USA > Wisconsin > Trempealeau County > History of Trempealeau County, Wisconsin > Part 4
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The Iroquois wars of the middle of the seventeenth century inter- rupted the northwest trade, and both the colony of New France and the interior tribes suffered from the break in the intercourse. Of the two
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
the French suffered the more, because the Indians had not yet forgotten their wilderness lore and were yet able to be self-sufficing. The lack of the annual harvest of furs from the Northwest had almost ruined the little French colony along the St. Lawrence, when suddenly it was gladdened by the arrival of a caravan of Indians at Three Rivers that came to exchange its hoarded treasure of peltry over northern streams and portages, uninfested by the dreaded Iroquois. Prosperity once more promised for Canada, the Indian visitors were royally treated, and when they embarked for their return voyage two young Canadians accompanied them and wandered for two years or more among the tribes of the Northwest, learning their customs and languages and teaching them the white man's arts.
The explorations of Radisson and Grosseilliers during the latter half of the sixth decade of the seventeenth century were not known to historians until the journals of Radisson were discovered late in the nineteenth century in the Bodleian library at Oxford. They were written in English by one unfamiliar with that language and their descriptions are so vague that it yet remains an open question where these explorers went and whether or not they were the first white men to view the Mississippi.
Radisson and Grossilliers made a second voyage to the Ottawa Country two or three years after their first adventure. Upon this occasion they explored Lake Superior and the headwaters of the Mississippi and passed a desolate and famishing winter, probably on the Wisconsin shore of Chequamegon Bay.
Meanwhile the first white missionary to Wisconsin had lost his life in her northern forests. Father Rene Menard in 1660 came to the North- west with a returning party of trading Indians. They abandoned him on the shore of Keweenaw Bay and after a wretched winter he started with one companion to visit the Huron fugitives, formerly members of the Ontario mission, then thought to be in hiding on the headwaters of Black River. While descending the Wisconsin in a tiny craft, the reverend father stepped aside at some one of its upper portages and was lost in the forest. Whether he was slain by beast or Indian or perished from starvation is not known; no trace of his fate was ever found.
In 1665 the colony of New France was re-enforced by a regiment of soldiers, the Iroquois enemies were punished and concluded a reluctant peace. Thereafter the wilderness waterways became safer and traders and missionaries sought the tribesmen in Wisconsin forests.
Notable among the traders was Nicholas Perrot, who, in 1665, began a career of discovery and exploration in Wisconsin that lasted over thirty years. Among the missionaries Father Claude Allouez was a pioneer. His first mission in 1665 was on the shores of the Chequamegon Bay, where for two years he instructed large bands of Indians from all the Wisconsin region. Even the Illinois visited the good father in his northern home and listened for the first time to the gospel message. In 1669 Allouez transferred his ministrations to the neighborhood of Green Bay where, among the Menominee, Potawatomi and Sauk of the bay shore, the Foxes on the Wolf, and the Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo of the upper
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
Fox Valley, he founded missions and worked with unflagging zeal for the conversion of their souls. The first permanent mission in Wisconsin was the mission of St. Francis Xavier, established in 1671 at the De Pere rapids of Fox River by Allouez and his fellow workers. The following decade was the most flourishing in the Jesuit missionary history of Wisconsin. After 1682 their influence and success began to wane, and by the close of the century was almost extinct.
In the meantime the King of France had, in 1671, staged a pageant on the far shore of Sault Ste. Marie, wherein his representative, Simon Francois Daumont Sieur de St. Lusson took possession of all the western country for the French sovereignty. Nicholas Perrot was sent in advance to notify the Wisconsin tribesmen and persuade them to send chiefs as representatives on this great occasion. With wondering awe the simple savages watched the impressive ceremony werein priests and warriors chanted the praise, both of God and of the great King Louis XIV and declared the latter's benevolence in annexing the Indians' country to his own domain. All unwillingly they assented to an acknowledgment that made them thenceforth subjects of a foreign monarch. Some years after- ward Perrot was sent as governor general of the new French territory west of Lake Michigan. He built therein a number of French posts, most of them upon the Mississippi. At Fort St. Antoine upon Lake Pepin in 1689 Perrot took possession for France of the Sioux territory lying along the upper waters of America's greatest river. He likewise was the first white man to explore the lead mines of southern Wisconsin. So long as he ruled in the West the French trade and influence was supreme and the Indians of Wisconsin were his docile instruments.
