An early Minnesota immigrant’s surprising thoughts on European vs. indigenous names for our state’s beloved lakes
“The Indians have left us their lands, their lakes, their streams; let us accept with them the names by which they were known.” -W.H.C. Folsom
This year, folks in Minneapolis have been working toward restoring the name of a popular lake to its Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska, stripping the honor from the white supremacist John C. Calhoun.
In late November, the Hennepin County board voted to rename the lake, and it’s now up to the state and federal government to approve the change and start using it on maps.
The idea of “erasing history” has been central to this conversation. The public debate has followed much of the same path as the removal of statues honoring seccessionists in the South.
Erasing history implies we know the real story. But the past is never as simple as it seems.
W.H.C. Folsom arrived in the St. Croix Valley not long after an 1837 treaty with the Dakota and Ojibwe let whites into the area. By 1850, he made his home in Taylors Falls and stayed until his passing in 1900. Folsom served as Washington County’s first sheriff, later in the legislature, and was in other ways a leader in the nascent territory and state.
In his memoir Fifty Years in the Northwest, Folsom wrote about the name of the county he called home, Chisago, and the lake it was named after. The name comes from the Ojibwe language, which referred to its “fair and lovely waters.”
He also described how another wave of newcomers now wanted to make it their own.
Folsom had feelings about that:
In 1851, the writer, with Bart Emery, made a visit to this beautiful sheet of water. We found it what its Indian name imports, “fair and lovely water.” The government had, the year before, completed a survey of the lake, and it was high time that it should be given a name by which it should be designated on the map and recognized by civilized visitors. What name more beautiful and appropriate than that which the Indians had already given it. That name we at once recognized and used all our influence to perpetuate under somewhat adverse influences; for Swedish emigrants having settled in its neighborhood, a strong effort was made to christen it “Swede Lake,” but the lake is to-day known as Chisago, and Chisago it is likely to remain. We believe in the policy of retaining the old Indian names whenever possible. As a rule they are far more musical and appropriate than any we can apply. The Indians have left us their lands, their lakes, their streams; let us accept with them the names by which they were known. Some have been translated into English and appear on the maps as Goose, Elk, Beaver and Snake. By all means let us retranslate them in memory of the race that once owned them.
The quote above shows that Folsom had racist ideas about Native Americans, too. (The assumption the decision should be left to the whites and the impression that taking the lands was just and fair, rather than by force and deceit.)
Despite his biases, he seemed to understand how naming places after whites could erase an enormous amount of history. Chisago Lake held onto its name. But a couple decades earlier, Army surveyors wiped away thousands of years of connections between people and the land when they dubbed the largest lake in what would become Minneapolis Calhoun, after their boss, the Secretary of War.
