MNMinnesota History

Q: When did Minnesota become a state?

Minnesota was admitted on May 11, 1858 as the 32nd state. Minnesota Territory had been organized on March 3, 1849.

Q: What was the US Dakota War of 1862?

A war along the Minnesota River that began on August 17, 1862 after treaty annuities failed to arrive and the Dakota faced starvation. It ended with the hanging of 38 Dakota men at Mankato on December 26, 1862, the largest mass execution in United States history, followed by the abrogation of the treaties and the expulsion of the Dakota from the state.

Q: Why does Minnesota stick up above the Canadian border?

The Northwest Angle exists because the 1783 Treaty of Paris assumed the Mississippi River rose west of Lake of the Woods. It rises at Lake Itasca instead, so the boundary was patched by the 1818 convention and the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, leaving about 123 square miles of Minnesota north of the 49th parallel.

Saint Paul · Upper Mississippi · Admitted May 11, 1858, the 32nd state

A northern border drawn around a mapmaker's mistake

The Treaty of Paris of 1783 ran the new nation's boundary west from Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi River, because the negotiators believed the Mississippi rose somewhere out on the prairie. It does not. It begins at Lake Itasca, well to the south and east of where they thought, so the line they wrote could never close. Repairing it took the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, which substituted the 49th parallel, and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. The leftover scrap is the Northwest Angle, about 123 square miles of Minnesota sitting above the 49th parallel that can be reached by road only by driving out through Manitoba.

Land east of the Mississippi came to the United States with independence in 1783. Land west of it arrived twenty years later as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Minnesota is therefore stitched together from two entirely separate acquisitions, and the river is the seam.

Dakota and Ojibwe, and the treaties of 1851

Mni sota makoce, the Dakota phrase the state's name comes from, describes water that carries the color of the sky. The eastern Dakota bands of the Oceti Sakowin, the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton and Wahpeton, the country from Mille Lacs down the Minnesota River valley. Ojibwe communities pushed west from Lake Superior through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and took the wild rice lakes of the north in a long war with the Dakota. Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, claimed the region for France at Mille Lacs in 1679, and Louis Hennepin named the falls at what became Minneapolis for Saint Anthony in 1680.

Zebulon Pike bought the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi from Dakota leaders in 1805 for trade goods; Fort Snelling was built there between 1820 and 1825. In 1851 the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota transferred nearly all of southern Minnesota, close to 24 million acres, for annuities that arrived late, fell short, and were skimmed by traders. Minnesota Territory had been organized on March 3, 1849. Statehood came on May 11, 1858, the 32nd state, admitted while Congress was still deadlocked over the Kansas constitution.

1862 on the Minnesota River, and the First Minnesota at Gettysburg

The annuity payment was late again in the summer of 1862 and the Dakota were starving. Fighting broke out near Acton on August 17 and spread down the valley under Taoyateduta, called Little Crow, who had argued against war and then led it. Hundreds of settlers and an unrecorded number of Dakota were killed before the fighting ended at Wood Lake in September. Military commissions tried 392 men, some in a matter of minutes. Abraham Lincoln reviewed the sentences and cut the list to 38, and those men were hanged together at Mankato on December 26, 1862, still the largest mass execution in United States history. Congress then abrogated the treaties and the Dakota were expelled from the state.

Minnesota had also given Lincoln the first volunteer regiment offered to him after Fort Sumter. On July 2, 1863 the First Minnesota was ordered to charge a far larger Confederate brigade at Gettysburg to buy a few minutes for the collapsing Union center. It bought the minutes and lost the overwhelming majority of the men who made the charge.

Flour, iron ore and fire

Water power at Saint Anthony Falls made Minneapolis the flour milling capital of the world once millers adopted the middlings purifier and roller grinding, which finally made hard spring wheat profitable to mill. The Washburn A mill exploded in a flour dust blast on May 2, 1878, killing eighteen men and flattening a district; the firms that rebuilt became General Mills and Pillsbury. The Merritt brothers found soft hematite lying near the surface of the Mesabi Range in 1890, and the first ore train left Mountain Iron in 1892. Mesabi ore supplied a large share of the steel for both world wars, and the taconite amendment of 1964 kept the range working after the rich ore was gone. Logging slash left the woods primed to burn: the Hinckley fire of September 1, 1894 killed more than 400 people in a few hours, and Cloquet burned in 1918.

Farmer-Labor politics and a state remade by arrivals

Third party politics ran deeper here than almost anywhere. The Farmer-Labor Party elected Floyd B. Olson governor in 1930 and held the office through most of the Depression. Minneapolis truck drivers struck in 1934, and police fired on them on July 20 in a confrontation that ended by breaking the open shop in a city that had been notorious for it. Farmer-Labor merged with the Democrats in 1944 to make the DFL, and Hubert Humphrey, then mayor of Minneapolis, forced a civil rights plank onto the 1948 Democratic platform and watched delegations walk out over it.

A father and two sons practicing medicine at Rochester built what became the Mayo Clinic, working out of Saint Marys Hospital from 1889. The firm that became 3M started at Two Harbors in 1902 on a mining claim that held the wrong mineral. Hmong families resettled in the Twin Cities after 1975 and Somali families from the early 1990s, now among the largest such communities in the country. The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020 set off protests in every state.

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Questions about Minnesota history

When did Minnesota become a state?

May 11, 1858, as the 32nd state. The territory had been organized on March 3, 1849.

Who lived in Minnesota before European settlement?

Eastern Dakota bands of the Oceti Sakowin held the south and center; Ojibwe communities held the north after moving west from Lake Superior.

What was the US Dakota War of 1862?

A war along the Minnesota River beginning August 17, 1862 after treaty annuities failed to arrive. It ended with 38 Dakota men hanged at Mankato on December 26, 1862 and the Dakota expelled from the state.

Why does Minnesota stick up above the Canadian border?

The 1783 Treaty of Paris wrongly assumed the Mississippi rose west of Lake of the Woods. Later treaties patched the line and left the Northwest Angle above the 49th parallel.