CHAPTER V

GROWTH OF SETTLEMENTS

The arrival of Governor Arthur St. Clair and the territorial judges encouraged immigration by assuring settlers of the institution of law and order. When the Reverend Daniel Breck delivered a sermon in the present state of Ohio, on Sunday, July 20, 1788, he addressed an audience of 300 people from Marietta and the settlement of Isaac Williams on the Virginia side of the river. After Manasseh Cutler returned home from his visit in 1788, General Samuel Holden Parsons wrote to him on December 11 that “we have had an addition of about one hundred within two weeks.... Between forty and fifty houses are so far done as to receive families.”

By the end of the year, 1788, the settlement contained 132 men and 15 families, making a total of nearly 200. James Backus wrote to his parents that their stock consisted of “one hundred and fifty horses, sixty cows, and seven yoke of oxen.”

In August of 1787 Judge John Cleves Symmes, an influential man and member of Congress from Trenton, New Jersey, petitioned Congress for a grant of land between the two Miami Rivers at the mouth of the Little Miami River, which became known to history as “The Symmes purchase.” In November of 1788 Benjamin Stites and about 20 others settled Columbia and in late December of the same year Matthias Denman, Colonel Robert Patterson and Israel Ludlow with a party of 26 men established Losantiville about five miles west of Columbia in the Symmes tract and in the very center of present Cincinnati. These two communities became Cincinnati in 1790 at the request of St. Clair. North Bend was the third of the Symmes settlements and was settled in February, 1789.

All the settlements suffered a hard winter. At Marietta the Ohio was frozen over from December until March and the settlers could not get to Pittsburgh for provisions. Their crops were not large the first year, and the Indians had driven the game away. Many lived on meat and boiled corn or coarse meal ground in a hand mill. Here again was demonstrated the heroism of peace.

Isaac and Rebecca Williams, living in Virginia, directly across the Ohio River from Marietta, had raised a goodly supply of corn, which, because of scarcity, had reached two dollars a bushel in the markets. Yet they chose to sell it to the hungry settlers at fifty cents per bushel, and proportioned it out according to the number of members of each family.

In order to raise larger crops to provide adequate food supply for the future, two branch settlements were made early in the spring. Fifteen miles below Marietta a farming community called Belpre was formed by 40 associates who had spent the winter in Marietta. Extending for five miles along the Ohio, the settlement consisted of upper, middle and lower divisions called respectively Stone’s Fort, Farmers’ Castle, and Newbury. Farmers’ Castle was a fortification containing 13 cabins built for safety during the Indian War. Soon after Belpre was settled, 39 associates moved 20 miles up the Muskingum to establish themselves at Plainfield, later called Waterford. Fort Frye was constructed as a place of refuge when the Indian War started. About a mile away a mill was built on Wolf Creek by some families who lived in the vicinity. Hearing of the growth of the Ohio Company settlement, the Virginia House of Burgesses appropriated money for a road from Alexandria to the Ohio River opposite Marietta. Merchandise was hauled over this road for many years.

[Illustration: FORT WASHINGTON, CINCINNATI

_Drawn by Junior Vahle, Quincy, Illinois_]

The Ohio Company assisted settlers in establishing themselves. Surveyors went out to lay off the lots at times when it was necessary to maintain a guard of soldiers against Indian attacks. The Ohio Company’s Land Office in which the surveys were recorded, is now the oldest building in Ohio. Liberal grants of land were made to persons who constructed mills for the convenience of settlers. The first flour mill in Ohio was erected about a mile from the mouth of Wolf Creek in 1789 by Major Haffield White, Colonel Robert Oliver, and Captain John Dodge. In 1797 a brickyard and tannery were established on land provided by the Ohio Company. In December of the same year Peletiah White started a small earthenware pottery, which according to Samuel P. Hildreth “was probably the first establishment of the kind north of the Ohio.” The directors provided for the fencing and ornamentation of the public squares in Marietta. For example, Marie Antoinette Square was leased to Rufus Putnam on condition that he plant mulberry, elm, honey locust, and evergreen trees in a specified design.

