THE STORY OF THE STATES EDITED UY ELBKlDCiE S BROOKS THE STORY OF THE STATES THE STORY OF WISCONSIN r LIBRARY '\ REUBEN GOLD TI IWAI' TEsDEC 6 lo9U IDEPTOFTHEINTEBIOB. Illnstratioiis by L J Bridi^inan BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON OPPOSITE BROMFIKLU STREET CorvRicHT, 1890, r.y D. LOTHKOP COMl'ANY. By transfer 5 JeiaW Presswork by Berwick & Smith,. Boston, U.S.A. PREFACE. Wisconsin is situated at tlie head of the chain of Great Lakes, It is touched on the east by Lake Michigan, on the north by Lake Superior, on the west by the Mississippi, and is drained by interlacing rivers which so closely approach each other that the canoe voyager can with ease pass from one great water system to the other ; he can enter the continent at the Gulf of St. Lawrence and by means of numerous narrow port- ages in Wisconsin emerge into the south-flowing Mississippi and eventually return to the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico. From Lake Michigan, the. Fox-Wisconsin river system was the most popular highway to the great river ; into Lake Superior, there flow numerous streams from whose sources led short portage trails over to the headwaters of feeders of the Mississippi. In their early voyages to the head of lake navi- gation, it was in the course of nature that the French should discover Wisconsin ; and having discovered it, soon learn that it was the key-point of the Northwest and the gateway to the mysterious " River of the Southern Sea." Thus the geographical character of Wisconsin became, very early in the history of New France, an important factor. The trading posts and Jesuit missions on Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior, and on Green Bay of Lake Michigan, soon played a prominent part in the history of American explora- tion. Two and a half centuries ago, when the Puritan colonies on Massachusetts Bay were yet in their infancy, and long before much of the intervening country had been visited PREFACE. by white men, the (general features of the map of Wisconsin and the route thither were familiar to the rulers of Quebec. Wisconsin was notable, too, in those early days, as a hiding place for tribes of Algonkins who had been driven beyond Lake Michigan before the resistless onslaught of the Iroquois, who, however, often ventured into these forest fastnesses and massacred the crouching fugitives. The country was, for a century and a half, a happy hunting-ground for the easy-going French — licensed traders and coureurs dc hois as well. In the French-and-Indian war it was a favorite recruiting field for those disciplined bands of redskins who periodically broke forth upon the borders, filling the life of American pioneers with scenes of horror. And it was a Wisconsin leader of these savage allies of the French, who caught Braddock in his slaughter pen and whose swarthy fellows bore away to their rude lodges in the trans-Michigan woods a goodly share of the scalps and spoils won by them on that fateful day. When New France fell, Wisconsin — now a part of the Province of Quebec — remained essentially French. The flag of England waved over the rude stockade at Green Bay, but the woods were filled with French and Indians in all grades of blood relationship, who had transferred their allegiance to the conqueror. French and half-bloods, throughout the War of the Revolution, wore the scarlet uniforms of officers in His Majesty's army. Wisconsin was again a recruiting ground, and the self-same savages who ambushed Braddock were sent out against the colonial borderers or against George Rogers Clark in his expedition for the conquest of the Northwest. Although the Northwest was given to the United States in the treaty of 1783, the English were practically in military possession of Wisconsin until the close of the war of 1812-15. But the French and half-bloods still held her woods and streams, and the fur-trade was the chief industry. Little by PREFACE. little, this French predominance was undermined; at first by the advent of Americans into the lead mines, then by agricult- ural settlers. The Black Hawk War was largely instrumental in opening the region to public view. American colonization, and development along American lines, now began in earnest. The fur-trade ceased to be of importance, the non-progressive French element subsided into insignificance, and thenceforth Wisconsin was an American territory which rapidly grew into a powerful and patriotic State. The story of the lung and checkered career of Wisconsin, is replete with suggestive and romantic incidents. Necessarily, a treatment of the topic from a picturesque standpoint must chiefly dwell upon the romantic pioneer period. A Western State, after reaching maturity, progresses upon pretty much the same lines as kindred commonwealths, and no longer furnishes a unique story. This will account for the fact that the for- mative epochs receive by far the most generous recognition in this volume. I am indebted to Professor Frederick J. Turner, of the Univer- sity of Wisconsin, for assistance in the revision of proof-sheets, and for many helpful suggestions. To General David Atwood, Major Frederick L. Phillips, Professor Albert O. Wright, Gen- eral Edwin E. Bryant, Doctor Lyman C. Draper and Professor Jesse B. Thayer, my thankful acknowledgments are also due, for valuable aid. Mr. James S. Buck has been so kind as to give me the privilege to freely appropriate any of the wood-cuts in his excellent Pioneer History of Milwaukee, and one or two of these the artist has taken the liberty to use as a basis for his own sketches. (^ . Awx^c-^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. IN THE BEGINNING ..... o . 11 CHAPTER ir. DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI ..... 36 1658-1673. CHAPTER HI. EXPLORERS AND FUR-TRADERS OF NEW FRANCE . . 61 1674-1760. CHAPTER IV. UNDER THE BRITISH FLAG ...... 89 1761-1783. CHAPTER V. ENGLISH DOMINATION CONTINUED. . . „ . II9 1783-1815. CHAPTER VI. WISCONSIN BECOMES AMERICANIZED . . „ . 149 1815-1836. CHAPTER VII. TERRITORIAL DAYS ....... 193 1S36-1S55. CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. " BARSTOW AND THE BALANCE" . . . c o 23O 1844-1856. CHAPTER IX. SPOTS ON THE ESCUTCHEON 247 1854-1856. CHAPTER X. WISCONSIN ON A WAR FOOTING ..... 