A Little History

 

At the end of the Ice Age, small bands of Ojibwa and Sioux hunters entered Minnesota. They were probably following herds of large animals, such as elk or giant bison. Over the centuries, their descendants made the land their home and slowly adopted new ways. As they learned to plant gardens of corn and squash and harvest wild rice growing in lakes and swamps, life became easier and the population grew.

 

 

As the Native Americans moved west, French traders migrated right along with them.   Both were friendly to the French and contributed to the fur-trading empire that reached from the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes and on to the Mississippi and the Great Plains.

 

 

The U.S. acquired eastern Minnesota from Great Britain after the Revolutionary War and twenty years later bought the western part from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.  However, it was only after the War of 1812 that settlement began in earnest. In 1820 Fort St. Anthony (later Fort Snelling) was founded as a guardian of the frontier. A gristmill established there in 1823 initiated the industrial development of Minneapolis. Treaties with the Ojibwa and the Sioux, (by which the U.S. government took over Native American lands,) and the opening of a land office at St. Croix Falls in 1848, initiated a period of substantial expansion. Minnesota eventually joined the Union on May 11, 1858, becoming the 32^nd state.