Near the end of the year 1788 the directors of the Ohio Company had become worried over the fact that thousands of immigrants floated past Marietta to settle in Kentucky. To attract some of these people to remain in the Ohio Company purchase the directors offered 100 acres to men who would agree to build a dwelling house 24 by 18 feet within five years, plant 50 apple or pear trees and 20 peach trees within three years, cultivate five acres, and provide themselves with arms and ammunition for defense. Settlements on donation lands were expected to serve as outposts of defense against Indian attack. After granting some free tracts, the Ohio Company found the practice too expensive and successfully petitioned Congress in 1792 for a tract of 100,000 acres for donation purposes. Located in the northeastern part of the Ohio Company Purchase, the donation tract was approximately 22 miles long and seven miles wide. In the autumn of 1790 a group of 36 men established a settlement on donation land 30 miles up the Muskingum from Marietta, at a place called Big Bottom.

The first town meeting in the territory was held in Marietta on February 4, 1789. Colonel Archibald Crary presided as chairman, and Ebenezer Battelle was elected clerk. A committee was appointed to draft an address to St. Clair, and report a plan for a police system. The police board appointed under this plan consisted of Putnam, Oliver, Griffin Green, and Nathaniel Goodale. In addition to their police duties, these men appointed a sealer of weights and measures, fence viewers, and a registrar of births and deaths. Laws were passed for the government of the community. Many of the regulations provided for defense against the Indians by completing Campus Martius and by securely bolting the gates at sunset. It was ordered “that the main Street leading from Campus Martius to Corey’s bridge, so called, should be cleared of logs and other woods that may obstruct it.” Residents of Campus Martius were ordered to construct walks of hewn logs along their cabins and to provide troughs or gutters to drain water from the eaves. Wagons, horses, cattle, and swine were not permitted inside the fort. One resolution prohibited the purchase of wild meats for the purpose of monopolizing the supply and charging extravagant prices.

[Illustration: TECUMSEH

_Drawn by Robert Eggebrecht, Vincennes, Ind._]

Food was scarce at the Miami settlements also, and the Indians were showing increasing signs of resistance to the whites. Several community blockhouses had been built and small parties of troops sent there to guard the settlements and their all-essential crops.

In January, 1790, St. Clair removed to Cincinnati, and Major John Doughty with his troops from Fort Harmar started construction of Fort Washington as headquarters for increasingly necessary western troops. General Josiah Harmar arrived in the fall of that year and took charge of the garrison then comprising 70 men.

Casual readers of history at times marvel at the small size of garrisons and armies used in these hazardous campaigns against the Indians, and thereby incline to minimize the severity of the conflicts. To understand this, it is necessary to realize how few people relatively were in the entire empire of the Northwest; that transportation and communication were so difficult as to make the movements of large bodies of men impossible, even if men had been available; that provisions and supplies could not be moved in quantity and, beyond two or three days’ supply the men could carry, the troops had to live on game and what the wilderness provided; and, lastly, that the Indians were usually small tribes and attacked in relatively small groups.

The protection normally needed was that of small detachments of hardy and fearless men trained to the ways of the woods and the Indians. One of the great problems of the period, as will be seen later, was the militia or volunteers, who, though eager to fight the Indians, were too impetuous, too unfamiliar with discipline, and too likely to decide to return to their homes upon their own initiative.

In October, 1790, a party of immigrants from France—anxious to escape the impending French Revolution—bought lands and settled in the lower part of the Ohio Company Purchase at a village called Gallipolis, or the city of the French. They had been deceived by representatives of the Scioto Purchase, and believed that they were buying a Garden of Eden, where nature provided the necessities of life without labor. For instance, they had been told by agents of the Scioto Company, which will be described later, that candles grew in swamps on their lands (cat tails), and that custard grew on trees (paw paws).

Here it seems proper to digress for a moment as to the Scioto Company—or more particularly to discuss the fact that in those days not all public men were heroes, and some were not even honest. Then, as now, the forward-looking forces of progress had to contend with selfishness, politics, chicanery and downright dishonesty.

It has been before pointed out that when Cutler was negotiating with Congress for purchase of Ohio Company lands, a group had approached him with a proposal to make another purchase at the same time for another company, and that he used this larger purchase to secure passage of the Ordinance of 1787. This other company was the Scioto Company, whose membership is not known beyond a small group. Its negotiations with the Ohio Company were carried on by one man, a public official. Cutler and Putnam did not permit the Ohio Company of Associates to become entangled with this other company—beyond the fact that the two purchases were to be made at the same time.

