History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 3

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper
Number of Pages: 1318

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The true history of Wisconsin begins with the coming of the French, who in 1634 sent their first representative to its shores. The period of French occupation was nominally about a century and a quarter ; in reality it lasted somewhat less than one hundred years, as more than twenty years elapsed before the first discoverer was followed by others. The real exercise of French sovereignty began in 1671 when St. Lusson at the Sault Ste. Marie took possession in the name of Louis XIV "of all other countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries, contiguous and adjacent thereunto (to the Sault and Lakes Huron and Superior), as well discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the Northern and Western Seas and on the other side by the South Sea including all its length and breadth." ?

The French domination of the area we now know as Wisconsin was exercised from the lower St. Lawrence Valley and was directed by the court at Versailles, where paternalism was the fashion, and where the smallest details of administration were decided by the highest powers of the kingdom. It may thus be said that Wisconsin during the French period was ruled directly by the French monarch. Every appointment of a petty officer of the Canadian army to command a log fort by one of Wisconsin's waterways had to be endorsed by the King; every little skirmish with the Indian tribesmen, every disagreement between soldiers and traders had to be reported by the Canadian authorities to the Royal Council, and await its dictum for settlement. Even the power of the governor of New France was frequently overruled by dictation from the Court of France, and orders for the governance of his subjects in Wisconsin were discussed in the presence of the greatest monarch of Europe.

The French domination came to an abrupt end when in the course of the Seven Years' War, Montreal, including all the upper province of New France, surrendered to the arms of England. The last French garrison left Wisconsin in 1760 by the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, and the next year an English detachment took possession of Green Bay and made Wisconsin a constituent part of the British empire. Thus it remained until the close

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

of the American Revolution. During the first years of the English possession, the Upper Country was ruled by the military authorities at Fort Edward Augustus (Green Bay), and Mackinac, subject to the commander-in-chief of the American armies, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department. After 1774 Wisconsin was a part of the Province of Quebec.

British sovereignty in Wisconsin fell with the treaty of Paris in 1783, which transferred to the new American nation the land south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi. The British government, however, claiming non-fulfillment of certain treaty provisions, but in reality acting in the interest of British fur traders, refused to deliver to the United States the northwestern posts. Thus the inhabitants of Wisconsin, while technically on American territory were practically ruled by English officers. In 1796 after Jay's treaty with England, the northwestern posts were delivered over to American garrisons, and Wisconsin became an unorganized portion of the Northwest Territory. On May 7, 1800, Indiana Territory was organized with Wisconsin a part of her vast domain. Upon the territorial division into counties Wisconsin became a part of St. Clair, whose limits extended from a line nearly opposite St. Louis to the northern boundary of the United States. In 1802 Gov. William Henry Harrison appointed two justices of the peace and three militia officers in St. Clair County of Indiana Territory to serve at the French-Canadian settlement near the mouth of Wisconsin River. The next year a third justice was appointed for Prairie du Chien, and another commissioned for the sister community at the mouth of Fox River on Green Bay. All these appointees were British subjects and prominent fur traders. Therefore while commissions were issued and writs ran in the name of the United States, British fur traders were in actual control of all government agencies in Wisconsin.

In' 1808 the United States increased the number of its representatives by the appointment of an Indian agent at Prairie du Chien. This agent was a French-Canadian by birth, formerly a British subject, who had become a naturalized American by residence in the French settlements of Illinois. By race and interests he was allied with the Franco-British traders of Wisconsin.

In 1809 Illinois Territory was set off from Indiana carrying with it St. Clair County, in which Wisconsin was included. So far as known the officials appointed by the governor of Indiana for Green Bay and Prairie du Chien continued to act under the commissions already received.

