Clark County, Wisconsin - Chapter 1: Early Wisconsin, 1918

1. Topography - In the beautiful new capitol of the State of Wisconsin a noted artist has portrayed the commonwealth as a strong and beautiful woman, embraced and encircled by the guardian figures of the Mississippi River, Lake Superior, and Lake Michigan. Thus in symbolic form the painter has vividly portrayed the truth that Wisconsin's position at the head-waters of the two great valleys of North Amerca - the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi - has been of supreme importance in the history of the State. To these advantages of position is due its early discovery, its thorough exploration and its value as a link in the penetration of the Old Northwest. The area of the present State is 56,066 square miles, somewhat larger than the whole of England. In extreme length from north to south it is 320 miles, with a maximum width almost as great. Its distance from the Atlantic coast is about a thousand miles - one-third of the entire distance across the continent. The eastern and northern portions of the State drain into the two upper Great Lakes by short streams with rapid courses. The larger portion of the area belongs to the Mississippi system, into which it drains by a series of large rivers; the largest and most important of these is the one from which the State takes its name. The Wisconsin River, rising on the northeastern boundary of the State, cuts across it to the southwest, making a great trough which at the elbow in south-central Wisconsin approaches within three-quarters of a mile of the eastward-flowing Fox River. The Fox, in its upper courses a sluggish stream, winding slowly through lakes and wide spreads of wild rice, after passing through Lake Winnebago, the largest lake wholly within the State, rushes with great force down a series of rapids into the upper end of Green Bay, the V-shaped western extremity of Lake Michigan. Thus a natural waterway crosses the State, uniting by means of a short portage the Atlantic waters with those of the Gulf of Mexico, and dividing the State into a northern and southern portion, which have had widely differing courses of development.

The southeastern half of the State, with plentiful harbors on Lake Michigan and Green Bay, opens unobstructedly towards the south and east. It was therefore the first portion to be permanently settled, and has partaken of the civilization and progress of the Middle West. The northern and western part of the State faces toward the farther West, and its development was delayed by the tardy growth of population at the head of Lake Superior and along the headwaters of the Mississippi. Waterways connecting these two drainage systems pass through this part of Wisconsin, the earliest known of which was that via the Bois Brule of Lake Superior and the St. Croix of the Mississippi. Other streams connect with the headwaters of the Chippewa, the Black, and the Wisconsin, All these routes were explored during the early years of Wisconsin's history, but their rapid flow and difficult portages have made them impractical as commercial routes.

The heavy forestation of the northern portion of the State has been until recent times the main fact in its history; while as carriers of timber, and as sources of water power the rapid rivers of northwestern Wisconsin have played their part in the production of its wealth and prosperity.

2. Sovereignty - Politically, Wisconsin has been included in more different units of government than any of its neighbors. It was first a part of the Spanish empire in North America, which claimed all the continent whose southern borders had been discovered and occupied by Spanish subjects, The Spanish sovereignty in Wisconsin was never more than a shadow, and so far as we know no one of that race ever placed foot upon Wisconsin soil until long after it was possessed by a rival power.

The true history of Wisconsin begins with the coming of the French, who in 1634 sent their first representative to its shores. The period of French occupation was nominally about a century and a quarter; in reality it lasted somewhat less than one hundred years, as more than twenty years elapsed before the first discoverer was followed by others. The real exercise of French sovereignty began in 1671 when St. Lusson at the Sault Ste. Marie took possession in the name of Louis XIV "of all other countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries, contiguous and adjacent thereunto (to the Sault and Lakes Huron and Superior), as well discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the Northern and Western Seas and on the other side by the South Sea including all its length and breadth." *

The French domination of the area we now know as Wisconsin was exercised from the lower St. Lawrence Valley and was directed by the court of Versailles, where paternalism was the fashion, and where the smallest details of administration were decided by the highest powers of the kingdom. It may thus be said that Wisconsin during the French period was ruled directly by the French monarch. Every appointment of a petty officer of the Canadian army to command a log fort by one of Wisconsin's waterways had to be endorsed by the King; every little skirmish with the Indian tribesmen, every disagreement between soldiers and traders had to be reported by the Canadian authorities to the Royal Council, and await its dictum for settlement. Even the power of the governor of New France was frequently overruled by dictation from the Court of France, and orders for the governance of his subjects in Wisconsin were discussed in the presence of the greatest monarch of Europe.

The French domination came to an abrupt end when in the course of the Seven Years' War, Montreal, including all the upper province of New France, surrendered to the arms of England. The last French garrison left Wisconsin in 1760 by the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, and the next year an English detachment took possession of Green Bay and made Wisconsin a constituent part of the British empire. Thus it remained until the close of the American Revolution. During the first years of the English possession, the Upper Country was ruled by the military authorities at Fort Edward Augustus (Green Bay), and Mackinac, subject to the commanderin-chief of the American armies, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department. After 1774 Wisconsin was a part of the Province of Quebec.