Wisconsin's great waterway to the Mississippi River was first traversed in 1673 by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette. Seven years later Daniel Greysolon Duluth, who had previously threaded the upper portage from Lake Superior to the Mississippi, came eastward by the Fox-Wisconsin route from the Sioux country. By these two voyages connection was established between Wisconsin's portage route and both the lower and the upper Mississippi.
Rapid changes in the Indian geography of Wisconsin occurred during the last twenty years of the seventeenth century. The population that had massed along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway was pressing upon the food supply. Moreover, in 1680 Robert Cavelier de La Salle took possession of the Illinois River Valley and invited the Wisconsin Indians to remove thither for a permanent home. The Miami, Mascouten and Kickapoo acceded to his request; the Potawatomi likewise moved south along the shore of Lake Michigan; the Foxes ventured from Wolf River to the river now called by their name. The Menominee surrounded Green Bay, the Sauk and Foxes controlled the Fox-Wisconsin waterway, the Winnebago occupied the upper Rock River. The Huron and Ottawa left northern Wisconsin for homes on the straits of Mackinac, and all the southern shore of Lake Superior was abandoned to the Chippewa, who at intervals continued their hereditary wars upon the Sioux of the St. Croix and upper Mississippi valleys.
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IHISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
4. The French Fur Trade-Along with the shifting of tribal homes grew up changes in the method of handling the fur trade. The Indian hunters no longer made yearly pilgrimages to Montreal to exchange their gathered peltry for the white man's goods. Instead the white men came to them offering their wares, and with tribal consent built in their country at convenient places little log forts, where an officer and a few soldiers kept order over the motley crowd of traders and coureurs des bois that enriched themselves by the wilderness traffic. Most of the traders were licensed by the government and subjected to strict rules for the conduct of their trade. The illegal trader, however, flourished and followed his Indian customers into the depths of the forest, beyond the reach of the orders and regulations enforced by the commandants at the wayside posts. These unlicensed traders carried to the red man the alcoholic liquors the white man had taught him to love; and in disregard of the regulations of the French government, the Indian grew more and more debauched and degraded by his association with the whites. Radisson, who had explored the western forests for the French, deserted to the English government, and in 1670 aided in forming the Hudson's Bay Company, that greatest of all fur-trade monopolies, which, after nearly 250 years, is still the greatest fur company in the world.
Its traders early penetrated to the north shore of Lake Superior and drew away many Indians who had previously contributed to the wealth of Canada. The English also attempted to secure the northwest fur trade by the route of the Great Lakes. Utilizing the Iroquois as middlemen, the tribes of Wisconsin were tempted to carry their wares to white men who paid a larger price for furs and gave better goods in return than those of the French merchants.
Thus through illegal traders and foreign rivals the French fur trade was, by the close of the seventeenth century, so demoralized that the Canadian authorities, spurred thereto by the missionaries, determined upon drastic measures. All licenses for traders were revoked, and in 1696 a decree went forth that all the Northwest posts should be evacuated and that missionaries should be the only white men allowed in the Ottawa Country. It was thought that the old custom of yearly caravans would be revived, thus governmental control could be exercised over the trade and the aborigines protected. These measures were only partially successful. Coureurs de bois refused to obey the summons to return to New France and shamelessly brought in English goods; soldiers deserted from the garrisons before evacuation, married among the Indian tribes and introduced the white man's arts. Albany and Hudson Bay traders vigorously pressed their advantage, and the Canadian authorities feared that the whole of the Northwest trade would slip from their control.
This danger of disintegration was checked by two events that occurred in the first year of the eighteenth century, by which the French recovered their morale and resumed operations in the Northwest. The first of these was the founding of Detroit, a post whose position barred the English from the upper lakes. The second was the peace with the Iroquois, which was signed at Montreal after a great ceremony, and an exchange of prisoners
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
among all the warring tribes. The license for the fur trade was then restored, the coureur des bois called in by proclaiming pardons for past offenses, and the policy of control by posts and garrisons was re-established throughout the Northwest.
