Stories of the Badger State Part 4

IN THE OLD FRENCH DAYS

In establis.h.i.+ng their chain of rude forts, or trading posts, along the Great Lakes and through the valley of the Mississippi, the French had no desire to plant agricultural settlements in the West. Their chief thought was to keep the continental interior as a great fur bearing wilderness; to encourage the Indians to hunt for furs, by supplying all their other wants with articles made in Europe; and to prevent them from carrying any of their furs to the English, who were always underbidding the French in prices.

The officers of these forts were instructed to bully or to persuade the Indians, as occasion demanded; and some of them became very successful in this forest diplomacy. Around most of the forts were small groups of temporary settlers, who could hardly be called colonists, for they expected when they had made their fortunes, or when their working days were over, to return to their own people on the lower St. Lawrence River. It was rather an army of occupation, than a body of settlers.

Nearly every one in the settlement was dependent on the fur trade, either as agent, clerk, trapper, boatman, or general employee.

Sometimes these little towns were the outgrowth of early Jesuit missions, as La Pointe (on Chequamegon Bay), or Green Bay (De Pere); but sooner or later the fur trade became the chief interest. Most of the towns, however, like Milwaukee, La Crosse, or Prairie du Chien, were the direct outgrowth of commerce with the savages. There were trading posts, also, on Lakes Chetek, Flambeau, Court Oreilles, and Sandy, but the settlements about them were very small, and they never grew into permanent towns, as did some of the others.

At all these places, the little log forts served as depots for furs and the goods used in trading with the Indians; they were also used as rallying points for the traders and other white inhabitants of the district, in times of Indian attack. They would have been of slight avail against an enemy with cannon, but afforded sufficient protection against the arrows, spears, and muskets of savages.

The French Canadians who lived in these waterside hamlets were an easy-going folk. Nearly all of them were engaged in the fur trade at certain seasons of the year. The _bourgeois_, or masters, were the chiefs. The _voyageurs_ were men of all work, propelling the canoes and bateaux when afloat, carrying the craft and their contents over portages, transporting packs of goods and furs along the forest trails, caring for the camps, and acting as guards for the persons and property of their employers. The _coureurs de bois_, or wood rangers, were everywhere; they were devoted to a life in the woods, for the fun and excitement in it; they conducted trade on their own account, far off in the most inaccessible places, and were men of great daring. Then there were the _habitants_, or permanent villagers; sometimes these worked as _voyageurs_, but for the most part they were farmers in a small way, cultivating long, narrow "claims" running at right angles to the river bank; one can still find at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, traces of some of these old "French claims." The object of having them so narrow was, that the _habitants_ could live close to one another, along the waterside.

They were of a very social nature, these French _habitants_. They liked to meet frequently, enjoy their pipes, and tell stories of the hunt or of old days on the St. Lawrence. They were famous fiddlers, too. No wilderness so far away that the little French fiddle had not been there; the Indians recognized it as a part of the furniture of every fur trader's camp. Music appealed strongly to these warm natures, and the songs of the _voyageurs_, as they propelled their canoes along the Wisconsin rivers, always greatly interested travelers. French Canadians are still living in Wisconsin, who remember those gay melodies which echoed through our forests a hundred years ago.

The old French life continued in Wisconsin until well into the nineteenth century. Although New France fell in 1760, and the British came into control, they never succeeded in Anglicizing Wisconsin.

English fur companies succeeded the French, and British soldiers occupied the Wisconsin forts; but the fur trade itself had still to be conducted through French residents, who alone had the confidence of the Indians. Great Britain was supposed to surrender all this country to the United States in 1796; but it was really 1816 before the American flag floated over Green Bay, and the American Fur Company came into power.

But, even under this company, most of the actual trading was done through the French; so we may say that as long as the fur trade remained the chief industry of Wisconsin, about to the year 1835, the old French life was still maintained, and French methods were everywhere in evidence.

