Montana
The area of Montana east of the Continental Divide passed through French, Spanish, and then French hands as part of the Louisiana territory before the United States acquired it via the Louisiana Purchase from the French First Republic in 1803. For thousands of years prior, indigenous peoples had inhabited the region, and France only controlled a small fraction of the broader Louisiana territory, most of which remained inhabited by Native Americans. The first permanent Euro-American settlement, St. Mary's, was established in 1841, and the Montana Territory was formally organized on May 26, 1864. Montana was admitted as the 41st state in the Union on November 8, 1889.
Pre-contact era
For thousands of years indigenous peoples inhabited what would become Montana. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the territory's non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants across the broader Louisiana territory, while most of the land was inhabited by Native Americans. France effectively only controlled a small fraction of the area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans.
Colonial history
France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.
France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; the Louisiana Purchase included only the area of Montana east of the Continental Divide.
France's failure to suppress a revolt in Saint-Domingue and the prospect of renewed warfare with the United Kingdom prompted Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States. The purchase covered only the area of Montana east of the Continental Divide.
The Territory of Montana was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 26, 1864, until November 8, 1889. The western borders of the Louisiana Purchase were later settled by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty with Spain, and the northern borders were adjusted by the Treaty of 1818 with the British.
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State history content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Historic sites data: National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
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