Barron County, Wisconsin - Chapter 4: Explorers, Traders and Trading Posts, 1922

The first white men to approach this region were Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart des Grosseilliers. They first became familiar with Wis¬ consin in 1654 when they wintered among the Potawatomi in the Green Bay region. In 1659, with six other traders and a band of Huron Indians, they skirted the southern bay of Lake Superior, and late in the autumn entered Chequamegon Bay. Near the present site of Ashland they built a crude fort close to the water's edge. From there they wandered as far west as the Mille Lac region in Minnesota where they wintered among the Sioux. In 1680 they returned to Chequamegon Bay and built a fort at Oak Point, eastward of Ashland. Then they returned to Three Rivers, Canada.

From that time Chequamegon Bay continued to be an objective point of the explorers, and early became a fur trading center. There the Indians, roaming the present Barron county, first became acquainted with the whites.

Father Claude Alloues, a Jesuit missionary, came from Canada by way of the lakes into Chequamegon Bay in 1665, and chose for the site of a mission, a point on the southwest shore, between the sites now occupied by Washburn and Ashland. After remaining there four years he was relieved by a younger priest, Father Jacques Marquette, who was later associated with Louis Joliet in the exploration of the Mississippi. From Fathers Alloues and Marquette the Chippewas of Barron county doubtless received their first religious instruction.

Daniel Greysolon du Luth reached Chequamegon Bay in 1679 and pene¬ trated westward to the Mille Lac region in Minnesota where he met the Sioux. Then he returned to Canada. In 1680 he reached the Mississippi river by way of Lake Superior, the Brule river fcnd the St. Croix river. The same year Father Louis Hennepin and two companions ascended the Mississippi from the mouth of the Wisconsin and spent a time with the Indians at Mille Lac. They had again ascended the Mississippi on a hunting party, had ascended the Chippewa for a distance, descended it again, were near the mouth of that stream, on the Mississippi, when they were rescued by Duluth. Duluth, Henne¬ pin and his party then again visited the Mille Lac region. In the fall of 1680 they again descended the Mississippi and reached Lake Michigan by way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers.

Nocolas Perrot, in 1684, wintered at a trading post which he established near the present site of Trempealeau. He also established other posts in the vicinity, and from one of them in 1689 took possession of this region in the name of the king of France.

In 1693, Pierre Le Sueur was sent by the authorities at Quebec to restore the fallen prestige of the French among the Indians of the upper Mississippi. He built a fort at La Pointe, on Chequamegon Bay, and one near Red Wing on the Mississippi. In 1717 a military post of considerable importance was established on Chequamegon Bay in charge of Captain de St. Pierre and Ensign Perriere de Linctot. In 1727 Fort Beauharnois was erected at the head of Lake Pepin near Frontenac. In 1749, Marin was sent to Chequamegon.

The French posts on the Mississippi were nearer to Barron county than those at Chequamegon Bay, but they were in Sioux territory, while Chequa¬ megon was in Chippewa country.

Jonathan Carver, a Connecticut Yankee, exploring under British auspices in 1766, was the first Anglo-Saxon to visit this vicinity. He was searching for a northwest passage to the Pacific ocean. From Green Bay he reached the Mississippi by the Fox and Wisconsin river route, and wintered with the Sioux in Minnesota. Disappointed the next year he returned to the East by way of the Chippewa river and Lake Superior, thus passing within a few miles of Barron county.

The Indians ranging Barron county were probably more or less familiar with the Frenchmen at Chequamegon Bay. Possibly Frenchmen from the posts there penetrated to this jegion to trade with the Indians.

Tradition ascribed a post to Barron county prior to the Revolutionary war. Dr. J. D. Butler, in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. IX, writes of this tradition substantially .as follows :

"The French pioneers are brought to my mind by an earth work which I visited Oct. 7, 1880. These remains are in Barron county, about a mile southeast of the village of Rice Lake, in Section 27, Township 35, Range 11.

