USA > Wisconsin > History of Wisconsin under the dominion of France > Part 2
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(1) Voyages of Radisson, p. 249. Also 241 and 250-3.
CHAPTER II.
GREEN BAY AND THE JESUIT MISSIONS.
1665-1672.
The ruin of the Huron missions did not cause the Jesuits to despair. Their first failure served only to open before them a wider hori- zon of duty, just as the night reveals what the day hides. The West was just then beginning to rise into view, and towards it the Jesuits turned as to a new land of promise. Thither they were also called by their duty to their Huron and other converts who, wandering about in exile, were in great danger of being wholly lost to the fold.
In August 1660, Father Menard set out for the West, and after frightful sufferings by the way, reached a settlement of the Ottawas at Keweenaw Point, on Lake Superior.' These fugitive Ottawas, of whom we shall hear much throughout this history, were now in the low- est depth of savage wretchedness. They had been driven from their old homes by the Iro- quois, and the steps of their wandering had all
(1) Verwyst. Missionary Labors of Marquette, Men- ard, etc., 176.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
been steps downward. Misery had brutalized them; they had lost that self-respect which formed the sole basis of savage virtues. A year after Menard's visit, Radisson met them in the forests of Northern Wisconsin; and he deseribes them, as "the coursedst, unablest, the unfamous and cowarliest people that I have seen among four score nations that I have frequented."1
Their treatment of Menard was most in- human; they mocked at his teachings and at last drove him from their cabins. In the depth of winter he was forced to make such a shelter as he could out of a few pine boughs. There amidst winter blasts, snow-storms and the in- tensest cold-half famished too, with no food but acorns, bark and vile refuse-this feeble old man crouched from day to day, a living martyr.
Still this marvellous man did not murmur. "I can truly say," he wrote, "that I have more contentment here in one day than I have enjoyed in all my life in whatsoever part of the world I have been."2
The next June he started to establish a mis- sion among the Hurons who, as we have seen,
(1) Voyages, 203.
(2) Relation, 1664, p. 6.
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GREEN BAY-JESUIT MISSIONS.
had found a refuge on the head-waters of the Chippewa. On the way he was deserted by his guides, but he pressed on until he had reached a point not very far distant from the Huron village. There he perished in the wil- derness. The precise manner of his death has never been known. But in some way or other the old missionary gained his coveted crown of martyrdom.
Menard was thus Wisconsin's first missionary and her first martyr. In 1665 Allouez was sent to take his place; but in the meantime the Hurons and Ottawas had removed from the interior wilds to the head of Chequamegon Bay. Thither Allouez repaired, built a rude bark chapel and established the first mission in Wisconsin.
This place, where Radisson in 1661 had found only a solitude, had now become a ren- dezvous for the nations on the West. The Hurons and Ottawas had come first, attracted by the abundant fisheries and the opportuni- ties for traffic. Other tribes had followed, some coming to trade and to fish, others as fugitives from the fury of the Iroquois who were then invading the West. Here were crowds of Sauks, Pottawattamies, Foxes and other tribes from Eastern Wisconsin as well as
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large numbers of the dispersed and panic- stricken Illinois. "It is the center," writes Allouez, "of all the nations of that country."
Amidst these animated scenes, Allouez labored with ardor, but with uncertain success. He himself was sanguine. "God," he affirms1 "found some of his Elect in every tribe while they were held here by fear of the Iroquois." The illustrious Marquette, who came after- wards, expressed himself less hopefully. But the work, whatever its value, was soon ended. The Iroquois, exhausted by constant fight- ing and curbed by the power of the French, ceased their invasions and the Western Indians returned to their homes. The Hurons and Ottawas remained, but in 1670 the Sioux drove them eastward just as the Iroquois, a few years before, had driven them westward. The mis- sionaries followed their flock to the shore of Lake Huron. The short life of the mission of St. Esprit was over and Northern Wisconsin was once more a solitude.
It has long been noticed that there was a re- markable massing of Indian tribes along Green Bay and Fox river, in Wisconsin. But how great was this massing and how utter the con-
(1) Relation, 1667, p. 18.