It is surprising how strongly marked upon our Wisconsin are the memories of the old French days. A quiet, un.o.btrusive people, were those early French, without high ambitions, and simple in their tastes; yet they and theirs have displayed remarkable tenacity of life, and doubtless their effect upon us of to-day will never be effaced. Our map is sprinkled all over with the French names which they gave to our hills and lakes and streams, and early towns. We may here mention a few only, at random: Lakes Flambeau, Court Oreilles, Pepin, Vieux Desert; the rivers Bois Brule, Eau Claire, Eau Pleine, Embarra.s.s, St. Croix; the counties Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Langlade, Marquette, Portage, Racine, St. Croix, Trempealeau; the towns of Racine, La Crosse, Prairie du Chien, b.u.t.te des Morts. Scores of others can readily be found in the atlas. In the cities of Green Bay, Kaukauna, Portage, and Prairie du Chien, and the dreamy little Fox River hamlet of Grand b.u.t.te des Morts, are still to be found little closely-knit colonies of French Creoles, descendants of those who lived and ruled under the old French regime.

The time must come, in the molding of all the foreign elements in our midst into the American of the future, when the French element will no longer exist among us as an element, but merely as a memory. If our posterity can inherit from those early French occupants of our soil their simple tastes, their warm hearts, their happy temperament, their social virtues, then the old French regime will have brought a blessing to Wisconsin, and not merely a halo of historical romance.

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH

Upon the eighth day of September, 1760, the French flag ceased to fly over Canada. In a long and bitter struggle, lasting at intervals through an entire century, French and English had been battling with each other for the control of the interior of this continent; and the former had lost everything at the decisive battle on the Plains of Abraham, before the walls of Quebec.

Reduced to the last extremity, the authorities of New France had ordered her fur traders, _coureurs de bois_ and all, to hurry down to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, and aid in protecting them against the English. Thus in the Wisconsin forests, when the end came, there were left no Frenchmen of importance. Leaving their Indian friends, and many of them their Indian wives and half-breed families, they had obeyed the far away summons, and several lost their lives in the great battle or in the skirmishes which preceded it. The others, who at last returned, were quick to show favor to the English, for little they really cared who were their political masters so long as they were let alone. The Indians, too, although personally they preferred the French to the English, were glad enough to see the latter, because they brought better prices for furs.

Wisconsin was so far away that it took a long time for British soldiers to reach the deserted and tumbledown fort at Green Bay. About the middle of October, 1761, there arrived from Mackinac Lieutenant James Gorrell and seventeen men to hold all of this country for King George. The station had been called by the French Fort St. Francis, but the name was now changed to Fort Edward Augustus.

It was a very lonely and dismal winter for the British soldiers, for nearly all the neighboring savages were away on their winter hunt and did not return until spring. Mackinac, then a poor little trading village, was two hundred forty miles away; there was a trading post at St. Josephs on the southeast sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, four hundred miles distant; and the nearest French villages on the Mississippi were eight hundred miles of canoe journey to the southwest. All between was savagery: here and there a squalid Indian village, with its conical wigwams of bark or matted reeds, pitched on the sh.o.r.e of a lake, at the foot of a portage trail, or on the banks of a forest stream. Now and then a French trading party pa.s.sed along the frozen trails, following the natives on the hunt and poisoning their minds against the newcomers, who were struggling to make their poor old stockade a fairly decent shelter against the winter storms.

But, when the savages returned to Green Bay in the spring, they met with fair words from Gorrell, a plentiful distribution of presents, and good prices for furs, and their hearts were won. In 1763 occurred the great uprising led by Pontiac against the English in the Northwest, during which the garrison at Mackinac was ma.s.sacred. This disturbed the friends.h.i.+p of Gorrell's neighbors, with the exception of a Menominee band, headed by chief Ogemaunee; and in June of that year the little garrison, together with the English traders at Green Bay, found it necessary to leave hastily for Cross Village, on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, escorted by Ogemaunee and ninety painted Menominees, who had volunteered to protect these Englishmen from the unfriendly Indians.

