Unable to influence the Wisconsin legislature, which stubbornly contended for the possession of the original tract, the St. Croix people next urged their claims upon Congress. The proposed State of Superior found little favor at Washington, but there was a general feeling that Wisconsin would be much too large unless trimmed. The result was that when she was finally admitted as a State, the St. Croix River was, in large part, made her northwest boundary; Minnesota in this manner acquired a vast stretch of country, including the thriving city of St. Paul. Wisconsin was thus shorn of valuable territory on the south, to please Illinois; on the northeast, to favor Michigan; and on the northwest, that some of her settlers might join their fortunes with Minnesota. The State, however, is still quite as large as most of her sisters in the Old Northwest, and possesses an unusual variety of soils, and a great wealth of forests, mines, and fisheries. There is a strong probability that, had Congress, in 1848, given to Wisconsin her "ancient limits," as defined by the Ordinance of 1787, the movement to create the proposed state of "Superior" would have gathered strength in the passing years, and possibly would have achieved success, thus depriving us of our great northern forests and mines, and our outlet upon the northern lake. LIFE IN PIONEER DAYS So long as the fur trade remained the principal business in Wisconsin, the French were still supreme at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien; and, until a third of the nineteenth century had passed away, there existed at these outposts of New France a social life which smacked of the "old régime," bearing more traces of seventeenth-century Normandy than of Puritan New England. With the decline of the fur trade, a new order of things slowly grew up. There being little legal machinery west of Lake Michigan, before Wisconsin Territory was erected, local government was slow to establish itself. Nothing but the good temper and stout common sense of the people prevented anarchy, under such a condition of affairs. For many years, the few public enterprises were undertaken at private expense. At Green Bay, schools were thus conducted, as early as 1817. In 1821 the citizens of that village raised a fund by popular subscription, and built a jail; and eleven years later, they asked the legislature of Michigan Territory to pay for it. There were some Territorial taxes levied in 1817, but the gathering of them was not very successful. The first county to levy a tax was Crawford, of which Prairie du Chien was the seat, but considerable difficulty appears to have been experienced in collecting the money.