What will become Nebraska had come under the "rule" of the United States for the first time after 1803, when the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for fifteen million dollars.

President James Madison signs a bill in 1812 creating the Missouri Territory, including the present-day state of Nebraska.

Manuel Lisa, a Spanish fur trader from New Orleans, builds a trading post called Fort Lisa in the Ponca Hills in 1812, about a dozen miles north of what will become Omaha, after he had abandoned his trading posts on the Upper Missouri: Fort Raymond/Manuel in Montana and the original Fort Lisa in North Dakota.

The fort trades in furs, cattle, horses and land, and serves as a base from which Lisa acts as a sub-agent to neighboring tribes for the federal government.

With his wide trading network, Manuel Lisa has a unique role in relation to American Indian tribes.

He travels extensively among them to share agricultural products and build relations, as well as to promote trade.

According to one source, the influence of Manuel Lisa, exerted from Fort Lisa, is strong enough to hold all the native tribes of the Missouri River basin firmly in alliance with the United States during the War of 1812.

He organizes war expeditions from Fort Lisa against tribes on the Mississippi River allied with the British.

During the same period, he secures the allegiance of tribes along the northern Missouri River.

However, the War of 1812 will disrupt the fur trade with the natives for years.

The first steamboat to ply the Missouri River, the Western Engineer, piloted by Stephen Harriman Long, reaches Fort Lisa in 1819.

Aboard the ship are General Henry Atkinson and Captain Stephen Watt Kearny, both important to the future development of the American West.

Later forts in the Nebraska Territory will be named after them: Fort Atkinson and Fort Kearny.

Manuel Lisa spends the winter of 1819-20 at Fort Lisa with his third wife, Mary Hempstead Keeney.

He is in the company of Major Stephen Long, whose famous expedition encamps a mile and a half north of Fort Lisa.

Lisa returns in 1820 to St. Louis, where he will die within the year.