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+Project Gutenberg's Stories of the Badger State, by Reuben Gold Thwaites
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stories of the Badger State
+
+Author: Reuben Gold Thwaites
+
+Release Date: November 25, 2011 [EBook #38137]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roberta Staehlin, David Garcia, Matthew Wheaton
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE
+
+    BY
+
+    REUBEN GOLD THWAITES
+
+
+    NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO
+    AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
+
+    REUBEN GOLD THWAITES.
+
+    STO. BADGER STA.
+
+    W. P. I.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The student of nature lives in a broader and more interesting world than
+does he who has not learned the story of the birds, the streams, the
+fields, the woods, and the hedgerows. So, too, the student of local
+history finds his present interest in town, village, city, or State,
+growing with his knowledge of its past.
+
+In recognition of this fact, these true stories, selected from
+Wisconsin's history, have been written as a means to the cultivation of
+civic patriotism among the youth of our commonwealth. It is not the
+purpose of the book to present a continuous account of the development
+of the State; for this, the author begs to refer to his larger work,
+"The Story of Wisconsin" (in the Story of the States Series). Rather is
+it desired to give selections from the interesting and often stirring
+incidents with which our history is so richly stored, in the hope that
+the reader may acquire a taste for delving more deeply into the annals
+of the Badger State.
+
+Wisconsin had belonged, in turn, to Spain, France, and England, before
+she became a portion of the United States. Her recorded history begins
+far back in the time of French ownership, in 1634. The century and a
+third of the French regime was a picturesque period, upon which the
+memory delights to dwell; with its many phases, several of the following
+chapters are concerned. The English regime was brief, but not without
+interest. In the long stretch of years which followed, before Wisconsin
+became an American State, many incidents happened which possess for us
+the flavor of romance. The formative period between 1848 and 1861 was
+replete with striking events. In the War of Secession, Wisconsin took a
+gallant and notable part. Since that great struggle, the State has made
+giant strides in industry, commerce, education, and culture; but the
+present epoch of growth has not thus far yielded much material for
+picturesque treatment, perhaps because we are still too near to the
+events to see them in proper perspective. An attempt has been made to
+present chapters representative of all these periods, but naturally the
+earlier times have seemed best adapted to the purpose in hand.
+
+R. G. T.
+
+
+
+
+    CONTENTS
+
+
+    The Mound Builders
+    Life and Manners of the Indians
+    The Discovery of Wisconsin
+    Radisson and Groseilliers
+    The Story of Joliet and Marquette
+    The Jesuit Missionaries
+    Some Notable Visitors to Early Wisconsin
+    A Quarter of a Century of Warfare
+    The Commerce of the Forest
+    In the Old French Days
+    The Coming of the English
+    Wisconsin in the Revolutionary War
+    The Rule of Judge Reaume
+    The British capture Prairie du Chien
+    The Story of the Wisconsin Lead Mines
+    The Winnebago War
+    The Black Hawk War
+    The Story of Chequamegon Bay
+    Wisconsin Territory formed
+    Wisconsin becomes a State
+    The Boundaries of Wisconsin
+    Life in Pioneer Days
+    The Development of Roads
+    The Phalanx at Ceresco
+    A Mormon King
+    The Wisconsin Bourbon
+    Slave Catching in Wisconsin
+    The Story of a Famous Chief
+    A Fight for the Governorship
+    Our Foreign-born Citizens
+    Swept by Fire
+    Badgers in War Time
+    INDEX
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUND BUILDERS
+
+
+In the basin of the Mississippi, particularly in that portion lying east
+of the great river, there are numerous mounds which were reared by human
+beings, apparently in very early times, before American history begins.
+They are found most frequently upon the banks of lakes and rivers, and
+often upon the summits of high bluffs overlooking the country. No
+attempt has ever been made to count them, for they could be numbered by
+tens of thousands; in the small county of Trempealeau, Wisconsin, for
+instance, over two thousand have been found by surveyors. Most of the
+mounds have been worn down, by hundreds of years of exposure to rain and
+frost, till they are but two or three feet in height; a few, however,
+still retain so majestic an altitude as eighty or more feet. The conical
+mounds are called by ethnologists _tumuli_. Other earthworks are long
+lines, or squares, or circles, and are probably fortifications; some of
+the best examples of these are still to be traced at Aztalan, Wisconsin.
+In many places, especially in Ohio and Wisconsin, they have been so
+shaped as to resemble buffaloes, serpents, lizards, squirrels, or
+birds; and some apparently were designed to represent clubs, bows, or
+spears--all these peculiarly shaped mounds being styled _effigies_.
+
+The mounds attracted the attention of some of the earliest white
+travelers in the Mississippi basin, and much was written about them in
+books published in Europe over a hundred years ago. Books are still
+being written about the mounds, but most of them are based on old and
+worn-out theories; those published by the Ethnological Bureau, at
+Washington, are the latest and best. Many thousands of these earthworks
+have been opened, some by scientists, many more by curiosity seekers,
+and their contents have, for the most part, found their way into public
+museums. Many of the mounds have been measured with great accuracy, and
+pictures and descriptions of them are common.
+
+Until a few years ago, the opinion was quite general, even among
+historians and ethnologists, that the mounds were built by a race of
+people who lived in the Mississippi basin before the coming of the
+Indians, and that the mound builders were far superior to the Indians in
+civilization. Many thought that this prehistoric race had been driven
+southward by the Indians, and that the Aztecs whom the Spaniards found
+in Mexico and Central America four hundred years ago were its
+descendants. We have in Wisconsin a reminder of the Aztec theory, in the
+name Aztalan, early applied to a notable group of earthworks in
+Jefferson county.
+
+There were many reasons why, in an earlier and more imperfect stage of
+our knowledge concerning Indians, this theory seemed plausible. It was
+argued that to build all these mounds required a vast deal of steady
+labor, which could have been performed only by a dense population,
+working under some strong central authority, perhaps in a condition of
+slavery; that these people must have long resided in the same spot; and
+must have been supported by regular crops of grain, vegetables, and
+fruit. It was shown that Indians, as we found them, lived in small
+bands, and did not abide long in one place; that their system of
+government was a loose democracy; that they were disinclined to
+persistent labor, and that they were hunters, not farmers. Further, it
+was contended that the mounds indicated a religious belief on the part
+of their builders, which was not the religion of the red men. The result
+of these arguments, to which was added a good deal of romantic fancy,
+was to rear in the public mind a highly colored conception of a mythical
+race of Mound Builders, rivaling in civilization the ancient Egyptians.
+
+But we are living in an age of scientific investigation; scientific
+methods are being applied to every branch of study; history has had to
+be rewritten for us in the new light which is being thrown upon the path
+of human development. This is not the place to set forth in detail the
+steps by which knowledge has been slowly but surely reached, regarding
+the history of the once mysterious mounds. The work of research is not
+yet ended, for the study of ethnology is only in its infancy;
+nevertheless, it is now well established that the Indians built the
+mounds, and we may feel reasonably certain for what purpose they used
+them.
+
+Indian population was never dense in North America. The best judges now
+agree that the entire native population consisted of not over two
+hundred thousand at the time when the Pilgrim Fathers came to Plymouth.
+Of these, Wisconsin probably had but nine thousand, which, curiously
+enough, is about its present Indian population. But, before the first
+whites came, many of the American tribes were not such roamers as they
+afterward became; they were inclined to gather into villages, and to
+raise large crops of Indian corn, melons, and pumpkins, the surplus of
+which they dried and stored for winter. We shall read, in another
+chapter, how the white fur trader came to induce the Indian
+agriculturist to turn hunter, and thereby to become the wandering savage
+whom we know to-day. Concerning the argument that the modern Indian is
+too lazy to build mounds, it is sufficient to say that he was, when a
+planter, of necessity a better worker than when he had become a hunter;
+also, that many of the statements we read about Indian laziness are the
+result of popular misunderstanding of the state of Indian society. It is
+now well known that the Indian was quite capable of building excellent
+fortifications; that the most complicated forms of mounds were not
+beyond his capacity; and that, in general, he was in a more advanced
+stage of mental development than was generally believed by old writers.
+Modern experiments, also, prove that the actual work of building a
+mound, with the aid of baskets to carry the earth, which was the method
+that they are known to have employed, was not so great as has been
+supposed.
+
+It has been recently discovered, from documents of that period, that
+certain Indians were actually building mounds in our southern States as
+late as the Revolutionary War. In the north, the practice of mound
+building had gone or was going out of fashion about a hundred and
+twenty-five years before, that is, in the days when the French first
+came to Wisconsin. It is thought that some of our Wisconsin mounds may
+be a thousand years old; while others are certainly not much over two
+hundred years of age, for skeletons have been found in some of them
+wearing silver ornaments which were made in Paris, and which bear dates
+as late as 1680.
+
+It is easy to imagine the uses to which the Wisconsin mounds were put by
+their Indian builders. We can the more readily reason this out, because
+we know, from books of travel published at the time, just what use the
+southern Indians were making of their mounds, in the period of the
+Revolutionary War. The small tumuli were for the most part burial
+places for men of importance, and were merely heaps of earth piled above
+the corpse, which was generally placed in a sitting posture; he was
+surrounded with earthen pots containing food, which was to last him
+until his arrival at the happy hunting ground, and with weapons of stone
+and copper, to enable him there to kill game or defend himself against
+his enemies. The larger tumuli were, no doubt, the commanding sites of
+council houses or of the huts of chiefs. Each Indian belonged, through
+his relationship with his mother's people, to some clan; and each clan
+had its symbol or _totem_, such as the Bear, the Turtle, the Buffalo,
+etc. The Indians claimed that the clan had descended from some giant
+animal whose figure, or effigy, was thus honored. Many white people
+place their family symbol, or crest, or coat of arms on their letter
+paper, or on the panels of their carriage doors, or upon their
+silverware; so Indians are fond of displaying their respective totems on
+their utensils, weapons, canoes, or wigwams. In the mound building days,
+they reared totems of earth, and probably dwelt on top of them. As in
+each village there were several clans, so there were numerous earth
+totems, many of them of great size. This, no doubt, is the origin of the
+so-called effigies. Add to these the mystic circles of the medicine men,
+the fantastic serpents, and the fortifications necessary to defend the
+village from the approach of an enemy up some sloping bank or
+sharp-sided ravine, and you have the story of the mounds. An Indian
+village in those old mound building days must have presented a
+picturesque appearance.
+
+Just why the Indians stopped building mounds is not settled; but it is
+noticeable that they were being built in various parts of the country
+about up to the time of the white man's entry. It may be that the coming
+of the stranger, with his different manners, hastened the decay of the
+custom; or perhaps it had practically ceased about that time, as many
+another wave of custom has swept over primitive peoples and left only
+traces behind.
+
+The mounds, with which the forefathers of our Indians dotted our land,
+remain to us as curious and instructive monuments of savage life in
+prehistoric times. No castles or grand cathedrals have come down to us,
+in America, to illustrate the story of the early ages of our own race;
+but we have in the mounds mute, impressive relics of a still earlier
+life upon this soil, by our primitive predecessors. It should be
+considered our duty, as well as our pleasure, to preserve them intact
+for the enlightenment of coming generations of our people.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE AND MANNERS OF THE INDIANS
+
+
+At the time when white men first came to Wisconsin, there were found
+here several widely differing tribes of Indians, and these were often at
+war with one another. The Winnebagoes, an offshoot of the Sioux,
+occupied the valleys of the Wisconsin and the Fox, and the shores of
+Green Bay as far down as Sturgeon Bay. If the theory of the ethnologists
+be correct, that most of the Wisconsin mounds were built by the
+Winnebagoes, then at times they must have dwelt in nearly every corner
+of the State. This is not unlikely, for the centers of Indian population
+were continually shifting, the red men being driven hither and thither
+by encroachments of enemies, religious fancies, or the never-ending
+search for food. We know only that when the whites found them, they were
+holding these two valleys, between Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. A
+broad-faced people, with flat noses, they were in personal appearance,
+habits, and morals the least attractive of all our tribes. Their
+cousins, the wild and dashing Sioux, were still using northwest
+Wisconsin as a hunting ground, and had permanent villages in Minnesota,
+and elsewhere to the west of the Mississippi River. The Chippewas (or
+Ojibways, as the name was originally spelled), the best of our
+Wisconsin aborigines, were scattered through the northern part of the
+State, as far south as the Black River, and perhaps as far eastward as
+the Wolf. East of them were the Menominees (Wild-Rice Eaters), a
+comparatively gentle folk, who gathered great stores of grain from the
+broad fields of wild rice which flourishes in the bayous and marshy
+river bottoms of northeast Wisconsin. The Pottawattomies, with feminine
+cast of countenance, occupied the islands at the mouth of Green Bay, and
+the west shore of Lake Michigan, down into Illinois. The united Sacs (or
+Saukies) and Foxes (Outagamies) were also prominent tribes. When first
+seen by whites, the Sacs and Foxes were weak in numbers, but, being a
+bold and warlike people, they soon grew to importance, and crowded the
+Winnebagoes out of the Fox valley and, later, out of much of the
+Wisconsin valley, becoming in their pride and strength bitter enemies of
+the French.
+
+Scattered elsewhere through the State were some smaller tribes: the
+Mascoutins (Fire Nation), chiefly in the neighborhood of the present
+city of Berlin; the short-limbed Kickapoos, in the Kickapoo valley; and,
+at various periods, bands of Hurons, Illinois, Miamis, and Ottawas, none
+of whom ever played a large part here. The Stockbridges, Oneidas,
+Brothertowns, and Munsees, now numerous in northeast Wisconsin, are
+remnants of New York and Massachusetts tribes who were removed hither by
+the general government in 1822 and later.
+
+No two tribes spoke the same language. In Wisconsin, the Indians were
+divided by language into two great families, the Algonkin and the
+Dakotan. The Sioux and the Winnebagoes belonged, by their similar
+speech, to the Dakotan family, just as the English and the Germans
+belong to the great Teutonic family. All the others were of the Algonkin
+group, just as the French, the Spanish, and the Italians belong to what
+is called the Latin family, and speak languages which have the same
+origin. The Indian history of Wisconsin is the more interesting, because
+here these two great families or groups met, clashed, and intermingled.
+Despite the diversity of tongues, they were, with certain variations,
+much the same sort of people; and for our present purpose, the
+description of one tribe will serve for the description of all.
+
+In size, Indians resemble Europeans; some are shorter than the average
+white man, some taller; the Kickapoos were among the short men. Indians
+have black eyes and coarse, black hair. Most of them wear no beard, but
+as the hairs appear, pluck them out with tweezers of wood or clam shell.
+They have thin lips, high cheek bones, broad faces, and prominent noses;
+the Winnebago's nose is large, but much flattened.
+
+In primitive times, the summer dress of the men was generally a short
+apron made of the well-tanned skin of a wild animal, the women being
+clothed in skins from neck to knees; in winter, both sexes wrapped
+themselves in large fur robes. In some parts of North America,
+especially in the south, where the Indians were more highly developed
+than those in the north, they wove rude cloths of thread spun from
+buffalo hair, or of sinews of animals killed in the chase. It is not
+supposed that there was much of this cloth made in Wisconsin. What
+specimens have been discovered in our mounds, no doubt were obtained
+from the native peddlers, who wandered far and wide carrying the
+peculiar products of several tribes, and exchanging them for other
+goods, or for wampum, the universal currency of the forest. Moccasins of
+deerskin were in general use; also leggins, with the fur turned inward
+or outward according to the weather. Much of their clothing was stained
+red or black or yellow; some was painted in stripes or lace work, and
+some was decorated with pictures of birds and beasts, or with scenes
+which they wished to commemorate. One old writer quaintly speaks of "a
+great skinne painted and drawen and pourtrayed that nothing lacked but
+life." Their dress was also ornamented by beads and porcupine quills; in
+the fringed borders of their leggins and robes were often fastened
+deer's hoofs, the spurs of wild turkeys, or the claws of bears or
+eagles, which rattled as their wearers walked along. Around their necks
+were strings of beads, and their ears and noses were pierced for the
+hanging of various other ornaments. In their hair, the men tied eagle
+feathers, one for each scalp taken.
+
+The "war bonnet," worn by the leading warriors, was a headdress of skins
+and feathers, which trailed down the back and often to the ground, and
+was highly picturesque. Add to this, the general habit of tattooing, or,
+on ceremonial occasions, of fantastically, often hideously, painting the
+face and neck and breast in blue, black, and red, and one can well
+imagine that an Indian village, on a fete day, or at other times of
+popular excitement, presented a striking scene.
+
+Each tribe could be readily distinguished from others, by the shape and
+material of its wigwams or huts. The Chippewas, for instance, lived in
+hemispherical huts, covered with great sheets of birch-bark; the
+Winnebago hut was more of the shape of a sugar loaf, and was covered
+with mats of woven rushes; the Sioux dwelt in cone-shaped huts
+(_tepees_), covered with skins, the poles sticking out at the top. These
+huts were foully kept, and all manner of camp diseases prevailed;
+pulmonary complaints and rheumatism were particularly frequent, and both
+men and women looked old and haggard before they reached middle age.
+
+In the old mound building days, the huts of the village leaders or
+chiefs were no doubt built upon the tops of the mounds, while the common
+people lived on the lower level. On top of a very large, conspicuous
+mound was the council house, where important events were discussed and
+action taken. Every warrior, that is, every man who had taken the scalp
+of an enemy, was permitted to be heard around the council fire; but the
+talking was for the most part done by the privileged class of headmen,
+old men, wise men, and orators.
+
+The political organization of the Indians was weak. The villages were
+little democracies, where one warrior considered himself as good as
+another, except for the respect naturally due to the chiefs or headmen
+of the several clans, or to those who had the reputation of being wise
+and able. The sachem, or peace-chief, whose office was hereditary
+through connection with his mother's family, had but slight authority
+unless his natural gifts commanded respect.
+
+When war broke out, the fighting men ranged themselves as volunteers
+under some popular leader, perhaps a regular chief, or perhaps only a
+common warrior. When the village council decided to do something, any
+man might, if he wished, refuse to obey. It was seldom that an entire
+tribe, consisting of several villages, united in an important
+undertaking; still more unusual was it, for several tribes to unite.
+This was, of course, a weak organization, such as a pure democracy is
+sure to be. The Indian lacked self-control and steadfastness of purpose,
+and the tribes and villages were jealous of one another; so they yielded
+before the whites, who better understood the value of union in the face
+of a common foe. The formidable conspiracies of King Philip, Pontiac,
+and some others were the work of Indians of quite unusual ability in
+the art of organization; but the leaders could find few others equal to
+their skill, and the uprisings were shortlived.
+
+The Indian's strength as a fighter lay in his capacity for stratagem, in
+his ability to thread the tangled forest as silently and easily as the
+plain, and in his habit of making rapid, unexpected sallies for robbery
+and murder, and then gliding back into the dark and almost impenetrable
+forest. He soon tired of long military operations, and, when hard
+pressed, was apt to yield to the white men who were often inferior in
+numbers, but who soon learned to adopt the aborigine's skulking method
+of warfare.
+
+Lord of his own wigwam, and tyrannical over his squaws, the Indian was
+kind and hospitable to unsuspected strangers, yet merciless to a
+captive. Nevertheless, prisoners were often snatched from the stake, or
+the hands of a cruel captor, to be adopted into the family of the
+rescuer, taking the place of some one killed by the enemy. The red man
+was improvident, given to gambling, and, despite the popular notion, was
+a jolly, easy-going sort of fellow around his own fire; but in council,
+and when among strangers, he was dignified and reserved, too proud to
+exhibit curiosity or emotion. He indulged in a style of oratory which
+abounded in metaphors drawn from his observations of nature. He was
+superstitious, peopling the elements with good and bad spirits; and was
+much influenced by the medicine men, who were half physicians and half
+priests, and who commanded long fastings, penances, and sacrifices, with
+curious dances, and various forms of necromancy.
+
+The Indian made tools and implements which were well adapted to his
+purpose; the boats which he fashioned of skins, of birch-bark, or of
+hollowed trunks of trees have not been surpassed. He was remarkably
+quick in learning the use of firearms, and soon equaled the best white
+hunters as a marksman. A rude sense of honor was developed within him;
+he had a nice perception of what was proper to do; he knew how to bend
+his own will to the force of custom, thus he overcame to some extent the
+natural evils of democracy. He understood the arts of politeness when he
+chose to practice them. He could plan admirably, and often displayed
+much skill in strategy; his reasoning was good. He knew the value of
+form and color, as we can see in his rock-carvings, in his rude
+paintings, in the decorations on his leather, and in his often graceful
+body-markings. In short, he was less of a savage than we are in the
+habit of thinking him; he was barbarous from choice, because he had a
+wild, untrammeled nature and saw little in civilized ideas to attract
+him. This is why, with his polite manner, he always seemed to be
+yielding to missionary efforts, yet perhaps never became thoroughly
+converted to Christianity.
+
+When first discovered by white men, Wisconsin Indians were using rude
+pottery of their own make. Their arrowheads and spearheads, axes,
+knives, and other tools and weapons were of copper obtained from Lake
+Superior mines, or of stone suitable for the purpose. They smoked
+tobacco in pipes wrought in curious shapes from a soft kind of stone
+found in Minnesota, and ornaments and charms were also frequently made
+from this so-called "pipestone." Game they killed with arrows or
+sling-shots, and in war used these, as well as stone spears and hatchets
+and stone-weighted clubs. The bulk of their food they obtained by
+hunting, fishing, and cultivating the soil, although at times they were
+forced to resort to the usually plentiful supply of fruits, nuts, and
+edible roots. Indian corn was the principal crop. Beans were sown in the
+same hills, while sometimes between the rows were planted several
+varieties of pumpkins, water-melons, and sunflowers. Tobacco and sweet
+potatoes were grown by some tribes, but not in Wisconsin. In our State,
+wild rice (or oats) furnished a good substitute for corn, and was
+similarly cooked.
+
+The whites wrought a serious change in the life and manners of the
+Indians. They introduced firearms among the savages, and induced them to
+become hunters, and to wander far and wide for fur bearing animals, the
+pelts of which were exchanged for European cloths, glass beads, iron
+kettles, hatchets, spears, and guns and powder. Thus the Indian soon
+lost the old arts of making their own clothing from skins, kettles from
+clay, weapons from stone and copper, and wampum (beads used both for
+ornament and money) from clam shells. It did not take them long to
+discover that their labor was more productive when they hunted, and
+purchased what they wanted from the white traders, than when they made
+their own rude implements and utensils and raised crops. But the result
+was bad, for thereby they ceased to be self-sustaining; their very
+existence became dependent on the fur traders, who introduced among them
+many vices, not least of which was a love for the intoxicating liquors
+in which the traders dealt.
+
+The Indian, at best, was never a lovable creature. He was dirty,
+improvident, brutal; he was, as compared with a European, mentally and
+morally but an undeveloped man. He is to-day, as we find him upon the
+reservations, pretty much the same as when found by the French over two
+and a half centuries ago, except that to his original vices he has added
+some of the worst vices of the white man. The story of the Indian is
+practically the story of the fur trade, and that is the story of
+Wisconsin before it became a Territory.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF WISCONSIN
+
+
+In the year 1608, the daring French explorer, Samuel de Champlain,
+founded a settlement on the steep cliff of Quebec, and thus laid the
+foundations for the great colony of New France. This colony, in the
+course of a century and a half, grew to embrace all of what we now call
+Canada and the entire basin of the Mississippi River.
+
+[Illustration: CHAMPLAIN]
+
+New France grew slowly. This was largely owing to the opposition of the
+fierce Iroquois Indians of New York, whom Champlain had greatly angered.
+Another reason was the changing moods of the Algonkin Indians of Canada
+and the Middle West; and still another, the enormous difficulties of
+travel through the vast forests and along streams frequently strewn with
+rapids. Champlain was made governor of New France, and varied his duties
+by taking long and painful journeys into the wilderness, thus setting
+the fashion of extensive exploration. There were two very good reasons
+for encouraging explorers: in the first place, New France was then
+largely controlled by a company of merchants, called the Hundred
+Associates, who desired to push the fur trade far and wide among the
+savage tribes; in the second place, the French Catholic missionary
+priests were anxious to reach the Indians, to convert them to the
+Christian religion. Thus it came about that, during the twenty-five
+years when the energetic and enterprising Champlain was governor, there
+was little talked or thought about in New France but exploration, the
+fur trade, and the missions to the Indians.
+
+In order to carry out his schemes for opening new fields to the traders
+and missionaries, Champlain found it necessary to train young men to
+this work. Only those were selected for the task who had a fair
+education, and were healthy, strong, well-formed, and brave. They were,
+often when mere boys, sent far up into the country to live among the
+Indian tribes, to be adopted by them, to learn their habits and
+languages, and to harden themselves to the rough life and rude diet of
+the dusky dwellers in the forest. It took several years of this
+practice, with patient suffering, for a youth to become an expert who
+could be trusted to undergo any hardship or daring task that might be
+asked of him. It was one of these forest-bred interpreters who became
+the first white discoverer of Wisconsin.
+
+In those early days of New France, most of its people were from the west
+and northwest provinces of France. The crews of the ships which engaged
+in the trade to New France were nearly all from the ports of Rouen,
+Honfleur, Fecamp, Cherbourg, Havre, Dieppe, and Caen; in these
+north-coast cities lived the greater part of the Hundred Associates, and
+from their vicinity came nearly all of the Jesuit missionaries and the
+young men who were trained as interpreters.
+
+Jean Nicolet was born in or near Cherbourg, and was the son of a mail
+carrier. He was about twenty years of age when, in 1618, he arrived in
+Quebec; "and forasmuch as," says an old Jesuit writer of that time, "his
+nature and excellent memory inspired good hopes of him, he was sent to
+winter with the Island Algonkins, in order to learn their language. He
+tarried with them two years, alone of the French, and always joined the
+Barbarians in their excursions and journeys, undergoing such fatigues as
+none but eyewitnesses can conceive; he often passed seven or eight days
+without food, and once, full seven weeks with no other nourishment than
+a little bark from the trees." These "Island Algonkins" lived on
+Allumettes Island in the Ottawa River, nearly three hundred miles from
+Quebec; their language was the principal one then used by the Indians in
+the country on the north bank of the St. Lawrence and in the great
+valley of the Ottawa.
+
+Although the life was so hard that few white men could endure it,
+Nicolet, like most of the other interpreters, learned to enjoy it; and,
+passing from one tribe to another, in his search for new languages and
+experiences, he remained among his forest friends for eight or nine
+years. He had been with the Algonkins for three or four years when he
+went, at the head of four hundred of them, into the Iroquois country,
+and made a treaty of peace with this savage foe, whom the Algonkins
+always greatly feared. It is related that thence he went to dwell with
+the Nipissing Indians, living about Lake Nipissing, "where he passed
+for one of that nation, taking part in the very frequent councils of
+those tribes, having his own separate cabin and household, and fishing
+and trading for himself."
+
+Possibly Nicolet might have been recalled from the woods before this,
+but, between 1629 and 1632, Canada was in the hands of the British; and
+he remained among the Indians, inspiring them to hostility against the
+strangers. In 1632, when the country was released to France, Champlain
+and his fellow-officers returned to Quebec, and Nicolet was summoned
+thither, and was employed as clerk and interpreter by the Hundred
+Associates.
+
+Champlain was eager to resume his explorations. He had once been up the
+great Ottawa River, and thence had crossed over to Lake Huron, and had
+become keenly interested in what were then termed the "upper waters." Of
+Lakes Ontario and Erie he knew nothing, for the dreaded Iroquois had
+prevented the French from going that way; and Lakes Superior and
+Michigan were, as yet, undiscovered by whites. Vague rumors of these
+unknown regions had been brought to Quebec by bands of strange savages
+who had found their way down to the French settlements in search of
+European goods in exchange for furs.
+
+Among the many queer stories brought by these fierce, painted barbarians
+was one which told of a certain "Tribe of the Sea" dwelling far away on
+the western banks of the "upper waters," a people who had come out of
+the West, no man knew whence. In those early days, Europeans still clung
+to the notion which Columbus had always held, that America was but an
+eastern projection of Asia. This is the reason that our savages were
+called Indians, for the discoverers of America thought they had merely
+reached an outlying portion of India; they had no idea that this was a
+great and new continent. Governor Champlain, and after him Governor
+Frontenac, and the great explorer La Salle, all supposed that they could
+reach India and China, already known to travelers to the east, by
+persistently going westward. When, therefore, Champlain heard of these
+strange Men of the Sea, he at once declared they must be the long-sought
+Chinese. He engaged Nicolet, in whom he had great confidence, to go out
+and find them, wherever they were, make a treaty of peace with them, and
+secure their trade.
+
+Upon the first day of July, 1634, Nicolet left Quebec, a passenger in
+the second of two fleets of canoes containing Indians from the Ottawa
+valley, who had come down to the white settlements to trade. Among his
+fellow passengers were three adventurous Jesuit missionaries, who were
+on their way to the country of the Huron tribe, east of Lake Huron.
+Leaving the priests at Allumettes Island, he continued up the Ottawa,
+then crossed over to Lake Nipissing, visited old friends among the
+Indians there, and descended French Creek, which flows from Lake
+Nipissing into Georgian Bay, a northeastern arm of Lake Huron. On the
+shores of the great lake, he engaged seven Hurons to paddle his long
+birch-bark canoe and guide him to the mysterious "Tribe of the Sea."
+
+Slowly they felt their way along the northern shores of Lake Huron,
+where the pine forests sweep majestically down to the water's edge, or
+crown the bold cliffs, while southward the green waters of the inland
+sea stretch away to the horizon. Storms too severe for their frail craft
+frequently detained them on the shore, and daily they sought food in the
+forest. The savage crew, tiring of exertion, and overcome by
+superstitious fears, would fain have abandoned the voyage; but the
+strong, energetic master bore down all opposition. At last they reached
+the outlet of Lake Superior, the forest-girt Strait of St. Mary, and
+paddled up as far as the falls, the Sault Ste. Marie, as it came to be
+called by the Jesuit missionaries. Here there was a large village of
+Algonkins, where the explorer tarried, refreshing his crew and gathering
+information concerning the "Tribe of the Sea." The explorers do not
+appear to have visited Lake Superior; but, bolder than before, they set
+forth to the southwest, and passing gayly through the island-dotted
+Straits of Mackinac, now one of the greatest of the world's highways,
+were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Michigan, of which Nicolet was
+probably the first white discoverer.
+
+Clinging still to the northern shore, camping in the dense woods at
+night or when threatened by storm, Nicolet rounded far-stretching Point
+Detour and landed upon the shores of Bay de Noquet, a northern arm of
+Green Bay. Another Algonkin tribe dwelt here, with whom the persistent
+explorer smoked the pipe of peace, and they gave him further news of the
+people he sought. Next he stopped at the mouth of the Menominee River,
+now the northeast boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan, where the
+Menominee tribe lived. Another council was held, more tobacco was
+smoked, and one of Nicolet's Huron companions was sent forward to notify
+the Winnebagoes at the mouth of the Fox River that the great white chief
+was approaching; for the uncouth Winnebagoes were the far-famed "Tribe
+of the Sea" whom Nicolet had traveled so far to find.
+
+The manner of their obtaining this name, which had so misled Champlain,
+is curious. The word was originally "ouinepeg," or "ouinepego," and both
+Winnipeg and Winnebago are derived from it. Now "ouinepeg" was an
+Algonkin term meaning "men of (or from) the fetid (or bad-smelling)
+water." Possibly the tribe, far back in their history, once dwelt by a
+strong-smelling sulphur spring. The French, in their eagerness to find
+China, fancied that the fetid water must necessarily be salt water,
+hence the Western Ocean or "China Sea;" that is why they called the
+Winnebagoes the "Tribe of the Sea," and jumped at the conclusion that
+they were Chinese.
+
+By this time, Nicolet had his doubts about meeting Chinese at Green Bay.
+As, however, he had brought with him "a grand robe of China damask, all
+strewn with flowers, and birds of many colors," such as Chinese
+mandarins are supposed to wear, he put it on; and when he landed on the
+shore of Fox River, where is now the city of Green Bay, strode forward
+into the group of waiting, skin-clad savages, discharging the pistols
+which he held in either hand. Women and children fled in terror to the
+wigwams; and the warriors fell down and worshiped this Manitou (or
+spirit) who carried with him thunder and lightning.
+
+"The news of his coming," says the old Jesuit chronicler, "quickly
+spread to the places round about, and there assembled four or five
+thousand men. Each of the Chief men made a feast for him, and at one of
+these banquets they served at least six-score Beavers." There was a
+great deal of oratory at these feasts, with the exchange of belts of
+wampum, and the smoking of pipes of peace, and no end of assurances on
+the part of the red men that they were glad to become the friends of New
+France and to keep the peace with the great French father at Paris.
+
+Leaving his new friends at Green Bay, the explorer ascended the Fox
+River as far as the Mascoutins, who had a village upon a prairie ridge,
+near where Berlin now lies. He made a similar treaty with this people,
+and learned of the Wisconsin River which flows into the Mississippi, but
+did not go to seek it. He then walked overland to the tribe of the
+Illinois, probably returning to Quebec, in 1635, by way of Lake
+Michigan. Nicolet had proceeded over nearly two thousand five hundred
+miles of lake, river, forest, and prairie; had been subjected to a
+thousand dangers from man and beast, as well as from fierce rapids and
+stormtossed waters; had made treaties with several heretofore unknown
+tribes, and had widely extended the boundaries of New France.
+
+For various reasons, it was nearly thirty years before another visit was
+made by white men to Wisconsin. Nicolet himself soon settled down at the
+new town of Three Rivers, on the shores of the St. Lawrence, between
+Quebec and Montreal, as the agent and interpreter there of the great fur
+trade company. He was a very useful man both to the company and to the
+missionaries; for he had great influence over the Indians, who loved him
+sincerely, and he always exercised this influence for the good of the
+colony and of religion. He was drowned in the month of October, 1642,
+while on his way to release a poor savage prisoner who was being
+maltreated by Indians in the neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+RADISSON AND GROSEILLIERS
+
+
+In the preceding chapter, the story was told how, in the year 1634, only
+fourteen years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Jean Nicolet
+was sent by Governor Champlain, of Quebec, all the way out to Wisconsin,
+to make friends with our Indians, and to induce them to trade at the
+French villages on the lower St. Lawrence River. Whether any of them
+did, as a result of this visit, go down to see the palefaces at Three
+Rivers or Quebec, and carry furs to exchange for European beads,
+hatchets, guns, and iron kettles, we do not know; there is no record of
+their having done so, neither are we aware that any white man soon
+followed Nicolet to Wisconsin.
+
+Fur traders were in the habit of wandering far into the woods, and
+meeting strange tribes of Indians; sometimes they would not return to
+Quebec until after years of absence, and then would bring with them many
+canoe-loads of skins. The fur trade was under the control of the Company
+of the Hundred Associates. The laws of New France declared that there
+could be no traffic with the Indians, except what this great company
+approved; for they had bought from the king of France the right to do
+all the trading and make all the profits, and New France really existed
+only to make money for these rich Associates. The fur trade laws
+provided severe punishments for those violating them; nevertheless,
+although the population was small, and everybody knew everybody else in
+the whole country, there were many brave, daring men who traveled
+through the deep forests, traded with the Indians on their own account,
+and paid no license fees to the Associates. These men, whom an
+oppressive monopoly could not keep down, were the most venturesome
+explorers in all this vast region; they were known as _coureurs des
+bois_, or "wood rangers." La Salle, Duluth, Perrot, and many other early
+Western explorers, were, at times in their career, _coureurs des bois_.
+
+Now, as a _coureur de bois_ was an outlaw, because he wandered and
+traded without a license, naturally he was not in the habit of telling
+where he had been or what he had seen; then again, though brave men, few
+of these outlaws were educated, hence they seldom wrote journals of
+their travels. For these reasons, we are often obliged to depend on
+chance references to them, in the writings of others, and to patch up
+our evidence as to their movements, out of many stray fragments of
+information.
+
+So far as we at present know, there were no white men in Wisconsin
+during the twenty years following the coming of Nicolet. It is uncertain
+when the next white men came upon our soil, but there is good reason to
+believe that it was in the autumn of 1654. These men were Pierre-Esprit
+Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers. Like so many others in New
+France, they were from the northern part of old France, and came to
+Canada while yet lads, Groseilliers in 1641, and Radisson ten years
+later. In 1653, Groseilliers married a sister of Radisson, and after
+that the two men became inseparable companions in their long and
+romantic wanderings.
+
+They experienced a number of thrilling adventures with Indians, both as
+traders to the forest camps of savages friendly to New France, and as
+prisoners in the hands of the French-hating Iroquois of New York.
+Nevertheless they had grown accustomed to the hard, perilous life of the
+wilderness, and were thoroughly in love with it. It was, as near as we
+can ascertain, early in the month of August, 1654, when these two
+adventurers started out "to discover the great lakes that they heard the
+wild men speak of." They followed, most of the way, in the footsteps of
+Nicolet, up the Ottawa River, and by the way of Lake Nipissing and
+French River to Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. This had now become a
+familiar route to the fur traders and Jesuit missionaries; but of the
+country west of the eastern shore of Lake Huron scarcely anything was
+yet known, except what vague and often fanciful reports of it were
+brought by the savages.