270 1860-1865. CHAPTER XI. DEEDS OF VALOR . . 29 1 1860-1866. CHAPTER XII. SINCE THE WAR . . ..... 33O THE CHRONOLOGICAL STORY ...... 369 THE people's COVENANT ...... 379 BOOKS RELATING TO WISCONSIN ..... 383 INDEX 387 ILLUSTRATIONS. Coming to a session of the Territorial Legislature A Winnebago cliief. Initial Nicolet and the Winnebagoes Robert de la Salle. Initial In the Wisconsin forest A W^isconsin home in the old days . Relics of Jesuit and voyageur. Initial The Griffin ..... Milwaukee in 1795. Initial The perils of the frontier . Solomon Juneau. Initial In the British camp . . . . The old Legislative Building at Belmont Black llawk. Initial Indians attacking a stockade Governors Dodge and Doty. Initial " King Strang " and his saints . Governors Bashford and Barstow. Initial By lake and river The State Capitol Governor Dewey. Initial Some Wisconsin scenery . Governor Randall. Initial Answering the President's call . Stanley and Oskhosh. Initial . Charging the Battery On the line of battle . In La Crosse. Initial Picturesque Milwaukee Frontispiece. 36 42 53 61 17> S9 103 119 127 141 149 165 193 209 231 243 247 257 270 279 291 =95 309 330 *345 THE STORY OF WISCONSIN CHAPTER I. IN THE BEGINNING. A A Wi^corivn Vy innebago. LAURENTIAN is- land, almost alone amidst a world of waters, such if scien- tists read her rocks aright, was the begin- ning of the State of Wisconsin. Geolo- gists say that a con- siderable portion of the area of the State (the whole northern third) had doubtless risen from the ancient ocean before much else of the American continent, and while most of Europe was still submerged. Thus its story reaches back to almost the days of " Chaos and old Night." Lofty mountains occupied the pres- ent plains of Central Wisconsin — peaks which pierced the clouds and rivaled the Himalayas of 12 IN THE BEGINNING. our day. But the waves of the ahnost shoreless ocean beat against their bases, the elements disin- tegrated their peaks, and rivers furrowed their slopes, these leveling processes being interrupted by intermittent periods of submergence ; until at last, after a series of such remarkable movements, lasting through ages of unknown and unknowable lenoth, and after the entire continent had emero-ed and taken form, the irresistible glacier came upon Wisconsin from the north, " planing down the prominences, filling up the valleys, polishing and grooving the strata, and heaping up its rubbish of sand, gravel, clay and bowlders over the face of the country." One monster tongue of ice pushed through the valleys of the Fox and Rock rivers, another plowed the bed of Lake Michigan, while two others separa- ted by Keweenaw Point moved southward and west- ward through the trough of Lake Superior into Wisconsin and Minnesota. The territory em- braced in Southwestern Wisconsin was alone left intact. This was the unique " driftless area," the wonder of American geologists. The thousands of depressions scooped out by the mighty floes, when they rudely tore their way through the land, were filled with water upon the melting of the ice, thus giving rise to the beautiful Wisconsin lakes, isolated and in chains, with their IN THE BEGINNING. 1 3 picturesque river outlets. " With the retreat of the glacier, vegetation covered the surface, and by its aid and the action of the elements our fertile drift soils, among the last and best of Wisconsin's formations, were produced ; and the work still goes on."* Man then came upon the scene. How long after, no one knows, but his coming opens the next chapter in Wisconsin's progress. Its details are lost in mystery, although scientific investigation and ingenious conjecture have of late framed for us a reasonable hypothesis. Upon the level benches of noble streams, upon ridge tops, upon the summits of commanding bluffs, upon the sloping banks of both inland and Great Lakes, there are in Wisconsin many thousands of artificial earthworks that have attracted the atten- tion of whites since the .time of the European con- quest. Some are mere hemispherical tumuli ; others are grotesque in shape, and it does not re- quire a great stretch of imagination to discover among them the rude outlines of birds, beasts, fishes and reptiles, the predominating forms being appar- ently those of the turtle, the lizard, the snake, the bird, the squirrel, the deer and the buffalo,! while not a * President T. C. Chamberlin, in Snyder, Van Vechten & Co.'s " Historical Atlas of Wisconsin " (Milwaukee, 1878), p. 151. t The so-called " elephant " mound, in Grant County, over which there has been so much speculation, is very likely but a distorted buffalo, the prolongation of the nose probably being occasioned by a land-slide. 14 IN THE BEGINNING. few maybe likened to men and even to implements of war, such as the club and the spear. Again, there are parallel lines, with circles and corners, and within such earthworks as these are often isolated mounds of considerable height. The best example of this latter class of structure is the field of Azta- Ian near the village of Lake Mills, in Jefferson County, where are to be found prehistoric ruins of a character quite similar to the famous works at Marietta, Ohio, presumably familiar to our readers. The effigy mounds of Wisconsin are, however, unique. There has been a vast amount of literature pub- lished concerning the mounds of the United States, and those in Wisconsin have received particular attention. Much of what has appeared, however, has been the product of lively and romantic imag- ination. It has been sturdily maintained that because the Indians whom the whites first met generally claimed to be ignorant of the origin of these earthworks ; because the Indians of our day do not build mounds ; and because nothing in the customs or beliefs of modern Indians appears upon superficial examination to be connected with the practice of mound building, that the prehistoric mounds were built by another and a singular race of men. It has been held that the builders of the mounds. IN THE BEGINNING. 1 5 coming from the mysterious north, commenced their most active labors in the Upper Mississippi valley and were gradually driven southward and eastward before the inroads of our modern Indians, until at last this mystic people made stand in Mexico, the progenitors of the Aztecs whom Cortez conquered, and the Pueblos who have sur- vived to our own time. This theory has been so persistently advanced for the past half-century, that doubtless the greater part of the reading public have at last come to accept it as an established historical fact. As to the purposes for which the mounds were built, spec- ulation has been rife, each set of theorists adopt- ing in their writings a descriptive terminology to agree with their peculiar notions, thereby giving rise to much confusion. Some would have us believe that the mounds were totems of the several clans — a sort of native heraldry ; others imagine the mounds to have been built almost solely for purposes of worship, others for defense, others as symbols of mystic rites in which human sacrifice and sun worship played prominent parts, others as cemeteries and sites for dwellings. It has remained, however, for the United States Bureau of Fthnology to dispel much of the fog of romance which has heretofore enveloped the long- 1 6 IN THE BEGINNING. mooted question of " Who were the Mound-build- ers ? " For several years past, competent special- ists have been engaged in the work of mound exploration upon a scientific basis, in various sec- tions of the country. It has been discovered that many mounds, heretofore supposed to be of great antiquity, contained articles of European manufac- ture at their base, undoubtedly placed there when the mounds were erected. The conclusion has been reached after careful investicvation, that there was nothinor in the habits or character of the Mound-builders, so far as the excavations show, which necessarily divorce them from the Indians whom the whites first met. That burial and dwelling-site mounds were erected, notably in the Southern States, after the advent of Europeans, is well established by the journals of many of the earliest travelers, who carefully de- scribed these works, the manner of building them and the curious customs then in vo2;ue amon" the savages relative to burial and sun worship. Several early explorers have stated that traditions relative to these mounds were abundant among some of the tribes, for instance the Cherokces, the Kaskaskias and the Creeks ; and that old men attributed the erection of the works to their ancestors. It is not a unique fact in human history that the Indian came to abandon their ancient custom of IN THE BEGINNING. I 7 mound building. The people of Egypt no longer fashion pyramids and sphinxes, yet the descendants of the builders of these mysterious structures still live in the country; the people of England no longer build abbeys, yet no one will deny that the descendants of the abbey builders still live within sight of the olden ruins. The Indians dropped many of their customs and rites with the advent of the whites : for instance, the maintenance of a perpetual fire in each village, an evidence in itself of sun worship ; they came no longer to manufacture wampum and implements and utensils of copper, flint and clay ; in the matter of clothing, it was not long before European articles of dress became common among them ; while their habits of daily life were at last so altered by contact with the whites that they ceased to be self-reliant and were absolutely dependent on the invaders of their country for domestic utensils, weapons, tools, cloth- ing and often food. It is indeed remarkable how soon the imitative American savao^e abandoned many of the long-established customs and methods of his ancestors, for those of the whites. So complete has been the transformation, that to-day the old gossips of many of the Western tribes assert with earnestness that their ancestors neither made nor used flint arrow-heads, and that those plowed up in the fields and fondly treasured in museums, 1 8 IN THE BEGINNING. were made and placed in the ground by spirits ; such is the value of Indian tradition, such the significance of the lack of it. The formal conclusion of the Bureau of Ethnol- ogy is, that " The links discovered directly con- necting the Indians and Mound-builders are so numerous and well established, that there should no longer be any hesitancy in accepting the theory that the two are one and the same people."* The Bureau inclines to the belief that Wisconsin was occupied by two or three different mound- building tribes of Indians, the efhgies and the groups being probably traceable to Dakotan stock, of which the Winnebagces are the modern representa- tives. There are reasons for believing that the Mound-builders came into the State from the southwest, through Northern Iowa, and moved frequently back and forth between the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan, but that some opposing element kept them from advancing around the * " Work in Miunid Exploration," I'mrerm of Etlniology Report, 1SS7, p. 11. See also "The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley Historically Considered" (Kentucky Geological Survey Memoirs, Vol. U.), by Lucien Carr of the Peabody' Museum of Arch.-cology and Ethnology; "Who liuilt the Mounds?" by P. R. Hoy (Trans. Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, .'\rt and Letters, Vol. VI.), and " Antiquities of Wisconsin" (Smithsonian Contri- butions, 1855), by I. A. Laphain. "That the Mound-builders were Indians, pertaining to or ancestors of the tribes inhabi- tating this country when discovered by Europeans, is now too well established to admit of a reasonable doubt. Those who question this conclusion are certainly not familiar with tlie evidence." — Cyrus Thomas, of the IJureau of Ethnology, in Magazine 0/ American History, Sept., 1888, p. 193. See also, Gerard Fowke, on " Sojne Popular Errors in Regard to Mnund-builders and Indians," in Ohio A rc'ueological and Historical Quarterly , I'ol. II. p. 3, and Winsor's 7V«r- rativc and Critical History of America, Vol. I. Index. IN THE BEGINNING. 1 9 sou.th end of the lake. The most ancient works in Wisconsin, probably originating in a very distant past, appear to be the effigy and elongated mounds, the evidence being that their builders came after- wards to abandon these forms and erect only burial tumuli. Even this latter species they had pos- sibly abandoned before the advent of the whites, althousfh the Illinois Indians who entertained Mar- O quette practised in his presence the rites of the ancient sun worship, the undoubted religion of the Mound-builders. As to the use of the effigies and more compli- cated forms, antiquarians still disagree, but it has been quite generally concluded that the other shapes were mostly erected as sites for dwellings, council houses and worship huts, also for purposes of defense. Fortified villao^es were common amons: the Mound-builders, as amono^ their descendants within historic times, and the evidences of ancient palisaded inclosures in Wisconsin are not in- frequent. The child born upon the Mayflower was but in her fourteenth year when Wisconsin entered upon the stage of history. It was in 1634 that Jean Nicolet, agent of the inquiring and politic Cham- plain, set foot upon Wisconsin soil, the first white man known to have visited the Old Northwest. 20 IN THE BEGINNING. Champlain had planted his feeble colony of French Catholics upon the rock of Quebec, twenty-six years before, but progress into the far West had been necessarily slow. The search for peltries had led adventurous fur-traders to Georgian Bay and Lake Huron; Recollet missionaries were, amidst a thousand lurking dangers, saying masses upon those distant shores and vainly endeavoring to brino- the red men to a realizino: sense of the enormity of their pagan rites;* while Champlain himself had, in 1615, ventured upon the waters of the o-reat " Fresh Sea." But all bevond was, to the authorities of New France, an unknown land. It is possible that coureurs de bois, those lawless Canadian adventurers who became Indians in habit and prosecuted the fur trade far beyond all licensed bounds, had by this time pushed their way into the Lake Superior country; but if so they discreetly kept quiet about it and left no record behind. It had been reported to Champlain, by Western traders, that the Indians told of two lakes beyond that of Huron : of a large body of fresh water, at the outlet of which was a sault, or rapids — after- wards ascertained to be the Lake Superior of our modern maps ; and of another lake that was smaller, styled by the Indians " Winnepegou," — the Winne- bago of our day, — while this smaller lake had a * Br^beuf s Jesuit mission was not begun until 1634. IN THE BEGINNING. 2$ river outlet, the Fox of later maps. Champlain had long wished to have this geographical mystery of the Northwest penetrated, and the Indians of that far-away region instructed in the benefits of religion and the fur-trade, for the love of Mammon had no small share in the missionary aspirations of the governors of New France. The opportunity at last came, and Jean Nicolet, interpreter at Three Rivers, was commissioned to undertake the haz- ardous enterprise. Nicolet was a native of Cherbourg, in Normandy, but emigrated to Canada in 1618, when a young man. At that time, Champlain, filled with ambi- tious schemes of exploration, was in the practice of occasionally sending young men to live among dis- tant tribes of Indians to learn their lansfuaees and customs in order to be of service to him as inter- preters and explorers. Nicolet was one of the per- sons thus selected, and soon after his arrival at Quebec was dispatched first to the Algonkins on the Ottawa River and next to the Nipissings, on the lake which bears their name. Upon his return to the colony, after many years of intimate associ- ation with the savages, Nicolet was employed as interpreter at Three Rivers, where he acquired the reputation of being adroit in his management of the hordes of red men who annually assembled there from the upper country, for purposes of trade 24 2N THE BEGINNING. and council . In 1634, this hardy adventurer was dispatched by the governor to visit the tribes dwelling upon the shores of the Winnepegou and other fresh-water seas of the Northwest, and endeavor to secure their good-will and their atten- dance upon the councils of the French on the low^er St. Lawrence. Nicolet proceeded up the Ottawa River as far as the Isle des AUumettes, in company with Fathers Brebeuf, Daniel and Davost, Jesuit priests who were on their way to the Huron country to re- establish the mission commenced but afterwards abandoned by the Recollets. At the Isle, he parted company with his priestly comrades, and proceeded by way of Lake Nipissing and French Creek to Georgian Bay, He appears to have spent some time among the Hurons there, and finally to have secured seven men of the tribe to accompany him upon his voyage of discovery to the North- west. Nicolet was himself a demi-savage, quite equal in endurance to any of his red companions and allowino- none of them to outdo him in the weary task before them. In their long canoe of birch-bark, propelled solely by paddles, they slowly skirted the northern shores of Lake Huron ; upon their right the gloomy pine forest swept down in solemn grandeur to the water's edge or thickly mantled the towering bluffs, while to their left the IN THE BEGINNING. 25 dark green waters stretched to the horizon in mys- tic sublimity. Their frail bark was often tossed about like a chip, in the white-capped swells which swept with but little warning around the awesome headlands.' There were times when storms too severe even for Indian boatmen compelled them to camp upon the shore in the shelter of the woods, for days at a time, until the wind had gone down and the sea was again quiet. Thus, through storm and calm, they pursued their spasmodic voyage, picking up their food as they went along, from the sea and the forest, veritable children of nature alone in the mighty wilderness. There were no doubt times when the Hurons, unimpelled by the spirit of exploration or the hope of gain, wearied of their seemingly useless task, but Nicolet was fired by the zeal of his mission and could brook no human opposition to his progress. Finally, the shore lines led them through the North Channel to the outlet of Lake Superior, the Strait of St. Mary. A considerable distance up this strait, and fifteen miles below the foot of the Great Lake, they encountered the falls, where — on the site of the present thriving city of Sault Ste. Marie, in Upper Michigan — there was a considerable village of Al- gonkins. Landing here, Nicolet, first of all recorded w^hite men, set foot upon the soil of what a century and a half later became the Northwest Territory, 26 IN THE BEGINIVING. It is not known whether Nicolet ever saw Lake Superior, which was within a few hours' walk of the Algonkin village. Probably he did not, as so notable a discovery would have been placed to his credit by his Jesuit admirers. It is certain, however, that he remained long enough at the falls to thoroughly refresh his men, whereupon the party again ventured forth, this time to the southward, seeking what they mioht find. The voyage now became more fraught with inter- est to a lover of nature. Islands in great variety appeared upon either hand — great masses, the size of a German principality, densely covered with mighty forests of dark-hued pine and skirted by broad, glistening beaches of sand and bowlders; pretty islets, a few square miles in extent, with cool and inviting shades, indented with restful coves and crowned by rocky observatories of fantastic form ; low, barren- patches of storm-swept rock, covered with lichens and scrub pine, telling tales of deadly struo-frles with ice and wind and wave. Throucrh this sylvan archipelago, Nicolet's bark threaded its way as rapidly as eight men could propel it, and in due time entered the Straits of Mackinaw; ascend- ing this now famous highway, the waters of Lake Michigan soon burst upon the sight of their first white discoverer. Closely skirting the northern coast of this inland IN THE BEGINNING. 27 sea, and frequently camping upon the edges of the deep forest which framed it, either to await the pas- sage of storms or refresh the weary crew, our in- trepid explorer finally rounded far-stretching Point Detour and beached his craft on the shores of Bay de Noquet, a northern arm of the great Green Bay. Here was another Algonkin tribe, with whom he smoked the pipe of peace, obtaining particulars from them of the country beyond. His next stopping place was the mouth of the river afterwards called Menomonee, from the tribe of Algonkins then inhabiting its valley ; this rugged stream, now one of the boundary lines between Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, is the principal northern afHuent of Green Bay. He only tarried here long enough to hold a brief council with the Menomonees and dispatch one of his Hurons to herald his approach to the Winneba- goes who were established at the mouth of Fox River. Green Bay is shaped like a monster letter V ; it opens to the northeast, and the Fox River flows into it from the south, at the vertex of the angle. The western shores are now, as they were in Nico- let's time, low, irregular in outline and densely wooded with pine and tamarack, presenting a sin- gularly somber and depressing appearance; while the eastern banks are generally high, with many 28 IN THE BEGINNING. bold headlands and abrupt slopes, well covered with both hard and soft woods. At Red Banks, so called from the red clay sub- soil predominant here, the height of the shore is about seventy-five feet sheer, the summit of this picturesque cliff of clay being crowned for some miles back into the country with interesting mounds. The Winnebacfoes have a tradition that the Adam and Eve of their race first lived at Red Banks ; also that the French first visited the tribe at this place. The last half of the tradition we know to be baseless. The bay is a wild and stormy estuary, much troubled by cross winds and cross tides,* and a dangerous passage for small craft ; but Nicolet, seizing the opportunity of favorable weather, pur- sued his venturesome way and soon came within sight of the enormous marshes of wild rice which bar the mouth of Fox River, vivid in their mass of changing greenery when swayed by the breeze and lightened by the sun. This was the day when the China Sea was sup- posed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes, there being as yet no knowledge of the immense width of the American continent. Nicolet had heard when among the Nipissings, that * There is no longer any question of there being tides in Green Bay, but whether caused by the winds or by lunar affection is undecided. IN THE BEGINNING. 29 at Green Bay he would meet a strange people, who had come from beyond " a great water" lying to the west. He was therefore prepared to find there a colony of Chinamen or Japanese, if indeed Green Bay were not the Orient itself. His mistake was a natural one, considering the crudity of the geo- graphical information then current. The " strange people " proved to be Winnebago Indians. A branch of the Dakotas, or Sioux, a distinct race from the Algonkins, they appear to have been stranded in Wisconsin, when the great body of their kin, probably the original Mound- builders, had withdrawn from the State to the trans-Mississippi country. They were as a wedge remaining in the heart of the Algonkin territory and long maintaining, despite all changes in political mastery, a firm foothold on the interlocked water- way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. The "great water" spoken of by the Nipissings and supposed by Nicolet to mean the China Sea, was the Missis- sippi River, beyond which the Dakota race held full sway. The canoe was run into a cove iust below the mouth of the Fox, and a short halt made while Champlain's forest ambassador attired himself in a gorgeous damask gown, decorated with gayly- colored birds and flowers, a ceremonial garment with which lie had taken care to provide himself at 30 IN THE BEGINNING. Quebec, expecting to meet mandarins wlio would be similarly dressed. As he stepped ashore, a short distance up the river, and thus, first of all Euro- peans, trod the soil of what is now Wisconsin, Nicolet was met by a horde of nearly naked Winne- bagoes who hailed him as a Manitou, or " wonder- ful man." It must have been no