History of Minnesota
The history of the U.S. state of Minnesota is shaped by its original Native American residents, European exploration and settlement, and the emergence of industries made possible by the state's natural resources. Early economic growth was based on fur trading, logging, milling and farming, and later through railroads and iron mining.
The earliest people followed herds of large game to the region during the last glacial period. They were the ancestors who preceded by thousands of years the recognized tribal communities of the Dakota, the Ioway, and other indigenous inhabitants. Fur traders from France arrived during the 17th century, as did the Anishinaabe. Europeans moving west during the 19th century drove out most of the Native Americans. Fort Snelling, built to protect United States territorial interests, brought early settlers to the future state. They used Saint Anthony Falls to power sawmills in the area that became Minneapolis, while others settled downriver in the area that became Saint Paul.
Minnesota's legal identity was created as the Minnesota Territory in 1849, and it became the 32nd U.S. state on May 11, 1858. After the chaos of the American Civil War and the Dakota War of 1862 ended, the state's economy grew when its timber and agriculture resources were developed. Railroads attracted immigrants, established the farm economy, and brought goods to market. The power provided by St. Anthony Falls spurred the growth of Minneapolis, and the innovative milling methods gave it the title of the "milling capital of the world".
New industry came from iron ore, discovered in the north, mined relatively easily from open pits, and shipped to Great Lakes steel mills from the ports at Duluth and Two Harbors. Economic development and social changes led to an expanded role for state government and a population shift from rural areas to cities. The Great Depression brought layoffs in mining and tension in labor relations, but New Deal programs helped the state. After World War II, Minnesota became known for technology, fueled by early computer companies Sperry Rand, Control Data, and Cray. The Twin Cities also became a regional center for the arts, with cultural institutions such as the Guthrie Theater, Minnesota Orchestra, and Walker Art Center.
Native American habitation
Earliest people in the state
The oldest known human remains in Minnesota, dating back about 9,000 years ago, were discovered near Browns Valley in 1933. "Browns Valley Man" was found with tools of the Clovis and Folsom types. Some of the earliest evidence of a sustained presence in the area comes from a site known as Bradbury Brook near Mille Lacs Lake which was used around 7500 BC. Subsequently, extensive trading networks developed in the region. The body of an early resident known as "Minnesota Woman" was discovered in 1931 in Otter Tail County. Radiocarbon dating places the age of the bones approximately 8000 years ago, approximately 7890 ±70 BP or near the end of the Eastern Archaic period. She had a conch shell from a snail species known as Busycon perversa, which had previously only been known to exist in Florida.Several hundred years later, the climate of Minnesota warmed significantly. As large animals such as mammoths became extinct, native people changed their diet. They gathered nuts, berries, and vegetables, and they hunted smaller animals such as deer, bison, and birds. The stone tools found from this era became smaller and more specialized to use these new food sources. They also devised new techniques for catching fish, such as fish hooks, nets, and harpoons. Around 5000 BC, people on the shores of Lake Superior were the first on the continent to begin making metal tools. Pieces of ore with high concentrations of copper were initially pounded into a rough shape, heated to reduce brittleness, pounded again to refine the shape, and reheated. Edges could be made sharp enough to be useful as knives or spear points.
Later precontact history
Archaeological evidence of Native American presence dates between 2,500 and 5,000 years ago at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site in southwest Minnesota. The exposed Sioux Quartzite rock is dotted with several thousand petroglyphs thought to date to the Late Archaic Period. Around 700 BC, burial mounds were first created, and the practice continued until the arrival of Europeans, when 10,000 to 11,000 such mounds dotted the state. The Hopewell burial mounds in Saint Paul are protected from invasive modern tourism.Archaeologists believe native peoples discovered the catlinite deposit at Pipestone over 3,000 years ago. Word of its existence spread and a quarry developed that was sacred ground to the native peoples across a vast area. When the French Voyageurs arrived in the region in the 1600s they learned of the quarry in their bartering with the indigenous peoples. In 1858, the same year Minnesota became a state, the Yankton Sioux Tribe signed the Yankton Treaty in which they gave up their lands in western Minnesota and South Dakota. However, section 8 of the treaty gave the Yankton nation a one-mile square reservation at the quarry site. In 1893 the site was sold to the US Government and in 1937 FDR signed the bill creating the Pipestone National Monument. Today the quarry remains active and is restricted exclusively to Native Americans by treaty with the National Park Service. At present there are 23 tribal nations affiliated by treaty to the Monument based upon their historic ties with Pipestone.