At Cross Village were several soldiers who had escaped from Mackinac, and the two parties and their escorts soon left in canoes for Montreal, by the way of Ottawa River. This old fur trade route was followed in order to escape Pontiac's Indians, who controlled the country about Detroit and along the lower lake. They arrived safely at their destination in August. The following year there was held a great council at Niagara, presided over by the famous Sir William Johnson, who was then serving as British superintendent for the Northern Indians. At this council Ogemaunee was present representing the Menominees of Wisconsin.

In token of his valuable services in escorting Lieutenant Gorrell's party to Montreal, and thereby delivering them safely from the great danger which threatened, Ogemaunee was given a certificate, which reads as follows:--

[Ill.u.s.tration:

[SEAL OF WAX] By the Honourable Sir William Johnson Baronet, His Majesty's sole agent and superintendent of the affairs of the Northern Indians of North America, Colony of the six United Nations their allies and dependants &c. &c. &c.

To OGemawnee a Chief of the Menomings Nation:

Whereas I have received from the officers who Commanded the Out posts as well as from other persons an account of your good behaviour last year in protecting the Officers, Soldiers &c. of the Garrison of La Bay, and in escorting them down to Montreal as also the Effects of the Traders to a large amount, and your having likewise entered into the strongest Engagements of Friends.h.i.+p with the English before me at this place. I do therefore give you This Testimony of my Esteem for your Services and Good behaviour.

Given under my hand & Seal at Arms at Niagara the first day of August 1764.

Wm. Johnson.]

This piece of paper, which showed that he was a good friend of the English, was of almost as great importance to Ogemaunee as a patent of n.o.bility in the Old World. He carried it with him back to Wisconsin, and it remained in his family from one generation to another, for fully a hundred years. One day a blanketed and painted descendant of Ogemaunee presented it to an American officer who visited his wigwam. This descendant, doubtless, knew little of its meaning, but it had been used in his family as a charm for bringing good luck, and in his admiration for this kind officer he gave it to him, for the Indian is, by nature, grateful and generous. In the course of years the paper was presented to the State Historical Society, by which it is preserved as an interesting and suggestive relic of those early days of the English occupation of Wisconsin.

WISCONSIN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

We ordinarily think of the Revolutionary War as having been fought wholly upon the Atlantic slope. As a matter of fact, there were enacted west of the Alleghanies, during that great struggle, deeds which proved of immense importance to the welfare of the United States. Had it not been for the capture from the British of the country northwest of the Ohio River by the gallant Virginia colonel, George Rogers Clark, it is fair to a.s.sume that the Old Northwest, as it came to be called, the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, would to-day be a part of the Dominion of Canada.

After the brief flurry of the Pontiac conspiracy (1763), the Indians of the Old Northwest became good friends of the British, whose aim was to encourage the fur trade and to keep the savages good-natured. The English have always been more successful in their treatment of Indians than have Americans; they are more generous with them, and while not less firm than we, they are more considerate of savage wants. The French and the half-breeds, too, were very soon the warm supporters of British policy, because English fur trade companies gave them abundant employment, and evinced no desire other than to foster the primitive conditions under which the fur trade prospered.

The English were not desirous of settling the Western wilderness with farmers, thereby driving out the game. Our people, however, have always been of a land-grabbing temper; we have sought to beat down the walls of savagery, to push settlement, to cut down the forests, to plow the land, to drive the Indian out. This meant the death of the fur trade; hence it is small wonder that, when the Revolutionary War broke out, the French and Indians of the Northwest upheld the British and opposed the Americans.

