Wisconsin : the Americanization of a French settlement

Preface

The history of Wisconsin concerns itself with three political regimes — those of New France, Great Britain, and the United States. Its civilization, however, is of the first and third, for the influence of the second was negligible. When, in 1816, American troops first took possession of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, the country between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River was still French to the core. Indeed, still another decade was to pass before the Americanizing process began to show results. These came, not by transforming the character or habits of our mild-mannered and nonprogressive habitans and voyageurs , who remained quite unchanged through full two centuries of residence in Wisconsin, but by means of the influx of New Yorkers and New Englanders, who gradually crowded them to the wall. It was nearly twenty years after American occupation began, before the fur-trade, now managed by Americans but almost wholly manned by French, ceased to be Wisconsin’s dominating industry.

So far as it differs materially from that of its neighbors, the story of Wisconsin is that of the Americanization of a French settlement, — or

VI

PREFACE rather of a cordon of widely scattered although closely related French fur-trade outposts. Long after the greater part of the Old Northwest had become a vigorous American community, this far northwestern corner, with a history all its own, was practically a foreign land.

During the twelve years of territorial experience (1836-48), the element of growth in Wisconsin was distinctly American. But immediately upon entering the Union, the state became a centre of attraction for German immigrants, and was for a time perhaps better known for its Teutonic than for its native-born population. Norwegians, Poles, Swiss, and other European peoples likewise found in Wisconsin those climatic, industrial, and political conditions favorable to their development. The result was that by 1890 Wisconsin was credited with a larger variety of foreign-born folk than could be found in any other American commonwealth, save perhaps Pennsylvania. In the Americanization of these people, Wisconsin throughout her statehood career has been actively engaged. That this task has been successfully performed is evident to any one familiar with her record. Fortunately, in becoming Americans European immigrants brought from Old-World experiences and culture much that was of use to the life of the young state. The results show themselves in the conservative tendencies of Wisconsin political thought, in the frank welcome here given to mod-

PREFACE vii

ern ideas, in the generous sustenance awarded to every form of popular and higher education, in evidences of a civic patriotism that must work still larger triumphs for the commonwealth.

Space within the volume has been devoted to the consideration of these matters rather than to a marshaling of annals, although I hope that none of the essentials of the state’s history have been neglected. As for errors of fact or of judgment, no historical work ever has been or will be free from them; history is a growing science, ever subject to new interpretations as fresh material comes to light, or points of view differ. It will be noticed that the present treatment of the French and much of the British regime in Wisconsin differs materially from previous historical writing on this subject ; indeed, it must frankly be admitted that there are herein many statements varying from what I have myself asserted in earlier writings. But within the past few years the discovery and publication of documentary material by the Wisconsin Historical Society has made necessary an entirely new view of that period, and this volume has thereby been the gainer. The “ deepest deep ” has, doubtless, not yet been sounded, hence to-day’s opinions may still need to be corrected. It would be strange, indeed, were this not so.

In the preparation of the book, I have been privileged to receive aid of varying sort from sev-

PREFACE viii

eral persons, some of whom have even done me the service of reading the manuscript in whole or in part. Miss Deborah B. Martin, one of the authors of that admirable local history, “ Historic Green Bay,” has kindly examined those portions having reference to that ancient town, and much is owing to her fruitful suggestions. President William Ward Wight, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, did for me a similar favor in the matter of Eleazer Williams, the “ lost Dauphin.” Dr. Louise P. Kellogg, my editorial assistant on the staff of the Wisconsin Historical Library, has been especially helpful in research cooperation, particularly in the French and British regimes. I have, in occasional footnotes, acknowledged aid from other sources; but owing to the popular nature of the work have not sought to fortify every statement by citations of authorities.

R. G. T.

Wisconsin Historical Library,

Madison, October , 1908.