+
+Like Nicolet, our two adventurous explorers traveled by canoes, with
+Indians to do the paddling. Passing between the Manitoulin Islands, in
+the northern waters of Lake Huron, they visited and traded with the
+Huron Indians there, thence proceeded through the Straits of Mackinac,
+and across to the peninsula of Door county, which separates Green Bay
+from Lake Michigan. Here they spent the winter with the Pottawattomies;
+they held great feasts with them, at which dogs and beavers, boiled in
+kettles into a sort of thick soup, were the greatest delicacies; they
+smoked pipes of peace with them, at wordy councils which often lasted
+through several days; they hunted and fished with them, in a spirit of
+good fellowship; and, in general, they shared the fortunes of their
+forest friends, whether feasting or starving, after the manner of all
+these early French explorers and fur traders. In the curious journal
+afterward written in wretched but picturesque English by Radisson, he
+says, "We weare every where much made of; neither wanted victualls, for
+all the different nations that we mett conducted us & furnished us with
+all necessaries."
+
+Springtime (1655) came at last, and the two traders proceeded merrily up
+the Fox River, still in the wake of Nicolet, past the sites of the
+present cities of Green Bay, De Pere, Kaukauna, Appleton, Neenah, and
+Menasha. They frequently had to carry their boats around the rapids and
+waterfalls, but after passing Doty's Island they had a smooth highway.
+Paddling through Lake Winnebago, and past the site of Oshkosh, then an
+Indian village, they pushed on through the winding reaches of the Upper
+Fox, and at last came to a broad prairie near Berlin, whereon was
+stationed the village of the Mascoutins, or Fire Nation.
+
+The Mascoutins treated the strangers, as they had Nicolet, with great
+kindness. With this village as headquarters, the explorers made frequent
+expeditions, "anxious to be knowne with the remotest people." Radisson
+quaintly writes, "We ware 4 moneths in our voyage without doeing any
+thing but goe from river to river." The explorers cared little, we may
+suppose, except to have a good time and make a profitable trade with the
+Indians; they do not appear to have made any map. Writing about their
+travels, many years after, Radisson says, in one place, that they went
+into a "great river" which flowed southward, and journeyed to a land of
+continual warmth, finer than Italy, where he heard the Indians describe
+certain white men living to the south, who might be Spaniards. It is
+supposed by many historians that Radisson meant that he was on the
+Mississippi; if this supposition be true, then the two explorers
+undoubtedly found the great river by going up the Fox from the Mascoutin
+village, carrying their canoe over the mile and a half of intervening
+marsh at Portage, and gliding down the Wisconsin to its junction with
+the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien. This is important, for the credit
+of discovering the Upper Mississippi is usually given to Louis Joliet
+and Father Marquette, who took this very course in 1673, eighteen years
+later. But the whole question of what "great river" Radisson meant to
+describe is so involved in doubt, that very likely we shall never know
+the truth about it.
+
+Leaving their Mascoutin friends at last, apparently in the autumn of
+1655, the two adventurers returned down the Fox River to Green Bay;
+thence on to the large villages of Indians which clustered around the
+Sault Ste. Marie. Received there, as elsewhere, with much feasting and
+good will, Radisson and Groseilliers conducted trade with their hosts,
+and explored a long stretch of the southern coast of Lake Superior, but
+do not appear to have ventured so far as the Pictured Rocks. They also
+made long expeditions into the country, on snowshoes, to visit and trade
+with other tribes in the Michigan Peninsula and northern Wisconsin, and
+even as far off as Hudson Bay, at one time being accompanied by a
+hundred and fifty Indian hunters.
+
+In this wild fashion they spent the winter of 1655-56, and finally
+reached Quebec in August, 1656. They had been absent from home for two
+years, and had experienced many singular adventures. It happened that
+during their absence the Iroquois had succeeded in keeping the Hurons
+and other friendly Indians from visiting Quebec, so that the fur trade,
+upon which New France depended, was now quite ruined; for this reason
+the arrival of Radisson and Groseilliers, with a great store of furs
+from far-away Wisconsin and Lake Superior, was hailed as a joyful event,
+and, despite their having departed without a license, they were made
+welcome at Quebec, the cannons being fired and the people flocking on
+the beach to meet them.
+
+Men who love adventure cannot be kept out of it long, whatever the risk.
+Three years later, in the summer of 1659, Radisson and Groseilliers
+again set off for Lake Superior, up the old Ottawa and Georgian Bay
+routes. This time they were specially bidden by the king's officers at
+Quebec not to go, so that they were obliged to slip off secretly, and
+join a fleet of Indian canoes returning home after the annual trade at
+the French settlements.
+
+At Sault Ste. Marie they spent a short time with their savage friends,
+and then paddled westward, along the southern shore of Lake Superior. In
+their company were several Huron and Ottawa Indians, who had recently
+been compelled to flee to Wisconsin because of Iroquois raids, which now
+extended as far west as Michigan. The travelers were obliged to carry
+their boats across Keweenaw Point, and at last found their way to
+Chequamegon Bay, a noble sheet of water, hemmed in by the beautiful
+Apostle Islands, and to-day a popular summer resort.
+
+Not far to the west of where Ashland now lies, somewhere near
+Whittlesey's Creek, they built for themselves a rude hut, or fort, of
+logs. The place was a small point of land jutting out into the water, a
+triangle, Radisson describes it, with water on two sides and land at the
+base. The land side of the triangle was guarded with a palisade of
+pointed stakes, and to prevent surprises by night, for Indians were
+always prowling about looking for plunder, the traders surrounded their
+house with boughs of trees piled one upon the other, intertwined with a
+long cord hung with little bells.
+
+After staying at their fort for a few weeks, they managed to _cache_
+(secretly bury) the greater part of their goods; and then set out on a
+hunt with their Huron neighbors upon the headwaters of the Chippewa
+River. Unusually severe weather set in, and a famine ensued, for there
+was no game to kill, and the snow was so deep that they could hardly
+travel.
+
+In the following spring (1660) the Frenchmen went with their Hurons on a
+long search for provisions, getting as far west as the Sioux camps in
+northern Minnesota. Then they returned to Chequamegon Bay, where they
+built another little fort, and from which they visited some Indians on
+the northwest shore of Lake Superior. In August they returned home,
+again in a fleet of Huron canoes going down to Montreal to trade. But
+this time the officers of the colony punished them for being _coureurs
+des bois_, and confiscated most of their valuable furs, which meant the
+loss of nearly all the property they possessed.
+
+Angered at this treatment, Groseilliers went to Paris to seek justice
+from the king; but, obtaining none, he and Radisson offered their
+services to the English, whom they told of Hudson Bay and its great
+furtrading possibilities. It took several years, however, for
+negotiations to be completed; and it was while in London that Radisson,
+for the information of the English king, wrote his now famous journal of
+explorations in the Lake Superior country. Finally, after some
+unfortunate voyages, our explorers, in 1669, reached Hudson Bay in an
+English ship; and, as a result, there was formed in England the great
+Hudson Bay Company, which from that day to this has controlled the rich
+fur trade of those northern waters.
+
+In later years (1678), we find Radisson and Groseilliers, who had been
+pardoned by Louis XIV., king of France, for their desertion to the
+English, back again in Paris. But after a time, suspicions as to their
+loyalty spread abroad, and they again joined the English, to whom they
+were useful in attracting Indian trade away from the French to the
+Hudson Bay Company. They died at last, in London, considered by the
+French as traitors to their own country. They will, however, live in
+history as daring explorers, who opened to the fur trade the country now
+known as Wisconsin, the waters of Lake Superior, and the vast region of
+Hudson Bay.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE
+
+
+In history there are two "discoveries of the Mississippi"; the lower
+waters were discovered by the Spanish explorer, De Soto (April, 1541);
+and the upper waters, by Frenchmen from Canada or New France. Nothing
+came of De Soto's discovery for over a hundred years, for the Spaniards
+had no love for exploration that gave no promise of mines of precious
+metals, and it is to the French that we give chief credit for finding
+the Mississippi; for their discovery immediately led the way to a
+general knowledge of the geography and the savages of the great valley,
+and to settlements there by whites.
+
+It is seldom safe to say who was the first man to discover anything, be
+it in geography, in science, or in the arts; generally, we can tell only
+who it was that made the first record of the discovery. Now it is quite
+possible that Frenchmen may have wandered into the Upper Mississippi
+valley before Radisson and Groseilliers appeared in Wisconsin (1654);
+but, if they did, we do not know of it. It is still a matter of dispute
+whether the "great river" described in Radisson's journal was the
+Mississippi; some writers think that it was, and that to him and to
+Groseilliers belongs the honor of the first-recorded discovery. Then,
+again, there are some who think that in 1670 the famous fur trader La
+Salle was upon the Mississippi; but that is a mere guess, and honors
+cannot be awarded upon guesswork. We do know, however, that in 1673
+Joliet and Marquette set out for the very purpose of finding the
+Mississippi, and succeeded; and that upon their return they wrote
+reports of their trip and made maps of the country. Having thus opened
+the door, as it were, white men were thereafter frequent travelers on
+the broad waterway. Hence it is idle to discuss possible previous
+visits; to Joliet and Marquette are due the credit of regular,
+premeditated discovery.
+
+Louis Joliet, who led this celebrated expedition, was at the time but
+twenty-eight years old. He was born in Quebec, had been educated at the
+Jesuit college there, and early in life became a fur trader. He learned
+several Indian languages, and made numerous long journeys into the
+wilderness, and, like Jean Nicolet before him, was regarded by the
+officers and the missionaries at Quebec as a man well fitted for the
+life of an explorer. In 1671 he went with Saint Lusson, one of the
+officials of New France, to Sault Ste. Marie. St. Lusson made peace with
+the Indians of the Northwest, and, in the name of the king of France,
+took possession of all the country bordering on the upper Great Lakes.
+
+Upon returning to Quebec, Joliet met the famous Count Frontenac, but
+recently arrived from Paris, where he had been appointed as governor of
+New France. Frontenac was curious to know more about the Mississippi
+River, especially whether it flowed into the Pacific Ocean, or the
+"Southern Sea" as it was then called in Europe. In looking about for a
+man to head an expedition to the great river, he could hear of no one
+better prepared for such service than Joliet.
+
+In those early days, no exploring party was complete without a priest;
+the conversion of the savages to Christianity was quite as important, in
+the eyes of the king, as the development of the fur trade. Father
+Jacques Marquette, then thirty-six years of age, was the Jesuit
+missionary at Point St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac. When Joliet
+reached that outpost, after a long and weary canoe voyage up the now
+familiar Ottawa River and Georgian Bay route, he delivered orders to
+Marquette to join his party. Joliet was a favorite with his old
+instructors, the Jesuits, so that the two young men were well pleased
+with being united upon this project, Joliet to attend to the worldly
+affairs of the expedition, and Marquette to the religious. Both of them
+had had long training in the hard life of the wilderness, and
+understood Indian character and habits as well as any men in New France.
+
+It was upon the 17th of May, 1673, that the two explorers, in high
+spirits, set forth from Marquette's little mission at Point Ignace. Five
+French boatmen paddled their two canoes, and did most of the heavy work
+of the journey, carrying the boats and cargoes around rapids, or along
+portage trails from one river to another. Marquette says in his journal:
+"Our joy at being chosen for this expedition roused our courage, and
+sweetened the labor of paddling from morning to night."
+
+The course they took was, no doubt, that followed through nearly two
+hundred years thereafter by persons journeying in canoes from Mackinac
+to Green Bay. They paddled along the northern shores of Lake Michigan
+and Green Bay, until they could cross over through the stormy water
+known as "Death's Door," to the islands beyond the Door county
+peninsula; and then crept down the east shore of Green Bay, under the
+lee of the high banks.
+
+They seem to have made good time, for on the 7th of June they reached
+the village of the Mascoutins, on the south shore of Fox River, near
+where Berlin now is, the same village, it will be remembered, where
+Nicolet, Radisson, and Allouez had already been entertained. We do not
+know upon what day our two explorers had reached De Pere, where the
+Jesuit mission was established, but they probably stayed among their
+friends there for some days, before going up the Fox.
+
+In his journal, the good missionary described nearly everything he saw,
+with much detail. The Menominee Indians interested him greatly; he calls
+them "the People of the Wild Oats," and tells how they gather the grain
+of these wild oats (or wild rice), by "shaking the ears, on their right
+and left, into the canoe as they advance" through the swamps. Then they
+take the grain to the land, strip it of much of the chaff, and "dry it
+in the smoke on a wooden lattice, under which they keep up a small fire
+for several days. When the oats are well dried, they put them in a skin
+of the form of a bag, which is then forced into a hole made on purpose
+in the ground; then they tread it out, so long and so well, that the
+grain being freed from the chaff is easily winnowed; after which they
+reduce it to meal." There are still to be seen, on the shores of Lake
+Koshkonong, and several other Wisconsin lakes and rivers, the shallow,
+bowl-like holes used by the Indians in threshing this grain, as
+described by Marquette two and a quarter centuries ago.
+
+The Mascoutin village also claims much attention in the missionary's
+diary. The Mascoutins themselves are rude, he says; so also are the
+Kickapoos, many of whom live with them. At this village are also many
+Miami Indians, who had fled from their homes in Indiana and Ohio,
+through fear of the fierce Iroquois of New York. These Miamis are,
+Marquette tells us, superior to the Wisconsin Indians, being "more
+civil, liberal, and better made; they wear two long earlocks, which give
+them a good appearance," and are brave, docile, and devout, listening
+carefully to the missionaries who have visited them. The Father also
+describes the site of the village: "I felt no little pleasure in
+beholding the position of this town; the view is beautiful and very
+picturesque, for from the eminence on which it is perched, the eye
+discovers on every side prairies spreading away beyond its reach,
+interspersed with thickets or groves of lofty trees. The soil is very
+good, producing much corn; the Indians gather also quantities of plums
+and grapes, from which good wine could be made, if they chose. As bark
+for cabins is rare in this country, they use rushes, which serve them
+for walls and roof, but which are no great shelter against the wind, and
+still less against the rain when it falls in torrents. The advantage of
+this kind of cabins is that they can roll them up, and carry them easily
+where they like in hunting-time."
+
+Above the Mascoutin village, the Fox begins to narrow, being hemmed in,
+and often choked, by broad swamps of reeds and wild oats. The canoe
+traveler who does not know the channel, is sometimes in danger of
+missing it, and getting entangled in the maze of bayous. Two Miami
+guides were therefore obtained from their hosts, and on the 10th of June
+the travelers set off for the southwest, "in the sight of a great crowd,
+who could not wonder enough to see seven Frenchmen alone in two canoes,
+dare to undertake so strange and so hazardous an expedition." The guides
+safely conducted them to the place where is now situated the city of
+Portage, helped them over the swampy plain of a mile and a half in
+width, and, after seeing them embarked upon the broad waters of the
+Wisconsin River, left them "alone in an unknown country, in the hands of
+Providence."
+
+The broad valley of the Wisconsin presents a far different appearance
+from that of the peacefully flowing Upper Fox, with its outlying marshes
+of reeds, and its numerous lakes. The Wisconsin, or Meskousing, as
+Marquette writes it, is flanked by ranges of bold, heavily wooded
+bluffs, which are furrowed with romantic ravines, while the channel is,
+at low water, studded with islands and sand bars, and in times of flood
+spreads to a great width. Marquette himself describes it thus: "It is
+very broad, with a sandy bottom, forming many shallows, which render
+navigation very difficult. It is full of vine-clad islets. On the banks
+appear fertile lands diversified with wood, prairie, and hill. Here you
+find oaks, walnut, whitewood, and another kind of tree with branches
+armed with long thorns. We saw no small game or fish, but deer and moose
+in considerable numbers." About ninety miles below Portage, they thought
+that they discovered an iron mine.
+
+At last, on the 17th of June, they swiftly glided through the
+picturesque delta of the Wisconsin, near Prairie du Chien, and found
+themselves upon the Mississippi, grateful that after so long and
+tiresome a journey they had found the object of their search. Joliet's
+instructions were, however, to ascertain whether the great stream flowed
+into the "Southern Sea"; so they journeyed as far down as the mouth of
+the Arkansas. There they gathered information from the Indians which
+led them to believe that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; thus
+the old riddle of the supposed waterway through the heart of the North
+American continent was left unsolved.
+
+In returning, Joliet and Marquette came up the Illinois River, and
+reached Lake Michigan by portaging over to the Chicago River. They were
+back at the Jesuit mission at De Pere, in September. Marquette having
+fallen ill, Joliet was obliged to return to Quebec alone, leaving the
+missionary to spend the winter with his Wisconsin friends. When almost
+within sight of the French settlement at Montreal, at the mouth of the
+Ottawa River, poor Joliet lost all his papers in the dangerous Lachine
+rapids, and could make only a verbal report to the government. He later
+prepared a map of his route, with great care, and forwarded that to
+France; it is one of the best maps of the interior parts of North
+America made in the seventeenth century. Joliet, as the leader of the
+expedition, had hoped to receive, either in office or lands, substantial
+rewards for his great discoveries; but there were now new officials at
+Quebec, with whom he had little influence, and the recompense of this
+brave spirit was small. Others reaped what advantages there were in the
+opening of the Mississippi valley to the fur trade.
+
+On the other hand, the unworldly priest who was his friend and
+companion, and who neither desired nor needed special recognition for
+what he had done, has, all unconsciously, won most of the glory of this
+brilliant enterprise. Under the rules of the Jesuit order, each
+missionary in New France was obliged to forward to his superior at
+Quebec, once each year, a written journal of his doings. Marquette
+prepared his report at leisure during the winter, while at De Pere, and
+in the spring sent it down to Quebec, by an Indian who was going thither
+to trade with the whites. Accompanying it was a crudely drawn but fairly
+accurate map of the Mississippi basin. The journal and map arrived
+safely, but for some reason neither was then printed; indeed, they
+remained almost unknown to the world for a hundred and seventy-nine
+years, being at last published in 1852. Marquette never learned the fate
+of either Joliet's elaborate records or his own simple story of the
+expedition, for he died in May, 1675, on the eastern shore of Lake
+Michigan, worn out by disease and by excessive labors in behalf of the
+Indians.
+
+By the time Marquette's journal was finally published, Joliet had been
+well-nigh forgotten; and to Marquette, because his journal was the only
+one printed, is given the chief credit in nearly every American history.
+The legislature of Wisconsin has placed a beautiful marble statue of the
+gentle Marquette, as the discoverer of the Mississippi, in the capitol
+in Washington; whereas the name of his sturdy chief is perpetuated only
+in the principal prison city of Illinois.
+
+
+
+
+THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES
+
+
+In planting settlements in Canada (or New France, as it was then
+called), the French had two principal objects in view: the fur trade
+with the Indians, and the conversion of these Indians to the Christian
+religion. Roman Catholic missionaries from France therefore accompanied
+the first settlers, and were always prominent in the affairs of the
+colony. Governor Champlain brought to Quebec some missionaries of the
+Recollect order, a branch of the Franciscans; but after a few years, the
+difficulties of their task proved so great that the Recollects asked the
+Jesuits, a much stronger order, to come over and help them. It was not
+long before nearly all the Franciscans returned home, and the Jesuits
+were practically the only missionaries in New France.
+
+During the first few years, these missionaries spent their winters in
+Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went out to meet
+the Indians in their summer camps. It was soon found, however, that
+greater persistence was needed; and after that, instead of returning
+home in the autumn, they followed the savages upon their winter hunts.
+In order to convert the Indians, the missionaries studied their many
+languages, their habits, and their manner of thought, lived as they
+lived, and with them often suffered untold misery, for life in a savage
+camp is sometimes almost unbearable to educated and refined white men,
+such as the French Jesuits were. They did not succeed in winning over to
+Christianity many of their savage companions; indeed, the latter
+frequently treated them with great cruelty, and several of the
+missionaries were tortured to death.
+
+Such were the ignorance and superstition of the Indians, that every
+disaster which happened to them, poor luck in hunting, famine, accident,
+or disease, was attributed to the "black gowns," as the Jesuits were
+called because of their long black cassocks. When the missionaries were
+performing the rites of their church, baptizing children or sick people,
+or saying mass, it was thought by these simple barbarians that they were
+practicing magic for the destruction of the red men. Thus the Jesuits,
+during the hundred years or more which they spent in traveling far and
+near through the forests of New France, seeking new tribes to convert,
+while still laboring with those already known, were in a state of
+perpetual martyrdom for the cause of Christianity. No soldier has ever
+performed greater acts of heroism than these devoted disciples of the
+cross. Several of the best and bravest of them were among the pioneers
+of the Wisconsin wilderness.
+
+The first Jesuit missionary to come to Wisconsin was Father Rene Menard
+(pr. _Ray-nay' May-nar'_). He had sailed from France to Canada in the
+year 1640, when he was thirty-five years old, and on his arrival was
+sent to the savages east of Lake Huron, among whom he labored and
+suffered for eight years. Later, he went to the Iroquois, in New York,
+and at last had to fly for his life, on account of an Indian plot to
+murder all the French missionaries in that country. He was for some time
+the superior of his order, at the Three Rivers mission, on the St.
+Lawrence, halfway between Quebec and Montreal, and in the early autumn
+of 1660 was summoned to go to Lake Superior, which had been made known
+through the explorations of Radisson and Groseilliers.
+
+These brave adventurers had returned from their second voyage into the
+Northwest, accompanied by a fleet of Indian canoes; several of the
+canoes were manned by Hurons from the Black River, who had come down all
+the way to Montreal to trade their furs for European goods. The red men
+spent some ten days there, feasting with the fur trade agents, and about
+the first of September set out on their return. With them were Menard,
+his servant, and seven other Frenchmen.
+
+Menard was now only fifty-five years old, but so severe had been his
+life among the Indians, that his hair was white, he was covered with the
+scars of wounds, and "his form was bent as with great age." The long
+journey was therefore a severe strain upon the good man, for in addition
+to the exposure to weather, he was forced to paddle most of the time, to
+carry heavy packs over the numerous portage trails, and to suffer many
+indignities at the hands of his hosts. By the time the company had
+finally made their weary way up the Ottawa River, over to Georgian Bay,
+and through to Sault Ste. Marie, the missionary was in a deplorable
+condition. An accident happened to his canoe, and the Frenchmen and
+three Indians were abandoned on the south shore of Lake Superior, at
+Keweenaw Bay. There he was forced to spend the winter in a squalid
+Ottawa village, and nearly lost his life in a famine which overtook the
+natives of that region.
+
+In the spring of 1661, while at Keweenaw Bay, Menard received an
+invitation to visit a band of poor, starving Hurons at the headwaters of
+the Black River. Several of these Indians had been baptized by Jesuits
+before the Iroquois had driven them out from their old home to the east
+of Lake Huron. In spite of his weak condition, and the many perils of
+this journey of a hundred and fifty miles through the dense forest, the
+aged missionary bade farewell to the Keweenaw Ottawas, among whom had
+also wintered several French fur traders, and in July set out to obey
+the new summons. In his company were his servant and several Hurons who
+had come to trade with the Ottawas.
+
+They proceeded along the narrow trail which ran from Keweenaw Bay to
+Lake Vieux Desert, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River, but the
+feeble missionary's gait was too slow for the Indians, who, after the
+manner of their kind, promptly deserted their white friends, leaving
+them to follow and obtain food as best they might. At the lake the
+Frenchmen embarked in a canoe upon the south-flowing Wisconsin, and
+paddled down as far as Bill Cross Rapids, some five or six miles above
+the mouth of Copper River, and not far from where is now the city of
+Merrill. From the foot of these rapids, they had intended leaving their
+canoe, and following a trail which led off westward through the woods to
+the headwaters of the Black, near the present town of Chelsea. Menard's
+servant took the canoe through the rapids, while the missionary, as
+usual, to lighten the boat, walked along the portage trail. He must have
+lost his way and perished of exposure in the depths of the dark and
+tangled forest, for his servant could not find any trace of him. Thus
+closed the career of Wisconsin's pioneer missionary, who died in the
+pursuit of duty, as might a soldier upon the field of battle.
+
+The death of Menard left the Lake Superior country without a missionary;
+but four years later (1665), another Jesuit was sent thither in the
+person of Claude Allouez (pr. _Al-loo-ay'_), who chose Chequamegon Bay
+for the seat of his labors. There he found a squalid village, near
+Radisson and Groseilliers' old forts, on the southwest shore; it was
+composed of remnants of eight or ten tribes, some of whom had been
+driven westward by the Iroquois and others eastward by the Sioux. He
+called his mission La Pointe, from the neighboring long point of land
+which, projecting northward, divides Chequamegon Bay from Lake Superior.
+
+Allouez could make little impression upon these poor savages. After four
+years of hard service and ill-treatment, he was relieved by Jacques
+Marquette, a youthful and enthusiastic priest. Late in the autumn of
+1669, Allouez went to Fox River, and there he founded the mission of St.
+Francis Xavier, overlooking the rapids of De Pere.[1] This was a more
+successful mission than the one at Chequamegon Bay; for, during the next
+summer, the western Sioux furiously attacked the Indian neighbors of
+Marquette and sent them all flying eastward, like dry leaves before an
+October gale. The zealous Marquette accompanied them, and, with such
+bands as he could induce to settle around him, opened a new mission on
+the mainland near Mackinac Island, at the Point St. Ignace of to-day.
+
+[Footnote 1: Called by the early French _Rapides des Peres_, or "The
+Fathers' Rapids"; but it was soon shortened into _Des Peres_, and
+finally, by the Americans, into _De Pere_.]
+
+[Illustration: SITE OF THE MISSION AT DE PERE]
+
+Meanwhile, Allouez continued his mission at De Pere, making long trips
+throughout Wisconsin, preaching to the Indians, and establishing the
+mission of St. Mark on the Wolf River, probably on or near Lake Shawano,
+where the Chippewas then lived in great numbers. Later, he opened St.
+James mission at the Mascoutin village near Berlin. His churches were
+mere huts or wigwams built of reeds and bark, after the manner of the
+natives. Another Jesuit, Louis Andre, was sent to Wisconsin to assist
+this enterprising missionary, and they traveled among the tribes,
+preaching and healing the sick in nearly every Indian village in the
+wide country between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. The career of
+these good missionaries was not one of ease. Their lives were frequently
+in peril; they suffered severely from cruel treatment, hunger, cold, and
+the many hardships of forest travel; and were rewarded by few
+conversions.
+
+Allouez remained in Wisconsin until 1676, when he departed to carry on a
+similar work in Illinois, dying thirteen years later, after a score of
+years spent in Western missions. In Wisconsin, he was succeeded, in
+turn, by several others of his order; chief among them were Fathers
+Silvy, Albanel, Nouvel, Enjalran, and Chardon. Chardon was the last of
+his kind, for he, with other Frenchmen, was driven out of Wisconsin in
+1728, at the time of the Fox War.
+
+It was during the time of Enjalran, at De Pere, that Nicolas Perrot, a
+famous fur trader, was military commandant for the French in the country
+west of Lake Michigan. In all this vast district, Enjalran was then the
+only priest. In token of his appreciation of its work, Perrot presented
+to the mission a beautiful silver _ostensorium_ (or _soleil_) made in
+Paris. The _ostensorium_ is one of the vessels used at the altar, in
+celebrating the mass. This was in the year 1686; the following year,
+during one of the frequent outbursts of Indian hostility against the
+missionaries, Enjalran was obliged to fly for his life. In order to
+lighten his burden, he buried this silver vessel, evidently intending to
+return some time and regain possession of it.
+
+In 1802, a hundred and fifteen years later, a man was digging a cellar
+in Green Bay, several miles lower down the bank of the Fox River than is
+De Pere, when his pickax ran through this piece of silver. It was
+brought to light, and for safe keeping was given to the Catholic priest
+then at Green Bay. Nobody would have known its story except for the
+clearly engraved inscription on the bottom; the words are in French, but
+in English they signify: "This soleil was given by Mr. Nicolas Perrot to
+the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at the Bay of the Puants, 1686"; for
+the early French name for Green Bay was "Bay of the Puants." The old
+_ostensorium_, with its inscription just as plainly to be read to-day as
+when engraved over two centuries ago, can now be seen among the
+treasures of the State Historical Society, at Madison. It is an enduring
+memorial to the labors and the sufferings of Wisconsin's first
+missionaries.
+
+
+
+
+SOME NOTABLE VISITORS TO EARLY WISCONSIN
+
+
+It has been pointed out that wandering fur traders were in Wisconsin at
+a very early date. We have seen that Nicolet, Radisson, and Groseilliers
+made Wisconsin known to the world, at a time when Massachusetts colony
+was still young. It will be remembered that when Father Menard went to
+Lake Superior, in 1660, to convert the Indians, there were several
+French fur traders with him. As early as the spring of 1662, these same
+traders had gone across country to the mouth of the Fox River. Three
+years later the Menominees and Pottawattomies, then living on both sides
+of the bay, were visited by Nicolas Perrot, a daring young spirit from
+Quebec, who had come to the then Far West to make his fortune in trading
+with the red men.
+
+Perrot was one of the most picturesque characters in Wisconsin history.
+In Canada he had been a servant of the Jesuit missionaries, acquiring in
+this work an education which was slight as to books, but broad as to
+knowledge of the Indians and of forest life. He was now twenty-one years
+of age, and started out for himself as soon as he was his own master.
+For five years Perrot wandered up and down the eastern half of
+Wisconsin, frequently visiting his friends, the Mascoutins and Miamis,
+on the Fox River. He smoked pipes of peace with them and with other
+forest and prairie tribes, and joined in their feasts of beaver, dog,
+and other savage delicacies.
+
+In 1670 he and four other Frenchmen, packing their furs into bundles of
+convenient size, joined a large party of Indians going down to Montreal
+in canoes, to trade. Perrot did not return with his companions, but
+visited Quebec, and there received an appointment from the government to
+rally the Western tribes in a great council at Sault Ste. Marie. Here a
+treaty was to be made, binding the savages to an alliance with France.
+The French were very jealous of the English, who had, through the
+guidance of Radisson and Groseilliers, commenced fur trade operations in
+the Hudson Bay country. It was feared that they would entice the Indians
+of the upper Great Lakes to trade with them, for the English offered
+higher prices for furs than did the French.
+
+Perrot spent the winter in visiting the tribes in Wisconsin and along
+the northern shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, and succeeded in
+inducing large bands of them to go to the Sault early in May (1671). The
+council was attended by an enormous gathering, representing tribes from
+all over the Northwest, even from the north shores of Lake Superior and
+Hudson Bay. Father Marquette was there with the Ottawas, and several
+other famous missionaries came to the council. The interpreter, who knew
+Indian dialects by the score, was no less a person than Louis Joliet.
+The French government was represented by Saint Lusson, who concluded
+the desired treaty, with great ceremony, took formal possession of all
+this country for the king of France, and reared on the spot a great
+cedar pole, to which he fastened a lead plate bearing the arms of his
+country. This symbol the simple and wondering savages could not
+understand: and as soon as the Frenchmen had gone home again, they tore
+it down, fearing that it was a charm which might bring bad luck to the
+tribesmen.
+
+And now we find Perrot suddenly losing his office, and forced for ten
+years to live a quiet life in the French settlements on the lower St.
+Lawrence. He married a well-to-do young woman, reared a considerable
+family, and became a man of some influence. But he was always eager to
+be back in the forest, wandering from tribe to tribe, and engaging in
+the wilderness trade, where the profits were great, though the risks to
+life and property were many. In 1681 he returned to the woods, but not
+till three years later was he so far west as Mackinac.
+
+In 1685 he appeared once more at Green Bay, this time holding the
+position of Commandant of the West, with a little company of twenty
+soldiers. He now had almost unlimited authority to explore and traffic
+as he would, for the only salary an official of that sort used to get,
+in New France, was the right to trade with the Indians. He had already
+lost money in working for the government as an Indian agent, and his
+present operations were wholly directed toward getting it back again. He
+went up the Fox and down the Wisconsin, and then ascended the
+Mississippi to trade with the wild Sioux tribe. For headquarters, he
+erected a little log stockade on the east bank of the Mississippi, about
+a mile above the present village of Trempealeau, and south of the mouth
+of Black River. In the year 1888, the site of this old stockade was
+discovered by a party of historical students, and many of the curious
+relics found there can now be seen in the museum of the State Historical
+Society, at Madison.
+
+All through the winter of 1685-86, Perrot traded here with the Sioux. He
+had a most captivating manner of treating Indians; for a long time, few
+of them ventured to deny any request made by him. Chiefs from far and
+near would come to the Trempealeau "fort," as it was called, and hold
+long councils and feasts with the great white chief, and more than once
+he was subjected to the curious Sioux ceremony of being wept over. A
+chief would stand over his guest and weep copiously, his tears falling
+upon the guest's head; when the chief's tear ducts were exhausted, he
+would be relieved by some headman of the tribe, who in turn was
+succeeded by another, and so on until the guest was well drenched. This
+must have been a very trying experience to Perrot, but he was shrewd
+enough to pretend to be much pleased by it.
+
+In the spring of 1686, the same year in which he gave the silver
+_ostensorium_ to the Jesuit chapel at De Pere, the commandant proceeded
+up the Mississippi to the broadening which was, about this time, named
+Lake Pepin by the French. On the Wisconsin shore, not far above the
+present village of Pepin, he erected another and stronger stockade,
+Fort St. Antoine. It was here, three years later, that, after the manner
+of Saint Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie, he formally took possession, in the
+name of his king, of all the Upper Mississippi valley.
+
+Several other forts were built by Perrot along the Mississippi, none of
+them more than groups of stout log houses. These were surrounded by a
+stockade wall of heavy logs well planted in the ground, sharpened at the
+top, pierced for musket fire, and sometimes surmounted by a small
+cannon. The stockade whose ruins were unearthed at Trempealeau, measured
+about forty-five by sixty feet. One of his stockades, Fort Perrot, was
+on the Minnesota shore of Lake Pepin; still another, Fort St. Nicholas,
+was near the "lower town" of the Prairie du Chien of to-day, at the
+confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi; and it also appears
+that he had a stockade lower down the Mississippi, to guard a lead mine
+which he had discovered near Galena, because lead was an important
+article for both fur traders and Indians. Sometimes traders fought among
+themselves, for the possession of a lead mine.
+
+Perrot made frequent voyages to the settlements on the St. Lawrence
+River, and engaged in some of the French expeditions against the hostile
+Iroquois of New York. While, on the whole, he was successful in holding
+the Western tribes in friendship to New France, his position was not
+without grave perils. One time his old friends, the Mascoutins, rose
+against him, claiming that he had killed one of their warriors. The
+claim may have been true, for he was a man of violent temper, and ruled
+the Wisconsin forests after the despotic fashion of an Asiatic prince.
+The Mascoutins captured Perrot, in company with a Pottawattomie chief,
+and carrying them to their village, robbed the commandant of all his
+furs, and decided to burn the prisoners at the stake. But while being
+conducted to the fire, the two managed by artifice to escape, and at
+last reached in safety their friends at the mouth of the Fox River.
+Another time, the Miamis captured Perrot, and would have burned him
+except for the interference of the Fox Indians, with whom he was
+friendly.
+
+In 1699, owing to the uprising of the Foxes, the king ordered that all
+the Western posts be abandoned, and their little garrisons removed to
+Montreal and Quebec. Thus suddenly ended the career of Perrot, who
+returned a poor man, for his recent losses in furs had been heavy, and
+his expenses of keeping up the posts large. Again and again he sought
+redress from the government, and the Wisconsin Foxes earnestly pleaded
+that he be sent back to them, as "the best beloved of all the French who
+have ever been among us." But his star had set, he no longer had
+influence; and it had just been decided to punish his friends the Foxes.
+Perrot lived about twenty years longer, on the banks of the Lower St.
+Lawrence, and died in old age, like Joliet, in neglect and poverty.
+
+During much of the time that Perrot was commandant of the West, several
+other great fur traders were conducting operations in Wisconsin. The
+greatest of these was the Chevalier La Salle, the famous explorer, who
+plays a large part on the stage of Western history, particularly in the
+history of the Mississippi valley. It has been claimed for La Salle that
+he was in Wisconsin in 1671, two years before Joliet, and actually
+canoed on the Mississippi River, but this is more than doubtful. We do
+know that in 1673 one of his agents was trading with the Sioux to the
+west of Lake Superior; and that in 1679 he came to Green Bay in a small
+vessel called the _Griffin_, the first sailing craft on the Great Lakes
+above the cataract of Niagara. La Salle was a _coureur de bois_, most of
+this time, for he operated in a field far larger than that for which he
+had a license. Leaving his ship, which was afterward wrecked, he and
+fourteen of his men proceeded in canoes southward along the western
+coast of Lake Michigan, visiting the sites of Milwaukee and other
+Wisconsin lakeshore cities. Finally, after many strange adventures, they
+ascended St. Joseph River, crossed over to the Kankakee River, and spent
+the winter in a log fort which they built on Peoria Lake, a broadening
+of the Illinois River.
+
+At least one priest was thought necessary in every well-equipped
+exploring expedition. La Salle had quarreled with the Jesuits, and hated
+them; hence the ministers of religion in his party were three Franciscan
+friars, one of them being Father Louis Hennepin, who afterward became
+famous. When La Salle determined to spend the winter at Peoria Lake, he
+sent Hennepin forward with two _coureurs de bois_, to explore the upper
+waters of the Mississippi. These three adventurers descended the
+Illinois River in their canoe, and then ascended the Mississippi to the
+Falls of St. Anthony, where now lies the great city of Minneapolis;
+there they met some Sioux, and went with them upon a buffalo hunt. But
+the Indians, although at first friendly, soon turned out to be a bad
+lot, for they robbed their guests, and practically held them as
+prisoners.
