Minnesota has been claimed by four nations since the first Europeans explored its terrain. Nine different territories or government subdivisions of the United States have maintained jurisdiction over its land. Understanding its multiple dominions and authorities is essential in researching early Minnesota residents.

With the erection and blessing of a great wooden cross at Sault de Ste. Marie on 14 June 1671, Simon Francois Daumont, Sieur de St. Lusson claimed, for the King of France, an area which included present-day Minnesota. French exploration followed, forts were built, and the fur trading industry created economic and family relationships between the French and the Native Americans.

The Minnesota country west of the Mississippi River was secretly ceded to Spain by France in 1762, resulting in the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis briefly being French and Spanish. History intervened the following year when territory east of the river and free navigation on it was acquired by England by the Treaty of Paris. By proclamation northeastern Minnesota was forbidden trade and settlement. In 1774 that same area became part of the Province of Quebec and ten years later a United States territory. It remained unorganized until the Northwest Territory was created in 1787 and became part of the Indiana Territory in 1800. A northwestern section of the future state remained English until 1818. The southwestern section was Spanish until 1800 when it was ceded to France for another three years. It then became part of the District of Louisiana and subsequently the Louisiana Territory from 1804–12.

The section of Minnesota which was the Indiana Territory became part of the Illinois Territory in 1809 and the Michigan Territory in 1818. The balance of the state was in the Missouri Territory from 1812 through 1821 but unorganized from then until 1834 when all of Minnesota country was attached to the Michigan Territory. This temporary arrangement lasted two years. It became the Wisconsin Territory in 1836.

Two years later Minnesota divided again and placed the country west of the Mississippi River into the Iowa Territory until 1846. The eastern section remained part of the Wisconsin Territory until 1848. On 29 May of that year, Wisconsin obtained statehood, with the western border being essentially the St. Croix River. This made Minnesota an abandoned area without any organized government. Despite a couple of false starts, the “Stillwater Convention of 1848” produced a document organizing the Minnesota Territory. In March of 1849 the proposal was passed by Congress, and Minnesota finally came into existence. Included was part of what is now eastern North and South Dakota. Minnesota was admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state in May of 1858.

Early settlement in Minnesota was affected by several factors. The fur trading industry, the Catholic missions, and the military all brought white settlers to the area. The first American military post was the primitive Cantonment New Hope near Mendota, established in 1819 by Col. Henry Leavenworth and the Fifth United States Infantry. The camp, renamed Camp Coldwater, was moved to higher ground in the spring of 1820 and shortly thereafter replaced by a permanent stone fort originally called Fort St. Anthony, but changed to Fort Snelling in 1825. It became a nucleus from which early Minnesota settlements evolved. Refugees from the Selkirk Colony in Canada tried to make new homes on or near the military reservation, and French-Canadian traders and voyagers settled their families at Mendota across the river from the Fort. Indian treaties in 1837 opened an area in 1838 between the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, the first available Minnesota real estate. The logging industry and the evolving sawmills established a St. Croix River valley community, the second focus of white settlement in Minnesota. On the east bank of the Mississippi River at St. Anthony Falls, the third center of pre-territorial population developed, eventually becoming the city of Minneapolis.

Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 opened the territory west of the Mississippi River to settlers, and the Rock Island Railroad opening in 1854 brought many new Americans. Later, the Homestead Act of 1862 was a very positive incentive for immigration to Minnesota.

Minnesota immigrants from 1820 through 1890 were basically from the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia, although there were small groups of Czech and Polish farmers and those from Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. All these groups continued to arrive in Minnesota after 1890, but beginning in 1890 and continuing through 1920 there was also a new group of immigrants—those basically without financial means to purchase property but eager to fill the employment opportunities in the new industries and in the transportation systems. Their nationalities varied, many coming from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. There were also Italians, Greeks, Russian-Germans, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Finns.

Immigration

The only direct immigration to Minnesota would have been across the United States-Canadian border by land, railroad or waterways. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, St. Paul, it was not until 1890 that port of entry records were kept for people entering from Canada. Passenger lists were not required on the lakes and rivers of Minnesota although some lists do exist. They may be found in diaries, letters, records of ship personnel, newspapers, or shipping company business papers. Their rarity makes them an uncommon source for genealogical research. For extensive information on the availability of river vessel records, see Ann H. Peterson's comprehensive, “Finding River People on Western Waters,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 78 (Dec. 1990): 245–61. Although focused on crews of steamboats, her listed sources could be helpful for research involving Midwest river travel.

Naturalization

Naturalization records are located at the District Court office of the county or at the Minnesota Historical Society Research Center. Availability varies by county and will continue to shift as more counties transfer their files to the center. Supreme Court Naturalization Records, 1858–1906 are found at the center. After 1906, naturalization was granted by the U.S. Federal District Court.

Black American

Minnesota counted very few blacks in the population prior to the Civil War. Those who were in the state were basically in two groups, either servants of officers at Fort Snelling or engaged in the fur trading industry. The latter, hired mainly by the fur companies in St. Louis, were some of the earliest blacks in Minnesota. The Minnesota territorial census of 1849 listed forty free persons of African descent, thirty of those living in St. Paul in seven family groups. After 1860 the black population increased two fold, including over 500 men, women and children arriving by steamboats from St. Louis to St. Paul in May of 1863. The Minnesota Historical Society has numerous manuscript collections pertaining to blacks in Minnesota.