The Scioto Company was to purchase some 3,500,000 acres in the valley of the Scioto River. They sent Joel Barlow, a fair poet perhaps, but of questionable business sagacity, to France to dispose of these lands to fear-worn French. Barlow employed one William Playfair to sell the lands, and it was in the booklet the latter prepared that the fantastic statements as to candles, custard, etc., appeared. The sale was highly successful. Middle-class French in such jeopardy between the revolutionists and the aristocracy, hastened to emigrate to the new land of dreams. What became of the moneys they paid for their new homes has never been proved. Someone absconded and when they landed at Alexandria, Virginia, they learned that the Scioto Company had never acquired title to the lands sold to them.

One interesting incident of this skullduggery is worth mention. Among the French settlers was François D’Hebecourt, a close boyhood friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte had originally considered joining the party, but remained behind to follow if his friend’s reports substantiated the claims made. In case the new country did come up to expectations, he was to follow D’Hebecourt, and establish a new empire somewhere in western America. Of course, D’Hebecourt’s reports of the villainy of the Scioto Company, the hovels they found for homes and the ensuing famine which the French settlers endured changed Bonaparte’s intentions, and he remained in France to leave his mark later on all Europe.

There are two very interesting suppositions suggested. Suppose the Scioto Company had kept its word, what might have been the subsequent history of the world? And suppose, as is altogether possible, that Bonaparte’s revulsion at the treatment of his countrymen had influenced him 13 years later in selling Louisiana Territory to the United States. The portent of such possibilities has no direct connection with our story, except to show what small affairs of men may affect all history and the millions of people who live afterward, and, an indication that the world is not worse, morally or ethically, now than it was then.

[Illustration: SPINNING

_Drawn by Lloyd Hune, Marietta, Ohio_]

Through the intervention of President George Washington, Colonel William Duer of the Scioto Company agreed to transport the emigrants to their lands, opposite the mouth of the Big Kanawha. In the meantime, surveyors discovered that this village site lay within the Ohio Company Purchase, and not, as supposed, within the Scioto Purchase. Duer contracted with Putnam to erect buildings for the settlers. Accordingly, Major John Burnham, with 40 men, erected four rows of 20 cabins each, with blockhouses at the corners and a small breastwork in front. To these crude dwellings came the artisans, lawyers, jewelers, physicians, and servants, the exiled nobility of France. They were so ignorant of pioneer ways that some were killed beneath the fall of the trees they chopped down. When the Ohio Company adjusted its affairs in December, 1795, the French settlers paid for their land a second time by buying it for a dollar and a quarter per acre. At a later time the United States government granted these unfortunate French a tract of land near Portsmouth, Ohio, but few of them ever moved there.

During the Indian war these citizens of Gallipolis were not molested by the warriors, who still had friendly feelings toward their former French allies in Canada. The other settlers, however, were not so fortunate in escaping Indian hostility. On May 1, 1789, only four months after the Treaty of Fort Harmar, Captain Zebulon King was killed and scalped by two Indians at Belpre. In August two boys were killed two miles up the Little Kanawha River in Virginia. Murders occurred with increasing frequency along the frontier. Settlers in Virginia, Kentucky, and the Ohio settlements called for protection. In 1790, Washington sent Harmar northward from Cincinnati with an expedition to punish the Indians in the Miami country, and compel obedience to the treaties of Fort McIntosh and Fort Harmar, but the warriors defeated his army so severely that they became bolder than ever in their revengeful attacks.

On Sunday, January 2, 1791, a war party of thirty Delaware and Wyandots attacked the settlers on donation lands at Big Bottom. Thirteen people, including a woman and two children, were gathered in a two-story blockhouse of beech logs. Four men were eating supper in a cabin a hundred yards above the blockhouse, and two men were preparing their meal in another cabin below the main building. A light snow covered the ground, and the ice on the Muskingum was strong enough to hold the Indians who crossed from the trail on the opposite side. While a few of their number tied the four men in the upper cabin, the main body of Indians surrounded the blockhouse. One of them pushed open the door, and his companions fired at the men around the fireplace. Then the Indians rushed in and massacred the settlers before they could reach their weapons. Twelve people were killed, five were made captives, and the two men in the lower cabin escaped to carry the news to the lower settlements.

