The area was originally inhabited by the Ho-Chunk and Menominee. The town is known in the Menominee language as "Namāēw-Wīhkit", or "bay of the sturgeon". The Menominee ceded this territory to the United States in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars following years of negotiations with the Ho-Chunk and the U.S. government over how to accommodate the incoming populations of Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee, and Brothertown peoples who had been removed from New York. After that, the area was available for white settlement.