Contents

I. The Coming of Nicolet 1

II. French Explorers and Missionaries . . 34

III. French Exploitation 62

Chapter I

In the year made memorable in J amestown annals through association with the legend of Captain John Smith’s rescue by the romantic Pocahontas, twelve and a half years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Samuel de Champlain, navigator, explorer, and statesman, reared on the gray cliff of Quebec (J uly, 1608) the stronghold destined to become the capital of New France.

As early as 1498 Devonshire men, “ coming out of Bristow [Bristol],” had caught fish and bartered with savages in the fiords of Newfoundland, being soon joined in this profitable undertaking by Spanish Basques, Portuguese, and Normans and Bretons. Throughout the sixteenth century the polyglot fishing village of St. John’s was well known as a port of call for maritime adventurers into the western seas, who obtained there water, provisions, and recruits; and later the pioneers of Virginia, New France, and New England not infrequently resorted thither for succor of various kinds.

In 1604 a trading and planting company, under grant from Henry IV of France, founded New France on the mainland of the continent, their initial choice for a site being Port Royal, near the present beautiful little town of Annapolis Royal, in Nova Scotia. Their first winter, however, was miserably spent upon the rocky islet of St. Croix, in Passamaquoddy Bay, on the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. The river St. Lawrence had in 1534 been ascended as far as the island of Montreal by the French explorer, Jacques Cartier, and a similar expedition had been made by Champlain in 1603. Port Royal had proved too easily accessible to roving English corsairs, jealous of this foreign intrusion upon a domain claimed by their own sovereign, and its facilities for trade with the aborigines were found to be meagre. It was, therefore, determined to remove the capital of the western possessions of the French king to a stronger position. Champlain, now appointed governor of New France, wisely selected the easily defensible rock of Quebec, which lay far from the path of the meddlesome English. It was so situated, also, as to command an apparently unlimited native traffic, and thence might easily be dispatched exploring and military expeditions into the far interior.

The motives that impelled the planting of New France remained to the end its chief characteristics: love of territorial conquest, that which in the political jargon of our day we dub “ imperialism the missionary zeal of the Catholic Church, eager at any hazard of martyrdom to gather within her fold the heathen savages of the New World; the spirit of commercial enterprise, finding in the fur-trade with North American natives a field at first rich in profits, but in time becoming a gambling venture, beset by enormous risks 5 and the generous yearning of the French people for adventure in strange lands, in a period when the area of the known world was being rapidly enlarged by the explorations of Europeans, and popular imagination was readily kindled by travelers’ tales.

Such were the dominating passions of the enterprise. Subsidiary to these were the hopes of prospectors, who thought in this vast wilderness to discover mines of metals and precious stones ; the ambition of army and naval officers, who in the stirring colonial arena sought recognition and rapid promotion ; and the cupidity of officials in every branch of service, military and civil, who, in an age far more corrupt than our own, too often deemed public office, particularly in over-sea colonies, but an opportunity for private peculation.

In Champlain’s day, — indeed, for nearly a century after he had planted Quebec, — Europeans had small notion of the enormous width of the North American continent. Not until Vitus Bering’s exploit in 1741 were they quite certain that it was a continent, and not an outlying portion of Asia. In their many sorry adventures, the Spanish followers of Columbus were ever seeking an American transcontinental waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific. The early Virginians fancied that, once successfully surmounting the Appalachian mountain wall by way of the James, the Potomac, or the Roanoke, they might reach the headsprings of streams flowing directly into the Pacific. Hendrik Hudson at first thought that he had found the way through, in Hudson River ; he was still more confident when later he discovered Hudson Strait and Bay. Throughout nearly two and a half centuries of effort, European navigators one by one exhausted the possibilities of North American inlets opening into both oceans ; the quest for what came to be known as the Northwest Passage was thus gradually moved farther and farther up the map, until at last that mythic waterway, that should shorten the sea route between Europe and Asia, was consigned to the impenetrable Arctic.

