USA > Wisconsin > Columbia County > A history of Columbia County, Wisconsin : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests > Part 7
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As remarked by the late A. J. Turner, who has made such valuable contributions to the history of Columbia County, "this region con- tinues to be the abode of straggling bands of them, from whose camps the descendants of De Korra, Yellow Thunder and Mi-ja-jin-a-ka (Dixon) annually depart for the blueberry plains and cranberry marshes to replenish their finances, to trap rats on the Neenah in season and indulge in fire water out of season, but give no evidence of 'passing away.' Lo is with us to stay."
THE PAYMENT OF 1914
About the only chance now to see the remnant of the once powerful Winnebago tribe resident in Columbia County is to be in Portage at the time of an annuity payment. Fort Winnebago is no more and the old Indian agency house is a farm building, but the hundred or so red men, women and papooses hang around the banks of the city for twenty- four or forty-eight hours after receiving their annuities. Probably the last chance at the public crib there occurred at their payment of March, 1914.
Pending the permanent settlement with the Indians of the United States an arbitrary allotment of $16,000 was granted to the Winne- bagoes of the district including Columbia County. As there are 1,285 Indians altogether included in the allotment, $12.45 was paid to each individual.
They came early in the morning, from all points of the compass,
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and the main street of Portage was soon a little panorama of present- day Indians. Groups of gray-haired Winnebagoes dressed like farmers; middle-aged women with red and blue shawls wrapped around them, sometimes bundling up a big faced stolid papoose; and stocky, bow- legged, black haired young men and bright girls with glistening braids down their backs, dressed neatly and becomingly, hung around chilly corners, apparently doing next to nothing with solid satisfaction. Ocea- sionally a couple of young sports would pass along the street, with up- to-date shoes, clothes, stick pins and all, and glance superciliously at the loungers, as they picked up their heels with the sprightliness of their young white brothers bound on countless pressing errands of pleasure and profit. Toward evening and far into the next day, the Bagoes were still gloating over the attractions of Portage, as if very loth to turn their steps toward their country homes; but they finally commenced to break ranks. The squaws came out of bakeries loaded with bread and cakes and looked up and down the street-evidently for the heads of families. By twos and threes the women and men straggled away to- ward the outskirts; sometimes a family intact, but more often paired off and segregated according to sex-men with men and women with women. It may be that this will be the last gathering of the Columbia County Winnebagoes. If it is, we wish them good luck, for, on the whole, they have been a credit to their race, and their leaders have furnished our white citizens with not a few examples of gentleness, courtesy and sustained strength of character which might well be emu- lated by all, irrespective of color or human family.
CHAPTER III
FIRST WHITE VISITORS
NICOLET AND COLUMBIA COUNTY-WHERE WAS THE MASCOUTEN VIL- LAGE ?- JOLIET AND MARQUETTE PASS THE PORTAGE-MEMORIAL AT THE PLACE OF CROSSING-HENNEPIN AT THE PORTAGE-LASALLE AND JONATHAN CARVER-VISITS OF UNITED STATES SOLDIERS-TRADERS AND CARRIERS.
Was Jean Nicolet, the great French explorer, the first white visitor to Columbia County, in 1643? Page upon page has been written on this question, most of the controversy raging around a sentence in the "Jesuit Relations" of 1640, which reads: "The Sieur Nicolet, who has penetrated the furthest into these so remote countries, assured me that if he had sailed three days further upon a large river which issues from this lake he would have reached the sea." The main point of the dis- pute hovers over the word "sea;" as to whether it means the large body of water we now know as the Wisconsin, or the Father of Waters, the Mississippi.
NICOLET AND COLUMBIA COUNTY
The weight of doubt is against the probability that Nicolet reached the Mississippi, but those who believe that he reached the portage be- tween the Fox and Wisconsin rivers in Columbia County, reason along the lines of that good authority and earnest man, the late A. J. Turner. In his "Family Tree of Columbia County" he says: "It is morally certain that he (Nicolet) did not depart from the Mascouten village, wherever located, to make an overland trip to some point on the Mississippi, when a much easier trip by water was at hand, which would have taken him through Columbia County. But even if he did make an overland journey, the trail from the Mascouten village would have taken him through Columbia County, for a well-defined Indian trail on the west bank of the Fox River to the Four Lakes region has Vol. I-3
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been known to exist for more than a century, and it has not been wholly obliterated to this day (written in 1904), I am assured by those who knew it well half a century ago."