+
+This was in the early summer of 1680. Luckily for Hennepin and his
+companions, the powerful _coureur de bois_, Daniel Graysolon Duluth (_du
+Luth_) appeared on the scene. Duluth was, next to Perrot, the leading
+man in the country around Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi
+valley. He had been spending the winter trading with the Sioux in the
+lake country of northern Minnesota, and along Pigeon River, which is now
+the dividing line between Minnesota and Canada. With a party of ten of
+his boatmen, he set out in June to reach the Mississippi, his route
+taking him up the turbulent little Bois Brule River, over the mile and a
+half of portage trail to Upper Lake St. Croix, and down St. Croix River
+to the Mississippi. On reaching the latter, he learned of the fact that
+Europeans were being detained and maltreated by the Sioux, and at once
+went and rescued them. The summer was spent among the Indians in company
+with Hennepin's party, who, now that Duluth was found to be their
+friend, were handsomely treated. In the autumn, Duluth, Hennepin, and
+their companions all returned down the Mississippi, up the Wisconsin,
+and down the Fox, and spent the winter at Mackinac. After that, Duluth
+was frequently upon the Fox-Wisconsin route, and traded for buffalo
+hides and other furs with the Wisconsin tribes.
+
+Another famous visitor to Wisconsin, in those early days, was Pierre le
+Sueur, who in 1683 traveled from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, over
+the Fox-Wisconsin route, and traded with the Sioux at the Falls of St.
+Anthony and beyond. His fur trade grew, in a few years, to large
+proportions; for he was a shrewd man, and was related to some of the
+officials of New France. This enabled him to secure trading licenses for
+the Western country, and other valuable privileges, which gave him an
+advantage over the unlicensed traders, like Duluth, who had no official
+friends. In 1693, Le Sueur was trading in Duluth's old country; and, in
+order to protect the old Bois Brule and St. Croix route from marauding
+Indians, he built a log fort at either end, one on Chequamegon Bay, and
+the other on an island in the Mississippi, below the mouth of the St.
+Croix. A few years later, Le Sueur was in France, where he obtained a
+license to operate certain "mines of lead, copper, and blue and green
+earth," which he claimed to have discovered along the banks of the Upper
+Mississippi. In the summer of 1700, he and his party opened lead mines
+in the neighborhood of the present Dubuque and Galena, and also near the
+modern town of Potosi, Wisconsin. He does not appear to have been very
+successful as a miner; but his fur trade was still enormous, and his
+many explorations led to the Upper Mississippi being quite correctly
+represented on the maps of America, made by the European geographers.
+
+A missionary priest, Father St. Cosme, of Quebec, was in Green Bay in
+October, 1699, and proposed to visit the Mississippi region, by way of
+the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. But the warlike Foxes, who were giving
+the French a great deal of trouble at this time, had forbidden any white
+man passing over this favorite waterway, so St. Cosme was obliged to go
+the way that La Salle had followed, up the west shore of Lake Michigan
+and through Illinois. The party stopped at many places along the
+Wisconsin lake shore, but the only ones which we can identify are the
+sites of Sheboygan and Milwaukee, where there were large Indian
+villages.
+
+It is not to be supposed that these were all the Frenchmen to tarry in
+or pass through Wisconsin during the latter half of the seventeenth
+century. Doubtless there were scores, if not hundreds of others, fur
+traders, _voyageurs_, soldiers, and priests; we have selected but a few
+of those whose movements were recorded in the writings of their time.
+Wisconsin was a key point in the geography of the West; here were the
+interlaced sources of rivers flowing north into Lake Superior, east and
+northeast into Lake Michigan, and west and southwest into the
+Mississippi River. The canoe traveler from Lower Canada could, with
+short portages, pass through Wisconsin into waters reaching far into the
+interior of the continent, even to the Rocky Mountains, the lakes of the
+Canadian Northwest, and the Gulf of Mexico. This is why the geography of
+Wisconsin became known so early in the history of our country, why
+Wisconsin Indians played so important a part on the stage of border
+warfare, and why history was being made here at a time when some of the
+States to the east of us were still almost unknown to white men.
+
+
+
+
+A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF WARFARE
+
+
+Wisconsin was important, from a geographical point of view, because here
+were the meeting places of waters which flowed in so many directions;
+here were the gates which opened upon widely divergent paths. The
+explorer and the fur trader soon discovered this, and Wisconsin became
+known to them at a very early period. France had two important colonies
+in North America, New France (or Canada), upon the St. Lawrence River,
+and Louisiana, extending northward indefinitely from the Gulf of Mexico.
+It was found necessary, in pushing her claim to the ownership of all of
+the continent west of the Alleghany Mountains and east of the Rockies,
+to connect New France and Louisiana with a chain of little forts along
+the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The forts at Detroit,
+Mackinac, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and Kaskaskia (in Illinois) were
+links in this chain, at the center of which was Wisconsin; or, to use
+another figure, Wisconsin was the keystone of the arch which bridged the
+two French colonies.
+
+There were six principal canoe routes between the Great Lakes and the
+Mississippi: one by way of the Maumee and Wabash rivers, another by way
+of St. Joseph River and the Kankakee and the Illinois, another by way
+of the St. Joseph, Wabash, and Ohio rivers, still another by way of the
+Chicago River and the Illinois, and we have already seen that from Lake
+Superior there were used the Bois Brule and the St. Croix routes. But
+the easiest of all, the favorite gateway, was the Fox-Wisconsin route,
+for all the others involved considerable hardship; this is why Wisconsin
+was so necessary to the French military officers in holding control of
+the interior of the continent.
+
+Affairs went well enough so long as the French were on good terms with
+the warlike and crafty Fox Indians, who held control of the Fox River.
+But after a time the Foxes became uneasy. The fur trade in New France
+was in the hands of a monopoly, which charged large fees for licenses,
+and fixed its own prices on the furs which it bought, and on the Indian
+goods which it sold to the forest traders. On the other hand, the fur
+trade in the English colonies east of the Alleghanies was free; any man
+could engage in it and go wherever he would. The result was that the
+English, with the strong competition among themselves, paid higher
+prices to the Indians for furs than the French could afford, and their
+prices for articles which the Indians wanted were correspondingly lower
+than those of the French.
+
+The Indians were always eager for a bargain; and although the French
+declared that those trading with the English were enemies of New France,
+they persisted in secretly sending trading parties to the English, who
+were now beginning to swarm into the Ohio valley. The Foxes, in
+particular, grew very angry with the French for charging them such high
+prices, and resented the treatment which they received at the hands of
+the traders from Quebec and Montreal. At one time they told Perrot that
+they would pack up their wigwams, and move in a body to the Wabash River
+or to the Ohio, and form a league with the fierce Iroquois of New York,
+who were friends and neighbors of the English. Had they done so, the
+French fur trade in the West would have suffered greatly.
+
+The Foxes began to make it disagreeable for the French in Wisconsin.
+They insisted on collecting tolls on fur trade bateaux which were being
+propelled up the Fox River, and even stopped traders entirely; several
+murders of Frenchmen were also charged to them. The French thereupon
+determined to punish these rebellious savages who sat within the chief
+gateway to the Mississippi. In the winter of 1706-07, a large party of
+soldiers, _coureurs des bois_, and half-breeds, under a captain named
+Marin, ascended the Fox River on snowshoes and attacked the Foxes,
+together with their allies, the Sacs, at a large village at Winnebago
+Rapids, near where is now the city of Neenah.
+
+Several hundreds of the savages were killed in this assault, but its
+effect was to make the Foxes the more troublesome. A few summers later,
+this same Marin arranged again to surprise the enemy. His boats were
+covered with oilcloth blankets, in the manner adopted by the traders to
+protect the goods against rain; only two _voyageurs_ were visible in
+each boat to propel it. Arriving at the foot of Winnebago Rapids, the
+canoes were ranged along the shore, and nearly fifteen hundred Indians
+came out and squatted on the bank, ready to collect toll of the traders.
+All of a sudden the covers were thrown off, and the armed men appeared
+and raked the Indians with quick volleys of lead, while a small cannon
+in Marin's boat increased the effectiveness of the attack. Tradition
+says that over a thousand Foxes and Sacs fell in this massacre; this is
+one of the many incidents in white men's relations with the Indians,
+wherein savages were outsavaged in the practice of ferocious treachery.
+
+Despite the great slaughter, there appear to have been enough Foxes left
+to continue giving the French a great deal of annoyance. There were
+fears at Quebec that it might be necessary to abandon the attempt to
+connect New France and Louisiana by a trail through the Western woods,
+in which case the English would have a free run of the Mississippi
+valley. There seem, however, not to have been any more warlike
+expeditions to Wisconsin for several years. But in May, 1712, the
+French induced large numbers of the Foxes, with their friends, the
+Mascoutins, the Kickapoos, and the Sacs, to come to Detroit for the
+making of a treaty of peace. At the same time the French also assembled
+there large bands of the Pottawattomies and Menominees from Wisconsin,
+with Illinois Indians, some camps from Missouri, and Hurons and Ottawas
+from the Lake Huron country; all of these were enemies of the Foxes.
+
+The records do not show just why it happened; but for some reason the
+French and their allies fired on the Foxes and their friends, who were
+well intrenched in a palisaded camp outside the walls of Detroit. A
+great siege ensued, lasting nineteen days, in which the slaughter on
+both sides was heavy; but at last the Foxes, worn out by loss of
+numbers, hunger, and disease, took advantage of a dark, rainy night to
+escape northward. They were pursued the following day, but again
+intrenched themselves with much skill, and withstood another siege of
+five days, when they surrendered. The French and their savage allies
+fell upon the poor captives with fury and slew nearly all of them, men,
+women, and children.
+
+The poor Foxes had lost in this terrible experience upward of fifteen
+hundred of the bravest of their tribe, which was now reduced to a few
+half-starved bands. But their spirit was not gone. Next year the
+officers at Quebec wrote home to Paris: "The Fox Indians are daily
+becoming more insolent." They had begun to change their tactics; instead
+of wasting their energies on the French, they began to make friends
+with, or to intimidate, neighboring tribes. By means of small, secret
+war parties, they would noiselessly swarm out of the Wisconsin forests
+and strike hard blows at the prairie Indians of Illinois, who preferred
+to remain their enemies. In this manner the Illinois Indians were
+reduced to a mere handful, and were compelled to seek shelter under the
+guns of the French fort at Kaskaskia. At the same time the Foxes were in
+close alliance with the Sioux and other great western tribes, who helped
+them lock the gate of the Fox-Wisconsin rivers, and plunder and murder
+French traders wherever they could be found throughout Wisconsin.
+
+Again it seemed evident that New France, unless something were done,
+could never maintain its chain of communication with Louisiana, or
+conduct any fur trade in the Northwest. The something decided on was an
+attempt to destroy the Foxes, root and branch. For this purpose there
+was sent out to Wisconsin, in 1716, a well-equipped expedition under an
+experienced captain named De Louvigny, numbering eight hundred men,
+whites and Indians. The Foxes were found living in a walled town upon
+the mound now known as Little Butte des Morts, on the west side of Fox
+River, opposite the present Neenah. The wall consisted of three rows of
+stout palisades, reenforced by a deep ditch; tradition says there were
+here assembled five hundred braves and three thousand squaws and other
+noncombatants.
+
+The French found it necessary to lay siege to this forest fortress, just
+as they would attack a European city of that time; trenches and mines
+were laid, and pushed forward at night, until, at the close of the third
+day, everything was ready to blow up the palisades. At this point the
+Foxes surrendered, but they gained easy terms for those days, for De
+Louvigny was no butcher of men, and appeared to appreciate their
+bravery. They gave up their prisoners, they furnished enough slaves to
+the allies of the French to take the place of the warriors slain, they
+agreed to furnish furs enough to pay the expenses of the expedition, and
+sent six hostages to Quebec to answer for their future behavior. The
+next year, De Louvigny returned to the valley of the Fox, from Quebec,
+and made a treaty with the Foxes, but nothing came of it. Treaties were
+easily made with Indian tribes, in the days of New France, and as easily
+broken by either side.
+
+In the very next year, the Foxes were again making raids on the
+French-loving Illinois, and the entire West was, as usual, torn by
+strife. It was evident that the Foxes were trying to gain control of the
+Illinois River, and thus command both of the principal roads to the
+Mississippi. The French were at this time enthusiastic over great
+schemes for opening mines on the Mississippi, operating northward from
+Louisiana; agriculture was beginning to flourish around Kaskaskia; and
+grain, flour, and furs were being shipped down the Mississippi to the
+French islands in the West Indies, and across the ocean to France. More
+than ever was it necessary to unite Louisiana with Canada by a line of
+communication.
+
+But just now the Foxes were stronger than they had been at any time.
+Their shrewd warriors had organized a great confederacy to shut out the
+French, and thereby advance the cause of English trade, although it is
+not known that the English assisted in this widespread conspiracy. Fox
+warriors were sent with pipes of peace among the most distant tribes of
+the West, the South, and the North, and it seemed as if the whole
+interior of the continent were rising in arms. A French writer of the
+period says of the Foxes: "Their fury increased as their forces
+diminished. On every side they raised up new enemies against us. The
+whole course and neighborhood of the Mississippi is infested with
+Indians with whom we have no quarrel, and who yet give to the French no
+quarter."
+
+This condition lasted for a few years. But Indian leagues do not
+ordinarily long endure. We soon find the Foxes weak again, with few to
+back them; in 1726, at a council in Green Bay, they were apologizing for
+having made so much trouble. The French were, however, still afraid of
+these wily folk, and two years later (1728) a little army of four
+hundred Frenchmen and nine hundred Indian allies advanced on the Fox
+villages by way of the Ottawa River route and Mackinac. The Foxes,
+together with their Winnebago friends, had heard of the approach of the
+whites, and fled; but the white invaders burned every deserted village
+in the valley, and destroyed all the crops, leaving the red men to face
+the rigor of winter with neither huts nor food.
+
+Fleeing from their native valley before the onset of the army, the
+unhappy fugitives, said to have been four thousand in number, descended
+the Wisconsin and ascended the Mississippi, to find their Sioux allies
+in the neighborhood of Lake Pepin. But the Sioux had been won by French
+presents, distributed from the fur trade fort on that lake, and turned
+the starving tribesmen away; the ever-treacherous Winnebagoes of the
+party sided with the Sioux; the Sacs expressed repentance, and hurried
+home to Green Bay to make their peace with the French; the Mascoutins
+now proved to be enemies. Thus deserted, the disconsolate Foxes passed
+the winter in Iowa, and sent messengers to the Green Bay fort, begging
+for forgiveness.
+
+But there was no longer any peace for the Foxes. Indians friendly with
+the French attacked one of their Iowa camps; and in the autumn of 1729
+they sought in humble fashion to return to the valley of the Fox; but
+they were ambuscaded by a French-directed party of Ottawas, Menominees,
+Chippewas, and Winnebagoes, and after a fierce fight lost nearly three
+hundred by death and capture; the prisoners, men, women, and children,
+were burned at the stake.
+
+Turning southward, the greater part of the survivors of this ill-starred
+tribe sought a final asylum upon the Illinois River, not far from
+Peoria. Three noted French commanders, heads of garrisons in the Western
+country, now gathered their forces, which aggregated a hundred and
+seventy Frenchmen and eleven hundred Indians; and in August, 1730, gave
+battle to the fugitives, who were now outnumbered full four to one. The
+contest, notable for the gallant sorties of the besieged and the
+cautious military engineering of the besiegers, lasted throughout
+twenty-two days; probably never in the history of the West has there
+been witnessed more heroic conduct than was displayed during this
+remarkable campaign. It was inevitable that the Foxes should lose in the
+end, but they sold themselves dearly. Not over fifty or sixty escaped;
+and it is said that three hundred warriors perished in battle or
+afterwards at the stake, while six hundred women and children were
+either tomahawked or burned.
+
+It is surprising, after all these massacres, that there were any members
+of the tribe left; yet we learn that two years later (1732) three
+hundred of them were living peaceably on the banks of the Wisconsin
+River, when still another French and Indian band swept down upon and
+either captured or slaughtered them all. Of another small party, which
+sought mercy from the officer of the fort at Green Bay, several,
+including the head chief of the Foxes, Kiala, were sent away into
+slavery, and wore away their lives in menial drudgery upon the tropical
+island of Martinique.
+
+The remainder took refuge with the Sacs, on Fox River; and the following
+year the French commander at Green Bay asked the Sacs to give them up.
+This time the Sacs proved to be good friends, and refused; and in the
+quarrel which followed at the Sac town, eight French soldiers were
+killed. This led to later retaliation on the part of the French, but in
+the battle which was fought both sides lost heavily; and then both Sacs
+and Foxes fled from the country, never to return. They settled upon the
+banks of the Des Moines River, in Iowa, whither French hate again sought
+them out in 1734. This last expedition, however, was a failure, and the
+Fox War was finally ended, after twenty-five years of almost continuous
+bloodshed. During this war not only had the great tribe of the Foxes
+been almost annihilated, but the power of France in the West had
+meanwhile been greatly weakened by the persistent opposition of those
+who had held the key to her position.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMMERCE OF THE FOREST
+
+
+We have seen in previous chapters why Wisconsin, with her intermingling
+rivers, was considered the key to the French position in the interior of
+North America; why it was that fur traders early sought this State, and
+erected log forts along its rivers and lakes to protect their commerce
+with the people of the forest. It remains to be told what were the
+conditions of this widespreading and important forest trade.
+
+The French introduced to our Indians iron pots and kettles, which were
+vastly stronger than their crude utensils of clay; iron fishhooks,
+hatchets, spears, and guns, which were not only more durable, but far
+more effective than their old weapons of stone and copper and bone;
+cloths and blankets of many colors, from which attractive clothing was
+more easily made than from the skins of beasts; and glass beads and
+silver trinkets, for the decoration of their clothing and bodies, which
+cost far less labor to obtain than did ornaments made from clam shells.
+To secure these French goods, the Indians had but to hunt and bring the
+skins to the white men. The Indian who could secure a gun found it
+easier to get skins than before, and he also had a weapon which made him
+more powerful against his enemies. It was not long before the Indian
+forgot how to make utensils and weapons for himself, and became very
+dependent on the white trader. This is why the fur trade was at the
+bottom of every event in the forest, and for full two hundred years was
+of supreme importance to all the people who lived in the Wisconsin
+woods.
+
+All trade in New France was in the control of a monopoly, which charged
+heavy fees for licenses, severely punished all the unlicensed traders
+who could be detected, and fixed its own prices for everything. French
+traders were obliged, therefore, to charge the Indians more for their
+goods than the English charged for theirs; and it was a continual and
+often bloody struggle to keep the Indians of the Northwest from having
+any trade with the English colonists from the Atlantic coast, who had
+with great labor crossed the Alleghany Mountains and were now swarming
+into the Ohio River valley. It was impossible to prevent the English
+trade altogether, but the policy was in the main successful, although it
+cost the French a deal of anxiety, and sometimes great expense in
+military operations.
+
+During the greater part of the French regime in Wisconsin, the bulk of
+the goods for the Indians came up by the Ottawa River route, because the
+warlike Iroquois of New York favored the English, and for a long time
+kept Frenchmen from entering the lower lakes of Ontario and Erie.
+Finally, however, after the fort at Detroit was built (1701), the lower
+lakes came to be used.
+
+It was, by either route, a very long and tiresome journey from Quebec or
+Montreal to Wisconsin, and owing to the early freezing of the Straits
+of Mackinac, but one trip could be made in a year. It was not, however,
+necessary for every trader to go to the "lower settlements" each year.
+At the Western forts large stocks of goods were kept, and there the furs
+were stored, sometimes for several seasons, until a great fleet of
+canoes could be made up by bands of traders and friendly Indians; and
+then the expedition to Montreal was made, with considerable display of
+barbaric splendor. When the traders reached Montreal, the inhabitants of
+the settlement turned out to welcome their visitors from the wilderness,
+and something akin to a great fair was held, at which speculators bought
+up the furs, feasts were eaten and drunk, and fresh treaties of peace
+were made with the Indians. A week or two would thus pass in universal
+festivity, at the end of which traders and savages would seek their
+canoes, and, amid volleys of cannon from the fort, martial music, the
+fluttering of flags, and the shouts of the _habitants_, the fleet would
+push off, and soon be swallowed again by the all-pervading forest.
+
+When the French were driven out of Canada, in 1760, and the British
+assumed control, the English Hudson Bay Company began spreading its
+operations over the Northwest. But in 1783, at the close of the
+Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with
+headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our
+Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. Soon
+sailing ships were introduced, and many goods were thus brought to
+Mackinac, Green Bay, and Chequamegon Bay; nevertheless, canoes and
+bateaux, together with the more modern "Mackinac boats" and "Durham
+boats," were for many years largely used upon these long Western
+journeys from Montreal. To a still later date were these rude craft sent
+out from the Mackinac warehouses to Wisconsin, or from Mackinac to the
+famous headquarters of the company at the mouth of Pigeon River, on the
+western shore of Lake Superior, the "Grand Portage," as it was called.
+
+It was a life filled with great perils, by land and flood; many were the
+men who lost their lives in storms, in shooting river rapids, in deadly
+quarrels with one another or with the savages, by exposure to the
+elements, or by actual starvation. Yet there was a glamour over these
+wild experiences, as is customary wherever men are associated as
+comrades in an outdoor enterprise involving common dangers and
+hardships. The excitement and freedom of the fur trade appealed
+especially to the volatile, fun loving French; and music and badinage
+and laughter often filled the day.
+
+After the Americans assumed control, in 1816, Congress forbade the
+British to conduct the fur trade in our country. This was to prevent
+them from influencing the Western Indians to war; but turning out the
+English traders served greatly to help the American Fur Company, founded
+by John Jacob Astor, and having its headquarters on the Island of
+Mackinac. Nevertheless the agents, the clerks, and the _voyageurs_ were
+still nearly all of them Frenchmen, as of old, and there was really very
+little change in the methods of doing business, except that Astor
+managed to reap most of the profits.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN JACOB ASTOR]
+
+The fur trade lasted, as a business of prime importance to Wisconsin,
+until about 1835. It was at its greatest height in 1820, at which time
+Green Bay was the chief settlement in Wisconsin. By 1835 new interests
+had arisen, with the development of the lead mines in the southwest, and
+with the advent of agricultural settlers from the East, upon the close
+of the Black Hawk War (1832).
+
+The fur trade led the way to the agricultural and manufacturing life of
+to-day. The traders naturally chose Indian villages as the sites for
+most of their posts, and such villages were generally at places well
+selected for the purpose. They were on portage trails, where craft had
+to be carried around falls or rapids, as at De Pere, Kaukauna, Appleton,
+and Neenah; or they were on portage plains, between distinct water
+systems, as at Portage and Sturgeon Bay; or they were at the mouths or
+junctions of rivers, as at Milwaukee, Sheboygan, Oshkosh, Lacrosse, and
+Prairie du Chien; or they occupied commanding positions on lake or river
+bank, overlooking a wide stretch of country. Thus most of the leading
+cities of Wisconsin are on the sites of old Indian villages; for the
+reasons which led to their choice by the Indians held good with the
+white pioneers in the old days when rivers and lakes were the chief
+highways. Thus we have first the Indian village, then the trading post,
+and later the modern town.
+
+The Indian trails were also largely used by the traders in seeking the
+natives in their villages; later these trails developed into public
+roads, when American settlers came to occupy the country. Thus we see
+that Wisconsin was quite thoroughly explored, its principal cities and
+highways located, and its water ways mapped out by the early French,
+long before the inrush of agricultural colonists.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE OLD FRENCH DAYS
+
+
+In establishing their chain of rude forts, or trading posts, along the
+Great Lakes and through the valley of the Mississippi, the French had no
+desire to plant agricultural settlements in the West. Their chief
+thought was to keep the continental interior as a great fur bearing
+wilderness; to encourage the Indians to hunt for furs, by supplying all
+their other wants with articles made in Europe; and to prevent them from
+carrying any of their furs to the English, who were always underbidding
+the French in prices.
+
+The officers of these forts were instructed to bully or to persuade the
+Indians, as occasion demanded; and some of them became very successful
+in this forest diplomacy. Around most of the forts were small groups of
+temporary settlers, who could hardly be called colonists, for they
+expected when they had made their fortunes, or when their working days
+were over, to return to their own people on the lower St. Lawrence
+River. It was rather an army of occupation, than a body of settlers.
+Nearly every one in the settlement was dependent on the fur trade,
+either as agent, clerk, trapper, boatman, or general employee.
+
+Sometimes these little towns were the outgrowth of early Jesuit
+missions, as La Pointe (on Chequamegon Bay), or Green Bay (De Pere);
+but sooner or later the fur trade became the chief interest. Most of the
+towns, however, like Milwaukee, La Crosse, or Prairie du Chien, were the
+direct outgrowth of commerce with the savages. There were trading posts,
+also, on Lakes Chetek, Flambeau, Court Oreilles, and Sandy, but the
+settlements about them were very small, and they never grew into
+permanent towns, as did some of the others.
+
+At all these places, the little log forts served as depots for furs and
+the goods used in trading with the Indians; they were also used as
+rallying points for the traders and other white inhabitants of the
+district, in times of Indian attack. They would have been of slight
+avail against an enemy with cannon, but afforded sufficient protection
+against the arrows, spears, and muskets of savages.
+
+The French Canadians who lived in these waterside hamlets were an
+easy-going folk. Nearly all of them were engaged in the fur trade at
+certain seasons of the year. The _bourgeois_, or masters, were the
+chiefs. The _voyageurs_ were men of all work, propelling the canoes and
+bateaux when afloat, carrying the craft and their contents over
+portages, transporting packs of goods and furs along the forest trails,
+caring for the camps, and acting as guards for the persons and property
+of their employers. The _coureurs de bois_, or wood rangers, were
+everywhere; they were devoted to a life in the woods, for the fun and
+excitement in it; they conducted trade on their own account, far off in
+the most inaccessible places, and were men of great daring. Then there
+were the _habitants_, or permanent villagers; sometimes these worked as
+_voyageurs_, but for the most part they were farmers in a small way,
+cultivating long, narrow "claims" running at right angles to the river
+bank; one can still find at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, traces of
+some of these old "French claims." The object of having them so narrow
+was, that the _habitants_ could live close to one another, along the
+waterside.
+
+They were of a very social nature, these French _habitants_. They liked
+to meet frequently, enjoy their pipes, and tell stories of the hunt or
+of old days on the St. Lawrence. They were famous fiddlers, too. No
+wilderness so far away that the little French fiddle had not been there;
+the Indians recognized it as a part of the furniture of every fur
+trader's camp. Music appealed strongly to these warm natures, and the
+songs of the _voyageurs_, as they propelled their canoes along the
+Wisconsin rivers, always greatly interested travelers. French Canadians
+are still living in Wisconsin, who remember those gay melodies which
+echoed through our forests a hundred years ago.
+
+The old French life continued in Wisconsin until well into the
+nineteenth century. Although New France fell in 1760, and the British
+came into control, they never succeeded in Anglicizing Wisconsin.
+English fur companies succeeded the French, and British soldiers
+occupied the Wisconsin forts; but the fur trade itself had still to be
+conducted through French residents, who alone had the confidence of the
+Indians. Great Britain was supposed to surrender all this country to the
+United States in 1796; but it was really 1816 before the American flag
+floated over Green Bay, and the American Fur Company came into power.
+But, even under this company, most of the actual trading was done
+through the French; so we may say that as long as the fur trade remained
+the chief industry of Wisconsin, about to the year 1835, the old French
+life was still maintained, and French methods were everywhere in
+evidence.
+
+It is surprising how strongly marked upon our Wisconsin are the memories
+of the old French days. A quiet, unobtrusive people, were those early
+French, without high ambitions, and simple in their tastes; yet they and
+theirs have displayed remarkable tenacity of life, and doubtless their
+effect upon us of to-day will never be effaced. Our map is sprinkled all
+over with the French names which they gave to our hills and lakes and
+streams, and early towns. We may here mention a few only, at random:
+Lakes Flambeau, Court Oreilles, Pepin, Vieux Desert; the rivers Bois
+Brule, Eau Claire, Eau Pleine, Embarrass, St. Croix; the counties Eau
+Claire, Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Langlade, Marquette, Portage, Racine,
+St. Croix, Trempealeau; the towns of Racine, La Crosse, Prairie du
+Chien, Butte des Morts. Scores of others can readily be found in the
+atlas. In the cities of Green Bay, Kaukauna, Portage, and Prairie du
+Chien, and the dreamy little Fox River hamlet of Grand Butte des Morts,
+are still to be found little closely-knit colonies of French Creoles,
+descendants of those who lived and ruled under the old French regime.
+
+The time must come, in the molding of all the foreign elements in our
+midst into the American of the future, when the French element will no
+longer exist among us as an element, but merely as a memory. If our
+posterity can inherit from those early French occupants of our soil
+their simple tastes, their warm hearts, their happy temperament, their
+social virtues, then the old French regime will have brought a blessing
+to Wisconsin, and not merely a halo of historical romance.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH
+
+
+Upon the eighth day of September, 1760, the French flag ceased to fly
+over Canada. In a long and bitter struggle, lasting at intervals through
+an entire century, French and English had been battling with each other
+for the control of the interior of this continent; and the former had
+lost everything at the decisive battle on the Plains of Abraham, before
+the walls of Quebec.
+
+Reduced to the last extremity, the authorities of New France had ordered
+her fur traders, _coureurs de bois_ and all, to hurry down to the
+settlements on the St. Lawrence, and aid in protecting them against the
+English. Thus in the Wisconsin forests, when the end came, there were
+left no Frenchmen of importance. Leaving their Indian friends, and many
+of them their Indian wives and half-breed families, they had obeyed the
+far away summons, and several lost their lives in the great battle or in
+the skirmishes which preceded it. The others, who at last returned, were
+quick to show favor to the English, for little they really cared who
+were their political masters so long as they were let alone. The
+Indians, too, although personally they preferred the French to the
+English, were glad enough to see the latter, because they brought
+better prices for furs.
+
+Wisconsin was so far away that it took a long time for British soldiers
+to reach the deserted and tumbledown fort at Green Bay. About the middle
+of October, 1761, there arrived from Mackinac Lieutenant James Gorrell
+and seventeen men to hold all of this country for King George. The
+station had been called by the French Fort St. Francis, but the name was
+now changed to Fort Edward Augustus.
+
+It was a very lonely and dismal winter for the British soldiers, for
+nearly all the neighboring savages were away on their winter hunt and
+did not return until spring. Mackinac, then a poor little trading
+village, was two hundred forty miles away; there was a trading post at
+St. Josephs on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, four hundred miles
+distant; and the nearest French villages on the Mississippi were eight
+hundred miles of canoe journey to the southwest. All between was
+savagery: here and there a squalid Indian village, with its conical
+wigwams of bark or matted reeds, pitched on the shore of a lake, at the
+foot of a portage trail, or on the banks of a forest stream. Now and
+then a French trading party passed along the frozen trails, following
+the natives on the hunt and poisoning their minds against the newcomers,
+who were struggling to make their poor old stockade a fairly decent
+shelter against the winter storms.
+
+But, when the savages returned to Green Bay in the spring, they met with
+fair words from Gorrell, a plentiful distribution of presents, and good
+prices for furs, and their hearts were won. In 1763 occurred the great
+uprising led by Pontiac against the English in the Northwest, during
+which the garrison at Mackinac was massacred. This disturbed the
+friendship of Gorrell's neighbors, with the exception of a Menominee
+band, headed by chief Ogemaunee; and in June of that year the little
+garrison, together with the English traders at Green Bay, found it
+necessary to leave hastily for Cross Village, on the eastern shore of
+Lake Michigan, escorted by Ogemaunee and ninety painted Menominees, who
+had volunteered to protect these Englishmen from the unfriendly Indians.
+
+At Cross Village were several soldiers who had escaped from Mackinac,
+and the two parties and their escorts soon left in canoes for Montreal,
+by the way of Ottawa River. This old fur trade route was followed in
+order to escape Pontiac's Indians, who controlled the country about
+Detroit and along the lower lake. They arrived safely at their
+destination in August. The following year there was held a great council
+at Niagara, presided over by the famous Sir William Johnson, who was
+then serving as British superintendent for the Northern Indians. At this
+council Ogemaunee was present representing the Menominees of Wisconsin.
+In token of his valuable services in escorting Lieutenant Gorrell's
+party to Montreal, and thereby delivering them safely from the great
+danger which threatened, Ogemaunee was given a certificate, which reads
+as follows:--
+
+[Illustration:
+
+     [SEAL OF WAX] By the Honourable Sir William Johnson Baronet,
+     His Majesty's sole agent and superintendent of the affairs of
+     the Northern Indians of North America, Colony of the six United
+     Nations their allies and dependants &c. &c. &c.
+
+To OGemawnee a Chief of the Menomings Nation:
+
+     Whereas I have received from the officers who Commanded the Out
+     posts as well as from other persons an account of your good
+     behaviour last year in protecting the Officers, Soldiers &c. of
+     the Garrison of La Bay, and in escorting them down to Montreal
+     as also the Effects of the Traders to a large amount, and your
+     having likewise entered into the strongest Engagements of
+     Friendship with the English before me at this place. I do
+     therefore give you This Testimony of my Esteem for your
+     Services and Good behaviour.
+
+    Given under my hand & Seal at Arms at
+    Niagara the first day of August 1764.
+
+    Wm. Johnson.]
+
+This piece of paper, which showed that he was a good friend of the
+English, was of almost as great importance to Ogemaunee as a patent of
+nobility in the Old World. He carried it with him back to Wisconsin, and
+it remained in his family from one generation to another, for fully a
+hundred years. One day a blanketed and painted descendant of Ogemaunee
+presented it to an American officer who visited his wigwam. This
+descendant, doubtless, knew little of its meaning, but it had been used
+in his family as a charm for bringing good luck, and in his admiration
+for this kind officer he gave it to him, for the Indian is, by nature,
+grateful and generous. In the course of years the paper was presented to
+the State Historical Society, by which it is preserved as an interesting
+and suggestive relic of those early days of the English occupation of
+Wisconsin.
+
+
+
+
+WISCONSIN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
+
+
+We ordinarily think of the Revolutionary War as having been fought
+wholly upon the Atlantic slope. As a matter of fact, there were enacted
+west of the Alleghanies, during that great struggle, deeds which proved
+of immense importance to the welfare of the United States. Had it not
+been for the capture from the British of the country northwest of the
+Ohio River by the gallant Virginia colonel, George Rogers Clark, it is
+fair to assume that the Old Northwest, as it came to be called, the
+present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin,
+would to-day be a part of the Dominion of Canada.
+
+After the brief flurry of the Pontiac conspiracy (1763), the Indians of
+the Old Northwest became good friends of the British, whose aim was to
+encourage the fur trade and to keep the savages good-natured. The
+English have always been more successful in their treatment of Indians
+than have Americans; they are more generous with them, and while not
+less firm than we, they are more considerate of savage wants. The French
+and the half-breeds, too, were very soon the warm supporters of British
+policy, because English fur trade companies gave them abundant
+employment, and evinced no desire other than to foster the primitive
+conditions under which the fur trade prospered.
+
+The English were not desirous of settling the Western wilderness with
+farmers, thereby driving out the game. Our people, however, have always
+been of a land-grabbing temper; we have sought to beat down the walls of
+savagery, to push settlement, to cut down the forests, to plow the land,
+to drive the Indian out. This meant the death of the fur trade; hence it
+is small wonder that, when the Revolutionary War broke out, the French
+and Indians of the Northwest upheld the British and opposed the
+Americans.
+
+A number of scattered white settlers and a few small villages had
+appeared along the Ohio River and many of its southern tributaries. In
+Kentucky there were several log forts, around each of which were grouped
+the rude cabins of frontiersmen, who were half farmers and half hunters,
+tall, stalwart fellows, as courageous as lions, and ever on the alert
+for the crouching Indian foe, who came when least expected. The country
+northwest of the Ohio River was then a part of the British province of
+Quebec. Here and there in this Old Northwest, as we now call it, were
+small villages of French and half-breed fur traders, each village
+protected by a little log fort; some of these villages were garrisoned
+by a handful of British soldiers, and others only by French Canadians
+who were friendly to the English. Such were Vincennes, in what is now
+Indiana; Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in the Illinois country; Prairie du
+Chien and Green Bay, in Wisconsin; and Mackinac Island and Detroit, in
+Michigan. Detroit was the headquarters, where lived the British
+lieutenant governor of the Northwest, Henry Hamilton, a bold, brave,
+untiring, unscrupulous man.
+
+Hamilton's chief business was to gather about him the Indians of the
+Northwest, and to excite in them hatred of the American settlers in
+Kentucky. In 1777, war parties sent out by him from Detroit, under cover
+of the forts of Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia, swept Kentucky from
+end to end, and the whole American frontier was the scene of a frightful
+panic. The American backwoodsmen were ambushed, many of the blockhouse
+posts were burned, prisoners were subjected to nameless horrors, and it
+seemed as if pandemonium had broken loose. By the close of the year,
+such had been the rush of settlers back to their old homes, east of the
+mountains, that but five or six hundred frontiersmen remained in all
+Kentucky. Had the British and the Indians succeeded in driving back all
+of the settlers, they would have held the whole interior of the
+continent, and the American republic might never have been permitted to
+grow beyond the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge; hemmed in to the
+Atlantic slope, this could never have become the great nation it is
+to-day.
+
+Prominent among the defenders of Kentucky in 1777 was George Rogers
+Clark. He was but twenty-five years of age, had come from a good family
+in Virginia, and had a fair education for that day, but had been a wood
+rover from childhood. He was tall and commanding in person, a great
+hunter, and a backwoods land surveyor, such as Washington was. With
+chain and compass, ax and rifle, he had, in the employ of land
+speculators, wandered far and wide through the border region, knowing
+its trails, its forts, its mountain passes, and its aborigines better
+than he knew his books. Associated with him were Boone, Benjamin Logan,
+and others who were prominent among American border heroes.