By AD 800, wild rice became a staple crop in the region, and corn farther to the south. Within a few hundred years, the Mississippian culture reached into the southeast portion of the state, and large villages were formed. The Dakota Native American culture may have descended from some of the peoples of the Mississippian culture.
European colonization
When Europeans first started exploring Minnesota, the region was inhabited primarily by tribal communities of Dakota people, who called the area "Mni Sóta Makoce, meaning "the land where the water reflects the skies." The Ojibwa There were also the Chiwere Ioway in the southwest, and possibly the Menominee in some parts of the southeast as well as other tribes which could have been either Algonquian or Chiwere to the northeast, alongside Lake Superior. The economy of these tribes was chiefly based on hunter-gatherer activities. There was also a small group of Ho-Chunk Native Americans near Long Prairie, who later moved to a reservation in Blue Earth County in 1855.At some early point, the Missouria moved south into what is now Missouri, the Menominee ceded much of their westernmost lands and withdrew closer to the region of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the A'ani were pushed north and west by the Dakota and split into the Gros Ventre and the Arapaho. Later tribes who would inhabit the region include the Assiniboine, who split from the Dakota and returned to Minnesota, but later also moved west as American settlers came to populate the region.
The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota phrase Mni Sóta Makoce, which is depicted on the only state seal in the US to include an Indigenous phrase.
European exploration
17th century
In the late 1650s, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, while following the southern shore of Lake Superior, were probably the first Europeans to meet Dakota Native Americans. The north shore of the lake was explored in the 1660s. Among the first to do this was Claude Allouez, a missionary on Madeline Island. He made an early map of the area in 1671.Around this time, the Ojibwa Native Americans reached Minnesota as part of a westward migration. Having come from a region around Maine, they had experience dealing with European traders. They sold furs and purchased guns. Tensions rose between the Ojibwa and Dakota in the ensuing years.
In 1671, France signed a treaty with a number of tribes to allow trade. Shortly thereafter, French trader Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, arrived in the area and began trading with the local tribes. Du Lhut explored the western area of Lake Superior, near his namesake, the city of Duluth, and areas south of there. He helped to arrange a peace treaty between the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes in 1679.
Father Louis Hennepin, with companions Michel Aco and Antoine Auguelle, headed north from the area of modern Illinois after coming into that area with an exploration party headed by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. They were captured by a Dakota tribe in 1680. While with the tribe, they came across and named the Falls of Saint Anthony. Soon, Du Lhut was able to obtain through negotiation the release of Hennepin's party. Hennepin returned to Europe and wrote a book, Description of Louisiana, published in 1683, about his travels; many portions, including the part about Saint Anthony Falls, were strongly embellished. As an example, he described the falls as having a drop of 50 to 60 feet, when they were really only about. Pierre-Charles Le Sueur explored the Minnesota River to the Blue Earth area around 1700. He thought the blue earth was a source of copper, and he told stories about the possibility of mineral wealth, but there actually was no copper in it.
18th century
Explorers searching for the fabled Northwest Passage and large inland seas in North America continued to pass through the state. In 1721, the French built Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin. In 1731, the Grand Portage trail was first traversed by a European, Pierre La Vérendrye. He used a map written down on a piece of birch bark by Ochagach, an Assiniboine guide. The North West Company, which traded in fur and competed with the Hudson's Bay Company, was established along the Grand Portage in 1783–1784.Jonathan Carver, a shoemaker from Massachusetts, visited the area in 1767 as part of another expedition. He and the rest of the exploration party were only able to stay for a relatively short period, due to a lack of supplies. They headed back east to Fort Michilimackinac, where Carver wrote journals about the trip, though others would later claim the stories were largely plagiarized. The stories were published in 1778, but Carver died before the book earned him much money. Carver County and Carver's Cave are named for him.