Grant County, Wisconsin - Chapter 1: Early History, 1900

Chapter 1: Early History

The region now comprised in Grant County has never, from the times of earliest written records, been a center of population, either aboriginal or of European origin, nor the theater of any great histori¬ cal evehts. Historically, politically, and commercially, it has been rather an eddy in the river than the main current - rather at the cir¬ cumference than at the center of great human affairs. Therefore its history is a history of small things rather than of great events, and so not of surpassing interest to people of other regions, however interest¬ ing I trust it is to the people whose lot has been cast within the borders of Old Grant.

Of the great aboriginal tribes of the Northwest none had their seat within this region. The Illinois and the Kickapoos were settled along the Illinois and Rock Rivers in northern Illinois. The latter tribe re¬ moved in the eighteenth century to the Fox River in southeastern Wisconsin. Along that river were already settled the Winnebagoes, the Foxes orOutagamies, the Sacs or Saukies, thePottawatomies,and the Ottawas. In the northeastern part of what is now Wisconsin were the Menominees, and in the northwestern part the Ojibways or Chippewas,and in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas their deadly enemies, the Sioux or Dakotas or Lakotas. Wandering bands of all these tribes hunted and fought each other in the region that is now Grant County, but there is no evidence that any of these tribes had so much as a single village in this region, except perhaps a temporary settle¬ ment of the Foxes, about the middle of the eighteenth century in the extreme northeastern corner of the county, and later another village called Penah near where McCartney Station now is. To them all it was neutral ground and a border land. That they fought here is very probable, for here the tribes of Illinois and Wisconsin met the deadly

Spanish Domination

From 1520, when the Spanish conquistadores first planted the banner of Spain on the American mainland, to about 1620, when French domination began, this region was nominally under the domin¬ ion of the Kings of Spain. But this fact made not the slightest differ¬ ence to any person who was ever in this region, for no Spaniard or person who acknowledged the dominion of Spain was ever during that time within five hundred miles of the mouth of the Wisconsin River.

French Domination

In the early part of the seventeenth century the French occupation of Canada had extended sufficiently far so that the King of France claimed dominion over all the great Northwest, including the present State of Wisconsin. But no Frenchman nor other European ever set his eyes on any part of what is now Grant County, until 1673. In the spring of that year an expedition set out from the new French set¬ tlement at what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the discovery and exploration of the great river of the West, of which they had heard marvelous stories.

The joint leaders of that expedition were Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet. Marquette was a Jesuit priest whose highest ambition was to bring the tribes of the West into the folds of the Church to which he was so intensely devoted. To extend the dominion of his earthly sovereign was a secondary ambition with him. Joliet was an ex-priest, then a wagon-maker, and finally a trader and explorer. They were accompanied by five other Frenchmen.

The party set out in birch-bark canoes in which they went up to the head of Fox River. Carrying their light barks over the short por¬ tage to the great bend of the Wisconsin River, they launched upon its broad but shallow current and floated leisurely downward. It is probable they first saw the majestic bluffs of this county back of where Mtiscoda now stands about the middle of June, for on the 17th of that month they emerged into the broad and powerful current of the Mississippi, and experienced the joy of successful discoverers and explorers. Floating along down the western border of what we call "Old Grant," they passed even more majestic scenery than that on the WTisconsin - the rounded, lofty bluffs of Wyalusing, the romantic glen of Glen Haven, and the castellated crags of Cassville and Eagle Point, all nameless in any European tongue then and for generations after¬ ward.

As they skirted Grant County for about 120 miles, it is very prob¬ able that they landed somewhere in it to camp or hunt, and so were the first white men to tread its borders. But their narrative gives us no definite assurance of this.

At Eagle Point they parted with Old Grant forever, for, after descending the Mississippi a long way, they returned to Green Bay by way of the Illinois River and Lake Michigan.

The next white man to see, and perhaps to tread, this region, was Louis Hennepin, a Recollet friar, in 1680. Sometime before this that great explorer Robert La Salle had reached the Mississippi in Illinois and sent Hennepin and a companion, Du Gay, to explore the upper Mississippi. Hennepin's account of his explorations has been much doubted, because many years afterward he claimed the honor of hav¬ ing, on this same expedition, descended the Mississippi to its mouth before La Salle had done so, stating that he had descended and returned in a time now known to be entirely inadequate for the pur¬ pose. But if he lied about his journey on the lower Mississippi, he probably told the truth about his trip on the upper river, as he gives information about the country he could not have acquired without visiting the region. He says that he and his companion were made captive April 12, 1680, by the Sioux near the mouth of the Wisconsin River, and that they then crossed the Mississippi, so that he was prob¬ ably within what is now Grant County either at his capture or soon afterward. He was taken far up into Minnesota, and returning to near the mouth of the Chippewa River, he was rescued by a French party conducted by that famous leader of courqurs du boisy or woodrangers, Daniel Graysolon Du Lhut, whose name, curiously twisted into "Duluth," is perpetuated in the "Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas."

Hennepin and Du Lhut descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin in the fall of 1680 and ascended that stream, so that probably they .both then trod the soil of what is now our county.

Ten years later Nicholas Perrot set out from Green Bay to explore the western territory, but it is doubtful if he reached the Mississippi till several years later. In 1689 he took formal possession of theupplr Mississippi in the name of the King of France. There seems to have been then a small French force, commanded by Captain De Borieguillot,

"in the neighborhood of the Ouisconche, on the Mesachape," (pro¬ nounced Mesashapuh) but whether above or below the mouth of the Wisconsin is not certain.

In April, 1700, Le Sueur, with several companions, ascended the Mississippi to the mouth of St. Peters River, and there is reason to be¬ lieve that he examined the lead deposits near the mouths of Grant and Platte Rivers.

Up to 1711 this region was considered as a part of Canada, with the seat of government at far-off Quebec, but in that year, as a part of the "Illinois country," it was attached to the Louisiana province, with the seat of government at Mobile. But little knew and less cared any sojourner between the Mississippi and the Pecatonica, the Wisconsin and the Fever Rivers, who was the viceroy or where he held his little court.

The first known settlement of any white man in what is now Grant County was a trading post, or at least a place of deposit for merchan¬ dise and furs, near the mouth of Sandy Creek in what is now Bloom¬ ington township. This was made by Captain Pierriere Marin, an energetic French trader, probably about 1725. The Fox Indians, then located on the Fox River, obstructed the passage of Marin's barges on their journeys to and fro between Green Bay and the Mississippi, and the energetic and indomitable trader, with forces of French and friendly Indians, made several expeditions against the Foxes, almost annihi¬ lating the warriors and driving the whole tribe from their ancient seat on Fox River to become wanderers down the Wisconsin and Missis¬ sippi. Marin continued his trading till he took a command in the war of the French against the English and was captured at Fort Niagara in 1759. The surrender of Canada followed a few years later, but Marin disappeared from historical view, and with him disappeared his post at the mouth of Sandy.

English Domination

By the treaty of Paris in 1763, all the region east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, was ceded by France to England, and what is now Grant County became again a part of the province of Canada, and remained so until after the Revolution, although the terms of sev¬ eral of the charters of the Atlantic colonies of England included the region in those colonies.

ably to tread our borders was Captain Jonathan Caryer, a native of Connecticut, who, in 1776, set out to find the South Sea, or Pacific. He came down the Wisconsin to its mouth, and ascended the Missis¬ sippi. He noticed at a place supposed to be where Muscoda now is,* a village of the Foxes, about fifty houses, but deserted "on account of an epidemical disorder." He noticed another village of the Foxes near the mouth of the Wisconsin, supposed to be about the site of Prairie du Chien, as he says the French called the place La Prairie des Chiens. He says he saw much lead in the villages of the Sauks, but it does not appear that he saw any of the mines. During the following winter he explored the upper Mississippi, and penetrated to about two hun¬ dred miles west of that river. In the spring he came down the river to Prairie du Chien, and from there went back up the Mississippi, ascended the Chippewa, and crossed overland to Green Bay.

American Domination

In the summer of 1778, the State of Virginia sent out a small expe¬ dition under Colonel George Rogers Clark, which captured the British forts in the "Illinois country." Virginia had always claimed the ter¬ ritory northwest of the Ohio under her charter, and thus strengthened her claim by conquest. In the fall of 1778 the legislature of Virgiuia established the County of Illinois, embracing all of the present States of Illinois and Wisconsin, but its jurisdiction over the region that is now Grant County was entirely nominal, as it had not even a justice of the peace within two hundred miles of our borders.

In 1787 the Continental Congress adopted the celebrated ordi¬ nance creating a territorial government for the "Territory Northwest of the Ohio River," more familiarly known as the "Northwest Terriritory." Both New York and Connecticut, as well as Virginia, had claimed this territory, but all these States yielded their claims to the general Government.

Though by the treaty of 1783 the British Government had ac¬ knowledged the jurisdiction of the United States over all the country to the Mississippi on the west and the Great Lakes on the north, yet the British continued to hold possession of all that region embraced in the States of Wisconsin and Michigan, on the pretext that the country

-It is doubtful if this village was at or near Muscoda. Carver's narrative shows that it was six days' journey from Portage to the mouth of the Wisconsin, and he appears to have reached this village in two days' journey (one third of the whole), while Muscoda is much more than half way from Portage to the mouth of the Wisconsin.

belonged to the Indian tribes who were their allies. At last, after Jay '8 treaty with Great Britain, the British forces were withdrawn in 1796. During this time the British probably had no military post on the Mississippi, but the region was controlled through their traders.

In 1796 Wayne County was formed, embracing most of the western part of the new territory, but that part of the present State of Wis¬ consin drained by waters running into the Mississippi was left with¬ out a county organization.

In 1800 the present State of Ohio was cut off from the Northwest Territory and the remainder became Indiana Territory. Saint Vin¬ cennes (now Vincennes, Ind.) was the capital. In 1805 the territory of the present State of Michigan was cut off from Indiana Territory, and in 1809 Illinois Territory was formed, embracing all the present States of Illinois and Wisconsin. The capitol was at Kaskaskia. In the same year St. Clair County was formed, including all the present State of Wisconsin. In 1812 the region now Grant County was included in Madison County.

In 1818 the State of Illinois was admitted into the Union with its present boundaries, and what is now Wisconsin was attached to Mich¬ igan Territory. The southwestern part of the Territory west of Lake Michigan was made Crawford County, with the county seat at Prairie du Chien.

Up to this time all this shifting of territorial and county lines was of no consequence or interest to any of the inhabitants then living in the limits of the present Grant County, if the wandering bands of In¬ dian warriors and hunters occasionally doing some desultory digging of lead, and the few equally nomadic white traders, can be called in¬ habitants; for there was nothing that could be called a settlement, except the temporary Fox village near Muscoda (if it was chere) and the later and rather more permanent Fox village a little above the mouth of Grant River.

After the Frenchman Marin, the next trader or trapper who is known to have made any considerable sojourn within our borders was one Grant. What was his first name is unknown and his nationality can only be guessed at from his name. An early historian, writing of him in the Grant County Herald , says :

"Grant was an Indian trader, one of those dauntless frontiersmen known to the Northwest, who differed from the savage by possessing a thirst for gain and the enterprise to gratify it. As early as 1810

Grant was engaged in trade with the Indians occupying this region, making his headquarters at Prairie du Chien. He was noted for his hardihood and endurance, and for his disregard for every comfort and convenience of civilized life. His rifle supplied him with food; his cooking utensil was a brass kettle which was fitted to his head, and which he wore under his cap. One incident of his history has been preserved and is worth relating. The Sacs and Foxes were at war with the Winnebagoes. Grant was trading with the former, and was consequently regarded by the latter as their enemy. One day he hap¬ pened to encounter a war party of Winnebagoes, who immediately gave him chase. The foremost, coming up, struck him upon the tu>ad with his tomahawk, which produced no other effect than a sharp ring from the kettle before mentioned. The Indian recoiled with consterna¬ tion and horror, exclaiming, 'Manitou!* (spirit), and precipitately re¬ treated, accompanied by the whole party. This revelation of his di¬ vine character subdued the animosity of the Winnebagoes, and he was ever afterward regarded with the uttnost awe by the Indians."