+
+Clark saw that the best way to defend Kentucky was to strike the enemy
+in their own country. Gaining permission from Patrick Henry, governor of
+Virginia, for Kentucky was then but a county of Virginia, and obtaining
+some small assistance in money, he raised, in 1778, a little army of a
+hundred fifty backwoodsmen, clad in buckskin and homespun, who came from
+the hunters' camps of the Alleghanies. The men collected at Pittsburg
+and Wheeling, and in flatboats cautiously descended the Ohio to the
+falls, where is now the city of Louisville. Here, on an island, they
+built a fort as a military base, and the strongest of the party pushed
+on down the river to the abandoned old French Fort Massac, ten miles
+below the mouth of the Tennessee, from which they marched overland, for
+a hundred twenty miles, to Kaskaskia in western Illinois.
+
+Capturing Kaskaskia by surprise (July 4), and soon gaining the good will
+of the French there, Clark sent out messengers who easily won over the
+neighboring Cahokia; and very soon even Vincennes, on the Wabash River,
+sent in its submission. It was not long before Hamilton, at Detroit,
+heard the humiliating news. He at once sent out two French agents,
+Charles de Langlade and Charles Gautier, of Green Bay, to raise a large
+war party of Wisconsin Indians. They succeeded so well, that Hamilton
+set out from Detroit in October, to retake Vincennes. His force
+consisted of nearly two hundred whites (chiefly French) and three
+hundred Indians. Such were the obstacles to overcome in an unbroken
+wilderness, that he was seventy-one days in reaching his destination.
+Clark had left but two of his soldiers at Vincennes, and as their French
+allies at once surrendered, there was nothing to do but to give up the
+place.
+
+Now came one of the most stirring deeds in our Western history. Clark,
+at Kaskaskia, soon learned of the loss of Vincennes; at the same time,
+it was told him that the greater part of Hamilton's expedition had
+disbanded for the winter, the lieutenant governor intending to launch a
+still larger war party against him in the spring. Thereupon Clark
+determined not to await an attack, but himself to make an attack on
+Hamilton, who had remained in charge of Vincennes.
+
+The distance across country, from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, is about two
+hundred thirty miles. In summer it was a delightful region of
+alternating groves and prairies; in the dead of winter, it would afford
+fair traveling over the frozen plains and ice-bound rivers; but now, in
+February (1779), the weather had moderated, and great freshets had
+flooded the lowlands and meadows. The ground was boggy, and progress was
+slow and difficult; there were no tents, and the floods had driven away
+much of the game; and Clark and his officers were often taxed to their
+wits' ends to devise methods for keeping their hard-worked men in good
+spirits. Often they were obliged to wade in the icy water, for miles
+together, and to sleep at night in soaked clothes upon little
+brush-strewn hillocks, shivering with cold, and without food or fire.
+
+But at last, after nearly three weeks of almost superhuman exertion and
+indescribable misery, Vincennes was reached. The British garrison was
+taken by surprise, but held out with obstinacy, and throughout the long
+moonlight night the battle raged with much fury. The log fort was on the
+top of a hill overlooking the little town; it was armed with several
+small cannon, but Clark's men had only their muskets. They were,
+however, served freely with ammunition by the French villagers; and,
+being expert marksmen, could hit the gunners by firing through the
+loopholes, so that by sunrise the garrison was sadly crippled. The
+fight continued throughout the following morning, and in the afternoon
+the British ran up the white flag. Hamilton and twenty-six of his
+fellows were sent as prisoners overland to Virginia.
+
+Clark remained as master of the Northwest until the close of the
+Revolutionary War. The fact that the flag of the republic waved over
+Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia when the war ended, had much to do
+with the decision of the peace commissioners to allow the United States
+to retain the country lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and
+the Great Lakes.
+
+During the Revolution, none of the forts in Wisconsin were occupied by
+British soldiers, and they were allowed to tumble into decay. Wisconsin
+was, however, used as a recruiting ground for Indian allies. Not only
+did Langlade and Gautier raise a war party of Wisconsin Indians to help
+Hamilton in his expedition against Vincennes, but they were frequently
+in Wisconsin on similar business during the war. In 1779 Gautier led a
+party of Wisconsin Indians to Peoria, in the Illinois country, where
+there was an old French fort which, it was thought, might fall into the
+hands of the Americans. Gautier burned this fort, and then hastily
+retreated because he found that Clark was making friends with all the
+Illinois Indians.
+
+Clark's agents traded as far north as Portage, in Wisconsin. At Prairie
+du Chien they induced Linctot, a famous French fur trader, to join the
+Americans. Linctot put himself at the head of a party of five hundred
+French and half-breed horsemen, who were of much assistance to Clark in
+his various movements after the capture of Vincennes. Meanwhile another
+large party, chiefly of Indians, assembled at Prairie du Chien in the
+British cause, led by three French traders, Hesse, Du Charme, and Calve.
+They raided the upper Mississippi valley, capturing provisions intended
+for the Americans, and making a futile attack on the Spanish village of
+St. Louis, which was thought to be assisting Clark.
+
+Despite these military operations in Wisconsin, the English fur trade
+continued in full strength, with headquarters upon the Island of
+Mackinac, but with French agents and boatmen, whose principal dwelling
+places were at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. Upon Lake Superior large
+canoes and bateaux were used; but upon Lake Michigan were three small
+sloops, the _Welcome_, the _Felicity_, and the _Archangel_, which
+carried supplies and furs for the traders, and made frequent cruises to
+see that the "Bostonians," as the French used to call the Americans,
+obtained no foothold upon the shore of the lake.
+
+Just before the close of the war, the British commander at Mackinac
+Island, Captain Patrick Sinclair, held a council with the Indians, and
+for a small sum purchased for himself their claims to that island and to
+nearly all of the land now comprising Wisconsin. But the treaty of 1783,
+between the British and the Americans, did not recognize this purchase,
+and Sinclair found that he was no longer the owner of Wisconsin. It had
+become, largely through the valor of Clark, and the persistence of our
+treaty commissioners, a part of the territory of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+THE RULE OF JUDGE REAUME
+
+
+By the treaty of peace with Great Britain, in 1783, the country
+northwest of the Ohio River was declared to be a part of the territory
+of the United States; but it was many years before the Americans had
+anything more than a nominal control of Wisconsin, which was a part of
+this Northwestern region. The United States was at first unable to meet
+all of its obligations under this treaty; hence Great Britain kept
+possession of the old fur trade posts on the Upper Lakes, including
+Mackinac, of which Wisconsin was a "dependency." A British garrison was
+kept at Mackinac, thus controlling the fur trade of this district, but
+no troops were deemed necessary within Wisconsin itself.
+
+To the few white inhabitants of the small fur trade villages of Green
+Bay and Prairie du Chien, there was slight evidence of any of these
+various changes in political ownership. Beyond the brief stay among them
+of Lieutenant Gorrell and his little band of redcoats, in the years
+1761-63, the French and half-breeds of Wisconsin led much the same life
+as of old.
+
+In 1780, an English fur trader, John Long, passed up the Fox River and
+down the Wisconsin, and bought up a great many furs in this region. Some
+years later he wrote a book about his travels, and from this we get a
+very good idea of life among the French and Indians of the Northwest.
+Long was at Green Bay for several days, and tells us that the houses
+there were covered with birch bark, and the rooms were decorated with
+bows and arrows, guns, and spears. There were in the village not over
+fifty whites, divided into six or seven families. The men were for the
+most part engaged as assistants to the two or three leading traders;
+they spent their winters in the woods, picking up furs at the Indian
+camps, and in summer cultivated their narrow strips of gardens which ran
+down to the river's edge. It mattered little to them who was their
+political master, so long as they were left to enjoy their simple lives
+in their own fashion.
+
+To this primitive community there came one day, in 1803, a portly,
+pompous, bald headed little Frenchman, named Charles Reaume. Wisconsin
+was then a part of Indiana Territory, of which William Henry Harrison
+was governor. It was for the most part a wilderness; dense woods and
+tenantless prairies extended all the way from the narrow clearing at
+Green Bay to the little settlement at Prairie du Chien. There were small
+clearings at Portage, Milwaukee, and one or two other fur trading posts.
+There was no civil government here, and the few white people in all this
+vast stretch of country practically made their own laws, each man being
+judge and jury for himself, so long as he did not interfere with other
+people's rights.
+
+Reaume bore a commission from Governor Harrison, appointing him justice
+of the peace at Green Bay, which meant nearly all of the country west of
+Lake Michigan. Thus "Judge Reaume," as he was called, was the only civil
+officer in Wisconsin, and although apparently never reappointed, he
+retained this distinction by popular consent until after the War of
+1812-15; indeed, for several years after that, he was the principal
+officer of justice in these parts.
+
+The judge was a good-hearted man, when one penetrated beneath the crust
+of official pomposity with which he was generally enveloped. He appears
+to have owned a volume of Blackstone, but the only law he understood or
+practiced was the old "Law of Paris," which had governed Canada from the
+earliest time, and which still rules in the Province of Quebec, and it
+is related that he knew little of that. His decisions were arbitrary,
+but were generally based on the right as he saw it, quite regardless of
+the technicalities of the law.
+
+A great many queer stories are told of old Judge Reaume. He loved
+display after his simple fashion, and invented for himself an official
+uniform, which he wore on all public occasions. This consisted of a
+scarlet frock coat faced with white silk, and gay with spangled buttons;
+it can still be seen in the museum of the State Historical Society. He
+issued few warrants or subpoenas; it is told of him that whenever he
+wanted a person to appear before him, either as witness or principal, he
+sent to that person the constable, bearing his honor's well-known large
+jackknife, which was quite as effectual as the king's signet ring of
+olden days.
+
+Quite often did he adjudge guilty both complainant and defendant,
+obliging them both to pay a fine, or to work so many days in his garden;
+and sometimes both were acquitted, the constable being ordered to pay
+the costs. It is even said that the present of a bottle of whisky to the
+judge was sufficient to insure a favorable decision. The story is told
+that once, when the judge had actually rendered a decision in a certain
+case, the person decided against presented the court with a new
+coffee-pot, whereupon the judgment was reversed.
+
+There may be some exaggeration in these tales of the earliest judge in
+Wisconsin, but they appear to be in the main substantiated.
+Nevertheless, although there doubtless was some grumbling, it speaks
+well for the old justice of the peace, and for the orderly good nature
+of this little French community without a jail, that no one appears ever
+to have questioned the legality of Reaume's decisions. These were
+strictly abided by, and although he was never reappointed, he held
+office under both American and British sway, simply because no one was
+sent to succeed him.
+
+Not only was Reaume Wisconsin's judge and jury during the first two
+decades of the nineteenth century, but as there was, during much of his
+time, no priest hereabouts, he drew up marriage contracts, and married
+and divorced people at will, issued baptismal certificates, and kept a
+registry of births and deaths. He certified alike to British and
+American military commissions; drew up contracts between the fur traders
+and their employees; wrote letters for the _habitants_; and performed
+for the settlers all those functions of Church and state for which we
+now require a long list of officials and professional men. He was a
+picturesque and important functionary, illustrating in his person the
+simple fashions and modest desires of the French who first settled this
+State. We are now a wealthier people, but certainly there have never
+been happier times in Wisconsin, all things considered, than in the
+primitive days of old Judge Reaume and his official jackknife.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRITISH CAPTURE PRAIRIE DU CHIEN
+
+
+Although the Northwest was obtained for the United States by the treaty
+with Great Britain in 1783, the fur trade posts on the Upper Great Lakes
+were openly held by the mother country until the new republic could
+fully meet its financial obligations to her. After thirteen years, a new
+treaty (1796) officially recognized American supremacy. Nevertheless,
+for another thirteen years English fur traders were practically in
+possession of Wisconsin, operating through French Canadian and
+half-breed agents, clerks, and _voyageurs_, until John Jacob Astor
+(1809) organized the American Fur Company, and English fur traders were
+forbidden to operate here.
+
+The military officers in Canada were firmly convinced that the Americans
+could not long hold the Northwest. They believed that some day there
+would be another war, and the country would once more become the
+property of Great Britain. Therefore they sought to keep on good terms
+with our Indians and French, giving them presents and employment.
+
+Thus, when our second war with Great Britain did break out, in 1812,
+nearly all the people living in Wisconsin, and elsewhere in the wild
+northern parts of the Northwest, were strong friends of the British
+cause. To them the issue was very clear. British victory meant the
+perpetuation of old times and old methods, so dear to them and to their
+ancestors before them. American victory meant the cutting down of the
+forests, the death knell of the fur trade, and the coming of a swarm of
+strange people, heretofore almost unknown to Wisconsin. These people had
+been described to them as an uneasy, selfish, land grabbing folk, who
+knew not how to enjoy themselves, and were for turning the world upside
+down with their Yankee notions. Naturally, the easy-going, comfort
+loving Wisconsin French looked upon their coming with great alarm.
+
+The principal event of the war in Wisconsin was the capture of Prairie
+du Chien by the British, in 1814. Wisconsin was then a part of Illinois
+Territory, and west of the Mississippi River lay the enormous Missouri
+Territory. General William Clark, a younger brother of George Rogers
+Clark, was governor of Missouri Territory, and had in charge the conduct
+of military operations along the Upper Mississippi River.
+
+Governor Clark had heard that the British, by this time strongly
+intrenched on Mackinac Island, intended to send an expedition up the Fox
+River and down the Wisconsin, to seize upon Prairie du Chien, which had
+not been fortified since the old French days. Clark recognized that the
+power that held Prairie du Chien practically held the entire Upper
+Mississippi River, and controlled the Indians and the fur trade of a
+vast region. Accordingly, early in June (1814) he ascended the river
+from his headquarters at St. Louis, with three hundred men in six or
+eight large boats, including a bullet-proof keel boat, and erected a
+stockade on the summit of a large Indian mound which lay on the bank of
+the Mississippi a mile or two above the mouth of the Wisconsin. The name
+given to this stockade was Fort Shelby. Lieutenant Joseph Perkins was
+left in charge of the garrison, which was divided between the fort and
+the keel boat, the latter being anchored out in the Mississippi.
+
+The British expedition from Mackinac had been greatly delayed. During
+the preceding autumn, Robert Dickson, an English fur trader, had been
+engaged in recruiting a large band of Indians in the neighborhood of
+Green Bay, and with them intended to occupy Prairie du Chien. But the
+Indians were evidently afraid to fight the Americans, and delayed
+Dickson so that the canoes of his party were caught in the ice on Lake
+Winnebago (December, 1813), and he was obliged to go into winter
+quarters on Island Park (known to the white pioneers as Garlic Island).
+
+Poor Dickson had a sorry time with his war party. As soon as it was
+learned that provisions were being freely given out at this island camp,
+Indians from long distances came to visit him, under pretense of
+enlisting under the banner of the British chief. Councils innumerable
+were held, presents and food had to be given the visitors continually,
+and Dickson was put to sore straits to keep them satisfied. He found it
+impossible to get sufficient supplies from British headquarters on
+Mackinac Island, and was being severely criticised by the officers
+there, for his exorbitant demands upon them. Nevertheless, unless he
+kept his Indians good-natured, they would promptly desert him. He was,
+therefore, forced to rely upon the French of Green Bay for what food he
+needed. This came grudgingly, and at so high prices that Dickson roundly
+scolded the Green Bay people, and promised to report them for punishment
+to the British king, for daring to take advantage of his Majesty's
+necessities.
+
+While Dickson was thus engaged in Lake Winnebago, a British captain was
+drilling a number of young Frenchmen at Green Bay, and trying to make
+soldiers of them; at Mackinac, a similar work was being done among the
+_voyageurs_ by the two leading fur traders of Prairie du Chien, Brisbois
+and Rolette. On the other hand, at Prairie du Chien, the American Indian
+agent, Boilvin, was issuing circulars calling on the people to claim
+American protection before it was too late.
+
+Late in June the leaders of the expedition started from Mackinac, under
+the command of Major William McKay, and at Green Bay, Lake Winnebago,
+and Portage picked up various parties of French and Indians. These bands
+were much reduced from those who had been so liberally maintained during
+the winter, for most of the Indians were anxious to keep away from the
+fighting until it should be evident which side would win, and many of
+the French were of the same mind. By the time Fox River had been
+ascended by the fleet of canoes, and the descent of the Wisconsin begun,
+the allied forces consisted of but a hundred twenty whites and four
+hundred fifty Indians. All of the latter, according to McKay's report,
+proved "perfectly useless."
+
+On the 17th of July, the British war party landed at Prairie du Chien,
+to find the Americans, some sixty or seventy strong, protected by a
+stockade and two blockhouses, on which were mounted six small cannon. In
+the river, the keel boat contained perhaps seventy-five men and fourteen
+cannon. The British had, besides their muskets, only a three-pounder,
+and the situation did not look promising.
+
+Perkins was summoned to surrender, but he declared that he would "defend
+to the last man." For two days there was a rather lively discharge of
+firearms on both sides. Apparently, the British were the better gunners;
+their cannonading soon forced the men on the keel boat to desert their
+comrades on shore, and McKay then centered his attention on the fort.
+The Indians were unruly, being principally engaged in plundering the
+Frenchmen's houses in the village. The British supply of ammunition had
+quite run out by the evening of the 9th, and McKay was seriously
+contemplating a retreat, when he was surprised to see a white flag put
+out by the garrison.
+
+It appears that the stock of food had become exhausted in the fort, and
+Perkins had formed an exaggerated idea of the strength of the invaders.
+The British guaranteed that the Americans should march out of Fort
+Shelby at eight o'clock in the morning of the 20th, with colors flying
+and with the honors of war, and that the Indians should be prevented
+from maltreating them. This last agreement McKay found it very difficult
+to carry out, for the savages wished, as usual, to massacre the
+prisoners. To the honor of the British, it should be recorded that they
+exercised great vigilance, and spared neither supplications nor threats,
+to insure the safety of their prisoners, whom they soon sent down the
+river to the American post at St. Louis.
+
+When the British flag was run up on the stockade, the name was changed
+to Fort McKay, in honor of the British leader. During the long autumn
+and succeeding winter, the British experienced their old difficulties
+with the Indian allies. The warriors sacked the houses of the French
+settlers, all over the prairie, and destroyed crops and supplies.
+Council after council was held at Fort McKay, and large bands of lazy,
+quarrelsome savages, encamped about the fort, were fed and were loaded
+with presents; altogether, the occupation of Wisconsin proved an
+expensive luxury. It was no doubt with some relief that the British
+garrison at last learned, late in May 1815, of the treaty of peace
+signed on the previous 24th of December, and made arrangements to
+withdraw up the Wisconsin and down the Fox, and across the great lake to
+Mackinac.
+
+In point of fact, the withdrawal of Captain Bulger, at that time in
+charge of Fort McKay, was in reality a hasty and undignified retreat
+from his own allies. The Indians had learned with amazement that the
+British palefaces were going to surrender to the American palefaces,
+without showing fight, and simply because somewhere, far away in another
+part of the world, some other palefaces, whom these Englishmen had never
+even seen, had held a peace council and buried the hatchet. This sort of
+thing could not be understood by the savages encamped outside the walls
+of Fort McKay, save as an evidence of rank cowardice. They called the
+redcoats a lot of "old women," became insolent, and even threatened
+them.
+
+Captain Bulger saw that it would not do to await the arrival of the
+American troops from St. Louis, so he sent an Indian messenger with a
+letter to the American commander, telling him to help himself to
+everything in Fort McKay. Then, only forty-eight hours after the arrival
+of the peace news, he pulled down his flag and hurried home as fast as
+he could, fearful all the way that an Indian war party might be at his
+heels. Thus ignominiously ended the last British occupation of
+Wisconsin.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE WISCONSIN LEAD MINES
+
+
+It was the fur trade that first brought white men to Wisconsin. The
+daring Nicolet pushed his way through the wilderness, a thousand miles
+west of the little French settlement at Quebec, solely to introduce the
+traffic in furs to our savages, and others were not long in following
+him. Soon it was learned that there were lead mines in what is now
+southwest Wisconsin.
+
+It is not probable that the aborigines, before the coming of white men,
+made any other use of lead than from it to fashion a few rude ornaments.
+But the French at once recognized the great value of this mineral, in
+connection with the fur trade. They taught the Indians how to mine it in
+a crude fashion, and to make it into bullets for the guns which they
+introduced among them.
+
+The French traders themselves mined a good deal of it for their own use,
+and shipped it in their canoes to other parts of the West, where there
+were no lead mines, but where both white men and Indians needed bullets.
+For in a remarkably short period nearly all the Indians had turned from
+their old pursuits of raising maize and pumpkins, and killing just
+enough game with slings and arrows to supply themselves with skins for
+their clothing and flesh for their food. They had now become persistent
+hunters for skins, which they might exchange with white men for
+European-made guns, ammunition, kettles, spears, cloths, and ornaments.
+
+Some of the Indians in the neighborhood of the lead mines found it more
+profitable to mine lead for other hunters, than to hunt; hence we find
+that, at an early date, the mines came to be regarded as the particular
+property of the Indians, a fact which had considerable influence upon
+the history of the region. With the French, most of our Wisconsin
+Indians were quite friendly. The French were kind and obliging, often
+married and settled among them, and had no thought of driving them away.
+They throve upon the fur trade with the Indians, and in general did not
+care to become farmers. The English and the Americans, on the contrary,
+felt a contempt for the savages, and did not disguise it; the aim of the
+Americans, in particular, was gradually to clear the forest, to make
+farms, and to build villages. In the American scheme of civilization the
+Indian had no part. Therefore we find that Frenchmen were quite free to
+work the lead mines in company with the savages; but the Anglo-Saxons,
+when they arrived on the scene, were obliged to fight for this right. In
+the end they banished the Indians from the "diggings."
+
+Marquette and Joliet had heard of the lead mines, and of the Frenchmen
+working at them, when they made their famous canoe trip through
+Wisconsin, in 1673. Through the rest of the seventeenth century,
+wherever we pick up any French books of travel in these regions, or any
+maps of the Upper Mississippi country, we are sure to find frequent,
+though rather vague, mention of the lead mines.
+
+The first official exploration of them appears to have been made in 1693
+by Le Sueur, the French military commandant at Chequamegon Bay, on Lake
+Superior. He was so impressed by the "mines of lead, copper, and blue
+and green earth" which he found all along the banks of the Upper
+Mississippi, that he went to France to tell the king about his great
+discoveries, and seek permission to work them. It was forbidden to do
+anything in New France without the consent of the great French king,
+although the free and independent fur traders did very much as they
+pleased out here in the wilderness. But Le Sueur was a soldier, and had
+to ask permission. Obtaining it, he returned at great expense with
+thirty miners, who proceeded up the Mississippi from New Orleans; but
+somehow nothing came of these extensive preparations.
+
+Several French speculators, in succeeding years, thought to make money
+out of supposed mines of gold, silver, lead, and copper along the upper
+waters of the Mississippi. Some of them came over from France with bands
+of miners and little companies of soldiers to guard them; but, like Le
+Sueur, they spent most of their time and money in exploration, not
+content with those lead mines that were well known to exist, and
+invariably left the country in disgust, their money and patience
+exhausted. Now and then a more practical man came quietly upon the
+scene, and seemed well satisfied with lead when he could not find gold;
+most of such miners were French, but a few were Spanish, for Spain then
+owned all the country lying westward of the Mississippi River.
+
+Occasionally the French commandant at Mackinac or Detroit would come to
+the mines, and with the aid of his soldiers and the Indians, get out a
+considerable quantity of the ore, and take it home with him in his fleet
+of canoes; or a fur trader would do the same, for the purposes of his
+own trade with the savages. The little French village of Ste. Genevieve,
+near St. Louis, had become, by the opening of our Revolutionary War, a
+considerable lead market, from which shipments were made in flatboats
+and bateaux down the Mississippi to New Orleans, or up the Ohio to
+Pittsburg. Lead was, next to peltries, the most important export of the
+Upper Mississippi region, and throughout the West served as currency.
+
+During the Revolutionary War, the British were at first in command of
+the upper reaches of the great river, and guarded jealously the approach
+to the lead mines, for bullets were necessary to the success of the fast
+growing Kentucky settlements; American military operations against the
+little British garrisons at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Detroit
+would be powerless without lead. Gradually the influence of the American
+fur trade grew among the Indians, and it was not long before the
+Americans in the West were able to obtain through them all the lead they
+wanted.
+
+Toward the close of the war, Julien Dubuque, a very energetic French
+miner, bought up large claims from the Spaniards, in Missouri and Iowa,
+and for about a quarter of a century was the principal man in the lead
+region. He was remarkably successful in dealing with the Indians, whom
+he employed to do the principal work. His mining and trading operations
+were not confined to the Spanish side of the river, but were carried on
+in American territory as well, and his influence with the savages for a
+time prevented American miners and fur traders from obtaining a
+foothold.
+
+When at last (1804) the United States obtained possession of the lands
+west of the Mississippi, numerous enterprising Americans forced their
+way into the lead district. They managed to mine a good deal of the
+metal, here and there, but frequently met with armed opposition from the
+Indians. It was fifteen years before the Americans equaled the French
+Canadians in number. In 1819, the Indian claims to the mining country
+having at last been purchased by the federal government, there was a
+general inrush of Americans. Among the earliest and most prominent of
+these was James W. Shull, the founder of Shullsburg, in Iowa county.
+Another man of note was Colonel James Johnson, of Kentucky, who brought
+negro slaves into the region, to do his heaviest labor, and maintained a
+fleet of flatboats to carry lead ore from Galena River to St. Louis, New
+Orleans, and Pittsburg.
+
+At first the operations of Johnson, Shull, and others had to be carried
+on under military protection; for the Indians, although they had sold
+their claims, persisted in annoying the newcomers, being urged on by the
+French miners and traders who were still numerous in the mining
+country. But so soon as the news spread that a large trade in lead was
+fast springing up, other Americans began to pour in; mining claims were
+entered in great numbers, a federal land office was opened, and by 1826
+two thousand men, including negro slaves brought in by Kentucky and
+Missouri operators, were engaged in and about the mines. The following
+year the town of Galena was founded, and in 1829 there was a stampede
+thither.
+
+Henceforth, for many years, the lead trade of southwestern Wisconsin,
+northwestern Illinois, and parts of Missouri and Iowa was the chief
+interest in the West. By this time the fur trade had almost died out,
+and the old French Canadian element had become but a small proportion of
+the population of the Mississippi valley. In those days, Galena, Mineral
+Point, and other lead mining towns were of much more importance than
+Chicago or Milwaukee, and their citizens entertained high hopes of the
+future. The lead trade with St. Louis and New Orleans was very large;
+but the East also wanted the lead, and the air was filled with projects
+to secure routes by which lead might be carried to vessels plying on the
+Great Lakes, which could transport it to Buffalo and other far away
+ports.
+
+For a time the most popular of these projects was the old fur trade
+route of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers. A canal was dug along the famous
+carrying trail at Portage, and the federal government was induced to
+deepen Fox River, which is naturally very shallow, and to attempt to
+create a permanent channel in the Wisconsin River. But, although much
+money has been spent on these schemes, from that day to this, the
+Fox-Wisconsin route is still impracticable save to boats of
+exceptionally light draft; and in our time the project of connecting the
+Mississippi River with Lake Michigan, by the way of Portage and Green
+Bay, is almost wholly abandoned. Another scheme was the proposed
+Milwaukee and Rock River canal, by which Milwaukee was to be connected
+with the Rock River, which joins the Mississippi at Rock Island; but
+this plan died a still earlier death. It was the struggle to connect the
+port of Milwaukee with the lead region that finally led to the building
+of the railroad between that city and Prairie du Chien.
+
+More immediately effective for the benefit of the lead trade, was the
+opening of a wagon road from the lead mining towns, through Madison, to
+Milwaukee, along which great canvas-covered caravans of ore-laden
+"prairie schooners" toiled slowly from the mines to the Lake Michigan
+docks, a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. Other roads led
+to Galena and Prairie du Chien, where the Mississippi River boats
+awaited similar fleets of "schooners" from the interior. A good deal of
+the lead was sent by similar conveyances to Helena, a little village on
+the Wisconsin River, where a shot tower had been built against the face
+of a high cliff; from here, shallow-draft boats took the shot to Green
+Bay, by way of the Portage Canal and Fox River, or descended the
+Wisconsin to Prairie du Chien.
+
+From various causes, the lead trade of the Upper Mississippi region had
+sadly declined by 1857. Among these causes was the finding of gold in
+California (1849), which attracted large numbers of the miners to a more
+profitable field; again, the surface or shallow diggings having been
+exhausted, much more capital was required to operate in the lower
+levels; more serious was the lack of sufficient transportation
+facilities, and these did not come until the great silver mines of the
+Rocky Mountains had been opened, lead being thenceforth more profitably
+produced in connection with silver.
+
+The effect of the lead industry upon the development of Wisconsin was
+important. Many years before farmers would naturally have sought
+southern Wisconsin in their pushing westward for fresh lands, the
+opening of the mines brought thither a large and energetic industrial
+population, and a considerable capital, and awakened popular interest in
+land and water transportation routes.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINNEBAGO WAR
+
+
+The world over, white men, representing a higher type of civilization,
+have wrested, or are still wresting, the land from the original savage
+occupants. This seems to be inevitable. It is one of the means by which
+civilization is being extended over the entire globe. We glory in the
+progress of civilization; but we are apt to ignore the hardship which
+this brings to the aborigines. While not relaxing our endeavor to plant
+the world with progressive men who shall make the most of life, we
+should see to it that the savage races are pushed to the wall with as
+kindly and forbearing a hand as possible; that we apply to them humane
+methods, and give them credit for possessing the sentiments of men who,
+like us, dearly love their old homes, and are willing to fight for them.
+These sentiments have certainly not often been applied in the past, by
+our Anglo-Saxon race, to the Indians of North America.
+
+We have failed to appreciate that the Indian, in being driven from his
+lands, has retaliated from motives of patriotism. His methods of
+fighting are often cruel and treacherous; but it must be remembered that
+he is in a stage of development akin to that of the child, and that
+white men upon the frontier have often been quite as cruel and
+treacherous toward the Indian as he was toward them, for such are ever
+the methods of the weak and the primitive. The Indian is blamed for his
+custom of wreaking vengeance upon all white men, when but an individual
+has injured him; yet, on the border, it has always been seen that white
+men have retaliated on the Indians in exactly the same spirit. "The only
+good Indian is a dead Indian," has been their motto, the offense of one
+Indian being considered the offense of all. Our dealings with the red
+men, both as individuals and as a nation, have, for over a hundred
+years, often been such as we should blush for. We are doing better now
+than formerly; but our treatment of the weak and unfortunate aborigines
+is still far from being to our credit.
+
+The story of the Winnebago War, in Wisconsin, is illustrative of the
+old-time method of treating our barbaric predecessors. No doubt it would
+have been better if the United States had, from the first, held all the
+Indians to be subjects, and forced them to obey our laws. But the tribes
+were considered in theory to be distinct nations, over whom we exercised
+supervision, and with whom we held treaties. This at first seemed
+necessary, owing to the patriarchal system among the Indians, by which
+heads of families or clans are supposed to control the younger members,
+all affairs being decided upon in councils, in which these wise old men
+participate. It was thought that, through the chiefs, binding agreements
+could be made with entire tribes. It was not then generally understood
+that each Indian is, according to the customs of those people, really a
+law unto himself; that the chiefs, in signing a treaty, are seldom
+representative in the sense that we use the word, and that they
+generally represent no one but themselves; that the only way in which
+they can commit their tribes is through the respect or fear which they
+may foster in the minds of their followers.
+
+In the month of August, 1825, when Wisconsin was still a part of
+Michigan Territory, there was a treaty signed at Prairie du Chien
+between the United States and the Indians of what are now Illinois,
+Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The treaty set boundaries between the
+quarrelsome tribes, and agreed on a general peace upon the border. Like
+most Indian treaties, this document was drawn up by the officers of the
+general government; and the chiefs, knowing little of its contents, were
+simply invited to sign their names to it. They signed as requested, but
+went home in bad temper, because the American commissioners would not
+make them costly presents of guns, ammunition, beads, hatchets, cloths,
+and rum, as the British in Canada always did; and the savages were not
+even allowed to celebrate the treaty by a roistering feast. The
+Americans, from their cold, businesslike conduct, impressed the Indians
+as being "stingy old women."
+
+Nobody on the frontier, the following winter, seemed to pay the
+slightest attention to the terms of the treaty. The Sioux, who lived
+west of the Mississippi, the Winnebagoes in southern and western
+Wisconsin, and the Chippewas in the north, quarreled with one another
+and scalped one another as freely as ever; while French traders, in
+British employ, stirred up the red men, and told them that Great Britain
+would soon have the whole country back again. The Winnebagoes, in
+particular, were irritated because two of their braves had been
+imprisoned for thieving, at Fort Crawford, in Prairie du Chien. They
+held numerous councils in the woods, and resolved to stand by the
+British when the war should break out. In the midst of this uneasiness,
+the troops at Fort Crawford were suddenly withdrawn to Fort Snelling, on
+the Upper Mississippi River, near where St. Paul now is. This was
+supposed by the Indians to mean that the American soldiers were afraid
+of them.
+
+The spring of 1827 arrived. A half-breed named Methode was making maple
+sugar upon the Yellow River, in Iowa, a dozen miles north of Prairie du
+Chien. With him were his wife and five children; all were set upon by
+some Winnebagoes and killed, scalped, and burned. Naturally there was an
+uproar all along the Upper Mississippi. Excitement was at its height,
+when word was brought in by Sioux visitors to the village of Red Bird, a
+petty Winnebago chief, that the two men of his tribe who had been
+imprisoned in Fort Crawford had been hung when the troops reached Fort
+Snelling. The wily Sioux suggested vengeance. The Winnebago code was two
+lives for one. Inflamed with rage, Red Bird set out at once upon the
+warpath to take four white scalps.
+
+Meanwhile the clouds were gathering for a general storm. The American
+Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, with singular indiscretion, was not
+treating his Winnebago visitors with kindness. English and French fur
+traders were, on behalf of Great Britain, making liberal promises for
+the future. Winnebagoes were being brutally driven from the lead mines
+by the white miners, who were now swarming into southwest Wisconsin. The
+Sioux along the west bank of the Mississippi, in Minnesota, were
+encouraging the Winnebagoes to revolt; and were displaying a bad temper
+toward Americans, whom they thought cowardly because apparently
+unwilling to use military force to keep the Indians in order.
+
+One day in June, Red Bird, a friend named Wekau, and two other
+Winnebagoes, appeared at the door of a log cabin owned by Registre
+Gagnier, a French settler living on the edge of Prairie du Chien
+village. Gagnier was an old friend of Red Bird, and invited the four
+Indians in to take dinner with him and his family. For several hours the
+guests stayed, eating and smoking in apparent good humor, until at last
+their chance came. Gagnier and his serving man, Lipcap, were instantly
+shot down; an infant of eighteen months was torn from the arms of Madame
+Gagnier, stabbed and scalped before her eyes, and thrown to the floor as
+dead; but the woman herself with her little boy, ten years of age,
+escaped to the woods and gave the alarm to the neighbors. The Indians
+slunk into the forest and disappeared. The villagers buried Gagnier and
+Lipcap, and, finding the infant girl alive, restored her to her mother.
+Curiously enough, the scalped child recovered and grew to robust
+womanhood.
+
+According to the Winnebago code, four white scalps must be taken in
+return for the two Indians supposed to have been killed at Fort
+Snelling. Red Bird had now secured three, those of Gagnier, Lipcap, and
+the infant; a fourth was necessary before he could properly return to
+his people in the capacity of an avenger, the proudest title which an
+Indian can bear. How he obtained these scalps was, to the mind of his
+race, unimportant; the one idea was to get them.
+
+On the afternoon of the third day after the massacre, Red Bird and his
+friends were visiting at a camp of their people, near the mouth of the
+Bad Ax River, some forty miles north of Prairie du Chien. A drunken
+feast was in progress, in honor of the scalp taking, when two keel boats
+appeared on their way down the Mississippi from Fort Snelling to St.
+Louis. The Sioux, at what is now Winona, had threatened the crews, but
+had not attempted to harm them. The Winnebagoes now appeared on the bank
+and raised the war whoop, but the crew of the foremost boat thought it
+only bluster, so in a spirit of bravado ran their craft toward shore.
+When it was within thirty yards of the bank, the Indians, led by Red
+Bird, poured a volley of rifle balls into the boat. The crew were well
+armed, and, rushing below, answered by shooting through the portholes.
+The boat ran on a bar, and a sharp fire lasted through three hours,
+until dusk, when the craft was finally worked off the bar, and dropped
+downstream in the dark. Although seven hundred bullets penetrated the
+hull, only two of the crew were killed outright, two others dying later
+from wounds, and two others were slightly wounded. The Indians lost
+seven killed and fourteen wounded.
+
+The "battle of the keel boats" was the signal for military activity. In
+July a battalion of troops from Fort Snelling came down to Prairie du
+Chien; and a little later a full regiment from St. Louis followed.
+General Henry Atkinson was in command, and early in August he ordered
+Major William Whistler, then in charge of Fort Howard, to proceed up Fox
+River with a company of troops, in search of the fugitives Red Bird and
+Wekau. At a council held with the Winnebagoes, at Butte des Morts, the
+chiefs were notified that nothing short of the surrender of the leaders
+of the disturbance would satisfy the government for the attack on the
+boats; were they not delivered up, the entire tribe should be hunted
+like wild animals.
+
+Great consternation prevailed among the tribesmen, as the runners sent
+out from the Butte des Morts council carried the terrible threat to all
+the camps of the Winnebagoes, in the deep forests, in the pleasant oak
+groves, and upon the broad prairies throughout southern Wisconsin.
+Whistler had reached the ridge flanking the old portage trail between
+the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, but had not fully completed the
+arrangements of his camp when an Indian runner appeared in hot haste,
+saying that Red Bird and Wekau would surrender themselves at three
+o'clock in the afternoon of the following day, that the tribe might be
+saved.
