Examines the early history of Minnesota and the U.S.-Dakota War. Explores the lives of early pioneers to the Minnesota territory and how Europeans and Native Americans interacted before state ratification and the war.

Congressman, governor, military leader, and senior statesman--no person played a longer, more influential, or more varied role in the shaping of Minnesota than Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-91). Yet Sibley's history reveals universal tensions about the duality of the nineteenth century frontiersman who is at once an accommodating trade partner of the Indian/European/Metis worlds and the conquering government official of the ever-expanding West. Rhoda...

Alexandria is situated near the center of Douglas County, surrounded by a chain of beautiful lakes. These lakes brought pioneer settlers to the area as early as 1858, when Minnesota achieved statehood and the town was established. The lakes remain a key factor that continue to draw residents and visitors. The images in Postcard History Series: Alexandria tell the community's story, recalling fond memories of the businesses, churches, homes, schools,...

The voyageur's highway was the route from Lake Superior along inland waterways to the Minnesota North Country. Countless people-explorers, fur traders, missionaries, map makers, lumberjacks, miners, naturalists-were drawn to the region's woods and lakeshores. Indians, French Canadians, Scandinavians, and Slavs all used the rich resources of the land to follow an old way of life or to find a new one. In a lively, clear style, Grace Lee Nute tells the...

The settlers focuses on Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson as they struggle to prosper on their new farm in Chisago County, Minnesota Territory, during the 1850s. Kristina, coping with a feeling of loss for Sweden and difficulty of adapting to a new land, draws strength from a newfound spirituality. Karl Oskar brings more land under cultivation and harvests rye, wheat, and corn. Together they survive blizzards, grasshopper plagues, wildcat speculation...