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Summary: In the summer of 1849, according to official count, fewer than 4,000 people lived in Minnesota. The tally did not include members of the Indian tribes who called Minnesota home for generations. Nor was it clear at the time just what and where Minnesota was. Minnesota is culture and nature in happy alignment. Visitors to Minnesota who come with fishing rods and snowshoes are apt to be looking for nature, as Henry Sibley and Alexander Ramsey and Henry Schoolcraft saw it, at the very beginning, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, in its unspoiled splendor. Minnesota is past and present in happy alignment.