This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this week.

April 11

1680 Father Louis Hennepin, exploring the Mississippi River north from Illinois by canoe, is captured by a group of Dakota. During his captivity he sees the Falls of St. Anthony, which he names for his patron saint. On July 25, Daniel Greysolon, the Sieur Du Luth, would arrange for Hennepin’s release.

April 12

1937 Dennis J. Banks is born on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. An activist for indigenous rights, he would be one of the founders of the American Indian Movement in 1968, along with Clyde and Vernon Bellecourt (White Earth Ojibwe) and Russel Means. Intent on raising awareness of the plight of Native people, the members of AIM would participate in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, Wounded Knee in South Dakota, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington. For these activities, Banks would spend time in prison. He died in 2017. The New York Times, reporting on his death, said “Banks and ... Russell Means were by the mid-1970s perhaps the nation’s best-known Native Americans since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.”

April 13

1967 Rod Carew plays his first major league baseball game with the Minnesota Twins, hitting a single.

1993 The North Stars professional hockey team plays its final game in the Met Center against the Chicago Blackhawks, losing 3-2. The team moves to Dallas later that year.

April 14

1861 Minnesota is the first state to offer troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. Gov. Alexander Ramsey is in Washington when word of the attack on Fort Sumter arrives, and he meets with Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, and offers 1,000 Minnesota soldiers for the country’s defense. He then telegraphs Lt. Gov. Ignatius Donnelly, who summons volunteers from across the state.

1894 Organizer Eugene Debs calls a strike by the workers of the Great Northern Railway. The railroad had imposed three wage cuts despite profits of over $5 million the previous year. As the strike progresses, other railroads — following the lead of the Great Northern in other strike situations — refuse to help company president James J. Hill move his stalled trains. On May 1 Charles A. Pillsbury negotiates an agreement between the strikers and Hill, who consents to rescind 75 percent of the wage cuts.

This column is derived from MNopedia.org and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners.