A brief history of Milwaukee and City Hall The City of Milwaukee
arose from a collection of scattered settlements on a site
familiar to the Native American tribes in what is now eastern
Wisconsin. Local historians attribute the name to a word derived
from the Potawatomi Tribe. The Potawatomis pronounced it Mahn-
ah-wauk, meaning council grounds. The first written mention of a
word closely resembling Milwaukee was recorded in 1761. A
British officer stationed in Green Bay, Lt. James Gorrell,
transcribed the name of the area as Milwacky. A traveling
companion of the French explorer LaSalle, Father Zenobe Membre,
wrote in 1697 of a river called Mellioke. The first immigrants
to Milwaukee were French and French Canadian traders and
trappers. During the 1830s, settlement occurred rapidly, and in
earnest. Families established themselves here, bringing the
population to several hundred by 1837. That year, under a
mandate from the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature to
incorporate, Milwaukee and other settlements in the