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The Making of Minnesota
University of Minnesota Press
June 2010
On Sale: May 29, 2010
448 pages
ISBN: 0816648689
EAN: 9780816648689
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
In 1862, four years after Minnesota was ratified as the
thirty-second state in the Union, simmering tensions between
indigenous Dakota and white settlers culminated in the
violent, six-week-long U.S.–Dakota War. Hundreds of lives
were lost on both sides, and the war ended with the
execution of thirty-eight Dakotas on December 26, 1862, in
Mankato, Minnesota—the largest mass execution in
American history. The following April, after suffering a
long internment at Fort Snelling, the Dakota and Winnebago
peoples were forcefully removed to South Dakota,
precipitating the near destruction of the area's native
communities while simultaneously laying the foundation for
what we know and recognize today as Minnesota. In North Country: The Making of Minnesota, Mary
Lethert Wingerd unlocks the complex origins of the
state—origins that have often been ignored in favor of
legend and a far more benign narrative of immigration,
settlement, and cultural exchange. Moving from the earliest
years of contact between Europeans and the indigenous
peoples of the western Great Lakes region to the era of
French and British influence during the fur trade and
beyond, Wingerd charts how for two centuries prior to
official statehood Native people and Europeans in the region
maintained a hesitant, largely cobeneficial relationship.
Founded on intermarriage, kinship, and trade between the two
parties, this racially hybridized society was a meeting
point for cultural and economic exchange until the western
expansion of American capitalism and violation of treaties
by the U.S. government during the 1850s wore sharply at this
tremulous bond, ultimately leading to what Wingerd calls
Minnesota's Civil War. A cornerstone text in the chronicle of Minnesota's history,
Wingerd's narrative is augmented by more than 170
illustrations chosen and described by Kirsten Delegard in
comprehensive captions that depict the fascinating, often
haunting representations of the region and its inhabitants
over two and a half centuries. North Country is the
unflinching account of how the land the Dakota named Mini
Sota Makoce became the State of Minnesota and of the people
who have called it, at one time or another, home
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