WHERE WAS THE MASCOUTEN VILLAGE ?
Volumes have been written over the location of the Mascouten vil- lage visited by Father Dablon in 1670, and the one at which Father Allouez established a mission in May, 1672. It is reasonably certain that the mission was founded in the large village mentioned in the "Relations" of 1670-1, and placed on a map published in that volume as three leagues from the portage. In June of the following year (1673) Joliet and Marquette visited the Allonez mission en route to the Wis- consin and the Mississippi. Various historians have placed the village all the way from northern Winnebago County to northern Columbia County, one of the latest investigators being firm in his conviction that it was near Governor's Bend, town of Fort Winnebago, on the west bank of the Fox River, on Section 16-three French leagues from the portage, as Marquette had written.
At least, a discovery of September, 1903, seems to point to the fact that this locality had been visited by traders or Jesuits. At the time mentioned, James Kirwin, of Portage, while digging along the banks of the river, uncovered a sun dial similar to the one found near Green Bay in the previous year and which Secretary Reuben G. Thwaites, of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, says "may have belonged to some fur trader or missionary."
"So it seems to me," says Turner, "the most reasonable theory that the Mascoutens village first visited by Dablon in 1670 was but one of the smaller outlying ones, and that the main village where Allouez established a mission two years later, which was visited by Marquette in 1673, was where he located it, three leagues from the portage.
"If we may conclude then that such was the fact, we find there every condition referred to by Marquette. He says: 'As we ap- proached the Mashkoutons, the Fire Nation, I had the curiosity to drink the mineral waters of the river which is not far from the town.' Turn- ing aside from his ascent of the Fox he would, by running up the Nee- nah creek a little more than half a mile come to a famous spring on section 8 near Corning Station. Continuing his narrative Marquette wrote: 'I also took time to examine an herb, the virtue of which an Indian who possessed the secret had, with many ceremonies, made known to Father Alloues. Its root is useful against the bite of serpents, the Almighty having been pleased to give this remedy against a poison
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1303716
MARQUETTE VOYAGING TOWARD THE MISSISSIPPI
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very common in this country. I put some into my canoe to examine it at leisure while we went on our way toward Maskoutons where we arrived on the 7th of June. Here we are then at Maskoutons.' "The most famous spring in the Fox River valley, of which I have any knowledge-for I assume that the 'mineral waters of the river' of which Marquette speaks, are those of a spring or a rivulet discharged from a spring-is that above alluded to, near Corning Station. As it flows across the morass a few rods to discharge into the Neenah the medical herb, Gilliana Trifoliata, or Indian Snake Root, Marquette re- fers to as an antedote for the snake bite, will be found in abundance.
"It would seem that every traveler, who crossed the portage in early times, did so with an awe of the serpent, for I have never read one of their accounts in which the numerous serpens a sonnettes they saw were not abundantly referred to, although I believe none of them ever recorded any unhappy experiences with them beyond their disagreeable presence. At all events Marquette provided himself with the herb, as most fishermen do with something when they go into dangerous places inhabited by the tenants of the pool. So, fortified with herbs, Marquette returned to his canoe and proceeded on his way to the village 'not far away.' Reaching it he exclaims 'Here we are then, at Maskoutons.' There is no mention made of having to walk 'a short league' to reach it, as Dablon had, so one would conclude that it was situated on the immediate banks of the river.
"The fact is not to be overlooked that the village may have been on the Neenah instead of the Fox, for many of the earliest maps show the Neenah as a portion of the Fox, and the latter river from the junction of the two streams was considered as an affluent of the Fox, instead of a portion of it."
JOLIET AND MARQUETTE PASS THE PORTAGE
The arrival of Joliet, Marquette and his party at the village of the Mascoutens was on the 7th of June, 1673, and their departure on the 10th. Joliet represented the intendant of Canada and the king; Mar- quette, the Jesuits and the church. To the follower of St. Ignatius fell the task of recording secretary for the expedition. "We knew," wrote Father Marquette, "that there was, three leagues from Maskoutens, a river entering into the Mississippi; we knew, too, that the point of the compass we were to hold to reach it was west-southwest, but the way is so cut up by marshes and little lakes that it is easy to go astray, espe- cially as the river leading to it is so covered with wild oats that you can hardly discover the channel. Hence we had good need of our two
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Miami guides, who led us safely to a portage of 2,700 paces and helped us to transport our canoes to enter this river, after which they returned, leaving us alone in an unknown country in the hands of Providence.
