North Country: The Making of Minnesota- by Mary Lethert Wingerd 448 pgs

"In North Country: The Making of Minnesota, Mary Lethert Wingerd unlocks the complex origins of the state—origins that have often been ignored in favor of legend and a far more benign narrative of immigration, settlement, and cultural exchange. Moving from the earliest years of contact between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the western Great Lakes region to the era of French and British influence during the fur trade and beyond, Wingerd charts how for two centuries prior to official statehood Native people and Europeans in the region maintained a hesitant, largely cobeneficial relationship."
B&N.com

*at over 400+ pages this text would be a helpful reference to accompany other books by native authors on MN history.  Many MN standards could use this text as a compare/contrast-many primary sources.