British sovereignty in Wisconsin fell with the treaty of Paris in 1783, which transferred to the new America nation the land south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi. The British government, however, claiming non-fulfillment of certain treaty provisions, but in reality acting in the interest of British fur traders, refused to deliver to the United States the northwestern posts. Thus the inhabitants of Wisconsin, while technically on American territory were practically ruled by English officers. In 1796 after Jay's treaty with England, the northwestern posts were delivered over to American garrisons, and Wisconsin became an unorganized portion of the Northwest Territory. On May 7, 1800, Indiana Terirtory was organized with Wisconsin a part of her vast domain. Upon the territorial division into counties Wisconsin became a part of St. Clair, whose limits extended from a line nearly opposite St. Louis to the northern boundary of the United States. In 1802 Gov. William Henry Harrison appointed two justices of the peace and three militia officers in St. Clair County of Indiana Territory to serve at the French-Canadian settlement near the mouth of Wisconsin River. The next year a third justice wag appointed for Prairie du Chien, and another commissioned for the sister community at the mouth of Fox River on Green Bay. All these appointees were British subjects and prominent fur traders. Therefore, while com. missions were issued and writs ran in the name of the United States, British fur traders were in actual control of all government agencies in Wisconsin.

In 1808 the United States increased the number of its representatives by the appointment of an Indian agent at Prairie du Chien. This agent was a French-Canadian by birth, formerly a British subject, who had become a naturalized American by residence in the French settlements of Illinois. By race and interests he was allied with the Franco-British traders of Wisconsin.

In 1809 Illinois Territory was set off from Indiana, carrying with it St. Clair County, in which Wisconsin was included. So far as known the official appointed by the governor of Indiana for Green Bay and Prairie du Chien continued to act under the commissions already received.

The outbreak of the War of 1812 made a sharp division among: Wisconsin's few governing officers. The Indian agent was the sole official who maintained his American allegiance. All the other appointees declared for Great Britain, and actively engaged in operations for her benefit. The Indian agent was driven down the Mississippi, and Wisconsin became again a part of the territory of the British empire, guarded by Canadian troops and administered by British officers, In 1814 the Americans made an attempt to repossess themselves of the region on the Mississippi. A force organized at St. Louis ascended the river and built a post at Prairie du Chien. This American post had been held less than

The Canadian authorities were eager to retain possession of Wisconsin, and during the negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent, in 1814, made a determined effort to have the boundary lines redrawn so that Wisconsin should be made a buffer Indian region under British authority. This attempt failed, and in 1815, according to the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, the British garrisons were withdrawn from Wisconsin's soil. Nevertheless, so hostile were the Indian tribes to American reoccupation that not until eighteen months after the signing of the treaty was the American flag raised within the limits of Wisconsin. During this non-governmental period the British fur traders maintained, as they had done since 1761, an ascendancy over the tribesmen that preserved the few settlements from anarchy and destruction. While thus theoretically changing sovereignty several times from 1761 to 1816, Wisconsin was really during the entire period a French-Canadian settlement under British control.

American military occupation began in 1816, when strong posts were built at Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, the garrisons of which overawed the sullen tribesmen. Indian officials were appointed and American traders soon rivaled the operations of the French-Canadians. So bitterly did the latter resent the restrictions imposed upon them by American officers and officials that in 1818 they planned to remove in a body to some place under British jurisdiction, taking the Wisconsin Indians with them. Within a few years, however, the friction was adjusted, and the leading Wisconsin settlers became naturalized American citizens.

In 1818 Illinois was admitted as a State into the Union, and Wisconsin was transferred to Michigan territory. The same year Wisconsin was organized into two counties, Brown and Crawford, justices of the peace were appointed and American sovereignty became operative with this region. In 1824 United States district courts were organized for that portion of Michigan Territory lying west of Lake Michigan. In 1829 Crawford County was divided, all south of the Wisconsin River becoming lowa County. In 1834 Brown County was reduced by the organization of its southern portion into Milwaukee County. In 1835 Michigan was admitted into the Union, and the Territory of Wisconsin was organized out of that portion of its limits that lay west of Lake Michigan.

Wisconsin Territory was maintained for twelve years. In 1846 there was a movement for Statehood, but the Constitution then drawn was rejected by the people, so that not until 1848 did Wisconsin become the thirtieth State in the American Union.

3. Boundaries - The boundaries of Wisconsin were first laid down in the Ordinance of 1787, which decreed that the southern boundary of the fifth or northwestern State of the Northwest Territory should be an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan; that the western boundary should be the Mississippi to its source, thence by a straight line to the Lake of the Woods and the international boundary; that the northern boundary should coincide with the international boundary through Lake Superior; and that the eastern boundary should be the meridian due north of Vincennes to the international line. The area of Wisconsin as outlined by this ordinance was one and a half times as large as at the present time. By successive measures Wisconsin's boundaries have since been curtailed at the southern, northeastern and northwestern sides.

