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Legends 65: Twin Spirits

Duration
31m
Broadcast on
27 Oct 2025
Audio Format
other

At the heart of their dual history and shared rivalry, this pair of midwestern cities hides a darker common ground, and the stories that live there are more than a little frightening.

Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Andrew Kelleher and research by Cassandra de Alba.

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©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

If you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're a small business owner. And like every small business owner, you started with a dream, to do what you love and watch it grow. What you probably didn't dream about, keeping up with cyber threats. That's where MasterCard can help. With access to tools that help identify cyber threats to better protect your business. Building your dream business, price-less. For cybersecurity in a changing world, there's MasterCard. [MUSIC] Learn more at MasterCard.com/smallbusiness. [MUSIC] The Dakota people have a creation myth that explains not just how they came to be, but how they view the universe and their place within it. In the beginning, they were the star people. Beans of light who walk the spirit road, which we know today as the Milky Way. One day, they tumbled from the sky and crashed to the earth, joining with the soil. The ground opened to receive them and where they landed, a pair of bluffs rose to frame two great rivers. Then the creator reached down between those bluffs and scooped up fistfuls of mud. And from it, he formed the first man and woman, the earliest ancestors of the Dakota. It's a strange story that says something profound. We are not separate from the land. We are the land. But this wasn't just any land. The spot where the creator molded the first people was known as Badugte, which means the place where waters meet. It's a real physical location at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers in what is now central Minnesota. For the Dakota, it is the center of the world and the earth's most sacred point. But history hasn't been kind to many of the Dakotas' holy places. Badugte became the site of a U.S. military fort, then the foundation for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Today, millions pass through without knowing they are treading on sacred ground. But places like this don't lose their energy. When creation starts in your backyard, it leaves a mark. Maybe that's why the Twin Cities have never been short on stories. Or for that matter. The place could barely even be called a town. It was more of a trading outpost in the beginning, a scattering of log structures, rough-hewn shops, and since this was the American frontier, a single tavern. The settlers called their new home Pig's Eye. After the town's most colorful character, a notorious, one-eyed, whiskey bootlegger who'd been giving the local soldiers' headaches and hangovers for years. Now, granted, Pig's Eye wasn't the most attractive name. Definitely not the kind of branding that you'd want your city's tourism brochure to have. But it was easier for the European settlers to pronounce then Badugte, which is what the indigenous Dakota called it. Pig's Eye, and the nearby military encampment of Fort Snelling, had risen up around the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. For generations, the spot had been the spiritual center for Dakota life.

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