History of Crawford and Richland counties, Wisconsin, Part 62

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899. [from old catalog]; Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company
Number of Pages: 1298

USA > Wisconsin > Richland County > History of Crawford and Richland counties, Wisconsin > Part 62
USA > Wisconsin > Crawford County > History of Crawford and Richland counties, Wisconsin > Part 62

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

privileges, and one grant of this kind would pave the way for another, and they must firmly deny all; that they must check the advance of the whites, for if one should go into their coun- try, others, like swarms of bees, would follow. They constantly begged for whisky, of which I had none.

I now proceeded on to Prairie du Chien, and there engaged in some little traffic. The place was much scattered, and sparsely settled; there were some fifty or sixty dwelling houses, and all the people could speak the English, French and Indian languages, and all imperfectly. 'There were perhaps three or four permanent traders located there, and, during the warm season of the year, some fifty or more would re- sort there, and late in the fall scatter abroad to their several trading stations on the upper Mis- sissippi and its numerous tributaries. This had been the custom for many years. I do not think there was an American resident at Prairie du Chien. The traders were polite and kind, and their hospitality was both general and generous; and while they drank freely, it was regarded as disgraceful to get drunk.

Mr. James Aird, a Scotch trader, had been thirty-seven years in the upper Mississippi coun- try, making Prairie du Chien generally his place of summer resort. Joseph Rolette, Antoine and Michael Brisbois, Francis Boutielle, Jean Baptiste St. Jean, Mons. Tiercourt, Mons. Ben- nette, Mons. Palen, and many others, were among the traders. All these traders had fam- ilies, and mostly by Indian wives; but Michael Brisbois had a fine French wife. In Brisbois' family was a beautiful girl named Fisher, whose parents,* carly settlers there, were dead; and Joseph Rolette was said to have married this young girl when she was only ten years of age. Rolette was regarded as the largest trader there, and reputed wealthy. The marriages of

the traders with squaws was without ceremony, and to last only for a single trading season. "The trader would make the engagement with the parents of the young squaw, to whom he would make liberal compensation; and by mak- ing a permanent marriage, the trader's business would be increased. When the trader renewed his engagement for his squaw wife for two or three years in succession, he generally then kept her for life.

I remained a few weeks at Prairie du Chien, and then returned without molestation to St. Louis, taking down a few skins and hides, but the trip was unprofitable. I learned, while at Prairie du Chien, that the people there had chiefly depended upon the traders bringing flour and other supplies from Mackinaw, but their remoteness from the older settlements, would now render it necessary to engage in farming, and raise large crops of wheat, and that ar- rangements were then making for that purpose. I thought it would be a good locality for a grist mill, and promised the people that I would erect one, for which there was sufficient water-power at Fisher's Coulee, four miles above Prairie du Chien. This promise was gratifying to them, as they had no mode of grinding except some- times to hitch a horse to a sweep, and grind on a small scale with a band and small stone; hence called a band-mill.

About June, 1816, I returned to Prairie du Chien with a large boat, and full load of mer- chandise and provisions, I then being but a common carrier for others. The post at Rock Island was then occupied, and commanded by Maj. Willoughby Morgan; this post was com- menced the previous year. On this visit, I be- lieve, I found a detachment of United States troops arrived at Prairie du Chien shortly be- fore me; perhaps from fifty to 150 in number, but I have forgotten the name of the command- ing officer. Their arrival was very unwelcome to the settlement generally. They were occupy- ing and repairing the okl fort on the bank of , the river, at the upper part of the town.

*When Capt. Piko visited Prairie du Chien in 1805, he speaks of Fisher as an American, and a prominent man of the place. He then had the title of captain and judge. and then filled those positions, as will elsewhere be shown, in this history.

