Settling Northfield: Dispossession, Commodification, and Frontier Ideology in the Cannon River Valley
Settling Northfield: Dispossession, Commodification, and Frontier Ideology in the Cannon River Valley
In this section, I invite you to travel back to the mid-19th century in what is now South Central Minnesota, when white settlers began colonizing the Cannon River Valley. The archival materials shown here were created during, or describe, this period of settlement– and the resulting dispossession of Dakota homelands and violence against Dakota peoples. As you read, look for traces of Indigenous presence and consider how settlers chose to write these stories. Why do they frame the land—and its histories—in these particular ways? Pay attention to the colonial ideologies and strategies that shaped Northfield’s founding, and to how settlers reconfigured their understanding of land and water to justify and enable settlement.
Pioneer Ideals - Northfield's Founding
The article below is a part of a scrapbook of early Northfield history. As you read Carl L. Weicht’s account of the town's founding, consider how he frames the Cannon River Valley as an “open land” and describes settlers as “alike only in their purpose to plant a garden where once was but a wilderness.” How does his rendering of the land function as a colonial strategy? Notice how he refers to Dakota (Sioux) people, particularly his emphasis on their supposedly 'nomadic' lifeways. How does Weicht shape a story of a settlement that both acknowledges and collapses Dakota presence? While examining these 19th century sources, I ask you to ponder the function of these fleeting mentions of Indigenous presence. How do these nods intentionally fold Indigenous presence into the past?
What did the Ames Mill Dam look like in the 1800s?
This early look at the Ames Mill Dam captures the scene. The focal point of this photograph is the old Fourth Street Bridge, positioned directly above the Ames Mill Dam. Horses and townspeople move across the bridge, while one figure pauses on the railing to watch the dam and the roaring flood waters of Cannon River below. The dam and Northfield’s bridges helped anchor the town's emerging identity. Together, they signaled Northfield’s harnessing of the river for industry.
The Cannon River: Controversy and Commodity
In a 1973 article published in the Golden Nugget, C. A. Morsching recounts a long history of controversies surrounding the Cannon River including the contentious 1865 proposal by the Cannon River Improvement Company to remake the river into a commericial shipping route with locks, dams, canals, and towpaths.
Although he notes that Dakota people used the river as a “source of food, water, and means of travel,” this framing flattens the depth of Dakota relationships with the Cannon and the central place of waterways in Dakota lifeways. Morsching adds that “the white settler too used the Cannon much as the Indian did, but he also came up with new and quite different capacities,” referring to the rise of hydropower through dams. By casting the river primarily as a tool of Euro-American industrial ‘progress,’ he overwrites Dakota perspectives and redefines the Cannon River as a commodity fueling the milling industry that quickly grew along its banks.
Settler Relationships with the Cannon River
As white settlers put down roots in Northfield, they developed a relationship with the Cannon River. Erling Larsen, in his book A Sentimental History, traces his relationship with the river starting in the early 1900s as a young boy. He depicts the Cannon River Valley as a mythic, timeless landscape– one without a history. Beneath the pastoral veneer, his narrative reveals the secrecy and ghosts that linger in the Cannon River Valley, marked by failed towns and their decaying dams that haunt the river’s course.
Throughout the piece, he frames the Cannon River as a source of power and industry for the towns along its path but describes that “of the sixteen [mills] which the Minnesota State Guide says once dotted the valley you can find today the ruins, the foundations, the shattered dams, of only a few. Some have disappeared entirely, others are almost lost in the woods and are seen only rarely by fishermen or hunters or small boys playing Indian.” Larsen frames the remnants of the mill dams as ghosts of settler ambition. By juxtaposing the children’s game with the “lost” or “disappear[ed]” mills, Larsen implicitly positions Indigenous presence as something already vanished– legible only through fantasy or performance. The phrase both literalizes and aestheticises the disappearance of Dakota peoples. Throughout his piece, Larsen acknowledges that Dakota people lived here, maintained diplomatic and trade relationships, and shaped the region’s linguistic and cultural landscape as we know it today. And yet, he still manages to describe the region as a “country without a past.”
Masculinity and Frontier Ideology
Although the photos below were taken roughly a decade before Larsen’s childhood memories of exploring the Cannon River, they offer a glimpse into the kinds of experiences he describes. The undercurrent of the photos reveal a masculine, pioneer-era engagement with the landscape. Consider how the boys engage with the land through their actions and posture. Why might the photographer have focused on the creek bridge as a setting for these images?