A number of scattered white settlers and a few small villages had appeared along the Ohio River and many of its southern tributaries. In Kentucky there were several log forts, around each of which were grouped the rude cabins of frontiersmen, who were half farmers and half hunters, tall, stalwart fellows, as courageous as lions, and ever on the alert for the crouching Indian foe, who came when least expected. The country northwest of the Ohio River was then a part of the British province of Quebec. Here and there in this Old Northwest, as we now call it, were small villages of French and half-breed fur traders, each village protected by a little log fort; some of these villages were garrisoned by a handful of British soldiers, and others only by French Canadians who were friendly to the English. Such were Vincennes, in what is now Indiana; Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in the Illinois country; Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, in Wisconsin; and Mackinac Island and Detroit, in Michigan. Detroit was the headquarters, where lived the British lieutenant governor of the Northwest, Henry Hamilton, a bold, brave, untiring, unscrupulous man.

Hamilton's chief business was to gather about him the Indians of the Northwest, and to excite in them hatred of the American settlers in Kentucky. In 1777, war parties sent out by him from Detroit, under cover of the forts of Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia, swept Kentucky from end to end, and the whole American frontier was the scene of a frightful panic. The American backwoodsmen were ambushed, many of the blockhouse posts were burned, prisoners were subjected to nameless horrors, and it seemed as if pandemonium had broken loose. By the close of the year, such had been the rush of settlers back to their old homes, east of the mountains, that but five or six hundred frontiersmen remained in all Kentucky. Had the British and the Indians succeeded in driving back all of the settlers, they would have held the whole interior of the continent, and the American republic might never have been permitted to grow beyond the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge; hemmed in to the Atlantic slope, this could never have become the great nation it is to-day.

Prominent among the defenders of Kentucky in 1777 was George Rogers Clark. He was but twenty-five years of age, had come from a good family in Virginia, and had a fair education for that day, but had been a wood rover from childhood. He was tall and commanding in person, a great hunter, and a backwoods land surveyor, such as Was.h.i.+ngton was. With chain and compa.s.s, ax and rifle, he had, in the employ of land speculators, wandered far and wide through the border region, knowing its trails, its forts, its mountain pa.s.ses, and its aborigines better than he knew his books. a.s.sociated with him were Boone, Benjamin Logan, and others who were prominent among American border heroes.

Clark saw that the best way to defend Kentucky was to strike the enemy in their own country. Gaining permission from Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, for Kentucky was then but a county of Virginia, and obtaining some small a.s.sistance in money, he raised, in 1778, a little army of a hundred fifty backwoodsmen, clad in buckskin and homespun, who came from the hunters' camps of the Alleghanies. The men collected at Pittsburg and Wheeling, and in flatboats cautiously descended the Ohio to the falls, where is now the city of Louisville. Here, on an island, they built a fort as a military base, and the strongest of the party pushed on down the river to the abandoned old French Fort Ma.s.sac, ten miles below the mouth of the Tennessee, from which they marched overland, for a hundred twenty miles, to Kaskaskia in western Illinois.

Capturing Kaskaskia by surprise (July 4), and soon gaining the good will of the French there, Clark sent out messengers who easily won over the neighboring Cahokia; and very soon even Vincennes, on the Wabash River, sent in its submission. It was not long before Hamilton, at Detroit, heard the humiliating news. He at once sent out two French agents, Charles de Langlade and Charles Gautier, of Green Bay, to raise a large war party of Wisconsin Indians. They succeeded so well, that Hamilton set out from Detroit in October, to retake Vincennes. His force consisted of nearly two hundred whites (chiefly French) and three hundred Indians. Such were the obstacles to overcome in an unbroken wilderness, that he was seventy-one days in reaching his destination.

Clark had left but two of his soldiers at Vincennes, and as their French allies at once surrendered, there was nothing to do but to give up the place.

Now came one of the most stirring deeds in our Western history. Clark, at Kaskaskia, soon learned of the loss of Vincennes; at the same time, it was told him that the greater part of Hamilton's expedition had disbanded for the winter, the lieutenant governor intending to launch a still larger war party against him in the spring. Thereupon Clark determined not to await an attack, but himself to make an attack on Hamilton, who had remained in charge of Vincennes.

