Wisconsin has been home to a wide variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years

. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation. Th
ese early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals
exemplified by the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed alon
g with spear points in southwest Wisconsin.[9] After the ice age ended around 80
00 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, and g
athering food from wild plants. Agricultural societies emerged gradually over th
e Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of this period, Wi
sconsin was the heartland of the "Effigy Mound culture", which built thousands o
f animal-shaped mounds across the landscape.[10] Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE
, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including
the fortified village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin.[11] The Oneota may be t
he ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin re
gion with the Menominee at the time of European contact.[12] Other American Indi
an groups living in Wisconsin when Europeans first settled included the Ojibwa,
Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Pottawatomie, who migrated to Wisconsin from the east b
etween 1500 and 1700.[13]
Jean Nicolet, depicted in a 1910 painting by Frank Rohrbeck, was probably the fi
rst European to explore Wisconsin. The mural is located in the Brown County Cour
thouse in Green Bay.
The first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explor
er Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 163
4, and it is traditionally assumed that he came ashore near Green Bay at Red Ban
ks.[14] Pierre Radisson and Mdard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 165
4 1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659 1660, where they traded for fur with local Americ
an Indians.[15] In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to
record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi R
iver near Prairie du Chien.[16] Frenchmen like Nicholas Perrot continued to ply
the fur trade across Wisconsin through the 17th and 18th centuries, but the Fren
ch made no permanent settlements in Wisconsin before Great Britain won control o
f the region following the French and Indian War in 1763. Even so, French trader
s continued to work in the region after the war, and some, beginning with Charle
s de Langlade in 1764, now settled in Wisconsin permanently rather than returnin
g to British-controlled Canada.[17]
The British gradually took over Wisconsin during the French and Indian War, taki
ng control of Green Bay in 1761 and gaining control of all of Wisconsin in 1763.
Like the French, the British were interested in little but the fur trade. One n
otable event in the fur trading industry in Wisconsin occurred in 1791, when two
free African Americans set up a fur trading post among the Menominee at present
day Marinette. The first permanent settlers, mostly French Canadians, some Angl
o-New Englanders and a few African American freedmen, arrived in Wisconsin while
it was under British control. Charles Michel de Langlade is generally recognize
d as the first settler, establishing a trading post at Green Bay in 1745, and mo
ving there permanently in 1764.[18] Settlement began at Prairie du Chien around
1781. The French residents at the trading post in what is now Green Bay, referre
d to the town as "La Bey", however British fur traders referred to it as "Green
Bay", because the water and the shore assumed green tints in early spring. The o
ld French title was gradually dropped, and the British name of "Green Bay" event
ually stuck. The region coming under British rule had virtually no adverse effec
t on the French residents as the British needed the cooperation of the French fu
r traders and the French fur traders needed the goodwill of the British. During
the French occupation of the region licenses for fur trading had been issued sca
rcely and only to select groups of traders, whereas the British, in an effort to
make as much money as possible from the region, issued licenses for fur trading
freely, both to British and French residents. The fur trade in what is now Wisc
onsin reached its height under British rule, and the first self-sustaining farms
in the state were established as well. From 1763 to 1780, Green Bay was a prosp

erous community which produced its own foodstuff, built graceful cottages and he
ld dances and festivities.[19]