Chapter 3

"We weare wellcomed & made of saying that we weare the Gods and devils of the earth; that we should fournish them, & that they would bring us to their enemy to destroy them. We tould them [we] were very well content. We persuaded them first to come peaceably, not to distroy them presently, and if they would not condescend then would wee throw away the hatchett and make use of our thunders. We sent ambassadors to them wth guifts. That nation called Pontonatemick[87] without more adoe comes and meets us with the rest, and peace was concluded." "The savages," he writes, "love knives better than we serve God, which should make us blush for shame." In another place, "We went away free from any burden whilst those poore miserable thought themselves happy to carry our Equipage for the hope that they had that we should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle."[88] We find them using this influence in various places to make peace between hostile tribes, whom they threatened with punishment. This early commerce was carried on under the fiction of an exchange of presents. For example, Radisson says: "We gave them severall gifts and received many. They bestowed upon us above 300 robs of castors out of wch we brought not five to the ffrench being far in the country."[89] Among the articles used by Radisson in this trade were kettles, hatchets, knives, graters, awls, needles, tin looking-glasses, little bells, ivory combs, vermilion, sword blades, necklaces and bracelets. The sale of guns and blankets was at this time exceptional, nor does it appear that Radisson carried brandy in this voyage.[90]

More and more the young men of Canada continued to visit the savages at their villages. By 1660 the _coureurs de bois_ formed a distinct class,[91] who, despite the laws against it, pushed from Michillimackinac into the wilderness. Wisconsin was a favorite resort of these adventurers. By the time of the arrival of the Jesuits they had made themselves entirely at home upon our lakes. They had preceded Allouez at Chequamegon bay, and when he established his mission at Green bay he came at the invitation of the Pottawattomies, who wished him to "mollify some young Frenchmen who were among them for the purpose of trading and who threatened and ill-treated them."[92] He found fur traders before him on the Fox and the Wolf. Bancroft's assertion[93] that "religious enthusiasm took possession of the wilderness on the upper lakes and explored the Mississippi," is misleading. It is not true that "not a cape was turned, nor a mission founded, nor a river entered, nor a settlement begun, but a Jesuit led the way." In fact the Jesuits followed the traders;[94] their missions were on the sites of trading posts, and they themselves often traded.[95]

When St. Lusson, with the _coureur de bois_, Nicholas Perrot, took official possession of the Northwest for France at the Sault Ste. Marie in 1671, the cost of the expedition was defrayed by trade in beaver.[96] Joliet, who, accompanied by Marquette, descended the Mississippi by the Fox and Wisconsin route in 1673, was an experienced fur trader. While Du Lhut, chief of the _coureurs de bois_, was trading on Lake Superior, La Salle,[97] the greatest of these merchants, was preparing his far-reaching scheme for colonizing the Indians in the Illinois region under the direction of the French, so that they might act as a check on the inroads of the Iroquois, and aid in his plan of securing an exit for the furs of the Northwest, particularly buffalo hides, by way of the Mississippi and the Gulf. La Salle's "Griffen," the earliest ship to sail the Great Lakes, was built for this trade, and received her only cargo at Green Bay. Accault, one of La Salle's traders, with Hennepin, met Du Lhut on the upper Mississippi, which he had reached by way of the Bois Brulé and St. Croix, in 1680. Du Lhut's trade awakened the jealousy of La Salle, who writes in 1682: "If they go by way of the Ouisconsing, where for the present the chase of the buffalo is carried on and where I have commenced an establishment, they will ruin the trade on which alone I rely, on account of the great number of buffalo which are taken there every year, almost beyond belief."[98] Speaking of the Jesuits at Green Bay, he declares that they "have in truth the key to the beaver country, where a brother blacksmith that they have and two companions convert more iron into beaver than the fathers convert savages into Christians."[99] Perrot says that the beaver north of the mouth of the Wisconsin were better than those of the Illinois country, and the chase was carried on in this region for a longer period;[100] and we know from Dablon that the Wisconsin savages were not compelled to separate by families during the hunting season, as was common among other tribes, because the game here was so abundant.[101] Aside from its importance as a key to the Northwestern trade, Wisconsin seems to have been a rich field of traffic itself.

