Following approval of statehood by the territory's citizens,
Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state. In 1634, French
explorer Jean Nicolet landed at Green Bay, becoming the first
European to visit the lake-heavy northern region that would
later become Wisconsin. In 1763, at the conclusion of the French
and Indian Wars, the region, a major center of the American fur
trade, passed into British control. Two decades later, at the
end of the American Revolution, the region came under U.S. rule
and was governed as part of the Northwest Territory. However,
British fur traders continued to dominate Wisconsin from across
the Canadian border, and it was not until the end of the War of
1812 that the region fell firmly under American control. In the
first decades of the 19th century, settlers began arriving via
the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to exploit Wisconsin's
agricultural potential, and in 1832 the Black Hawk War ended
Native American resistance to white settlement. In 1836, after
several decades of govern