only restriction is upon the range of subjects from which the student’s
choice may be made; a college of agriculture (including military
tactics), which is now a “department,” including a college and a
school of agriculture, a short course for farmers, a dairy school, the
Crookston school of agriculture, a main experiment station at St
Anthony Park, between Minneapolis and St Paul, and sub-stations
1 m. north of Crookston and 2 m. east of Grand Rapids; a college
of mechanic arts, now called the college of engineering and the
mechanic arts, which offers four-year courses in civil, mechanical,
electrical and municipal engineering, a four-year course in science
and technology, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science, and
graduate work leading to the degree of Master of Science; the college
of law, a three-years course, with evening classes and graduate
courses; a college of medicine, which is now the college of medicine
and surgery (1888), and the college of homoeopathic medicine and
surgery (1889), each with four-year courses, and each (since 1903)
with a course of six years partly in the college of science, literature
and the arts, and partly in the medical college and leading to the
degrees of Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine. In addition
to these departments provided for in the organic act, the university
included in 1909 colleges of dentistry (three-year course), pharmacy
(two-year and three-year courses), a school of mines (1891; four-year
course, leading to the degree of Engineer of Mines or Metallurgical
Engineer), a school of analytical and applied chemistry (four-year
courses, leading to the degree of Bachelor in Science in Chemistry
or in Chemical Engineering), a college of education (1906; three-year
course, after two years of college work, leading to a Master’s degree),
a graduate school (with courses leading to the degrees of Master of
Arts, of Science and of Laws, and of Doctor of Philosophy, of Science
and of Civil Law), and a university summer school. The growth
and development of the university have been almost entirely under
the administration of Cyrus Northrop (b. 1834), who graduated at
Yale College in 1857 and at Yale Law School in 1859, and was
professor of rhetoric and English literature at Yale from 1863 until
1884, when he became president of the university of Minnesota.
The university is one of the largest in the country. In 1907 there
were twenty-three buildings valued at more than $1,475,000. The
university library of 110,000 volumes is supplemented by the libraries
of Minneapolis and St Paul. In 1908–1909 the faculty numbered
about 325 and the total enrolment of students was 4421. Other
higher educational institutions in Minnesota are Hamline University
(Methodist Episcopal), with a college of liberal arts at St Paul,
and a college of medicine at Minneapolis; Macalester College (Presbyterian)
at St Paul; Augsburg Seminary (Lutheran) at Minneapolis;
Carleton College (non-sectarian, founded in 1866) and St Olaf
College (Lutheran, founded in 1874) at Northfield; Gustavus
Adolphus College (Lutheran) at St Peter; Parker College (Free
Baptist, 1888) at Winnebago City; St John’s University (Roman
Catholic) at Collegeville, Stearns county; and Albert Lea College for
women (Presbyterian, founded 1884) at Albert Lea.
History.—The first European visitors to the territory now embraced in the state of Minnesota found it divided between two powerful Indian tribes, the Ojibways or Chippewas, who occupied the heavily wooded northern portion and the region along the Mississippi river, and the Sioux or Dakotas, who made their homes on the more open rolling country in the south and west and in the valley of the Minnesota. The first known white explorers were Radisson and Groseilliers, who spent the winter of 1658–1659 among the Sioux in the Mille Lacs region. At Sault Sainte Marie in 1671, before representatives of fourteen Indian nations, the Sieur de St Lusson read a proclamation asserting the French claim to all the territory in the region of the Great Lakes. Two years afterwards the upper course of the Mississippi was explored by Joliet and Marquette. In 1679 Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (Duluth), as agent for a company of Canadian merchants which sought to establish trading posts on the Lakes, explored the country from the head of Lake Superior to Mille Lacs and planted the arms of Louis XIV. in a large Sioux village. In the following year the Franciscan friar Father Louis Hennepin, acting as an agent of the Sieur de la Salle, discovered and named the Falls of St Anthony; and in 1686 Nicholas Perrot, the commandant of the west, built Fort St Antoine on the east bank of Lake Pepin, in what is now Pepin county, Wisconsin, and in 1688 formally took possession of the region in the name of the French king. A few years later (1694) Le Sueur, who had as early as 1684 engaged in trade along the upper