In 1732 the king of France reasserted his sovereignty over the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, and governed the section through a governor general who lived at New Orleans. There is no record or probability that either France or Spain took any actual possession of the South Dakota country until young Verendrye claimed it for France in March, 1743.
For nearly twenty years after Verendrye claimed the land France's title seems to have been undisputed, but in 1762 she ceded all of Louisiana, which included South Dakota, to Spain, in return for certain political favors. Spain took possession and governed the land west of the Mississippi for nearly forty years thereafter; then in 1800 she secretly deeded it back to France.
When the American people learned of this secret cession of the Louisiana country to France, the western pioneers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were greatly concerned and aroused. The great Napoleon had just made himself the head of the French government; his fame as a soldier and conqueror had spread over the world, and the American frontiersman did not like to have him for a near neighbor.
Thomas Jefferson was then President of the United States. The importance of the control of the Mississippi River was clear to his far-seeing eye. He determined that we must, at least, have a joint right to its free passage and must have a site for a commercial city at its mouth, and he undertook, by sending special representatives to France, to secure these rights. At the same time he prevailed upon Congress to permit him to undertake the