+
+Whistler and his officers, as true soldiers, were prompt to appreciate
+bravery. They were broad enough to judge these savages by the standards
+of savagery, not by those of a civilization from which the Indian is
+removed by centuries of human progress. They knew full well that the
+culprits were but carrying out the law of their race in seeking white
+scalps in vengeance for the Winnebagoes supposed to have been slain at
+Fort Snelling. Whistler knew that the Indians considered Red Bird and
+Wekau as heroes, and could feel no pangs of conscience, because
+treachery toward enemies was the customary method of Indian warfare.
+Realizing these facts, the American officers recognized that it required
+a fine type of heroism on the part of these simple natives thus to offer
+themselves up to probable death, to redeem their tribe from destruction.
+
+For this reason the soldiers were brought out on parade; and when,
+prompt to the hour named, Red Bird and Wekau, accompanied by a party of
+their friends, came marching into camp, clad in ceremonial dress, and
+singing their death songs, they were received with military honors. The
+native ceremony of surrender was highly impressive. Red Bird conducted
+himself with a dignity which won the admiration of all. Wekau, on the
+contrary, was an indifferent looking fellow, and commanded little
+respect.
+
+Red Bird made but one request, that, although sentenced to death, he
+should not be placed in chains. This was granted; and while, during his
+subsequent imprisonment at Prairie du Chien, he had frequent
+opportunities to escape, he declined to take advantage of them. A few
+months later he fell an easy victim to an epidemic then raging in the
+village, thus relieving the government from embarrassment, for it was
+felt that he was altogether too good an Indian to hang; indeed, his
+execution might have brought on a general border war.
+
+The murderers of Methode were also apprehended and given a death
+sentence; but upon the Winnebagoes promising to relinquish forever their
+hold upon the lead mines of southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern
+Illinois, President Adams pardoned all the prisoners then living. The
+following year (1828), a fort was erected at the Fox-Wisconsin portage,
+near the scene of Red Bird's surrender; being in the heart of that
+tribe's territory, it was called Fort Winnebago. Thereafter the
+Winnebagoes were kept in entire subjection. Indeed, the three forts,
+Howard at Green Bay, Winnebago at Portage, and Crawford at Prairie du
+Chien, now gave the United States, for the first time, firm grasp upon
+the whole of what is now Wisconsin.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLACK HAWK WAR
+
+
+In November, 1804, the Sac and Fox Indians, in return for a paltry
+annuity of a thousand dollars, ceded to the United States fifty million
+acres of land in eastern Missouri, northwestern Illinois, and
+southwestern Wisconsin. There was an unfortunate clause in this compact,
+which quite unexpectedly became one of the chief causes of the Black
+Hawk War of 1832; instead of obliging the Indians at once to vacate the
+ceded territory, it was stipulated that, "as long as the lands which are
+now ceded to the United States remain their property, the Indians
+belonging to said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of living and hunting
+on them."
+
+Within the limits of the cession was the chief seat of Sac power, a
+village lying on the north side of Rock River, three miles above its
+mouth. It was picturesquely situated on fertile ground, contained the
+principal cemetery of the tribe, and was inhabited by about five hundred
+families, being one of the largest Indian towns on the continent.
+
+From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal character in
+this village was Black Hawk, who was born here in 1767. Black Hawk was
+neither an hereditary nor an elected chief, but was, by common consent,
+the village headman. He was a restless, ambitious, handsome savage; was
+possessed of some of the qualities of successful leadership, was much of
+a demagogue, and aroused the passions of his people by appeals to their
+prejudices and superstitions. It is probable that he was never, in the
+exercise of this policy, dishonest in his motives. A too confiding
+disposition was ever leading his judgment astray; he was readily duped
+by those who, white or red, were interested in deceiving him. The effect
+of his daily communication with the Americans was often to shock rudely
+his high sense of honor; while the studied courtesy accorded him upon
+his annual begging visit to the British military agent at Malden, in
+Canada, contrasted strangely, in his eyes, with his experiences with
+many of the inhabitants on the Illinois border.
+
+[Illustration: BLACK HAWK]
+
+At the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and the United
+States in 1812, Black Hawk naturally allied himself with Tecumseh and
+the British. After burying the hatchet, he settled down into the
+customary routine of savage life, hunting in winter and loafing about
+his village in summer, improvidently existing from hand to mouth,
+although surrounded with abundance. Occasionally he varied the monotony
+by visits to Malden, whence he would return laden with provisions, arms,
+ammunition, and trinkets, his stock of vanity increased by wily
+flattery, and his bitterness against the Americans correspondingly
+intensified. It is not at all surprising that he hated the Americans.
+They brought him naught but evil. The even tenor of his life was
+continually being disturbed by them; and a cruel and causeless beating
+which some white settlers gave him, in the winter of 1822-23, was an
+insult which he treasured up against the entire American people.
+
+In the summer of 1823, squatters, covetous of the rich fields cultivated
+by the "British band," as Black Hawk's people were often called, began
+to take possession of them. The treaty of 1804 had guaranteed to the
+Indians the use of the ceded territory so long as the lands remained the
+property of the United States and were not sold to individuals. The
+frontier line of homestead settlement was still fifty or sixty miles to
+the east; the country between had not yet been surveyed, and much of it
+not explored. The squatters had no rights in this territory, and it was
+clearly the duty of the general government to protect the Indians within
+it so long as no sales were made.
+
+The Sacs would not have complained had the squatters settled in other
+portions of the tract, and not sought to steal the village which was
+their birthplace and contained the cemetery of their tribe. There were
+outrages of the most flagrant nature. Indian cornfields were fenced in
+by the intruders, squaws and children were whipped for venturing beyond
+the bounds thus set, lodges were burned over the heads of the occupants.
+A reign of terror ensued, in which the frequent remonstrances of Black
+Hawk to the white authorities were in vain. Year by year the evil grew.
+When the Indians returned each spring from the winter's hunt, they found
+their village more of a wreck than when they had left it in the fall. It
+is surprising, in view of their native love of revenge, that they acted
+so peaceably while the victims of such harsh treatment.
+
+Returning to his village in the spring of 1831, after a gloomy and
+profitless winter's hunt, Black Hawk was fiercely warned away by the
+whites; but, in a firm and dignified manner, he notified the settlers
+that, if they did not themselves remove, he should use force. This
+announcement was construed by the whites as a threat against their
+lives. Petitions and messages were showered in by them upon Governor
+John Reynolds, of Illinois, setting forth the situation in exaggerated
+terms that would be amusing, were it not that they were the prelude to
+one of the darkest tragedies in the history of our Western border.
+
+The governor caught the spirit of the occasion, and at once issued a
+flaming proclamation calling out a mounted volunteer force to "repel the
+invasion of the British band." These volunteers, sixteen hundred strong,
+cooperated with ten companies of regulars in a demonstration before
+Black Hawk's village on the 25th of June. During that night the Indians,
+in the face of this superior force, quietly withdrew to the west bank of
+the Mississippi, whither they had previously been ordered. On the 30th
+they signed a treaty of capitulation and peace, solemnly agreeing never
+to return to the east side of the river without express permission of
+the United States government.
+
+The rest of the summer was spent by the evicted savages in a state of
+misery. It being now too late to raise another crop of corn and beans,
+they suffered for want of the actual necessaries of life. White Cloud,
+the eloquent and crafty Prophet of the Winnebagoes, was Black Hawk's
+evil genius. He was half Sac and half Winnebago, a hater of the whites,
+an inveterate mischief maker, and, being a "medicine man," possessed
+much influence over both tribes. He was at the head of a Winnebago
+village some thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Rock, on the east
+side of the Mississippi; and to this village he invited Black Hawk,
+advising him to raise a crop of corn there, with the assurance that in
+the autumn the Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies would join him in a
+general movement against the whites in the valley of the Rock.
+
+Relying on these rose-colored promises, Black Hawk spent the winter on
+the west bank of the Mississippi, recruiting his band, and on the 6th of
+April, 1832, crossed the great river at Yellow Banks, below the mouth of
+the Rock. Thus he invaded the State of Illinois, in the face of his
+solemn treaty of the year before. With him were his second in command,
+Neapope, a wily scoundrel, who was White Cloud's tool, and about five
+hundred Sac warriors with their women and children, and all their
+belongings. Their design was to carry out the advice of the Prophet, in
+regard to the corn planting, and if possible to take up the hatchet in
+the autumn.
+
+But it became evident to Black Hawk, before he reached the Prophet's
+town, that the main body of the Pottawattomies, now controlled by the
+peace loving Chief Shaubena, did not intend to go to war; and that the
+rascally Winnebagoes, while cajoling him, were preparing as usual to
+play double. He tells us in his autobiography that, crestfallen, he was
+planning to return peacefully to the west side of the Mississippi, when
+of a sudden he became aware that the whites had raised an army against
+him, and he was confronted with a war not in the time and manner of his
+asking.
+
+The news of his second invasion had spread like wildfire throughout the
+Illinois and Wisconsin settlements. The United States was appealed to
+for a regiment of troops; and meanwhile, under another fiery
+proclamation from the governor of Illinois, an army of eighteen hundred
+militiamen was quickly mustered. Amid intense popular excitement, during
+which many settlers fled from the country, and others hastily threw up
+log forts, the army was mobilized by General Atkinson, who appeared at
+the rendezvous with three hundred regulars. There were many notable men
+upon this expedition: Abraham Lincoln, then a rawboned young fellow, was
+captain of a company of Illinois rangers; Zachary Taylor, famous for his
+bluff manner, was a colonel of regulars; and Jefferson Davis, who was
+wooing Taylor's daughter, was one of his lieutenants; also of the
+regulars, was Major William S. Harney, afterward the hero of Cerro Gordo
+in the Mexican War; and the mustering-in officer was Lieutenant Robert
+Anderson, who was to become famous in connection with Fort Sumter.
+
+Black Hawk was foolish enough to send a message of defiance to General
+Atkinson, and, retreating up the Rock, he came to a stand at Stillman's
+Creek. Here he repented, and sent out runners with a flag of truce, to
+inform the white chief that he would surrender; but the drunken pickets
+of the militia advance wantonly killed these messengers of peace. This
+so angered the Hawk that with a mere handful of thirty-five braves, on
+foot, and hid in the hazel brush, he turned in fury upon the two hundred
+seventy-five horsemen who were now rushing upon him. The cowardly
+rangers, who fled at the first volley of the savages, without returning
+it, were haunted by the genius of fear, and, dashing madly through
+swamps and creeks, did not stop until they had reached Dixon,
+twenty-five miles away. Many kept on at a keen gallop till they reached
+their own firesides, fifty or more miles farther, carrying the absurd
+report that Black Hawk and two thousand bloodthirsty warriors were
+sweeping northern Illinois with the besom of destruction.
+
+Rich in supplies captured in this first encounter, and naturally
+encouraged at the result of his valor, the Hawk thought that so long as
+the whites were determined to make him fight, he would show his claws
+in earnest. Removing the women and children to far-away swamps on the
+headwaters of the Rock River, in Wisconsin, he thence descended with his
+braves for a general raid through northern Illinois. The borderers flew
+like chickens to cover, on the warning of the Hawk's foray. There was
+consternation throughout the entire West. Exaggerated reports of his
+forces, and of the nature of his expedition, were spread throughout the
+land. His name became coupled with fabulous tales of savage cunning and
+cruelty, and served as a household bugaboo the country over. The effect
+on the Illinois militia was singular enough, considering their haste in
+taking the field; in a frenzy of fear, they instantly disbanded!
+
+A fresh levy was soon raised, but in the interval there were irregular
+hostilities all along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, in which Black Hawk
+and a few Winnebago and Pottawattomie allies succeeded in making life
+miserable enough for the frontier farmers of northern Illinois and the
+lead miners of southwest Wisconsin. In these border strifes fully two
+hundred whites and nearly as many Indians lost their lives; and there
+were numerous instances of romantic heroism on the part of the settlers,
+men and women alike.
+
+In about three weeks after Stillman's defeat the reorganized militia
+took the field, reenforced by the regulars under Atkinson. Black Hawk
+was forced to fly to the swampy region of the upper Rock; but, when the
+pursuit became too warm, he hastily withdrew with his entire band
+westward to the Wisconsin River. Closely following upon his trail were a
+brigade of Illinois troops under General James D. Henry, and a
+battalion of Wisconsin lead mine rangers under Major Henry Dodge,
+afterwards governor of Wisconsin Territory.
+
+The pursuers came up with the savages at Prairie du Sac. Here the south
+bank of the Wisconsin consists of steep, grassy bluffs, three hundred
+feet in height; hence the encounter which ensued is known in history as
+the Battle of the Wisconsin Heights. With consummate skill, Black Hawk
+made a stand on the summit of the heights, and with a small party of
+warriors held the whites in check until the noncombatants had crossed
+the broad river bottoms below, and gained shelter upon the willow-grown
+shore opposite. The loss on either side was slight, the action being
+notable only for the Sac leader's superior management.
+
+During the night, the passage of the river was accomplished by the
+fugitives. A large party was sent downstream upon a raft, and in canoes
+begged from the Winnebagoes; but those who took this method of escape
+were brutally fired upon near the mouth of the river by a detachment
+from the garrison at Prairie du Chien, and fifteen were killed in cold
+blood. The rest of the pursued, headed by Black Hawk, who had again made
+an attempt to surrender his forces, but had failed for lack of an
+interpreter, pushed across country, guided by Winnebagoes, to the mouth
+of the Bad Ax, a little stream emptying into the Mississippi about forty
+miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin River. His intention was to get
+his people as quickly as possible on the west bank of the Mississippi,
+in the hope that they would there be allowed to remain in peace.
+
+The Indians were followed, three days behind, by the united army of
+regulars, who steadily gained on them. The country between Wisconsin
+Heights and the Mississippi is rough and forbidding in character; there
+are numerous swamps and rivers between the steep, thickly wooded hills.
+The uneven pathway was strewn with the corpses of Sacs who had died of
+wounds and starvation; and there were frequent evidences that the
+fleeing wretches were sustaining life on the bark of trees and the flesh
+of their fagged-out ponies.
+
+On Wednesday, the 1st of August, Black Hawk and his now sadly depleted
+and almost famished band reached the junction of the Bad Ax with the
+Mississippi. There were only two or three canoes to be had, and the
+crossing of the Father of Waters progressed slowly and with frequent
+loss of life. That afternoon there appeared upon the scene a government
+supply steamer, the _Warrior_, from Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien), at
+the mouth of the Wisconsin. The Indians a third time tried to surrender,
+but their white flag was deliberately fired at, and round after round of
+canister swept the camp.
+
+The next day the pursuing troops arrived on the heights above the river
+bench, the _Warrior_ again opened its attack, and thus, caught between
+two galling fires, the little army of savages soon melted away. But
+fifty remained alive on the spot to be taken prisoners. Some three
+hundred weaklings had reached the Iowa shore through the hail of iron
+and lead. Of these three hundred helpless, half-starved, unarmed
+noncombatants, over a half were slaughtered by a party of Sioux, under
+Wabashaw, who had been sent out by our government to waylay them. So
+that out of the band of a thousand Indians who had crossed the
+Mississippi over into Illinois in April, not more than a hundred and
+fifty, all told, lived to tell the tragic story of the Black Hawk War, a
+tale that stains the American name with dishonor.
+
+The rest can soon be told. The Winnebago guerrillas, who had played fast
+and loose during the campaign, delivered to the whites at Fort Crawford
+the unfortunate Black Hawk, who had fled from the Bad Ax to the Dells of
+the Wisconsin River, to seek an asylum with his false friends. The proud
+old man, shorn of all his strength, was presented to the President at
+Washington, imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, forced to sign articles of
+perpetual peace, and then turned over for safe keeping to the Sac chief,
+Keokuk, his hated rival. He died on a small reservation in Iowa, in
+1838. But he was not even then at peace, for his bones were stolen by an
+Illinois physician, for exhibition purposes, and finally were
+accidentally consumed by fire in 1853.
+
+Black Hawk, with all the limitations of his race, had in his character a
+strength and manliness of fiber that were most remarkable, and displayed
+throughout his brief campaign a positive genius for military evolutions.
+He may be safely ranked as one of the most interesting specimens of the
+North American savage to be met with in history. He was an indiscreet
+man. His troubles were brought about by a lack of mental balance, aided
+largely by unfortunate circumstances. His was a highly romantic
+temperament. He was carried away by mere sentiment, and allowed himself
+to be deceived by tricksters. But he was honest, and was more honorable
+than many of his conquerors were. He was, above all things, a patriot.
+The year before his death, in a speech to a party of whites who were
+making a holiday hero of him, he thus forcibly defended his motives:
+"Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my town, my cornfields, and
+the home of my people. I fought for them." No poet could have penned for
+him a more touching epitaph.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF CHEQUAMEGON BAY
+
+
+Chequamegon Bay, of Lake Superior, has had a long and an interesting
+history. Nearly two and a half centuries ago, in the early winter months
+of 1659, two adventurous French traders, Radisson and Groseilliers,
+built a little palisade here, to protect the stock of goods which they
+exchanged with the Indians for furs. This was on the southwestern shore
+of the bay, a few miles west of the present city of Ashland, and in the
+neighborhood of Whittlesey's Creek.
+
+These men did not tarry long at Chequamegon Bay. For the most part, they
+merely kept their stock of goods hid in a _cache_ there, while for some
+ten months they traveled through the woods, far and wide, in search of
+trade with the dusky natives. But they made the region known to
+Frenchmen in the settlements at Quebec and Montreal, as a favorite
+meeting-place for many tribes of Indians who came to the bay to fish.
+
+The first Jesuit mission on Lake Superior was conducted by Father Rene
+Menard, at Keweenaw Bay; but he lost his life in the forest in 1661. In
+1665 the Jesuits determined to reopen their mission on the great lake,
+and for that purpose sent Father Claude Allouez. Having heard of the
+advantages of Chequamegon Bay, Allouez proceeded thither, and erected
+his little chapel in an Indian village upon the mainland, not far from
+Radisson's old palisade, and possibly at the mouth of Vanderventer's
+Creek. He called his mission La Pointe.
+
+Conversions were few at La Pointe, and Allouez soon longed for a broader
+field. He was relieved in 1669 by Father Jacques Marquette, a young and
+earnest priest. But it was not long before the Sioux of Minnesota
+quarreled with the Indians of Chequamegon Bay; and the latter, with
+Marquette, were driven eastward as far as Mackinac.
+
+Although the missionaries had deserted La Pointe, fur traders soon came
+to be numerous there. One of the most prominent of these was Daniel
+Grayson Duluth, for whom the modern lake city of Minnesota was named.
+For several years he had a small palisaded fort upon Chequamegon Bay,
+and, with a lively crew of well-armed boatmen, roamed all over the
+surrounding country, north, west, and south of Lake Superior, trading
+with far-away bands of savages. He had two favorite routes between the
+Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. One was by way of the narrow and
+turbulent Bois Brule, then much choked by fallen trees and beaver dams;
+a portage trail of a mile and a half from its headwaters to those of the
+St. Croix River; and thence, through foaming rapids, and deep, cool
+lakes, down into the Father of Waters. The other, an easier, but longer
+way, was up the rugged St. Louis River, which separates Wisconsin from
+Minnesota on the northwest, over into the Sand Lake country, and thence,
+through watery labyrinths, into feeders of the Mississippi.
+
+Another adventurous French forest trader, who quartered on Chequamegon
+Bay, was Le Sueur, who, in 1693, built a fort upon Madelaine Island.
+During the old Fox War the valleys of the Fox and the Wisconsin were
+closed to Frenchmen by the enraged Indians. This, the most popular route
+between the Great Lakes and the great river, being now unavailable, it
+became necessary to keep open Duluth's old routes from Lake Superior
+over to the Upper Mississippi. This was why Le Sueur was sent to
+Chequamegon Bay, to overawe the Indians of that region. He thought that
+his fort would be safer from attack upon the island, than upon the
+mainland. As La Pointe had now come to be the general name of this
+entire neighborhood, the island fort bore the same name as the old
+headquarters on land. It is well to remember that the history of
+Madelaine Island, the La Pointe of to-day, dates from Le Sueur; that
+the old La Pointe of Radisson, Allouez, Marquette, and probably Duluth,
+was on the mainland several miles to the southwest.
+
+In connection with the La Pointe fort protecting the northern approach
+to Duluth's trading routes, Le Sueur erected another stockade to guard
+the southern end, the location of this latter being on an island in the
+Mississippi, near the present Red Wing, Minnesota. The fort in the
+Mississippi soon became "the center of commerce for the Western parts";
+and the station at La Pointe also soon rose to importance, for the
+Chippewas, who had drifted far inland with the growing scarcity of game,
+were led by the presence of traders to return to Chequamegon Bay, and
+mass themselves in a large village on the southwest shore.
+
+Although Le Sueur was not many years in command at the bay, we catch
+frequent glimpses thereafter of fur trade stations here, French,
+English, and American in turn, most of them doubtless being on Madelaine
+Island. We know, for instance, that there was a French trader at La
+Pointe in 1717; also, that the year following, a French officer was sent
+there, with a few soldiers, to patch up and garrison the old stockade.
+Whether a garrisoned fort was kept up at the bay, from that time till
+the downfall of New France (1763), we cannot say; but it seems probable,
+for the geographical position was one of great importance in the
+development of the fur trade.
+
+We first hear of copper in the vicinity, in 1730, when an Indian brought
+a nugget to the La Pointe post; but the whereabouts of the mine was
+concealed by the savages, because of their superstitions relative to
+mineral deposits.
+
+The commandant of La Pointe, at this time, was La Ronde, the chief fur
+trader in the Lake Superior country. He and his son, who was his
+partner, built for their trade a sailing vessel of forty tons burden,
+without doubt the first one of the kind upon the great lake. We find
+evidences of the La Rondes, father and son, down as late as 1744; a
+curious old map of that year gives the name of "Isle de la Ronde" to
+what we now know as Madelaine.
+
+We find nothing more of importance concerning Chequamegon Bay until
+about 1756, when Beaubassin was the French officer in charge of the
+fort. The English colonists were harassing the French along the St.
+Lawrence River; and Beaubassin, with hundreds of other officers of
+wilderness forts, was ordered down with his Indian allies to the
+settlements of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec, to defend New France.
+The Chippewas, with other Wisconsin tribes, actuated by extravagant
+promises of presents, booty, and scalps, eagerly flocked to the banner
+of France, and in painted swarms appeared in fighting array on the banks
+of the St. Lawrence. But they helped the British more than the French,
+for they would not fight, yet with large appetites ate up the provisions
+of their allies.
+
+The garrison being withdrawn from La Pointe, Madelaine Island became a
+camping-ground for unlicensed traders, who had freedom to plunder the
+country at their will, for New France, tottering to her fall, could no
+longer police the upper lakes. In the autumn of 1760 one of these
+parties encamped upon the island. By the time winter had set in upon
+them, all had left for their wintering grounds in the forests of the far
+West and Northwest, save a clerk named Joseph, who remained in charge of
+the goods and what local trade there was. With him were his wife, his
+small son, and a manservant. Traditions differ as to the cause of the
+servant's action; some have it, a desire for plunder; others, his
+detection in a series of petty thefts, which Joseph threatened to
+report. However that may be, the servant murdered first the clerk, then
+the wife, and in a few days, stung by the child's piteous cries, killed
+him also. When the spring came, and the traders returned to Chequamegon,
+they inquired for Joseph and his family. The servant's reply was at
+first unsatisfactory; but when pushed for an explanation, he confessed
+to his terrible deed. The story goes, that in horror the traders
+dismantled the old French fort, now overgrown with underbrush, as a
+thing accursed, sunk the cannon in a neighboring pool, and so destroyed
+the palisade that to-day certain mysterious grassy mounds alone remain
+to testify of the tragedy. They carried their prisoner with them on
+their return voyage to Montreal, but he is said to have escaped to the
+Huron Indians, among whom he boasted of his act, only to be killed by
+them as too cruel to be a companion even for savages.
+
+Five years later a great English trader, Alexander Henry, who had
+obtained the exclusive trade on Lake Superior, wintered on the mainland
+opposite Madelaine Island. His partner was Jean Baptiste Cadotte, a
+thrifty Frenchman, who for many years thereafter was one of the most
+prominent characters on the upper lakes. Soon after this, a Scotch
+trader named John Johnston established himself on the island, and
+married a comely Chippewa maiden, whose father was chief of the native
+village situated four miles across the water, on the site of the
+Bayfield of to-day.
+
+About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Michel, a son of old Jean
+Baptiste Cadotte, took up his abode on the island; and from that time to
+the present there has been a continuous settlement there, which bears
+the name La Pointe. Michel, himself the child of a Chippewa mother, but
+educated at Montreal, married Equaysayway, the daughter of White Crane,
+the village chief on the island, and became a person of much importance
+thereabout. For over a quarter of a century this island nabob lived at
+his ease; here he cultivated a little farm, commanded a variable but
+far-reaching fur trade, first as agent of the Northwest Company, and,
+later, of the American Fur Company, and reared a large family. His sons
+were educated at Montreal, and become the heads of families of traders,
+interpreters, and _voyageurs_.
+
+To this little paradise of the Cadottes there came (in 1818) two sturdy,
+fairly educated young men from Massachusetts, Lyman Marcus Warren, and
+his younger brother, Truman Warren. Engaging in the fur trade, these two
+brothers, of old Puritan stock, married two half-breed daughters of
+Michel Cadotte. In time they bought out Michel's interests, and managed
+the American Fur Company's stations at many far-distant places, such as
+Lac Flambeau, Lac Court Oreilles, and the St. Croix. The Warrens were
+the last of the great La Pointe fur traders, Truman dying in 1825, and
+Lyman twenty-two years later.
+
+Lyman Warren, although possessed of a Catholic wife, was a Presbyterian.
+Not since the days of Marquette had there been an ordained minister at
+La Pointe, and the Catholics were not just then ready to reenter the
+long-neglected field. Warren was eager to have religious instruction on
+the island, for both Indians and whites; and in 1831 succeeded in
+inducing the American Home Missionary Society to send hither, from
+Mackinac, the Rev. Sherman Hall and wife, as missionary and teacher.
+These were the first Protestant missionaries upon the shores of Lake
+Superior. For many years their modest little church building at La
+Pointe was the center of a considerable and prosperous mission, both
+island and mainland, which did much to improve the condition of the
+Chippewa tribe. In later years the mission was moved to Odanah.
+
+Four years after the coming of the Halls, there arrived at the island
+village a worthy Austrian priest, Father (afterward Bishop) Baraga. In a
+small log chapel by the side of the Indian graveyard, this new mission
+of the older faith throve apace. Baraga visited Europe to beg money for
+the cause, and in a few years constructed a new chapel; this is
+sometimes shown to summer tourists as the original chapel of Marquette,
+but no part of the ancient mainland chapel went into its construction.
+Baraga was a man of unusual attainments, and spent his life in laboring
+for the betterment of the Indians of the Lake Superior country, with a
+self-sacrificing zeal which is rare in the records of any church. At
+present, the Franciscan friars, with headquarters at Bayfield, on the
+mainland, are in charge of the island mission.
+
+La Pointe has lost many of its old-time characteristics. No longer is it
+the refuge of squalid Indian tribes; no longer is it a center of the fur
+trade, with gayly clothed _coureurs de bois_, with traders and their
+dusky brides, with rollicking _voyageurs_ taking no heed of the morrow.
+With the killing of the game, and the opening of the Lake Superior
+country to the occupation of farmers and miners and manufacturers, its
+forest trade has departed; the Protestant mission has followed the
+majority of the Indian islanders to mainland reservations; and the
+revived mission of the Mother Church has also been quartered upon the
+bay shore.
+
+
+
+
+WISCONSIN TERRITORY FORMED
+
+
+What we now know as Wisconsin was part of the vast undefined wilderness
+to which the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century, gave the name
+Florida. Spain claimed the country because of the early discoveries of
+her navigators and explorers. Her claim was undisputed until there came
+to North America the energetic French, who penetrated the continent by
+means of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes, and
+gradually took possession of the inland water systems, as fast as
+discovered by their fur traders and missionaries. It should be
+understood, however, that there were very few, if any, Spaniards in all
+this vast territory, except on or near the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+In 1608 Quebec was founded. It is supposed that twenty-six years later
+the first Frenchman reached Wisconsin, which may, from that date (1634)
+till 1763, be considered as a part of French territory. When Great
+Britain conquered New France, Wisconsin became her property, and so
+continued till the treaty of 1783, by which our Northwest was declared
+to be American soil.
+
+Owing to the vague and undefined boundaries given by the British
+government to its original colonies on the Atlantic slope, several of
+the thirteen States claimed that their territory extended out into the
+Northwest; but finally all these claims were surrendered to the general
+government, in order that there might be formed a national domain, from
+which to create new States. By the famous Ordinance of 1787, Congress
+created the Northwest Territory, which embraced the wide stretch of
+country lying between the Great Lakes and the Ohio and the Mississippi
+rivers. The present Wisconsin was a part of this great territory.
+
+In the year 1800 Indiana Territory was set off from the rest of the
+Northwest Territory, and took Wisconsin with it. Nine years later
+Illinois Territory was formed, Wisconsin being within its bounds. Nine
+years after that, when Illinois became a State, all the country lying
+west of Lake Michigan was given to Michigan Territory; thus was the
+ownership of Wisconsin once more changed, and she became a part of
+Michigan.
+
+By this time settlers were coming into the region west of the lake.
+There had long been several little French villages; but, in addition to
+the French, numerous American farmers and professional men had lately
+arrived. The great distance from Detroit, at a time when there were no
+railways or telegraphs, was such as to make it almost impossible to
+carry on any government here. Hence, after a good deal of complaint from
+the frontiersmen living to the west of Lake Michigan, and some angry
+words back and forth between these people and those residing east of the
+lake, Congress was induced, in 1836, to erect Wisconsin Territory, with
+its own government.
+
+Thus far, this region beyond Lake Michigan had borne no particular name.
+It was simply an outlying part of the Northwest Territory; or of the
+Territories of Indiana, Illinois, or Michigan, as the case might be.
+But, now that it was to be a Territory by itself, a name had to be
+adopted. The one taken was that of its principal river, although
+"Chippewau" was preferred by many people. Wisconsin is an Indian name,
+the exact meaning of which is unknown; some writers have said that it
+signifies "gathering of the waters," or "meeting of the waters," but
+there is no warrant for this. The earliest known French form of the word
+is "Misconsing," which gradually became crystallized into "Ouisconsin."
+When the English language became dominant, it was necessary to change
+the spelling in order to preserve the sound; it thus, at first, became
+"Wiskonsan," or "Wiskonsin," but finally, by official action,
+"Wisconsin." The "k" was, however, rather strongly insisted on by
+Governor Doty and many newspaper editors, in the days of the Territory.
+
+The first session of the legislature of the new Territory of Wisconsin
+was held at the recently platted village of Belmont, in the present
+county of Lafayette. The place of meeting was a little story-and-a-half
+frame house. Lead miners' shafts dimpled the country round about, and
+new stumps could be seen upon every hand. There were many things to be
+done by the legislature, such as dividing the Territory into counties,
+selecting county seats, incorporating banks, and borrowing money with
+which to run the new government; but the matter which occasioned the
+most excitement was the location of the capital, and the bitterness
+which resulted was long felt in the political history of Wisconsin.
+
+A month was spent in this contest. The claimants were Milwaukee, Racine,
+Koshkonong, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Wisconsinapolis, Peru,
+Wisconsin City, Portage, Helena, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville,
+Cassville, Belleview, and Dubuque (now in Iowa, but then in Wisconsin).
+Some of these towns existed only upon maps published by real estate
+speculators.
+
+Madison was a beautiful spot, in the heart of the wild woods and lakes
+of central southern Wisconsin. It was unknown save to a few trappers,
+and to the speculators who had bought the land from the federal
+government, and thought they saw a fortune in inducing the legislature
+to adopt it as the seat of government. Madison won, upon the argument
+that it was halfway between the rival settlements on Lake Michigan and
+the Mississippi, and that to build a city there would assist in the
+development of the interior of the Territory.
+
+When Madison was chosen, a surveyor hurried thither, and in a blinding
+snowstorm laid out the prospective city. The village grew slowly, and it
+was November, 1838, before the legislature could meet in its new home.
+
+
+
+
+WISCONSIN BECOMES A STATE
+
+
+Some of the people of Wisconsin were not long content with a Territorial
+government. The Territory was only two years old when a bill was
+introduced in Congress for a State government, but the attempt failed.
+In 1841 Governor Doty, the leader in the movement, had the question put
+to popular vote; but it was lost, as it also was in the year following.
+In 1843 a third attempt was defeated in the Territorial council (or
+senate); and in 1845, still another met defeat in the Territorial house
+of representatives (or assembly).
+
+But at last our Territorial representative in Congress gave notice
+(January 9, 1846), "of a motion for leave to introduce a bill to enable
+the people of Wisconsin to form a constitution and State government, and
+for the admission of such State into the Union." He followed this, a few
+days later, by the introduction of a bill to that effect; the bill
+passed, and in August the measure was approved by President Polk.
+
+Meanwhile, the council and house of Wisconsin Territory had favorably
+voted on the proposition. This was in January and February, 1846. In
+April the question of Statehood was passed upon by the people of the
+Territory, the returns this time showing 12,334 votes for, and 2487
+against. In August, Governor Dodge issued a proclamation calling a
+convention for the drafting of a constitution.
+
+The convention was in session in the Territorial capitol at Madison,
+between October 5 and December 16, 1846. But the constitution which it
+framed was rejected by the people. The contest over the document had
+been of an exciting nature; the defeat was owing to differences of
+opinion upon the articles relating to the rights of married women,
+exemptions, banks, the elective judiciary, and the number of members of
+the legislature.
+
+As soon as practicable, Governor Dodge called a special session of the
+Territorial legislature, which made provisions for a second
+constitutional convention. Most of the members of the first convention
+declined reelection; six only were returned. The second convention was
+in session at Madison from December 15, 1847, to February 1, 1848. The
+members of both conventions were men of high standing in their several
+communities, and later many of them held prominent positions in the
+service of the State and the nation.
+
+The constitution adopted by the second convention was so satisfactory to
+most people, that the popular verdict in March (16,799 ayes and 6384
+noes) surprised no one. Arrangements for a new bill in Congress,
+admitting Wisconsin to the Union, were already well under way. Upon the
+very day of the vote by the people, before the result was known, the
+Territorial legislature held its final meeting, and left everything
+ready for the new State government.
+
+The general election for the first State officers and the members of the
+first State legislature was held May 8. President Polk approved the
+congressional act of admission May 29. Upon the 7th of June, Governor
+Nelson Dewey and his fellow-officials were sworn into office, and the
+legislature opened its first session.
+
+In the old lead mining days of Wisconsin, miners from southern Illinois
+and still farther south returned home every winter, and came back to the
+"diggings" in the spring, thus imitating the migrations of the fish
+popularly called the "sucker," in the south-flowing rivers of the
+region. For this reason the south-winterers were humorously called
+"Suckers." On the other hand, lead miners from the far-off Eastern
+States were unable to return home every winter, and at first lived in
+rude dugouts, burrowing into the hillsides after the fashion of the
+badger. These burrowing men were the first permanent settlers in the
+mines north of the Illinois line, and called themselves "Badgers." Thus
+Wisconsin, in later days, when it was thought necessary to adopt a
+nickname, was, by its own people, dubbed "The Badger State."
+
+
+
+
+THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN
+
+
+In the Ordinance of 1787, whereby Congress created the old Northwest
+Territory out of the triangle of country lying between the Ohio and
+Mississippi rivers and Lake of the Woods and the Great Lakes, it was
+provided that this vast region should eventually be parcelled into five
+States. The east-and-west dividing line was to be "drawn through the
+southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan"; south of this line were to
+be erected three States, and north of it two. "Whenever," the ordinance
+read, "any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants
+therein, such State shall be admitted" to the Union.
+
+It should be said, in explanation of this east-and-west line, that all
+the maps of Lake Michigan then extant represented the head of the lake
+as being much farther north than it was proved to be by later surveys.
+The line as fixed in the ordinance proved to be a bone of contention in
+the subsequent carving of the Northwest Territory into States, leading
+to a good deal of angry discussion before the boundaries of Ohio,
+Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the five States eventually
+formed from the Territory, became established as they are to-day.
+
+Ohio, the first State to be set off, insisted that Maumee Bay, with the
+town of Toledo, should be included in her bounds, although it lay north
+of the east-and-west line of the ordinance. Michigan, on the other hand,
+stoutly insisted on the line as laid down in the law. In 1835 and 1836
+there were some popular disturbances along the border; one of these,
+though bloodless, was so violent as to receive the name of "the Toledo
+war." Congress finally settled the quarrel by giving Ohio the northern
+boundary which she desired, regardless of the terms of the ordinance;
+Michigan was compensated by the gift of what we now call the "northern
+peninsula" of that State, although it had all along been understood that
+the country lying west of Lake Michigan should be the property of the
+fifth State, whenever that was created. Thus, in order that Ohio might
+have another lake port from Michigan, Wisconsin lost this immense tract
+of mining country to the north.
+
+When Indiana came to be erected, it was seen that to adopt the
+east-and-west line, established by the ordinance, would be to deprive
+her entirely of any part of the coast of Lake Michigan. In order,
+therefore, to satisfy her, Congress took another strip, ten miles wide,
+from the southern border of Michigan, and gave it to the new State.
+Michigan made no objection to this fresh violation of the agreement of
+1787, because there were no important harbors or towns involved.