This prevalent misconception of the width of North America, the lingering notion that it was a part of Asia, and the theory that a waterway would yet be found that directly connected the two oceans, were three basic facts in the story of the discovery of Wisconsin. Perhaps equally significant was the circumstance that the sources of rivers connected with the several divergent drainage systems of the continent in numerous places here closely approach each other, making it possible for primitive travelers to proceed from one system to another, and thus readily traverse the greater part of the country. We shall have abundant opportunity to observe wherein these factors shaped the. early history of Wisconsin ; indeed, they profoundly affected the course of exploration throughout almost the entire continental interior.

We have seen that in choosing Quebec as the capital of New France, Champlain purposely planted himself well within the continent, upon a great east-and-west drainage trough whose affluents in lake and river were to the adventurous people of New France destined to prove far-stretching highways. Their imagination was easily fired by the prospect of thereby penetrating an immense area of forested wilderness peopled with strange tribes of wild men.

At the head of this trough of the St. Lawrence valley is another low area, extending transversely north and south, practically between the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with the Mississippi River flowing through the greater part of its enormous length. Now the basin of the Mississippi is separated from that of the St. Lawrence by only a low and narrow watershed running parallel to the Great Lakes. Flowing into these lakes are many short rivers, easily ascended by the light Indian canoes, which the whites soon learned to construct and operate quite as skillfully as the aborigines. Portage paths, varying in length from one mile to ten, and seldom difficult of passage, lead from these waterways over the height of land to other, and for the most part leisurely, streams pouring into larger rivers that in their turn empty directly or indirectly into the Mississippi. While possible portages are numerous along this watershed, certain routes had in the course of time been selected as the most practicable by aboriginal war, trading, and hunting parties. Well-defined before the coming of Europeans, they were freely used by the latter in exploring and exploiting the country.

Proceeding westward, the first of these St. Lawrence-Mississippi routes was one by which the traveler from Lake Erie might, through Lake Chautauqua, gain the waters of the Ohio River, the Mississippi’s great eastern tributary. The Ohio could also be reached from Lake Erie by way of the present Penny si vania town of Erie and French Creek, a confluent of the Allegheny. The Beaver, Muskingum, and Scioto (by way of the Cuyahoga), and the Maumee and the Wabash rivers were also well-worn trade and war routes between the lower Great Lakes and the Ohio.

From Lake Erie it was possible to ascend the Maumee and carry over to the St. Josephs, which debouches into Lake Michigan, — thus making a short cut across the base of the lower Michigan peninsula; or, paddling up the St. Josephs from Lake Michigan, one might at the present South Bend, Indiana, portage over to the Kankakee, a tributary of the Illinois, itself a feeder of the Mississippi; this route was used by La Salle in 1679, and afterwards became famous as a French highway. Chicago River could be ascended, as it was in 1674 by Marquette, to the swamps closely approaching the Des Plaines, the latter being then followed to the Illinois.

For the French, undoubtedly the favorite path between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi was that of the Fox- Wisconsin rivers, in the heart of central Wisconsin. From Green Bay, the canoeist might work his way up the frequently sluggish but here and there rapids-strewn Fox to where is now the small city of Portage, carry his craft and its cargo across a marshy plain of a mile and a half, and then reembark on the swift-flowing Wisconsin, whose current would quickly convey him to the Mississippi. Sometimes the Wisconsin, when in high spring stage, would, as despite modern levees it still occasionally does, leap the scarcely perceptible watershed and pour its flood into the Fox, thus sending to the Gulf of St. Lawrence waters ordinarily flowing toward the Gulf of Mexico. In like manner the Chicago portage plain was sometimes flooded from Lake Michigan, the lake thus seeking a southern outlet through the Des Plaines, — an egress properly its own in an earlier geological era, and in our own day regained through the Chicago drainage canal.