Many of the men from Belpre and Waterford were attending the Court of Quarter Sessions in Marietta when the news of the massacre arrived. Hurrying back to their homes, they prepared to defend themselves if other attacks should be made. Several smaller settlements were abandoned, and the fortifications at Marietta, Belpre, and Waterford were strengthened. On January 8 Putnam wrote to Washington:

“The garrison at Fort Harmar, consisting at this time of little more than twenty men, can afford no protection to our settlements; and the whole number of men in all our settlements, capable of bearing arms, including all civil and military officers, do not exceed 287; and these badly armed. We are in the utmost danger of being swallowed up, should the enemy push the war with vigor during the winter.”

[Illustration: INDIAN CHIEFS BEING ENTERTAINED BY RUFUS PUTNAM AT CAMPUS MARTIUS]

During the following summer a company of United States troops under Major Jonathan Haskell was stationed at the Ohio Company settlements. The roofs of Campus Martius were covered with four inches of clay as a protection against flaming arrows. Picketed Point was strengthened and another blockhouse built for quartering troops. Colonel Ebenezer Sproat commanded a detail of 60 men from the militia in building fortifications. Six scouts, two from each of the settlements, started each morning on a circuit of 15 miles to discover the approach of Indians and give the alarm. For this defense the Ohio Company paid a total of $11,350.90, which was never repaid by the government. During the war the Indians killed 38 settlers in the vicinity of Marietta.

Coming soon after Harmar’s tragic defeat, the Big Bottom massacre seemed to justify the boast of the Indians that they would drive the white men out of the Ohio Valley. Washington commissioned St. Clair to lead an army of 2,000 men to punish the tribes. Starting from Fort Washington in October, 1791, they reached the eastern fork of the Wabash at present Fort Recovery, Ohio, on November 3, and encamped without suspicion of danger. At dawn they were surprised by a large body of Indians and forced to retreat with a loss of 900 men. As a result of the bitter criticism directed against St. Clair, a committee of Congress investigated the battle and found that the blame rested not upon St. Clair, but upon the incompetence of the troops and the inadequacy of the equipment. This has been before referred to as a besetting evil of early western campaigns.

The situation had become of serious national consequence. One of the traits of Indian warriors was a desire to be on the winning side. Under the impetus of two crushing defeats administered in quick succession to the American troops, even those tribes which had been peaceable and inoffensive began joining with the war-mad tribes and all white settlements were endangered. There was strong reason to believe, as was later substantiated, that the British who had not evacuated posts in Michigan despite the Treaty of Paris, were aiding and abetting the red man.

Washington realized that decisive steps must be taken if the Northwest was to be saved to the United States, and appointed General “Mad” Anthony Wayne of Revolutionary fame to lead the next expedition against the Indians and their allies.

[Illustration: ANTHONY WAYNE

_Drawn by Herbert Krofft, Zanesville, Ohio_]

After two years of preparation in drilling his troops and building several forts to protect supply trains, he led an army of 2,000 regulars and 1,500 militia to the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers. Enroute from Fort Greenville he had performed a notable strategy, which led the Indians on the westward to believe he would attack near present Fort Wayne, Indiana, and those to the east to conclude that he would attack them near present Toledo, Ohio. In reality he drove straight north to the mouth of the Auglaize where he built Fort Defiance, and thus, because of their absolute dependence upon the Maumee River for transportation, split the Indian forces in half. Taking ample time and with his now well-disciplined army, he attacked the Indians at Fallen Timbers, west of present Toledo. Here, behind trees blown down by a tornado, an army of 2,000 Indians waited for an attack. On the morning of August 20, 1794, Wayne’s army finally crushed the strength and spirit of the Indian hostility.

The British troops at Fort Miami, which was on American soil, four miles away from the battlefield, did not go to the assistance of the Indians, although a number of Canadian soldiers and officers were captured or killed in the battle. This failure of support and the smashing defeat which had been administered to them made possible the Treaty of Greenville, made by Wayne with the Indians on August 5, 1795.

The boundary lines established by this treaty extended somewhat beyond those of the Fort McIntosh Treaty of ten years before. What Wayne and the Greenville Treaty did accomplish was to convince the Indians and their British backers that America meant to hold the Northwest. They remained convinced until the War of 1812, when the matter was settled for all time.

