WISCONSIN BLUE BOOK


policies. In the case of Wisconsin it was the Astor American Fur
Company. This fact differentiated such settlements from the ordi-
nary American pioneer community.
  An important change came over both Green Bay and Prairie du
Chien with the establishment by the United States government of a
military post at each of those fur trade centers and the association
therewith of agencies to control, protect and civilize the natives.
Green Bay and the Fox River Valley became the scene of vastly in-
creased activity due to such governmental participation in affairs, and
Prairie du Chien, as well as the Portage, and other points along the
great waterway, shared to some extent in the process of rejuvenation
set in motion thereby. So much, indeed, was going on in Wisconsin


   Southwestern Wisconsin mining district. Landscape pockmarked
                          with old diggings.

that the government was forced to recognize that detached portion of
Michigan Territory by strengthening its civil as well as military posi-
tion, for which purpose a special territorial court was created with
James Duane Doty as judge. This occurred in 1823, Judge Doty
thereafter holding sessions alternately at Green Bay and at Prairie
du Chien, which emphasizes once more the geographical determination
of Wisconsin history up to that point.
  Wisconsin, however, was about to undergo a change which, consid-
ering the long duration of fur trade dominance, by lake and river, was
nothing less than revoluntionary. It came through a mining develop-
ment in what has long been known as the Wisconsin lead region, cen-
tered mainly in the three modern counties of Grant, Lafayette, and
Iowa, all at first comprised in the original Iowa County. This lead
bearing area constitutes the larger part of what was once known as
the upper Mississippi lead mines, whose terrain embraces also the
Galena district in Illinois and the Dubuque district in Iowa. The lat-


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