Early U.S. Settlement

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

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 at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers (1828). Besides offering protection to settlers, these early military posts sponsored much civilian activity. Many enlisted men found themselves building roads, constructing bridges, farming produce, cutting lumber, surveying town lots, or escorting travelers. The forts also served as political and judicial centers, and the presence of the military, particularly the officers and their families, helped set the social tone of the early settlements by promoting education and religion and by hosting social gatherings.

To Native Americans, the U.S. forts represented both commercial opportunity and military oppression. To the frontier French, some of whom had been here for several generations, the posts were unwelcome intrusions, bringing military commanders and American settlers hostile to French land claims and customs. To the English-speaking Yankees and Southerners relocating on the Wisconsin frontier, the forts were cherished bastions of civilization in an unfamiliar wilderness.

The first important U.S. exploring expedition through Wisconsin was Major Zebulon Pike's 1805 trip to find the source of the Mississippi (linked here from our American Journeys digital collection). Fifteen years later Michigan's territorial governor Lewis Cass set out with scientist Henry Schoolcraft, with young James Doty acting as secretary, to travel to the same destination by way of Detroit, hugging Lake Superior's shore. They also intended to assess the condition of the Ojibwe Indians and investigate the reported mineral deposits on the Keweenaw Peninsula of upper Michigan.

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

By the time 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.

[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)]

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	A teenager comes to Green Bay as a new bride in 1824.
	A missionary travels 1,500-miles among the Ojibwe and Sioux in 1838
	Memoirs of a Fox River Homesteader
	John Shaw recalls Tomah, Black Hawk, Keokuk, and other Indian leaders.
	An early Yankee settler recalls Prairie du Chien's infancy.
	Recollections of Wisconsin slaves by pioneer settlers.
	The surveyor that laid out Madison recalls his days in the field in 1837.
	A participant tells how the Oneida, Stockbridge, and Brothertown came to Wisconsin in the 1820s.
	A woman's memoir of the founding of Sheboygan
	Governor Philipp reflects on his childhood in Sauk County, 1920
	An officer's daughter recalls her girlhood at Fort Howard, 1824-29.
	A trader relates his family history and personal adventures, 1745-1857.
	Girlhood and motherhood on the Wisconsin frontier, 1824-1860.
	Indian Versions of Some Early Wisconsin Events
	A Green Bay girlhood in the 1820s.
	A Yankee Childhood in Dodge County
	Henry Dodge brought his slaves to Wisconsin
	An 1886 visit to the Menominee community of Keshena
	The oldest toast in Wisconsin
	A mid-1800s birchbark maple sugar container
	A teenager's diary of coming overland from Ohio in 1846
	Increase Lapham describes territorial Wisconsin for new settlers.
	An 1875 history of the Chippewa Valley
	A guide to the Mohican language, 1789
	A clergyman locates the Biblical Garden of Eden in Wisconsin, 1886
	The language of the Brothertown Indians' ancestors, 1722
	The first book printed in Wisconsin, an Ojibwe almanac
	A speech by Brothertown Indian leader Samsom Occom, 1771
	Folklore and folktales collected by Charles E. Brown
	Stockbridge and Munsee Testimony, 1892
	Descriptions of Wisconsin disasters and catastrophes, 1848-1948
	Fr. Baraga's 1853 Ojibwe Dictionary
	A Munsee language edition of Methodist hymns, 1874
	The Stockbridge-Munsee Constitution, 1857
	The history and traditions of the Chippewa Valley
	Early Wisconsin settler and Madison Promoter James Duane Doty
	Stockbridge Chief John W. Quinney in 1849
	A photograph of Augustin Grignon near the end of his life.
	Wisconsin's first Territorial Governor, Henry Dodge
	Madison's first white woman settler
	Increase Lapham examining a meteorite, ca. 1868
	Oneida Chief Daniel Bread in 1856
	Stockbridge Indian leader Austin E. Quinney, 1849
	Prairie du Chien merchant and judge James H. Lockwood, 1856.
	Letters by relatives of Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1861-1919
	Brief Ho-Chunk Language Vocabularies, 1830-1930
	James Doty explores Lake Superior in 1820 with Lewis Cass
	Northern settlers try to join Minnesota, 1847
	Ledger books from Fort Winnebago, 1831-1851
	Climatological observations at Portage, 1828-1842
	The imaginary capital city that its chief promoter envisoned, 1836.
	The rectangular survey gets underway in Wisconsin, 1835.
	States and territories created under the Northwest Ordinance.
	A member of the party maps the Cass and Doty expedition of 1820.
	The first capitol in Belmont
	Stonefield, home of Gov. Nelson Dewey and the State Agricultural Museum
	Northwest and XY Company Trading Post
	Plough Inn in Madison

Primary Sources Available Elsewhere

	An 1847 travelogue by a visiting British geologist
	An officer's wife recalls Fort Winnebago, 1829-1834.
	Recollections of northern Wisconsin by Henry S. Baird
	Collected historical documents from the Wisconsin Historical Society
	Henry Schoolcraft's account of the 1820 Cass-Doty expedition.
	Father Goldsmith travels to parishioners in Flambeau in 1881
	Maj. Zebulon Pike travels up the Mississippi, 1805-1806
	Henry Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs (1812-1842)
	A historical, documentary, and descriptive history of Wisconsin to 1854
	An artist and writer travels Wisconsin's rivers and lakes in 1846
	Daily operations of the Prairie Post trading post at Chippewa Falls
	Biographical sketches and writings of some Wisconsin pioneer women

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