With the advent of peace, settlement of Ohio and the Northwest proceeded rapidly. Virginians swarmed into the Military Tract reserved by her deed of cession for bounty lands. Manchester, on the Ohio River, was settled in 1791 by Colonel (later General) Nathaniel Massie, who also settled Chillicothe in 1796. Chillicothe was to become later the first territorial capital, then the first capital of Ohio.

When Connecticut ceded her claims to the Northwest Territory lands to the United States, reservation had been made in the northeast corner of the present state of Ohio—known as the “Western Reserve.”

A half million acres of this area were set off for the benefit of Connecticut citizens who had suffered loss by fire at the hands of the British in the Revolutionary War. These still bear the name of “Firelands.” In 1795 Connecticut sold the portion of her reserved lands east of the Cuyahoga River to a land company, and here in 1796 Moses Cleaveland established the present city which bears his name.

In the central part of the state Franklinton, present Columbus, was laid out in August, 1797. By 1800 the towns of Marietta, Cincinnati, North Bend, Gallipolis, Manchester, Hamilton, Dayton, Franklin, Chillicothe, Cleveland, Franklinton, Steubenville, Williamsburg and Zanesville and many smaller settlements were in existence.

In the territory to the west settlers were now finding new homes. Settlements around the old French trading posts and forts had grown materially and new centers were springing up in an ever westward march.

The Northwest as an integral and thriving part of the United States was definitely established.

While it would be interesting herein to follow through the developing communities of those states later to be formed from the territory, the purpose of this book apparently requires confinement of details to the formative period of the territory, and, except in unusual cases, towns and cities settled after 1800 will be left to state histories, which are commonly available.

[Illustration: FORT HARRISON ON THE WABASH

_Drawn by Helen Jean Marshall, Grand Ledge, Michigan_]

The region now known as Indiana was traversed by La Salle, possibly along the Ohio in 1670, along the St. Joseph and the Kankakee in 1679. French traders were at the present site of Fort Wayne early in the eighteenth century, and Fort Ouiatenon (southwest of Lafayette) was built by 1722. Vincennes was established and a fort built there by 1732. This entire region remained under French control until after the French and Indian War, when it was surrendered to the English. Following victories at Kaskaskia and Cahokia in the Illinois country, Americans under George Rogers Clark captured Vincennes in 1779. While his expedition was authorized by Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia as a state venture, the final effect was to establish the claim of the United States to the Northwest Territory sufficiently to secure cession by England in the Treaty of Paris.

This event, followed by cession of state claims, opened up the Middle West to the United States, except for Indian titles. The first American settlement in Indiana was made at Clarksville in 1784.

The Treaty of Greenville, made by Wayne in 1795 gave the United States undisputed title to the southwest corner of the present state of Indiana and certain reservations for white settlements. Thus, a hundred and fifty years ago it was the whites who were privileged to live on reservations in Indian territory, rather than as has been the practice since the memory of living men. The “Vincennes tract” and the “Clark grant” had been occupied before the Northwest Ordinance was framed. There followed the Treaty of Greenville, at irregular intervals, well into the middle of the nineteenth century, more than fifty treaties of more or less importance before all Indian titles had passed to the United States.

[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON HOUSE

_Drawn by Geneva Kirschoff, Vincennes, Indiana_]

In 1800 the population of Indiana Territory (the western part of the Northwest Territory after its division) was 5641 people. Of these, 929 lived in the Clark grant and some 1500 others around Vincennes. Corydon in southern Indiana succeeded Vincennes as the territorial capital in 1813, and so remained when the state was admitted to the Union in 1816. At that time, some 15 counties had been established, all of them in the southern part of the state. The state capital was removed to Indianapolis, its present location, in 1825.

Illinois, located on the great Mississippi River highway of the French explorers and missionaries, had attained a considerable repute for so remote an area.

About 1700, Kaskaskia and Cahokia, near the present St. Louis, had been settled as trading posts and, along with those erected in present Michigan and Wisconsin, were links in a chain of proposed forts from the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf of Mexico. Such was the intensity of purpose of France with reference to the Northwest in the early 1700’s.

In 1712 the Illinois River had been made the northern border of the Louisiana Territory.

