Early Indian Cultures

The Minnesota area was home to four different early cultures before European explorers entered it.

The first was the Paleo-Indian culture, which came to the area eight to ten thousand years ago. These early people depended upon large animals such as the woolly mammoth and giant bison for food.

The mammals gradually became extinct, affected by changes in the climate (and also perhaps by more effective hunting methods). By 5060 B.C. a different way of life had emerged.

The small family groups of the Eastern Archaic culture lived by foraging for edible plants or hunting small game. They began to use copper tools.

About 2500 B.C., they began to grow crops; corn, beans and squash were first introduced in the area from Mexico. Farming gradually became common in much of the rest of North America and helped make more permanent settlements.

As the centuries passed, people in different regions of what is now the United States developed distinct ways of life. Around 1000 B.C., the Woodland culture was dominant through most of the East and Upper Midwest.

Much has been learned about this culture from two important sources: pottery, which first appeared at this time, and the many burial mounds filled with artifacts that the Woodland people formed.

Life still depended upon food available in the wild. Deer and buffalo were hunted in this area. Copper tools disappeared as the source of the metal near Lake Superior was depleted; instead tools were made of stone or animal bone. Although agriculture became part of the Woodland life in areas farther south, in northern Minnesota wild rice supported a larger and more settled population.

About 700 A.D., a new influence entered this area from the south. The Mississippian culture originated near the Gulf of Mexico and was more oriented toward agriculture (supplemented by hunting and fishing) than earlier cultures had been.

Mississippian peoples had a different style of pottery, although their tools were still of stone or animal bone and burial mounds remained common. Evidence shows that the Mississippian culture reached as far north as the Twin City area and had some effect on pottery and tools used here.

In a series of field surveys conducted in the late 1800s, Theodore H. Lewis tried to locate and describe all the Indian burial mounds in Minnesota. His survey included 104 mounds, called the "Black Dog" group, that were situated in Eagan near the present intersection of Cedar Avenue and Highway 13. All but three of these were said to be fairly round, between 1 and 5-1/2 feet high, and from 15 to 75 feet in diameter. The other three were 1-1/2 to 3 feet high and measured 40 x 100 feet, 20 x 125 feet and 50 x 125 feet.

Over the years, as land was plowed for planting, the Indian mounds were destroyed. Today few traces of past Indian cultures remain.

This area is usually considered part of the traditional homeland of the Dakota, or Sioux, Indian nation, but several tribes lived in this region at the time of the early European explorations. The Iowa Indians reportedly once made their home here, creating a village before being driven south by the Dakotas. (This was reported in an 1881 history of Dakota County, in which account is also given of a major battle between the Dakota and Jo at Pilot Knob. However, later sources question the truth of this story.) The Chippewa, or Ojibway, Indians also began to move in Minnesota from the northeast.

The Dakota Indians were once located in northern Minnesota the vicinity of Lake Mille Lacs. The word "Dakota" means "ally" and refers to a loose alliance of groups which spoke similar languages. The main Dakota tribes, called the seven "council fires," were the Teto, Yankton, Yanktonai, Wahpekute, Wahpeton, Sisseton and Mdewakanton. The Mdewakanton, which means "People of Spirit Lake" in referance to Lake Mille Lacs, later settled in the Eagan, Mendota area.

By the 17th century, many of the Dakota bands had moved to the southwest, adapting to a hunter's life on the plains. The Dakota who still lived in the north warred with the Chippewa and eventually had to leave the Mille Lacs area.