Minnesota Historical Foodways: A Rich Tapestry of Cultural Influence
- amnicklaus
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Part 1 in my Minnesota Foodways Series
Here in Minnesota, we have access to a wild array of cuisines. On my four-minute drive home from the coffee shop I’m at in Saint Paul, I’ll pass two Irish pubs, a New American steakhouse, a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, two Thai restaurants, and a McDonald’s. If I take the long way home, I’ll pass several other types of cuisine offerings, including Russian, Indian, Italian, and many more. Even leaving the metro, there are plenty of global cuisine options across the state.
How did we get such a diverse variety of food offerings? What is “typical” Minnesota food, and why? What ingredients have been here all along? These are the questions I’ll attempt to answer in my new blog series, shining a light on Minnesota foodways and all the history surrounding what we eat here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
What are foodways?
“Foodways” is the term given to “the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period,” according to Merriam Webster. The 4-H Folkpatterns series developed by the Michigan State University Museum and Michigan State University Extension 4-H Programs describe foodways as “all of the traditional activities, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors associated with the food in your daily life. Foodways include customs of food production, preservation, preparation, presentation, gathering, marketing (both buying and selling), uses of food products other than for eating and food folklore.” Think of how much meaning a recipe from your grandmother holds. We can’t separate our daily eating patterns from the contextual history of available ingredients and cultural cuisines surrounding us and our ancestors.
Minnesota foodways, then, are influenced by all of the people groups that live and have lived in this state. These cuisines, in turn, are influenced by available ingredients, local crops and native plants, and ancestral recipes. In order to better understand Minnesota foodways, we need to understand the history of Minnesotans—the demographics, the timelines, and the cultural influences.
History of Minnesotans
First Peoples
Minnesotans can be categorized into native-born people, immigrants, and refugees. Far before US borders were drawn, before Minnesota was a state or even a US territory, the Dakota people lived here for millennia. The Ojibwe also made their way to what is now Minnesota long before fur traders and explorers arrived in the 1600-1700s. Compared to the Dakota and Ojibwe, colonists and immigrants have been on this land for a blink of an eye.
Immigration Influx of the 1800s
In the mid 1800s, Minnesota became a US territory when US government officials from the East Coast negotiated (and forced) land from the Dakota. According to the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS), “Through a series of treaties, land cessions, and conflicts that culminated in the 1850s and 1860s, the US government exiled most of the Dakota and restricted the Ojibwe to reservations.” Thus began an influx in European immigrants from the East Coast moving west and settling in Minnesota. These groups included people with British roots as well as German-Jewish families.
In 1858, Minnesota officially became a state, and shortly after, the Homestead Act of 1862 granted homesteaders the right to settle on land that the US had recently acquired. This was a popular program, and by the end of the 1800s, about 75,000 people were homesteading in Minnesota.
A quick note: during this time, Dakota people had been moved to reservations and concentration camps. Used to living in rhythm with the earth–feeding themselves with age-old methods of hunting and gathering, the Dakota began to starve. The US government failed to uphold its end of treaties, and the six-week-long Dakota War broke out due to desperation of starvation. An article from MinnPost states: “After the war, the US government nullified its treaties with the Dakota, dissolved their reservation, and publicly executed thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato at the largest mass hanging in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, it removed about 1,600 Dakota non-combatants to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling, where they remained imprisoned during the winter of 1862–1863.” As we know, war affects everyone involved, and this dark time in our history illustrates the necessity of both reliable food sources, generational food practices, and fair treatment of people groups. (I don’t mean to simplify this issue, but for the sake of an article I must; the colonization of Minnesota is a dense topic that deserves to be studied in full.)
In the 1860s and 70s, Swedish, Norwegian, and German immigrants made their way to Minnesota. In 1867, the Minnesota government created the board of immigration and campaigned for the state to be an immigration destination. Norwegians in particular responded enthusiastically.
In 1876, the wealthy Canadian-Irish immigrant and railroad magnate James J. Hill made his bishop friend a land agent for his railroad, empowering the Catholic Colonization Bureau. This power shift brought a tide of Catholic Irish immigrants to Minnesota.
