<span>The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The territory contained land that forms Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; the portion of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River; a large portion of North Dakota; a large portion of South Dakota; the northeastern section of New Mexico; the northern portion of Texas; the area of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River; and small portions of land within the present Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants, of whom half were African slaves.</span>
Hero of the Poor After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which established the Texas boundary at the Rio Grande, Cortina rose in prominence as a leader of poor Mexicans along the river whose lands were being taken by the U.S. gov- ernment.
