Winnebago County, Wisconsin - Chapter 16, 1880

Battle of Little Butte des Morts - Sanguinary Engagement - The Most Populous Village of the Foxes Destroyed - The Expulsion of the Foxes from the Fo.x River Valley - , The Menominees Take Possession of the Fo.x Country - Tomah, the Great Menominee Chief.

APT. MORAND held an office in the French Indian Department, and had control of several important posts; one ^S^' near Mackinaw and one on the Mississippi. His boats, in their passage up the Fox, had been frequently stopped at the " Little Butte," and compelled to yield to the exactions of the Foxes. A young Canadian trader, in command of one of Morand's fleets, refused to pay the tribute demanded at the "Little Butte," and in the encounter which followed, was killed with some of his men, and his boats plundered. This raised the ire of Morand; and the French authorities, having determined on the expulsion of the Foxes, a large force of men were placed under his command, and he commenced the preparation of his expedition. A number of large Mackinaw boats were got in readiness, and Morand then opened up negotiations with the Menominee^- to take part in the enterprise of expelling theii enemies from the Valley of the Fox; declaring his intention of not leaving one of the tribe in that section, and promising the former the possession of the Fox hunting grounds. The Menominees replied, that what was said was

"good talk;" but a little of their fathers' skootay tvaivbo would help to quicken their thoughts and make them more favorable to the proposition.

Morand complied with these demands, and a general Menominee drunk was the consequence; after the termination of which, the expedition, composed of a large force of Menominees and a body of French and halfbreeds, proceeded up the Fox to the belligerent village.

The morning sun shone pleasantly on the bark and mat wigwams of the Little Buttes des Morts. The inhabitants reposed in fancied security; the squaws moved about in the perfomance of their usual duties; the dogs quarreled over their bones and refuse; the papooses played at their ju\'enile games, and the waxriors lolled about dreamily, comfortably contemplating their next foray on the boats of the voyagers, which should furnish them a generous supply of the white man's delicacies, and especially tobacco, and their favorite skootay waiibo. They had not long to wait for their expected opportunity. Morand's fleet was rapidly nearing their village. It was composed of bateaux and canoes, covered with oil cloths, such as the traders used to protect their goods from the weather. Under these oil cloths were concealed armed men. When the expedition approached to within a mile of the village, a large detachment of the French and the Menominees was sent from that point to take a position in the rear, and cut ofl" the retreat of the Foxes. Morand's fleet then proceeded up the river. As soon as it hove in sight of the village, the dogs barked, the squaws screamed with delight, and the warriors proceeded in a body to the shore, eagerly expectant of the rich booty.

When the foremost boats came opposite to the Indians congregated on the shore, the latter commenced to violently gesticulate, and demand their stoppage; which, not being complied with, a number of balls were fired across their bows - a peremptory demand for them to heave to. The rowers immediately stopped their further progress, when Morand asked what they required? Skootay watibo was yelled by hundreds of voices. "To shore with with the boats! " ordered Morand; and they were immediately along side the river banks, the swarming savages rushing forward impetuously to board them. "Back! Back! Don't touch the boats", warned Morand; but on they came. "Ready!" shouted the commander. In an instant the oil cloths were thrown ofl", and a hundred men, with guns at their shoulders arose, as if by magic. "Fire!" shouted Morand.

A hundred muskets were simultaneously discharged, and scores of dark forms dropped on the river bank, and writhed in the agonies of death. The suddenness of the une.xpected attack sent the Indians howling and panic stricken from the shore. They hastily retreated towards their wigwams. Here a more terrible foe approached them. They were now greeted with the war-whoop of the Menominees, with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, and the appalling sight of their blazing wigwams and their fleeing squaws and papooses; for the Menominees who had come up in the rear, had industriously applied the torch. Then came a desperate hand to hand conflict; the Foxes fighting bravely, but compelled at last to retreat to the woods. Here the unfortunate wretches were met by the detachment of French that formerly landed, and a discharge of musketry checked their flight. The pursuing Menominees again came upon them, and tomahawk and bayonet completed the bloody work. Morand endeavored to stop the terrible carnage; but "no quarter" was the revengeful war-cry; and they perished, man, woman and child - almost the entire village, which had contained the most numerous bands of the Fox tribe. A few escaped and fled to the upper Fox.

The populous village that, an hour before, reposed in the enjoyment of peace, was in that short time transformed into a scene of utter desolation. There was nothing left but the dead bodies of the slain. The storm of war had swept over the Petite Buttes des Morts like a besom of destruction, and annihilated the greater portion of a tribe. Such is the history of the memorable battle of the Little Buttes des Morts (the hills of the dead ) ; a spot commemorative of the overthrow of the supremacy of the Fox Indians, in the Valley of the Fox.

The few Foxes who had escaped during the battle, joined other bands of the tribe, and congregated at a point on the south side of the river, about three or Tour miles above Big Lake Buttes des Morts, near the present site of Winneconnee, where they were again attacked by Morand, and defeated with great loss.

