That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic community is shown by an ecological interpretation of history.  Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and the land.  The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.

                                           -Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Purpose

This observation by Leopold can be applied to many situations in the past and is applied in this project.  This research project will examine the interactions between people and nature in the early history of the Cannon River as it runs through the Northfield area. The intent of the project is to look particularly at the lives of those settlers and immigrants who came to Northfield in the early days and created the town that now exists.

To do this the research project in part will investigate why people ended up where they did?  And how they were shaped or shaped the land they choose to live on.  The second big part will investigate a related question.  Once someone is uprooted and replanted to a new place how did they connect to their new homes and in general find a sense of place? 

Settlers or pioneers, as the earliest were known, can be described as those people who ventured forth into the unknown to create a new life for themselves.  Immigrants, which setters often were, here are more commonly described as those who came to the area after the first settlers had already largely developed a community and already began to reshape the land building houses and towns.

In looking at these questions this project will center namely on European or Yankee settlers and immigrants who arrived in this area during the 1850s.  To examine these questions about the early settlers and immigrants the project focuses on a strip of land on each side of the Cannon River as it flows north from the edge of Dundas, through Northfield, and to the Rice County/Dakota County border.  The strips evaluated on each side of the river extend to an estimated width of 2 sub-sections on each side in the township grid system.  Because the river is not straight and all the grid section are not all the same size in the town grid, this size cuts across grid squares (refer to the map below for an example piece of the study area).  In picking this land the intent was to get a cross section of land that has both town and rural patches and hopefully different vegetation types.  I also picked this place because I was interested in the Cannon River as a certain feature of this landscape that the town was built around and what it has meant for the people here in general.  It is important to note that this is a case study and as such cannot give a total view of peoples lives during this time, but it will give a glimpse of something to connect to bigger ideas and patterns in the history of the people in the Northfield area.   

Used with permission - Shaw-Olson Center for College History, St. Olaf College
Northfield town plat map with part of the study section area outlined.  This study section reaches beyond what is shown on this map.  It stretches from the edge of Rice County to edge of the town plat of Dundas with the Cannon river in its middle.

  The project looked at the family histories available during this time and looked at them through a lens that connects nature to human history that has already been interpreted in cultural, social, and economical contexts.  This body of thought is a relatively newer section of historical thought called Environmental History.

This topic relates to the bigger conversations on settlement and environmental history and also how people find or know a sense of place when the have moved to a new area, and how that might change as time passes.  How is a sense of place related to issues of settlement and environmental history?   I think that it is in that it is about the relationship between people and land, which can be seen in both settlement and environmental history. It also connects to bigger histories of the county, the state, and probably even the nation. For more information refer to the literature section.

The settlers and early immigrants of the Northfield area are connected to a bigger group of settlers who headed west to newly opened territories.  Many came from the eastern states but some would go on a continuous journey heading west.  With the Louisiana Purchase a vast new territory of lands would open up.  Many settlers would enter this world and make it their own.

Methods

Research for this project started out looking at literature on a sense of place where I defined it for this project.  The next part involved reading histories of settlement in Minnesota and on a National level.  Because a part of this project was picking a piece of land to focus on both historical and current maps were consulted to form boundaries of the study area.  Then general histories of the Northfield area and Rice county Minnesota were examined.  Included in these was geological and ecological history on the area.  From here American environmental history was used to analyze the general history story in a broader context of human interactions with nature.  Then a look at a land cover map off the Cannon River Watershed Partnership website helped to analyze the land and what changes had occurred. Out of the general histories on the area came the names of possible families to study in the area chosen and information about industries in the area such as milling.  A visit to the Northfield Historical Society provided ground information on the area and the people who settled here.  It also pointed to other sources that could be used for studying families in the section along the river that is the focus of the project.  At the Northfield Public Library family histories, genealogy books, plat books, and old pamphlets helped find core information for the project. 

Constraints

Information on early settler families in the area is limited and as such cannot give a holistic picture of those who came to this area or even in some cases cannot give a holistic view of the families experiences here.  Also in focusing on just a certain section of settlement in the area this field is made even narrower.  There may be other resources out there that I was unaware of that could shed more light on this project and further research is needed to really answer the questions I pose in this project.  Considering this many of the conclusions were draw from other broader experiences of settlers and their interactions with and feelings toward their places.