Editing Duluth, Minnesota (section)

===Exploration and fur trade===
[[File:MinnPointCamp.jpg|thumb|left|alt=black and white image of two teepees with a dozen or more people, some in suite|Ojibwe camp and white visitors on Minnesota Point, 19th century]]
Several factors brought fur traders to the Great Lakes in the early 17th century. The fashion for [[beaver hats]] in Europe generated demand for pelts. The French trade for beavers in the lower [[St. Lawrence River]] led to the depletion of the animals in the region by the late 1630s, after which the French searched farther west for new resources and new routes, making alliances with the Native Americans along the way to trap and deliver furs.

[[Étienne Brûlé]] is credited with the European discovery of Lake Superior before 1620. [[Pierre-Esprit Radisson]] and [[Médard des Groseilliers]] explored the Duluth area, [[Fond du Lac (Duluth)|Fond du Lac]] (Bottom of the Lake), in 1654 and again in 1660. The French soon established fur posts near Duluth and in the far north where [[Grand Portage]] became a major trading center. The French explorer [[Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut]], whose name is sometimes anglicized as "DuLuth", explored the [[Saint Louis River (Lake Superior tributary)|St. Louis River]] in 1679.

After 1792 and the independence of the United States, the [[North West Company]] established several posts on Minnesota rivers and lakes, as well as in areas to the west and northwest, for trading with the Ojibwe, the [[Dakota (given name)|Dakota]], and other native tribes. The first post was where [[Superior, Wisconsin]], later developed; known as Fort St. Louis, the post became the headquarters for North West's new Fond du Lac Department. It had stockade walls, two houses of {{convert|40|ft|m}} each, a shed of {{convert|60|ft|m}}, a large warehouse, and a canoe yard. Over time, Native American peoples and European Americans settled nearby, and a town gradually developed.

In 1808, German-born [[John Jacob Astor]] organized the [[American Fur Company]]. The company began trading at the Head of the Lakes in 1809. In 1817, it erected a new headquarters at present-day [[Fond du Lac (Duluth)|Fond du Lac]] on the St. Louis River. There, portages connected Lake Superior with [[Lake Vermilion]] to the north and with the [[Mississippi River]] to the south. After creating a powerful [[monopoly]], Astor got out of the business around 1830, as the trade was declining. But active trade continued until the failure of the fur trade in the 1840s. European fashions changed, and many American areas were getting over-trapped, causing game to decline.

In 1832, [[Henry Schoolcraft]] visited the Fond du Lac area and wrote of his experiences with the Ojibwe Indians there. [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] based the [[Song of Hiawatha]], his epic poem relating the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman, on Schoolcraft's writings.<ref>{{Cite web |title=An Ethnographic Study of Indigenous Contributions to the City of Duluth |url=http://www.duluthstories.net/downloads/DuluthEthnographicStudy2015.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200329210515/http://www.duluthstories.net/downloads/DuluthEthnographicStudy2015.pdf |archive-date=March 29, 2020 |access-date=March 30, 2020}}</ref>

Natives signed two [[Treaty of Fond du Lac|Treaties of Fond du Lac]] with the United States in the present neighborhood of Fond du Lac in 1826 and 1847; in them, the Ojibwe ceded land to the American government. As part of the Treaty of Washington (1854) with the [[Lake Superior Band of Chippewa]], the United States placed the [[Fond du Lac Indian Reservation]] upstream from Duluth near [[Cloquet, Minnesota]].