"We now leave the waters which flow to Quebec, a distance of from four or five hundred leagues, to follow those which will henceforth lead us into strange lands. Before embarking we all began together a new devotion to the Blessed Virgin Immaculate, which we practiced every day, addressing her particular prayers, to put under her protec- tion both our persons and the success of our voyage. Then, after having encouraged one another we got into our canoes. The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing; it is very broad, with a sandy bot- tom forming many shallows which render navigation very difficult. It is full of vine-clad islets. On the banks appear fertile lands, diversified with wood, prairie and hill. Here you find oaks, walnut, whitewood, and another kind of tree with branches armed with thorns. We saw no small game or fish, but deer and moose in considerable numbers."
Several days after leaving the village of the Mascoutens, Joliet and Marquette, with their Indian guides, crossed the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, and about June 14, 1673, launched their canoes on the broad bosom of the Wisconsin, and started on their his- toric voyage which resulted in New France and the vast expansion of interior America.
MEMORIAL AT THE PLACE OF CROSSING
Waubun Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, which has achieved so much historically, commemorated the event May 9, 1902, by planting trees at either end of the portage, or Wauona. But neither the Marquette Tree nor the Joliet Tree seemed to thrive, and three years later the chapter presented the city of Portage with a fitting me- morial of red granite, rockfaced except on one side where this inscrip- tion appears: "This tablet marks the place near which Jacques Mar- quette and Louis Joliet entered the Wisconsin river, June 14, 1673. Erected by Waubun Chapter, D. A. R., 1905."' The monument stands at the intersection of Bronson and Wisconsin streets, in the southern part of the city of Portage.
The memorial to Marquette and Joliet was unveiled on the 19th of October, the anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis, always ob- served by the Daughters of the American Revolution with significant exercises of some kind. Rain interfered with out-of-door exercises, but the court room was filled with local and state celebrities, and from
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the addresses of a number of eloquent speakers we select the following striking words uttered by Dr. Frederick J. Turner, then of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin ; "not only did religion enter the Mississippi valley with the advent of Marquette but in the presence of Joliet at Portage the power of France, the greatest nation of the time under Louis XIV, the great monarch, passed into the Mississippi valley. Already in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, France had laid claim to rights over the river system of which the Indians had made report, but which as yet had not been explored. But now in the person of these daring wanderers France justified her claims to one of the greatest and richest regions of the globe-a domain for which in later years England, Spain and the United States contended by diplomacy and by arms, until another Frenchman, the antithesis of Marquette, the great Napoleon, gave the Louisiana territory to the United States
"Joliet was the' leader of the expedition, the bearer of the 'sword of the flesh,' but Marquette, gentle, courageous, enduring, the bearer of the 'sword of the spirit,' was its hero. With the energy of the man of action he had the ideals of the poet, the devotion of the saint. He per- sonified the highest type of the discoverer, the man who carries into the darkness of the wilderness, into the utter night of savagery, the light of spiritual civilization. Loyalty to duty, courage, aspiration for the highest things, were Marquette's. Over two hundred years have passed since the frail priest trod this portage path. Six generations of men have passed here since then. But in all these years no man at Portage has struck a higher note of devotion and loftier ideals than the first man who trod the ground where now we stand.
"Wisconsin has fittingly honored his memory by placing his statue in the national capital. He was one of the choice spirits driven by a divine discontent with the narrow confines of things about him, to widen the horizon, to push haek the unknown, to add new realms for the human spirit. And while he followed the gleam into empires hitherto unknown, he left undone no humble service to the lowliest of the savages to whom he ministered. Burning as was his ambition to find new lands, his consecration to the daily duty was no less ardent.
"When we mark this spot we honor a man as well as an event. We testify our veneration for those whose lives spell service to their fellow men."