The establishment of Detroit caused new changes in the Indian geography of Wisconsin. The Miami and Mascouten entirely withdrew from the state and moved eastward toward the new post. The Potawatomi progressed southward around the bend of Lake Michigan, while the Winne- bago filled in the vacant territory near Lake Winnebago and along the Rock River Valley. In 1706 a large portion of the Fox and Sauk tribes deserted Wisconsin and settled in the vicinity of Detroit, whither the Ottawa and Huron from the neighborhood of Mackinac had preceded them. This new accumulation of savage peoples did not long dwell in harmony. In 1712 a fierce intertribal quarrel broke out in which the commandant of Detroit took sides against the Wisconsin tribesmen. Many of the Sauk, Foxes and Kickapoo were slain, the remainder fled back to their former homes in Wisconsin, where the remnant of these tribes waged barbaric warfares against the French for over thirty years. This hostility closed the Fox- Wisconsin waterway to French traders, rendered their lives insecure on all the western pathways and greatly diminished French influence in the far Northwest.
In the course of these Fox wars the first military invasion of Wisconsin occurred when, in 1716, Sieur Louvigny led a considerable army of Canadian soldiers, accompanied by a miscellaneous host of traders, voyageurs and Indians through Green Bay to the Fox fort at Little Butte des Morts. The Foxes withstood for a time a considerable siege, which ended in a compro- mise with the invading forces. The succeeding year a French post was built on the site of Fort Howard, that was maintained until the fall of the French sovereignty in the New World. In 1718, in order to develop the copper mines that were thought to exist on the shores of Lake Superior, an official post was built at Chequamegon. From 1727 to 1750, in order to exploit the fur trade among the Sioux French, posts were erected upon the Upper Mississippi. Chequamegon and the Mississippi posts were abandoned during the French and Indian war. In 1743 a French post was erected on the Mississippi near the lead mines, where a beginning was made in devel- oping this industry. Thus the French found copper, lead and furs in Wisconsin, the most valuable of which was peltry.
After the Fox wars were over the fur trade grew with startling rapidity, and the only rivals to the Canadian traders were the French merchants from Louisiana, whose northern boundary lay between the Rock. and Wisconsin rivers. In 1752 the Green Bay post was leased to a relative of the reigning governor, who exploited it so dishonestly that the Marquis of Montcalm declared, "Never have theft and license gone so far." The yearly harvest of Wisconsin furs amounted to 500 to 600 packs valued at a quarter of a million dollars.
Peculation and dishonesty led to the downfall of New France. Unpro- tected by rapacious officials, the lilies of France fell before the cross of St. George and St. Andrew, and the British replaced the French not only
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
on the St. Lawrence, but along the Great Lakes and in the eastern part of the Mississippi Valley.
5. Development and Decline of the Fur Trade Under the British- The change from French to British sovereignty in Wisconsin was not accompanied by any marked upheaval in the little hamlets and among the Indian villages of the western wilderness. Most of the French traders transferred their allegiance to the new sovereign with only mild regrets. The earliest British officers were conciliatory in attitude, and the Indians docilely exchanged their French medals and flags for those of England. The British traders employed the same voyageurs and coureurs des bois as had served the traffic under the French regime. The language most in use in Wisconsin's forests continued to be French. Beyond the bounds of Wisconsin there was much discontent, which culminated in the revolt known as Pontiac's Conspiracy. In this uprising Wisconsin tribesmen, almost alone among those of the Northwest, refused to participate. Possibly the old grievances against the French, repressed since the Fox wars, still rankled, and made Wisconsin Indians more favorable to their new British masters. Be that as it may, the garrison at Green Bay was escorted by friendly and protecting tribesmen to Mackinac, and there aided in rescuing the captured British officers from the hands of the hostile Chippewa and Ottawa. When Sir William Johnson met the Indian chiefs at Niagara in 1764 he signalized the loyalty of the Wisconsin Menominee by presenting to their chief a medal and a certificate.6
With the withdrawal in 1763 of the garrison from Green Bay, Wis- consin's British post was permanently abandoned. Thenceforward the metropolis of the fur trade was at Mackinac, where each summer a great mart was held. Traders brought from Canada an abundance of goods for forest traffic and exchanged them for the peltry that had been gathered during the previous winter and spring at dozens of small posts throughout the West.
