Door County, Wisconsin - Chapter 2: Discovery of Door County and the West, 1917

Chapter 2: Discovery of Door County and the West

The French dominion in America may be said to begin with the year 1608. In that year Samuel de Champlain made a settlement at Quebec. He explored the coasts carefully, penetrated up the great St. Lawrence River with its many tributaries, and was the first to behold the great chain of inland oceans that stretched for vast and unknown distances to the west.

Champlain's chief object in establishing a colony in the new world was to develop the fur trade. Prowling through the forests of this new continent were tens of thousands of Indians. They lived chiefly by hunting and had peltries by the millions. These were of little use

_ to the natives but of great commercial value to the French. Champlain's first object was therefore by a conciliatory and fraternal attitude toward the red men to gain their good will and thus their trade.

When Champlain founded his colony at Quebec he found the vast wilderness around him was dominated by two great groups of Indians. These were the Iroquois and the Algonquins. Roughly speaking the Iroquois ruled over the region south of the St. Lawrence while the Algonquins occupied the northern country. Champlain soon found that these two groups were irreconcilable enemies and he had to choose between them for his field of enterprise. He chose the Algonquins.

"This decision being taken he took steps to cement his alliance with the Indians in a very sagacious and far reaching manner. He endeavored to teach them the fear of God by the establishment of missionary stations, and to protect them against their ancient enemies, the Iroquois, by the establishment of a series of frontier forts which became havens of refuge in the intermittent wars between the two Indian divisions which never ceased. He worked out his plans with excellent results. Henceforth we see the quaint alliance of missionary and merchant, the black-robed Jesuit and the dealer in peltries. So successful was the policy of the French in dealing with the Indians, as laid down by Champlain, that as long as the French continued in power in Canada their Indian allies never turned against them. While the English cavaliers on the St. James and the English Puritans in Massachusetts were in constant dread of extermination, the French in Canada ruled peacefully and profitably, their name honored and respected for two thousand miles westward.

Little by little Champlain extended the sway of the French dominion westward by making treaties with distant tribes and establishing friendly relations. In this work his chief agent was a man by the name of Jean Nicolet. He came to Canada in 1618 and soon showed a remarkable aptitude for getting along with the Indians. He was therefore commanded by his superior to go and live among the various Indian tribes, to learn their language, their manners and customs, their secret thoughts. This was done. Nicolet for years lived among the Indians and became as one of them. He taught them numberless clever arts and accomplishments of the white man and in turn learned like an Indian to bear suffering without a murmur and to go for days without food. So great was his endurance, his ability, his tact, that he won the complete confidence of the Indians and was adopted into many tribes, made chief, and was looked upon as the most wonderful man that ever came to the knowledge of the red man. By his cleverness and tact he was able to make treaties of peace and friendship with tribe after tribe, preparing the way for the missionary and the furtrader. He even accomplished the unheard of feat of persuading the relentless Iroquois to bury the hatchet of war and make a treaty of peace with their traditional enemy, the Algonquins.

Largely through the power of his persuasive personality the fame of the great French father at Quebec spread far and wide and Indian envoys came from unknown regions to pay their respects. Among them came one summer day a naked Chippewa, from a distant country two moons' journey to the west, and laid at Champlain's feet a lump of copper.

On being questioned he told of the vast territory he had traversed and of the Great Lakes - the great inland oceans that stretched for illimitable distances to the west and southwest of his native country. He told also of the Indian nations that lived around these lakes, one of which particularly interested Champlain. These were the Winnebagos, or as their name means, the fetid, or salt water people - the most savage and crafty Indians of the West and the chief tribe of that region.

Like all other explorers of his time Champlain looked with fond desire upon the same hope as that which propelled Columbus - the hope of finding a passage to Cathay, or the Orient - the land of spices, pearls and untold wealth. When he heard of these great seas with the name of the people living upon them suggesting that they lived in the proximity of the ocean, he thought that they were probably one of the outlying tribes of China. To ascertain this and to extend the French empire to this distant and mighty people, he decided at once to dispatch Nicolet to negotiate a treaty of peace with them.

This journey of Nicolet's, a thousand miles into the interior of an unknown wilderness, inhabited by the most ferocious warriors and cannibals, is one of the most fascinating and romantic events of American history. Yet never was a great journey undertaken with less fuss. Forty years ago Henry Stanley made his sensational journey of seven hundred miles into the interior of Africa to look for Livingstone, and the world has not yet ceased to wonder at the bravery of it. But Stanley had an army of camp followers and assistants, camels and beasts of burden, stacks of arms and a ponderous luggage. Nicolet had none of these things. Alone and almost unarmed he seated himself in a birch bark canoe, taking only seven dusky Hurons to man the oars for him.

As he started out upon this great journey we may well imagine some of the woeful prophecies that were made to him; of the turbulent rivers and fearful rapids he would have to breast; of the huge seas on which raged such terrible storms; of whirlpools and supernatural dangers and bloodthirsty Indian tribes who knew no mercy but killed and ate all strangers to come to their shores.

But Nicolet was not dismayed. He was thoroughly familiar with the Algonquin language and perfectly understood the innermost recesses of the Indian mind. Pushing up the pine clad gorges of the turbulent Ottawa River with its hundred waterfalls he reached Lake Nepissing far up in the North Country. From this a river led to Georgian Bay. Then followed a journey of many hundred miles along the shores of Lakes Huron and Michigan. Finally after about ten weeks of canoeing he reached the shore of the Door County peninsula.

On this long journey Nicolet visited many Indian tribes who had never seen a white man. Some of these savages hailed him as a god, while others fled from him in terror. But Nicolet's commanding presence and reassuring smile was able to overcome all their distrust and fear. Although their training and experience of centuries led them to look upon all strangers with suspicion and hostility he was able to wander at will among them honored and unmolested.

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journeying were at that time occupying the greater part of the Door County peninsula. Their main stronghold was a large, palisaded village at Red Banks, just below the town of Union and about twelve miles northeast of the present city of Green Bay. When Nicolet was within two day's journey of this village he stopped and dispatched one of his Huron companions to them with grectings of peace to apprise them of his coming. This stopping place of Nicolet's was probably near Sturgeon Bay. A day's journey with a canoe was from fifteen to twenty miles, which makes it probable that his camp was at some point on Sturgeon Bay, very likely at Little Sturgeon. It has been supposed by earlier writers that this camp was on the west shore of Green Bay, but this view is not in accordance with Nicolet's account of his journey as recorded in the Jesuit Relations. Speaking of the Winnebagos when the messenger. apprised them of his coming, it states that they ran to meet him, they carried all his baggage," which indicates that these Winnebagos sent to welcome him made their journey to him by land.

Arriving at the Winnebago village Nicolet took it for granted that he had reached an outlying settlement of the Chinese of the Orient. He therefore arrayed himself in a highly decorated Chinese robe brought for the occasion and firing off pistols in the air he entered the village with such pomp as his meagre resources permitted. The Indians were greatly impressed, having never heard firearms before. The women and children fled while the warriors made humble salutations, believing that the great Manitou had deigned to visit them. He was therefore lavishly entertained and treated most respectfully.