+
+Illinois next knocked at the door of the Union. The same conditions
+applied to her as to Indiana; a strict construction of the ordinance
+would deprive her of an opening on the lake. The Illinois delegate who
+argued this matter in Congress was shrewd; he contended that his State
+must become intimately connected with the growing commerce of the
+northern lakes, else she would be led, from her commercial relations
+upon the south-flowing Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to join a Southern
+confederacy in case the Union should be broken up. This was in 1818, and
+shows how early in our history there had come to be, in the minds of
+some far-seeing men, a fear that the growing power of slavery might some
+time lead to secession. The argument prevailed in Congress, and there
+was voted to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles wide, lying
+north of the east-and-west line.
+
+Thus again was the region later to be called Wisconsin deprived of a
+large and valuable tract. When Wisconsin Territory was created, there
+was a great deal of indignation expressed by some of her people, at
+being deprived of this wide belt of country embracing 8500 square miles
+of exceedingly fertile soil, numerous river and lake ports, many miles
+of fine water power, and the sites of Chicago, Rockford, Freeport,
+Galena, Oregon, Dixon, and numerous other prosperous cities.
+
+An attempt was made in 1836, at the time the Territory was established,
+to secure for Wisconsin's benefit the old east-and-west line, as its
+rightful southern boundary. But Congress declined to grant this request.
+Three years later, the Wisconsin Territorial legislature declared that
+"a large and valuable tract of country is now held by the State of
+Illinois, contrary to the manifest right and consent of the people of
+this Territory."
+
+The inhabitants of the district in northern Illinois which was claimed
+by Wisconsin, were invited by these resolutions to express their opinion
+on the matter. Public meetings were consequently held in several of the
+Illinois towns interested; and resolutions were adopted, declaring in
+favor of the Wisconsin claim. The movement culminated in a convention at
+Rockford (July 6, 1839), attended by delegates from nine of the fourteen
+Illinois counties involved. This convention recommended the counties to
+elect delegates to a convention to be held in Madison, "for the purpose
+of adopting such lawful and constitutional measures as may seem to be
+necessary and proper for the early adjustment of the southern
+boundary."
+
+Curiously enough, the weight of public sentiment in Wisconsin itself did
+not favor the movement. At a large meeting held in Green Bay, the
+following April, the people of that section passed resolutions "viewing
+the resolutions of the legislature with concern and regret," and asking
+that they be rescinded. With this, popular agitation ceased for the
+time; and in the following year the legislature promptly defeated a
+proposition for the renewal of the question.
+
+Governor Doty, however, was a stanch advocate of the idea, and at the
+legislative session of 1842 contrived to work up considerable enthusiasm
+in its behalf. A bill was reported by the committee on Territorial
+affairs, asking the people in the disputed tract to hold an election on
+the question of uniting with Wisconsin. There were some rather fiery
+speeches upon the subject, some of the orators going so far as to
+threaten force in acquiring the wished-for strip; but the legislature
+itself took no action. However, in Stephenson and Boone counties,
+Illinois, elections were actually held, at which all but one or two
+votes were cast in favor of the Wisconsin claim.
+
+Governor Doty, thus encouraged, busily continued his agitation. He
+issued proclamations warning Illinois that it was "exercising an
+accidental and temporary jurisdiction" over the disputed strip, and
+calling on the two legislatures to authorize the people to vote on the
+question of restoring Wisconsin to her "ancient limits." At first,
+neither the legislatures of Illinois nor Wisconsin paid much attention
+to the matter. Finally, in 1843, the Wisconsin legislature sent a rather
+warlike address to Congress, in which secession was clearly threatened,
+unless the "birthright of Wisconsin" were restored. Congress, however,
+very sensibly paid no heed to the address, and gradually the excitement
+subsided, until eventually Wisconsin was made a State, with her present
+boundaries.
+
+We have seen that the northern peninsula was given to Michigan as a
+recompense for her loss of Toledo and Maumee Bay. But when it became
+necessary to determine the boundary between the peninsula and the new
+Territory of Wisconsin, now set off from Michigan, some difficulty
+arose, owing to the fact that the country had not been thoroughly
+surveyed, and there was no good map of it extant.
+
+There were various propositions; one of them was, to use the Chocolate
+River as part of the line; had this prevailed, Wisconsin would have
+gained the greater part of the peninsula. But the line of division at
+last adopted was that of the Montreal and Menominee rivers, by the way
+of Lake Vieux Desert. This line had been selected in 1834, because a map
+published that year represented the headwaters of those rivers as
+meeting in Lake Vieux Desert; hence it was supposed by the congressional
+committee that this would make an excellent natural boundary. When,
+however, the line came to be actually laid out by the surveyors, six
+years later, for the purpose of setting boundary monuments, it was
+discovered that Lake Vieux Desert had no connection with either stream,
+being, in fact, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River; and that the
+running of the line through the woods, between the far-distant
+headwaters of the Montreal and Menominee, so as to touch the lake on the
+way, involved a laborious task, and resulted in a crooked boundary. But
+it was by this time too late to correct the geographical error, and the
+awkward boundary thus remains.
+
+As originally provided by the Ordinance of 1787, Wisconsin, as the fifth
+State to be created out of the Northwest Territory, was, even after
+being shorn upon the south and northeast, at least entitled to have as
+her western boundary the Mississippi to its source, and thence a
+straight line running northward to the Lake of the Woods and the
+Canadian boundary. But here again she was to suffer loss of soil, this
+time in favor of Minnesota.
+
+As a Territory, Wisconsin had been given sway over all the country lying
+to the west, as far as the Missouri River. In 1838, all beyond the
+Mississippi was detached, and erected into the Territory of Iowa. Eight
+years later, when Wisconsin first sought to be a State, the question
+arose as to her western boundary. Naturally, the people of the eastern
+and southern sections wished the one set forth in the ordinance. But
+settlements had by this time been established along the Upper
+Mississippi and in the St. Croix valley. These were far removed from the
+bulk of settlement elsewhere in Wisconsin, and had neither social nor
+business interests in common with them. The people of the northwest
+wished to be released from Wisconsin, in order that they might either
+cast their fortunes with their near neighbors in the new Territory of
+Minnesota, or join a movement just then projected for the creation of
+an entirely new State, to be called "Superior." This proposed state was
+to embrace all the country north of Mont Trempealeau and east of the
+Mississippi, including the entire northern peninsula, if the latter
+could be obtained; thus commanding the southern and western shores of
+Lake Superior, with the mouth of Green Bay and the foot of Lake Michigan
+to the southeast.
+
+The St. Croix representative in the legislature was especially wedded to
+the Superior project. He pleaded earnestly and eloquently for his
+people, whose progress, he said, would be "greatly hampered by being
+connected politically with a country from which they are separated by
+nature, cut off from communication by immense spaces of wilderness
+between." A memorial from the settlers themselves stated the case with
+even more vigor, asserting that they were "widely separated from the
+settled parts of Wisconsin, not only by hundreds of miles of mostly
+waste and barren lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but
+equally so by a diversity of interests and character in the population."
+All of this reads curiously enough in these days, when the intervening
+wilderness resounds with the hum of industry and "blossoms as the rose."
+But that was long before the days of railroads; the dense forests of
+central and western Wisconsin then constituted a formidable wilderness,
+peopled only by savages and wild beasts.
+
+Unable to influence the Wisconsin legislature, which stubbornly
+contended for the possession of the original tract, the St. Croix people
+next urged their claims upon Congress. The proposed State of Superior
+found little favor at Washington, but there was a general feeling that
+Wisconsin would be much too large unless trimmed. The result was that
+when she was finally admitted as a State, the St. Croix River was, in
+large part, made her northwest boundary; Minnesota in this manner
+acquired a vast stretch of country, including the thriving city of St.
+Paul.
+
+Wisconsin was thus shorn of valuable territory on the south, to please
+Illinois; on the northeast, to favor Michigan; and on the northwest,
+that some of her settlers might join their fortunes with Minnesota. The
+State, however, is still quite as large as most of her sisters in the
+Old Northwest, and possesses an unusual variety of soils, and a great
+wealth of forests, mines, and fisheries. There is a strong probability
+that, had Congress, in 1848, given to Wisconsin her "ancient limits," as
+defined by the Ordinance of 1787, the movement to create the proposed
+state of "Superior" would have gathered strength in the passing years,
+and possibly would have achieved success, thus depriving us of our great
+northern forests and mines, and our outlet upon the northern lake.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN PIONEER DAYS
+
+
+So long as the fur trade remained the principal business in Wisconsin,
+the French were still supreme at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien; and,
+until a third of the nineteenth century had passed away, there existed
+at these outposts of New France a social life which smacked of the "old
+regime," bearing more traces of seventeenth-century Normandy than of
+Puritan New England. With the decline of the fur trade, a new order of
+things slowly grew up.
+
+There being little legal machinery west of Lake Michigan, before
+Wisconsin Territory was erected, local government was slow to establish
+itself. Nothing but the good temper and stout common sense of the people
+prevented anarchy, under such a condition of affairs. For many years,
+the few public enterprises were undertaken at private expense. At Green
+Bay, schools were thus conducted, as early as 1817. In 1821 the citizens
+of that village raised a fund by popular subscription, and built a jail;
+and eleven years later, they asked the legislature of Michigan Territory
+to pay for it. There were some Territorial taxes levied in 1817, but the
+gathering of them was not very successful. The first county to levy a
+tax was Crawford, of which Prairie du Chien was the seat, but
+considerable difficulty appears to have been experienced in collecting
+the money.
+
+Finally, Wisconsin Territory was organized, and the legislature
+assembled (1838) in Madison, the new capital. The accommodations at that
+raw little woodland village were meager, even for pioneer times. The
+Territorial building of stone, and a few rude frame and log houses in
+the immediate neighborhood, were all there was of the infant city. Only
+fifty strangers could be decently lodged there, and a proposition to
+adjourn to Milwaukee was favored. But as the lakeshore metropolis, also
+a small village, could offer no better accommodations, it was decided to
+stay at the capital, and brave it out on the straw and hay mattresses,
+of which, however, there were not enough to supply the demand.
+
+This was long before railroads had reached Wisconsin. Travel through the
+new Territory was by boat, horseback, or a kind of snow sledge called a
+"French train." There were no roads, except such as had been developed
+from the old deep-worn Indian trails which interlaced the face of the
+country, and traces of which can still be seen in many portions of the
+State. The pioneers found that these trails, with a little
+straightening, often followed the best possible routes for bridle paths
+or wagon roads. It was not long before they were being used by long
+lines of teams, transporting smelted lead from the mines of southwest
+Wisconsin to the Milwaukee and Galena docks; on the return, they carried
+supplies for the "diggings," and sawmill machinery into the interior
+forests. Farmers' wagons and stagecoaches followed in due time. Bridges
+were but slowly built; the unloaded wagons were ferried across rivers in
+Indian "dugout" canoes, the horses swimming behind, and the freight
+being brought over in relays.
+
+In 1837 there was a financial crisis throughout the country, and this
+checked Western immigration for a few years. But there was not enough
+money in Wisconsin for bank failures materially to affect the people;
+so, when the tide of settlement again flowed hither, the Badgers were as
+strong and hopeful as ever.
+
+People coming to Wisconsin from the East often traveled all the way in
+their own wagons; or would take a lake boat at Buffalo, and then proceed
+by water to Detroit, Green Bay, or Chicago, thence journeying in
+caravans to the interior.
+
+Frontier life, in those days, was of the simplest character. The
+immigrants were for the most part used to hard work and plain fare.
+Accordingly the privations of their new surroundings involved relatively
+little hardship, although sometimes a pioneer farmer was fifty or a
+hundred miles from a gristmill, a store, or a post office, and generally
+his highway thither was but a blazed bridle path through the tangled
+forest.
+
+Often his only entertainments throughout the year were "bees" for
+raising log houses or barns for newcomers, and on these occasions all
+the settlers for scores of miles around would gather in a spirit of
+helpful comradery. Occasionally the mail carrier, either afoot or on
+horseback, would wish accommodation over night. Particularly fortunate
+was the man who maintained a river ferry at the crossing of some
+much-frequented trail; he could have frequent chats with strangers, and
+collect stray shillings from mail carriers or other travelers whose
+business led them through the wilderness.
+
+Often the new settler brought considerable flour and salt pork with him,
+in his journey to the West; but it was not at first easy to get a fresh
+supply. Curiously enough, although in the midst of a wild abundance,
+civilized man at the outset sometimes suffered for the bare necessaries
+of life. As soon, however, as he could garner his first crop, and become
+accustomed to the new conditions, he was usually proof against disaster
+of this kind; fish and game were so abundant, in their season, that in
+due time the backwoodsman was able to win a wholesome livelihood from
+the storehouse of nature.
+
+Satisfactory education for youth was a plant of comparatively small
+growth. At first there was not enough money in the country to pay
+competent teachers. The half-educated sons and daughters of the pioneers
+taught the earliest schools, often upon a private subscription basis;
+text-books were few, appliances generally wanting, and the results were,
+for many years, far from satisfactory. As for spiritual instruction,
+this was given by itinerant missionary preachers and priests, of various
+denominations, who braved great hardships while making their rounds on
+horseback or afoot, and deserve to rank among the most daring of the
+pioneer class. In due time churches and schools were firmly established
+throughout the Territory.
+
+In addition to these farmer colonists, there came many young
+professional and business men, chiefly from New York and New England,
+seeking an opening in the new Territory for the acquisition of fame and
+wealth. Many of these were men of marked ability, with high ambition and
+progressive ideas, who soon took prominent part in molding public
+opinion in the young Wisconsin. There are, all things considered, no
+abler, more forceful men in the Wisconsin of to-day than were some of
+those, now practically all passed away, who shaped her destinies in the
+fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century.
+
+The sessions of the legislature were the principal events of the year.
+Prominent men from all over Wisconsin were each winter attracted to
+Madison, as legislators, lobbyists, or visitors, crowding the primitive
+little hotels and indulging in rather boisterous gayety; for humor in
+those pioneer days was often uncouth. There was overmuch "horseplay,"
+hard drinking, and profanity; and now and then, as the result of a warm
+discussion, a tussle with fists and canes.
+
+The newspapers were given to rude personal attacks upon their enemies;
+one would suppose, to read the columns of the old journals, that editors
+thought it their chief business in life to carry on a wordy, bitter
+quarrel with some rival editor or politician. But this was largely on
+the surface, for effect. As a matter of fact, strong attachments between
+men were more frequent then than now. There was a deal of dancing and
+miscellaneous merrymaking at these legislative sessions; and travelers
+have left us, in their letters and journals, statements which show that
+they greatly relished the experience of tarrying there on their winter
+journeys across the Territory, and of being entertained by the
+good-hearted villagers.
+
+Pioneers, in their stories of those early years, are fond of calling
+them the "good old times," and styling present folk and manners
+degenerate. No doubt there was a certain charm in the rude simplicity of
+frontier life, but there were, as well, great inconveniences and rude
+discomforts, with which few pioneers of our day would wish to be
+confronted, after having tasted the pleasures arising from the wealth of
+conveniences of every sort which distinguishes these latter days. As far
+back in time as human records go, we ever find old men bewailing
+prevalent degeneracy, and sighing in vain for "the good old times" when
+they were young. It is a blessing given to the old that the disagreeable
+incidents of their youth should be forgotten, and only the pleasant
+events remembered. As a matter of fact, we of to-day may well rejoice
+that, while Wisconsin enjoyed a lusty youth, she has now, in the
+fullness of time, grown into a great and ambitious commonwealth, lacking
+nothing that her sisters own, in all that makes for the prosperity and
+happiness of her people.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROADS
+
+
+When white men first came to our land, the Indian trails formed a
+network of narrow, deep-sunken paths over the face of the country, as
+they connected village with village, and these with the hunting and
+fishing resorts of the aborigines. Many of the most important trails
+simply followed the still earlier tracks of the buffalo, which in great
+herds wandered from plain to plain, in search of forage, or in hiding
+from man, through the dark forest and over the hills. The buffalo
+possessed an unerring instinct for selecting the best places for a road,
+high ridges overlooking the lowlands, and the easy slopes of hills. In
+the Far West, they first found the passes over the Rockies, just as,
+still earlier, they crossed the Alleghanies by the most favorable
+routes.
+
+The Indian followed in the footsteps of the buffalo, both to pursue him
+as game, and better to penetrate the wilderness. The white man followed
+the well-defined Indian trail, first on foot, then on horseback; next
+(after straightening and widening the curving path), by freight wagon
+and by stagecoach; and then, many years later, the railway engineer
+often found his best route by the side of the developed buffalo track,
+especially in crossing the mountain ranges. The Union Pacific and the
+Southern Pacific railways are notable examples of lines which have
+simply followed well-worn overland roads, which were themselves but the
+transcontinental buffalo paths of old.
+
+An interesting story might be written concerning the development of the
+principal Indian trails in Wisconsin into the wagon roads of the
+pioneers, and some of these into the military roads made by the federal
+government for the marching of troops between the frontier forts.
+Without fairly good roads, at least during the winter and summer months,
+it would have been impossible for Wisconsin to grow into a great State;
+for good roads are necessary to enable settlers, tools, and supplies to
+get into the country, and to afford an outlet for crops. For this
+reason, in any newly settled region, one of the first duties of the
+people is to make roads and bridges.
+
+We have still much to do in Wisconsin, before we can have such highways
+as they possess in the old eastern States. In many parts of our State,
+the country roads in the rainy seasons are of little credit to us. But
+the worst of them are much better than were some of the best in pioneer
+days, and some of our principal thoroughfares between the larger cities
+are fairly good.
+
+The federal government set a good example by having its soldiers build
+several military roads, especially between Forts Howard (Green Bay),
+Winnebago (Portage), and Crawford (Prairie du Chien). In Territorial and
+early Statehood days, charters were granted by the legislature for the
+building and maintenance of certain tollroads between large towns; some
+of these were paved with gravel or broken stone, others with planks.
+Many of the plank roads remained in use until about 1875; but before
+that date all highways became the property of the public, and tollgates
+were removed. Bridges charging tolls are still in use in some parts of
+the State, where the people have declined to tax themselves for a public
+bridge, which therefore has been built by a private company in
+consideration of the privilege of collecting tolls from travelers.
+
+Early in the year when Wisconsin Territory was erected (1836), and while
+it was still attached to Michigan Territory, there was a strong
+movement, west of Lake Michigan, in favor of a railway between Milwaukee
+and Prairie du Chien, connecting the lake with the Mississippi River.
+Congress was petitioned by the legislative council of Michigan to make
+an appropriation to survey the proposed line. There were as yet very few
+agricultural settlers along the route; the chief business of the road
+was to be the shipment of lead from the mines of the southwest to the
+Milwaukee docks; thence it was to be carried by vessels to Buffalo, and
+sent forward in boats, over the Erie Canal, to the Hudson River and New
+York.
+
+This was in January; in the September following, after Wisconsin
+Territory had been formed, a public meeting was held in Milwaukee, to
+petition the Territorial legislature to pass an act incorporating a
+company to construct the proposed lead-mine road, upon a survey to be
+made at the expense of the United States, and there was even some talk
+of another road to the far-away wilderness of Lake Superior.
+
+But this early railway project was premature. Wisconsin had then but
+twenty-two thousand inhabitants, and Milwaukee was a small frontier
+village. Then again, railroading in the United States was still in its
+infancy. In Pennsylvania there was a small line, hardly better than an
+old-fashioned horse car track, over which a wheezy little locomotive
+slowly made occasional trips, and the Baltimore and Ohio railway had not
+long before experimented with sails as a motive power. It is not
+surprising, therefore, that Congress acted slowly in regard to the
+overambitious Wisconsin project, and that it was nearly fourteen and a
+half years before a railway was actually opened in this State.
+
+Indeed, many people thought at that time that canals, costing less in
+construction and in operation, were more serviceable for Wisconsin than
+railways. The people of northern Wisconsin were particularly eager for
+canals; in the southern part, railways were most popular. The most
+important canal project was that known as the Fox and Wisconsin rivers
+improvement. From the earliest historic times, these two
+opposite-flowing rivers, whose waters approach within a mile and a half
+of each other at Portage, had been used as a boat route between the
+Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. We have seen, in preceding
+chapters, what an important part was played by this route in the early
+history of Wisconsin. But when large vessels became necessary to the
+trade of the region, and steam navigation was introduced, it was found
+that the historic water way presented many practical difficulties: the
+Fox abounds in rapids below Lake Winnebago, and in its upper waters is
+very shallow; the Wisconsin is troubled with shifting sand bars. In
+order to accommodate the traffic, a canal was necessary along the
+portage path, and extensive improvements in both rivers were essential.
+
+As early as 1839, Congress was asked to aid in this work, and from time
+to time such aid has been given. But, although several millions of
+dollars have, through all these years, been spent upon the two streams,
+there has been no important modern navigation through them between the
+Great Lakes and the great river. The chief result has been the admirable
+system of locks between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay, making available
+the splendid water power of the lower valley of the Fox.
+
+Another water way project was that of the Milwaukee and Rock River
+Canal. This was designed to connect the waters of the Milwaukee and Rock
+rivers, thereby providing an additional way for vessels to pass from
+Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. A company was incorporated, with a
+capital of a million dollars, and Congress made a large grant of land to
+Wisconsin Territory. But after some years of uncertainty and heavy
+expense the project was abandoned as impracticable.
+
+The Territorial legislature began to charter railway companies as early
+as 1836, but the Milwaukee and Mississippi was the first road actually
+built. The track was laid in 1851 and a train was run out to Waukesha, a
+distance of twenty miles. In 1856 the line reached the Mississippi. This
+was the modest beginning of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul system.
+
+The Chicago and Northwestern Railway entered Wisconsin from Chicago
+about the same time (1855). Numerous small lines were built before the
+War of Secession, nearly all of them being soon swallowed up by the
+larger companies. During the war, there was stagnation in railway
+building, but when peace was declared there was renewed activity, and
+to-day Wisconsin is as well provided with good railways as any State of
+its size and population in the Union.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHALANX AT CERESCO
+
+
+In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century there was much agitation,
+both in France and America, over the teachings of a remarkable man named
+Francois Marie Charles Fourier. He claimed that if people would band
+themselves together in communities, in the proper spirit of mutual
+forbearance and helpfulness, and upon plans laid down by him, it would
+be proved that they could get along very well with no strife of any
+sort, either in business, or religion, or politics. Then, if the nations
+would but unite themselves in the same way, universal peace would reign.
+
+During the stirring times of the French Revolution and of the great
+Napoleon, there had been much social agitation of the violent sort. A
+reaction had come. The talk about the rights of man was no longer
+confined to the violent, revengeful element of the population; it was
+now chiefly heard among the good and gentle folk, among men of wealth
+and benevolence, as well as those of learning and poverty.
+
+In France, Fourier was the leader among this new class of socialists. In
+France, England, and Holland, colonies more or less after the Fourier
+model were established; and it was not long before communities came to
+be founded in the United States. The most famous of these latter was
+Brook Farm, in Massachusetts, because among its members were several
+well-known authors and scientists, who wrote a great deal about their
+experiences there. But the only community in America conducted strictly
+on Fourier's plan, flourished in Wisconsin.
+
+The _New York Tribune_, edited by Horace Greeley, a noted reformer, was
+earnest in advocating Fourierism, as it was called, doing much to
+attract attention to "the principle of equitable distributions." One of
+the many readers of the _Tribune_ was Warren Chase, of Kenosha, a young
+New Hampshire man, thirty years of age, who became much attached to the
+new idea.
+
+This was during the winter of 1843-44. Chase gathered about him at
+Kenosha a group of intelligent men and women, some of whom had property,
+and they formed a stock company, incorporated under the laws of
+Wisconsin Territory, but based strictly on the plans laid down by
+Fourier.
+
+Having purchased six hundred acres of government land, in a gentle
+valley within the present Ripon township, in Fond du Lac county,
+nineteen pioneers, led by Chase, made their way thither in May. There
+were no railroads in those days, and the little company proceeded
+overland through flower-decked prairies, and over wooded hills, in
+oxcarts and horse wagons, with droves of cattle, and tools and utensils.
+
+The reformers called their colony "Ceresco," after Ceres, the goddess of
+agriculture. Plowing was commenced, buildings were erected, shops and
+forges established. Very soon some two hundred men, women, and children
+had arrived, and in due time many branches of industry were in full
+operation.
+
+The Ceresco community was, as suggested by Fourier, styled a "phalanx."
+The members were classified, according to their capacity to labor, in
+educational, mechanical, and agricultural series, each series being
+divided into groups. The government was headed by a president and nine
+councilors; each series had a chairman, and each group a foreman.
+
+Labor was voluntary, the shops being owned by the community at large;
+while the land was divided equally among all the members, old and young,
+save that no family might possess over forty acres. As the community
+grew, more land was purchased for their use. The council laid out the
+work to be done, or the policy to be pursued. When there was a question
+to be decided, the series interested voted upon it; but in some
+important cases, the matter was referred for final action to the several
+groups. Each person received pay according to his value as a worker, the
+record being kept by the foreman of his group. They were not paid upon
+the same scale; for instance, the members of the council and the
+school-teachers received more than skilled mechanical laborers, and
+these in turn more than ordinary workmen.
+
+The phalanx at first lived in temporary quarters, and a year later
+erected a large building "four hundred feet in length, consisting of two
+rows of tenements, with a hall between, under one roof." Each family
+lived in its own compartments, but all ate in common at a boarding
+house called the "phalanstery," where a charge was made of seventy-five
+cents a week for each person. The "unitary" was a large building used
+for business and social meetings, these being held in the evenings; each
+Tuesday evening the literary and debating club met, Wednesday evening
+the singing school, and Thursday evening a dancing party.
+
+Unlike many other communities, the Fourier colonies were not religious
+in character. Each member of the phalanx at Ceresco might worship as he
+pleased. At various times, for the membership fluctuated somewhat,
+ministers of different denominations were members of the colony, and
+frequently there were visits from wandering missionaries.
+
+None of the colonists were allowed to use intoxicating liquors as a
+beverage. There must be no vulgar language, swearing, or gambling; and
+one of the by-laws commanded that "censoriousness and fault-finding,
+indolence, abuse of cattle or horses, hunting or fishing on the first
+day of the week, shall be deemed misdemeanors, and shall be punishable
+by reprimand or expulsion." These punishments were the only ones which
+the community could inflict upon its members, for it had no judicial
+powers under the law.
+
+But there was small need of punishments at Ceresco. Its members were, as
+a rule, men and women of most excellent character. There was never any
+dishonesty, or other serious immorality, within the phalanx; the few
+neighboring settlers regarded the reformers with genuine respect. All
+the proceedings of the community were open, and its carefully kept
+accounts and records might be inspected by any one at any time.
+Whenever charges were brought against a member, they were laid before
+the full assembly at the next weekly meeting; a week elapsed before
+consideration, in order to give ample opportunity for defense; then the
+entire body of colonists, women as well as men, voted on the question,
+acquitting the offender or reprimanding him or, by a two-thirds vote,
+expelling him from the phalanx.
+
+Wisconsin was then sparsely settled at best; the peaceful little valley
+of Ceresco was equally far removed from the centers of population at
+Green Bay and in the southern portion of the Territory. Yet many
+pioneers came toiling over the country, to apply for admission to this
+Garden of Eden. But it is recorded that not one in four was taken into
+fellowship, for the phalanx desired "no lazy, shiftless, ne'er-do-well
+members," and only those believed to be wise, industrious, and
+benevolent were taken into the fold.
+
+And thus the Ceresco phalanx seemed mightily to prosper. Its stock
+earned good dividends, its property was in excellent condition, the
+quality of its membership could not be bettered. Far and near were its
+praises sung. The _New York Tribune_ gave weekly news of its doings, and
+was ever pointing to it as worthy of emulation; the Brook Farm paper
+hailed it as proof that socialism had at last succeeded.
+
+Had each member been equally capable with his fellows, had the families
+been of the same size, had there been no jealousies, no bickerings, had
+these good folk been without ambition, had they, in short, been
+contented, the phalanx might have remained a success. They were
+clothed, fed, and housed at less expense than were outsiders; they had
+many social enjoyments not known elsewhere in the valley; and, according
+to all the philosophers, should have been a happy people.
+
+The public table, the public amusement rooms, and all that, had at first
+a spice of pleasant novelty; but soon there was a realization that this
+had not the charm of home life, that one's family affairs were too much
+the affairs of all. The strong and the willing saw that they were yoked
+to those who were weak and slothful; there was no chance for natural
+abilities to assert themselves, no reward for individual excellence.
+
+Wisconsin became a State in 1848. Everywhere, ambitious and energetic
+citizens in the rapidly growing commonwealth were making a great deal of
+money through land speculations and the planting of new industries,
+everywhere but in Ceresco, where the community life allowed no man to
+rise above the common level. The California gold fields, opened the
+following year, also sorely tempted the young men. The members of the
+phalanx found themselves hampered by their bond. Caring no longer for
+the reformation of society, they eagerly clamored to get back into the
+whirl of that struggle for existence which, only a few years before,
+they had voted so unnecessary to human welfare.
+
+In 1850 the good folk at Ceresco voted unanimously, and in the best of
+feeling toward one another, to disband their colony. They sold their
+lands at a fair profit to each; and very soon, in the rush for wealth
+and for a chance to exercise their individual powers, were widely
+distributed over the face of the country. Some of them ultimately won
+much worldly success; others fell far below the level of prosperity
+maintained in the phalanx, and came to bemoan the "good old days" of the
+social community, when the strong were obliged to bolster the weak.
+
+
+
+
+A MORMON KING
+
+
+In the year 1843 there came from New York to the village of Burlington,
+Racine county, an eccentric young lawyer named James Jesse Strang.
+Originally a farmer's boy, he had been a country school-teacher, a
+newspaper editor, and a temperance lecturer, as well as a lawyer.
+Possessed of an uneasy, ambitious spirit, he had wandered much, and
+changed his occupation with apparent ease. Strang was passionately fond
+of reading, was gifted with a remarkable memory, and developed a
+fervent, persuasive style of oratory, which he delighted in employing.
+He often astonished the courts by the shrewd eloquence with which he
+supported strange, unexpected points in law. It is related of him that,
+soon after he came to Wisconsin, he brought a suit to recover the value
+of honey which, he claimed, had been stolen from his client's hives by
+the piratical bees of a neighbor, and his arguments were so plausible
+that he nearly won his case.
+
+In less than a year after his arrival in Burlington, the village was
+visited by some Mormon missionaries. They came from Nauvoo, Illinois, on
+the banks of the Mississippi River, where there was a settlement of
+so-called Latter-Day Saints, who lived under the sway of a designing
+knave named Joseph Smith. Strang at once became a convert, and entered
+into the movement with such earnestness that, with his oratory, his
+ability to manage men, and his keen zest for notoriety, he became one of
+the most prominent followers of the faith.
+
+Six months after Strang's conversion, Joseph Smith, the president and
+prophet of the Mormons, was killed by an Illinois mob. At once there
+arose a desperate strife among the leaders, for the successorship to
+Joseph. Two of the number, Brigham Young and Strang, were men of
+ability, and the contest soon narrowed down to them. Young had the
+powerful support of the council of the church, known as "the twelve
+apostles"; but Strang produced a letter said to have been written by
+Joseph just before his death, in which Strang was named as his
+successor, with directions to lead the Mormons to a new "city of
+promise" in Wisconsin, to be called "Voree."
+
+The "apostles" at Nauvoo denounced Strang as an impostor, declared that
+his letter was a forgery, and attacked him bitterly in their official
+newspapers, published at Nauvoo and at Liverpool, England. But Strang
+was not easily put down. A great many of the fanatics at Nauvoo believed
+in this impetuous young leader, who defended his cause with tact and
+forceful eloquence; and for a time it looked as if he might win.
+
+However, in the end the "apostles" had their way, and the adroit Young
+was elected to the headship of the church. Strang at once called forth
+his followers, and in April, 1845, planted the "City of Voree" upon a
+prairie by the side of White River, in Walworth county, Wisconsin. It
+soon became a town of nearly two thousand inhabitants, who owned all
+things in common, but were ruled over, even in the smallest affairs of
+life, by the wily President Strang, who claimed to be divinely
+instructed in every detail of his rigorous government.
+
+The people dwelt "in plain houses, in board shanties, in tents, and
+sometimes, many of them, in the open air." Great meetings were held at
+Voree, and the surrounding settlers gathered to hear Strang and his
+twelve "apostles" lay down the law, and tell of the revelations which
+had been delivered to them by the Almighty. Strang, who closely imitated
+the methods of Joseph, pretended to discover the word of God in
+deep-hidden records. Joseph had found the Book of Mormon graven upon
+plates dug out of the hill of Cumorah, in New York; so Strang discovered
+buried near Voree similar brazen plates bearing revelations, written in
+the rhythmic style of the Scriptures, which supplemented those in the
+Book of Mormon.
+
+President Strang was a very busy man as the head of the Voree branch of
+the Mormon church. He obtained a printing outfit, and published a little
+weekly paper called _Gospel Herald_, besides hundreds of pamphlets, all
+written by himself, in which he assailed the "Brighamites" in the same
+violent manner as they attacked him in their numerous publications. He
+also, with his missionaries, conducted meetings in Ohio, New York, and
+other States in the East, gathering converts for Voree, and boldly
+repelling the wordy attacks of the Brighamites, whose agents were
+working the same fields.
+
+Despite some backslidings, and occasional quarrels within its ranks,
+Voree grew and prospered. By 1849 there was a partially built stone
+temple there, which is thus described by an imaginative letter writer of
+the time: "It covers two and one-sixth acres of ground, has twelve
+towers, and the great hall two hundred feet square in the center. The
+entire walls are eight feet through, the floors and roofs are to be
+marble, and when finished it will be the grandest building in the
+world."
+
+Nevertheless, it was early seen by Strang that the growing opposition of
+neighboring settlers would in the end cause the Mormons to leave
+Wisconsin, just as the Nauvoo fanatics were compelled (in 1846) to flee
+from Illinois, to plant their stake in the wilderness of the Far West.
+
+He therefore made preparations for a place of refuge for his people,
+when persecutions should become unbearable. In journeying by vessel,
+upon one of his missions, he had taken note of the isolation of an
+archipelago of large, beautiful, well-wooded islands near the foot of
+Lake Michigan. The month of May, 1846, found him with four companions
+upon Beaver Island, in this far-away group. They built a log cabin,
+arranged for a boat, and returned to Voree to prepare for the migration
+of the faithful.
+
+The new colony at first grew slowly, but by the summer of 1849 the
+"saints" began to arrive in goodly numbers. Strang himself now headed
+the settlement; and thereafter Voree ceased to be headquarters for the
+"Primitive Mormons," as they called themselves, although a few remained
+in the neighborhood.
+
+Very soon, about two thousand devotees were gathered within the "City of
+St. James," on Beaver Island, with well-tilled farms, neat houses, a
+sawmill, roads, docks, and a large temple. A hill near by they renamed
+Mount Pisgah, and a River Jordan and a Sea of Galilee were not far away.
+
+One beautiful day in July, 1850, Strang, arrayed in a robe of bright
+red, was, with much ceremony, crowned by his "apostles" as "King of the
+Kingdom of St. James." Foreign ambassadors were appointed, and a royal
+press was set up, for the flaying of his enemies. Schools and debating
+clubs were opened; the community system was abolished; tithes were
+collected for the support of the government; tea, coffee, and tobacco
+were prohibited; and even the dress of the people was regulated by law.
+Never was there a king more absolute than Strang; doubtless, for a time,
+he thought his dream of empire realized at last, and that here in this
+unknown corner of the world the "saints" might remain forever
+unmolested.
+
+But the sylvan archipelago, and Beaver Island itself, had other
+inhabitants; these were rude, sturdy, illiterate fishermen, who lived in
+huts along the coast, and had little patience with the fantastic
+performances of their neighbors, King Strang and the court of St. James.
+His majesty had, also, jealous enemies among his own subjects.
+
+Trouble soon ensued. The fishermen frequently assaulted the "saints,"
+and carried on a petty warfare against the colony at large, in which the
+county sheriff was soon engaged; for false charges came to be entered
+against these strange but inoffensive people, and they were now and then
+thrown into jail. The king, thereupon, in self-defence, "went into
+politics." Having so many votes at his command, he easily secured the
+election of Mormons to all the county offices, and of himself to the
+legislature of Michigan.
+
+But despite these victories over outside foes, matters at home went from
+bad to worse. The enemies in his camp multiplied, for his increasingly
+despotic rule gave them abundance of grievances. At last, about the
+middle of June, 1856, two of the malcontents shot their monarch from
+behind. He was taken by vessel to his old home in Voree, where he was
+tenderly cared for until his death, a month later, by his poor,
+neglected wife, who had remained behind when he went forth to the
+island. His kingdom did not long survive him. The unruly fishermen came
+one day with ax and torch, leveled the royal city to the ground, and
+banished the frightened "saints."
+
+To-day the White River prairie gives no evidence of having once borne
+the city of Zion, and even in the Michigan archipelago there remain few
+visible relics of the marvelous reign of King Strang.
+
+
+
+
+THE WISCONSIN BOURBON
+
+
+Two years after Louis the XVI., Bourbon king of France, and his
+beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, were beheaded by the revolutionists
+in Paris, in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, their
+imbecile child of eight years, called the "dauphin," was officially
+reported to have died in prison. But the story was started at the time,
+and popularly believed, that the real dauphin, Louis the XVII., had been
+stolen by the royalists, and another child cunningly substituted to die
+there in his place. The story went that the dauphin had been sent to
+America, and that all traces of him were lost; thus was given to any
+adventurer of the requisite age, and sufficiently obscure birth, an
+opportunity to seek such honor as might be gained in claiming identity
+with the escaped prisoner.
+
+Great was the excitement in the United States, when, in 1853, it was
+confidently announced by a New York magazine writer that the long lost
+prince had at last been discovered, in the person of the middle-aged
+Eleazer Williams, an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians at
+Little Kaukauna, in the lower valley of the Fox.
