By the year 1600 the Minnesota area was inhabited mainly by the Dakota or Sioux Indian Nation. The name Dakota means friend or ally. Seven groups of Dakota lived in the forests and grasslands around the headwaters of the Mississippi River. They called themselves O-ce-ti-sa-ko-win, or the seven council fires and were the Teto, Yankton, Yanktonai, Wahpekute, Wahpeton, Sisseton and Mdewakanton.

For three hundred years before Lewis and Clark, the hatters of Europe raised a cry for beaver. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century over 100,000 beaver skins a year were used in the production of men's hats. There were numerous models and styles all made with felt fashioned from beaver fur.

Indian trade and the search for furs under the flag of Louis XIV of France was the motivation for the initial exploration of the Minnesota area. The Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries also had interests in spreading the influence of the church to the native population .

Minnesota meaning, "sky tinted waters" has over 11,000 lakes and can boast of over four thousand square miles of water and that excludes Lake Superior bordering it on the north east. These lakes and streams lie in an area of continental divides causing them to drain into three main waterways going to as many seas. The largest of these is the Mississippi River that cuts a wide path south through the center of the continent and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Just a short distance from the headwaters of the Mississippi are streams that flow north into the Red River system and on to the Labrador Sea through Lake Winnipeg and Hudson's Bay. In the Arrow Head region of north eastern Minnesota are hundreds of streams that flow into Lake Superior through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean.

Frenchmen, exploring west from the colony of New France on the lower reaches of the St. Lawerance River looking for the fabled Northwest Passage finally added Lake Superior to the maps in 1641. It was along this route that fur traders Pierre Raddison and his brother-in-law, Me'dard Chouart, sieur des Groseillers, traveled westward in 1654 and explored inland from the south shore of Lake Superior. Where they went or did until 1660 is a bit unclear but it is certain that they came into contact with the Dakota, probably around Lake Mille Lacs. They may have traveled as far as Prairie Island on the Mississippi River near Hastings, passing Mendota, before returning to New France. There after arguing with the governor, the brother's-in-laws switched alliances to the British, resulting in the organization of the Hudson's Bay Company.

In 1673 Father Jacques Marquette and a layman Louis Jolliet landed at Green Bay, crossed the Wisconsin area via the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, and traveled past Mendota on the Mississippi as far south as the Arkansas River. Proving that the Mississippi River Flowed south, this pair are credited with the discovery of the upper Mississippi.

Still looking for the Pacific Ocean by way of the Great Lakes, Daniel Greysolon, sieur du Luth made his way to a great Sioux village on Mille Lacs Lake and claimed the area for France in 1679. Hearing that some of his countrymen were being held captive by the Sioux, he explored the Bois Brule' and the St. Croix rivers to the Mississippi where in July 1680 came upon Father Louis Hennipin, Michael Accault, and Antoine Auguelle with a hunting party of Indians. They had been sent from pathfinder La Salle's Illinois fort to explore the upper Mississippi the previous year. They were captured by a war party near Lake Pepin and held near Mille Lacs Lake for a few months before being allowed to accompany a hunting party south on the Mississippi resulting in the discovery of the Falls of St. Anthony early in July.

The Minnesota Area remained under the flag of France for the next eighty years while more explorers and fur traders/trappers arrived. Voyageurs, hardy Frenchmen, regularly plied the water routes through Minnesota by birchbark canoe bringing trade goods like pots, pans, knives and axes and returning with loads of valuable furs. After the defeat of the French by the British in the French and Indian War in, 1762, the control of the Minnesota area east of the Mississippi went to the British and to Spain went the lands west of the River. Under the British, trade flourished. The competing rivals in the fur trade, the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Companies dotted the waterways of Minnesota with forts and trading posts. The competition between them was very great and sometimes resulted in violent hostility. The Voyageurs remained simply changing alliances to their new employers.

By the time the area came under the control of the new United States with the closing of the Revolutionary War in the treaty of 1783, the Northwest Company became the dominant fur trade company in the area and remained so until the close of the War of 1812.