As a result of the French and Indian War, however, the territory east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River was ceded to England. Due to the Pontiac Conspiracy, an alliance of most of the Indian tribes of the Northwest, it was two years later before the French flag was lowered at Fort Chartres and English dominion effected. As in all the rest of the Northwest after that war, settlement was forbidden by royal decree until around 1770, when settlers poured in from the seaboard colonies. As a result, one of the great early colonial “land bubble” schemes centered in southern Illinois.

In 1771, the Illinois settlers petitioned for, and, in fact, _demanded_, a form of self-government; but this was refused by Great Britain and in 1774 the Quebec Act annexed the entire area to the Province of Quebec. This all resulted in a considerable sympathy of the Illinois people for the cause of the American colonists in the ensuing Revolutionary War.

[Illustration: FORT DEARBORN, CHICAGO

_Drawn by Helen Jean Marshall, Grand Ledge, Michigan_]

Fort Dearborn, established 1803, and now the site of America’s second largest city, was captured in 1812 by the Indians, and as late as 1832 the Blackhawk War was fought in their last effort to retain title.

Due probably to the entrenched squatter settlements scattered through the area, the “first American settlements” are disputed, although Bellefontaine in the present Monroe County is regarded as the first. Shawneetown and Edwardsville were early land offices, along with Kaskaskia and Vincennes.

When lead ore was discovered at Galena in northwestern Illinois, settlement spread rapidly there. As has been said, Chicago began with Fort Dearborn in 1803, but at the time it was incorporated as a city in 1837, the village had but 4,170 inhabitants.

In 1809 the separate Territory of Illinois was created by Congress. The territory entered its second phase of elective officers in 1812, and in 1818 was admitted into the Union. Capitals had been at Kaskaskia, 1809-18; Vandalia, 1819-39; and thereafter at Springfield.

It is impossible to interpret the American phase of Michigan’s history without a fairly thorough understanding of the earlier French and English occupancies.

[Illustration: DETROIT IN 1815

_Drawn by Helen Jean Marshall, Grand Ledge, Michigan_]

The French explorer-missionary-trader parties had followed the water courses of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and other rivers, and founded posts substantial enough, particularly at strategic points, to survive as English and later American communities.

Cadillac settled Detroit in 1701, but the restraint to settlement imposed by the English occupation—1763-1775—precluded any substantial growth. Pontiac, the great Indian chieftain of the Ottawas, effected his conspiracy and made a great effort to retain the territory for the Indians.

Michigan was made a separate territory in 1805 (see chapter on Evolution of the Northwest Territory), and became a state in 1837. The capital had been at Detroit, and so remained until 1847, when it was moved to Lansing.

As has been said, particularly of Illinois and Michigan, growth of American settlement in Wisconsin cannot be dissociated from the French era. Jean Nicolet is credited with being the first white man to explore the region, in 1634. But all the noted French expeditions paved the way for later trading posts and missions.

The Indian population of Wisconsin early in the seventeenth century had probably been the largest of any area of similar size east of the Mississippi River, and hence, with the adjacent Minnesota lands, the region offered great attraction to the fur traders, and to missionaries.

Prairie du Chien and Green Bay were major settlements and county seats of the first counties of the early era. While England held technical possession of the territory—1763-1783—her occupation was ineffective and of little importance. Wisconsin was, however, the last section of the Northwest Territory to be evacuated by the British.

American traders entered “Ouisconsin” 1760-1766, and were later succeeded by John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. The lead mines discovered around present Galena, Illinois, by the Frenchman, Perrot, in the late 1600’s were a considerable factor in settlement. It is interesting to note that negro slaves were used in these mines in 1820.

Set apart as a territory in 1836, with its first boundaries later changed to the territory east of the Mississippi River in 1838, Wisconsin became a state in 1848, with its capital at Madison.

Technically, under the Ordinance of 1787, all of the Northwest Territory was to become not more than five states, and hence the present portion of Minnesota lying east of the Mississippi represents one of those adjustments of state boundaries established by Congress.

