page_title: Territorial era of Minnesota
section_title: Pioneers and exploration
hierarchical_section_title: Territorial era of Minnesota / Pioneers and exploration
context_page_description: The territorial era of Minnesota lasted from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to Minnesota's achieving statehood in 1858. The Minnesota Territory itself was formed only in 1849 but the area had a rich history well before this. Though there was a long history of European presence in the area before 19th century, it was during the 19th century that the United States began to establish a firm presence in what would become Minnesota.
  Many of the facets of Minnesota culture that are perceived as the area's early history in fact originated after this period. Notably, the heavy Scandinavian immigration for which the state is known, and the pioneering days chronicled by author Laura Ingalls Wilder occurred after statehood in the later 19th century. Unlike these later years, the first half of the 19th century was characterized by sparsely populated communities, harsh living conditions, and to some degree, lawlessness.
  This era was a period of economic transition. The dominant enterprise in the area since the 17th century had been the fur trade.
context_section_description: At the beginning of the 19th century many parts of the Minnesota area were already well traveled by British and French explorers. Though the region's population was mostly Native American, there were important British trading posts in the area with many European and mixed-race settlers, particularly in the north. Grand Portage, in particular, had long been established as the major trading center for the North West Company of Montreal.
  David Thompson, a British fur trader for the North West Company, completed numerous surveys and maps of the North American frontier. In 1797 he completed the first known map of the Minnesota area, in what was then the Northwest Territory. The Jay Treaty, however, obliged most of the British settlers to withdraw their settlements in 1796, though mixed-race peoples remained.
  In 1805 U.S. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike was sent by General Wilkinson, governor of the Louisiana Territory, to enforce U.S. sovereignty against British traders in the area and establish diplomatic and trading relationships with the native tribes. He met with the Sioux leadership in central Minnesota to secure rights for the U.S. to an area near Saint Anthony Falls, which would later become the city of Saint Paul. Though a treaty was signed by some leaders from the Sioux tribes, its legitimacy (including whether the Sioux understood it) was dubious and ultimately his efforts did little to establish the authority of the U.S. in the area.
  In 1817 Major Stephen H. Long of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led a waterborne expedition from Prairie du Chien to reach Saint Anthony Falls. He documented much of the terrain today occupied by Minneapolis and Saint Paul as well as the Native American villages that existed there at the time.
  In 1818 the 49th parallel was established as the boundary between the United States and British North America. However, the point where the Red River crossed this line was not marked until 1823, when Stephen Long conducted a survey expedition. The expedition determined, among other things, that the fur trading post of Pembina lay just inside the U.S. border.
  Several efforts were made to determine the source of the Mississippi River. In 1823 Italian explorer Giacomo Constantino Beltrami who had split from the Long expedition in Pembina, found Lake Julia which he believed was the source of the Mississippi River. The actual source was found in 1832, when Henry Schoolcraft was guided by a group of Ojibwe headed by Ozaawindib ("Yellow Head") to a lake in northern Minnesota.  Schoolcraft named it Lake Itasca, combining the Latin words veritas ("truth") and caput ("head").
  In 1835 George William Featherstonhaugh conducted a geological survey of the Minnesota River valley and wrote an account entitled A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor. Joseph Nicollet scouted the area in the late 1830s accompanied by John C. Frémont, exploring and mapping the Upper Mississippi River basin, the Saint Croix River, and the land between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.
caption: Engraving of Zebulon Pike, who led a U.S. expedition to central Minnesota establishing the first U.S. treaty with the Sioux
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