Civil War Roundtable: Unearthing Central MN History

Speaker:  Rob Mann – professor of archaeology at St. Cloud State University and past presenter at the Central MN Round Table.

Meeting Overview:  Come and hear about the findings of an archaeological dig at the site of William Warren’s ca. 1949-1853 cabin in Morrison County, near Royalton. William Warren was the son of an Ojibwe-French woman and an American fur trader. He arrived in the area then known as Two Rivers around 1849/1850 and built a cabin/trading post on what is today the McDougall State Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Morrison County. During this period, Warren was actively working on the manuscript that would become the History of the Ojibwe People, originally published by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1885. This book was and is important because as a person of mixed ancestry Warren was a cultural broker, who thus wrote the first history of the Ojibwe from an Indigenous perspective. Warren was also an interpreter and a legislator from the Minnesota Territory, serving in the Minnesota Territorial House of Representative in 1851.

For more information – contact Andy Ditlevson – aditlevson@gmail.com, 320-241-8477