+
+The Bonaparte family, represented by Louis Napoleon, were just then in
+control of France; but the Bourbon family, of which Louis the XVII.,
+were he alive, would naturally be the head, considered themselves
+rightful hereditary masters of that country. Of course, there was at the
+time no opportunity for any Bourbon actually to occupy the French
+throne; but the people of that country are highly emotional, revolutions
+have been numerous among them, and displaced royalists are always hoping
+for some turn in affairs which may enable them once more to gain the
+government. It was this possible chance of the Bourbons getting into
+power once more, that added interest to the story.
+
+Let us see what sort of person this Eleazer Williams of Wisconsin was,
+and how it came about that he made the assertion that he was the head of
+the Bourbons, and an uncrowned king. It had heretofore been supposed by
+every one who knew him that he was the son of Mohawk Indian parents,
+both of whom had white blood in their veins, living just over the New
+York border, in Canada. Certain Congregationalists had induced this
+couple to allow two of their sons, Thomas and Eleazer, to be educated in
+New England as missionaries to the Indians; and for several years they
+attended academies there, becoming fairly proficient in English,
+although their aboriginal manners were not much improved.
+
+At last returning to his Canadian home, Eleazer neglected his
+Congregational benefactors, and soon became interested in the Episcopal
+Church. He would have become one of its missionaries at once, but just
+at that time the War of 1812-15 broke out; and instead he became a spy
+in the pay of the United States, conveying to his employers important
+information concerning the movements of British troops in Canada. When
+the war was over, having, as an American spy, incurred the dislike of
+the Canadian Mohawks, he was sent as an Episcopal missionary to the
+Oneida Indians, then living in Oneida county, New York.
+
+Williams appears to have differed from the ordinary Indian type,
+although he was thickset, dark haired, and swarthy of skin. Some took
+him to be a Spaniard; others there were who thought him French; and
+comments which he had heard, concerning his slight resemblance to the
+pictures of the Bourbons, doubtless caused Eleazer in later years to
+pretend to be the lost dauphin. He was a fair orator, and in his earlier
+years succeeded well in persuading the simple red men about him. His
+plausible manner, and this ease of persuasion, finally led him astray.
+
+The Oneida Indians in New York and their neighbors (formerly from New
+England), the Munsees, Stockbridges, and Brothertowns, were just then
+being crowded out of that State. A great company had acquired the right
+from the federal government to purchase the lands held by these Indians,
+whenever they cared to dispose of them. In order to hurry matters, the
+company began to sow among the poor natives the seeds of discontent.
+
+Certain of their leaders, among them Williams, advocated emigration to
+the West. It appears that Williams, who was a born intriguer, conceived
+the ambitious idea of taking advantage of this movement to establish an
+Indian empire in the country west of Lake Michigan, with himself as
+dictator.
+
+Moved by the clamor of the red men, the federal government sent a
+delegation to Wisconsin, in 1820, to see whether the tribes west of the
+lake would consent to accept the New York Indians as neighbors. This
+delegation was headed by Dr. Jedediah Morse, a celebrated geographer and
+missionary. Morse visited Mackinac and Green Bay, and returned with the
+report that the valley of the lower Fox was the most suitable place in
+which to make a settlement. That very summer, Williams himself, with
+several other headmen, had on their own account journeyed as far as
+Detroit on a similar errand, but returned without discovering a
+location.
+
+The owners of the land selected by Morse were the Menominees and
+Winnebagoes, with whom Williams and his followers held a council at
+Green Bay, the following year. A treaty was signed, by which the New
+York Indians were granted a large strip of land, four miles wide, at
+Little Chute.
+
+The ensuing year (1822), at a new council held at Green Bay, the New
+Yorkers asked for still more land. The Winnebagoes, much incensed,
+withdrew from the treaty, but the Menominees were won over by Williams's
+eloquence, and granted an extraordinary cession, making the New York
+Indians joint owners with themselves of all Menominee territory, which
+then embraced very nearly a half of all the present State of Wisconsin.
+
+Ten years of quarreling followed, for there was at once a reaction from
+this remarkable spirit of generosity. In 1832 there was concluded a
+final treaty, apparently satisfactory to most of those concerned, and
+soon thereafter a large number of New York Indians removed hither. The
+Oneidas and Munsees established themselves upon Duck Creek, near the
+mouth of the Fox, and the Stockbridges and Brothertowns east of Lake
+Winnebago. As for Williams, the jealousies and bickerings among his
+people soon caused him to lose control over them, thus giving the
+deathblow to his wild dreams of empire.
+
+During the next twenty years, in which he continued to serve as a
+missionary to the Wisconsin Oneidas, Williams was a well-known and
+picturesque character. His home was on the west bank of the river, about
+a mile below Little Kaukauna. Although a man of much vigor and strength
+of mind, he soon came to be recognized as an unscrupulous fellow by the
+majority of both whites and reds in the lower Fox, and his clerical
+brethren, East as well as West, appear to have regarded him with more or
+less contempt.
+
+Baffled in several fields of notoriety which he had worked, Williams
+suddenly posed before the American public, in 1853, as the hereditary
+sovereign of France. He was too young by eight years to be the lost
+dauphin; that he was clearly of Indian origin was proved by a close
+examination of his color, form, and feature; his dusky parents protested
+under oath that the wayward Eleazer was their son; every allegation of
+his in regard to the matter has often been exposed as false; and all
+his neighbors who knew him treated his claims as fraudulent.
+
+Nevertheless, he succeeded in deceiving a number of good people,
+including several leading clergymen of his church; one of the latter
+attempted in an elaborate book, "The Lost Prince," to prove conclusively
+that Williams was indeed the son of the executed monarch.
+
+The pretensions of Eleazer Williams, who dearly loved the notoriety
+which this discussion awakened, extended through several years. They
+even won some little attention in France, but far less than here, for
+several other men had claimed to be the lost dauphin, so that the
+pretension was not a new one over there. Louis Philippe, the head of the
+Bourbon-Orleans family in France, sent him a present of some finely
+bound books, believing him the innocent victim of a delusion; but,
+further than that, and a chance meeting at Green Bay, between Eleazer
+Williams and another French royalist, the Prince de Joinville, then on
+his travels through America, the family in France paid no attention to
+the adventurous half-breed American Indian who claimed to be one of
+them.
+
+The reputation of Williams as a missionary had at last fallen so low,
+and the neglect of his duties was so persistent, that his salary was
+withdrawn by the Episcopal Church, and his closing years were spent in
+poverty. He died in 1858, maintaining his absurd claims to the last.
+
+
+
+
+SLAVE CATCHING IN WISCONSIN
+
+
+There had been a few negro slaves in Wisconsin before the organization
+of the Territory and during Territorial days. They had for the most part
+been brought in by lead miners from Kentucky and Missouri. But, as the
+population increased, it was seen that public opinion here, as in most
+of the free States, was strongly opposed to the practice of holding
+human beings as chattels. Gradually the dozen or more slaves were
+returned to the South, or died in service, or were freed by their
+masters; so that, at an early day, the slavery question had ceased to be
+of local importance here.
+
+As the years passed on, and the people of the North became more and more
+opposed to the slave system of the South, the latter lost an increasing
+number of its slaves through escape to Canada. They were assisted in
+their flight by Northern sympathizers, who, secretly receiving them on
+the north bank of the Ohio River, passed them on from friend to friend
+until they reached the Canadian border. As this system of escape was
+contrary to law, it had to be conducted, by both white rescuers and
+black fugitives, with great privacy, often with much peril to life;
+hence it received the significant, popular name of "The Underground
+Railroad." Wisconsin had but small part in the working of the
+underground railroad, because it was not upon the usual highway between
+the South and Canada. But our people took a firm stand on the matter,
+sympathizing with the fugitive slaves and those who aided them on their
+way to freedom.
+
+When, therefore, Congress, in 1850, at the bidding of the Southern
+politicians, passed the Fugitive Slave Law, Wisconsin bitterly condemned
+it. This act was designed to crush out the underground railroad. It
+provided for the appointment, by federal courts, of commissioners in the
+several States, whose duty it should be to assist slaveholders and their
+agents in catching their runaway property. The unsupported testimony of
+the owner or agent was sufficient to prove ownership, the black man
+himself having no right to testify, and there being for him no trial by
+jury. The United States commissioners might enforce the law by the aid
+of any number of assistants, and, in the last resort, might summon the
+entire population to help them. There were very heavy penalties provided
+for violations of this inhuman law.
+
+The Fugitive Slave Law was denounced by most of the political
+conventions held in our State that year. In his message to the
+legislature, in January, 1851, Governor Dewey expressed the general
+sentiment when he said that it "contains provisions odious to our
+people, contrary to our sympathies, and repugnant to our feelings." But
+it was three years before occasion arose for Wisconsin to act.
+
+In the early months of 1854, a negro named Joshua Glover appeared in
+Racine, and obtained work in a sawmill four miles north of that place.
+On the night of the 10th of March, he was playing cards in his little
+cabin, with two other men of his race. Suddenly there appeared at the
+door seven well-armed white men,--two United States deputy marshals from
+Milwaukee, their four assistants from Racine, and a St. Louis man named
+Garland, who claimed to be Glover's owner.
+
+A desperate struggle followed, the result being that Glover, deserted by
+his comrades and knocked senseless by a blow, was placed in chains by
+his captors.
+
+Severely bleeding from his wounds, he was thrown into an open wagon and
+carted across country to the Milwaukee county jail, for the man hunters
+feared to go to Racine, where the antislavery feeling was strong. It was
+a bitter cold night, and Glover's miseries were added to by the brutal
+Garland, who at intervals kicked and beat the prisoner, and promised
+him still more serious punishment upon their return to the Missouri
+plantation.
+
+The news of the capture was not long in reaching Racine. The next
+morning there was held in the city square a public meeting, attended by
+nearly every citizen, at which resolutions were passed denouncing the
+act of the kidnapers as an outrage; demanding for Glover a trial by
+jury; promising "to attend in person to aid him, by all honorable means,
+to secure his unconditional release"; and, most significant of all,
+resolving that the people of Racine "do hereby declare the slave
+catching law of 1850 disgraceful and also repealed." There were many
+such nullifying resolutions passed in those stirring days by mass
+meetings throughout the country, but this was one of the earliest and
+most outspoken. That afternoon, on hearing where Glover had been
+imprisoned, a hundred indignant citizens of Racine, headed by the
+sheriff, went by steamer to Milwaukee, arriving there at five o'clock.
+
+Meanwhile, Milwaukee had been active. News of the capture had not been
+circulated in that city until eleven o'clock in the morning. One of the
+first to learn of it was Sherman M. Booth, the energetic editor of a
+small antislavery paper, the _Wisconsin Free Democrat_. Riding up and
+down the streets upon a horse, he scattered handbills, and, stopping at
+each crossing, shouted: "Freemen, to the rescue! Slave catchers are in
+our midst! Be at the courthouse at two o'clock!"
+
+Prompt to the hour, over five thousand people assembled in the
+courthouse square, where Booth and several other "liberty men" made
+impassioned speeches. A vigilance committee was appointed, to see that
+Glover had a fair trial, and the county judge issued in his behalf a
+writ of _habeas corpus_, calling for an immediate trial, and a show of
+proofs. But the federal judge, A. G. Miller, forbade the sheriff to obey
+this writ, holding that Glover must remain in the hands of the United
+States marshal, in whose custody he was placed by virtue of the Fugitive
+Slave Law.
+
+The local militia were called out to suppress the disorder, but they
+were without power. It soon became noised about that Glover was to be
+secretly removed to Missouri. This made the mob furious. Just at this
+time the Racine contingent arrived, adding oil to the flames. The
+reenforced crowd now marched to the jail, attacked the weak structure
+with axes, beams, and crowbars, rescued the fugitive just at sunset, and
+hurried him off. An underground railroad agency took the poor fellow in
+charge, and soon placed him aboard a sailing vessel bound for Canada,
+where he finally arrived in safety.
+
+Throughout Wisconsin the rescue was approved by the newspapers and
+public gatherings. Sympathetic meetings were also held in other States,
+at which resolutions applauding the action of Booth and his friends, and
+declaring the slave catching law unconstitutional, were passed with much
+enthusiasm. There was also held at Milwaukee, in April, a notable State
+convention, with delegates from all of the settled parts of the
+commonwealth; this convention declared the law unconstitutional, and
+formed a State league for furnishing aid and sympathy to the Glover
+rescuers.
+
+In 1857, as a result of the Glover affair, the Wisconsin legislature
+passed an act making it a duty of district attorneys in each county "to
+use all lawful means to protect, defend, and procure to be discharged
+... every person arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave," and throwing
+around the poor fellow every possible safeguard. Such was Wisconsin's
+final protest against the iniquity of the Fugitive Slave Law.
+
+Naturally, Booth had been looked upon by the United States marshal as
+the chief abettor of the riot. He was promptly arrested for violating a
+federal law by aiding in the escape of a slave; but the State supreme
+court promptly discharged him on a writ of _habeas corpus_. Thereupon he
+was brought before the federal court, but again the State court
+interfered in his favor, because of a technical irregularity.
+
+On the first of these occasions, the State court issued a very
+remarkable decision upon State rights, that attracted national attention
+at a time when this question was violently agitating the public mind. It
+declared, after a clear, logical statement of the case, that the
+Fugitive Slave Law was "unconstitutional and void" because it conferred
+judicial power upon mere court commissioners, and deprived the accused
+negro of the right of trial by jury. One of the justices of the court,
+in an individual opinion, went still further: he held that Congress had
+no power to legislate upon this subject; that "the States will never
+quietly submit to be disrobed of their sovereignty" by "national
+functionaries"; that the police power rested in the State itself, which
+would not "succumb, paralyzed and aghast, before the process of an
+officer unknown to the constitution, and irresponsible to its
+sanctions"; and that so long as he remained a judge, Wisconsin would
+meet such attempts with "stern remonstrance and resistance."
+
+The federal court reversed this action, and again arrested Booth in
+1860, but he was soon pardoned by the President, and met with no further
+trouble on account of the Glover affair.
+
+As for the people of Racine, they made life rather uncomfortable for the
+men who had assisted the Milwaukee deputy marshals in arresting Glover.
+The city became a fiercer hotbed of abolition than ever before, and
+several times thereafter aided slaves to escape from bondage.
+Fortunately for their own good, as well as for the cause of law and
+order, they found no further occasion to take the law into their own
+hands, in the defense of human liberty.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A FAMOUS CHIEF
+
+
+One of the best-known Indians with whom Wisconsin Territorial pioneers
+were thrown into personal contact was Oshkosh, the last of the Menominee
+sachems, or peace chiefs. It is worth while briefly to relate the story
+of his career, because it was the life of a typical Indian leader, at
+the critical time when the whites were coming into the country in such
+numbers as to crowd the reds to the wall.
+
+Oshkosh was born in 1795, at Point Bas, on the Wisconsin River.
+Cha-kau-cho-ka-ma (meaning Old King), the peace chief of the Menominees
+at that time, was his maternal grandfather. The war chief was Glode, the
+orator of the tribe, and a mighty hunter. The Old King lived until 1826,
+but Glode died in 1804, his successor being Tomah (the French
+pronunciation of Thomas, his English name).
+
+In the War of 1812-15, a large band of Wisconsin Indians joined the
+ranks of Tecumseh, in raiding upon the American borderers. The principal
+Menominee chiefs were Tomah, Souligny, Grizzly Bear, and Iometah, and
+among the young men was Oshkosh.
+
+Their first expedition was against Fort Mackinac, in 1812, that
+stronghold being captured from the Americans without bloodshed. Among
+white men, such an enterprise would not seem to offer much opportunity
+for the display of personal bravery; but savage and civilized standards
+of courage differ, and young Oshkosh appears to have satisfied the old
+men upon this occasion, so that he then received the name by which we
+know him, meaning in the Menominee tongue, "brave."
+
+By the following May, Oshkosh, now in his nineteenth year, and prominent
+among the young warriors, went out with Souligny and Tomah, and joined
+Tecumseh in the siege of Fort Meigs at the rapids of the Maumee River.
+Later, during the same summer, he was engaged in the memorable
+British-Indian siege of Sandusky. The succeeding year he was one of a
+large party of Menominees assisting the British to repel a fierce but
+futile American attempt to recapture Fort Mackinac. This was his last
+campaign, for peace between Great Britain and the United States soon
+followed.
+
+Oshkosh, now living upon the lands of the tribe in northeastern
+Wisconsin, appears to have passed a quiet existence, after his exploits
+of 1812-15. Lacking the stimulus of war, he maintained a state of
+artificial excitement by the use of fire water, and soon won a bad
+reputation in this regard. But he was not wholly debased. Few in council
+had more power than he. Although he was slow to speak, his opinion when
+given had much weight, because of a firm, resolute tone, beside which
+the impassioned flights of Tomah and Souligny often failed in effect.
+
+When the Old King died without any sons, a contest arose over the
+successorship to the chieftaincy. In many tribes there would have been
+no question about the election of Oshkosh, for he was the son of Old
+King's daughter; but the Menominees did not recognize any heirship
+except through sons. So many claimants arose, each determined to fight
+for the position, that the United States government feared an outbreak
+of civil war within the tribe, with possible injuries to the neighboring
+white settlers.
+
+Hence a court of claims was organized, to choose a chief among the
+contestants. This court, headed by Governor Lewis Cass, of Michigan
+Territory, met at Little Butte des Morts (near Neenah) in August, 1827,
+and selected Oshkosh. Cass, in the presence of the tribesmen, hung a
+medal about the neck of the victor, shook hands with him, and ordered a
+feast in honor of the event.
+
+The first five years of the reign of this dusky chieftain were peaceful
+enough, so far as relations with other tribes were concerned. But within
+the Menominee villages there were frequent drunken frolics, which
+sometimes ended in bloodshed or in endless disputes between families;
+and in these disturbances, which often greatly alarmed the white
+settlers, Oshkosh had his full share.
+
+When in June, 1832, the great Sac leader, Black Hawk, was harassing the
+settlements in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, while being
+slowly driven northward by the white troops, fears were entertained in
+the valley of the lower Fox that he would turn toward Green Bay. With
+the hope of preventing this, a force of three hundred Menominee Indians
+was recruited there, and sent to the seat of war, officered by American
+and French residents. Oshkosh headed his people, but arrived too late to
+do any fighting; Black Hawk had already been vanquished by white
+soldiers, at the battle of the Bad Ax. Oshkosh and his braves found no
+more savage foe than a small party of Sacs, old men and women and
+children, flying from the battlefield, and these they promptly
+massacred, proudly carrying the scalps back with them to Green Bay.
+
+Four years later, the Menominees sold all of their lands in Wisconsin to
+the federal government, and were placed upon the reservation at Keshena,
+where they still live.
+
+In 1840, the little four-year-old white settlement at the junction of
+the upper Fox with Lake Winnebago thought itself large enough to have a
+post office, hence the necessity for adopting a permanent name. The
+place had at first been known to travelers as Stanley's Tavern, because
+here a man named Stanley ran a ferry across Fox River, and kept a log
+hotel. Then the Green Bay merchants fell into the habit of marking
+"Athens" on boxes and bales which the boatmen carried up to Stanley's.
+
+When the question arose over the name for the post office, there were
+several candidates, "Osceola," "Galeopolis," and "Athens" being
+prominent. Robert Grignon, a French fur trader at Grand Butte des Morts,
+desiring to be on good terms with his Menominee neighbors, proposed
+"Oshkosh." Thereupon party spirit ran high. Upon a day named, a popular
+election without distinction of race was held at the office of the
+justice of the peace, who provided a free dinner to the voters; among
+them were a score of Indians, brought in by Grignon. Several ballots
+were taken, between which speeches were made in behalf of the rivals.
+"Oshkosh" finally won, chiefly by the votes of Grignon's Indians.
+Harmony was soon restored, and the election ended in drink and smoke,
+after the fashion of border gatherings in those days.
+
+We hear little more of old chief Oshkosh, until fifteen years later. In
+the year 1852 occurred a kidnaping case, which became famous in the
+frontier annals of Wisconsin. Nahkom, a Menominee squaw, was accused of
+having stolen a little white boy, the son of Alvin Partridge, of the
+town of Neenah, in Winnebago county. The Indians stoutly denied the
+truth of this accusation; indeed, Partridge himself failed to recognize
+his lost son in the person of Nahkom's boy. But the relatives and
+neighbors of Partridge were confident as to the identity, and the
+bereaved father was induced to ask aid of the courts in obtaining the
+child.
+
+The case hung fire for three years, the courts always deciding in favor
+of Nahkom, although Partridge regained temporary possession of the boy
+under writs of _habeas corpus_. Finally, pending the decision of a
+Milwaukee judge upon the application for a writ, the little fellow was
+placed in the jail of that city. From there the Partridges kidnaped him
+and fled to Kansas, leaving poor Nahkom childless, for undoubtedly it
+was a case of mistaken identity, and the child was really hers.
+Ultimately the boy was found and restored to her.
+
+This was in 1855. Oshkosh and a number of Menominee headmen went at once
+to Milwaukee, upon learning of the jail delivery, and laid their
+complaints before the judge. Recognizing the press as a medium of
+communication with the public, Oshkosh and Souligny also visited the
+editor of the _Sentinel_, asking him to state their grievance and plead
+their cause. The speech which Oshkosh made to the editor was given in
+full in that paper, and is a good specimen of the direct, earnest method
+in Indian oratory.
+
+He said, among other things: "Governor Dodge told us that our great
+father [the President] was very strong, and owned all the country; and
+that no one would dare to trouble us, or do us wrong, as he would
+protect us. He told us, too, that whenever we got into difficulty or
+anything happened we did not like, to call on our great father and he
+would see justice done. And now we come to you to remind our great
+father, through your paper, of his promise, and to ask him to fulfil
+it.... We thought our child safe in the jail in the care of the
+officers; that none could get the child away from them unless the law
+gave them the right. We cannot but think it must have been an evil
+spirit that got into the jail and took away our child. We thought the
+white man's law strong, and are sorry to find it so weak." Upon the
+conclusion of his visit, Oshkosh and his friends returned to their
+reservation, determined never again to mingle with the deceitful and
+grasping whites.
+
+Upon their way home to Keshena, Oshkosh stopped at the thriving little
+city which had been christened for him, and expressed pride at having so
+large a namesake. It was his first and only visit. Three years later he
+died in a drunken brawl, aged sixty-three years. He was a good Indian,
+as savages go, his chief vice being one borrowed from the whites, who
+forced themselves upon his lands and contaminated him and his people.
+
+
+
+
+A FIGHT FOR THE GOVERNORSHIP
+
+
+Between the time when Wisconsin became a state (1848), and the opening
+of the War of Secession (1861), party feeling ran high within the new
+commonwealth. Charges of corruption against public officials were freely
+made; many men sought office for the plunder supposed to be obtained by
+those "inside the ring"; newspaper editors appeared to be chiefly
+engaged in savage attacks on the reputations of those who differed from
+them, and general political demoralization was prevalent. When, however,
+important issues arose out of the discussions of the strained relations
+between North and South, a higher and more patriotic tone was at once
+evident, and this has ever since been maintained in Wisconsin politics.
+
+The most striking event of the years of petty partisan strife which
+preceded the war, was the fight for the governorship of the State,
+between William A. Barstow and Coles Bashford.
+
+Barstow, a Democrat from Waukesha county, had been secretary of state
+during Governor Dewey's second term (1850-51). Owing to bitterness
+occasioned by the rejection of the first State constitution, the
+Democratic party in Wisconsin was torn into factions, at the head of one
+of which was Barstow. While serving as secretary of state, he made many
+enemies, who freely accused him of rank official dishonesty, and
+associated him with the corrupt methods of the early railway companies
+which were just then seeking charters from the legislature.
+Nevertheless, like all strong, positive men, he had won for himself warm
+friends, who secured his election as governor for the year 1854-55.
+
+[Illustration: COLES BASHFORD]
+
+His enemies, however, grew in number, and their accusations increased in
+bitterness. His party renominated him for governor; but he had lost
+ground during the term, and could not draw out his full party strength
+in the November election of 1855. Besides, the new Republican party,
+although as yet in the minority, was making rapid strides, and voted
+solidly for its nominee, Bashford, a Winnebago county lawyer. As a
+result, the voting for governor proved so close that for a full month no
+one knew the outcome. Meanwhile there was, of course, much popular
+excitement, with charges of fraud on both sides.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM A. BARSTOW]
+
+Finally, in December, the State board of canvassers met at Madison. It
+consisted of the secretary of state, the State treasurer, and the
+attorney-general, all of them Barstow men. Their report was that he had
+received one hundred fifty-seven more votes than his opponent. The
+Republicans at once advanced the serious charge that the canvassers had
+deliberately forged supplemental returns from several counties,
+pretending to receive them upon the day before the count. Large numbers
+of people soon came to believe that fraud had been committed, and
+Bashford prepared for a contest.
+
+Upon the day in early January when Barstow was inaugurated at the
+capitol, with the usual military display, Bashford stepped into the
+supreme court room and was quietly sworn in by the chief justice.
+Thereupon Bashford appealed to the court to turn Barstow out, and
+declare him the rightful governor.
+
+There followed a most remarkable lawsuit. The constitution provides that
+the State government shall consist of three branches, legislative,
+judicial, and executive. It was claimed that never before in the history
+of any of the States in the Union had one branch of the government been
+called upon to decide between rival claimants to a position in another
+branch. Barstow's lawyers, of course, denied the jurisdiction of the
+court to pass upon the right of the governor to hold his seat; for, they
+argued, if this were possible, then the judiciary would be superior to
+the people, and no one could hold office to whom the judges were not
+friendly. There was a fierce struggle, for several weeks, between the
+opposing lawyers, who were among the most learned men of the State, with
+the result that the court decided that it had jurisdiction; and, on
+nearly every point raised, ruled in favor of the Bashford men.
+
+Before the decision of the case, Barstow and his lawyers withdrew,
+declaring that the judges were influenced against them by political
+prejudices. However, the court proceeded without them, and declared that
+the election returns had been tampered with, and that Bashford really
+had one thousand nine majority. He was accordingly declared to have been
+elected governor.
+
+This conclusion had been expected by Barstow, who, determined not to be
+put out of office, resigned his position three days before the court
+rendered its decision. Immediately upon Barstow's resignation, his
+friend, the lieutenant governor, Arthur McArthur, took possession of the
+office. He claimed that he was now the rightful governor, for the
+constitution provides that in the event of the resignation, death, or
+inability of the governor, the lieutenant governor shall succeed him.
+But the supreme court at once ruled that, as Barstow's title was
+worthless, McArthur could not succeed to it, a logical view of the case
+which the Barstow sympathizers had not foreseen.
+
+It was upon Monday, March the 24th, that the court rendered its
+decision. Bashford announced that he would take possession of the office
+upon Tuesday. There had been great popular uneasiness in Madison and the
+neighboring country, throughout the long struggle, and the decision
+brought this excitement to a crisis. Many of the adherents of both
+contestants armed themselves and drilled, in anticipation of an
+encounter which might lead to civil war within the State. There were
+frequent wordy quarrels upon the streets, and threats of violence; and
+many supposed that it would be impossible to prevent the opposing
+factions from fighting in good earnest.
+
+Affairs were in this critical condition upon the fateful Tuesday. Early
+in the day people began to arrive in Madison from the surrounding
+country, as if for a popular fete. The streets and the capitol grounds
+were filled with excited men, chiefly adherents of Bashford; they
+cheered him loudly as he emerged from the supreme court room, at eleven
+o'clock, accompanied by the sheriff of the county, who held in his hand
+the order which awarded the office to Bashford.
+
+Passing through the corridors of the capitol, now crowded with his
+friends, Bashford and the sheriff rapped upon the door of the governor's
+office. McArthur and several of his friends were inside; a voice bade
+the callers enter. The new governor was a large, pleasant-looking man.
+Leisurely taking off his coat and hat, he hung them in the wardrobe, and
+calmly informed McArthur that he had come to occupy the governor's
+chair.
+
+"Is force to be used in supporting the order of the court?" indignantly
+asked the incumbent, as, glancing through the open door, he caught sight
+of the eager, excited crowd of Bashford's friends, whose leaders with
+difficulty restrained them from at once crowding into the room.
+
+"I presume," blandly replied Bashford, "that no force will be
+essential; but in case any is needed, there will be no hesitation
+whatever in applying it, with the sheriff's help."
+
+McArthur at once calmed down, said that he "considered this threat as
+constructive force," and promptly left his rival in possession. As he
+hurried out, through rows of his political enemies, the corridors were
+ringing with shouts of triumph; and in a few moments Bashford was
+shaking hands with the crowd, who, in the highest glee, swarmed through
+his office.
+
+The legislature was divided in political sentiment. The senate received
+the new governor's message with enthusiasm, and by formal resolution
+congratulated him upon his success. The assembly at first refused,
+thirty-eight to thirty-four, to have anything to do with him; but upon
+thirty of the Democrats withdrawing, after filing a protest against the
+action of the court, the house agreed, thirty-seven to nine, to
+recognize Governor Bashford. Thereafter he had no trouble at the helm of
+State.
+
+
+
+
+OUR FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS
+
+
+It is probable that no other State in the Union contains so many
+varieties of Europeans as does Wisconsin. About seventeen per cent of
+our entire population were born in Germany; next in numbers come the
+Scandinavians, natives of Great Britain, Irish, Canadians, Poles,
+Bohemians, Hollanders, Russians, and French.
+
+These different nationalities are scattered all over the State; often
+they are found grouped in very large neighborhoods. Sometimes one of
+these groups is so large that, with the American-born children, it
+occupies entire townships, and practically controls the local churches
+and schools, which are generally conducted in the foreign tongue. There
+are extensive German, Scandinavian, and Welsh farming districts in our
+State where one may travel far without hearing English spoken by any
+one. Some crowded quarters of Milwaukee are wholly German in custom and
+language; and there are other streets in that city where few but Poles,
+Bohemians, or Russians can be found.
+
+Although these foreign-born people, as is quite natural, generally cling
+with tenacity to the language, the religion, and many of the customs in
+which they were reared, it is noticeable that all of them are eager to
+learn our methods of government, and to become good citizens; and their
+children, when allowed to mingle freely with the youth of this country,
+become so thoroughly Americanized that little if any difference can be
+distinguished between them and those whose forefathers have lived here
+for several generations past.
+
+There is, however, hardly a family in Wisconsin which is not of European
+origin. Some of us are descended from ancestors who chanced to come to
+the New World at an earlier period than did the ancestors of others of
+our fellow-citizens; that is all that distinguishes these "old American
+families" from those more recently transplanted.
+
+It is a very interesting study to watch the gradual evolution of a new
+American race from the mingling on our soil of so many different
+nationalities, just as the English race itself was slowly built up from
+the old Britons, Saxons, Norsemen, and Norman French. But we must
+remember that this "race amalgamation," although now proceeding upon a
+larger scale than was probably ever witnessed before, has always been
+going on in America since the earliest colonial days, when English,
+French, Hollanders, Swedes, Scotch, and Irish were fused as in a melting
+pot, for the production of the American types that we meet to-day.
+
+A variety of reasons induced foreigners to come to Wisconsin in such
+large numbers; they may, however, be classified under three heads,
+political, economic, and religious. The political reason was
+dissatisfaction with the government at home, chiefly because it
+repressed all aspiration for liberty and forced young men to sacrifice
+several of the best years of their lives by spending them in the army.
+The most powerful economic reason was inability to earn a satisfactory
+living in the fatherland, because worn-out soils, low prices for
+produce, overcrowding of population, and excessive competition among
+workmen resulted in starvation wages. The religious reason was the
+disposition of European monarchs to interfere with men's right to
+worship God as they pleased.
+
+In 1830 there were serious political troubles in Germany, and thousands
+of dissatisfied people emigrated from that country to America. Many of
+the newcomers were young professional men of fine education and lofty
+ideals. In those early days American society was somewhat crude,
+especially upon the frontier. These spirited young Germans complained
+that, both in religion and politics, the life of our people was sordid
+and low, with little appreciation for the higher things of life; and
+especially did they resent our popular lack of appreciation of their
+countrymen.
+
+Therefore, in 1835, there was formed in New York a society called
+"Germania," which was to induce enough Germans to settle in some one of
+the American States to be able to gain control of it and make it a
+German State, with German life and manners, with German schools,
+literature, and art, with German courts and assemblies, and with German
+as the official language. A great deal of discussion followed, as to
+which State should be chosen; some preferred Texas, others Oregon, but
+most of the members wished some State in what was then called the
+Northwest, between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The
+society disbanded without result; but the agitation to which it gave
+rise was continued throughout many years on both sides of the ocean.
+
+Wisconsin was strongly favored by most of the German writers on
+immigration, especially about the time that it became prominent through
+being admitted to the Union (1848). Nothing came of all this agitation
+for a German State, except the very wide advertising which Wisconsin
+obtained in Germany, as a State admirably suited for Germans, in soil,
+climate, liberal constitution, and low prices for lands, and as
+possessing social attractions for them, because it had early obtained an
+unusually large German population.
+
+The counties near Milwaukee were the first to receive German settlers.
+This movement began about 1839, and was very rapid. Soon after that,
+Sauk and Dane counties became the favorites for new arrivals. Next,
+immigrants from Germany went to the southwestern counties, about Mineral
+Point, and northward into the region about Lake Winnebago and the Fox
+River. By 1841 they had spread into Buffalo county, and along the
+Mississippi River; but since 1860 they have chiefly gone into the north
+central regions of the State, generally preferring forest lands to
+prairies. The first arrivals were mainly from the valley of the Rhine;
+next in order, came people from southern Germany; but the bulk of the
+settlers are from the northern and middle provinces of their native
+land.
+
+The principal Swiss groups in Wisconsin are in Green, Buffalo, Sauk,
+Fond du Lac, and Taylor counties. That at New Glarus, in Green county,
+is one of the most interesting. In the sterile little mountainous
+canton of Glarus, in Switzerland, there was, about 1844, much distress
+because of over population; the tillable land was insufficient to raise
+food for all the people. It was, therefore, resolved by them to send
+some of their number to America, as a colony.
+
+Two scouts were first dispatched, in the spring of 1845, with
+instructions to find a climate, a soil, and general characteristics as
+nearly like Switzerland as possible. These agents had many adventures as
+they wandered through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, before finally
+selecting Green county, Wisconsin, as the place best suited for their
+people.
+
+It was supposed that those left behind would wait until a report could
+be sent back to them. But one hundred ninety-three of the intending
+emigrants soon became restless, and started for America only a month
+later than the advance guard. The party had a long and very disagreeable
+journey, down the Rhine River to the seaport, where after many sore
+trials they obtained a vessel to take them across the Atlantic. This
+ship was intended for the accommodation of only one hundred forty
+passengers; but nearly two hundred crowded into it, and had a
+tempestuous and generally disheartening passage of forty-nine days, with
+insufficient food.
+
+At last, reaching Baltimore, they proceeded by canal boat to the foot of
+the Alleghanies, crossed the mountains by a crude railway, and then
+embarked in a steamer down the Ohio River, bound for St. Louis. After
+their arrival at that city, there ensued a long and vexatious search
+for the scouts, who, not expecting them, had left few traces behind. But
+perseverance finally won, and by the middle of August all of these weary
+colonists were reunited in the promised land of New Glarus, five
+thousand miles away from their native valleys.
+
+The experience of the first few years was filled with privations,
+because these poor Swiss, fresh from narrow fields and small shops at
+home, did not comprehend the larger American methods of farming, with
+horse and plow. But, by the kindness of their American neighbors, they
+finally learned their rude lessons; and, soon adopting the profitable
+business of manufacturing Swiss cheese, by thrift and industry they in
+time succeeded in making of New Glarus one of the most prosperous
+agricultural regions in Wisconsin.
+
+It is estimated that in Green county there are now eight thousand
+persons of Swiss birth, or the descendants of Swiss, about one-third of
+the entire population. The language which they still use in business
+affairs is the German-Swiss dialect.
+
+[Illustration: FIRST NORWEGIAN CHURCH]
+
+The first Norwegian immigrants to America arrived in 1825, after some
+strange adventures on the ocean, and settled in the State of New York;
+this was before Wisconsin was ready for settlers. From 1836 to 1845,
+thousands of Norwegians came to Illinois and Wisconsin, their first
+settlement in Wisconsin being made in 1844, in the town of Albion, Dane
+county. They are now scattered quite generally over the State, in large
+groups, with hundreds of ministers and churches, and many newspapers;
+but they are still strongest in Dane county, where, probably, there are
+not less than fourteen thousand who were either born in Norway or are
+the children of Norwegian-born parents.
+
+The Belgians are closely massed in certain towns of Door, Kewaunee, and
+Brown counties, in the northeastern portion of the State. The beginning
+of their immigration was in 1853, when ten families of the province of
+Brabant, in Belgium, determined to move to America, where they could win
+a better support for themselves, and suitably educate their children.
+The vessel in which they crossed the Atlantic was forty-eight days in
+sailing from Antwerp to New York, the passage being tedious and rough,
+accompanied by several terrific hurricanes. The poor pilgrims suffered
+from hunger and thirst, as well as sickness, and lost one of their
+number by death.
+
+It was while on board ship that the majority decided to settle in
+Wisconsin, and upon landing, hither they promptly came. Arriving in
+Milwaukee, they knew not what part of the State was best suited for
+them; but began to prospect for land, and finally settled near Green
+Bay, simply because a large portion of the population of that village
+could speak French, which was their own language. At first they had
+determined to locate near Sheboygan, but were annoyed at not being able
+to make themselves understood by the inhabitants of that place. The
+little band of Belgians was at last established within rude log huts, in
+the heart of a dense forest, ten miles from any other human habitation,
+without roads or bridges, or even horses or cattle. They experienced the
+worst possible inconveniences and hardships naturally appertaining to
+life in the frontier woods, and for the first year or two the colony
+seemed in a desperate condition. Its hopeful members, however, hiding
+their present misery, sent cheerful letters home, and enticed their old
+neighbors either to join them, or to form new settlements in the
+neighborhood. In due time, the Belgians of northeastern Wisconsin became
+prosperous farmers and merchants.