What became of Grant is as little known as where he came from. His name is perpetuated by the county with which we are dealing and the principal stream which flows through it.

In the fall of 1815 Captain John Shaw went up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien with a boat-load of merchandise, and there established a trading business.. He made trips every year until 1820, In 1816 he stopped near where Cassville now is, hoping to obtain part of a cargo of lead from the Indians, who had long been doing a little superficial mining and smelting in this region. His land¬ ing was probably at the Fox village of Penah (Turkey), mentioned on page 8. He failed in obtaining lead here, but, although the Indians jealously excluded English-speaking whites from their mines, Captain Shaw, speaking French fluently and being taken by the Indians for a Frenchman, was allowed to ascend Grant River and go out to the mines, probably near Potosi.

The Indian mining was of the most superficial character. An out¬ crop of a vein having been found on a hillside, the Indians burrowed in with sharpened sticks, prongs of deer-horns, knives, etc., as far as they could go in this manner. Occasionally some obstructing rock was removed by building a fire under or about it and, after it became hot, pouring water upon it to split it. The earth was removed in buckskin sacks, pulled out by rawhide thongs. The furnaces in which

"A hole or cavity was dug in the face of a sloping piece of ground, about two feet in depth and as much in width at the top. This hole was made in the shape of a mill-hopper, and was lined or faced with flat stones. At the bottom, or point of the hopper, which was about eight or nine inches square, other stones were laid across grate-wise. A channel or eye was dug from the sloping side of the ground inward to the bottom of the hopper. This channel was about a foot in width and in height, and was filled with dry wood and brush. The hopper being filled with mineral and the wood ignited, in a few minutes the molten lead fell through the stones at the bottom of the hopper and thence was discharged through the eye over the earth." It was cer¬ tainly a simple, but rough and improvident, way of gathering the melted lead. But in the great abundance of mineral and the ease with which it could be procured, it sufficed for the wants of the Indian. At many of these primitive smelting places the white settlers afterward extracted a rich harvest of lead from the slag and refuse of the Indians' smelting.

It has been stated that the Indians were enabled to locate the "leads" by means of a small, bluish bush resembling sage, and by an abundant growth of wire-grass, but this is highly improbable. They had no need of such guides. Numerous rich veins of lead ore cropped out on the hillsides, and the ore was exposed by the wash of the rains, full enough for the small wants of the Indians, who had little use for lead except to sell to the traders, and who were not disposed to do un¬ necessary labor in sinking a shaft, upon mineral-weed indications, when they could work out-cropping veins by means of a simple drift into the hillside.

The lead being extracted, it was run into plats , as the French traders called them, or bowl-shaped masses of about seventy pounds' weight. Captain Shaw obtained seventy tons of lead at the mouth of Fever River, where, he said, the lead of each trader was stacked up in separate piles on the river bank.

Although, as just stated, the Sacs and Foxes, at the time of Cap¬ tain Shaw's visit in 1816, excluded English-speaking whites from the mines, their title to these lands had previously been extinguished by more than one treaty. In 1804 General Harrison made a treaty with

"Beginning at a point on the Missouri River opposite the mouth of Gasconade River; thence in <a direct course so as to strike the river Jefferson [now Salt River] at the distance of thirty miles from its mouth, and down the said river to the Mississippi ; thence up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Wisconsin River, and up the same to a point which shall be thirty-six miles in a direct line from the mouth of said river [about three miles west of Muscoda]; thence by a direct line to the point where the Fox River [in Illinois] leaves the small lake called Sakaegan ; thence down the Fox River to the Illinois River, and down the same to the Mississippi."

It will be observed that the boundaries include nearly all the pres¬ ent Grant County. The validity of this treaty was denied by the band of Sacs of which Black Hawk was the chief ; but it was confirmed by two subsequent treaties made in 1815. One was with "the chiefs and warriors of that portion of the Sac nation residing on the Missouri River," in which they assent to the treaty made by Harrison in 1804. The other was with the "kings, chiefs, and warriors of the Fox tribe or nation," in which they assent to the treaty of 1804. Black Hawk and his band did not assent to either of these treaties, and this failure was made the ground of the Black Hawk War in 1832. The Foxes, driven from their ancient seat on the Fox River by the repeated ter¬ rific assaults of the French, had drifted down the Wisconsin and the Mississippi, with some temporary halts and settlements, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century had combined with their ancient allies and kindred tribe of Sauks, and had dispossessed the more num¬ erous but less warlike Illinois, and had their principal settlements along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, quite below what is now Grant County.