The outbreak of the War of 1812 made a sharp division among Wisconsin's few governing officers. The Indian agent was the sole official who maintained his American allegiance. All the other appointees declared for Great Britain, and actively engaged in operations for her benefit. The Indian agent was driven down the Mississippi, and Wisconsin became again a part of the territory of the British empire, guarded by Canadian troops and administered by British officers. In 1814 the Americans made an attempt to repossess themselves of the region on the Mississippi. A force organized at St. Louis ascended the river and built

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

a post at Prairie du Chien. This American post had been held less than a month, however, when an overwhelming British force from Mackinac and Green Bay captured the new fort and expelled the American garrison.

The Canadian authorities were eager to retain possession of Wisconsin, and during the negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 made a determined effort to have the boundary lines redrawn so that Wisconsin should be made a buffer Indian region under British authority. This attempt failed, and in 1815 according to the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, the British garrisons were withdrawn from Wisconsin's soil. Nevertheless, so hostile were the Indian tribes to American reoccupation that not until eighteen months after the signing of the treaty was the American flag raised within the limits of Wisconsin. During this non-governmental period the British fur traders maintained, as they had done since 1761, an ascendancy over the tribesmen that preserved the few settlements from anarchy and destruction. While thus theoretically changing sovereignty several times from 1761 to 1816, Wisconsin was really during the entire period a French-Canadian settlement under British control.

American military occupation began in 1816 when strong posts were built at Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, the garrisons of which overawed the sullen tribesmen. Indian officials were appointed and American traders soon rivaled the operations of the French-Canadians. So bitterly did the latter resent the restrictions imposed upon them by American officers and officials that in 1818 they planned to remove in a body to some place under British jurisdiction, taking the Wisconsin Indians with them. Within a few years, however, the friction was adjusted, and the leading Wisconsin settlers became naturalized American citizens.

In 1818 Illinois was admitted as a State into the Union, and Wisconsin was transferred to Michigan territory. The same year Wisconsin was organized into two counties, Brown and Crawford, justices of the peace were appointed and American sovereignty became operative with this region. In 1824 United States district courts were organized for that portion of Michigan Territory lying west of Lake Michigan. In 1829 Crawford County was divided, all south of the Wisconsin River becoming Iowa County. In 1834 Brown County was reduced by the organization of its southern portion into Milwaukee County. In 1836 Michigan was admitted into the Union, and the Territory of Wisconsin was organized out of that portion of its limits that lay west of Lake Michigan.

Wisconsin Territory was maintained for twelve years. In 1846 there was a movement for Statehood, but the Constitution then drawn was rejected by the people, so that not until 1848 did Wisconsin become the thirtieth State in the American Union.

3. Boundaries-The boundaries of Wisconsin were first laid down in the Ordinance of 1787, which decreed that the southern boundary of the fifth or northwestern State of the Northwest Territory should be an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan ; that the western boundary should be the Mississippi to its source, thence by a straight line to the Lake of the Woods and the international boundary; that the northern boundary should coincide with the

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

international boundary through Lake Superior; and that the eastern boundary should be the meridian due north of Vincennes to the international line. The area of Wisconsin as outlined by this ordinance was one and a half times as large as at the present time. By successive measures Wisconsin's boundaries have since been curtailed at the southern, northeastern, and northwestern sides.

The southern boundary was changed when in 1818 Illinois was admitted to the Union. In order to secure for that State a harbor on Lake Michigan, Illinois' northern boundary was shifted from the line due west from the southern point of Lake Michigan, to latitude 42° 30'. This added to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles in width, containing 8,500 square miles, and the site of Chicago. In 1818 there was no one in Wisconsin to protest against this change. In 1838, however, and during Wisconsin's later territorial period, attempts were made to repossess the northern portion of Illinois on the ground that the Ordinance of 1787 was a solemn compact, and as such inviolable without the consent of all parties concerned. The matter never came before the United States Supreme Court, but Wisconsin's territorial legislature passed several vigorous resolutions on the subject to which Congress paid no attention. Strange to say, many Illinois inhabitants dwelling in the disputed strip would have preferred Wisconsin's jurisdiction ; at one time an informal referendum on the question in several Illinois counties resulted overwhelmingly in favor of Wisconsin. No official action, however, resulted, and the enabling act for Wisconsin in 1846, fixed its southern line 42° 30'. The eastern boundary as outlined by the Ordinance of 1787 was obliterated when in 1818 Wisconsin became part of Michigan Territory. When in 1834 it became evident that Michigan east of Lake Michigan would soon become a State, it was suggested that all west of Lake Michigan be organized into a new territory. This would have included in Wisconsin the upper peninsula of Michigan, and made our State a topographical unit.