small disappointment to the explorer to be thus met by breech-clouted sav- ages when he had fondly anticipated the formal greetings of Oriental courtiers. But the politic envoy smothered his chagrin and, the rustling skirts of his silken robe sweeping the ground, advanced boldly among the astonished barbarians, discharg- ing the pistols which he held in either hand. The warriors were much startled at this singular appari- tion, while women and children fled in terror from the Manitou who carried with him lightning and thunder. But after duly impressing them with the solem- nity of his mission, Nicolet soon doffed his fanciful costume and met the Winnebagoes in friendly council. The news of his arrival quickly spread to neighboring villages and tribes, and a great feast was held, at which some four or five thousand Indians assembled, according- to the old chronicle,* and devoured one hundred and twenty beavers with • Jesuit " Relation," 16.(3. IN THE BEGINNING. 3 1 divers other viands. There was a great deal of proHx oratory in various tongues, accompanied by the exchange of wampum belts and other. presents and the smoking of innumerable pipes of tobacco, with the usual result of an agreement on the part of the red men to forever keep the peace towards all Frenchmen. Leaving the Winnebagoes at the mouth of the Fox, Nicolet pursued his way up that stream. He was obliged to make portages around the falls of Des Peres, the two Kakalins, Grand Chute and Winnebago Rapids — where the cities of Depere, Kaukauna, Appleton and Neenah are located in our day. The Lower F"ox is a picturesque, deep and rapid stream. It flows between terraced, vine- clad banks which for the most part rise from twenty to fifty feet in height, varied now and then by park- like glades and bold, rocky bluffs. The river is now lined with prosperous towns whose numerous factories are dependent upon its abundant water- power. When Nicolet carried the banner of France along this dimpled flood, the valley was the seat of a considerable Indian population, there being vil- lages at each of the rapids and on Doty's Is-land, at the outlet of Lake Winnebago, while upon the table lands which stretch away on either side were large fields of maize ; for these people were thrifty, 32 IN THE BEGINNING. as Indians go, placing their grain in caches for winter use and bartering their surplus with neigh- boring tribes. Emerging upon the broad expanse of Lake Winnebago, among the most charming of our Western inland waters, Nicolet cautiously wended his way from headland to headland, until at last he found the point where the Upper Fox empties its flood into the lake — a broad bay fringed with marshes of wild rice, beyond which rose gentle prairie slopes, backed on the horizon by agreeable oak openings. Where to-day is the city of Osh- kosh — with its thirty-odd thousand industrious inhabitants, the river lined with saw mills and their outlying rafts, their lines of piling, and their great yards of newly-sawn lumber — were then but a half- dozen Indian wigwams at the junction of the river and lake, a few canoes on the gravelly beach and elsewhere solitude. There is no record of Nicolet pausing here, afterwards a famous camping ground for French voyageurs. He pushed on in search of the Mas- coutins, or P""ire Nation, whose j^rincipal camp was still some thirty miles to the southwest, up the Fox. While the shores of the Fox below Lake Win- nebago are rugged and gloomy, and the dark pine forest closed in the view of the explorer as though solid ramparts lined his narrow path, the Upper IN THE BEGINNING. 33 Fox was alike depressing, although from another cause. The Indians have a tradition that the numerous rivers called by them Fox were so named because their winding paths resembled the course of a pur- sued fox. In regard to this particular Fox River, above Lake Winnebago, there is still another tale. The Upper Fox valley is for the most part an im- mense widespread tract of reeds, wild rice and willow clumps, with dark, forest-girt ridges hemming in the marshy expanse, through which the gleaming river doubles upon itself like a serpent in agony. The red men, who have an eye to the picturesque in Nature, tell us that once a monster snake lay down for the night in the swamp between the Wisconsin River portage and the Lake of the Winnebagoes. The dew accumulated upon it as it lay, and when the morning came it wriggled and shook the water from its back, and disappeared down the river which it had thus created in its nocturnal bed. Through this sedgy couch of the serpent, Nicolet pushed on, often losing his way in some vexatious cul-de-sac, obliged to retrace his steps with the frequent danger of mistaking a branch for the main channel ; for such was the height of the wall of reeds upon either side that it was impossible to overlook it even when standing upright in the 34 JN THE BEGINNING. canoe, and the view was generally confined to the few rods of winding river ahead and astern. Above where Omro village now lies nestled upon a fertile bench which is hugged closely by the flood, cranberry bogs were first encountered. Near the present city of Berlin, in Green Lake County — in our day the seat of an extensive cranberry in- terest — prairies came down to the southern bank. Upon a clayey beach Nicolet stranded his canoe, for upon an eminence two miles or so south of the river * lay the palisaded town of the Mascoutins, the object of his search. Had Nicolet ^proceeded up the river he would in three days have reached the low plain of but a mile and a half .in width, which, at the modern city of Portage, separates' the waters of the Fox from the Wisconsin — a slight and often overflowed water- shed between the basins of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. Small exertion on his part, had he been aware of the fact, might have made him the first white discoverer of the Upper Mississippi. This was, however, reserved for others of his race. He went no farther west than the village of the Mascoutins, and then, having secured them to the French interest, took up his path over the prairies to the south and visited the nation of the Illinois, • Father Allouez, who visited the Mascoutins in 1670, locates the fort of these people a French league (2.4 Englisli miles), "over beautiful prairies," to the soutli of the river. IN THE BEGINNING. 