History of Buffalo County Wisconsin 10847607, Part 13

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168

THE INDIANS.

to plunder and to kill cattle among the white settlers near Fort Ripley. The agent wanted to arrest the chief, but the latter was inclined to fight.

Commissioner Dole from Washington, then at St. Paul, ob- tained two companies of volunteers and advanced to Fort Ripley, where he held several councils with the chief, without any further result than dividing the Indians, and thus diminishing the strength of Hole-in-the-day.

The chief, seeing that his support had melted away, restored his plunder and delivered. up his war-club, as a token of peace. He even offered Gen. Pope the whole force of his tribe against the Sioux, but the offer was not accepted. It has always been a policy of insufficient measures, what the government did in such cases, more calculated for the profit of interested parties, than the benefit of the people at large. This refusal to employ Indians against Indians, when every man detained in Minnesota was needed at the front against the rebellion, is a striking instance of conscientious scruples not much. in harmony with com-

mon sense. The government not always did, nor could it do, what its agents found politic to promise to the Indians in concluding a treaty; but who was to blame for that ? Certainly not those who suffered from Indian outbreaks, and that the one of the . Sioux was the fault of the government can hardly be denied, inasmuch as it had withdrawn all the safeguards against its occur- rence. But why should not the merciless Sioux be punished to the full. extent ? And the gratification of the ancient grudge of the Chippewas against them could have been the only adequate means for punishing the treacherous nation, and to teach them the lesson they needed so much. But an annihilated tribe would no longer need an agency, and the party, expecting to be in it soon again, would lose an opportunity to place a number of adherents into comparatively lucrative positions, and to retain them in their ranks for partisan services in the expectation of that remunera- tion .. .

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The earliest discoveries in the Mississippi Valley had no rela- tion to the northern parts of it. As far as they formed a basis for claims made by European powers to the ownership or possession of the great river, they must be considered in the chapter on " Political History."

Later discoveries directly in and about our own part of. the valley must be related in this and every similar history. To do this I consider the best plan to be the biographical one, since these discoveries were the direct result of individual explorations, not- withstanding the fact, that they were carried on by order, or under the protection, of the French Government, at that time represented by the governor of Canada. The biographies of Nicolet, Mar- quette and Joliet, Hennepin, Du Luth, Perrot and Le Sueur and Capt. Carver, will give the history of the explorations, and at the same time satisfy a laudable curiosity in regard to the further life - of these men,

JEAN NICOLET.

This man, to whom unquestionably belongs the honor of hav- ing been the first white man who set foot upon the soil of Wiscon- sin, and penetrated to the very center of it, was born in Cherbourg, in the province of Normandy of the kingdom of France, and came to Quebec in the year 1618. Samuel Champlain, the founder and governor of New France, with his profound insight into affairs, and likewise into human nature, had as early as 1615 sent some young Frenchmen of his colony among the surrounding Indian tribes or nations, to stay with them, to learn their language, acquire and adopt their mode of life, or, as we now would say, to study them thoroughly, at the same time to learn also all that could be found .out about the country, the land and water, and the ways and ·means of traveling, and of trading in the places they visited, and for the time inhabited. Nicolet was added to the number of these young men and the station assigned to him was with the Algon- ¿quins on Allumette Island in the Ottawa River, These islands,

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for there seem to have been two, were situated about halfways be- tween the St. Lawrence River, and Lake Nipissing, which, how- ever, has no connection with Ottawa River, but was then reached by going up a tributary and making a portage between it and the lake. The Algonquins of the Isles were an important nation, for they commanded the passage between the upper lakes and the St. Lawrence, which on account of being much. shorter, and not ex- posed to the incursions of the Iroquois, must be kept open at all hazards, and it was of vital interest to the young French colony to keep on good terms with them. Nicolet remained with them for two years. He acquired great influence among them, as may be judged from the fact that he went with four hundred of these sav- ages upon a mission of peace to the Iroquois and the mission was successful, he returning in safety. Afterward he took up his resi- dence among the Nipissings, who adopted him into their nation, and among whom he remained eight or nine years. The notes or memoirs written by him were afterwards presented to one of the missionaries, (Jesuits) who undoubtedly made good use of it for the order. It is immaterial. for our purpose, whether he visited Quebec during his long residence among the Nipissings, but he was not at that place, when in 1629 the English took possession of it, and occupied it until 1632. It appears, however, that in the sum- mer of 1632, when the French resumed possession, Nicolet came down to Trois Rivieres, then the camping place of the nations from the upper country at their annual trading voyage. There was not any town or even fort at the place then. He remained on the St. Lawrence as a clerk and interpreter in the service of the Hundred Associates or of Governor Champlain. The governor having in the course of time, and. partly during. his military excursion against the Iroquois, learned many things of countries, lakes and nations, beyond the limits of the country so far explored by missionaries and others, and among other things he had heard of the nation of the Winnebagoes. He determined to extend the influence of his power to this distant nation, of whose whereabouts he had no de- finite ideas, but who sometimes carried on war against nations of his acquaintance. For this purpose he selected, and as the event proved very judiciously, his protege Jean Nicolet. Nicolet accor- dingly went up the Ottawa River to-the Algonquins thence to his nation of Nipissings and from these to the Hurons whose station