With the growth of the trade subsidiary marts were established, and the one in Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien became next in importance to that ยท at Mackinac.
The first years of the British trade in Wisconsin were years of unregu- lated and fierce competition between rival traders and rival companies. Slight restraints were imposed by the post officers, who in most cases participated in the profits of the traffic. Therefore, this unrestricted rivalry wrought great havoc, both among the fur-bearing animals and their red hunters. Liquor became the ordinary medium of exchange. The traders' outfits were largely composed of kegs of beverages, and so fierce were the drunken orgies of the Indians that it seemed that they would soon exterminate themselves. The traders in like manner grew demoralized and employed all kinds of subterfuges to secure the advantage. Even murder and robbery went unpunished, and the law of force and cunning ruled the forests.
Excess of competition finally suggested its own remedy. In 1778 a representative group of Canadian merchants made at Mackinac a temporary combination to control the trade. Two years later the agreement was
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
renewed, and became in 1783 the basis of the North West Fur Company, a powerful organization of Scotch merchants, who controlled the Canadian trade for the third of a century. About the same time the Mackinac Company was formed, whose operations lay farther south than those of the North West Company. In 1786 the Mackinac Company had a post opposite the mouth of the Missouri and was competing for the trade of Spanish Louisiana.
The Spanish strove unsuccessfully to bar the British traders from the trans-Mississippi. The lower Missouri trade they succeeded in possessing, but the waters of the upper Mississippi and the Minnesota (then called the St. Peter's) were practically in the hands of the Scotch from Canada, all supplied by means of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway.
The headquarters of the North West Company lay on the northwest shore of Lake Superior; two subsidiary posts in Wisconsin-at Fond du Lac of the great lake, and at Madelaine Island-served the interior forts along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Around these posts small communities gradually grew up, composed chiefly of retired voyageurs and engagees no longer able to endure the hardships of forest wintering. These occupied themselves with a primitive type of agriculture and supplied the products to the active traders. The most important of these settlements was at Green Bay, where, before the close of the French regime, a few families had settled. Thither, after Pontiac's Conspiracy, the Langlades removed from Mackinac, and by their superior education and ability became the recognized leaders of the little community. Charles Langlade, called the "Father of Wisconsin," had been an officer in the French-Canadian army. Under the British he held a commission in the Indian Department, and his influence over both the white and red men of Wisconsin was unbounded. It was Langlade, who, during the American Revolution, rallied the Wisconsin Indians for participation in the defense of Canada and in the invation of Burgoyne. It was due to his loyalty to the British that George Rogers Clark's agents had so little success in detaching Wisconsin Indians for the American alliance. It was Langlade who was depended upon to protect the Wisconsin settlements against the dangers from the Spanish of Louisiana ; and upon his death in 1801 the French-Canadian settlements mourned a protector and a leader. His leadership fell into the hands of his descendants and relatives, the Grignons and Gautiers, who were allied to the better families of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. The patriarchal condition of society in Wisconsin lasted until the coming of the Americans, who, with their democracy and energy, broke down the class system founded on the fur trade hierarchy, and introduced the elements of modern life into the trading posts and settlements that grew up during the fur trade regime. In the fur trade the bourgeois or master trader was all-powerful, his will and the exigencies of the traffic were the sole source of authority. To make this more binding, each voyageur and engagee was obliged before leaving the main trading post, to sign a contract by which he bound himself in consideration of a small wage and certain supplies "to serve, obey, and faithfully execute all that the said Sieurs, his Bourgeois * * shall lawfully and honestly order him to do; without trading on his own account,
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
nor absenting himself from, nor leaving the said service."? This consti- tuted a species of peonage, which, to the honor of the fur trading fraternity, was seldom abused. In truth, the tie that bound master and man was not purely economic; it was composed of personal elements of loyalty and attachment. It was compounded from two loyalties-the French system of subordination and responsibility, and the Scotch Highlander's attachment to the head of his clan, and the clan leaders' obligations therefor.