Michigan, however, became engaged in a boundary contest with Ohio concerning the harbor of Toledo. Congress decided this controversy in favor of Ohio, but compensated Michigan by adding to her area the lands east of the Montreal and Menominee River boundary. Wisconsin, then unorganized, had no means of protest. Her northeastern boundary was fixed by the erection of the Territory in 1836.

Wisconsin Territory when organized included all that portion of the Louisiana Purchase lying north of Missouri, and east of the Missouri and White Earth rivers. This vast region embracing Iowa, and the larger part of the Dakotas, and Minnesota was understood to be added to Wisconsin for administrative purposes only. In 1838 Iowa Territory was set off, and Wisconsin was limited to the western boundary as outlined in the Ordinance of 1787. This included within Wisconsin Territory nearly one-third of the present area of Minnesota. At one time it was suggested that a sixth State should be formed of the territory east of the upper Mississippi and south of Lake Superior. Later the portion west of the St. Croix and the St. Louis River line actually became a part of a sixth State, Minnesota, which was organized as a Territory in 1849 and admitted as a State in 1858.

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

Wisconsin in 1848 became a State with boundaries as at present. Although short of her original allotment of territory, her present area makes her third in size of the five States of the Old Northwest.3

II. The Red Men and the Fur Trade

1. First Men in Wisconsin-A large portion of the surface of Wisconsin is covered with small heaps of earth or mounds that are without doubt the work of man, and not of nature. The formation of these earthworks was formerly attributed to a pre-Indian race of men known collectively as the Mound Builders; modern archaeologists, however, have repudiated the theory of a prehistoric race, and now are certain that the true mound builders were none other than the Indians. A peculiar kind of mound occurs in southern and central Wisconsin and in the neighboring regions of northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota, that is not found elsewhere in the United States. These are the effigy mounds, slight eminences that take the outline of deer, bears, panthers, turtles, various kinds of birds, and in one or two instances of man. The origin of these effigy mounds has been much discussed. It is now accepted by scientists that their makers were a tribe known to the first discoverers of the Northwest as the Puant or Winnebago Indians.

The great number and extent of the mounds scattered over the surface of Wisconsin indicates the presence of a large Indian population in prehistoric times ; but at what era in the world's history, or in what way the Winnebago reached Wisconsin we can only infer from a few scattered facts. The migration legends of the Siouan peoples, to which stock the Winnebago belong, indicate that they came from the region near the sources of the Ohio River. Pressed upon by neighboring Algonquian peoples they slowly progressed along the Ohio Valley, leaving great earthworks as they advanced. In the course of several centuries they reached the Ohio's mouth, and there divided, one large branch passing northward along the Mississippi River, gradually separating into many tribes that located chiefly west of the great river. Somewhere, possibly at the mouth of Rock River, one group of this vast horde, attracted by the abundant game of the pleasant valley, moved eastward and northward, and after occupying the valley of Rock River to its headwaters, spread along the Fox River and around the lake now called Winnebago, terminating their migration at the shores of Green Bay. From the size of the trees growing upon the artificial mounds, it is inferred that the settlement of the Winnebago in Wisconsin must have occurred some time before the discovery of America by Columbus.