The southern boundary was changed when, in 1818, Illinois was admitted to the Union. In order to secure for that State a harbor on Lake Michigan, Illinois' northern boundary was shifted from the line due west frora the southern point of Lake Michigan, to latitude 42° 30'. This added to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles in width, containing 8,500 square miles, and the site of Chicago. In 1818 there was no one in Wiseonsin to protest against this change. In 1838, however, and during Wisconsin's later territorial period, attempts were made to repossess the northern portion of Illinois on the ground that the Ordinance of 1787 was a solemn compact, and as such inviolable without the consent of all parties concerned, The matter never came before the United States Supreme Court, but Wisconsin's territorial legislature passed several vigorous resolutions on the subject to which Congress paid no attention. Strange to sav, many Illinois inhabitants dwelling in the disputed strip would have preferred Wisconsin's jurisdiction; at one time an informal referendum on the question in several Illinois counties resulted overwhelmingly in favor of Wisconsin. No official action, however, resulted, and the enabling act for Wisconsin in 1846, fixed its southern line 42° 30'. The eastern boundary, as outlined by the Ordinance of 1787, was obliterated when, in 1818, Wisconsin became part of Michigan Territory. When, in 1834, it becamie evident that Michigan east of Lake Michigan would soon become a State, it was suegested that all west of Lake Michigan be organized into a new territory. This would have included in Wisconsin the upper peninsula of Michigan, and made our State a topographical unit.

Michigan, however, became engaged in a boundary contest with Ohio concerning the harbor of Toledo. Congress decided this controversy in favor of Ohio, but compensated Michigan by adding to her area the lands east of the Montreal and Menominee River boundary. Wisconsin, then unorganized, had no means of protest. Her northeastern boundary was fixed by the erection of the Territory in 1836.

Wisconsin Territory, when organized, included all that portion of the Louisiana Purchase lying north of Missouri and east of the Missouri and White Earth rivers. This vast region embracing Iowa, and the larger part of the Dakotas, and Minnesota was understood to be added to Wisconsin for administrative purposes only. In 1838 Iowa Territory was set off, and Wisconsin was limited to the western boundary as outlined in the Ordinance of 1787. This included, within Wisconsin Territory, nearly one-third of the present area of Minnesota. At one time it was suggested that a sixth State should be formed of the territory east of the upper Mississippi and south of Lake Superier. Later, the portion west of the St. Croix and the St. Louis River line actually becarme a part of a sixth State, Minnesota, which was organized as a Territory in 1849, and admitted as a State in 1858.

1. First Men in Wisconsin - A large portion of the surface of Wisconsin is covered with small heaps of earth, or mounds, that are without doubt the work of man, and not of nature. The formation of these earthworks was formerly attributed to a pre-Indian race of men known collectively as the Mound Builders; modern archaeologists, however, have repudiated the theory of a prehistoric race, and now are certain that the true mound builders were none other than the Indians. A peculiar kind of mound occurs in southern and central Wisconsin and in the neighboring regions of northern Illionis, eastern Iowa and southeastern Minnesota, that is not found elsewhere in the United States. These are the effigy mounds, slight eminences that take the outline of deer, bears, panthers, turtles, various kinds of birds, and in one or two instances of man. The origin of these effigy mounds has been much discussed. It is now accepted by scientists that their makers were a tribe known to the first discovers of the Northwest as the Puant or Winnebago Indians.

The great number and extent of the mounds scattered over the surface of Wisconsin indicates the presence of a large Indian population in prehistoric times; but at what era in the worlds' history, or in what way the Winnebago reached Wisconsin we can only infer from a few scattered facts. The migration legends of the Siouan peoples, to which stock the Winnebago belong, indicate that they came from the region near the sources of the Ohio River. Pressed upon by neighboring Algonquian peoples they slowly progressed along the Ohio Valley, leaving great earthworks as they advanced. In the course of several centuries they reached the Ohio's mouth, and there divided, one large branch passing northward along the Mississippi River, gradually separating into many tribes that located chiefly west of the great river. Somewhere, possibly at the mouth of Rock River, one group of this vast horde, attracted by the abundant game of the pleasant valley, moved eastward and northward, and after occupying the valley of Rock River to its headwaters, spread along the Fox River and around the lake now called Winnebago, terminating their migration at the shores of Green Bay. From the size of the trees growing upon the artificial mounds, it is inferred that the settlement of the Winnebago in Wisconsin must have occurred some time before the discovery of America by Columbus.

The Winnebago who peopled Wisconsin's valleys, and built their mounds along her streams and lakes were in what is known as the Stone Age of primitive culture. Contrary to the common belief, they were not a wandering, but a home-loving people, devotedly attached to the places of their birth, the homes of their fathers and the sites of their villages. These villages were so advantageously placed that the sites of most of Wisconsin's present cities were those once occupied by the Indians. The woods and streams supplied their simple needs of food, clothing, ana shelter. From the skins of animals they fashioned their garments, by hunting and by harvesting wild rice they gained their food. Their lodges were built of slender trees, covered with bark, and with mats formed of plaited reeds. Gradually they learned a rude form of agriculture, by cultivating the ground with hoes of bone and plows -of wood, corn and pumpkins were added to their food supply. They had no domestic animals except dogs, which also served as an addition to their food supply. Their tools and implements of warfare and of chase were made of stone, flints chipped to a point tipped their arrows, axes and hatchets were of edged stone, war clubs swung a heavy stene head. The only metals known were lead and copper, The former mined in a crude fashion was mostly used for ornament. Copper, secured by intertribal trade from Lake Superior, was beaten by hand into ornamental shapes, and occasionally used to tip weapons and domestic implements.