Between Lake Superior and the upper waters of the Mississippi there were, not to mention several minor because more difficult paths, two much-used routes. One followed the narrow and somewhat turbulent Bois Brule, from whose head-springs there was and still is a carrying path of a mile and a half to the willow marshes whence flows the beautiful St. Croix, an affluent of the great river ; another was by way of the foaming St. Louis, from which can be reached the watery plain of the Mille Lacs, and thence the uppermost pools of the Mississippi. By ascending Pigeon River, on the present international boundary, the traveler might by means of a score or two of portages and a network of lakes ultimately reach Lake W innipeg ; whence by other interlacing waters could be penetrated the great systems of the Saskatchewan and the Assiniboin, which touch the feet of the Canadian Rockies. Still other portages in the far north and northwest brought him in connection with streams debouching into both the Arctic and the Pacific oceans.

These important geographical facts were but slowly revealed to the French. At first cartographers depended on the vague statements of Indians who sought the lower settlements for purposes of trade ; later, on the reports of explorers, fur-traders, missionaries, and soldiers, who upon their respective errands had followed returning tribesmen into the wilderness, and through close contact with conditions were enabled to extend the bounds of the map of New France.

Champlain was a born rover, and in person conducted several exploring parties, chiefly up the Saguenay, into the country around Lake Champlain, and up the broad Ottawa. The deep trough of the Saguenay led him through picturesque scenes to the north and northeast, into the rich fur-bearing region around Lake St. John, among the rudest of his savage neighbors. His first visit to the Lake Champlain country (1609) resulted unfortunately ; for in order to please his Algonkin friends he attacked and routed the confederated Iroquois, who lived for the most part in the northern half of New York State and in northeastern Pennsylvania. Thereby he incurred for New France the undying hostility of the most astute and vengeful warriors among the North American tribes. The effect was, for a century and a half, at times highly disastrous to missionary and trading enterprises throughout the great length of New France, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi.

Lake Erie was firmly held by these implacable enemies, who long stoutly refused to allow Frenchmen to pass through, so that Champlain’s westward exploration must needs be by way of the Ottawa. Stemming its strong flood and portaging around its numerous rapids, the governor ascended to the Mattawan ; after tracing that tributary to its source, he followed the Indian portage trail over to Lake Ni pissing, and thence descended its many-channeled outlet, French River, to Georgian Bay. Thus in 1615 was discovered Lake Huron, first of the

Great Lakes to be unveiled by the French. Later in the year, Champlain returned by Lake Ontario. We shall find that Lake Michigan was apparently first seen by a Frenchman in 1634, and doubtless Superior also by the same adventurer ; while seven years later (1641), Jesuit missionaries at Sault de Ste. Marie wrote familiarly of the “ other great lake above the Sault.” Erie was seen by the French as early as 1640, but unnavigated by them until twenty-nine years later, save as unlicensed fur-traders conducted an illicit commerce with English and Dutch allies of the Iroquois.

The French had not long been settled at Quebec before news began to reach them of what in later years proved to be the Mississippi River. At first the information brought by Indians, who annually came down in their fleets of birch-bark canoes to barter with the fur-traders on the St. Lawrence, was of the vaguest. It might mean either that in the far-away western country certain “ great waters ” flowed directly into the Pacific, or that somewhere in what we now call the Middle West might actually be found the coast of the Pacific itself. Savages themselves had necessarily but a limited stock of geographical knowledge. They understood well their particular tribal range for fishing, hunting, trading, and war ; the Iroquois at times raided over much of the country north of the Ohio, from New England to the Mississippi. But this was exceptional ; to most tribes all beyond their own habitat was apt to be a region of myth, peopled by enemies, man-devouring monsters, and angry spirits. The aboriginal imagination was well developed ; tribesmen cowered before the unknown.

Information thus coming at second and third hand, obviously distorted by the fears, superstitions, and personal exaggerations of the tale-tellers, but whetted the curiosity of Champlain. His desire to solve the mysteries of this western wilderness had been accentuated by reports of rich copper mines in that quarter, for among the officials of New France the discovery of mineral deposits ranked only second in importance to the fur-trade. He tells us in his “ Voyages” 1 that in June, 1610, an Algonkin chief whom he was entertaining in the neighborhood of Quebec “ drew from a sack a piece of copper a foot long, which he gave me. This was very handsome and pure. He gave me to understand that there were large quantities where he had taken this, which was on the bank of a river, near a great lake. He said that they [the savages of those parts] gathered it in lumps, and having melted it, spread it in sheets, smoothing it with stones.”

