I. General Information

1. Course Title:
Minnesota History

2. Course Prefix & Number:
HIST 2404

3. Course Credits and Contact Hours:

Credits: 3

Lecture Hours: 3

4. Course Description:

This course will survey the history of people who have inhabited the land area we know today as Minnesota. Topics will include: Native North Americans, European exploration and the fur trade, early American settlement, Indian and white cultural interactions, post Civil War settlement, the growth of agriculture and industry, protest politics in the 19th and 20th centuries, and an examination of the People of Minnesota. Minnesota will be a case study in which we will examine many of the historical processes which have shaped the Midwest and indeed much of the United States.

5. Placement Tests Required:

6. Prerequisite Courses:

9. Co-requisite Courses:

II. Transfer and Articulation

1. Course Equivalency - similar course from other regional institutions:

III. Course Purpose

2. MN Transfer Curriculum (General Education) Courses - This course fulfills the following goal area(s) of the MN Transfer Curriculum:
Goal 5 – History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences

IV. Learning Outcomes

1. College-Wide Outcomes

2. Course Specific Outcomes - Students will be able to achieve the following measurable goals upon completion of the course:

V. Topical Outline

Listed below are major areas of content typically covered in this course.

1. Lecture Sessions

• Early Peoples and First Contact
• Pre-Historic peoples
• Ojibwe: Early history and culture
• Dakota: Early history and culture

• European Exploration/ Fur Trade 1670-1830
• Northwest passage
• French explorers
• Fur trade: how it operated, Indian involvement, companies involved, changes over time
• Interactions between Europeans and American Indians
• British Era in Minnesota

• Early Settlement 1830-1849
• American Era: Explorations of Zebulon Pike
• Shift from trade to settlement and its impact on European-Native interactions
• Establishment of Ft. Snelling
• Search for the source of the Mississippi
• First land session treaties

• Minnesota Territory 1849-1858
• Land Sessions
• Treaty of Traverse des Sioux
• Mendota Treaty
• Missionaries
• Transportation improvements
• Growth of St. Paul
• Land speculation
• Life in Minnesota Territory

• Dakota Conflict, 1862

• Statehood and the Politics of Freedom 1850-1865
• Issues of statehood in a dividing nation
• Rise of the Republican Party
• Minnesota and the Underground Railroad
• Questions of Black suffrage
• Dueling Constitutional Conventions
• Minnesota soldiers in the Civil War

• Peopling the Land/Developing the Frontiers 1865-1900
• Lumbering: Lumber mills, Growth of Minneapolis, Falls of St. Anthony
• Farming: Homestead Act, Wheat production, growth of the Milling Industry,
• Mining: Mineral exploration, Mesabi, Vermillion and Cuyuna Ranges, immigrant labor
• New Immigration: Germans, Scandinavians, Southern and Eastern Europeans
• Railroad Development
• State promotion

• Populists and Progressives 1890-1916
• Farmer unrest
• National Grange
• Farmers Alliance
• People’s Party: Ignatius Donnelly
• Minnesota Progressives
• Challenges of Industrialization
• Prohibition
• Indian Reform and the Reservations
• Women advocates: social reform and women’s suffrage

• The Great War and Becoming American 1917-1929 
• War and patriotism
• Commission of Public Safety
• Non-Partisan League
• Beginnings of the Farmer-Labor Party
• Post-war Racial Tensions: Duluth Lynchings 1920

• The Great Depression 1929-1940
• Lives of Minnesotans during the Great depression
• Rise of the Farmer-Labor Party
• Farmer’s Holiday Association
• Citizens Alliance and the Minneapolis Truckers Strike of 1934
• Emergence of Harold Stassen

• World War II 1940- 1945
• Soldiers in World War II
• Bataan Death March
• German POW’s
• Wartime Politics in Minnesota
• Life on the Home Front: Rosie the Riveter and Minnesota women in the work force

• Post-War Society in Minnesota 1945-1960
• Growth of suburbia
• Cold War
• GI Bill
• Baby Boom
• Civil Rights Movement: 1948 and the emergence of Hubert Humphrey
• Politics of Liberal consensus

• Minnesota in the 1960’s and beyond
• Civil Rights Movement
• Vietnam Protest: Emergence of Eugene McCarthy
• Wendell Anderson and the “Minnesota Miracle’
• Growing Conservatism   

• Industry and Environmentalism in Minnesota 1900-2000
• Economies of the 20^th century
• Agriculture and flour milling: diversification
• Lumbering: Forest Management
• Iron Mining
• Importance for world wars
• Taconite
• Reserve Mining Court Case