Heritage Renewal

A timely article in the Fargo Forum recounts some details of the Siege of Fort Abercrombie. Good to see St. John quoted here. We'll hear more from her at the 150th observance at the fort on Saturday. (The center will be sponsoring a field trip for senior seminar and public history students.) The Forum got word of the ABPP grant to the center via the ABPP website; since the signed contract hasn't yet arrived, we haven't yet sent out our press release.

Historical research is proceeding on the Siege of Fort Abercrombie, pursuant to our grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program. Interesting details and perspectives emerge early in the process. For instance, it's important to establish who the fighters were in 1862--on both sides, federal and Dakota. On the federal side were Company D, 5th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry; and a company of civilians, Smith's Company, comprising mainly a bunch of teamsters from a wagon train that happened to be passing by. A cursory examination of the roster of Company D discloses that the volunteers were mainly German and Francophone (some Quebecois, others Metis). A minority were Anglo-Celtics. These are important details, for reasons that will become plain as we go along. The Senior Seminar in History will be tasked with figuring out just who these guys were--and what records they generated to enlighten our view of the siege.

Meanwhile, I spent a lovely evening in the archives last night, examining the McCauley Papers. David McCauley--Judge McCauley to later settlers--was a sutler at Fort Abercrombie and present during the siege. In fact, he's on the roster for Smith's Company of civilian defenders. He married late in life and, according to his bio, sired his only child at age 61. His widow, Carrie Whitman McCauley, was active in the Red River Valley Old Settlers Association, to which she delivered a remarkable address in 1902. Her address, which provides a previously unused account of the Siege of 1862, we will be referring to as the McCauley Narrative. Here's a sample page, wherein Mrs. McCauley recounts events leading up to the siege. (Click to enlarge.)

I'm not going to post any more than this fragment of the McCauley Narrative, as it belongs to the Institute for Regional Studies, but you'd like to see more, wouldn't you? Good work if you can get it.

We're in the initial stage of the work on Fort Abercrombie, which is historical research in verbal and pictoral sources. From there we proceed to archeological work, which will be led by our stalwart collaborator, Richard Rothaus. The history and archeology fold into a third aspect of the research, which is military terrain analysis. History + archeology + military science = definition of the battlefield.

Home from DC, where I attended training sessions for the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service. Some of this was a little dreary, having to do with arcane details of grant administration, but interest picked up as we got into the rationale and method of the ABPP. The point is to identify and document sites of battlefield action for purposes of preservation. (In our case, this means sites associated with the siege of Fort Abercrombie in 1862. This is not the same as the fort itself, which is a state historical society site, although of course, it includes the fort.) The method progresses through three overlapping and looping phases: historical research in documentary sources (verbal and graphic); fieldwork and archeology done on site; and military terrain analysis, through deployment of the KOCOA (Key Terrain Observation and Fields of Fire, Cover and Concealment, Obstacles, Avenues of Approach) template. So we're talking about a blend of History, Archeology, and Military Science. Great fun. Facebook users, you can like the ABPP here.