In the light of modern knowledge, it is not difficult to recognize Lake Superior as the home of this historic lump of copper. The governor’s guest had, possibly, never been there ; the specimen may

1 Champlain’s Voyages (Paris, 1613), pp. 246, 247 ; Prince Society ed., yoI. ii, pp. 236, 237.

easily have reached him from the west through the medium of intertribal barter. North American savages were keen traders ; in intervals between warfare they held markets with their neighbors, at certain well-known aboriginal rendezvous (like Mackinac, Green Bay, or Prairie du Chien), for the exchange of tribal specialties, and of curiosities from a distance. By means of this widespread commerce, European articles, bartered to natives by early explorers along the Atlantic coast, are known to have reached the forest camps of the far interior long in advance of the arrival of white men themselves.

After his own laborious journey to Lake Huron, five years later, in search of more definite information concerning the mysterious West, further news continued to reach Champlain, slowly percolating through the uncertain channel of savage report. New France was still weak, both in population and in resources. In 1629 a predatory English fleet had secured the unresisting surrender of Quebec. It was not until three years after (1632) that the country was restored to its French owners, and the governor returned to his charge. In the year of restoration probably not over a hundred and eighty of the inhabitants of New France might properly be called settlers, with perhaps a few score military men, seafarers, and visiting commercial adventurers— during a time when (1627-37) upward of twenty thousand settlers were emigrating from

Europe to the English colonies. Because of this weakness, exploration in New France long kept at a lagging pace. There were also affairs on the St. Lawrence, among them a protracted hand-tohand struggle with the exasperating Iroquois, that sapped the slender resources of the province. Not until 1634 could Champlain carry out his longcherished scheme of dispatching an exploring agent into the country beyond Lake Huron, to make trading treaties with its uncouth tribes, and to bring back what information he might of the great western water and the reputed mines of copper.

In the year of his own visit to Lake Huron, Champlain inaugurated the policy of selecting certain adventurous and vigorous youths of good character and sending them out into the Indian camps to become through years of experience schooled to the forest life, familiarized with aboriginal languages, customs, and thought, and possessed of the confidence of the tribesmen. From among the graduates of this rude seminary he chose his interpreters and explorers : men with fibre toughened to the work before them, adding to the physical endurance of the savage the intelligent persistence and tact of the European.

Among the best of these was Jean Nicolet, who, immediately upon his arrival from Normandy in 1618, being then twenty years of age, was dispatched by the governor to the friendly Algonkins of Allumette Island, far up on the Ottawa River.

The associations and language of this tribe were in close touch with the West, where men such as Nicolet were most needed. Says the quaint old chronicle : 1 —

Forasmuch as his nature and excellent memory inspired good hopes of him, he was sent to winter with the Island Algonquins, 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.

During his residence with the Algonkins, Nicolet accompanied a party of four hundred of his forest friends to New York to patch up a temporary peace with the Iroquois, who had recently been harrying the Ottawa valley. This mission successfully accomplished, he took up his residence with the Indians around Lake Nipissing, fifty leagues farther westward on the route to Georgian Bay. During the “ eight or nine years ” that he is reported to have dwelt among these people, “ 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. . . . He was able to control and to direct [the savages] whither he wished, with a skill that will hardly find an equal.”

1 Thwaites, Jesuit Relations , vol. xxiii, pp. 275-277.

It seems likely that Nicolet was even longer than 44 eight or nine years ” among the Nipissings, or perhaps also with their neighbors to the west, on Georgian Bay ; for the close of that term would have brought him to the time of the surrender of Quebec, and under the brief English regime there could have been no official employment for Frenchmen of his profession. There is no evidence that he left the woods until the restoration of New France in 1632. In the latter year we find him returning to Quebec, having withdrawn from the undoubted fascination of his wild life — 44 only in order to secure his salvation in the use of the sacraments,” declares the Jesuit 44 Relation.” Here he received employment as agent and interpreter for the Company of the Hundred Associates. To this trading monopoly, directed by Cardinal Richelieu, had been granted almost sovereign jurisdiction throughout the vast transatlantic territory claimed by the French, extending from Florida to the Arctic Circle, and from Newfoundland to the farthest west. Upon the restoration, the company resumed sway, Governor Champlain now being little more than its resident manager.