With such extensive operations as the foregoing in the region reached by Wisconsin rivers, it is obvious that the government could not keep the _coureurs de bois_ from the woods. Even governors like Frontenac connived at the traffic and shared its profits. In 1681 the government decided to issue annual licenses,[102] and messengers were dispatched to announce amnesty to the _coureurs de bois_ about Green Bay and the south shore of Lake Superior.[103]

We may now offer some conclusions upon the connection of the fur trade with French explorations:

1. The explorations were generally induced and almost always rendered profitable by the fur trade. In addition to what has been presented on this point, note the following:

In 1669, Patoulet writes to Colbert concerning La Salle's voyage to explore a passage to Japan: "The enterprise is difficult and dangerous, but the good thing about it is that the King will be at no expense for this pretended discovery."[104]

The king's instructions to Governor De la Barre in 1682 say that, "Several inhabitants of Canada, excited by the hope of the profit to be realized from the trade with the Indians for furs, have undertaken at various periods discoveries in the countries of the Nadoussioux, the river Mississipy, and other parts of America."[105]

2. The early traders were regarded as quasi-supernatural beings by the Indians.[106] They alone could supply the coveted iron implements, the trinkets that tickled the savage's fancy, the "fire-water," and the guns that gave such increased power over game and the enemy. In the course of a few years the Wisconsin savages passed from the use of the implements of the stone age to the use of such an important product of the iron age as firearms. They passed also from the economic stage in which their hunting was for food and clothing simply, to that stage in which their hunting was made systematic and stimulated by the European demand for furs. The trade tended to perpetuate the hunter stage by making it profitable, and it tended to reduce the Indian to economic dependence[107] upon the Europeans, for while he learned to use the white man's gun he did not learn to make it or even to mend it. In this transition stage from their primitive condition the influence of the trader over the Indians was all-powerful. The pre-eminence of the individual Indian who owned a gun made all the warriors of the tribe eager to possess like power. The tribe thus armed placed their enemies at such a disadvantage that they too must have like weapons or lose their homes.[108] No wonder that La Salle was able to say: "The savages take better care of us French than of their own children. From us only can they get guns and goods."[109] This was the power that France used to support her in the struggle with England for the Northwest.

3. The trader used his influence to promote peace between the Northwestern Indians.[110]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: Histoire du Canada, 193-4 (edition of 1866).]

[Footnote 80: Dablon, Jesuit Relations, 1671.]

[Footnote 81: See Parkman, Pioneers, 429 ff. (1890).]

[Footnote 82: Margry, I., 50. The date rests on inference; see Bibliography of Nicolet in Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., and cf. Hebberd, Wisconsin under French Dominion, 14.]

[Footnote 83: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 160.]

[Footnote 84: Margry, VI., 3; Coll. de Mamiscrits, I., 255, where the date is wrongly given as 1676. The italics are ours.]

[Footnote 85: Radisson, Voyages (Prince Soc. Pubs.); Margry, I., 53-55, 83; Jes. Rels., 1660; Wis. Hist. Colls., X., XI; Narrative and Critical Hist. Amer., IV., 168-173.]

[Footnote 86: Cf. Radisson, 173-5, and Jes. Rels., 1660, pp. 12, 30; 1663, pp. 17 ff.]

[Footnote 87: Pottawattomies in the region of Green Bay.]

[Footnote 88: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 67-8.]

[Footnote 89: _Ibid._ XI., 90.]

[Footnote 90: Radisson, 200, 217, 219.]

[Footnote 91: Suite, in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, V., 141; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 153, 140,152; Margry, VI., 3; Parkman, Old Régime, 310-315.]

[Footnote 92: Cf. Jes. Rels., 1670, p. 92.]

[Footnote 93: History of United States, II., 138 (1884).]

[Footnote 94: Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, 174-181.]

[Footnote 95: Parkman, Old Régime, 328 ff., and La Salle, 98; Margry, II., 251; Radisson, 173.]

[Footnote 96: See Talon's report quoted in Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 175.]

[Footnote 97: Margry abounds in evidences of La Salle's commercial activity, as does Parkman's La Salle. See also Dunn, Indiana, 20-1.]

[Footnote 98: Margry, II., 254.]

[Footnote 99: Margry, II., 251.]

[Footnote 100: Tailhan's Perrot, 57.]