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trast between it and the desolation that about 1670, reigned everywhere else between the Alleghanies and the Upper Mississippi-has, so far as I know, never been pointed out.
When Marquette and Joliet journeyed down the Mississippi in 1673, they traveled almost the entire distanee through an unbroken soli- tude. They met, indeed, one demoralized band of the Illinois who had fled from their homes and were temporarily encamped near the Mississippi, on its western side. But with this exception, in the long journey from the Wisconsin portage down to a great distance below the mouth of the Ohio-more than a thousand miles through the fairest portion of the continent-the travelers beheld only a tenantless waste, an unpeopled Paradise.
The great expanse stretching from the Mis- sissippi, eastwardly, to the mountains, was vir- tually in the same condition. The Eries, who had inhabited the present state of Ohio, had been swept from the earth by the Iroquois. Michigan was also a solitude, except its north- ern part, where the Ottawa refugees and some of the Chippewas had gathered around the straits of Mackinaw and upon the shore of Lake Superior; its southern part had been occupied by the Mascoutins, but the most of
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them had been destroyed by the Neutral na- tion and the rest driven to their kindred in Wisconsin. 1 Indiana had been the home of the Miamis, and a part of them were still roaming there; but the main body with the king of the confederacy at their head had emi- grated to Fox river. Illinois was also a soli- tude, its former denizens having fled across the Mississippi, leaving their broad prairies, crowded with buffalo and game of every kind, as a hunting ground for the Wisconsin Indians. In Kentucky a few hundred Shawanoes roamed along the banks of the Ohio.2 In fine, the six states lying east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio-excluding Northeastern Wis- consin-contained a population in 1670, of less than twelve hundred warriors or eight thousand souls. There were three hundred thousand square miles of territory, rich in soil and in all things that contribute to human pros-
(1) Lalemant. Relation des Hurons, 1644. On Sanson's map they are placed in Southern Michigan. Parkman, Jesuits, 436. Note.
(2) La Salle, in 1682, counted the Shawanoes as 200 war- riors. Parkman, La Salle, 296. I have estimated the Ottawas and Chippewas in Northern Michigan at 500 war- riors - a very large estimate, as most of the Chippewas were then wanderers on the north shore of Lake Superior. The Miamis remaining in their old home, I have put at 500 warriors - also a large estimate.
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perity; and yet this immense expanse was virtually a solitude.
Turning now to Northeastern Wisconsin we behold a wonderful contrast. Stretched along both sides of Green Bay and the Fox river as far south as Green Lake county was a terri- tory about one hundred and thirty-five miles long and of an average width of thirty miles, which fairly teemed with human life. In the North, on the islands and along the eastern shore of Green Bay, were the Pottawattamies, a docile people, with a keen instinct for trade, who were seeking to become the middlemen in the commerce between the French and the tribes farther west; they numbered not less than five hundred warriors.' Across the bay were the Menominees settled upon the river of the same name, a brave but peaceful people --- "very fine men," writes Charlevoix,? "the best shaped in all Canada." At the mouth of Fox river was a mixed village gathered from four
(1) Allouez. Relation, 1667, - narrates a visit of 300 of these warriors to Chequamegon Bay.
(2) Charlevoix, Letters, XIX. 202. Cadillac (Memoire in Margry, V, 121) is still more eulogistic. They were long at war with the Chippewas, but in the time of the French al- most uniformly peaceable. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, I, 304, and Shea, Indian Tribes of Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. Coll., III, 134.
3
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or five different tribes; a little distance up the river were the Winnebagoes or "Men of the Sea," of whom we have already heard. The number of the Winnebagoes, the Menominees and the people of the mixed village could not have been less than six hundred warriors.1 On the west side of the river, about four leagues from its mouth were the Sauks, who must have numbered at least four hundred fighting men.2
Passing through Lake Winnebago to the Upper Fox and its tributary the Wolf, we come to that famous gathering of tribes that were to bring such disaster upon the French Empire in the West. Some distance up the Wolf river were the Foxes, with not less than eight hun-
(1) No estimate of the numbers either of the Menominees or Winnebagoes is given in the 17th century. But in a Memoir of 1736 (New York Col. Documents, IX,) the Men- ominees are numbered at 160 warriors. But this Memoir is uniformly low in its estimates. Even the Iroquois are there counted as only 850 and the Illinois at 600, and the Miamis at 550; the real numbers, excepting those of the Il- linois were perhaps twice as large. In this Memoir the Winnebagos are put at only 80 warriors; but this was after they had been decimated by famine and expelled from the state; in 1640 their great numbers are spoken of (Margry, 1,48). I have for these reasons increased the French esti- mate of 1736 by 50 per cent, for 1670.