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EARLY EXPLORATIONS.

nebagoes agreed to keep the peace with the Hurons, the Nez Perces of the Lakes and probably some other tribes. They were, of course, instructed in the advantages to be derived from com- mercial intercourse with the young colony, of which they received the first instalment in the shape of presents distributed by the am- bassador. But this was not sufficient for Nicolet's ambition. He ascended Fox River to Lake Winnebago, and thence entered the river again above the lake and proceeded to the Mascoutins, a na- tion which had become known to the French by having 1615 been in war with the nations of the Neutrals and Ottawas in Canada. Among the Mascoutins he heard of the Wisconsin River, but the accounts given him of this tributary of the Mississippi seem to have been very confused. His report on his return to Canada, is claimed to have been that he was within three days journey to the Great Sea, of which even then, one hundred and forty years after the discovery of America, no nation seems to have had any precise knowledge. That he did not believe any such thing may be in- ferred from the fact that he did not proceed any further in that direction, which he certainly would have done, had he believed what he is said to have reported, since a journey of three days only, seems a trifle compared with what he had already aecom- plished. But prudence forbade the embassador of the governor, what the ambition and the audacity of the explorer might have at- tempted. He had done his work and had done it well, but to secure its results he had to return, to acquaint the nations on his way of the peace concluded, and to report to the governor .. This he did. In the spring of 1635 he departed with his seven dusky com- panions from the Winnebagoes, reversing the course he had steered before, came up to Mackinaw and along the south shores of Mani- toulin Island to the Ottawas who had made their home thereon, from which place he proceeded to the Hurons, to which tribe or nation his companions belonged. He returned to Quebec by way of French River, Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa River, journeying in the lower end of his return voyage with the savages upon their annual trading voyage to the French settlements.

There were some disputes in regard to the time of Nicolet's mission, and most books, (schoolbooks especially), say that it hap- pened in 1639, but there are abundant proofs that he went out. in 1634 and returned in 1635, having been absent about ten months

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or perhaps one year. These proofs have too remote a bearing upon the subject of this present work, but they can be found most dis, tinctly exposed and stated in the work of Prof. C. W. Butterfield, of Madison, Wis., entitled " History of the Discovery of the North- west by.John Nicolet in 1634, with a Sketch of his Life." I ack. nowledge my indebtedness to this work for the above sketch of Nicolet's performances upon Wisconsin soil, and his journey to it and return. A few passages I have copied in the course of the narrative. The reader may reasonably be curious about the fur- ther fortunes of the bold adventurer. He returned to his old posi- tion of clerk and interpreter and was married in October 1637 at Quebec to Marguerite Couillard, a god-child of Champlain. He resided at Trois Rivieres (Three Rivers) where his only child, a daughter, was born. In 1642 he was called to Quebec to take the place of his brother-in-law Mons. Olivier le Tardiff, who was Gen- eral Commissary (Chief Clerk) of the Hundred Partners, and who sailed for France on the seventh day of October of that year. Nicolet was drowned on the 27th of the same month below Sillery in the St. Lawrence River. He accompanied Mons. de Savigny from Quebec to Trois Rivieres for the purpose of rescuing a pri- soner taken by a band of Algonquins, who were slowly torturing him. Near Sillery a squall upset the boat and Nicolet and three others, unable to swim, sank after. having clung to the boat for some time. They were near shore, but the pitchy darkness pre- vented their knowing it. Mons. de Savigny being an expert swim- mer saved his life. Nicolet's death under the circumstances may be considered a heroic end of a heroic life, but his loss was deeply . felt and lamented not alone by his countrymen, but as much, and perhaps more, by the Indians of the neighborhood.

We know of two of his brothers, Pierre, a navigator, and Gil- les, a priest of the.secular ordination, that is, belonging to no reg- ular order of ecclesiastics. Pierre returned to France some time after Nicolet's death; Gilles Nicolet, the priest, returned to the same country in 1647.

His daring expedition to Green Bay had opened the road for the fur-trader, the voyageur and the missionary to the Far West, and even before his death, in 1641, the Jesuit fathers received an invitation to occupy the country "around a rapid, in the midst of the channel by which Lake Superior empties into Lake Huron,"

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I conclude with the words of Prof. Butterfield: History can: not refrain from 'saluting Nicolet as a disinterested traveler, who, by his explorations in the interior of America, has given clear proofs of his energetic character, and whose merits have not been disputed, although they were temporarily forgotten." ·

MARQUETTE AND JOLIET.