HENNEPIN AT THE PORTAGE
Not many years elapsed after the visit of Joliet, Marquette and their companions to the portage, before the narrow neck of land be-
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tween the Fox and Wisconsin rivers was again crossed by civilized man. In 1680 Louis Hennepin, a Recollet friar, and his party, as a detail from La Salle's expedition to the Illinois, reached the portage. He was on his way from the upper Mississippi to the Great Lakes, passing up the Wisconsin and down the Fox River, on his way to Green Bay, and speaks of it thus: "After we had rowed about seventy leagues upon the river Ouisconsin, we came to the place where we were forced to carry our canoe for half a league. We lay at this place all night and left marks of our having been there by the crosses which we cut in the bark of the trees. Next day, having carried our canoe and the rest of our little equipage over this piece of land, we entered upon a river which makes almost as many meanders as that of the Illinois at its rise."
LA SALLE AND JONATHAN CARVER
La Salle and his party made the portage in 1683, on his way to the Mississippi, and in 1766, Jonathan Carver, a noted English traveler, passed it from the East on his way to St. Anthony Falls, on the far upper Mississippi. After describing the Fox River, Winnebago Lake, and all the Indian tribes along his course, he says: "The carrying place between the Fox and Ouisconsin rivers is in breadth not more than a mile and three-quarters, though in some maps it is so delineated as to appear to be ten miles. Near one-half of the way between the rivers is a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass; the rest of it, a plain with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon. I observed here a great number of rattle snakes. I observed that the main body of the Fox River came from the southwest, that of the Ouisconsin from the northeast; and also that some of the small branches of the two rivers, in descending into them, doubled within a few feet of each other, a little to the south of the carrying place. That two such rivers should take their rise so near each other and, after running such differ- ent courses, empty themselves into the sea at a distance so amazing is an instance scarcely to be met in the extensive continent of North America."
VISITS OF UNITED STATES SOLDIERS
Major S. H. Long paid the portage a visit both in 1817 and 1823, being the head of a Government expedition of exploration and discovery. In 1819 the Fifth Regiment of United States Infantry made the portage on its way from Fort Howard to Fort Crawford, and its commander, Capt. Henry Whiting, says in one of his reports: "The portage
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between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers is abont 2,500 yards; the road runs over a marshy prairie. There is a Frenchman (Francis Le Roy) residing on the rising ground between the rivers. He keeps the proper transportation for boats and baggage. The limestone bluffs and high- lands begin on the Wisconsin about eight miles below the portage."
In 1826 a flotilla of thirty-five boats carrying the Third United States Infantry from Green Bay to St. Louis, passed the portage, and in the following year General Cass came that way during his voyage of investigation to ascertain the feeling among the Winnebagoes toward the United States Government.
TRADERS AND CARRIERS
Enterprising and well-known fur traders from Green Bay were also familiar with the portage and with the Fox and Wisconsin rivers in Columbia County. But long before, even prior to the opening of the nineteenth century, a number of French Canadians and half-breeds, with a few of fairly pure Italian blood, located at or near the portage to assist in the land transportation between the two rivers, to supply provisions to travelers or to trade with anybody who came along. Some of them lived in the vicinity for years; others were mere adventurers and rovers.
The first to appear on the ground were Laurant Barth and family, French Canadians who had passed the winter of 1792-3 on the St. Croix River of Northern Wisconsin. On his return to Canada, in the spring of 1793, Barth stopped at the portage and obtained permission from the Indians to transport goods at the carrying place. On his arrival he built a cabin there, the first to be erected by a white man in Columbia County. Its location was on the low land between the Fox and Wisconsin, probably within the present limits of Portage southeast of the canal. In the following year to avoid the high-water floods he removed to higher ground and continued the transportation business in a small way for a number of years.
Soon after the arrival of Barth, came the famous old Indian chief, De Korra, who founded a village for his Winnebago followers about eight miles above the portage on the east side of the Fox River, in what is now Section 10, town of Fort Winnebago. Its side afterwards be- came known as Waggoner's Bluff.
In 1798 came John Lecuyer, a brother-in-law of De Korra, who improved upon Barth's declining enterprise. The pioneer transporter of boats and goods had used but a single horse and cart; but, after ob- taining anthority from the Winnebagoes, Lecuyer bought several teams
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and wagons. About 1803 the latter bought, as he supposed, all of Barth's rights in the business, but afterward found that they covered only the west end of the portage. After some trouble with Barth's sons who held the east end to the route, Lecuyer died in 1810, and his widow continued the business until the War of 1812. Her son-in-law, Francis Le Roy, of Green Bay, then assumed the enterprise, and about the same time the elder Barth died, he having removed to Prairie du Chien.