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

Having discharged my load, I descended to Fevre river, as I had orders from St. Louis mer- chants to bring down lead from the traders in payment for goods they had purchased there. Reaching a point then known as Kettle Chief's prairie,* some little distance below where Cass- ville now is, perhaps fifteen or eighteen miles, I there met the traders upon whom I had the orders, and some 2,000 or 3,000 Indians congre- gated, holding a sort of jubilee just after their corn planting, swigging whisky, and invoking the blessing of the Great Spirit upon their crop. The traders requested me to go down to the mouth of Fevre river, and there await their sending the lead down; they were very anxious that I should take it down to St. Louis for them, and they had it piled up at the very spot where Galena now is. This I refused, as I could not consent to wait so long, and asked to go up with my boat. This request the Indians re- fused, saying that "the Americans must not see their lead mines," as they were particularly sus- picious of Americans, but did not cherish the same feelings towards Frenchmen, with whom they had been so long connected and associated. Speaking, as I did, the French as fluently as I did the English, the traders declared to the In- dians that I was a Frenchman, and all my boat- men, which was true, were French voyageurs; the Indians, with very little persuasion, con- sented that I might go to their smelting estab- lishments.

About 200 Indians jumped upon my boat, while others followed in canoes, and we pushed on to the spot. There was no Indian town there, but several encampments, and no trading estab- lishment. There were at least twenty furnaces in the immediate neighborhood; and the lead was run into plaques or plats, or flats, of about seventy pounds each. These flats were formed by smelting the mineral in a small walled hole, in which the fuel and mineral were mingled, and the liquid lead run out, in front, into a hole

scooped in the earth, so that a bowl shaped mass, of lead was formed therein. The squaws dug the mineral. and carried it in sacks on their heads to the smelting places. I loaded seventy tons of lead in my boat, and still left much at the furnaces. This was the first boat load of lead from Galena. The Indians had often pre- viously taken lead in small quantities in their canoes to Portage des Sioux and St. Louis, for purposes of barter.

In the course of that year, I made two trips in the trade to Prairie du Chien, and also trips in 1817-18 *- 19 and '20, making altogether nine trips. I am not certain that I took more than one other trip up Fevre river for a load of lead, for the traders, now making all their pur- chases at St. Louis, would carry down their own lead, and take back a new supply of goods suitable for the Indian trade. After the peace of 1815, and all was settled down again in quiet in the northwest, the channel of the Indian trade was completely changed, from Mackinaw, where it had so long centered, to St. Louis, as it was found far more accessible, and by this time there were several heavy establishments of mer- chandise selected with special reference to this trade.

In 1818 I built a grist-mill, as I had prom- ised, at Fisher's Coulee, four miles above Prai- rie du Chien. It had but a single run of stones, and eventually proved a source of expense to me, but a matter of great convenience to the people. Lieut. Col. Talbot Chambers went up to Prairie du Chien in 1817, in my boat, and as- sumed the command of the garrison. Col. Chambers loved to make a display, was fond of drinking freely, and was naturally tyrannical and over-bearing, and, when intoxicated, was desperate and dangerous. Once, when so in- flamed with liquor, he chased a young female

* Probably named after the Fox chief Kettle, who was killed, in 1830, by a war party of Sioux and Menomonees.

*In a letter dated at Prairie du Chien, June 5th, 1818, it is stated: ** Since you left this place, there have been several arrivals at different times from St. Louis, among whom were Mr. Boilvin, (who is now Indian agent, and civil magistrate, ) Col. McNair, Maj. Fowler, Mr. Shaw and Lient. (now cap- tuin Hickman and lady. In two hours after his arrival, Col. Chambers started for St. Louis; whether he will return, I do not know. Hickman now commands this post."

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into the house of Jacque Menard, with no good motive for doing so, when Menard reproached him; upon which Chambers ordered a file of twenty-five soldiers to tie him up, strip, and give him twenty-five lashes with a cat o' nine tails, well laid on.

While the preparations were making for carrying this inhuman order into effect, a son of Nicholas Boilvin, a bright and handsome youth of some ten years of age, ran up and com- menced crying and pleading in behalf of Me- nard, not wishing to see one of the citizens thus humiliatingly punished in public. After two or three blows were struck, Col. Chambers ordered the drummer to cease. Menard was a clever citizen,cultivated a large farm,and had a worthy family of quarter-bloods. Col. Cham- bers inflicted corporeal punishment in several instances, and finally, for cutting off both ears of one soldier, and one ear of another, was tried and cashiered, and then descended the Mississippi; went to Mexico, and joined the army there, and had risen to about the rank of colonel in that service, and was in the Mexican army at the surrender of the city of Mexico to Gen. Scott. It was in consequence of Col. Chambers' petty tyrannies, the civil law not be- ing much in force or very effectual, that I aban- doned all idea of settling at Prairie du Chien, and all the designs of improvement I had formed, and sold my mill at a sacrifice.

