capital some
money paid by the United States on the three per cent fund due the state.
The former trip occupied fourteen days, the latter eight days.(384)

Governor Cass' protection of Galena during the Winnebago War of 1827 may
have been influenced by its uncertain governmental status. In 1828 miners
in what is now southwestern Wisconsin voted for members of Congress from
Illinois, and in 1829 Galena was enumerated among the thriving towns of
Huron or Ouisconsin Territory. November 29, 1828, one hundred and
eighty-seven inhabitants of Galena and vicinity sent a memorial to
Congress asking that a separate territory be formed, the territory to be
bounded on the south by a line drawn due west from the southern point of
Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, and by the northern boundary of
Missouri. The memorial began: "The undersigned, inhabitants of that
portion of the 'Territory Northwest of the Ohio,' lying north of a due
east and west line drawn through the southernmost end of Lake Michigan,
and west of that lake to the British possessions, comprehending the mining
district, more generally known as the Fever River Lead Mines." The
petitioners referred to the violation of the Ordinance of 1787, and also
stated that they were subject to two separate governments, each some
hundreds of miles from them, and each unacquainted with their needs. The
petition was read and tabled.(385) It is true that the situation of Galena
was peculiarly difficult. No mail could be carried along the rude trail
from Peoria to Galena during the wet season, and when the Illinois
legislature, seeking to give relief, passed a bill for laying out a road
between the "Illinois settlements and Galena," it was vetoed by the
governor and council because the road would pass through lands of the
United States and of the Indians. When the river was frozen provisions
were very high, and mail was sent forward from Fort Edwards once a month.
These conditions were more aggravating as the number of inhabitants
increased, and in 1827, notwithstanding the trouble with the Winnebago
Indians, there were about four thousand men at Galena, and they mined
about fifteen times as much lead as had been mined in 1823. In January,
1828, a congressional committee reported favorably on a proposition to
open a road to Galena.(386) In a letter written one year later by the
delegate from Michigan Territory, to the committee on territories, the
suggestion is made that a new territory,