We need to acknowledge the Anishinaabeg people who first inhabited this northern land, including the Cree, Dakota, and Ojibwe. Further south and west from these northern areas were also the Sioux people. Beginning in the mid-1600, and continuing, at first slowly, throughout the 1700s and 1800s, people of European heritage began to investigate the land now known as Minnesota. It wasnât until the mid-1800s that the Arrowhead region saw settlements of white people take hold and grow. Beginning at that time, the Iron Ranges of Minnesota (Cuyuna, Vermilion, and Mesabi) would become the new home to over forty-five different European nationalities who settled here.