[Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap.
x.] Taught by this experience, the United States, at the close of
the war, passed laws excluding aliens from conducting the Indian
trade, and erected forts at Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, Chicago,
and Fort Snelling. By order of Secretary of War Calhoun, Governor
Cass, of Michigan, made an expedition in 1820 along the south shore
of Lake Superior into Minnesota, to compel the removal of English
flags and to replace British by American influence. [Footnote:
Schoolcraft, Hist, of Indian Tribes, VI., 422; ibid., Narrative
Journal; "Doty's Journal," in Wis. Hist. Soc., Collections, XIII.,
163.] At the same time, an expedition under Major Long visited the
upper waters of the Minnesota River on a similar errand. [Footnote:
Keating, Long's Expedition.] An agent who was sent by the government
to investigate the Indian conditions of this region in 1820,
recommended that the country now included in Wisconsin, northern
Michigan, and part of Minnesota should be an Indian reservation,
from which white settlements should be excluded, with the idea that
ultimately the Indian population should be organized as a state of
the Union. [Footnote: Morse, Report on Indian Affairs in 1820.]

The Creeks and Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws of the Gulf
region were more advanced towards civilization than the Indians of
the northwest. While the latter lived chiefly by hunting and
trapping, the southwestern Indians had developed a considerable
agriculture and a sedentary life. For that very reason, however,
they were the more obnoxious to the pioneers who pressed upon their
territory from all sides; and, as we shall see, strenuous efforts
were made to remove them beyond the Mississippi.

Throughout the decade the problem of the future of the Indians east