[Footnote 101: Jes. Rels., 1670.]

[Footnote 102: La Hontan, I., 53; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 159; Parkman, Old Régime, 305.]

[Footnote 103: Margry, VI., 45.]

[Footnote 104: Margry, I., 81.]

[Footnote 105: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 187. On the cost of such expeditions, see documents in Margry, I., 293-296; VI., 503-507. On the profits of the trade, see La Salle in 2 Penna. Archives, VI., 18-19.]

[Footnote 106: See Radisson, _ante_, p. 28.]

[Footnote 107: _Vide post_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 108: _Vide ante_, p. 14; Radisson, 154; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 427. Compare the effects of the introduction of bronze weapons into Europe.]

[Footnote 109: Margry, II., 234. On the power possessed by the French through this trade consult also D'Iberville's plan for locating Wisconsin Indians on the Illinois by changing their trading posts; see Margry, IV., 586-598.]

[Footnote 110: Wis. Hist. Colls., XI., 67-8, 90; Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 182; Perrot, 327; Margry, VI., 507-509, 653-4.]

FRENCH POSTS IN WISCONSIN.

In the governorship of Dongan of New York, as has been noted, the English were endeavoring to secure the trade of the Northwest. As early as 1685, English traders had reached Michillimackinac, the depot of supplies for the _coureur de bois_, where they were cordially received by the Indians, owing to their cheaper goods[111]. At the same time the English on Hudson Bay were drawing trade to their posts in that region. The French were thoroughly alarmed. They saw the necessity of holding the Indians by trading posts in their midst, lest they should go to the English, for as Begon declared, the savages "always take the part of those with whom they trade."[112] It is at this time that the French occupation of the Northwest begins to assume a new phase. Stockaded trading posts were established at such key-points as a strait, a portage, a river-mouth, or an important lake, where also were Indian villages. In 1685 the celebrated Nicholas Perrot was given command of Green Bay and its dependencies[113]. He had trading posts near Trempealeau and at Fort St. Antoine on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin where he traded with the Sioux, and for a time he had a post and worked the lead-mines above the Des Moines river. Both these and Fort St. Nicholas at the mouth of the Wisconsin[114] were dependencies of Green Bay. Du Lhut probably established Fort St. Croix at the portage between the Bois Brulé river and the St. Croix.[115] In 1695 Le Sueur built a fort on the largest island above Lake Pepin, and he also asked the command of the post of Chequamegon.[116]

These official posts were supported by the profits of Indian commerce,[117] and were designed to keep the northwestern tribes at peace, and to prevent the English and Iroquois influence from getting the fur trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 296, 308; IV., 735.]

[Footnote 112: Quoted in Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 310.]

[Footnote 113: Tailhan's Perrot, 156.]

[Footnote 114: Wis. Hist. Colls., X., 54, 300-302, 307, 321.]

[Footnote 115: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 186.]

[Footnote 116: Margry, VI., 60. Near Ashland, Wis.]

[Footnote 117: Consult French MSS., 3d series, VI., Parl. Library, Ottawa, cited in Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 422; Id., V., 425. In 1731 M. La Ronde, having constructed at his own expense a bark of forty tons on Lake Superior, received the post of La Pointe de Chagouamigon as a gratuity to defray his expenses. See also the story of Verenderye's posts, in Parkman's article in _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1887, and Margry, VI. See also 2 Penna. Archives, VI., 18; La Hontan, I., 53; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 159; Tailhan, Perrot, 302.]

THE FOX WARS.

In 1683 Perrot had collected Wisconsin Indians for an attack on the Iroquois, and again in 1686 he led them against the same enemy. But the efforts of the Iroquois and the English to enter the region with their cheaper and better goods, and the natural tendency of savages to plunder when assured of supplies from other sources, now overcame the control which the French had exercised. The Sauks and Foxes, the Mascoutins, Kickapoos and Miamis, as has been described, held the Fox and Wisconsin route to the West, the natural and easy highway to the Mississippi, as La Hontan calls it.[118] Green Bay commanded this route, as La Pointe de Chagouamigon[119] commanded the Lake Superior route to the Bois Brulé and the St. Croix. One of Perrot's main objects was to supply the Sioux on the other side of the Mississippi, and these were the routes to them. To the Illinois region, also, the Fox route was the natural one. The Indians of this waterway therefore held the key to the French position, and might attempt to prevent the passage of French goods and support English influence and trade, or they might try to monopolize the intermediate trade themselves, or they might try to combine both policies.

