A grand tour of the North Star State's geographical, political, and human history, including travelers' guides to historic destinations.

Winner of a Spur Award, presented by the Western Writers of America (WWA), for the Best Western Nonfiction Historical Book. Renowned historian Annette Atkins presents a fresh understanding of how a complex and modern Minnesota came into being in Creating Minnesota. Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or politics during a period in our past. A three-act play about Minnesota's statehood vividly depicts the competing interests of Natives, traders, and politicians who lived in the same territory but moved in different worlds. Oranges are the focal point of a chapter about railroads and transportation: how did a St. Paul family manage to celebrate their 1898 Christmas with fruit that grew no closer than 1,500 miles from their home? A photo essay brings to life three communities of the 1920s, seen through the lenses of local and itinerant photographers. The much-sought state fish helps to explain the new Minnesota, where pan-fried walleye and walleye quesadillas coexist on the same north woods menu. In Creating Minnesota Atkins invites readers to experience the texture of people's lives through the decades, offering a fascinating and unparalleled approach to the history of our state.

Leader of the Santee Sioux, Inkpaduta (1815–79) participated in some of the most decisive battles of the northern Great Plains, including Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn. But the attack in 1857 on forty white settlers known as the Spirit Lake Massacre gave Inkpaduta the reputation of being the most brutal of all the Sioux leaders. Paul N. Beck now challenges a century and a half of bias to reassess the life and legacy of this important Dakota leader. In the most complete biography of Inkpaduta ever written, Beck draws on Indian agents’ correspondence, journals, and other sources to paint a broader picture of the whole person, showing him to have been not only a courageous warrior but also a dedicated family man and tribal leader who got along reasonably well with whites for most of his life. Beck sheds new light on many poorly understood aspects of Inkpaduta’s life, including his journeys in the American West after the Spirit Lake Massacre. Beck reexamines Euro-American attitudes toward Indians and the stereotypes that shaped nineteenth-century writing, showing how they persisted in portrayals of Inkpaduta well into the twentieth century, even after more generous appreciations of American Indian cultures had become commonplace. Long considered a villain whose passion was murdering white settlers, Inkpaduta is here restored to more human dimensions. Inkpaduta: Dakota Leader shatters the myths that surrounded his life for too long and provides the most extensive reassessment of this leader’s life to date.

Over the last few decades, researchers in fields such as history, the social sciences and medicine have had improved access to census materials in northern Europe, making an update on these infrastructures both possible and topical. This book’s presentation of European census history and infrastructure is not strictly limited to northern Europe, although most of the Mosaic materials originated north of the forty-fifth parallel. The template for modern census-taking was created by Adolphe Quetelet in Belgium in the 1830s, and his census standards were spread almost globally by the international statistical conferences. This book explores Icelandic residence patterns amongst the elderly; Siberian polygamy as indicated in the Polar Census; men’s living arrangements in Northern Norway; Sweden’s pioneering register-based census in 1930; unique source materials on the Soviet family; and data on Ukrainian and Russian population groups in the most recent Ukrainian censuses. All of these contributions stress the book’s focus on Northern European census data. This book was originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.

Minnesota History was first published in 1960. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Anyone interested in Minnesota history, whether as a teacher, as a student, or as a general reader, will find this an invaluable guide to reading and study. The book contains an outline of the state's history, questions and suggestions for the student, and lists of reading material for each of the 42 topical sections into which the outline is divided. The outline covers the entire history of the state from the time of the Indians, before the French and British explorations, to the present. The reading references include accounts written from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. The aim in preparing the reading lists was to include any article or book bearing upon the Minnesota story which met the qualifications of good historical writing and fair accessibility. Materials of particular interest or importance to the topic under consideration are so designated, and there are liberal annotations to help the reader in his choice of readings. References which are particularly appropriate for young readers are also specially designated. A number of maps are provided for additional guidance. This is a complete revision of a book long out of print, Minnesota History: A Study Outline by Theodore C. Blegen.

Considered the most authoritative history of the state, the four volume set was first published in the 1920s. Volume Two includes detailed accounts of Minnesota's role in the Civil War and the Dakota War of 1862.