The change of seasons brought to Wisconsin Indians changed modes of living. During the winter season they left their permanent villages and in small groups scattered through the forests, subsisting as best they might on the products of the chase. They built temporary wigwams of pelts thrown over poles, within which fires were kindled that kept them from freezing. Upon the return of spring they sought their villages and corn fields. The summer was the time for religious rites, for council and for warfare. Raids upon neighboring enemy groups were a normal part of the Indians' life. In every village a council house was built where questions of war and alliance were discussed by the chiefs and elders. The religious rites clustered about a unit resembling a clan; the effigy mounds were the symbols of the clan totems. Near to these totems burial mounds were placed. The sacred mysteries of the tribe and clan were there celebrated.

Aside from warfare, intercourse was maintained with other tribes by means of trade. The extent and volume of intertribal trade was considerable. Sea shells found in Wisconsin mounds prove that they had passed from hand to hand among all the tribes between its inhabitants and the Atlantic coast. Shells, bits of metal, articles of dress and ornament, constituted the bulk of the exchange. Shells pierced and strung or wrought into belts were both the medium of exchange and the binding symbol of intertribal treaties and agreements. While the fate of captives taken in war was horrible, envoys were sacred, and treaties were observed inviolate.

The red mans' life was by no means as idyllic as children of nature have been supposed to lead. Famine and disease stalked his footsteps ; war and wild animals carried away his young; struggle and hardships made up his lot in life. None the less it is open to question whether the contact with the white man did not make the condition of the Indian worse. He soon became dependent upon the farmer's products for clothing, implements and weapons. He forgot the art of his primitive economy. Urged on by the greed of traders he rapidly killed off the wild game or drove it farther into the wilderness, which he had to penetrate in order to secure the store of furs with which to purchase his necessities. Thus, hunting became more and more important to his existence, and with increased efforts and superior weapons brought ever-diminishing returns. The red man became dependent upon the trader for the very means of life. After the French and Indian War, when all traders of the French race were withdrawn from Wisconsin, the English traders who, after a lapse of two years, went to Lake Superior and found naked, starving savages, who in less than one hundred years had ceased to be self-sufficing, and could live only by means of relations with white men. Thus arose the fur trade, which was not only a commercial or an economic regime, but a system of government, a form of social life, a means of exploitation, and a stage in the development of the American frontier. '

2. The Coming of the White Man - For one hundred and forty years after the discovery of America by Columbus, Wisconsin's forests slept in quiet, unvexed by the presence of any but their red children. Then suddenly out of the east, and skirting the coasts of Green Bay in a bark canoe driven by strange red men, the first white man came, and "women and children fled at the sight of a man who carried thunder in both hands" - for thus they called the two pistols that he held. "He wore a grand robe of China damask, all strewn with flowers and birds of many colors." "They meet him; they escort him, and carry all his baggage." They eall him the Manitouriniou, the wonderful or godlike man. From all quarters they haste to see him until four or five thousand are assembled. "Rach of the chief men made a feast for him, and at one of these banquets they served at least six score Beavers.'* Then the mysterious stranger made a peace with them, under such forms and ceremonies as were customary in intertribal negotiations, and vanished into the east wnence he had come.

To the whites who had crossed the ocean to begin a small colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence, this first white stranger to visit Wisconsin was known as Jean Nicolet. He had come to the New World with the express purpose of dealing with the red men, learning their languages and customs, and opening a way into their country for trade and missions. Sent by Champlain, the founder of New France, to dwell among the forest inhabitants, Nicolet spent several years among the Algonquin Indians of the upper Ottawa River; then he dwelt among the Huron in the peninsula between Lake Erie and Georgian Bay. There he heard of a far western tribe known as the "people of salt water,' whom Nicolet supposed must dwell on the borders of the Western Sea and be akin to the tribes of Tartary. Hence, the damask robe, and the hope of a new route to Cathay. Instead of Oriental potentates Nicolet found merely a new tribe of Indians whose name - the Winnebago - meant equally "people of the salt water," or "people of bad-smelling springs," and who were known henceforth to the French as the Puants or Stinkards.

