The Minnesota Territorial Legislature was a bicameral legislative body created by the United States Congress in 1849 as the legislative branch of the government of the Territory of Minnesota.
The Organic Act which created the Territory of Minnesota established that the Territorial Council would have a minimum of nine members, while the House of Representatives would have a minimum of eighteen members; the act also permitted the Territorial Legislature to provide for the election of up to a maximum of fifteen councillors and thirty-nine representatives.
[3] The first time the area presently known as Minnesota was entirely unified within a single polity was in 1834, when all lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase which were east of the Missouri River and then remained unallocated, were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Territory of Michigan.
In 1849, Congress finally organized a reunified polity for these unceded lands in the form of the Territory of Minnesota, which, in addition to the current territory of the State of Minnesota, also included the portions of the present-day states of North Dakota and South Dakota which were east of the Missouri River.
The upper chamber, the Council, consisted of nine councillors in the 1st through 6th Territorial Legislatures, and fifteen councillors in the 5th and 8th, while the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, consisted of eighteen members in the 1st through 6th Territorial Legislatures, and thirty-eight in the 7th and 8th.