Sacred Ground

The local landscape, sacred to Indigenous peoples, was shaped by glaciers that created rolling hills, lakes, and prairie potholes.  Streams formed channels through the land, including the North Fork of the Watab River (Stumpf Lake).  The fieldstone deposited by the glaciers was used by pioneer monks to form the foundation of the Quadrangle and later to create stone walls across the campus.

Humans hunted and gathered here shortly after the glaciers receded.  Since the 1600s Native American tribes, including the Ho-Chunk, Dakota, and Ojibwe, lived in what is now the state of Minnesota.  During the 1760s the Indigenous peoples were pushed west by white settlers and other uprooted Indigenous nations.  Through a series of treaties drawn by the U.S. government, borders shifted before settling under American control, and reservations for the Ojibwe were created in central and northern Minnesota.  Though the Dakota and Ojibwe ceded the southern half of the Minnesota Territory, including present-day Saint John’s, the Dakota never received annual investment income as promised.  When the United States closed several of the reservations, the Ojibwe were forced to live on even less land. 

This sacred ground stands at the intersection of hardwood forest and prairie.  The Nature Conservancy has identified it as “ecologically significant,” one of the few areas in the nation with intact, native plant communities.  Saint John’s honors with gratitude this land and the Ho-Chunk, Dakota, Ojibwe, and Anishinaabe peoples who have stewarded it for generations.