"I found a ditch about a foot wide and a little less in depth inclosing a plat of ground fifty feet square. At two diagonal corners, namely, the south¬ west and northeast, there are projections, indicating the sides of two flanking turrets. Near two sides of the inclosure are small heaps of flat stones which may mark the spots where fires were made.

"Digging in the ground at various points, we discovered that it was under¬ laid everywhere with charcoal dust, at a depth of about three inches. Near the fireplaces we turned a great quantity of bones. It seemed clear that a palisade had stood in the ditch. A resident in the neighborhood, James Bracklin, told me that he had once dug up a stump of one of the poles or stakes, which was sharpened at the lower end, the sharpening plainly indicat¬ ing the work of a white man's axe.

"This stockade stands on an eminence with an outlook on Rice lake and on a lakelet. The locality is called Pocagamah, a Chippewa word said to mean confluence or the joining of waters. (This is the same word as Pokegema, applied to a lake in Chetek township.) There is some underbrush on the side, but no tall trees are near.

"On the saddle or isthmus between the lake and the lakelet, there is a grading or road way (sometimes spoken of by the early settlers as a dam) which existed just as it is now when the oldest inhabitant came into the region. The embankment is about six hundred feet in length, its width thirty feet at the base, and fifteen at its summit, its height from six to seven feet. Regarding this embankment I am reluctant about expressing an opinion.

"In regard to the fortification, however, I am inclined to think that it is of French origin. Indian works (with the exception of the Aztalan to which this could hardly belong) are irregular. This is an exact square. Indian works made no provision for flankers. But here there is clean indication of provision for a flanking fire. Indian defenses were always larger than this, being intended to protect whole tribes. This, like the Hudson Bay posts of today, is so small that it could shelter only one or two dwellings.

"The post would be a convenient trading point; it is in a section where beavers have always abounded, and where they are still common and still trapped every year. It would form a convenient midway station for the voyageurs who were constantly passing between the Mississippi and Chequa¬ megon Bay and other Lake Superior points, especially if they came up the Chippewa and Menomonie rivers.

"On Jeffrey's map of 1763, a fort is set down far up the St. Croix and south of it, in a location which might indicate the spot where these remains at Rice Lake now exist.

"Early settlers in Barron county heard from the oldest Indians that this post at Rice Lake was long occupied by a fur trader named Auguste Carot, or Augustine Cadotte, who was killed there by the raiding Sioux shortly after the Revolutionary war. For many years a spot was pointed out as his grave.

"So much credit has been given these stories by many Barron county whites that they have dug into the earth in several neighboring places, hoping to unearth the supposed buried cash of the mythical trader."

The location would certainly be a most admirable one, not only to attract the Indians ranging the Menomonie river and the sparkling lakes of the county, but also to catch trade from the wandering bands who came to what is now Doyle township to get pipestone for their pipes and ornaments.

Later other posts were established here and there, and in the lumbering days there was many a small trading shack on the lakes and in the woods which derived their principal business from .the Indians.

"Barron county was a part of the territory for which the Chippewa and the Dakota (Sioux) battled. About at the end of the eighteenth century the latter tribe held possession, but not without constant reprisals and counter attacks from the retreating Sioux. At the end of the eighteenth and the begin¬ ning of the nineteenth century two great fur trade companies were operating in northern Wisconsin, both of British or Canadian origin. These were known as the North West Company and the X Y Company. The former was the older, richer and more powerful; the latter, an offshoot of the former, more enter¬ prising and persistent. In 1804 the two companies united under the name of the former, which thenceforth conducted the trade until after the War of 1812. In fact it was not until 1817 that arrangements were completed for the transfer of the Wisconsin posts from British to American hands. At that date, John Jacob Astor, president of the American Fur Company, made arrangements to supply the trade goods and traders for the Northwest posts.