After Nicolet's advent to Wisconsin in 1634, no more of these mysterious white strangers disturbed the dwellers on Lake Michigan and Green Bay for over twenty years. Nevertheless, in these far regions great changes were taking place, due to the widespread disturbances in Indian georgraphy, caused by the coming of the white man. Upon the peninsula of Ontario, then occupied by the Huron tribesmen, the Jesuit missionaries some years before the voyage of Nicolet founded the largest and most successful of their missions. Throughout all the Huron villages they spread, and impelled by a desire to evangelize distant Indians, two of the fathers had, in 1641, accompanied some of their neophytes to the shores of Lake Superior, and named the strait where the waters leap down from this mighty basin, the Sault de Ste. Marie.

But the Huron were not long left to develop their new religion in peace. Suddenly, from central New York, appeared large bands of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois; by one blow after another the Huron missions were destroyed, some of the Jesuits fell martyrs to their cause, others escaping, sought refuge with the remnants of their mission children under the cliffs of Quebec. The remainder of the Huron fled westward, their alarm was communicated to the Algonquian peoples living beyond them, and for fear of the Iroquois, whole tribes left their ancestral homes for shelter in the farther forests. It happened that shortly before this disturbance the Winnebago of southern and central Wisconsin had suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Illinois tribes living to the south, wherein they were so reduced in numbers that but a small fragment of the former tribe was left in its Wisconsin home. Into this sparsely-settled land the fugitives from Ontario and Michigan poured, both by southern and northern routes. They hid from the pursuing Iroquois in the swamps and marshes of our State, and the Winnebago, being in no condition to resist, made alliances with the intruding tribes, and yielded to them new homes on the lakes and streams where their ancestors had dwelt. Thus, eame the Sauk and Foxes, the Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo. Thus, pressed down from the north and the islands of Lake Michigan, came the Menominee and Potawatomi to mingle with the Winnebago around Green Bay; while the Huron and Ottawa, impelled by a more dreadful fear, sought refuge on the southern shores of Lake Superior, and about the headwaters of Black River. Thus, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Wisconsin became crowded with Indian villages, and was sustaining a larger number of red inhabitants than at any other time throughout her history. This aggregation of tribesmen conditioned her discovery and exploration and made her a region tempting, both to the French fur trader and to the French missionary of the cross.

Before the dispersion of tribes incident to the Iroquois wars the Huron and their neighbors had learned the value of the white man's goods, and had ventured as far as Three Rivers and Montreal, there to exchange their skins and robes for the weapons, clothing and trinkets that the white men had taught them to covet. Immediately, there sprang up an intertribal trade that extended so far westward that tribes which had never seen a white man became familiar with his wares. The Ottawa Indians were especially skillful in trade, and so long acted as middlemen for the western tribes that all the region of the Upper Lakes was called by the French the Ottowa Country.

The Iroquois wars of the middle of the seventeenth century interrupted the northwest trade, and both the colony of New France and the interior tribes suffered from the break in the intercourse. Of the two the French suffered the more, because the Indians had not yet forgotten their wilderness lore and were yet able to be self-sufficing. The lack of the annual harvest of furs from the Northwest had almost ruined the little French colony along the St. Lawrence, when suddenly it was gladdened by the arrival of a caravan of Indians at Three Rivers that came to exchange its hoarded treasure of peltry over northern streams and portages, uninfested by the dreaded Iroquois. Prosperity once more promised for Canada, the Indian visitors were royally treated, and when they embarked for their return voyage two young Canadians accompanied them and wandered for two years or more among the tribes of the Northwest, learning their customs and languages and teaching them the white man's arts.

The explorations of Radisson and Grosseilliers during the latter half of the sixth decade of the seventeenth century were not known to historians until the journals of Radisson were discovered late in the nineteenth century in the Bodleian library at Oxford. They were written in English by one unfamiliar with that language, and their descriptions are so vague that it yet remains on open question where these explorers went and whether or not they were the first white men to view the Mississippi,

Radisson and Grossilliers made a second voyage to the Ottawa Country two or three years after their first adventure. Upon this occasion they explored Lake Superior and the headwaters of the Mississippi, and passed a desolate and famishing winter, probably on the Wisconsin shore of Chequamegon Bay.

Meanwhile, the first white missionary to Wisconsin had lost his life in her northern forests. Father Rene Menard, in 1660, came to the Northwest with a returning party of trading Indians. They abandoned him on the shore of Keweenaw Bay, and after a wretched winter started with one companion to visit the Huron fugitives, formerly members of the Ontario mission, then thought to be in hiding on the headwaters of Black River. While descending the Wisconsin in a tiny craft, the reverend father stepped aside at some one of its upper portages and was lost in the forest. Whether he was slain by beast or Indian or perished from starvation is not known; no trace of his fate was ever found.

In 1665 the colony of New France was re-enforced by a regiment of soldiers, the Iroquois enemies were punished and concluded a reluctani peace. Thereafter, the wilderness waterways became safer and traders and missionaries sought the tribesmen in Wisconsin forests.

