The settlement was part of the land designated in 1824 as a Half-Breed Tract by the United States Government for allotting land to mixed-race descendants of the Sauk and Fox tribes. Typically children of European or British men (fur traders and trappers) and Native women, they were often excluded from tribal communal lands because their fathers were not tribal members. Native Americans considered the settlement a neutral ground. Rules for the tract prohibited individual sale of the land, but the US Congress ended this provision in 1837, creating a land rush and instability.