The Winnebago who peopled Wisconsin's valleys, and built their mounds along her streams and lakes were in what is known as the Stone Age of primitive culture. Contrary to the common belief, they were not a wandering, but a home-loving people, devotedly attached to the places of their birth, the homes of their fathers and the sites of their villages. These villages were so advantageously placed that the sites of most of Wisconsin's present cities were those once occupied by the Indians. The woods and streams supplied their simple needs of food, clothing, and

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

shelter. From the skins of animals they fashioned their garments, by hunting and by harvesting wild rice they gained their food. Their lodges were built of slender trees covered with bark, and with mats formed of plaited reeds. Gradually they learned a rude form of agriculture, by cultivating the ground with hoes of bone and plows of wood, corn and pumpkins were added to their food supply. They had no domestic animals except dogs, which also served as an addition to their food supply. Their tools and implements of warfare and of chase were made of stone, flints chipped to a point tipped their arrows, axes and hatchets were of edged stone, war clubs swung a heavy stone head. The only metals known were lead and copper. The former mined in a crude fashion was mostly used for ornament. Copper, secured by intertribal trade from Lake Superior, was beaten by hand into ornamental shapes, and occasionally used to tip weapons and domestic implements.

The change of seasons brought to Wisconsin Indians changed modes of living. During the winter season they left their permanent villages and in small groups scattered through the forests, subsisting as best they might on the products of the chase. They built temporary wigwams of pelts thrown over poles, within which fires were kindled that kept them from freezing. Upon the return of spring they sought their villages and corn fields. The summer was the time for religious rites, for council and for warfare. Raids upon neighboring enemy groups were a normal part of the Indian's life. In every village a council house was built where questions of war and alliance were discussed by the chiefs and elders. The religious rites clustered about a unit resembling a clan ; the effigy mounds were the symbols of the clan totems. Near to these totems burial mounds were placed. The sacred mysteries of the tribe and clan were there celebrated.

Aside from warfare, intercourse was maintained with other tribes by means of trade. The extent and volume of intertribal trade was considerable. Sea shells found in Wisconsin mounds prove that they had passed from hand to hand among all the tribes between its inhabitants and the Atlantic coast. Shells, bits of metal, articles of dress and ornament, constituted the bulk of the exchange. Shells pierced and strung or wrought into belts were both the medium of exchange and the binding symbol of intertribal treaties and agreements. While the fate of captives taken in war was horrible, envoys were sacred, and treaties were observed inviolate.

The red man's life was by no means idyllic as children of nature have been supposed to lead. Famine and disease stalked his footsteps ; war and wild animals carried away his young ; struggle and hardships made up his lot in life. None the less it is open to question whether the contact with the white man did not make the condition of the Indian worse. He soon became dependent upon the farmer's products for clothing, implements and weapons. He forgot the arts of his primitive economy. Urged on by the greed of traders he rapidly killed off the wild game or drove it farther into the wilderness, which he had to penetrate in order to secure the store of furs with which to purchase his necessities. Thus hunting became more and more important to his existence, and with increased efforts and superior weapons brought ever-diminishing returns. The red man became

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

dependent upon the trader for the very means of life. After the French and Indian War when all traders of the French race were withdrawn from Wisconsin, the English traders who after a lapse of two years went to Lake Superior found naked, starving savages who in less than one hundred years had ceased to be self-sufficing, and could live only by means of relations with white men. Thus arose the fur trade, which was not only a commercial or an economic regime, but a system of government, a form of social life, a means of exploitation, and a stage in the development of the American frontier.

2. The Coming of the White Man-For one hundred and forty years after the discovery of America by Columbus, Wisconsin's forests slept in quiet, unvexed by the presence of any but their red children. Then suddenly out of the east, and skirting the coasts of Green Bay in a bark canoe driven by strange red men, the first white man came, and " women and children fled at the sight of a man who carried thunder in both hands" -for thus they called the two pistols that he held. "He wore a grand robe of China damask, all strewn with flowers and birds of many colors." "They meet him; they escort him, and carry all his baggage." They call him the Manitouriniou, the wonderful or godlike man. From all quarters they haste to see him until four or five thousand are assembled. "Each of the chief men made a feast for him, and at one of these banquets they served at least six score Beavers." + Then the mysterious stranger made a peace with them, under such forms and ceremonies as were customary in intertribal negotiations, and vanished into the east whence he had come.