Notable among the traders was Nicholas Perrot, who, in 1665, began a career of discovery and exploration in Wisconsin that lasted over thirty years. Among the missionaries, Father Claude Allouez was a pioneer. His first mission, in 1665, was on the shores of the Chequamegon Bay, where for two years he instructed large bands of Indians from all the Wisconsin region. Even the Illinois visited the good father in his northern home, and listened for the first time to the gospel message. In 1669 Allouez transferred his ministrations to the neighborhood of Green Bay where, among the Menominee, Potawatomi and Sauk of the bay shore, the Foxes on the Wolf, and the Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo of the upper Fox Valley, he founded missions and worked with unflagging zeal for the conversation of their souls. The first permanent mission in Wisconsin was the mission of St. Francis Xavier, established in 1671, at the De Pere rapids of Fox River by Allouez and his fellow workers. The following decade was the most flourishing in the Jesuit missionary history of Wisconsin. After 1682 their influence and success began to wane, and by the close of the century was almost extinct.

In the meantime the King of France had, in 1671, staged a pageant on the far shore of Sault Ste. Marie, wherein his representative, Simon Francois Daumont Sieur de St. Lusson took possession of all the western country for the French sovereignty. Nicholas Perrot was sent in advance to notify the Wisconsin tribesmen and persuade them to send chiefs as representatives on this great occasion. With wondering awe the simple savages watched the impressive ceremony wherein priests and warriors chanted the praise, both of God and of the great King Louis XIV, and declared the latter's benevolence in annexing the Indians' country to his own domain. All unwillingly, they assented to an acknowledgment that made them thenceforth subjects of a foreign monarch. Some years afterward Perrot was sent as governor general of the new French territory west of Lake Michigan. He built therein a number of French posts, most of them upon the Mississippi. At Fort St. Antoine, upon Lake Pepin, in 1689, Perrot took possession for France of the Sioux territory lying along the upper waters of America's greatest river. He likewise was the first white man to explore the lead mines of southern Wisconsin. So long as he ruled in the West the French trade and influence was supreme and the Indians of Wisconsin were his docile instruments.

Wisconsin's great waterway to the Mississippi River was first traversed, in 1673, by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette. Seven years later Daniel Greysolon Duluth, who had previously threaded the upper portage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi, came eastward by the Fox-Wisconsin route from the Sioux country, By these two voyages connection was established between Wisconsin's portage route and both the lower and the upper Mississippi.

Rapid changes in the Indian geography of Wisconsin occurred during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century. The population that had massed along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway was pressing upon the food supply. Moreover, in 1680, Robert Cavelier de La Salle took possession of the Illinois River Valley and invited the Wisconsin Indians to remove thither for a permanent home. The Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo acceded to his request; the Potawatomi likewise moved south along the shore of Lake Michigan; the Foxes ventured from Wolf River to the river now called by their name. The Menominee surrounded Green Bay, the Sauk and Foxes controlled the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, the Winnebago occupied the upper Rock River. The Huron and Ottawa left northern Wisconsin for homes on the straits of Mackinac, and all the southern shore of Lake Superior was abandoned to the Chippewa, who at intervals con-

4. The French Fur Trade - Along with the shifting of tribal homes grew up changes in the method of handling the fur trade. The Indian hunters no longer made yearly pilgrimages to Montreal to exchange their gathered peltry for the white man's goods. Instead, the white men came to them offering their wares, and with tribal consent built in their country at convenient places little log forts, where an officer and a few soldiers kept order over the motley erowd of traders and coureurs des bois that enriched themselves by the wilderness traffic. Most of the traders were licensed by the government and subjected to strict rules for fhe conauct of their trade. The illegal trader, however, flourished and followed his Indian customers into the depths of the forest, beyond the reach of the order of regulations enforced by the commandants at the wayside posts. These unlicensed traders carried to the red man the alcoholic liquors the white man had taught him to love; and in disregard of the regulations of the French government, the Indian grew more and more debauched and degraded by his association with the whites. Radisson, who had explored the western forests for the French, deserted to the English government, and in 1670 aided in forming the Hudson's Bay Company, that greatest of all fur-trade monopolies, which, after nearly 250 years, is still the greatest fur company in the world.

Its traders early penetrated to the north shore of Lake Superior and drew away many Indians who had previously contributed to the wealth of Canada, The English also attempted to secure the northwest fur trade by the route of the Great Lakes. Utilizing the Iroquois as middlemen, the tribes of Wisconsin were tempted to carry their wares to white men who paid a larger price for furs and gave better goods in return than those of the French merchants.

Thus, through illegal traders and foreign rivals the French fur trade was, by the close of the seventeenth century, so demoralized that the Canadian authorities, spurred thereto by the missionaries, determined upon drastice measures. All licenses for traders were revoked, and in 1696 a decree went forth that all the Northwest posts should be evacuated and that missionaries should be the only white men allowed in the Ottawa Country. It was thought that the old custom of yearly caravans would be revived, thus, governmental control could be exercised over the trade and the aborigines protected. These measures were only partially successful. Coureurs des bois refused to obey the summons to return to New France, and shamelessly brought in English goods; soldiers deserted from the garrisons before evacuation, married among the Indian tribes and introduced the white man's arts. Albany and Hudson Bay traders vigorously pressed their advantage, and the Canadian authorities feared that the whole of the Northwest trade would slip from their control.

