Making Marriage

The debate over the meaning of marriage in the United States and specifically in Minnesota is not a recent development. From 1820 to 1845, when the first significant numbers of Americans arrived in the region now called Minnesota, they carried very specific ideas about the roles of men and women should play in marriage. However, the Dakota, Ojibwe, and mixed-race communities resisted the new version of marriage, forcing many Americans to compromise their own beliefs so that they could put down roots.