As we have seen, Le Roy was still at the portage in 1819, and there he continued in business for several years longer. When the Fifth U. S. Infantry called upon his transportation outfit in that year, he was charging $10 for taking a boat from one river to another, and fifty cents per one hundred pounds of goods.
During the years of which we have been writing the portage was a point of consequence as a trading post. Barth kept no goods for sale to the Indians after he had disposed of the remnant of stock which he brought from the St. Croix, but Lecuyer always kept a considerable variety.
But although it had been evident for many years that sometime there was to be a growing and stable settlement at the portage, it was not until the building of Fort Winnebago and the assurance of safe residence in the locality that real settlers-men of stable character and of constructive value to the community-commenced to look upon Columbia County as a fit abiding place for white people and their families.
CHAPTER IV
INDIAN WARS AND THE FORT
THE WINNEBAGO UPRISING-THE PURSUIT OF RED BIRD VOLUNTARY SURRENDER OF THE CHIEF-THE MAGNIFICENT RED BIRD-BEGS NOT TO BE PUT IN IRONS-RED BIRD GIVES AWAY HIS LIFE-DE KORRA AS RED BIRD'S HOSTAGE-FORT WINNEBAGO AND "A PARTY NAMED ASTOR"-THE COMING OF MAJOR TWIGGS-GROUND BROKEN FOR THE FORT-COMPLETED-AMUSEMENTS AT THE POST-NOTED MEN AND WOMEN AT THE FORT-LIEUTENANT AND MRS. VAN CLEVE- HENRY MERRELL-EVACUATED-FINAL. DISSOLUTION.
The Winnebago and Black Hawk wars were of much importance to Columbia County, albeit neither murders nor military engagements occurred within its boundaries. Each covered but a few months of time, but the Winnebago uprising under Red Bird called forcible atten- tion to the exposed condition of settlers and travelers in Southern Wis- consin along the Fox and Wisconsin valleys and hastened the con- struction of the fort at the portage, while the hostilities of the Sacs under Black Hawk raged all around Winnebago and so threatened the security of Southern Wisconsin that the national government felt obliged to crush all Indian pretensions forever. The final result of Black Hawk's defeat was apparent within a few years by the session of all the lands east of the Mississippi held by the really dangerous tribes. Within a few months after Black Hawk was crushed at the battle of the Bad Axe, in August, 1832, the General Government commenced its surveys of Wisconsin lands in earnest.
The lands lying east and south of the Wisconsin River were sur- veyed in 1832, 1833 and 1834, and were placed in two land districts -- the offices were at Green Bay and Mineral Point, Columbia County fall- ing within the Green Bay District. Public sales of the surveyed lands were held in 1835, the first land entries for this section of the state being made in the following year.
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THE WINNEBAGO UPRISING
As stated, the result of the Winnebago and Black Hawk wars to Columbia County was to make it habitable to pioneers of settled and industrious habits. Yet there are certain phases of both uprisings which are of intense interest. In the case of the Winnebago uprising of June-August, 1827, the most dramatic episode, the surrender of Red Bird to Maj. William Whistler, who commanded the Government troops at the portage, belongs to the history of Columbia County. The conflicts between the Chippewas and Winnebagoes in the early part of the year, and the murder of the Gagniers, father and child, in June, by Red Bird, We-Kaw and another Indian, occurred in the Mississippi Valley, the latter near Prairie du Chien. The attack, a little later, led by Red Bird and his drunken band upon the boats returning from Fort Snelling, whither they had taken goods and provisions for the gar- rison, occurred at the mouth of the Bad Axe River in Vernon County, not far from Black Hawk's defeat five years afterward.
Great was the alarm at Prairie du Chien when the bullet-riddled boats arrived, two dead and several badly wounded being stowed away out of sight and protected from the desecration of the savages. An express was immediately sent to Galena and another to Fort Snelling, while messengers were dispatched to General Atkinson at Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis) and to Major Whistler, at Fort Howard. The people near Prairie du Chien left their houses and farms and crowded panic-stricken into the dilapidated fort.
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