In 1819 I proceeded up Black river to the first fall, about six feet descent, and erected a saw mill on the southeastern bank of the stream. I had barely got it fairly going, when hundreds of Winnebagoes came there, in a starving con- dition, and importuned me incessantly for every- thing I had for eating or wearing purposes, and I was thus soon left without supplies, and re- turned to Prairie du Chien. The next spring I went up there again and found the Indians had burned the mill; I then rafted down a quantity of pine logs I had cut the previous year. These

were the first mills erected in western Wis- consin.

BY JAMES H. LOCKWOOD.

I was born in the town of Peru, Clinton Co., N. Y., Dec. 7th, 1793-and as the sequal will show, I have lived in the woods the most of my days. My father was a farmer, to which occu- pation I was raised until past the age of sixteen years. When I was between two and three years old, my father's house in Peru took fire and almost everything he possessed of a movable character, was consumed. Ile sold his farm, and about this period removed to the town of Jay, in the adjoining county of Essex, where he owned or obtained land. Ilere he made im- provements, and had good buildings, an orchard, and everything comfortable about him, when, about 1803, he got the Ohio fever. Ile sold his farm at a great sacrifice; but before he collected the money for it, he met a gentleman who had just returned from Ohio, who stated that though lands were cheap, and they could raise large crops of grain aud flocks of cattle with little labor, yet many of the settlers were obliged to go twenty or thirty miles to mill, and there was no market for their fine cattle and rich harvests, and that a farmer with a comfortable home was better off in the cold and unproductive region of northern New York, than in the fertile plains of Ohio without a market. These con- siderations dissuaded my father from removing to Ohio, and, in March, 1805, he settled in Champlain, Clinton Co., N. Y., where he pur- chased a farm, with a log dwelling and forty aeres of improvement.

Living thus on the frontiers, and removing from place to place, my educational advantages were very limited. But after moving to Champlain, the nearest school was at the village of Chazy, two and a half miles distant, whither I went pretty regularly for two or three winters. In that day and in a new country, to be able to read, write and cipher as far as the rule of three, was considered sufficient qualifications to teach a common school. I was ambitious to ob-

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tain a good education, and relaxed no efforts to be punctual in my attendance, although the dis- tance was great, and traveling through the deep snow was often very laborious. I read with avidity every book that chance threw in my way, or which I could obtain by borrowing in the neighborhood.

In the summer of 1808 I boarded at Cham- plain village, and attended the school taught by the late Dr. William Beaumont, who was then a student of medicine. Under his tuition I greatly improved myself in grammar, geogra- phy, etc., but at that early day I never saw a school atlas. Opportunities for attending better schools increased, and I continued alternately on the farm and at school until I was between sixteen and seventeen years of age, when I engaged in the study of the law. I, however, concluded that, from deficient early education and my native diffidence, I should never make a great lawyer, and my ambition protesting against a second or third rate position, I aban- doned the law as I then supposed, forever, and sought and obtained a situation as a merchant's clerk.

The merchant who employed me became the sutler to the Light Artillery regiment, then commanded by Col. Wm. Fenwick, and formed a part of Gen. Izard's army. This force com- menced its march from Plattsburgh to the west in August, 1814; and my employer having some business to transact in Plattsburgh, before his departure, sent me to attend to the sutling busi- ness, and I continued with the regiment until the campaign on the Niagara was over, and the troops retired into winter-quarters near Buffalo. In November my employer arrived, and taking offense at some of his acts, I demanded a settle- ment, and left him. I then engaged myself to a man named Fuller, sutler for Maj. Ball's two companies of dragoons, then cantoned near Avon, N. Y., on the Genesee river, where I re- mained doing little or nothing during the win- ter, as the dragoons, for some reason, were not paid off.

In April, 1815, I received a letter from the late Lewis Rouse * of Green Bay, a townsman of mine, dated at Buffalo, stating that he had obtained the sutling of the consolidated Rifle regiment, and desired my assistance. Having no need of my services, I left Mr. Fuller and repaired to Buffalo, and the stage which con veyed me carried flying colors announcing the news of peace.

