The Minnesota area is the ancestral homeland of the several Dakota peoples, who consisted of the loosely confederated Oceti sakowin (Seven Council Fires).

By the mid-19th century, the traditional Dakota yearly cycle of farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild rice had been disrupted by cultural changes.

Wild game such as bison, elk, whitetail deer, and bear had been hunted so intensively that populations were much reduced compared to the centuries before Euro-American settlement.

Dakota people relied on the sale of valuable furs to American traders to earn cash needed to buy necessities.

It is not clear that the Dakota well understood the concept of credit, but they grew to depend on trade goods for metal tools and other items.

Pressure from traders who wanted to be paid and concern from government officials about the ability of the Dakota to earn the money they needed, led to the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.

The site of the future town of Redwood Falls was within the Dakota reservation area along the lower Minnesota River.

An August 4, 1862 confrontation between soldiers and Dakota men led the Indian Agency near Granite Falls to distribute provisions to the tribe on credit to avoid violence.

At an August 15, 1862 meeting attended by Dakota representatives, Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith, and representatives of the traders, the traders resisted pleas to distributing provisions held in agency warehouses to starving Dakota until the annuity payments arrived.

In 1862, U.S. officials in Minnesota were distracted by the U.S. Civil War, payments did not arrive, and the suffering of the Dakota was severe.

As a result of the war, the U.S. government hanged 38 participants and attempted to expel the Dakota people from Minnesota altogether.

He hired men to use lumber from the Dakota reservation to build a fortified house and surrounded it with a sod stockade eight feet tall.

The house he built in 1869 still stands in North Redwood and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Honner operated a granite quarry near North Redwood and supplied the stone for the county courthouse.

Started in 1958 to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship and attract industry to town, MIC held a juried exhibition each year.

[10] Redwood Falls has a hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa), with hot summers and freezing winters.