Exploring Minnesota Chapter 2: The First Minnesotans

What is Minnesota?  State Bird -- Loon

 State Fish --

 State Tree --

Click for State Symbols Click for State Symbols

Chapter Objectives  Explain how the land and climate of Minnesota have changed over time  Understand how early people in MN adapted their way of living to the changing environment  Describe how early people’s lives changed with new tools and methods  Explain how archaeologists learn about what life was like before written history

Living on the Edge of the Glaciers  Glaciers have covered Minnesota many times.  When the last ice began to melt about 12,000 years ago, lakes and rivers began to form. -- Glacial Lake Agassiz. See page 8.

Glacial Lake Agassiz and the Formation of the Minnesota River  Click for Animation Click for Animation Click for Animation

 Climate: cooler and drier than today. On edges of glacier grew spruce forests.  Grass grew in open spaces – mammoths, mastadons, giant bison, caribou, and arctic hare.

Possible Scene from the Ice Age

 About 10,000 years ago a band of hunters following the herds arrived in MN. These are ancestors of today’s American Indians. The only traces of them are found in spear points.

Game Hunters in a Warmer Climate  Between 6000 and 5000 BC the climate was warming. Many large animals could not adapt and vanished. Dense spruce forests also retreated northward.  Bears, elk, deer, beavers, and other smaller animals entered the region. Open grasslands grew. Pines and leafy trees began thriving.  As natural surroundings changed, so did people. Began eating different things.  See Lake Itasca kill site (7,000 yrs ago) on page 10.

Lake Itasca Kill Site  Click for link Click for link Click for link

New Tools in a Cooling Climate  About 3,000 years ago, the climate began to cool and the weather settled into patterns similar to today. Plants and animals were similar as well. People really started to change how they lived.  Pottery for cooking and storing food– pg. 11  Beginning of new religious practices such as mound building. See Grand Mound at Rainy River (2,000 yrs ago) page 12.

Grand Mound at Rainy River  Artifacts- objects made, used, or altered by humans.

New Foods, New Relationships  About 1,000 years ago, a large city called Cahokia developed across the Mississippi River from present day St. Louis, MO. May have been home to as many as 20,000 people who built mounds and used them for worship, planted and harvested crops such as corn, beans, and squash.  Cahokians traveled widely and it is believed that they may have made their way up the Mississippi to MN as farming communities developed in Southern MN. One was located in an area overlooking the Cannon River in SE MN.  See pages

The Bryan Site – 1,000 years ago Bryan Site- Spring of ’51, equipment operators at a newly opened gravel pit along the Cannon River were startled to observe human skeletons intermixed with the gravel they were mining. Professor Lloyd Wilford at the University of Minnesota was contacted and immediately visited the site and found the workmen had discovered a major town site dating back to the beginning of the 2nd millennia A.D. Investigation revealed that the site covered about 65 acres and consisted of a large group of 173 mounds. The site was named the Bryan Site after the family that owned the property since the end of the 19th century. Click here for link to website Click here for link to website

Petroglyphs – courtesy of Mr. Kaufmann