Participants in the Treaty of Washington, including Henry Belland, Joseph Renshaw Brown, Nathaniel R. Brown, Antoine Joseph Campbell, and the Dakota leaders Wabasha and Mankato, 1858. Photographed by Charles DeForest Fredericks.
George Morrison, one of Minnesota’s most important artists, is best known for his landscape paintings and wood collages. He drew inspiration from nature, combining impressionism with expressionism, cubism, and surrealism to develop a uniquely textured style. He referred to himself as a formalist in his approach to art.
The U.S. Army built Fort Snelling between 1820 and 1825 to protect American interests in the fur trade. It tasked the fort’s troops with deterring advances by the British in Canada, enforcing boundaries between the region’s Native American nations, and preventing settler-colonists from intruding on Native American land. In these early years and until its temporary closure in 1858, Fort Snelling was a place where diverse people interacted and shaped the future state of Minnesota.