35 returning to Quebec by the way of Lake Michigan the following year. Thus had the redoubtable Jean Nicolet pursued an amphibious journey of over two thousand miles through a trackless wilderness, won to New France the fealty of half a dozen heretofore unknown tribes and made the first step in the European conquest of Wisconsin and the Northwest. LIBRARY DEC 6 1890 CHAPTER II. DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. OON after the return of Nicolet and his resumption of duty at Three Rivers, the governor of New France, Samuel de Champlain, died at Quebec. It was on Christmas Day, 1635, that this fearless ge- nius passed away, and with him appeared to depart, for a time, the spirit of the colony. The Iroquois, whom Champlain had sadly offended, took advan- tage of the lack of military leadership in New France, to wreak their vengeance on the French and the Alofonkin tribes that had communion with tliem. The Dutch traders at Albany, ever their firm friends, had plentifully supplied the Five Nations with fire-arms and ammunition, and these, the best-brained of American Indians, were soon a match for the finest shots in Canada. They 36 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. t^J now began to repay the French in their own coin. The colonists were chased within their gates, and the Algonkin allies sadly harried, whole tribes being driven as far west as Wisconsin, with great slaughter and suffering. Exploration ceased for some years ; although in 1641 two Jesuit mission- aries, Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault, pro- ceeded on a tour of inspection as far as Sault Ste. Marie, following the path pointed out by Nicolet, and there preached to two thousand Ojibways and other Algonkins, who had been collected to meet the visitors. But Jogues was captured by the Iroquois, a year later, while on his return to the lower St. Lawrence, and Raymbault died about the same time, so nothing came of this adventurous expedition. There is no record of any white man being in Wisconsin between the autumn of 1634, when Nicolet made the initial canoe voyage up the Fox, and the winter of 1658-59. It was in the month of June, 1658, when Pierre d'Esprit, Sieur Radisson, set out with his sister's husband, Medard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, upon a voyage up the Ottawa River to the far Northwest, determined " to travell and see countreys." Radisson was already much of a traveler in savage wilds. In 1652, hav- ing been captured near his home in Three Rivers, 2,8 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. by a band of marauding Iroquois, he was adopted into the Mohawk tribe ; but he finally made his escape to the Dutch at Albany and sailed to Holland, returning to Three Rivers in 1654. In 1657, he went with the Jesuits Ragueneau and Du Peron to their Onondaga mission, which was clandestinely abandoned during the night of March 20, 1658, hardly three months before his departure for the Northwest, in the company of Groseilliers. Seven years later, when these two adventurers offered their services to King Charles II., to open up Hudson's Bay to English fur-trading interests — they were alternately employed under the flags of Great Britain and France, as fancy or their self- interest dictated — Radisson wrote out his Memoirs in English, for the edification of the Kinsf. An unlearned but brave and witty Frenchman, Radis- son's narratives, in a language he was ill versed in, are unique specimens of " English as she is wrote ;" they are, however, valuable records of a series of most remarkable explorations in the American wilderness of the seventeenth century. Radisson was an acute observer and very much of a philoso- pher in his way. Some Hurons served these adventurous mer- chants as their guides to the upper country, and they staid for some time in the villages of the former — apparently on one of the Manitoulin DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 39 islands. On the Great Manitoulin, they visited the Ottawas, and when winter came on pushed south- westward to the Pottawatomie country — the islands at the mouth of Green Bay, and the mainland to the southward along the western shore of Lake Michigan. They spent several months among these friendly Wisconsin people. In the spring, Radisson and Groseilliers followed the wake of Nicolet by going up Fox River, through the Winnebago country, to visit the Mascoutins. The latter told them of the Sioux, their neighbors to the west ; also of a wandering tribe, the Christi- nos or Crees, who lived on the shores of Hudson's Bay in the summer and along the south shore of Lake Superior in the winter. Radisson speaks with enthusiasm of their kindly treatment by the Mascoutins and says, " We ware 4 moneths in our voyage without doeing any thing but goe from river to river." He alludes, in- cidently, to "ye great river" into which he and Groseilliers were conducted by their Indian friends, and describes a stream which answers to the Mis- sissippi. It is reasonable to conclude that in the course of these four months of water journeys as guests of the Mascoutins, wherein they were anxious " to be knowne with the remotest people " and to see all there was to be seen, the adventurers trimmed their bark to the current of the Missis- 40 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. sippi — antedating the discovery claimed for La Salle * by not less than eleven years, and tliat of Joliet and Marquette by fourteen years. Upon the conclusion of their visit to the Mas- coutins, the adventurers returned by the way of Green Bay and the Straits of Mackinaw, in company with a party of their hosts, to Sault Ste. Marie. After cruising along a portion of the southeastern shores of Lake Superior, in the neigh- borhood of the Sault, in the prosecution of their fur trade, they returned to Lower Canada by way of the accustomed route of the Ottawa River, arriving at Three Rivers about the first of June, 1660. Radisson again set out for the