Early humans first arrived in Minnesota between 15,000-30,000 years ago by crossing the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, traveling down the Alaskan coast, or crossing the ice-choked Atlantic from Europe. As the last ice age ended around 12,500 years ago, melting glaciers formed huge lakes and forests covered most of the landscape. Various groups of indigenous peoples inhabited Minnesota over thousands of years, adapting to climate changes and relying increasingly on wild rice and agriculture. When Europeans arrived in the 1600s, the Dakota were the main native group living in the region.

1. Early Minnesota History

2. 15,000 to 30,000 Years Ago
• People come to
America –
? hunters crossed
the land bridge
from Asia.
? Asians traveled
down the Alaskan
coastline
? people came from
Europe across the
ice-choked
Atlantic.
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3. 12,500 Years Ago
• As the most recent
ice age comes to an
end, melting glaciers
form huge lakes Lake Agassiz, is
larger than Lakes
Superior, Michigan,
and Huron combined.
•
Most of the open
land is covered with
forests of spruce
trees.
.

4. • Minnesota is teeming with exotic wildlife--caribou,
musk oxen, giant bison, beavers the size of large
black bears, and great mammoths that stand 14 feet
high at the shoulder and weigh upwards of 10 tons.

5. Around 11,000 Years Ago
• People
As the glaciers retreat north for
the last time, people move onto
the land that is now Minnesota,
probably following game from
the south and west. These
people gather and hunt animals
large and small, including the
woolly mammoth and other
creatures living near the
glaciers.

6. There is a style of stone point
(like an arrowhead) known to
archaeologists as a "Clovis"
point.
Clovis points have also been
found in Minnesota, though
archeologists have not been
able to date these exactly.
.

7. 9,200 Years Ago
• People sit around a fire
and chip rocks into spear
points at a site south of
Lake Mille Lacs known to
archeologists as
Bradbury Brook.
• This is the earliest
evidence of people's work
in Minnesota.

8. 9,000 Years Ago
• As the glaciers
recede, mammoths
and other giant
animals disappear,
either killed off by
hunters or unable to
live in the warmer,
drier climate.

9. 8,600 Years Ago
•
Indian people travel the rivers to trade
with one another. Shells from the Gulf
Coast make their way to Minnesota.
• Traders traveling up and down the rivers
meet different people with different ways
Conch shell pendant found
of doing things; they carry their new
with the skeleton of a young
knowledge and ideas along with their
woman near Pelican Rapids.
goods.

10. 7,000 Years Ago
• People living near Lake Superior
begin shaping copper nuggets into
spear points, fishhooks, awls, and
knives. They are the first people in the
Americas to make tools from metal.

11. 3,000 Years Ago
• Native people begin
making clay pots for
cooking and storing
food. The use of
pottery suggests a
cultural change; pot
makers are more likely
to use the same base
camps over and over
again.

12. 2,700 Years Ago
• Morrison Mound is the oldest mound
in Minnesota. Over the next 2,500
years, Indians--including the Dakota
and their ancestors--build earthen
mounds to bury their dead.

13. 1,200 Years Ago
• Wild rice becomes a
staple and changes
the cultures of central
and northern
Minnesota.
• Rice is a healthy,
portable food that will
last through the
winter.
• Wild ricing leads to
rapid population
growth and, later,
permanent villages.

14. 1,000 Years Ago
•
People living in the river valleys of southeastern Minnesota are
part of a large, culture that archeologists call Mississippian.
Their capitol is at distant Cahokia (outside present-day St.
Louis, Missouri). They plant beans, squash, sunflowers,
tobacco, and most important of all, corn. They build permanent
houses and large villages and dig deep pits in which they
store their summer harvest.
•
At its peak about 800 years ago, Cahokia has between 20,000
and 25,000 residents in a six-square-mile city. Not until 1800,
when Philadelphia's population reaches 30,000, does any U.S.
city have more people.

15. 1492
• On an expedition to China funded by Spain,
Christopher Columbus accidentally lands in the
Caribbean.
• In the region that we now call Minnesota, the
Dakota, Assiniboin, Cree, Oto, and Ioway
nations are unaware of the new arrivals and will
remain so for perhaps another century.

16. The Dakota
• The Dakota Indians
are the main group
of American Indians
that live in
Minnesota when
early explorers from
France and Spain
travel here in the
1600s.