Fort Ripley

Fort Ripley was a United States Army outpost on the upper Mississippi River, in mid-central Minnesota from 1848 to 1877. It was situated a few miles from the Indian agencies for the Ho-Chunk (and later with the new Crow Wing Chippewa Agency in the 1850s Ojibwe) in Iowa Territory and then the Minnesota Territory. It was still under construction when the Ho-Chunk arrived in summer 1848. In time, its presence spurred immigration into the area on the eastern (ceded) side of the Mississippi and the trading settlement of Crow Wing developed into a town on an island on the Crow Wing River approximately 6.75 miles (10.86 km) north of the fort when the agency for the Ojibwe was finally established there. Military protection had been stipulated in the 1846 treaty agreement with the Ho-Chunk and the Ojibwe agency was called for in the Ojibwe 1847 treaties at Fond du Lac and Leech Lake. The Ojibwe had been talked into making land available for the Ho-Chunk who had been temporarily removed from Wisconsin to the Neutral Ground of northern Iowa under the assumption that only Indians would live there, not whites. The second cession in 1847 was designated for the Menomonie and the Stockbridge-Oneida and small bands of other "New York Indians" (all of whom who refused to remove from eastern Wisconsin). The military post was initially named Fort Marcy. It then was renamed Fort Gaines and in

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