Those of the troops enlisted for the war were now discharged, and those enlisted for five years retained; of the latter was the Rifle regiment, then understood to have been ordered to Detroit. As I had conducted Mr. Rouse's business principally, he wished ine to go with him, and desiring to see the country, I accepted his invitation. The troops having left Buffalo about the first of June, we sailed from that place on the 15th of that month, in the schooner Lady of the Lake, said to have been the best vessel then on the lakes and ar- rived at Detroit on or about the 10th of July. Here we found, that the regiment had been or- dered to Mackinaw.

Detroit was then an old French village, with the houses mostly covered with bark. Waiting here a few days for a vessel on which to pro- ceed to Mackinaw, we engaged passage about the 15th of July, on a crazy old schooner com- manded by Capt. Pearson, bound for Drum- mond's Island, with pork and hard bread for the British troops then stationed at that place. On board the vessel as a passenger was Ramsey Crooks, since so distinguished among the Rocky Mountain traders, then on his way to Mack- inaw, to receive the property of the Southwest Fur Company, which had been recently pur- chased by John Jacob Astor of New York. We found this old crazy vessel without any con- venience of table or provisions. Mr. Crooks

* Judge House was a native of Rouse's Point, on Lake Champlain, and settled at Green Bay about 1824. He was judge of the northwest judicial district while Wisconsin yet formed a part of Michigan Territory. He was a man of prom- inence in his day, and possessed many kind and gentlemanly qualities. Ile died suddenly at his residence, in Manitowoc. April 19th, 1855, at the age of sixty-three years. His sudden death was probably caused by apoplexy, as he was of plethorie habit, and weighed over 300 pounds.

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had come passenger on her from Buffalo, and the captain had promised him that he would lay in ample supplies at Detroit, but just as we had got under way from the latter port, Mr. Crooks went into the cabin and ascertained that the captain had failed to fulfill his engagement; and immediately he took the skiff, went ashore, and purchased dishes, knives, forks, spoons, and provisions, and we proceeded on our voyage. We were becalmed about ten days on the St. Clair river and flats, during which we went on shore and bought a sheep, which helped along with the rusty pork and hard bread. At that time, I had seen very little hardships, and I suf- fered much from such fare as hard bread and rusty pork.

We were almost a month from Detroit to Drummond's Island, where we found a trader named LaCroix, with a boat bound to Mack- inaw, and with him we engaged our passage. No provisions could be had at Drummond's Is- land, so we were obliged to depend on the roy- ageurs' kettle of corn soup, a new kind of fare to me, and, I believe, I ate but a few monthfulls from Drummonds Island to Mackinaw. We were two days reaching Mackinaw, where we arrived on the morning of the 15th of August. Once there and recruited, we had a new source of anxiety, in daily expecting the arrival of the paymaster, until the close of navigation; and then I had to content myself, as well as I could, until the ensuing spring of 1816. At the re- quest of some of the inhabitants, I concluded to open a school, as it would keep me from idle- ness; if my scholars did not learn much En- glish, I concluded I should stand a chance of ac- quiring some French; thus acting out the Yankee character of adapting one's self to cir- cumstances. And thus I spent the winter.

During the winter of 1815-16, Congress pass- ed an act excluding foreigners from partici- pating in the Indian trade within the limits of the United States or its territories. This was then supposed to have been done through the influence of Mr. Astor; and, upon the pur-

chase of the property of the SouthwestCompany, the American Fur Company re-appeared under the anspices of Mr. Astor, the headquarters of which were in Mackinaw.

Although Congress had passed a law ex- eluding foreigners from the Indian country, it was found that the trade could not be carried on without their aid, as most of the clerks, interpreters and boatmen were foreign- ers; and, in the summer of 1816, the secretary of the treasury of the United States, issued or- ders to the Indian agents on this frontier to license foreigners as interpreters and boatmen, on their giving bond with large penalties for their good conduct in the Indian country. Thus the British traders, who wanted to get into the Indian country, had only to employ an Ameri- can, to whom the goods were invoiced; and the license taken in his name, and the trader went as interpreter until they were beyond the Indian agencies, when the trader assumed the control of his property, and carried on his business as nsnal.