Augustin Grignon, in his " Seventy Years Recollections," says " My grandfather, De Langlade, and aged Indians told me that the second battle of Morand with the Foxes took place about three miles above the Great Buttes des Morts. "

This tribe next concentrated its remaining force near the mouth of the Wisconsin, where Morand subsequently followed and again defeated them. They then fled, and took refuge with the Sauks, on Sauk Prairie, across the Wisconsin. The united tribes must have recuperated rapidly after their settlement at Sauk Prairie; for they had several desperate encounters with the Sioux, and became powerful enough in time, to deprive the Kaskaskias of their possessions on the Rock River, where Black Hawk, their distinguished chief, was born.

The discovery of the lead mines, in 1822, on the territory then occupied b\- them, brought American settlers into that section, and they again were routed from their possessions, by what Black Hawk alleges to have been a fraudulent treaty. They were removed across the Mississippi, and here came into conflict with the Sioux, their hereditary foes.

The Foxes and Sauks seem to ha\e affiliated with no other tribes. For over a century they were known to have been continually on the war-path. The other tribes held them in great awe. Their children, for generations, may be said to have been born on the battle-field, with the sound of the warwhoop ringing in their mothers' ears. No Indians ever surpassed them in bravery or devotion to the cause of the red-man in resenting the encroachments of the whites; and, as the Black Hawk war was the closing scene of the strife of the Sauks and Foxes, who had been so long the dominant tribes of this valley, which will be forever associated with their fame, a sketch will be given, on a subsequent page, of that last struggle of these tribes against the fate closing so remorselessly around them.

After the expulsion of the Sauks and Foxes, the Menominees came into the possession of the territory formerly occupied by the former tribes. As they remained the firm allies of the French, and pursued a peaceable course in their relations with other Indian nations, they rapidly increased in numbers and power; and when the Americans commenced the settlement of this country, the Menominee lands included the tract north of the Upper Fox, extending from one of the branches of the Wisconsin, on the west, to a point on Lake Michigan, north of the Menominee River, and from there south to the mouth of the Milwaukee River; embracing the tract between Lakes Winnebago and Michigan, the Lower Fox country and the Wolf and its tributaries.

The French seem, from the first, to have affiliated very closely with the Menominees, intermarrying with them to such an extent that at one time the population of the Lower Fox country was composed largely of people of mixed blood.

a man of great abilities and virtues. He was held in the highest esteem by the neighboring nations, and is spoken of by the whites as one of Nature's noblemen.

James W. Biddle, who had the contract for supplying the troops at Green Bay and other western posts, in 1816, thus speaks of him in his published " Recollections of Green Bay. "

"When at Mackinaw, early one morning in the latter part of May, or early in June, 1817, I had come out of my lodgings and observed approaching m.e one of the many Indians then on the Island; and taking a look at him as he emerged from the fog, then very heavy, I was struck as he passed, in a most unusual manner, by his singularly imposing presence. I had never seen, I thought, so magnificent a man. He was of the larger size, perhaps six feet, with fine proportions, alittle stoop-shouldered, and dressed in a somewhat dirty blanket, and had scarcely noticed me as he passed. I remember it as distinctlyas if it was yesterday. I watched him until he disappeared again in the fog, and remember almost giving expression to a feeling which seemed irresistibly to creep over me , tliat the earth zvas too mean for such a man to ivalk on ! This idea was, of course, discarded the moment it came up, but existence it had, at this, my first view of Tomah. I had no knowledge, at the time, of who he was, or that Tomah was on the Island, but while standing there, before my door, and under the influence of the feeling I have described, Henry Graverat, the Indian interpreter, came up, and I enquired of him whether he knew of an Indian who had just passed up. He replied, yes, that it was Tomah, chief of the Menominees. "

"When Tecumseh visited the Indians at the Bay, and addressed them in council, advocating a union of tribes against the Americans, his eloquent recital of his success in the many battles he had fought, was well calculated to arouse a war-like spirit in the Indians. Tomah, desirous of allaying this, replied, 'that he had heard the words of Tecumseh - heard of the battles he had fought, enemies they had slain, and the scalps he had taken,'" "He then," says Biddle, "paused; and while the deepest silence reigned throughout the audience, he slowly raised his hands, his eyes fixed on them, and in a lower, but not less prouda tone, continued: ' but it is my boast that these hands are unstained with human blood!"

"The effect is described as tremendous; nature obeyed hei own impulse, and admiration was forced, even from those who could not, or did not, approve of the moral to be implied, and the gravity of the council was disturbed, for an instant, by a murmur of approbation - a tribute to genius, overpowering, at the moment, the force of education and habit. He concluded with remarking, 'that he had ever supported the policy of peace, as his nation was small and consequently weak; that he was fully aware of the injustice of the Americans in their encroachments upon the lands of the Indians, and for them feared its consequences, but that he saw no relief for it in going to war, and, therefore, as a national thing, he would not do so; but that if any of his young men were desirous of leaving their hunting grounds and following Tecumseh, they had his permission to do so. ' His prudent councils prevailed."

The Menominees became partially civilized at a very early period of their known history, through the christianizing influence of the missionaries and intimate association with the French, whom they regarded as their greatest benefactors.