The land about the falls was a military reservation and therefore not open to settlement. As early as 1837 a Swiss watchmaker by the name of Perry attempted to settle there, but was driven off by the soldiers. Going a few miles down the river, he became in 1838, the first settler upon the present site of the city of St. Paul. His only competitor for this honor is a certain one-eyed personage of evil disposition and unattractive appearance whose true name was Parrant, but who became known to fame as Pig's Eye. With an eye to the advantages of the liquor business, Parrant located his claim beyond the limits of the reservation and near the river, where it became a flourishing resort for soldiers, Indians, and other frontier characters. It was the head of navigation on the river and entered into competition with the neighboring village of Stillwater for the proud position of the metropolis of the Territory. A town near by was surveyed in 1847 and during the following two years, as we are credibly informed by a local historian, "maturative and creative influence, slowly but surely tended towards civilization." From the same source we learn that in 1848 "the _nuclei_ of civilization" consisted of a church, a school, and a hotel,--surely not a bad beginning. The history of the modern city properly begins in 1848, when Minnesota was organized as a territory with St. Paul as the provisional capital. The territorial government was organized with Alexander Ramsey (afterwards Governor of the State, Senator, and Secretary of War) as Governor, and duly proclaimed on June 1, 1848. The enabling act named St. Paul as the temporary capital, but left the people free to choose at the first general election a permanent place of government. [Illustration ALEXANDER RAMSEY.] In the meantime, a rival town had grown up at the east end of the Falls of St. Anthony, and the long struggle for supremacy began with the selection of a permanent capital. The Indian title to the lands was extinguished in 1838, but two years earlier the commandant at the fort, Major Plympton, availed himself of his superior facilities and staked out a claim and built a cabin near the east end of the falls. Other claims were located soon after, all of which ultimately became the property of Franklin Steele and Pierre Bottineau, names famous in the early history of the locality. Early in 1847 there were about fifty people in the village, but in that year the van of "that great army which is moving yet but never stopping" began to arrive.