Mississippi, established a trading post on Isle Pelée (Prairie Island) in the Mississippi between Hastings and Red Wing, and in 1700 he built Fort L’Huillier at the confluence of the Blue Earth and the Le Sueur rivers. In 1762 the Sieur de la Perrière, acting as an agent of the French government, established on the west bank of Lake Pepin a fortified post (Fort Beauharnois), which was to be a headquarters for missionaries, a trading post and a starting-point for expeditions in search of the “western sea.” But none of the French posts was permanent, and in 1763 French rule came to an end, the Treaty of November (1762) and the Treaty of Versailles (1763) transferring respectively the western portion of the state to Spain and that part east of the Mississippi river to Great Britain. In 1766 the region was visited by the Connecticut traveller Jonathan Carver (1732–1780). Great Britain surrendered its title to the eastern portion by the Treaty of Paris (1783), and after the surrender of Virginia’s colourable title had been accepted by Congress in 1784, this eastern part was made a part of the Northwest Territory by the ordinance of 1787, although the British held possession and did some trading there until 1796. The western part remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it, too, after being retransferred to France, became a part of the United States with the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1805–1806, at the instance of President Thomas Jefferson, Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike led an exploring expedition as far north as Leech Lake and took formal possession of the Minnesota region for the United States. He obtained from the Sioux for military reservations one tract 9 m. square at the mouth of the St Croix River and another containing about 100,000 acres at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. On the latter tract a military post was established by Lieut.-Colonel Henry Leavenworth (1783–1834) in 1819, and in the following year the construction was begun of a fort at first named Fort St Anthony but renamed Fort Snelling in 1824 (two years after its completion) in honour of its builder and commander Colonel Josiah Snelling (1782–1829). In 1819 Michigan Territory was extended westward to the Mississippi river, and in 1820 General Lewis Cass, its governor, conducted an exploring expedition in search of the source of the Mississippi, which he was satisfied was in the body of water named Lake Cass in his honour. Further search for the true source of the Mississippi was made in 1823 by Giacomo Constantio Beltrami (1779–1855), an Italian traveller and political refugee, and in 1832 by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who had accompanied Cass’s expedition and traced the Mississippi from Lake Cass to Lake Itasca. In 1823 extensive explorations of the Minnesota and Red River valleys were conducted by Major Stephen Harriman Long (1784–1864), and subsequently (1834–1836) knowledge of the region was extended by the investigations of the artist George Catlin (1796–1872), the topographer George William Featherstonhaugh (1780–1866), and the geologist Jean Nicholas Nicollett (1786–1843). Meanwhile, the country was slowly being settled. In 1823 the first river steamboat reached St Paul; the Mississippi was soon afterwards opened to continuous if irregular navigation; and in 1826 a party of refugees from Lord Selkirk’s colony on the Red River settled near Fort Snelling. On the erection of Wisconsin Territory in 1836 the whole of Minnesota, which then extended westward to the Missouri river, was incorporated with it, but on the erection of Iowa Territory in 1838 Minnesota was divided and the part west of the Mississippi became a part of Iowa Territory. In 1837, by two important treaties, the one (July 29) between the Chippewas and Governor Henry Dodge of Wisconsin at St Peters, and the other (Sept. 29) between some Sioux chiefs and Joel R. Poinsett at Washington, the Indian titles to all lands east of the Mississippi were practically extinguished. The first county, St Croix, was established in 1839, and in the succeeding years thriving settlements were established at St Paul and Stillwater. The admission of Wisconsin as a state in 1848 left that part of the former territory west of the St Croix and north of the Mississippi rivers, which was not included in the new state, practically without a government. On the 26th of August a convention met at Stillwater, where measures were taken for the formation of a separate territorial government, and Henry Hastings Sibley (1811–1891) was sent to Congress as a delegate of “Wisconsin Territory.” Upon his admission to a seat the curious situation was presented of representatives of the state and of the territory of Wisconsin sitting in the same body. This situation did not last long, however, for on the 3rd of March 1849 the bill organizing the territory of Minnesota was passed,
