The same conditions governed the activity of Mr. Rice, who took his seat as delegate in Congress in December, 1853. Industrious, persuasive, and soon influential, he promoted in many ways the interests of the territory and his constituents, and by so doing obtained a popularity hardly equaled in Minnesota history. He was diligent in laboring for the extension of the land surveys and the establishment of land offices. He secured the opening of post-offices in the new villages. His influence contributed to the extension of the preëmption system to unsurveyed lands, a change which virtually opened all lands not Indian to settlement. Mr. Rice’s own personal qualities were such as to give him wide acquaintance and influence, and these were extended in no small degree by those of the charming Virginian lady whom he had taken to wife. Standing for reëlection in the fall of 1855, he won by a handsome plurality over his Republican opponent, William R. Marshall, and another Democratic candidate, David Olmstead, supported by the friends of Mr. Sibley.
As the administration of Mr. Ramsey had been signalized by the opening of many millions of acres of Indian lands to white men’s occupation in southern Minnesota, so in Governor Gorman’s day great areas were opened in the Chippeway country of northern Minnesota. It is probable that Mr. Rice, more familiar with the Chippeways than any other public man, was most influential of all in procuring the cessions.
The earliest explorers to the shores of Lake Superior had brought away specimens of native copper and Indian reports of hidden metallic treasure. In 1826 Governor Lewis Cass obtained, by a treaty made at Fond du Lac with the Chippeways, the right of the whites to search for metals and minerals in any part of their vast country. Although no mining development took place, the belief persisted that there was great metallic wealth in the upper lake region. The first cession in the northwest was that of the Chippeways of Lake Superior in September, 1854, of the “triangle” north of the lake, extending westward to the line of the St. Louis and Vermilion rivers, embracing nearly three million acres. This great cession was followed by another still greater, early in 1855. Nearly four hundred townships in the north central part of the state were freed from Indian incumbrance. The two cessions cover nearly one half of the area of the state. It was the lumber interest which desired the acquisition of 1855. On the area liberated stood large bodies of the finest pine forests of America. The current belief was that they could never be exhausted. Of Chippeway country there remained a trapezoidal block in the extreme northwest corner of the state, which was not acquired by treaty until 1863.