(2) In the Memoir of 1736 they are put at 150 warriors - a low estimate even for that time, and then they had been decimated by the Fox wars. In 1763 Lieut. Gorrel put them at 350, as also Foxes. Wis. Hist. Coll., 1, 32.
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GREEN BAY-JESUIT MISSIONS.
dred warriors.1 To the southwest of these, on the Fox river, was the great palisaded town where the Mascoutins and Miamis dwelt to- gether in barbaric friendliness; farther on, en- veloped in the wild rice marshes, were other towns of the Kickapoos and Mascoutins; all these tribes together could not have numbered less than the Foxes. 2
Here then in this narrow strip of territory was a population of thirty-one hundred war- riors or at least twenty thousand souls, nearly three times the number that roamed in the vast expanse of surrounding solitude. It was like an oasis in a desert.
What caused this wonderful massing of tribes? In the first place, the land was excep- tionally rich in all essentials of barbaric plenty. Charlevoix declared that it was "the most
(1) Relation, 1667, estimated the Foxes at 1,000 warriors. Relation of 1670 at 400, on the first, hasty inspection. But the next year they are said to have 200 cabins, each con- taining five or ten families; so that the estimate of 1667 must have been nearer right than that of 1670. All the facts of their subsequent history also corroborate this.
(2) Perrot, Mœurs des Sauvages, p. 127, puts population of chief town of Mascoutins and Miamis at 4,000 souls. Al- louez, Relation, 1670, at more than 3,000, at another time at 800 warriors. In the Narrative of Occurrences, 1695, Neu York Coll. Docts., IX, 608. Frontenac puts the Foxes, Mas- coutins and Kickapoos at 1,500 warriors. This does not include the Miamis, so that my estimate is very low.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
charming country in the world."' The lakes and rivers were full of fish and the forest of game; fuel was plenty; the soil was easy to till and yielded richly. But the crowning attrac- tion, doubtless, was the wild rice marshes, offering an abundant harvest without any labor save that of gathering it in the autumn. There indeed, was the Indian Utopia.
Secondly, all the population excepting the Winnebagos were of the Algonquin stock and they were here admirably sheltered from the two great foes of their race, the Iroquois on the East, and the Sioux or Dakotas on the West. The approach on the one side was guarded by a great lake and the bristling rapids of Fox river; on the other side, were impass- able swamps, deep forests and the winding mazes of a river enveloped in marshes. Thus this region offered peace as well as plenty to its inhabitants. "It is a terrestial Paradise," wrote Dablon; "but the way to it is as difficult as the way to heaven." Savages, at least, could desire nothing beyond that -a paradise safely locked from one's enemies.
The great gathering of the tribes along Green Bay and Fox river is thus easily ex- plained. Consider now the commanding po-
(1) Lettres, XIX, 203.
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sition occupied by this region between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, making it virtually the key to the interior of the conti- nent. Thus we already begin to understand why Wisconsin was to become the focus of the French struggle for supremacy in the West.
The instability of the mission at Chequame- gon Bay had been manifest for some time be- ¿ fore the final collapse; and the Jesuits had eagerly sought for some more permanent foundation on which to build. They were spurred on to such a work by the rising hostil- ity against their order. Their prestige had greatly waned and many of the colonists were rebelling against their rigid rule. "For more than thirty years, " writes Le Clerc, ' "they have complained in Canada of the hampering of their consciences." The Jesuit missions which had once set all France aflame with enthusiasm, began to be sharply criticised. Talon, the in- tendant of Canada, wrote to Colbert: "I have reproached the Jesuits as courteously as pos- sible with paying too little attention to the civilizing and education of the savages."2 Stung by such reproaches and by still graver charges,
(1) Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foi, II, 84.