The route to Georgian Bay, by way of the Ottawa and the Mattawan, Lake Nipissing, and French River, was now fairly well known to the French. Beyond, all was still obscurity. The gift of copper from the Algonkin chief spoke eloquently of the commercial possibilities of the illimitable

West; still more so the rich furs that annually found their way from the upper lakes to the market on the strand of Quebec. But at the time Champlain appears to have been particularly interested in persistent rumors then reaching him, concerning a certain tribe called “ Men of the Sea,” whose home was reputed to be less than four hundred leagues1 westward of the Algonkin.

It was reported by the Algonkins that these people had come to their present habitat from a point still farther west, by the shore of a salt sea ; that annually there came out of that country, to trade with them, a people without hair or beards, and with manners and dress so described to Champlain as to suggest what he had read concerning the appearance of Tartars or Chinese ; and it was confidently asserted that in the course of their coming these western traders traveled upon a great water in large canoes of wood (not bark, the material used by Canadian tribes).

Later knowledge has revealed the fact that the Men of the Sea were but the Winnebago of our day, — a name derived from the Algonkin word ouinipegou , meaning “ men of the fetid (or stinking) water.” When we take into consideration the then prevalent notion that North America, if not

1 The standard French league is about equal to 2.42 English miles; the common league, 2.76. But the early French explorers used the term approximately — it is not safe to hold them too closely to their estimates of distance.

a portion of Asia, was at least a narrow continent washed on the west by a probably narrow ocean that touched Asia ; and further, the fact that the widely-diffused Algonquian 1 stock, embracing most of the eastern tribes known to the French, often applied to salt water an adjective equivalent to “stinking,” it is not difficult to comprehend why this term was translated into Gens de Mer . We understand, also, why the active imagination of Champlain impelled him to accept these unknown Men of the Sea, or their curious visitors, as possible Mongolians, and to hope that through their lands was at last to be found that short route to the Orient sought by Europeans since the days of Columbus, for which they still were searching a century after Champlain’s death. Ethnologists now believe that the term ouinipeg (stinking water) as applied by the Algonkins to the Winnebago, had no reference to the sea, but to certain ill-smelling sulphur springs in the neighborhood of Lake Winnipeg. Whence the swarthy Winnebago, an outcast and somewhat degenerate branch of the Dakota linguistic stock, are thought to have migrated to the shores of Green Bay by way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, — a thin foreign wedge projected into the far-stretching territory of the

1 Algonkin is the name of a tribe, whose chief seat in the days of New France was the valley of the Ottawa ; Algonquian is the name of the linguistic stock, which included the Algonkins and nearly all tribes east of the Mississippi and north of the Tennessee, except the Iroquois, the Huron, and a few of their kindred.

Algonquian race. We now recognize, also, that the “ great water” was no other than the Mississippi itself; upon it there came, in long “dug-out” canoes 1 to trade with the Winnebago, many of the W estern and Southern tribes, such as the Sioux and the Illinois, to whom the exuberant fancy of the Algonkin attributed physical peculiarities that were intensified as the tale passed from tribe to tribe on its way to the great white chief.

It is a curious etymological fact that as soon as the French discovered that the Men of the Sea were but ordinary Indians, they ceased to call them Gens de Mer, thenceforth translating ouinipeg into the French word for “ stinking,” puant . Thus in their phraseology the Winnebago early became known as Les Puctnts ,2 or “ The Stinkards,” — an opprobrious term ill merited by those people, who were quite as cleanly as most of their neighbors.