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Fort Machillimackinack

Replica of Fort Michilimackinac, also called Mackinac. View the original source document: WHI 35063

After the War of 1812, the U.S. government concluded it had to do more to protect its resources in the Northwest. The government was particularly concerned about making the routes used by American fur traders safe. Garrisons were posted and forts built at Detroit, Mackinac, Chicago and elsewhere in the West, including three locations along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway.

Military Outposts

Shortly after the British withdrew from Prairie du Chien's Fort McKay in 1815, three permanent military outposts were established in Wisconsin: Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien (1816), Fort Howard at Green Bay (1816) and Fort Winnebago between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers (1828). In addition to protecting settlers, early military posts sponsored civilian activities. Many enlisted men built roads, constructed bridges, farmed produce, cut lumber, surveyed town lots or escorted travelers. The forts also served as political and judicial centers. The presence of the military, particularly the officers and their families, helped create a sense of community in the early settlements by promoting education, religion and social gatherings.

The U.S. forts represented both commercial opportunity and military oppression to the Native Americans. Many French had lived in Wisconsin for several generations. To them, the posts were unwelcome intrusions that brought military commanders and American settlers who were hostile to French land claims and customs. To the English-speaking Yankees and Southerners relocating to the Wisconsin frontier, the forts were bastions of civilization in an unfamiliar wilderness.

Expedition and new Residents

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Zebulon Pike

Copy of a steel engraved portrait of Zebulon Montgomery Pike. View the original source document: WHI 89205

The first notable U.S. expedition through Wisconsin was Major Zebulon Pike's 1805 trip to find the source of the Mississippi. Fifteen years later, Michigan's territorial governor Lewis Cass set out with scientist Henry Schoolcraft to travel to the same destination through Detroit and along the shore of Lake Superior.

One of the most interesting developments in early Wisconsin settlement was the emigration of several Indian communities to the state in the 1820s. The Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans were part of the Oneida nation and the Brothertown community were a group of Pequot, Niantic, Montauk and other coastal peoples who had been given refuge by the Oneida in New York. Both groups came to Wisconsin to escape exploitation in the East. They secured lands in northeastern Wisconsin from the Menominee and Ho-Chunk and established new communities on the Wisconsin frontier.

When Wisconsin became a territory in 1836, exploitation of the lead region and the commercial potential of harbors on Lake Michigan's shoreline had spawned many new settlements and industries that would transform the region.

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[Sources: Wyman, Mark. The Wisconsin Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1998). Kellogg, Louise Phelps. The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (Madison : State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1925). The History of Wisconsin: volume 1, From Exploration to Statehood by Alice E. Smith. (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973)]