Door County, Wisconsin - Chapter 8: Indian Outbreaks, 1917

After Allouez left the Mission of St. Xavier at DePere we have a number of Jesuit fathers who spent more or less time in this region. Among these were Louis Andre, Anthony Silvy, Andre Bonneault, Claude Dablon, Charles Abanel, Jacques Marquette, John Enjalran and Jean B. Chardon. These, with their assistants, all came up Green Bay past the palisaded heights 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 cliffs and beautiful bays; they followed the Indians from village to village preaching the gospel of peace, good works and salvation to them. Some of them were recalled to other fields, while others again never returned but left their lives in the forest as martyrs to their faith. For a while the fathers had much success and hundreds of Indians were baptized each year. (When Father Marquette visited the mission in 1673 he reports that more than two thousand Indians had been baptized). They used to gather at the DePere Chapel and venerate it as if it were an idol - offering tobacco to it' and talking to it as if it were a living thing. Before long, however, this peaceful worship ceased. This was due to the debasing influence of the fur traders. These men carried brandy with them as the most potent means to make a profitable bargain with the Indians. To obtain brandy the Indians were willing to agree to anything. Debased by drinking the Indians quickly became insolent and brutish. About 1680 they set fire to the DePere Chapel. It was re-erected and again destroyed. Once in a drunken brawl an attack was made on the Jesuits and several members of the mission were killed. For a time the Indians were quiet, expecting swift vengeance from the governor in Quebec. The Jesuits, however, exemplifying the doctrine of forgiveness, demanded no punishment and no vengeance came. The Indians misunderstood this tolerance, despised the French for weaklings, and matters: grew worse. The Jesuits were subjected to all sorts of indignities. Once a great Outagami chief brought all his old and dull axes to the mission and compelled the reverend father to temper and sharpen them while the chief stood over him with a drawn sword. When the work was done instead of showing gratitude the chief gave the father such a beating that he was obliged to keep to his bed for many days.

About this time a great plague broke out among the Indians around the bay which greatly decimated their numbers. The Indian sorcerers, after many incantations, claimed that this plague was brought on by the "black gowns" (Jesuits) in revenge for their injuries, and urged that they, with all other French, be exterminated. For a while it looked as if a general massacre would follow. Perrot alone prevented this. He was the agent of the French Government and had charge of all the secular affairs of the French in the West. He had such commanding ways about him that the Indians seemed to respect him more than an army. Whole tribes fled at the news of his coming. Several times he unexpectely entered hostile Indian villages about to go to war and rebuked them like dogs. He would lay his breast bare before them and defy them to kill him. His wonderful bravery, ingenius strategems and magnetic oratory saved the French on more than one occasion. In these hostilities, however, his old friends the Potawatomies on the Door County Peninsula were always faithful to the French.?

The evil influence of the fur traders upon the Indians finally became so notorious that the venerable Father Carhul, who spent sixty years in laboring with the Indians, wrote a scathing denunciation of the traffic to the French governor. He denounces "the two infamous sorts of commerce which have brought the missions to the brink of destruction: * * * the commerce in brandy and the commerce of the savage women with the French. Both are carried on in equally publie manner, without our being able to remedy the evil because we are not supported by the commandants. * * * All the villages of our savages are now only taverns, as regards drunkenness and Sodoms, as regards immorality - from which we must withdraw, and which we must abandon to the just anger and vengeance of God"? Perhaps in response to this protest the French Government about the year 1700 for a time greatly curtailed the fur trade.

sNieholas Perrot labored for forty years among the western Indians in various capacities. Probably no man knew them as well as he. He was born in 1644 and died about 1720.

had a few years previously occupied the east shore of the Door County Peninsula but were driven from there by Iroquois attacks as told in Chapter IV. They later settled on the headwaters of the Fox and Wolf Rivers in the present Winnebago and Waupaca counties. Here they quickly waxed very mighty and formidable and soon became a menace not only to the fur traders but to the very French power in the West. In order to prevent an alliance among these related tribes which might prove disastrous to French dominion, Captain Cadillac, the commandant of the post at Mackinac, formed the project of getting a number of these tribes to locate in Southern Michigan where they, supported by the French, could form a buffer nation against possible hostile excursions of the Outagamis. The Potawatomies, always docile to the wishes of the French, accepted his invitation and with the Sauks formed a settlement at Detroit and another at St. Joseph River. Several other tribes followed. There seems to have remained only a small mixed village of Potawatomies and Ottawas in Door County, located on Detroit Island.

Shortly after these tribes had settled in Southern Michigan a large army of Outagamis and their allies, the Mascoutens, appeared before the French fort at Detroit, one day in the year 1710, and besieged it. Thanks to the nearness of his Indian allies, the Potawatomies, Ottawas and others, the commandant, Captain Duboisson, was able to repel them. In the pursuit that followed no less than a thousand Outagamis were killed. The survivors returned to their Wisconsin woods and were soon on the warpath again. Several large military expeditions were sent out from Montreal to subjugate them. At Mackinac these forces were augmented by hundreds of Indian allies, which all proceeded up Green Bay to wage war with the terrible Outagamis. For twenty years this war continued with varying success until the Outagamis were finally exerminated.

Meanwhile the missions were abandoned and destroyed, and the fur trade languished. The Indians turned again to their idolatrous practices and their last stage was worse than the first,