[1][2] In 1817, King left Vermont in order to investigate his grandfather Jonathan Carver's claims that Sioux chiefs had deeded him 10,000 square miles (30,000 km2) of land in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota.
[2] In July 1817, he and another of Carver's grandsons traveled in a birch bark canoe from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
They rendezvoused there on July 9 with explorer Stephen H. Long and traveled alongside his skiff up the Mississippi River in order to meet with Native Americans at the Falls of Saint Anthony in an attempt to validate the claim.
His opponent was Dennis Chidester, who was a follower of the "King of Beaver Island", James Jesse Strang, the head of a schismatic sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
[9] Fellow Mormons won several other local positions, including sheriff; the latter's warnings on May 12, 1853, that he would begin to enforce a ban on the trade of liquor by sailing vessels in the area, led to King co-signing a notice calling for a public meeting for locals to "devise ways and means of protecting themselves against the felonious depredations of the Mormons".