Up to 1824 it was believed that no steamboat could pass the rapids in the Mississippi immediately above the mouth of Rock River ; but in the spring of that year, the water being high, David G. Bates passed the rapids with a small steamer, the Puta&m, and made the first through trip from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien and Fort Snelling. In the same year larger steamers ascended and steam navigation of the upper Mississippi was established.

The Prairie Du Chien And Fever River Settlements

region, the wars and treaties, the numerous provincial, territorial, and county- lines that succeeding kings, congresses, and legislatures had run around it, more than two centuries passed after the settle¬ ments were established at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, and still this fair region we call Old Grant lay in native wildness, without a white settler, even a "sucker" miner, until the quarter-post of the nineteenth century was reached. It is true that, when this quarterpost was reached, close upon its northern and southern borders were two settlements of widely different characters. The older and north¬ ern consisted of a few soldiers, passing the time in the dull routine of military duties, and a few French settlers, many of them with Indian wives, living mostly by the rifle, the fishing tackle, and the trap, culti¬ vating only small patches of vegetables, barley, and wheat, on the sandy, easily tilled soil of the prairie bottom - living a half idle and wholly careless and contented life. The southern and newer (very new) settlement was of eager miners and enterprising traders along Fever River in the vicinity of the present city of Galena. It was a set¬ tlement then - by no means a town or a village.

It is probable that the French had a military' force, at least tempo¬ rarily, in the neighborhood of Prairie duChien as early as 1689. Rev. Alfred Brunson has stated that the first settler was a trader named Cardinelle, who came with his wife in 1726 and made a small farm. In 1737 a French trading post with a stockade was established there; but it seems to have been abandoned, as Carver, in 1766, makes no mention of it, although he mentions a Fox village there. In 1781 Michael Brisbois settled at Prairie du Chien and lived there till 1837, and is remembered by some still living. The place was an important trading post where the Indians sold their furs and peltries and lead. Here met on terms of truce the braves of many tribes hostile on other ground - the Sioux, Chippewas, Sauks, Foxes, Menominees, Pottawatomies, and Kickapoos, and their buffalo-skin tepees, bulrush wickiups and bark wigwams dotted the prairie about the little settle¬ ment.

In the spring of 1814 the United States Government sent some Regulars and a company of Missouri volunteers to Prairie du Chien. This force was driven out and the place captured the same year by a greatly superior force of British and Indians under Lt.-Col. McKay, who erected a fort there, called it Fort McKay, and held it during the war. At the close of the war in 1815 the British, repeating their tactics adopted after the treaty of Paris, refused to deliver up this fort on the pretext that the surrounding country belonged to their Indian allies. But it was finally evacuated by the British, and in 1816 a force of U. S. troops occupied the place, and built Fort Crawford.

In 1818 Crawford County was formed, with Prairie du Chien its county seat. It included the present Grant County. Thos. McNair was appointed sheriff. No term of court was held until 1823.

As to the settlement on Fever River: although as early as 1788 Julian DuBuque, a French trader, did considerable mining on the site of the city bearing his name, and probably some on the east side of the Mississippi near the mouths of Fever and Grant Rivers, the earliest occupant of the Fever River lead region of whom we have any record is Colonel James Johnson, brother of the famous Richard M. Johnson, who came to Fever River in 1822. He had with him that year about twenty persons. The next year the neighborhood contained seventyfour persons, men, women, and children. A few of them were negroes. In 1823 425,000 pounds of lead were shipped from the settlement. A few more persons came in 1824, and probably a few of them went out into what is now Lafayette County, and it is stated that some came to Hardscrabble (Hazel Green) that year; but probably none of them entered the bounds of the present Grant County until 1825. But the fame of the new lead mines was rapidly spreading and the great tide of immigration was about to set in, dispelling the solitude that had for untold ages hung over these hills and glens.