As early as 1687 the Foxes, Mascoutins and Kickapoos, animated apparently by hostility to the trade carried on by Perrot with the Sioux, their enemy at that time, threatened to pillage the post at Green Bay.[120] The closing of the Ottawa to the northern fur trade by the Iroquois for three years, a blow which nearly ruined Canada in the days of Frontenac, as Parkman has described,[121] not only kept vast stores of furs from coming down from Michillimackinac; it must, also, have kept goods from reaching the northwestern Indians. In 1692 the Mascoutins, who attributed the death of some of their men to Perrot, plundered his goods, and the Foxes soon entered into negotiation with the Iroquois.[122] Frontenac expressed great apprehension lest with their allies on the Fox and Wisconsin route they should remove eastward and come into connection with the Iroquois and the English, a grave danger to New France.[123] Nor was this apprehension without reason.[124] Even such docile allies as the Ottawas and Pottawattomies threatened to leave the French if goods were not sent to them wherewith to oppose their enemies. "They have powder and iron," complained an Ottawa deputy; "how can we sustain ourselves? Have compassion, then, on us, and consider that it is no easy matter to kill men with clubs."[125] By the end of the seventeenth century the disaffected Indians closed the Fox and Wisconsin route against French trade.[126] In 1699 an order was issued recalling the French from the Northwest, it being the design to concentrate French power at the nearer posts.[127] Detroit was founded in 1701 as a place to which to attract the northwestern trade and intercept the English. In 1702 the priest at St. Joseph reported that the English were sending presents to the Miamis about that post and desiring to form an establishment in their country.[128] At the same date we find D'Iberville, of Louisiana, proposing a scheme for drawing the Miamis, Mascoutins and Kickapoos from the Wisconsin streams to the Illinois, by changing their trading posts from Green Bay to the latter region, and drawing the Illinois by trading posts to the lower Ohio.[129] It was shortly after this that the Miamis and Kickapoos passed south under either the French or English influence,[130] and the hostility of the Foxes became more pronounced. A part of the scheme of La Motte Cadillac at Detroit was to colonize Indians about that post,[131] and in 1712 Foxes, Sauks, Mascoutins, Kickapoos, Pottawattomies, Hurons, Ottawas, Illinois, Menomonees and others were gathered there under the influence of trade. But soon, whether by design of the French and their allies or otherwise, hostilities broke out against the Foxes and their allies. The animus of the combat appears in the cries of the Foxes as they raised red blankets for flags and shouted "We have no father but the English!" while the allies of the French replied, "The English are cowards; they destroy the Indians with brandy and are enemies of the true God!" The Foxes were defeated with great slaughter and driven back to Wisconsin.[132] From this time until 1734 the French waged war against the Foxes with but short intermissions. The Foxes allied themselves with the Iroquois and the Sioux, and acted as middlemen between the latter and the traders, refusing passage to goods on the ground that it would damage their own trade to allow this.[133] They fostered hostilities between their old foes the Chippeways and their new allies the Sioux, and thus they cut off English intercourse with the latter by way of the north. This trade between the Chippeways and the Sioux was important to the French, and commandants were repeatedly sent to La Pointe de Chagouamigon and the upper Mississippi to make peace between the two tribes.[134] While the wars were in progress the English took pains to enforce their laws against furnishing Indian goods to French traders. The English had for a time permitted this, and their own Indian trade had suffered because the French were able to make use of the cheap English goods. By their change in policy the English now brought home to the savages the fact that French goods were dearer.[135] Moreover, English traders were sent to Niagara to deal directly with "the far Indians," and the Foxes visited the English and Iroquois, and secured a promise that they might take up their abode with the latter and form an additional member of the confederacy in case of need.[136] As a counter policy the French attempted to exterminate the Foxes, and detached the Sioux from their alliance with the Foxes by establishing Fort Beauharnois, a trading post on the Minnesota side of Lake Pepin.[137]

The results of these wars were as follows:

