Door County, Wisconsin - Chapter 6: The Great Explorers, 1917

About this time began an era of great exploration which made known the wealth and vast area of the Western world to France. Practically all of these world-famous explorers paddled their way past the palisaded cliffs of Door County. They camped on its shores, they fished in its waters, they hunted in the interior for their sustenance, they admired its towering heights and beautiful bays, and while lingering here on the threshold of their great enterprise they reviewed while in the shelter of Door County's majestic headlands, the details of their lofty purpose.

The first of these explorers were Joliet and Marquette who in 1673 set out to discover and explore the Mississippi of which vague rumors had been heard from the Indians. The great river had, to be sure, been discovered fifteen years previously by the two adventurers, Radisson and Grosselliers, but this fact was not known until 100 years later. These two explorers do not seem to have touched on the Door County peninsula as they apparently followed the west shore. The only Indian tribe they mention are the Menominees who lived on the river of the same name. When these Indians heard of their project they did their best to dissuade them from it. They told the explorers that "they would meet nations that never spared strangers but tomahawked them without provocation; that all the inland tribes were at war; that the Great River was very dangerous unless the difficult parts were known; that it was full of frightful monsters who swallowed up men and canoes together; that there is even a demon there who can be heard from afar and stops the passage and engulfs all who dare approach; lastly that the heat is so oppressive in those countries that it would infallibly cause our death." Nothing daunted by these frightful forebodings the two explorers pushed on in a canoe until they eventually reached the mouth of the Arkansas River.

In the fall of 1679 Robert Cavelier de La Salle, the most intrepid explorer of them all, sailed up the great lakes on the Griffin, the first vessel to sail the inland waters of America. The year before he had sent fifteen men ahead to make certain preparations and to collect a large stock of furs. He found these men on Washington Island, partaking of the hospitality of the generous Potawatomis. He sent them back to Canada on the Griffin, laden with furs and other trophies. On September 18th she departed, firing a parting shot, but was never heard of again. 'Tradition has it that she was engulfed in the waves immediately after leaving the island. La Salle, ignorant of this, pushed onward on his great enterprise of discovery in four canoes.

When La Salle parted with his comrades on the Griffin he proceeded to the prairie country west of Chicago and there established a frontier fort. This was placed in charge of Captain Tonti, La Salle's right hand man in all his enterprises. Seeing nothing was heard of the Griffin, La Salle, the next spring, in March, 1680, started to walk to Montreal. "He set out with four Frenchmen and one Mohegan guide; and these six men fought their way eastward through the wilderness, now floundering through melting snow, now bivouacking in clothes stiff with frost, now stopping to make a bark canoe, now leaping across streams on floating ice-cakes, like the runaway slave-girl in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'; in such plight did they make their way across Michigan and Ontario to the little log fortress at Niagara Falls. All but La Salle had given out on reaching Lake Erie, and the five sick men were ferried across by him in a canoe. Thus because of the sustaining power of wide-ranging thoughts and a lofty purpose, the gentlemen reared in luxury and trained at college surpassed in endurance the Indians and the hunters inured to the forest." !

Shortly after La Salle left the fort in Illinois the garrison mutinied and pulled down the fort. 'lonti and a few faithful followers unable to prevent this, found refuge among some friendly Illinois Indians. Before long, however, this tribe was attacked by a large force of Iroquois sent to avenge their defeat of a few years previously.* The Illinois were defeated but Tonti and some of his men escaped. They pushed northward hoping to find an asylum among their friends, the Potawatomis on the Door County peninsula. It was late in fall and the cold became very intense. It was no easy task to grub up wild onions from the ground to keep from starving. Finally they canie near the bay (Green Bay) and were saved from starvation by finding some corn and frozen squashes in the fields of an empty Indian village. This renewed their strength and they reached the shores of the bay where they found an old canoe which they repaired and embarked in. Then, says Tonti, "there arose a northwest wind which lasted five days, with driving snow. We consumed all our food, and not knowing what to do next we resolved to go back to the deserted village and die by a warm fire in one of the wigwams. On our way we saw a smoke, but our joy was short, for, when we reached the fire we found nobody there. We spent the night by it and before morning the bay froze. We tried to break a way for our canoe through the ice, but could not; and therefore we determined to stay there another night, and make moccasins in order to reach the village. We made some. * * * I was angry at Etienne Renault for not finishing his, but he excused himself on account of illness, because he had great oppression of the stomach, caused by eating a piece of Indian shield of rawhide, which he could not digest. His delay proved our salvation, for the next day, December 4th, as I was urging him to finish the moccasins, and he was still excusing himself on account of his malady, a party of Kiskanon Ottawas, who were on their way to the Potawatomis, saw the smoke of our fire and came to see use. We gave them such a welcome as was never seen before. They took us into their canoes and carried us to an Indian village only two leagues off. There 'we found five Frenchmen who received us kindly and all the Indians seemed to take pleasure in sending us food." They spent the winter with the Potawatomis and next spring met La Salle at Mackinac.

One of La Salle's associates was a Recollet friar by the name of Louis Hennepin. He was commissioned to explore the Illinois River. Arriving at its mouth he was taken captive by the Sioux. 'They were about to kill him but finding his pocket compass, which was considered wonderful "medicine" he was adopted into the tribe and carried hundreds of miles up into the Minnesota wilderness, where he had many strange experiences. Eventually he was liberated and made his way east again. Concerning his return he writes: "About four hundred leagues sail from our leaving the country of the Issati and Nadonessious (Sioux), we arrived safely at the extremity of the Bay of Puants (Green Bay), where we found Frenchmen trading with the Indians contrary to orders. They had some little wine in a pewter flagon, which enabled me to say mass. I had then only a chalice and altar stone, but Providence supplied me with sacerdotal vestments, for some Illinois, flying from the tyranny of the Iroquois, who had destroyed a part of their nation, took the vestments of the chapel of Father Zenobius Membre, a Recollect, who was with the Illinois in their flight. These savages gave me all except the chalice. * * * I had not celebrated holy mass for over nine months for want of wine. I had still some altar breads. We remained two days at rest singing the Te Deum, high mass and preaching. All our Frenchmen went to confession and to communion, to thank God for having preserved us amid so many wanderings and perils."

Among other explorers and famous fur traders who visted the Door County peninsula on their way to the interior were Daniel Graysolon Duluth, Pierre Charles Le Sueur, Baron La Hontan, Jonathan Carver, and Peter Pond.