White settlers first entered the Root River region in the 1850s before Minnesota was a state. A decade later the railroad arrived in Lanesboro, opening the door to a flood of northern European immigrants in the last half of the 19th century, mostly from countries like Ireland and Norway. Many put down roots here.

But those people certainly weren’t the first to call bluff country home. Who were?

Two centuries earlier French fur traders exploring this area encountered the descendants of Native American tribes. Some are known today as Dakota and Ojibwe. The descendants of those cultures go back hundreds, probably thousands, of years. People of the Winnebago (or Ho Chunk) tribe, who had ancestral homes in pre-historic Wisconsin, later moved to modern-day southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. The Winnebago visited—may even have lived in—the Root River Valley, utilizing local rivers and streams for food, navigation and trade.

A controversial 1851 treaty between white settlers and the Dakota led to homesteading in Fillmore County. A decade later treaty tensions erupted in violent raids that ended tragically on December 26, 1862, with the public hanging of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest public execution in U.S. history.

While no skirmishes erupted locally, those violent times had a lasting impact. The forced departure of many Native Americans out of southern and western Minnesota into reservations forever altered the presence of Native Americans in the Root River area. While scattered contacts with smaller tribes such as the Ho-Chunk were reported in Lanesboro, an era of bluff country history had sadly ended forever.

Questions, legends, even a few mysteries remain about who lived here first. However those questions are answered or those stories are told, the presence and importance of local native cultures needs to be acknowledged and respected for generations to come.