Activity by British traders and the presence of a colony on the Red prompted the United State War Department in 1819 to send Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Leavenworth from Detroit to put a post 300 miles northwest of Prairie du Chien, until then the most advanced United States post. In September 1822 two companies of infantry arrived at the mouth of the St. Peter's River, the head of navigation on the Mississippi, and began construction of Fort St. Anthony which, upon completion, was renamed in honor of its commander, Colonel Josiah Snelling.

It was from the American outposts that Red River shortages of livestock were to be made good. Hercules L. Dousman, fur trader and merchant at Prairie du Chien, contracted to supply Selkirk's people with some 300 head of cattle, and Alexis Bailly and Francois Labothe were hired as drovers. Bailly, after leaving Fort Snelling in August 1821, was forced to leave some of the cattle at the Hudson's Bay Company's post on Lake Traverse ``in the Sieux Country'' and reached Fort Garry, as the Selkirk Hudson's Bay Company center was now called, late in the fall. He set out on his 700 -- mile return journey with five families of discontented and disappointed Swiss who turned their eyes toward the United States. Observing their distressing condition, Colonel Snelling allowed these half starved immigrants to settle on the military reservation.

As these Swiss were moving from the Selkirk settlement to become the first civilian residents of Minnesota, Dousman of Michilimackinac, Michigan, and Prairie du Chien was traveling to Red River to open a trade in merchandise. Early in 1822 he was at Fort Garry offering to bring in pork, flour, liquor and tobacco. Alexander McDonnell, governor of Red River, and James Bird, a chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, ordered such ``sundry articles'' to a value of 4500.