1. They spread the feeling of defection among the Northwestern Indians, who could no longer be restrained, as at first, by the threat of cutting off their trade, there being now rivals in the shape of the English, and the French traders from Louisiana.[138]

2. They caused a readjustment of the Indian map of Wisconsin. The Mascoutins and the Pottawattomies had already moved southward to the Illinois country. Now the Foxes, driven from their river, passed first to Prairie du Chien and then down the Mississippi. The Sauks went at first to the Wisconsin, near Sauk Prairie, and then joined the Foxes. The Winnebagoes gradually extended themselves along the Fox and Wisconsin. The Chippeways,[139] freed from their fear of the Foxes, to whom the Wolf and the Wisconsin had given access to the northern portion of the state, now passed south to Lac du Flambeau,[140] to the headwaters of the Wisconsin, and to Lac Court Oreilles.[141]

3. The closing of the Fox and Wisconsin route fostered that movement of trade and exploration which at this time began to turn to the far Northwest along the Pigeon river route into central British America, in search of the Sea of the West,[142] whereby the Rocky Mountains were discovered; and it may have aided in turning settlement into the Illinois country.

4. These wars were a part of a connected series, including the Iroquois wars, the Fox wars, the attack of the Wisconsin trader, Charles de Langlade, upon the center of English trade at Pickawillany,[143] Ohio, and the French and Indian war that followed. All were successive stages of the struggle against English trade in the French possessions.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 118: La Hontan, I., 105.]

[Footnote 119: Near Ashland, Wis.]

[Footnote 120: Tailhan, Perrot, 139, 302.]

[Footnote 121: Frontenac, 315-316. Cf. Perrot, 302.]

[Footnote 122: Perrot, 331; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 633.]

[Footnote 123: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 124: N.Y. Col. Docs., IV., 732-7.]

[Footnote 125: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 673.]

[Footnote 126: Shea, Early Voyages, 49.]

[Footnote 127: Kingsford, Canada, II., 394; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 635.]

[Footnote 128: Margry, V.,219.]

[Footnote 129: _Ibid._ IV., 597.]

[Footnote 130: Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 149; Smith, Wisconsin, II., 315.]

[Footnote 131: Coll. de Manus., III., 622.]

[Footnote 132: See Hebberd's account, Wisconsin under French Dominion; Coll. de Manus., I., 623; Smith, Wisconsin, II., 315.]

[Footnote 133: Margry, VI., 543.]

[Footnote 134: Tailhan, Perrot, _passim_; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 570, 619, 621; Margry, VI., 507-509, 553, 653-4; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 422, 425; Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 154.]

[Footnote 135: N.Y. Col. Docs., V., 726 ff.]

[Footnote 136: _Ibid._ IV., 732, 735, 796-7; V., 687, 911.]

[Footnote 137: Margry, VI., 553, 563, 575-580; Neill in _Mag. Western History_, November, 1887.]

[Footnote 138: Perrot, 148; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 42; Hebberd, Wisconsin under French Dominion, chapters on the Fox wars.]

[Footnote 139: Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 190-1.]

[Footnote 140: Oneida county.]

[Footnote 141: Sawyer county.]

[Footnote 142: Margry, VI.]

[Footnote 143: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 84, and citations; _vide post_, p. 41.]

FRENCH SETTLEMENT IN WISCONSIN.

Settlement was not the object of the French in the Northwest. The authorities saw as clearly as do we that the field was too vast for the resources of the colony, and they desired to hold the region as a source of peltries, and contract their settlements. The only towns worthy of the name in the Northwest were Detroit and the settlements in Indiana and Illinois, all of which depended largely on the fur trade.[144] But in spite of the government the traffic also produced the beginnings of settlement in Wisconsin. About the middle of the century, Augustin de Langlade had made Green Bay his trading post. After Pontiac's war,[145] Charles de Langlade[146] made the place his permanent residence, and a little settlement grew up. At Prairie du Chien French traders annually met the Indians, and at this time there may have been a stockaded trading post there, but it was not a permanent settlement until the close of the Revolutionary war. Chequamegon bay was deserted[147] at the outbreak of the French war. There may have been a regular trading post at Milwaukee in this period, but the first trader recorded is not until 1762.[148] Doubtless wintering posts existed at other points in Wisconsin.