Part 4

They proceeded along the narrow trail which ran from Keweenaw Bay to Lake Vieux Désert, 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. Ménard'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 Ménard 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 Pères_, or "The Fathers' Rapids"; but it was soon shortened into _Des Pères_, and finally, by the Americans, into _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 André, 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 Ménard 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 Brulé 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 Brulé 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 Brulé 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.