Early Life
Henry Rice was born on November 29, 1816, in Waitsfield, Vermont to Edmund Rice and Ellen Durkee Rice. Both Edmund and Ellen were of entirely English ancestry which had been in New England since the early 1600s. Because of his father's death when Rice was quite young, he lived with friends. After primary education, he studied law for two years.
When he was 18, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, and participated in the surveying of the canal route around the rapids of Sault Ste. Marie between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. It was a major fur trading center.
In 1839 he secured a job at Fort Snelling, near what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota. He became a fur trader with the Ho-Chunk and Chippewa Indians, attaining a position of prominence and influence. Rice was trusted by the Indians, and he was instrumental in negotiating the United States treaty with the Ojibwe Indians in 1847.
Read more about this topic: Henry Mower Rice
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