and the tales and legends that have circulated among the Tlingit people for centuries are all woven together

beautiful and bone dense

make us long for woods and waters today

Together they sit underneath the family’s cottonwood tree

Are dream catchers an authentic tradition

Fort Snelling at Bdote: A Brief History Menominee and the tales and legendsFor millennia, the place where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi has been a crossroads, a place of strategic power. In the 1820s, the newly arriving U. S. troops built Fort Snelling on the bluff above the rivers. That limestone fortress has stood for almost two hundred years as both an actor and a symbol in Minnesota's history. But that symbolism is complicated. The fort is a powerful reminder that most Minnesotans today are descendants of