+
+Similar tales might be related, of the great difficulties and hardships
+bravely overcome by several other foreign groups in Wisconsin: for
+instance, the Poles, the Dutch, the Welsh, the Bohemians, the Cornishmen
+of the lead-mine region, and the Icelandic fishermen of lonely
+Washington Island. But the foregoing will suffice to show of what sturdy
+stuff our foreign-born peoples are made, and cause us to rejoice that
+such material has gone into the upbuilding of our commonwealth.
+
+
+
+
+SWEPT BY FIRE
+
+
+Before the great inrush of agricultural settlers, in 1836, most of the
+surface of Wisconsin was covered with dense forests. In the northern
+portion of the State, pines, hemlocks, and spruce predominated, mingled
+with large areas of hard wood; elsewhere, hard wood chiefly prevailed,
+the forests in the southern and eastern portions being frequently broken
+by large prairies and by small treeless "openings."
+
+In the great northern pine woods, lumbermen have been busy for many
+years. They leave in their wake great wastes of land, some of it covered
+with dead branches from the trees that have been felled and trimmed;
+some so sterile that the sun, now allowed to enter, in a rainless summer
+bakes the earth and dries the spongy swamps; while all about are great
+masses of dead stumps, blasted trunks, and other forest debris. Settlers
+soon pour in, purchase the best of this cut-over land, and clear the
+ground for farms. But there are still left in Wisconsin great stretches
+of deforested country, as yet unsettled; some of these areas are
+worthless except for growing new forests, an enterprise which, some day,
+the State government will undertake for the benefit of the
+commonwealth.
+
+Now and then, in dry seasons, great fires start upon these "pine
+barrens," or "slashings," as they are called, and spread until often
+they cause great loss to life and property. These conflagrations
+originate in many ways, chiefly from the carelessness of hunters or
+Indians, in their camps, or from sparks from locomotives, or bonfires
+built by farmers for the destruction of rubbish.
+
+Nearly every summer and autumn these forest fires occur more or less
+frequently in northern Wisconsin, working much damage in their
+neighborhoods; but usually they exhaust themselves when they reach a
+swamp, a river, or cleared fields. When, however, there has been an
+exceptionally long period of drought, everything in the cut-over lands
+becomes excessively dry; the light, thin soil, filled with dead roots
+and encumbered by branches and stumps, becomes as inflammable as tinder;
+the dried-up marshes generate explosive gases.
+
+The roaring flames, once started in such a season, are fanned by the
+winds which the heat generates, and, gathering strength, roll forward
+with resistless impetus; dense, resinous forest growths succumb before
+their assault, rivers are leaped by columns of fire, and everything goes
+down before the destroyer. In a holocaust of this character, all
+ordinary means of fire fighting are in vain; the houses and barns of
+settlers feed the devouring giant, whole towns are swept away, until at
+last the flames either find nothing further upon which to feed, or are
+quenched by a storm of rain.
+
+The most disastrous forest conflagration which Wisconsin has known,
+occurred during the 8th and 9th of October, 1871. There had been a
+winter with little snow, and a long, dry summer. Fires had been noticed
+in the pine forests which line the shores of Green Bay, as early as the
+first week in September. At first they did not create much alarm; they
+smouldered along the ground through the vegetable mold, underbrush, and
+"slashings," occasionally eating out the roots of a great tree, which,
+swayed by the wind, would topple over with a roar, and send skyward a
+shower of sparks.
+
+Gradually the "fire belt" broadened, and, finding better fuel, the
+flames strengthened; the swamps began to burn, to a depth of several
+feet; over hundreds of square miles the air was thick and stifling with
+smoke, so that the sun at noonday appeared like a great copper ball set
+on high; at night the heavens were lurid. Miles of burning woods were
+everywhere to be seen; hundreds of haystacks in the meadows, and great
+piles of logs and railroad ties and telegraph poles were destroyed.
+
+For many weeks the towns along the bay shore were surrounded by cordons
+of threatening flame. The people of Pensaukee, Oconto, Little Suamico,
+Sturgeon Bay, Peshtigo, and scores of other settlements, were frequently
+called out by the fire bells to fight the insidious enemy; many a time
+were they apparently doomed to destruction, but constant vigilance and
+these occasional skirmishes for a time saved them.
+
+Reports now began to come in, thick and fast, of settlers driven from
+blazing homes, of isolated sawmills and lumber camps destroyed, of
+bridges consumed, of thrilling escapes by lumbermen and farmers. On
+Sunday, the 8th of October, a two days' carnival of death began. In
+Brown, Kewaunee, Oconto, Door, Manitowoc, and Shawano counties the
+flames, suddenly rising, swept everything within their path. Where
+thriving, prosperous villages once had stood, blackened wastes appeared.
+Over a thousand lives were lost, nearly as many persons were crippled,
+and three thousand were in a few hours reduced to beggary. The horrors
+of the scenes at New Franken, Peshtigo, and the Sugar Bush, in
+particular, were such as cannot be described.
+
+This appalling tragedy chanced to occur at the same time as vast prairie
+fires in Minnesota, and the terrible conflagration which destroyed
+Chicago. The civilized world stood aghast at the broad extent of the
+field of needed relief; nevertheless, the frenzied appeals for aid,
+issued in behalf of the Wisconsin fire sufferers, met with as generous a
+response as if they alone, in that fateful month of October, were the
+recipients of the nation's bounty. Train loads of clothing and
+provisions, from nearly every State in the Union, soon poured into Green
+Bay, which was the center of distribution; the United States government
+made large gifts of clothing and rations; nearly two hundred thousand
+dollars were raised, and expended under official control; and great
+emergency hospitals were opened at various points, for the treatment of
+sick and wounded.
+
+As for the actual financial loss to the people of the burned district,
+that could never be estimated. The soil was, in many places, burned to
+the depth of several feet, nothing being left but sand and ashes; grass
+roots were destroyed; bridges and culverts were gone; houses, barns,
+cattle, tools, seed, and crops were no more. It was several years before
+the region began again to exhibit signs of prosperity.
+
+In the year 1894, forest fires of an appalling magnitude once more
+visited Wisconsin, this time in the northwestern corner of the State.
+Again had there been an exceptionally dry winter, spring, and summer.
+The experience gained by lumbermen and forest settlers had made them
+more cautious than before, and more expert in the fighting of fires; but
+that year was one in which no human knowledge seemed to avail against
+the progress of flames once started on their career of devastation.
+
+During the summer, several fires had burned over large areas. By the
+last week of July, it was estimated that five million dollars' worth of
+standing pine had been destroyed. The burned and burning area was now
+over fifty miles in width, the northern limit being some forty miles
+south of Superior. Upon the 27th of the month, the prosperous town of
+Phillips, wholly surrounded by deforested lands, was suddenly licked up
+by the creeping flames, the terrified inhabitants escaping by the aid of
+a railway train. Neighboring towns, which suffered to a somewhat less
+degree, were Mason, Barronett, and Shell Lake.
+
+In 1898 Wisconsin was again a heavy sufferer from the same cause. The
+fires were chiefly in Barron county, upon the 29th and 30th of
+September. Two hundred fifty-eight families were left destitute, and the
+loss to land and property was estimated at $400,000. Relief agencies
+were established in various cities of the state, and our people
+responded as liberally to the urgent call for help as they had in 1871
+and 1894.
+
+A more competent official system of scientifically caring for our
+forests, restricting the present wasteful cutting of timber, and
+preventing and fighting forest fires, would be of incalculable benefit
+to the State of Wisconsin. The annual loss by burning is alone a
+terrible drain upon the resources of the people, to say nothing of the
+death and untold misery which stalk in the wake of a forest fire.
+
+
+
+
+BADGERS IN WAR TIME
+
+
+The men of Wisconsin who had fought and conquered the hard conditions of
+frontier life, developing a raw wilderness into a wealthy and
+progressive commonwealth, were of the sort to make the best of soldiers
+when called upon to take up arms in behalf of the nation.
+
+From the earliest days of the War of Secession until its close,
+Wisconsin troops were ever upon the firing line, and participated in
+some of the noblest victories of the long and painful struggle. General
+Sherman, in his "Memoirs," paid them this rare tribute: "We estimated a
+Wisconsin regiment equal to an ordinary brigade." It is impracticable in
+one brief chapter to do more than mention a few of the most brilliant
+achievements of the Badger troops.
+
+In April, 1862, the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth Wisconsin
+infantry regiments, although new in the service, won imperishable
+laurels upon the bloody field of Shiloh. The men of the Fourteenth were
+especially prominent in the fray. Arriving on the ground at midnight of
+the first day, they passed the rest of the night in a pelting rain,
+standing ankle-deep in mud; and throughout all the next day fought as
+though they were hardened veterans.
+
+A Kentucky regiment was ordered to charge a Confederate battery, but
+fell back in confusion; whereupon General Grant asked if the Fourteenth
+Wisconsin could do the work. Its colonel cried, "We will try!" and then
+followed one of the most gallant charges of the entire war. Thrice
+driven back, the Wisconsin men finally captured the battery; confusion
+ensued in the Confederate ranks, and very soon the battle of Shiloh was
+a Union victory.
+
+In the Peninsular campaign of the same year, the Fifth Regiment made a
+bayonet charge which routed and scattered the Confederates, and turned
+the scales in favor of the North. In an address to the regiment two days
+later, General McClellan declared: "Through you we won the day, and
+Williamsburg shall be inscribed on your banner. Your country owes you
+its grateful thanks." His report to the War Department describes this
+charge as "brilliant in the extreme."
+
+Some of the highest honors of the war were awarded to the gallant Iron
+Brigade, composed of the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin, the
+Nineteenth Indiana, and the Twenty-fourth Michigan. At Gainesville, in
+the Shenandoah Valley campaign, also in 1862, this brigade practically
+won the fight, the brunt of the Confederate assault being met by the
+Second Wisconsin, which that day lost sixty per cent of its rank and
+file; the brigade itself suffered a loss of nine hundred men.
+
+The Third opened the battle at Cedar Mountain, and very soon after that
+was at Antietam, where it lost two-thirds of the men it took into
+action. The Fifth also was prominent near by, and the Iron Brigade,
+behind a rail fence, conducted a fight which was one of the chief events
+of the engagement.
+
+At the battle of Corinth, several Wisconsin regiments and four of her
+batteries won some of the brightest honors. In the various official
+reports of the action, such comments as the following are frequent:
+"This regiment (the Fourteenth) was the one to rely upon in every
+emergency;" a fearless dash by the Seventeenth regiment, one general
+described as "the most glorious charge of the campaign"; there was an
+allusion to the Eighteenth's "most effectual service"; in referring to
+the Sixth battery, mention is made in the reports, of "its noble work."
+
+At Chaplin Hills, in Kentucky, a few days later, the First Wisconsin
+drove back the enemy several times, and captured a stand of Confederate
+colors. The Tenth was seven hours under fire, and lost fifty-four per
+cent of its number. General Rousseau highly praised both regiments,
+saying, "These brave men are entitled to the gratitude of the country."
+The Fifteenth captured heavy stores of ammunition and many prisoners;
+the Twenty-fifth repulsed, with withering fire, a superior force of the
+enemy, who had suddenly assaulted them while lying in a cornfield; and
+the Fifth battery three times turned back a Confederate charge, "saving
+the division," as General McCook reported, "from a disgraceful defeat."
+
+At Prairie Grove, in Arkansas, at Fredericksburg, and at Stone River,
+still later in the campaign of 1862, Wisconsin soldiers exhibited what
+General Sherman described as "splendid conduct, bravery, and
+efficiency."
+
+Men of Wisconsin were also prominent in the Army of the Potomac, during
+the famous "mud campaign" of the early months of 1863. At the crossing
+of the Rappahannock, theirs was the dangerous duty to protect the makers
+of the pontoon bridges. In the course of this service, the Iron Brigade
+made a splendid dash across the river, charged up the opposite heights,
+and at the point of the bayonet routed the Confederates who were
+intrenched in rifle pits.
+
+At Chancellorsville, the Third Wisconsin, detailed to act as a barrier
+to the advance of the Confederates under Stonewall Jackson, was the last
+to leave the illfated field.
+
+At Fredericksburg, not far away, the Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine
+led a desperate charge up Marye's Hill, where, in a sunken roadway, lay
+a large force of the enemy; this force, a few months before, had killed
+six thousand Union men who were vainly attempting to rout them. This
+second and final charge overcame all difficulties, and succeeded. As the
+Confederate commander handed to the colonel of the Wisconsin regiment
+his sword and silver spurs, he told the victor that he had supposed
+there were not enough troops in the Army of the Potomac to carry the
+position; it was, he declared, the most daring assault he had ever seen.
+Such, too, was the judgment of Greeley, who declared that "Braver men
+never smiled on death than those who climbed Marye's Hill on that fatal
+day." The correspondent of the _London Times_ also wrote, "Never at
+Fontenoy, Albuera, nor at Waterloo was more undaunted courage
+displayed."
+
+In the campaign which resulted in the fall of Vicksburg, in 1863,
+numerous Wisconsin regiments participated, many of them with conspicuous
+gallantry. It was an officer of the Twenty-third who received, at the
+base of the works, the offer of the Confederates to surrender.
+
+The part taken by Wisconsin troops at Gettysburg, was conspicuous. The
+Iron Brigade and a Wisconsin company of sharpshooters were, day by day,
+in the thickest of the fight, and gained a splendid record. At
+Chickamauga, several of our regiments fought under General Thomas, and
+lost heavily. They afterward participated in the struggle at Mission
+Ridge, which resulted in the Confederate army under Bragg being turned
+back into Central Georgia.
+
+The Iron Brigade was in Grant's campaign against Richmond, serving
+gallantly in the battles of the Wilderness, in the "bloody angle" at
+Spottsylvania, at Fair Oaks, and in the numerous attacks before
+Petersburg.
+
+Wisconsin contributed heavily to the army of Sherman, in his "march to
+the sea," and in the preliminary contests won distinction on many a
+bitterly contested field. Several of our regiments were in the assault
+on Mobile, the day when Lee was surrendering to Grant, in far-off
+Virginia. Others of the Badger troops, infantry and cavalry, served in
+Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, fighting the Confederate guerillas,
+while our artillerymen were distributed throughout the several Union
+armies, and served gallantly until the last days of the war.
+
+Wisconsin soldiers languished in most of the great Southern military
+prisons. A thrilling escape of Union men from Libby Prison, at Richmond,
+was made in February, 1864, by means of a secret tunnel. This was
+ingeniously excavated under the superintendence of a party of which
+Colonel H. C. Hobart of the Twenty-first Wisconsin was a leader.
+
+Another notable event of the war, of which a Wisconsin man was the hero,
+occurred during the night of the 27th of October, 1864. The Confederate
+armored ram _Albemarle_, after having sunk several Union vessels, was
+anchored off Plymouth, North Carolina, a town which was being attacked
+by Federal troops and ships. Lieutenant W. B. Cushing of Delafield,
+Waukesha county, proceeded to the _Albemarle_ in a small launch, under
+cover of the dark; and, in the midst of a sharp fire from the crew of
+the ram, placed a torpedo under her bow and blew her up. The daring
+young officer escaped to his ship, amid appalling difficulties, having
+won worldwide renown by his splendid feat.
+
+The saving of the Union fleet in the Red River was an incident which
+attracted national attention to still another Wisconsin man. The
+expedition up the river, into the heart of the enemy's country, was a
+failure, and immediate retreat inevitable. But the water had lowered,
+and the fleet of gunboats found it impossible to descend the rapids at
+Alexandria. The enemy were swarming upon the banks, and the situation
+was so hazardous that it seemed as if the army would find it necessary
+to desert the vessels. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey of the Fourth
+Wisconsin infantry, serving as chief engineer on General Franklin's
+staff, proposed to dam the river, then suddenly make an opening, and
+allow the boats to emerge with the outrush of imprisoned water. The plan
+is a familiar one to Wisconsin lumbermen, in getting logs over shoals;
+but it was new to the other officers, and Bailey was laughed at as a
+visionary. However, the situation was so desperate that he was allowed
+to try his experiment. It succeeded admirably; the fleet, worth nearly
+two millions of dollars, was saved, and the expedition emerged from the
+trap in good order. Bailey was made a brigadier general, and the
+grateful naval officers presented him with a valuable sword and vase.
+
+No account of Wisconsin's part in the War of Secession should, however
+brief, omit reference to a conspicuous participant, "Old Abe," the war
+eagle of the Eighth Regiment. He was captured by an Indian, on the
+Flambeau River, a branch of the Chippewa, and until the close of the
+long struggle was carried on a perch by his owners, the men of Company
+C. He was an eyewitness of thirty-six battles and skirmishes, and
+accompanied his regiment upon some of the longest marches of the war.
+Frequently he was hit by the enemy's bullets, but never was daunted, his
+habit in times of action being to pose upon his perch or a cannon,
+screaming lustily, and frequently holding in his bill the corner of a
+flag. No general in the great struggle achieved a wider celebrity than
+"Old Abe." Until his death, in 1881, he was exhibited in all parts of
+the country, at State and national soldiers' reunions, and at fairs held
+for their benefit. At the great Sanitary Fair in Chicago, in 1865, it is
+said that the sales of his photographs brought $16,000 to the soldiers'
+relief fund.
+
+Upon the opening of the Spanish-American War, in April, 1898,
+Wisconsin's militia system was one of the best in the country, and its
+quota of 5390 volunteers was made up from these companies.
+
+The First Regiment was sent to Camp Cuba Libre, at Jacksonville,
+Florida; the Second and Third to Camp Thomas, at Chickamauga; and the
+Fourth, at first to the State military camp at Camp Douglas, and later
+to Camp Shipp, Alabama. The First was the earliest raised, and the best
+equipped, but its colonel's commission was not so old as those held by
+the other regimental commanders from this State; therefore, when two
+Wisconsin regiments were to be sent in July to Puerto Rico, the Second
+and Third were selected, leaving the First reluctantly to spend its
+entire time in camp. After the war, it had been intended to detail the
+Fourth, not mustered in until late in the struggle, to join the
+American army of occupation in the West Indies; but, owing to the fact
+that a large percentage of the men were suffering from camp diseases,
+they were finally mustered out without leaving the country.
+
+The Second and Third had an interesting experience in Puerto Rico.
+Arriving at the port of Guamico upon the 25th of July, they took a
+prominent part in the bloodless capture of the neighboring city of
+Ponce. This task completed, they were detailed, with the Sixteenth
+Pennsylvania, to form the advance guard of the army, which prepared at
+once to sweep the island from south to north. Our men were almost daily
+under fire, particularly in road clearing skirmishes under General Roy
+Stone.
+
+Two days after the landing at Guamico, Lieutenant Perry Cochrane, of Eau
+Claire, an officer of the Third, was sent forward with seventeen other
+Eau Claire men, to open up the railway line leading to the little
+village of Yauco, lying about twenty miles westward of Ponce, and to
+capture that place. The track and the bridges had been wrecked by the
+fleeing enemy, so that Cochrane's party endured much peril and fatigue
+before they reached their destination; and Yauco was not disposed to
+succumb to this handful of men. Cochrane successfully held his own,
+however, until the following day, when reenforcements arrived.
+
+A few days after the fall of Ponce, the Sheboygan company was acting as
+guard to a detachment repairing the San Juan road, several miles out of
+town. Hearing that a party of Spanish soldiers had taken a stand at
+Lares, eighteen miles away, a detail was sent with a flag of truce, to
+treat with them. The squad consisted of Lieutenant Bodemer, four
+privates, and a bugler. The Spaniards were not in a pleasant frame of
+mind, and but for their officers would have made short shrift of the
+visitors, despite the peaceful flag which they bore. Finally, the
+Spaniards agreed to receive a deputation of native Puerto Ricans, and
+talk the matter over with them. Our men withdrew, and sent natives in
+their stead; but the latter were treacherously assaulted, and only one
+of them escaped to tell the story.
+
+Upon the 9th of August, there was a sharp fight at Coamo. Both of our
+regiments were actively employed in this encounter, and were of the
+troops which finally raised the American flag over the town walls.
+
+The final engagement was fought two days later, at the mountain pass of
+Asomanta, near Aibonito, where 2500 Spanish troops were centered. The
+Second Wisconsin was the last American regiment in this fight, and lost
+two killed and three wounded. These were Wisconsin's only field losses
+during the war, although her deaths from camp diseases were about
+seventy.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+    Albanel, Father Charles, 57.
+    Albion, 227.
+    Algonkin tribes, 16, 24.
+    Allouez, Father Claude, 45, 55-57, 147, 149.
+    American Fur Company, 85, 86, 90.
+    Andre, Father Louis, 57.
+    Apostle Islands, 40.
+    Appleton, 36, 86.
+    Ashland, 40, 146.
+    Astor, John Jacob, 85.
+    Atkinson, General Henry, 131, 139-141.
+    Aztalan, 7, 8.
+
+    Bad Ax River, 130, 142, 143, 212.
+    Badger State, origin of term, 161.
+    Bailey, Colonel Joseph, 242, 243.
+    Baraga, Father Frederick, 153.
+    Barron County, 235.
+    Barronett, 235.
+    Barstow, Colonel William A., 216-221.
+    Bashford, Governor Coles, 216-221.
+    Bayfield, 154.
+    Beaubassin, Hertel de, French commandant, 150.
+    Beaver Island, 193, 194.
+    Belgians in Wisconsin, 228, 229.
+    Belleview, 158.
+    Belmont, 157, 158.
+    Berlin, 15, 37.
+    Bill Cross Rapids, 55.
+    Black Hawk, Sac chief, 212.
+    Black Hawk War, 86, 134-145.
+    Black River, 15, 53-55, 62.
+    Bohemians in Wisconsin, 222, 229.
+    Bois Brule River, 67, 71, 90, 148.
+    Booth, Sherman M., 205-208.
+    Brisbois, Michel, 113.
+    Brothertown Indians, 15, 198, 200.
+    Brown County, 228, 233.
+    Buffalo County, 225.
+    Bulger, Captain Alfred, 116.
+    Burlington, 190.
+    Butte des Morts, Grand, 91, 131, 213.
+    Butte des Morts, Little, 76, 211.
+
+    Cadotte, Jean Baptiste, 152.
+    Cadotte, Michel, 152.
+    Calve, Joseph, 104.
+    Cass, Governor Lewis, 211.
+    Cassville, 158.
+    Ceresco Phalanx, 183-189.
+    Cha-kau-cho-ka-ma (Old King), 209, 211.
+    Champlain, Samuel de, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 51.
+    Chardon, Father Jean B., 57.
+    Chase, Warren, 184.
+    Chelsea, 55.
+    Chequamegon Bay, 40, 55, 56, 67, 84, 87, 88, 146-154.
+    Chippewa Indians, 14, 15, 18, 57, 78, 127, 149, 150, 152, 153.
+    Chippewa River, 40, 243.
+    Clark, General George Rogers, 97-104, 111.
+    Clark, General William, 111.
+    Cochrane, Lieutenant Perry, 244, 245.
+    Copper mines, 21.
+    Copper River, 55.
+    Cornish in Wisconsin, 229.
+    Crawford County, 171.
+    Cushing, Lieutenant W. B., 241, 242.
+
+    Dakotan tribes, 16.
+    Dane County, 225, 227, 228.
+    Davis, Jefferson, 140.
+    Delafield, 242.
+    De Louvigny, French captain, 75, 76.
+    De Pere, 36, 45, 49, 50, 56-58, 86, 88.
+    Dewey, Governor Nelson, 161, 203, 216.
+    Dickson, Robert, 112, 113.
+    Dodge, Major Henry, 142, 160, 214.
+    Door County, 35, 45, 228, 233.
+    Doty, Governor James D., 157, 159, 166.
+    Doty's Island, 36.
+    Dubuque, Julien, 120, 121.
+    Ducharme, Jean Marie, 104.
+    Duck Creek, 200.
+    Duluth, Daniel Graysolon, 34, 66, 67, 147-149.
+    Dutch in Wisconsin, 222, 229.
+
+    Eau Claire, 244.
+    Eau Claire County, 90.
+    Eau Claire River, 90.
+    Eau Pleine River, 90.
+    Embarrass River, 90.
+    English in Wisconsin, 92-98, 104-106, 110-116, 118.
+    Enjalran, Father Jean, 57, 58.
+    Equaysayway, Chippewa maid, 152.
+
+    Flambeau River, 243.
+    Fond du Lac, 158, 182.
+    Fond du Lac County, 90, 184, 225.
+    Fort Crawford, 128, 133.
+    Fort Edward Augustus, 93.
+    Fort Howard, 131, 133.
+    Fort McKay, 115, 116.
+    Fort Perrot, 63.
+    Fort St. Antoine, 63.
+    Fort St. Francis, 93.
+    Fort St. Nicholas, 63.
+    Fort Shelby, 112-116.
+    Fort Snelling, 128, 130-132.
+    Fort Winnebago, 133.
+    Fox Indians (Outagamies), 15, 57, 64, 69, 71-80, 134.
+    Fox River, 14, 15, 30, 32, 36-38, 45, 56, 58-61, 64, 67, 68, 71,
+      72, 76, 79, 111, 113, 114, 122-124, 131, 133, 148, 180, 182, 199,
+      200, 212, 213, 225.
+    French in Wisconsin, 15, 24-91, 97, 98, 104-110, 117-122, 127, 155,
+      222. _See_, also, Fur Trade.
+    Frontenac, Governor of New France, 28, 43, 44.
+    Fur Trade in Wisconsin, 22-25, 27, 28, 32-41, 43, 44, 49, 51, 53,
+      59-93, 97, 98, 104, 105, 109-113, 117, 118, 120, 127, 146, 149,
+      152, 171.
+
+    Gagnier, Registre, 129, 130.
+    Galena, Illinois, 63, 68, 122, 124, 172.
+    Galena River, 121.
+    Gautier, Charles, 100, 101, 103.
+    Germans in Wisconsin, 222, 224, 225.
+    Glode, Indian chief, 209.
+    Glover, Joshua, 204-208.
+    Gorrell, Lieutenant James, 93-96, 105.
+    Grand Portage, 84.
+    Green Bay, 14, 15, 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 45, 58, 61, 65, 68, 70,
+      77-79, 84, 85, 88-91, 93-96, 98, 104-106, 112, 113, 123, 124, 131,
+      158, 166, 171, 173, 178, 182, 187, 199, 212, 213, 228, 232, 234.
+    Green County, 225-227.
+    Grignon, Robert, 213.
+    Grizzly Bear, Indian chief, 209.
+    Groseilliers, Medard Chouart des, 34-41, 53, 55, 59, 60, 146.
+
+    Hall, Rev. Sherman, 153.
+    Harrison, Governor William H., 106.
+    Helena, 124.
+    Hennepin, Father Louis, 66, 67.
+    Henry, General James D., 142.
+    Hesse, English captain, 104.
+    Hobart, Colonel H. C., 241.
+    Hudson Bay Company, 41, 60, 84.
+    Huron Indians, 15, 28-30, 39-41, 53, 54, 74, 151.
+
+    Icelanders in Wisconsin, 229.
+    Illinois Indians, 15, 32, 74-76.
+    Indians, as mound builders, 7-14, 19; life and manners of, 14-23;
+      pottery, 21; copper and stone implements, 21, 22. _See_, also,
+      the several Tribes.
+    Iometah, Indian chief, 209.
+    Iowa County, 121.
+    Irish in Wisconsin, 222.
+    Iron Brigade, 237-240.
+    Iroquois Indians, 24, 27, 38, 39, 45, 53, 63, 72.
+
+    Janesville, 182.
+    Jesuit Missionaries in Wisconsin, 25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 35, 42-59,
+      62, 66, 87, 88.
+    Johnson, Colonel James, 121.
+    Johnson, John, 152.
+    Joliet, Louis, 37, 38, 42-50, 60, 65, 118.
+    Joseph, fur-trade clerk, 151.
+
+    Kaukauna, 36, 86, 91.
+    Kenosha, 184.
+    Keokuk, Sac chief, 145.
+    Keshena, 212, 215.
+    Kewaunee County, 228, 233.
+    Kiala, Fox chief, 79.
+    Kickapoo Indians, 15, 16, 46, 74.
+    Kickapoo River, 15.
+    Koshkonong, 158.
+
+    La Crosse, 86, 88, 91.
+    La Crosse County, 90.
+    Lafayette County, 157.
+    Lake Chetek, 88.
+    Lake Court Oreilles, 88, 90, 153.
+    Lake Flambeau, 88, 90, 153.
+    Lake Koshkonong, 46.
+    Lake Michigan, 15, 27, 29, 32, 35, 49, 57, 60, 65-67, 69, 93, 94,
+      104, 123, 157, 158, 162, 164, 171, 179, 182, 193, 198.
+    Lake Pepin, 62, 63, 78, 90.
+    Lake St. Croix (Upper), 67.
+    Lake Sandy, 88.
+    Lake Shawano, 56, 57.
+    Lake Superior, 27, 29, 38-41, 53-56, 59, 60, 65, 66, 71, 104, 146,
+      148, 150, 151, 154.
+    Lake Vieux Desert, 54, 55, 90, 167.
+    Lake Winnebago, 37, 112, 113, 181, 200, 212, 225.
+    Langlade, Charles de, 100, 101, 103.
+    Langlade County, 90.
+    La Pointe, 55, 56, 147-150, 152-154.
+    La Ronde, fur trader, 150.
+    La Salle, Chevalier de, 28, 34, 43, 64-66, 69.
+    Lead Mining in Wisconsin, 63, 68, 117-124.
+    Le Sueur, Pierre, 67, 68, 119, 148, 149.
+    Lincoln, Abraham, 139.
+    Linctot, Godefroy, 103, 104.
+    Lipcap, killed by Indians, 129, 130.
+    Little Chute, 199.
+    Little Kaukauna, 196, 200.
+    Little Suamico, 233.
+    Long, John, 105, 106.
+
+    McArthur, Lieutenant Governor Arthur, 219, 220.
+    McKay, Major William, 113, 114.
+    Mackinac, 29, 35, 44, 45, 56, 61, 67, 70, 78, 83, 84, 93, 94, 98,
+      99, 104, 105, 111-114, 120, 147, 199, 209, 210.
+    Madelaine Island, 148-150.
+    Madison, 123, 158, 160, 165, 172, 175, 182, 217, 220.
+    Manitowoc County, 233.
+    Marin, French captain, 72, 73.
+    Marquette, Father Jacques, 37, 38, 42-50, 56, 60, 118, 147, 149,
+      153.
+    Marquette County, 90.
+    Mascoutin Indians (Fire Nation), 15, 37, 38, 45-47, 57, 60, 63, 64,
+      74, 78.
+    Mason, destroyed by fire, 235.
+    Massachusetts Indians in Wisconsin, 15.
+    Menard, Father Rene, 52-55, 59, 146.
+    Menasha, 36.
+    Menominee Indians, 15, 46, 59, 74, 78, 94-96, 199, 209-214.
+    Menominee River, 30, 167, 168.
+    Merrill, 55.
+    Methode, killed by Indians, 128, 133.
+    Miami Indians, 15, 46, 47, 60, 64.
+    Miller, A. G., 206.
+    Milwaukee, 66, 69, 86, 88, 106, 122, 123, 158, 172, 179, 180, 182,
+      204, 214, 222, 225, 228.
+    Mineral Point, 122, 158, 225.
+    Mississippi River, 14, 32, 37, 42-50, 57, 62, 63, 65-70, 72, 73,
+      76-78, 87, 93, 104, 111, 112, 119, 120, 123, 124, 127, 128, 138,
+      139, 142, 143, 148, 149, 156, 158, 162, 164, 168, 169, 179, 180,
+      182, 190, 225.
+    Mohawk Indians, 197, 198.
+    Montreal River, 167.
+    Mormons in Wisconsin, 190-195.
+    Morse, Dr. Jedediah, 199.
+    Munsee Indians, 15, 198, 200.
+
+    Nahkom, Indian woman, 213, 214.
+    Neapope, Sac leader, 139.
+    Neenah, 36, 73, 76, 86, 211, 213.
+    New Franken, 233.
+    New Glarus, 225, 227.
+    New York Indians in Wisconsin, 15.
+    Nicolet, Jean, 26-33, 36, 37, 43, 45, 59, 117.
+    Northwest Company, 84.
+    Nouvel, Father Henri, 57.
+
+    Oconto, 233.
+    Oconto County, 233.
+    Odanah, 153.
+    Ogemaunee, Menominee chief, 94-96.
+    "Old Abe," Wisconsin war eagle, 243
+    Oneida Indians, 15, 196, 198, 200.
+    Oshkosh (city), 37, 86, 213.
+    Oshkosh, Indian chief, 209-215.
+    Ottawa Indians, 15, 39, 53, 60, 74, 78.
+
+    Partridge, Alvin, 213, 214.
+    Pensaukee, 233.
+    Perkins, Lieutenant Joseph, 112, 114.
+    Perrot, Nicolas, 34, 57-64, 66, 72.
+    Peshtigo, 233.
+    Phillips, 235.
+    Platteville, 158.
+    Point Bass, 209.
+    Poles in Wisconsin, 222, 229.
+    Pontiac's War, 94, 97.
+    Portage, 37, 47, 48, 86, 90, 91, 103, 106, 113, 122, 131, 133, 158,
+      178, 180.
+    Portage County, 90.
+    Potosi, 68.
+    Pottawattomie Indians, 15, 36, 59, 64, 74, 138, 141.
+    Prairie du Chien, 14, 37, 48, 63, 70, 86, 88, 89, 91, 98, 103-105,
+      110-116, 123, 124, 127-133, 142, 144, 172, 178, 179.
+    Prairie du Sac, 142.
+
+    Racine, 91, 158.
+    Racine County, 90, 190.
+    Radisson, Pierre-Esprit, 34-41, 45, 53, 55, 59, 60, 146, 147, 149.
+    Reaume, Charles, 105-109.
+    Red Bird, Winnebago chief, 128-133.
+    Roads in Wisconsin, 177-182.
+    Rock River, 123, 134, 138, 141, 145, 182.
+    Rolette, Joseph, 113.
+    Russians in Wisconsin, 222.
+
+    Sac Indians, 15, 73, 74, 78-80, 134-145, 212.
+    St. Cosme, Father Jean Francois Buisson, 68, 69.
+    St. Croix County, 90.
+    St. Croix River, 67, 68, 71, 90, 148, 169, 170.
+    St. Francis Xavier mission. _See_ De Pere.
+    St. James, Jesuit mission, 57.
+    St. Louis River, 148.
+    St. Mark, Jesuit mission, 56, 57.
+    Sauk County, 225.
+    Sault Ste. Marie, 43, 60, 61, 63.
+    Scandinavians in Wisconsin, 222, 227, 228.
+    Scotch in Wisconsin, 222.
+    Shawano County, 233.
+    Sheboygan, 69, 86, 228.
+    Shell Lake, 235.
+    Shull, James W., 121.
+    Shullsburg, 121.
+    Silvy, Father Antoine, 57.
+    Sinclair, Captain Patrick, 104.
+    Sioux Indians, 14, 16, 18, 40, 56, 62, 66, 67, 78, 127-130, 144,
+      147.
+    Slavery in Wisconsin, 202-208.
+    Souligny, Indian chief, 209, 210, 214.
+    Spaniards in lead mines, 120, 121.
+    Spanish-American War, Wisconsin in, 243-245.
+    Stockbridge Indians, 15, 198, 200.
+    Strang, James Jesse, 190-195.
+    Sturgeon Bay, 86, 233.
+    Sturgeon Bay (water), Indians on, 14.
+    Sugar Bush, 233.
+    Superior, 235.
+    Swiss in Wisconsin, 225-227.
+
+    Taylor, Zachary, 139.
+    Taylor County, 225.
+    Tecumseh, 135, 209, 210.
+    Tomah, 209, 210.
+    Trempealeau, 62, 63, 169.
+    Trempealeau County, 7, 90, 91.
+
+    Vanderventer's Creek, 147.
+    Voree, 191-193, 195.
+
+    Wabashaw, Sioux chief, 144.
+    Walworth County, 192.
+    War of Secession, Wisconsin in, 236-245.
+    Warren, Lyman Marcus, 152, 153.
+    Warren, Truman, 152, 153.
+    Washington Island, 229.
+    Waukesha, 182.
+    Waukesha County, 216, 242.
+    Wekau, Winnebago avenger, 129-133.
+    Welsh in Wisconsin, 222, 229.
+    Whistler, Major William, 131, 132.
+    White Cloud, Sac leader, 138, 139.
+    White Crane, Chippewa chief, 152.
+    White River, 192, 195.
+    Whittlesey's Creek, 146.
+    Williams, Eleazer, 196-201.
+    Winnebago County, 213.
+    Winnebago Indians, 14-16, 18, 30-32, 78, 125-133, 138, 139, 141,
+      142, 144, 199; as mound builders, 14.
+    Winnebago Rapids, 73.
+    Wisconsin City, 158.
+    Wisconsin River, 14, 15, 32, 37, 48, 55, 61, 63, 67, 68, 71, 78,
+      79, 113, 114, 122-124, 133, 141, 142, 148, 167, 180.
+    Wisconsinapolis, 158.
+    Wolf River, 15, 56.
+
+    Yellow Banks, 138.
+
+
+TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of the Badger State, by
+Reuben Gold Thwaites
+
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