Like the areas of Michigan and Wisconsin, the Minnesota country was first explored by the French, who established missions, developed the fur trade, and conducted a search for the fabled northwest passage to the Pacific. Perhaps the earliest of the French explorers to see the Minnesota country were Radisson and Groseilliers, who may have pushed into what is now part of the state not long after the middle of the seventeenth century, and who came into contact with Sioux Indians in 1659-60. The region became known as a result of the visits of a number of explorers, including Du Lhut, who explored the country between the Mississippi and the St. Croix in the decade following 1679; Father Hennepin, who discovered the Falls of St. Anthony in 1680; Perrot, who laid formal claim to the upper Mississippi country for France in 1689; Le Sueur, who built a post on Prairie Island in the Mississippi in 1695 and Fort L’Huillier on the Blue Earth River in 1700; La Perriére, who established Fort Beauharnois on Lake Pepin in 1727; and La Vérendrye, who with his sons and his nephew opened the great canoe route from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg between 1731 and 1743. Along this route, which he believed might connect with the northwest passage, he established a chain of forts, including Fort St. Charles on the Lake of the Woods.

At Grand Portage, where La Vérendrye’s route to the West left Lake Superior, a great fur trade depot developed in the French period and continued to prosper after the arrival of the British in 1763. The British were forced to abandon Grand Portage after 1816, but the white occupation of the site has continued to the present. Among exploring traders who entered the Minnesota country during the British period were Jonathan Carver, Peter Pond, and David Thompson.

In southern Minnesota the earliest permanent white settlement grew up in the American period near the mouth of the Minnesota River on a tract that was acquired from the Indians by Lieutenant Pike in 1805. There in 1819 Fort St. Anthony, later called Fort Snelling, was established. To manufacture lumber for the fort, a government sawmill was built at the Falls of St. Anthony in 1821-22. The first steamboat pushed up the Mississippi to the Minnesota fort in 1823. Other white settlements developed in the vicinity—Mendota across the Minnesota River from the fort, St. Paul some miles down the Mississippi, and St. Anthony and Minneapolis on the same stream above the fort at the Falls of St. Anthony. Exploration continued in the American period. After Schoolcraft discovered Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi, in 1832, it became possible to determine definitely the northwestern boundary of what had been the Northwest Territory. The upper valley of the Father of Waters was explored also by Pike, Cass, Beltrami, and Nicollet.

In 1805 the United States acquired from the Indians tracts of land at the mouths of the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, and in 1837, the area between the lower St. Croix and the Mississippi. Settlements began soon afterward at Dakota (Stillwater), Marine, and St. Croix Falls, and it was due in large part to the efforts of these settlements that what is now eastern Minnesota was not included in Wisconsin. In 1848 a land boom started at St. Paul and immigration to the region increased materially. In 1849 the area of eastern Minnesota, which had been successively a portion of the Northwest, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin territories, became a part of the new Minnesota Territory, which was admitted to the Union as a state in 1858. Indian title to lands in the region was extinguished by treaties in 1854 and 1866.

Thus, eighty-one years after the first cession to the United States of Indian lands in the Northwest Territory, territorial acquisition was complete.

It is not fair to leave consideration of growth of settlements without some mention of its religious aspect, particularly in view of the portentous clauses of the ordinance, “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government” and “no person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship.” It is impossible even to estimate the influence of the French-Catholic missionaries upon the Indians and later white settlers. Nor can we evaluate the effect of the early Moravian effort to christianize the Indians in Ohio.

As soon as the Ohio Company settlers built their cabins, they provided educational opportunities for their children. Aside from the Moravian mission school for Indians at Schoenbrunn in 1773, the first school in Ohio was opened for the small children at Belpre in the summer of 1789. On the hill above Farmers’ Castle lived Colonel Israel Putnam, who brought to Belpre many books that had belonged to his father, General Israel Putnam. With these books as a nucleus, the Belpre residents formed a library owned by a joint stock company with shares at ten dollars each. It was variously called the Putnam Library, the Belpre Library, and the Belpre Farmers’ Library. It was the first American circulating library in the Northwest Territory.

A school was conducted at Marietta during the winter of 1788 by Tupper in the northwest blockhouse of Campus Martius. Teachers were employed regularly every year thereafter in Campus Martius and “The Point.” On July 16, 1790, the Ohio Company made its first appropriation of $150.00 for the support of schools. According to the contract of the Ohio Company with Congress, two townships near the center of the purchase were to be given by the national government for a university. Under this provision Ohio University was established at Athens in 1808 as the first state university in the world under democratic government.