Native American

Minnesota's two major native nations were the Dakota (or Sioux), originally from the southern prairie, and the Ojibway (or Chippewa) of the northern pine forests, both semi-nomadic societies based on hunting and gathering. In 1805 the United States purchased two small parcels of land in Minnesota—one piece for a military post, Fort Snelling; all other land belonged to the Native Americans. Intertribal fighting for northern Minnesota existed until 1825 when the Dakota and Ojibway agreed to a tribal diagonal demarcation almost across the center of the state.

Massive cessions of Native American land to European settlement began in Minnesota country in 1837 when an area between the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers was relinquished by the Dakota and Ojibway. After the chiefs signed the treaty, they headed north to the lands for which they thought they had given only timber rights. It was not until 1849 that they realized they had indeed sold their native land.

In 1847 land west of the Mississippi in central Minnesota was provided by treaty for the Winnebago and Menominee, although neither tribe ever occupied the area. Four years later, at Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, the Dakota signed treaties that gave the United States most of southern Minnesota. In treaties of 1854, 1855, 1863, and 1866, the Ojibway gave up much of their northern Minnesota land.

During the 1850s and 1860s, the Dakota treaties brought about a tragic and sorrowful chapter of Minnesota history. The reservations were not established as promised, and the various bands refused to move to the provisional reserves in the mid-1850s. Land annuity payments, the restriction of reservation life, and the non-existence of promised agricultural aid led many Dakota families to return to their original lands, now the homes of European settlers. In 1857 settlers were killed in Spirit Lake, Iowa, and in Jackson County, Minnesota. A treaty in 1858 providing for Dakota self-government and land allotments failed, resulting in the Sioux Conflict of 1862, after which many either fled to the Dakota Territory or Canada or were moved to Crow Creek (now South Dakota). The unsatisfactory conditions at Crow Creek resulted in many deaths before the tribe was moved to Nebraska in 1866.

Minnesota's Ojibway were not involved in armed conflict with the white settlers, but the United States acquired most of their land and tried to confine them to reservations within the state. Small inter-tribal treaty parcels were consolidated, and some Ojibway refused to move to these larger reservations.

However, by 1980 there were nearly twice as many Native Americans in Minnesota as when the Europeans first visited this area. The metropolis of St. Paul and Minneapolis has the third largest urban concentration of Native Americans in the United States. The Ojibway in the northern part of the state occupy one of the few unallotted and unceded reservations in the country.

Other Ethnic Groups

Nineteenth-century French Canadians as fur traders, as lumbermen, and as priests in the Catholic church, were the first immigrants to Minnesota. Later other French Canadians followed, locating their new homes in the river valleys. The first French-Canadian communities at Fort Snelling and Mendota were both at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. Minnesota has a larger French-Canadian population in the late twentieth century than any state outside of New England.

Of the approximate 32,000,000 total immigrants to the United States from 1820 through 1950, it is estimated that at least 1,000,000 made their way to or through Minnesota. They came to the state for the available land; they came with tickets purchased for them by earlier U.S. immigrants; and they came to the support and security of ethnic communities already established in the counties and small towns. Most came via Canada and the Red River trails, up the Mississippi on steamboats, and overland. Eventually they arrived by train.

For excellent and thorough discussions of all the immigrant groups to Minnesota see June Drenning Holmquist's They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups (St. Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1981).

There are several research repositories for ethnic groups in Minnesota. The Immigration History Research Center was founded at the University of Minnesota (826 Berry Street, St. Paul, Minnesota 55114) in 1965. Its dual purpose is to encourage the study of the role of immigration and to collect the records of twenty-four American ethnic groups originating from Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe and the Near East. The collection includes newspapers, books, periodicals, the records of churches, cultural societies, political and fraternal organizations, and the personal papers of immigrants. The American Letters (1880–1964), a microfilmed collection of some 15,000 letters sent by immigrants to friends and relatives in Finland, is an example of the type of items in the collection.

The Norwegian-American Historical Association, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota 55057, has a collection on immigration including letters, diaries, business records, family histories, photographs, oral histories, and obituary and newspaper indexes.

The Minnesota Historical Society has a large collection of Norwegian immigration materials including guidebooks written for prospective emigrants, about 10,000 manuscripts, an excellent printed and periodical collection for Swedish-Americans, and several ethnic collections which include artifacts and manuscripts listed in the society's Historic Resources in Minnesota: A Report on their Extent, Location, and Need for Preservation (St. Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society, 1979).

The American Swedish Institute, 2600 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55407, focuses on the settlement of Swedes in America. Its collection includes family and personal papers, oral history, correspondence and record books of Swedish immigrant organizations, Bibles, genealogies, photographs, and microfilm copies of Swedish church records in Minnesota.

The emphasis of the Celtic Collection, O'Shaughnessy Library, College of Saint Thomas, 2115 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105, is on Welsh, Scottish, and Irish history, folklore, language, and literature.