upper country, in company with Groseilliers, in August, 1661. With them were six other French fur-traders, and the aged Jesuit missionary, Rene Menard, together with several small bands of Hurons and Ottawas return- ing home from a trading trip to Three Rivers. The little fleet of canoes closely skirted the rugged south shore of Lake Superior, and the whites were the first of their race to see the Pictured Rocks. At Keweenaw Bay, where they arrived the fifteenth of October, Menard and the other Frenchmen, together with a party of Ottawas, were left; while Radisson and Groseilliers pushed on to the west. Portaging across the great Keweenaw * Margry, Vol. I. pp. 324, 37S, 379. DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 4 1 Point, they visited a village of Christinos, some miles northeast of Montreal River, where there was an abundance of buffalo, moose and beaver. While there they learned of the copper mines which were then being worked from time to time by the Indians ; the metal was pounded smooth with stones and fashioned with much skill into a orreat variety of curious implements which, with those of stone, were afterwards abandoned when the spread of the French fur-trade enabled the savages to secure European implements at a far less expenditure of labor. Near the Montreal River, some of the Huron companions of the adventurers left them, to proceed overland by a well-worn trail to their village about the sources of the Chippewa River. The French- men pushed on with the remainder of the Hurons and after a portage across what is now known as Oak Point, in Ashland County, entered Chequame- gon Bay — a noble sheet of water, fringed by the picturesque Apostle Islands, and to-day the most popular of the Lake Superior summer resorts. It was lonely and dreary enough, however, when Radisson and his companion scrambled ashore from their bark canoe, after a tedious voyage, and stretched their cramped legs upon the beach near where the city of Ashland nestles to-day. Winter was just setting in, the waters of the bay were 42 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. taking on that black and sullen aspect peculiar to the season, the islands looked gloomy indeed, in their dark evergreen mantles, while before the venturesome traders a dense and dark forest stretched southward for hundreds of miles. Here and there in the primeval depths was a small cluster of starveling Algonkins, still trembling from fear of a return of the Iroquois who had chased them from Canada into these far-away swamps and matted woods, where their safety lay in hiding. At great intervals, uncertain trails led from village to village, and the rivers were in places convenient highways ; these narrow paths, however, beset with danger in a thousand shapes, but em- phasized the unspeakable terrors of the wilderness. The Frenchmen built near where they landed, what they called a "fort" — a small log hut oc- cupying the extremity of a spit of land ; the door opened towards the water front, while the land side, to the rear of the house, was defended by a salient of palisades stretching from bank to bank of the narrow promontory. All about the fort they laid boughs, one upon another; and in addition to this stretched a long cord upon which were strung a number of the small hawk-bells commonly used in the fur-trade for purposes of gift and barter. It was expected that in case of a night attack the enemy would run afoul of the bells, the ringing of which IN THE WISCONSIN FOREST. DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 45 would arouse the garrison. These ingenious de- fenses were not put to the test, although they doubtless had a good moral effect in keeping the thieving Hurons at a respectful distance from the white men's stores. At the end of a fortnight, the bulk of these stores were secretly cached and the traders pro- ceeded with their dusky companions to the prin- cipal Huron village at the head of the Chippewa River, passing the winter of 1661-62 in that vicinity. The season was phenomenally severe and the Hurons could not find enough game to properly sustain life. A famine ensued in the camp, the tragical details of which are painted by Radisson with a painful minuteness worthy of Hogarth. In the early spring, upon a search for provisions, they visited the Buffalo band of the Sioux, in the Mille Lac region of Minnesota, staying with them for some six weeks, and then the Frenchmen returned to Chequamegon Bay, where they built another fort, this time on Oak Point. After a time spent here, during which Radisson fell ill and when both the explorers encountered much hardship from the backwardness of the season, they ventured with their Gfoods as far northwest as the Christino villasfes on Lake y\ssiniboine, and appear to have returned to Three Rivers in 1662. Father Menard, who had been left at Keweenaw 46 DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Bay by Radlsson and Groseilliers in October, 1661, was not successful in his attempts to convert the Ottawas there, and set out the following June for the Huron villages on the upper waters of the Black and Chippewa rivers. There has been some question as to how Menard reached Black River — whether across country by Indian trails, or by the way of the Menomonee River, Green Bay, the Fox-Wisconsin watercourse and the Mississippi. The weight of testimony is in favor of the latter route which was, as well, the easier of the two.* It is probable, therefore, that Menard and his ser- vant, Jean Guerin, a gunsmith by trade, were upon the waters of the Upper Mississippi two years after Radisson's voyage and eleven before that of Joliet. The journey had been a long and painful one, in the heat of midsummer; they suffered from hunger, bruised feet and myriads of mosquitoes, while the Indian guides were often insolent and cruel in their exactions. On the seventh of August, while portaging around some rapids in the Black River, Menard lost the blind trail and was never after seen by his party. He was either killed by lurking savages, or died from exposure. His kettle was afterwards seen by Guerin in the hands of a Sac Indian, while his breviary and cassock were said * See T