To the whites who had crossed the ocean to begin a small colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence, this first white stranger to visit Wisconsin was known as Jean Nicolet. He had come to the New World with the express purpose of dealing with the red men, learning their languages and customs, and opening a way into their country for trade and missions. Sent by Champlain, the founder of New France, to dwell among the forest inhabitants, Nicolet spent several years among the Algonquin Indians of the upper Ottawa River; then he dwelt among the Huron in the peninsula between Lake Erie and Georgian Bay. There he heard of a far western tribe known as the "people of salt water," whom Nicolet supposed must dwell on the borders of the Western Sea and be akin to the tribes of Tartary. Hence the damask robe, and the hope of a new route to Cathay. Instead of Oriental potentates Nicolet found merely a new tribe of Indians whose name-the Winnebago-meant equally "people of the salt water" or "people of bad-smelling springs," and who were known henceforth to the French as the Puants or Stinkards.

After Nicolet's advent to Wisconsin in 1634, no more of these mysterious white strangers disturbed the dwellers on Lake Michigan and Green Bay for over twenty years. Nevertheless in these far regions great changes were taking place, due to the widespread disturbances in Indian geography caused by the coming of the white man. Upon the peninsula of Ontario then occupied by the Huron tribesmen, the Jesuit missionaries some years before the voyage of Nicolet founded the largest and most successful of their missions. Throughout all the Huron villages they

HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY

spread, and impelled by a desire to evangelize distant Indians, two of the fathers had in 1641 accompanied some of their neophytes to the shores of Lake Superior, and named the strait where the waters leap down from this mighty basin, the Sault de Ste. Marie.

But the Huron were not long left to develop their new religion in peace. Suddenly from central New York appeared large bands of their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois; by one blow after another the Huron missions were destroyed, some of the Jesuits fell martyrs to their cause, others escaping sought refuge with the remnants of their mission children under the cliffs of Quebec. The remainder of the Huron fled westward, their alarm was communicated to the Algonquian peoples living beyond them, and for fear of the Iroquois whole tribes left their ancestral homes for shelter in the farther forests. It happened that shortly before this disturbance the Winnebago of southern and central Wisconsin had suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the Illinois tribes living to the south, wherein they were so reduced in numbers that but a small fragment of the former tribe was left in its Wisconsin home. Into this sparsely-settled land the fugitives from Ontario and Michigan poured both by southern and northern routes. They hid from the pursuing Iroquois in the swamps and marshes of our State, and the Winnebago being in no condition to resist, made alliances with the intruding tribes, and yielded to them new homes on the lakes and streams where their ancestors had dwelt. Thus came the Sauk and Foxes, the Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo. Thus, pressed down from the north and the islands of Lake Michigan, came the Menominee and Potawatomi to mingle with the Winnebago around Green Bay; while the Huron and Ottawa, impelled by a more dreadful fear, sought refuge on the southern shores of Lake Superior and about the headwaters of Black River. Thus in the middle of the seventeenth century Wisconsin became crowded with Indian villages, and was sustaining a larger number of red inhabitants than at any other time throughout her history. This aggregation of tribesmen conditioned her discovery and exploration, and made her a region tempting both to the French fur trader and to the French mis- sionary of the cross.

3. Missionaries and Traders

Before the dispersion of tribes incident to the Iroquois wars the Huron and their neighbors had learned the value of the white man's goods, and had ventured as far as Three Rivers and Montreal, there to exchange their skins and robes for the weapons, clothing and trinkets that the white men had taught them to covet. Immediately there sprang up an intertribal trade that extended so far westward that tribes which had never seen a white man became familiar with his wares. The Ottawa Indians were especially skillful in trade, and so long acted as middlemen for the western tribes that all the region of the Upper Lakes was called by the French the Ottawa Country.

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History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, Part 3

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper Number of Pages: 1318

Author: Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn; Pierce, Eben Douglas
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Chicago Winona : H.C. Cooper
Number of Pages: 1318