We have seen in the history of Nicolet that even under the first governor of New France, the renowned Champlain, there was a strong desire to explore the country west of the Great Lakes and more especially the great river of the Far West, of which at the time the name. even was unknown. The discoverers of those latter times seem to have labored under the same delusions which had possessed the mind of Columbus, and to have expected at every considerable step westward to meet the people described by Marco Polo, Rubriqui and other travelers of past centuries, the Tartars and the Chinese. 'Every river of which they received any information was sure to flow into the South Sea, the mysterious ocean of which they knew that it was on the eastside of Asia, but of whose situation and extent they had but vague notions. As early as 1670 La Salle had traveled in that direction and had dis- covered the Ohio and the Illinois. The intendant of the colony under Governor Courcelles, whose name was Talon, had in 1669 sent out two parties, one furnished by the Jesuit Seminary of Quebec, the other by La Salle. They did not proceed by the usual route already described, that is by the Ottawa River, but ascended the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario, from which they went to the Seneca village. Owing to different adverse circumstances they could get no guide to the Ohio, and were in danger of being killed. They left for an Iroquois colony at the head of Lake Ontario, which they reached on the twenty-fourth of September and there La Salle received the present of a Shawano prisoner; who told them, that the Ohio could be reached in six weeks. They were about setting out when they met with Louis Joliet, who by the orders of Talon had been up at Lake Superior to dis .. cover and explore the copper-mines. He had failed in the at- tempt and was now returning. He showed the priests a map of such parts of the Upper Lakes as he had visited and gave them a copy of it. By this and by other representations he induced the. Seminary party to change their plan, and La Salle protested in

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the way to the waters of the Wisconsin. The guides were readily furnished and on the tenth the Frenchmen embarked again with two Indians to conduct them. . All the town assembled to witness their departure and to marvel at their daring to undertake an en- terprise so hazardous. The river twisted among lakes and marshes choked with wild rice, and they had great need of their guides. Finally they reached the portage. After carrying their canoes a mile and a half over prairie and marsh they launched them on the . Wisconsin, and, bidding farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, committed thomselves to those that were to bear them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, per- haps to the South sea, or the Gulf of California.

The season of high water for the Wisconsin River was past, and this voyage was quiet and regular. Finally they came to the point where the meadow stretched away indefinably between bluffs, near the place where now stands, and where perhaps even then stood the first rudimentary beginnings of the city of Prairie du Chien. They knew nothing of it, and could not perceive it, and with the singular directness which characterizes this remarkable expedition, they passed on -until their canoes shot out upon the whirling eddies of the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Missis- sippi. They do not appear to have entertained any desire to ascend the large river, perhaps they had no instructions to that effect, at any rate they began to descend. Game and fish abounded and Joliet's experience as a woods-man manifested itself in the precautions observed with regard to the night-camps. They landed in the evening built a fire, cooked and ate their supper and then de. scended some leagues further, anchoring in the stream and having one man keeping guard during the night. Nobody was met, un- til one day they discovered foot-prints and landed. Marquette and Joliet went along a track which finally brought them to a village of the Illinois Indians, in what is now either Missouri or Iowa, on the west bank of the river, some distance from it. This commu- nity dwelt in surprising security, and the travellers had to shout to make their presence known. They were well received, and as the Illinois were of the Algonquin stock, Marquette, and most prob. ably Joliet also, was able to converse with them, and they were most honorably entertained according to the fashion of the people. It would be tedious to describe the proceedings, but after some

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days the travelers bade farewell to these friendly Indians, of whom almost the entire tribe had followed them to the river. After a while they passed the mouth of the Illinois River and soon after the rocks worn by the changes of temperature and weather into what seemed to be .Ruined Castles, by which name they were designated by Marquette on his map and on many . maps after him. The place is between Grafton and Alton in Illinois. Before. they reached the site of the latter city, and before the rocks began to depart from the river in a southeastern' direction they met, what seemed to them pictures of his Satanic 'Majesty, though in them- selves these pictures were inoffensive enough, "as pictures usually happen to be. It was not very long afterward that the pictures were almost effaced, and as the copies made by Marquette were lost, and he was accused of exaggeration by subsequent travelers of his own cloth, it is not material what the pictures were. A few miles further south the travelers met something more substantially alarming, the muddy and turbulent waters of the Missouri, carry- ing trees and stumps along, and mixing with the clear and placid waters of the river on whichthey had come down so far. Soon after they passed the shelving hights on"which the city of St. Louis is now located, probably then covered with a dense forest. As they proceeded, the heat became more intensive, and after they had pas- sed the mouth of the Ohio the temperature became almost unen- durable. Innumerable swarms of mosquitoes tormented .them by day and night, and there was little rest for any of the travelers. They had been led to believe from what they had learned of the Illinois Indians, that'they were much nearer to the mouth of the river than they really were and expected to see the gulf very soon. Near the mouth of the Arkansas"River they met the next Indians and were at first threatened, but soon safe. These people belonged to the Akanseas, which some have considered as a branch of the Illinois Algonquins. . The fact that Marquette had to make use of ;a stranger who happened to be present, and who understood some Illinois, puts this assumption into a doubtful position. In the :second town of the same nation the conversation depended on the same conditions, and as the interpreter was more competent it was more animated, but the necessity of the interpreter is expressly mentioned. From these Indians the travelers learned that it was dangerous to proceed any further. Though similar warnings had