"In Wis. Hist. Colls., XIX and XX there were published some years ago two typical journals of traders during the British regime. The first was that of a North West Company trader at Lac du Flambeau in 1804-05. Wis. Hist. Colls., XIX, 162-233; the second was that of an X Y Company trader whose name was Michel Curot, who wintered in 1803-04 in the Yellow River region of the St. Croix district. This is translated and published in Wis. Hist. Colls., XX, 396-471. A persistent rumor attached itself to the fate of a trader named Carot (some said Auguste), who, it was claimed, was murdered by the Sioux near Rice Lake in Barron county. At this distance of time it is impossible to be certain, but there seems good reason to believe that this was Michel Curot; that he returned to this region the succeeding year, 1804-05, and advanced as far as the Rice Lake district, where he was murdered in an attack of the Sioux upon his customers, the Chippewa. If one will read his journal, pages 444- 451, one will see that he was, during the winter of 1803-04, in mortal fear of the Sioux and was saved by the kindness of his rival, the trader of the North West Company.

"If Curot had a post in Barron county, it might be called a French post, since he and all his employes were French-Canadians who spoke only French, while they were working for a British company. With regard to the site of this post, there is difference of opinion. In 1880, Dr. J. D. Butler, a member of this Society, visited Barron County and located the post. See Wis. Hist. Colls., IX, 118, 119. Our recent archeological investigators, however, found reason to think this location was incorrect. See Wisconsin Archeologist, XVI, 111, 112. We think there may have been posts at both places; as the trade in this region was very good. The murdered trader's grave was said to be near the dam on a stream running in to Rice Lake.

"The American Fur Company's post, built or removed after 1818, was probably on Lake Chetek. See description in Wisconsin Archeologist, XVI, 94. We have never heard of the trader mentioned in this reference, Louis Montra. He was probably an employe of Jean Baptiste Corbin, who was the chief trader of this region with headquarters at Lac Court Oreilles. Montra's post may have been what is known as a "Jack knife post," one opened up by an employe for the season's trade and then closed again.

"In 1831, Henry R. Schoolcraft passed through from Lac Court Oreilles to Rice Lake and down the Red Cedar. He mentions a post on an island in

"On a map in the Historical Atlas of Wisconsin (1878) are laid down two trading posts in Barron county, one at the outlet of Red Cedar Lake, one on the southwest corner of section ten, town 35, range ten west. These posts may have been in operation at the time the map was issued. We think it probable, however, that they were the ruins of posts occupied until the lumbermen came in."

The imagination is stirred in contemplating the early French trading posts in this vicinity. They were usually maintained through the winter and deserted in the spring.

In the autumn, when the falling leaves had spread a soft carpet in the forest glades, and the dropping pine needles added to the rich beds under the evergreens, when few of the wild flowers were left, when the feathered songsters had taken their departure, when the wild geese and ducks in great flocks were wending their way southward with raucous cries, when the fur clad denizens of the forest and stream had assumed their winter coats, the traders arrived.

Constructing a comfortable shack in the thick forests overlooking a wind¬ ing stream or a spreading lake, or moving into one previously constructed, they made it their headquarters until the following spring, and from it set forth on their winter expeditions, penetrating to Indian encampments in all directions, and returning with their hard earned booty.

Many a blustering night passed when the members of the party assembled around the roaring hearth and narrating by turns their wild and adventurous experiences, passed about the social glass, or broke into some wild and stir¬ ring songs of the frontier, or it may be some gentler ditty reminiscent of more civilized scenes and arousing for the moment more tender emotions.

Visiting Indians from time to time camped nearby, adding picturesque¬ ness to the scene and variety to the lives of the traders, the smudge from their camp fires mingling with the smoke of the cabin, and the sound of their tom¬ toms and native singing and dancing vying with the roistering hilarity of the traders.

With the traders were often youths of tender years, sent out by their rela¬ tives in France to seek fortune and adventure. One can picture the experi¬ ences of such courageous lads, far from home and youthful playmates, accom¬ panying these hardened adventurers on their excursions through the bitter cold of the snow bound forests, witnessing the haggling with the native sav¬ ages over the exchange of furs and trinkets, and then returning over the dreary route to the isolated cabin, his slender shoulders bowed with the weight of a heavy pack of valuable fur.