Many of the prominent traders of Wisconsin were Scotchmen, and in the War of 1812 they commanded retinues of voyageurs and Indians, who successively captured Mackinac and Prairie du Chien and drove every American from the vicinity. These traders fondly hoped and loudly boasted that new boundaries would be drawn and the territory now Wisconsin would become a fur-trading preserve. Disappointed in that hope, they planned to adjust the exigencies of the forest trade to the demands of the American system. The Mackinac Company was dissolved and in its stead was organ- ized the American Fur Company, many of whose operators were the Scotch- Canadians who had been partners in the British concern. For twenty years after the American occupation the new company conducted a flourishing trade along the old lines. From 1816 to 1824 the United States sought to better the Indians' condition by the so-called factory system, government posts operated not for profit, but for benevolence toward its Indian wards. The factory system failed because of the powerful opposition of the Amer- ican Fur Company, and because the factors were unacquainted with the conditions of Indian trade.
Gradually the fur trade, which for two hundred years had ruled Wis- consin, declined. The local traders, deeply in debt to Astor's monopoly, the American Fur Company, mortgaged their lands and lost them. Of recent years a new commerce in furs has sprung up and grows increasingly valuable. But the fur trade as a regime passed from Wisconsin with the coming of the Americans and the development of modern industries.
1-This chapter is adapted by permission from a manseript history prepared by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
2-Wis. Hist. Colls., XI, 27-28.
3-For the entire subject of Wisconsin Boundaries, see Ibid., 451-50I.
4-Id., XVI, 1-3.
5-Id., XVIII, 206.
6-Ibid., 268-269.
7-Id., XIX, 343.
CHAPTER II GEOLOGY
(By George H. Squier)
The geology of Trempealeau County is the geology of a considerable tract in western Wisconsin, for, in a region of undisturbed and nearly horizontal rocks, an area so small as a county will rarely show in its geological features any great diversification, and the description of one would apply with slight changes to its neighboring counties.
In entering upon the consideration of this subject it must be fully recognized that the features of the region as we now see them are but a passing phase. Changeless as our hills and valleys may seem to us, never- theless within the long periods of which geology takes cognizance, they are scarcely more so than are the most ephemeral of the works of man compared with his own span of life. Therefore, just as the historical portion of this work seeks to trace the changing phases which have attended the human occupancy of this region, in the same manner an adequate treatment of the geology of the county must seek to present an outline sketch of the history whose record is found in the rocks.
All the rocks exposed within the limits of this county belong to the upper portion of the Cambrian, and the base of the Ordovician. To a geologist, a condensed statement of this nature conveys much information, but to the reader who is not a specialist in that study, it may have but little meaning, and a further elucidation is needed to place the subject at the command of the average reader.
In order to understand the significance of the statement that our rocks belong near the top of the Cambrian and base of the Ordivician, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the geological time scale. The scale here given is the one commonly accepted as the standard:
Pleistocene.
Tertiary.
Cretaceous.
Jurassic.
Triassic.
Permian.
Pennsylvanian.
Mississippian.
Devonian.
Silurian.
Upper
Ordovician
Middle
Lower
Our local rocks
Upper
Cambrian
Middle
Lower
Pre-Cambrian
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HISTORY OF TREMPEALEAU COUNTY
All of the periods are subdivided into numerous "formations," but in this list only the subdivisions are indicated that apply to the Cambrian and Ordovician, and only the larger subdivisions even for these. The range of our local rocks is also duly indicated. Since the older rocks are at the bottom, it will be seen that the Potsdam Sandstone (Cambrian) and the Lower Magnesian Limestone (Ordovician) are very ancient. The Lower and Middle Cambrian are not present in this region, consequently the Upper Cambrian rests directly on the Pre-Cambrian.
It is to be understood that the Pre-Cambrian is not a period comparable to the others in the table. It is, indeed, properly not a name at all, but merely a convenient designation for all of the immense series of rocks antedating the Cambrian, and includes a time, perhaps, as long as all succeeding time. The rocks have been so extensively folded and faulted and so generally metamorphosed and intruded by eruptives as to constitute a very complex problem, and while it is evident that the long series is capable of subdivision into periods comparable with those given above, the subdivisions proposed have not been accepted with the same approach to unanimity as these.
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