During the same time frame, Minnesota saw its first Chinese immigrants. These people moved east from the West Coast, fleeing from racial discrimination and violence. They opened laundries and restaurants in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Unfortunately, anti-Chinese sentiment and racially discriminating attitudes from European settlers led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (later repealed in 1943), targeting Chinese people and temporarily preventing them from immigrating to the US.
In 1882, the first Russian Jews settled in Saint Paul–also fleeing ethnic violence. In fact, this second wave of Jewish immigrants (also the largest) “was made up of more than two million Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe,” says the MNHS. This wave lasted from 1882–1924.
By the 1890s, Minnesota was a true tapestry of ethnicities and immigrants, more so than the rest of the country. Says the MNHS, “40 percent of the state’s population was foreign-born, compared to 11 percent of the US population overall.” Elections in 1896 were held in nine different languages: Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, and Swedish. By 1900, over 60 percent of the state’s immigrant population were from Germany, Norway, and Sweden, a majority that has impacted our state’s identity to this day.
Minnesotans in the 1900s
Latinos first came to Minnesota in the early 1900s. Most were migrant workers from Mexico or Texas who established communities throughout Minnesota.
In 1917, on the eve of World War 1, the governor-led Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (a watchdog group known for suppressing dissent), began persecuting German Americans. “This leads to the tarring and feathering of ‘traitors,’ the shuttering of German newspapers, and the restriction of German language in schools,” says MNHS. This public loss of German culture took a toll on German foodways in Minnesota, a topic we will discuss in future articles.
In the 1920s, Latinx people began settling in Minneapolis and Saint Paul neighborhoods. Then, during World War 2, Mexican immigrants were recruited by the government-sponsored Bracero Program to work in factories and meat-packing plants. This program was a result of labor shortages due to fighting overseas. Says the MNHS: “When not wanted for their labor, members of the community became targets for forced deportation; in 1931, at least 15 percent of the Mexican residents of St. Paul’s West side were forcibly removed from their homes and repatriated to Mexico.” It is interesting to note that for the past hundred years, Mexican people in America have been dealing with the same struggles and discrimination we see today.
In 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japanese citizens were forcibly relocated to concentration camps for the next five years. It is not difficult to imagine how these foodways were interrupted and changed to reflect such discrimination and undignified treatment.
When the Korean war ended in 1953, it was only a couple of years before Minnesotans began to first adopt Korean children.
In 1963, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened up immigration to more non-Europeans, broadening the diversity of immigrants to the US. In the 1970s, the United States pulled out governmental support in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, leaving shaky governments that led to thousands of refugees. Lao and Hmong refugees made their way to Minnesota in 1975.
There was a lot of legislation around immigrants and refugees in the 80s, and then in 1991, Russia’s independence from the USSR led to a wave of Russian immigrants arriving in Minnesota. The 90s were also a time of Somali refugees, fleeing civil war, arriving in Minnesota. Finally, from the 90s to 2000s, Minnesota saw a wave of African immigrants; other than Somali, many Ethiopian, Liberian, Kenyan, and Nigerian people made Minnesota their home.
Today’s Diverse Minnesota
Minnesota may be stereotyped as a monoculture Midwestern state, but this imagery couldn’t be further from the truth. Like the state’s diverse and rich physical landscapes, the people that make up Minnesota come from a wide variety of backgrounds, cultures, and histories. As of 2018, “over forty different ethnic groups make up the state’s Asian American and Asian immigrant and refugee communities,” says MNHS. Minnesota is also home to the world’s largest Somali diaspora. In the 2010s, most immigrants to Minnesota have come from Somalia, Mexico, China, India, Laos, and Myanmar.
With such a diverse global history and demographic makeup, it is no wonder that Minnesota’s foodways are so rich in culture. Yet while incredibly diverse, our cuisine is tied together by our identity, blending into the beautiful tapestry that is the Minnesota food scene today.
Sources Referenced
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