custom. The first collection of people in Minnesota, aside from the garrison of Fort Snelling, was the little hamlet of Mendota, inhabited by French half-breeds and their Indian wives and children. At times its numbers were swelled by traders from outposts coming in to headquarters to bring their furs and obtain supplies. Mendota is a French hamlet to-day. The first American settlement was made at Marine, on the St. Croix, early in 1839, where a sawmill was put into operation August 24. In the year following, on a claim previously made, Joseph R. Brown laid out the town site of Dakotah on land now forming a part of Stillwater. This city was not laid out till 1843, when settlement was begun in full confidence that Stillwater was to be the great city of the region. Its progress for a few years seemed to justify that expectation. Later many of its people migrated to the new towns on the Mississippi. In the year of the treaties (1837) the officer commanding at Fort Snelling had a survey made, to carve out of the Pike tract of nine by eighteen miles the land to be held by the government for military use. The bounds included practically all of Reserve Township of Ramsey County, the east line passing through the “Seven Corners” of St. Paul. Because of growing scarcity of timber, and alleged trespasses of the squatters, Major Plympton in the spring of 1838 ordered all those settled on the main reserve west of the Mississippi to move over to the east side. A very few had sufficient foresight to place themselves beyond the military lines,—among them one Pierre Parrant, a Canadian voyageur, who, not waiting for the ratification, built a whiskey shanty near the issue of the streamlet from Fountain Cave, in upper St. Paul, thus becoming the first inhabitant of that city. The evicted Swiss mostly settled on ground within easy reach of the fort, and there built their cabins anew. They were, however, not long allowed that indulgence. Their number was reinforced by a few voyageurs, discharged soldiers, and perhaps some other whites. Among the whites were a few who opened grog-shops at which the custom of the soldiers was very welcome. These places became so intolerable that the commandant begged the War Department to require all squatters to get off the reservation. His recommendation was adopted, and on the 6th of May, 1840, a deputy United States marshal, supported by a detachment of soldiers, drove them all over the lines and destroyed their cabins. What did they do but reëstablish themselves just beyond the line, about Parrant’s claim? French fashion, they grouped their cabins and formed a little French village, the nucleus of the capital city of Minnesota. A memorial of the evicted Swiss to Congress for indemnity for loss of improvements on land they had been suffered to occupy and cultivate, and for the destruction of their shelters, was ignored.