The distance across country, from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, is about two hundred thirty miles. In summer it was a delightful region of alternating groves and prairies; in the dead of winter, it would afford fair traveling over the frozen plains and ice-bound rivers; but now, in February (1779), the weather had moderated, and great freshets had flooded the lowlands and meadows. The ground was boggy, and progress was slow and difficult; there were no tents, and the floods had driven away much of the game; and Clark and his officers were often taxed to their wits' ends to devise methods for keeping their hard-worked men in good spirits. Often they were obliged to wade in the icy water, for miles together, and to sleep at night in soaked clothes upon little brush-strewn hillocks, s.h.i.+vering with cold, and without food or fire.

But at last, after nearly three weeks of almost superhuman exertion and indescribable misery, Vincennes was reached. The British garrison was taken by surprise, but held out with obstinacy, and throughout the long moonlight night the battle raged with much fury. The log fort was on the top of a hill overlooking the little town; it was armed with several small cannon, but Clark's men had only their muskets. They were, however, served freely with ammunition by the French villagers; and, being expert marksmen, could hit the gunners by firing through the loopholes, so that by sunrise the garrison was sadly crippled. The fight continued throughout the following morning, and in the afternoon the British ran up the white flag. Hamilton and twenty-six of his fellows were sent as prisoners overland to Virginia.

Clark remained as master of the Northwest until the close of the Revolutionary War. The fact that the flag of the republic waved over Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia when the war ended, had much to do with the decision of the peace commissioners to allow the United States to retain the country lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes.

During the Revolution, none of the forts in Wisconsin were occupied by British soldiers, and they were allowed to tumble into decay. Wisconsin was, however, used as a recruiting ground for Indian allies. Not only did Langlade and Gautier raise a war party of Wisconsin Indians to help Hamilton in his expedition against Vincennes, but they were frequently in Wisconsin on similar business during the war. In 1779 Gautier led a party of Wisconsin Indians to Peoria, in the Illinois country, where there was an old French fort which, it was thought, might fall into the hands of the Americans. Gautier burned this fort, and then hastily retreated because he found that Clark was making friends with all the Illinois Indians.

Clark's agents traded as far north as Portage, in Wisconsin. At Prairie du Chien they induced Linctot, a famous French fur trader, to join the Americans. Linctot put himself at the head of a party of five hundred French and half-breed hors.e.m.e.n, who were of much a.s.sistance to Clark in his various movements after the capture of Vincennes. Meanwhile another large party, chiefly of Indians, a.s.sembled at Prairie du Chien in the British cause, led by three French traders, Hesse, Du Charme, and Calve.

They raided the upper Mississippi valley, capturing provisions intended for the Americans, and making a futile attack on the Spanish village of St. Louis, which was thought to be a.s.sisting Clark.

Despite these military operations in Wisconsin, the English fur trade continued in full strength, with headquarters upon the Island of Mackinac, but with French agents and boatmen, whose princ.i.p.al dwelling places were at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. Upon Lake Superior large canoes and bateaux were used; but upon Lake Michigan were three small sloops, the _Welcome_, the _Felicity_, and the _Archangel_, which carried supplies and furs for the traders, and made frequent cruises to see that the "Bostonians," as the French used to call the Americans, obtained no foothold upon the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

Just before the close of the war, the British commander at Mackinac Island, Captain Patrick Sinclair, held a council with the Indians, and for a small sum purchased for himself their claims to that island and to nearly all of the land now comprising Wisconsin. But the treaty of 1783, between the British and the Americans, did not recognize this purchase, and Sinclair found that he was no longer the owner of Wisconsin. It had become, largely through the valor of Clark, and the persistence of our treaty commissioners, a part of the territory of the United States.