This danger of disintegration was checked by two events that occurred in the first year of the eighteenth century, by which the French recovered their morale and resumed operations in the Northwest. The first of these was the founding of Detroit, a post whose position barred the English from the upper lakes. The second was the peace with the Iroquois, which was signed at Montreal after a great ceremony, and an exchange of prisoners among all the warring tribes. The license for the fur trade was then restored, the coureur des bois called in by proclaiming pardons for past offenses, and the policy of control by posts and garrisons was re-established throughout the Northwest.

The establishment of Detroit caused new changes in the Indian geography of Wisconsin. The Miami and Mascouten entirely withdrew from the state and moved eastward toward the new post. The Potawatomi progressed southward around the bend of Lake Michigan, while the Winnebago filled in the vacant territory near Lake Winnebago and along the Rock River Valley. In 1706 a large portion of the Fox and Sauk tribes deserted Wisconsin and settled in the vicinity of Detroit, whither the Ottawa and Huron from the neighborhood of Mackinae had preceded them. This new accumulation of savage peoples did not long dwell in harmony. In 1712 a fierce intertribal quarrel broke out, in which the commandant of Detroit took sides against the Wisconsin tribesmen. Many of the Sauk, Foxes and Kickapoo were slain, the remainder fled back to their former homes in Wisconsin, where the remnant of these tribes waged barbaric warfares against the French for over thirty years. This hostility closed the Fox- Wisconsin waterway to French traders, rendered their lives insecure on all the western pathways and greatly diminished French influence in the far Northwest.

In the course of these Fox wars the first military invasion of Wisconsin occurred when, in 1716, Sieur Louvigny led a considerable army of Canadian soldiers, accompanied by a miscellaneous host of traders, voyageurs and Indians through Green Bay to the Fox forts at Little Butte des Morts. The Foxes withstood for a time a considerable siege, which ended in a compromise with the invading forces. The succeeding year a French post was built on the site of Fort Howard, that was maintained until the fall of the French sovereignty in the New World. In 1718, in order to develop the copper mines that were thought to exist on the shores of Lake Superior, an official post was built at Chequamegon. From 1727 to 1750, in order to exploit the fur trade among the Sioux French, posts were erected upon the Upper Mississippi. Chequamegon and the Mississippi posts were abandoned during the French and Indian war. In 1743 a French post was erected on the Mississippi, near the lead mines, where a beginning was made in developing this industry. Thus, the French found copper, lead and furs in Wisconsin, the most valuable of which was peltry.

After the Fox wars were over the fur trade grew with startling rapidity, and the only rivals to the Canadian traders were the French merchants from Louisiana, whose northern boundary lay between the Rock and Wisconsin rivers. In 1752 the Green Bay post was leased to a relative of the reigning governor, who exploited it so dishonestly that the Marquis of Montcalm declared, "Never have theft and license gone so far."* The yearly harvest of Wisconsin furs amounted to 500 to 600 packs valued at a quarter of a million dollars.

tected by rapacious officials, the lilies of France fell before the cross of St. George and St. Andrew, and the British replaced the French not only on the St. Lawrence, but along the Great Lakes and in the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley.

5. Development and Decline of the Fur Trade Under the British - The change from French to British sovereignty in Wisconsin was not accompanied by any marked upheaval in the little hamlets and among the Indian villages of the western wilderness. Most of the French traders transferred their allegiance to the new sovereign with only mild regrets. The earliest British officers were conciliatory in attitude, and the Indians docilely exchanged their French medals and flags for those of England. The British traders employed the same voyageurs and coureurs des bois as had served the traffic until the French regime. The language most in use in Wisconsin's forests continued to be French. Beyond the bounds of Wisconsin there was much discontent, which culminated in the revolt known as Pontiae's Conspiracy. In this uprising Wisconsin tribesmen, almost alone among those of the Northwest, refused to participate. Possibly the old grievances against the French, repressed since the Fox wars, still rankled, and made Wisconsin Indians more favorable to their new British masters. Be that as it may, the garrison at Green Bay was escorted by friendly and protecting tribesmen to Mackinac, and there aided in rescuing the captured British officers from the hands of the hostile Chippewa and Ottawa. When Sr. William Johnson met the Indian chiefs at Niagara in 1764 he signalized the loyalty of the Wisconsin Menominee by presenting to their chief a medal and a certificate."

With the withdrawal in 1763 of the garrison from Green Way, Wisconsin's British post was permanently abandoned. Thenceforward the metropolis of the fur trade was at Mackinac, where each summer a great mart was held. Traders brought from Canada an abundance of goods for forest traffic, and exchanged them for the peltry that had been gathered during the previous winter and spring at dozens of small posts throughout the West.

With the growth of the trade subsidiary marts were established, and the one in Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien became next in importance to that at Mackinac.