(2) Margry, I, 79.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
the disciples of Loyola sought for a new field where they might establish themselves firmly and reconstruct society according to the ideals of Jesuitism. Their choice, almost inevitably, fell upon the Green Bay region.
Allouez was sent to make a beginning. In December, 1669, he landed at the head of Green Bay, spent the winter in the vicinity and the next spring ascended the river to visit the Foxes and Mascoutins. Returning to the Bay he was joined in September by Dablon, the Superior of the Jesuit missions on the lakes. Having established the mission of St. Francois Xavier, the two Fathers went to labor among the Mascoutins. The journey over the Fox rapids was arduous. "But as a ře- compense for all our difficulties," Dablon writes, "we enter the most beautiful country that ever was seen; prairies on all sides as far as the eye can reach, divided by a river which gently flows through them, and on which to float by rowing is to repose one's self; there are forests of elms, oaks, etc .; vines, plum-trees, apple-trees are in abund- ance and seem by their appearance to invite the traveller to disembark and taste of their fruits," They saw also great clouds of wild- fowl floating over the harvest of wild-rice that
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lined the river on either side. And game of every kind was so plentiful that it could be killed almost without an effort.1
Paddling through this savage elysium, they reached the chief abode of the Mascoutins. It was a palisaded town standing on the crown of a hill about a league from the river bank; while all around the prairie stretched beyond the sight, interspersed with groves and belts of tall forest. The Mascoutins with the characteristic hospitality of the red man, had received the fugitive Miamis into their town. They had even accepted the Miami king as their ruler; and this potentate guarded day and night by a band of armed warriors, reigned over all with a pomp quite unparalleled in Indian politics.
On his previous visit Allouez had been re- ceived like one from the clouds, " and the rever- ence of the savages now was not abated. They listened with open ears, beset him night and day with questions, invited him and the Father Superior to unceasing feasts. Some were bap- tized. A cross was planted in the midst of the town, and three years afterward Marquette saw it still standing, decorated with deer-
(1) Relation, 1671, p. 43-44.
(2) Relation, 1670, p. 100.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
skins, red-girdles, and other offerings to the Great Manitou of the French.
But the Foxes were not so complaisant. On his first visit to their town on Wolf river, Allouez had been extremely horrified. "They are a nation," he grimly observes, "renowned for being numerous; each man commonly has four wives, some six and others ten." The Foxes, on their part, "had had a very poor opinion of the French ever since two traders in beaver skins had appeared among them." Towards the new faith they maintained a ju- dicial reserve. "They allow the majesty and unity of God," Allouez writes; "of the "rest they say not a word," An old man, the grand chief of the Foxes, thanked the mis- sionary for his visit. "But as for these other things," he continucd, "we have no leisure to speak; we are occupied in bewailing our dead." I
On the second visit the Foxes proved still more obdurate. The year before some of their number had visited Montreal, and there had been shamefully abused by the soldiery;2 and "now they were determined to avenge them-
(1) Ibid., p. 98.
(2) Faillon, Colonie Francaise, III, 392. A vivid picture of the brutality of the soldiery. The Indians were often mur- dered for their furs, on their visits to Montreal.
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selves for the bad treatment they had re- ceived in the French settlements." But Al- louez armed himself with patience and with all the arts of Jesuitic wisdom. He exhibited highly colored paintings of judgment and eter- nal flames. "The parents," he remarks, "were happy to see their baptized children at the top of the picture, while they were horri- fied to behold the torments of the devils at the foot."
In another way the missionary availed him- self of that master passion in the Indian's heart, his love of his children. With soft blandish- ments, Allouez first won the children to his side. "He sang to them spiritual songs with French airs which pleased them and their parents immensely. Then he composed cer- tain canticles against the superstitions and vices most opposed to Christ. These he taught to the children by the sound of a soft lute, and went about the village with his little savage musicians, declaring war against the jugglers, the dreamers and those with many wives. And because the savages, passionately loved their children and suffered everything from them, they permitted the biting reproaches which were made against them by these songs."I
(1) Relation, 1672, p. 39-40.
