Monette, John W. History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi, by the Three Great European Powers, Spain, France and Great Britain, and the Subsequent Occupation, Settlement, and Extension of Civil Government by the United States, Until the Year 1846, in two volumes, Volume II . New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1846. [format: book], [genre: history]. Permission: Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures, Aurora University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=monette2.html

towns and commerce occupy the seats and haunts of the degraded Indian, upon which the rays of civilization had never beamed. A large mercantile town, with an active and enterprising community, had sprung up at Milwaukie Bay; a town which, three years afterward, in 1845, became an incorporated city, with extensive powers and privileges, designed to render it the commercial emporium of the future State of Wisconsin. Other trading towns lined the beautiful shore of the lake for many miles north and south of this central dépôt.

[A.D. 1843.] During the year 1843, the aggregate number of persons who arrived in the Wisconsin Territory has been estimated at more than sixty thousand, embracing all ages and sexes. Of these, about fifty thousand arrived by way of the lake route. ⁶³⁷ The remainder advanced by way of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, and comprised a great proportion of foreign emigrants from the German States. These emigrants spread over the country south and east of the Wisconsin River, and opened new settlements upon its northern and western tributaries. In 1845 Wisconsin Territory contained more inhabitants than any other new state possessed upon her admission into the Union; yet the people, satisfied with the territorial form of government, desired not, in the recent state of the principal settlements, to incur the additional expenses of an independent state government. Hence, with a population of more than one hundred and forty thousand souls, the Wisconsin Territory had not, in 1845, made application to Congress for authority to establish a state government.

The commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing resources of the Wisconsin Territory are unrivaled in that latitude, either in Europe or America. But it is in her mineral resources that Wisconsin excels any other portion of the West. Besides other mineral productions of value, the lead mines of Wisconsin are inexhaustible, and embrace nearly half of the great lead region east of the Mississippi. According to the census of 1840, the whole amount of lead produced in the United States and territories was 31,239,453 pounds. Of this the Territory of Wisconsin, with a capital of $664,600, produced one half, or 15,000,000 pounds.

Michigan had already become a great agricultural state, supplying the city of New York with immense quantities of wheat,

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