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once or twice been given before without intimidating them or stopping their progress, they now concluded to return. They had learned that some of the Indians in the lower country were trading with the Spaniards, or with tribes who had received guns and ;horses from that nation, and they were naturally afraid of losing the fruits of their arduous labors by being either killed by the savages, or made prisoners by the Spaniards. Accordingly they commenced to ascend the river on their return voyage on the seventeenth of July, just about one month after having begun to descend it. They had established one fact to their own satis- faction, that is, that the Mississippi did not discharge its waters into the Atlantic or Virginia Sea, nor into the Gulf of California or the Vermillion Sea, but into the Gulf of Mexico. Their upward · voyage was slow and tedious, and Marquette expecially was almost exhausted by the climate and an attack of dysentery. At length they reached the Illinois, where the current was less rapid and the country in every.respect more pleasant, especially as the hottest part of the summer was almost past .. They stopped at a town of the Illinois Indians which Marquette calls Kaskaskia, a name afterwards transfered to another locality. Here they were offered guidance and probably further assistance, enabling them to reach Lake Illinois, now Lake Michigan. They went to the lake, and, coasting along reached Green Bay at the end of September, hav- ing paddled their canoes more than two thousand five hundred miles in about four months. Marquette was obliged to remain on account of his feeble health, but Joliet went to Quebec; to report -the result of his expedition to Count Frontenac. After having been favored with more than common good luck during all his voyage he was nearly drowned in the St. Lawrence River at the rapids of La Chine whereby two of his men and a boy were lost, and also all of his papers. It seems, however, that Marquette made also maps and reports probably incorporating both in the " Relations," which according to the rule of his orders he had to make at stated times to his superiors. After some consideration I have come to think it a little suspicious, that Joliet met with his accident and lost his papers, never attempting any restoration of them, though as a surveyor probably quite competent to do so, while Marquette, who had the reputation of a linguist and a preacher, on this occasion turns up as a cartographer, and reporter

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the coast of Labrador in the employ of a company formed: for whale and seal fishery. He was made royal pilot of the. St. Law- rence and hydrographer of Quebec. It is supposed that he died poor in 1699 or 1700 and was buried on one of the Mignon islands, which lie north of Anticosti near the main land. .

Like those of Nicolet, so were Joliet's services forgotten, and his fame partially eclipsed by that of his companion, and some- what tainted by his subserviency to the Jesuit factions, which in- volved ungratefulness to Count Frontenac. The labors of Shea in this country and Margry in France have rescued his fame from oblivion.

Father Jaques Marquette, S. J.

Marquette was born in 1637 of an old and honorable family at Laon in the north of France. He joined the Jesuits at the age of seventeen, his motives being purely religious. In 1666 he was sent to the mission of Canada, where his first station was at Tadousac on the Lower St. Lawrence, where he studied the Montagnais language, a branch of the Algonquin. In 1668 he was sent to the Upper Lakes, where he remained until his voyage with Joliet. He was for some time at Esprit the station of Allouez at the Apostle Islands, afterwards at Green Bay, then again at Point St. Ignace, '

' from which he started, but to which he never returned. We have seen that at the termination of the voyage of discovery he stayed, or had to stay, at Green Bay, where his malady still continued.to trouble him, until about a year after his return he felt himself well enough, and was permitted by his superiors, to return to the Illi -. nois river and nation. During his stay at Green Bay he must have written his report of the expedition and made those maps, which. were afterwards published as his. He himself never published anything, and if in the report published as his there was anything calculated to throw his companion into the shade, we may excul- pate himself entirely. On . the twentyfifth of October Marquette set out with two Frenchmen, named Pierre and Jaques, one of whom had been with him on his great journey of discovery, and a .. small band of Pottawatamies and one similar one of Illinois In- dians. They followed the east shore of Green Bay, made the por- tage at Sturgeon Cove, now Sturgeon Bay, to the lake and thence proceeded southwards. . The lake was stormy and they consumed more than a month in coasting along the western shore. They ..

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History of Buffalo County Wisconsin 10847607, Part 13

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