The first years of the British trade in Wisconsin were years of unregulated and fierce competition between rival traders and rival companies. Slight restraints were imposed by the post officers, who in most cases participated in the profits of the traffic. Therefore, this unrestricted rivalry wrought great havoc, both among the fur-bearing animals and their red hunters. Liquor became the ordinary medium of exchange. The traders' outfits were largely composed of kegs of beverages, and so fierce were the drunken orgies of the Indians that it seemed that they would soon exterminate themselves. The traders in like manner grew demoralized and employed all kinds of subterfuges to secure the advantage. Even murder and robbery went unpunished, and the law of force and cunning ruled the forests, representative group of Canadian merchants made at Mackinae a temporary combination to control the trade. Two years later the agreement was renewed, and became, in 1783, the basis of the North West Fur Company, a powerful organization of Scotch merchants, who controlled the Canadian trade for the third of a century. About the same time the Mackinac Company was formed, whose operations lay farther south than those of the North West Company. In 1786 the Mackinac Company had a post opposite the mouth of the Missouri and was competing for the trade of Spanish Louisiana.

The Spanish strove unsuccessfully to bar the British traders from the trans-Mississippi. The lower Missouri trade they succeeded in possessing, but the waters of the upper Mississippi and the Minnesota (then called the St. Peter's) were practically in the hands of the Scotch from Canada, all supplied by means of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway,

The headquarters of the North West Company lay on the northwest shore of Lake Superior; two subsidiary posts in Wisconsin - at Fond du Lac of the great lake, and at Madelaine Island - served the interior forts along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Around these posts small communities gradually grew up, composed chiefly of retired voyageurs and engagees no longer able to endure the hardships of forest wintering. These occupied themselves with a primitive type of agriculture and supplied the products to the active traders. The most important of these settlements was at Green Bay, where, before the close of the French regime, a few families had settled. Thither, after Pontiac's Conspiracy, the Langlades removed from Mackinac, and by their superior education and ability became the recognized leaders of the little community. Charles Langlade, called the "Father of Wisconsin," had been an officer in the French- Canadian army. Under the British he held a commission in the Indian Department, and his influence over both the white and red men of Wisconsin was unbounded. It was Langlade, who, during the American Revolution, rallied the Wisconsin Indians for participation in the defense of Canada and in the invasion of Burgoyne. It was due to his loyalty to the British that George Rogers Clark's agents had so little success in detaching Wisconsin Indians for the American alliance, It was Langlade who was depended upon to protect the Wisconsin settlements against the dangers from the Spanish of Louisiana; and upon his death, in 1801, the French- Canadian settlement mourned a protector and a leader. His leadership fell into the hands of his descendants and relatives, the Grignons and Gautiers, who were allied to the better families of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. The patriarchal condition of society in Wisconsin lasted until the coming of the Americans who, with their democracy and energy, broke down the class system founded on the fur trade hierachy, and introduced the elements of modern life into the trading posts and settlements that grew up during the fur trade regime. In the fur trade the bourgeois, or master trader, was all-powerful, his will and the exigencies of the traffic were the sole source of authority. To make this more binding, each voyageur and engagee was obliged before leaving the main trading post, to sign a contract by which he bound himself in consideration of a small wage and certain supplies "to serve, obey, and faithfully execute all that the said Sieurs, his Bourgeois * * *_ shall lawfully and honestly order him to do; without trading on his own account, nor absenting himself from, nor leaving the said service."* This constituted a species of peonage, which, to the honor of the fur trading fraternity, was seldom abused. In truth, the tie that bound master and man was not purely economic; it was composed of personal elements of loyalty and attachment. It was compounded from two loyalties - the French system of subordination and responsibility, and the Scotch Highlander's attachment to the head of his clan, and the clan leaders' obligations therefor.

Many of the prominent traders of Wisconsin were Scotchmen, and in the War of 1812 they commanded reinues of voyageurs and Indians, who successively captured Mackinac and Prairie du Chien and drove every American from the vicinity. These traders fondly hoped and loudly boasted that new boundaries would be drawn and the territory, now Wisconsin, would become a fur-trading preserve. Disappointed in that hope, they planned to adjust the exigencies of the forest trade to the demands of the American system. The Mackinac Company was dissolved and in its stead was organized the American Fur Company, many of whose operators were the Scotch-Canadians who had been partners in the British concern. For twenty years after the American occupation the new company conducted a flourishing trade along the old lines. From 1816 to 1824 the United States sought to better the Indians' condition by the so-called factory system, government posts operated not for profit, but for benevolence toward its Indian wards. The factory system failed because of the powerful opposition of the American Fur Company, and because the factors were unacquainted with the conditions of Indian trade.

Gradually the fur trade, which for two hundred years had ruled Wisconsin, declined. The local traders, deeply in debt to Astor's monopoly, the American Fur Company, mortgaged their lands and lost them. Of recent years a new commerce in furs has sprung up and grows increasingly valuable. But the fur trade as a regime passed from Wisconsin with the coming of the Americans and the development of modern industries.