During the summer of 1816, it was projected to establish a United States fort at Green Bay; and, in July of that year, Col. John Miller, then colonel of the 3d regiment, United States In- fantry, was ordered on that service, and soon chartering three vessels, embarked three or four companies of rifle-men and infantry, with some artillery. Among the vessels was the Washing- ton, the largest of the fleet, commanded by Capt. Dobbins, on board of which vessel was the commandant. I had that year engaged my- self as a clerk to some traders, to take charge of an outfit or trading establishment near the head of the St. Peters river, and the colonel appre- hending difficulty from the Indians in landing at Green Bay, proposed to take the goods of several boats in the vessel, and tow the boats, and use them if necessary, in landing, and then return them to their owners.

Accordingly, Angustin Grignon, myself and a French clerk by the name of Chappin em- barked on board the Washington, Mr. Grignon

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and Chappin acting in some measure as pilots. During the night of the second or third day out from Macknaw, the two other vessels became separated from the Washington, and arriving in the vicinity of what is now called Washing- ton island and harbor, and learning from Mr. Grignon that there was a good harbor, Col. Miller ordered the Washington to put in there to wait for her consorts. We remained there nearly two days, during which time the officers and passengers rambled over the island, and finally, in honor of our vessel, supposed to be the first one that had entered the harbor, we gave its name to Washington island and har- bor, which they have ever since retained. Find- ing the other vessels had got into Green bay ahead of us, and had found a harbor at Ver- million island and were waiting for us, we proceeded up the bay, and arrived at Green Bay settlement about two days after, when the troops landed without the anticipated opposi- tion from the Indians. This was in the month of July, 1816.

Green Bay was a kind of traders' depot for the trade of that bay, the Fox and upper part of Wisconsin rivers, which were considered de- pendents of it. There then resided at Green Bay, as a trader, John Lawe, and four or five at the Grignon's. Augustin Grignon resided and traded atthe Little Kankalin. Those traders who pretended to make Green Bay their home, resided generally but a small portion of the year there, as most of them wintered in the In- dian country, and generally spent two or three months of the summer at Mackinaw. The tra- ders of Green Bay mostly married, after the Indian manner, women of the Menomonee tribe, there being no white women in the country. I saw at this time but one woman in the settle- ment that pretended to be white, and she had accidentally been brought there at an early day, but her history, however, I do not now recollect. There were at Green Bay some forty or fifty Canadians of French extraction who pretended to cultivate the soil; but they were generally

old, worn out voyageurs or boatmen, who, hav- ing become unfit for the hardships of the In- dian trade, had taken wives generally of the Menomonee tribe, and settted down on a piece of land. As the land did not cost anything, all they had to do was, to take up a piece not claimed by any other person, and fence and cul- tivate it. But they had generally been so long in the Indian trade that they had, to a great ex- tent, lost the little knowledge they had acquired of farming in Canada; so that they were poor cultivators of the soil, although they raised con- siderable wheat, barley, peas, etc. Green Bay was at that time a part of the territory of Indi- ana, of which the seat of government was at Vincennes, which was also the county town of the county to which Green Bay was attached- between 400 and 500 miles distant by the tedi- ous and circuitous route of that day.

There was an old Frenchman at Green Bay of the name of Charles Reanme, who could read and write a little, who acted as justice of the peace. He had been commissioned under George III., when Great Britain held jurisdic- tion over the country and after it was given up to the American government and attached to Indiana, he had been commissined by Gov. Har- rison,* and being thus donbly armed with com- missins, he acted under either as he found most convenient. The laws under which he acted were those of Parist and the customs of the Indian traders of Green Bay. He was very arbitrary in his decisions.

The county seat was so distant and difficult of access, that if a person felt himself aggrieved he preferred suffering injustice to going to the expense of an appeal; so that, practically, Reaume's court was the supreme court of the country. He took care not to decide against any of the traders who were able to bear the

Reaume received his commission as justice from Gov. * Harrison, of Indiana territory, which was probably not long after the organization of that territory in 1801. from which. till 1813, Gen. Harrison continued uniterruptedly its govern- or.

+ The code Coutume de Paris, the law of France, which governed Canada, and all the territory of the northwest while under the French dominion.

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HISTORY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY.

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History of Crawford and Richland counties, Wisconsin, Part 62

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899. [from old catalog]; Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog] Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company Number of Pages: 1298

Author: Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 1824-1899. [from old catalog]; Union publishing company, Springfield, Ill., pub. [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Springfield, Ill., Union publishing company
Number of Pages: 1298