08-23-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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The people who lived on Savage Lake before the French-Canadian fur traders first arrived were from the Kaposia band of the Dakota Sioux tribe. Their main village was located along the Mississippi River, but for many years before settlement, these people regularly traveled up the watershed in their canoes and camped along the shore of Savage Lake while hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. During the 1830s, according to an account of one early settler, the fur traders occasionally met these Indian people to transact business at their encampment on the lake. The traders chose to call this lake “Lac du Sauvages,” which translates “Lake of the Savages.” The account states that this name was considered even then to be a derogatory reference to the indigenous people who lived there. I’ve looked up the French word “sauvage” in a 19th Century dictionary, and the only translation I find that might be considered charitable is “timid.” All others are disparaging—wild, untamed, uncivilized, fierce, barbarous. There’s not much doubt in my mind that the traders’ choice of the word “sauvage” to name this lake was intended to be disrespectful. So what else might the lake have been called? What if our predecessors had chosen a historic name like “New Canada Lake” after the original township in which the lake and community were situated? Or maybe a name like “Lambert Lake” could have been selected, which would have honored one of the early families who settled the area. There once was, in fact, a lake in the area named after the Lambert family but it was drained early for development. Or what if our predecessors had chosen “Encampment Lake” to acknowledge this lake’s earlier use by the indigenous people? Or knowing that these Indian people regarded the lake as sacred and even buried their dead along its shore, perhaps our forerunners might have named it “Spirit Lake”? I don’t know whether such possibilities were ever considered by the early settlers of the area, but the name Savage had clearly become identified with the lake by the 1860s—and we have chosen to call it by that name ever since. ****** In case of an atomic attack on our cities, the road net must permit quick evacuation of target areas, mobilization of defense forces and maintenance of every essential economic function…the Interstate System must be given top priority in construction planning. —Dwight D. Eisenhower from letter to Congress (1955) It was the height of the Cold War. President Eisenhower intended to build an extensive Interstate Highway System throughout the United States. Congress passed legislation authorizing this system in 1956 and Minnesota soon began constructing its Interstate roadways. There is little doubt that the most devastating event in the history of Savage Lake was the decision by highway planners to bisect the lake with Interstate-35E. No, bisect is too kind a word; the lake was run over by the highway, and it has never recovered. No other lake along the entire route of I-35 through Minnesota was treated in this way, although there was at least one other close call. The original plans for the Interstate through Dakota County south of St. Paul called for it to run through the middle of Blackhawk Lake in the City of Eagan, much as had been done with Savage Lake. Even as late as 1979, the official Minnesota Department of Transportation map