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Gradually the Foxes succumbed. Sixty children and some adults were baptized; the whole village learned to make the sign of the cross. All revered the black-robed stranger as at least a mighty magician armed with a mysterious power, and possessed of more po- tent spells than had ever before been witnessed in the wilderness. One day a war-party were so wrought upon by the harangues of Allouez, that they daubed the figure of a cross upon their shields of bull-hide, before going to battle; they returned victorious, extolling the sacred symbol as the greatest of "war-medi- cines." This test convinced multitudes. It is the first recorded attempt to apply the scien- tific method to the verifying of religious truth.
The Jesuits rejoiced. "We have good hope" they said, "that we shall soon carry our faith to the famous river called the Mis- sissippi and perhaps even to the South Sea." The missionaries had found favor in the eyes of all the tribes and a firm foothold had been gained amidst the only permanent population east of the great river. A central mission had been established at De Pere, five miles above the mouth of the Fox, with outlying stations among the various tribes. To be sure it was but a beginning; the central chapel was as yet
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but a flimsy structure of bark. But as Dablon had said, "the way to heaven is as open through a roof of bark as through a roof of gold and silver."
Five years later a more substantial church was built, and within the palisaded enclosure of the mission were also dwellings, work- shops and store-houses. Besides the two mis- sionaries Allouez and Andre, there were also lay brothers 'and hired workmen, some em- ployed in building, hunting, fishing, clearing and tilling the soil, others as blacksmiths, gunsmiths, and it would seem that there was even a silversmith there.2 The western trad- ers also, made the mission their rendezvous and stored their furs within its stockade. The scene was a rude and rough one, but the ar- dent missionaries saw in it the nucleus of a new Paraguay-another Jesuit empire rising in the wilds of North America.
(1) Margry, II, 251.
(2) Butler, Early Historic Relics, Wis. Hist. Coll., VII. 295.
CHAPTER III. LA SALLE AND THE COUREURS DE BOIS.
1672-1683.
A little while after the establishment of the mission at Green Bay, Frontenac became gov- ernor of New France. The new governor seems to have set his heart chiefly upon two things: the one to harry the Jesuits, the other to monopolize for himself, so far as pos- sible, the fur-trade of the West. "With the Jesuits," he declared,' "the conversion of souls is but a pious phrase for trading in beaver- skins;" and in another dispatch he affirmed, 2 "that the most of their missions are pure mock- eries." As for the fur-trade, in order to mo- nopolize that, he made use of several agents or secret partners, chief among whom was the celebrated La Salle.
Upon La Salle's carcer we wish to dwell only so far as it pertains to the history of Wis- consin. But such a glamour of romance has been thrown around his name by his impas- sioned admirers and his real relation to West-
(1) Frontenac a Colbert, Nov. 2, 1672.
Margry, I, 248.
(2) Ibid., Nor. 14, 1674. Ibid., 250.
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LA SALLE-COUREURS DE BOIS.
ern affairs has been so thoroughly misunder- stood that our research must take a rather wide range.
La Salle was a fit agent for such a man as Frontenac. He was bold, unscrupulous, ready for anything that could help on his schemes. In hatred of the Jesuits, he surpassed even his master. La Salle's soul was surcharged with suspicions of everybody, but especially of the missionaries. Imaginary Jesuits dogged his footsteps everywhere; they tried to seduce him from the path of chastity; they encouraged his men to desert, soured the minds of the sav- ages against him, thwarted his enterprises and plotted against his life. 1
It is not worth our while to inquire what basis of fact may have underlain these dreams of a disordered fancy. Humanity is sinful; and the Jesuits, it must be confessed, were human.
All of La Salle's hatred of the Jesuits con- verged upon the mission at Green Bay. He claimed for himself nearly the whole Missis- sippi valley by virtue of his alleged discover- ies; but he laid special stress upon the right to the Wisconsin river. He had even protested against Du Lhut's -who was another secret
(1) Parkman, La Salle, 101-7.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
partner of Frontenac-going by that route to trade with the Sioux. "If they go by the way of the Wisconsin where I have founded an es- tablishment," he wrote,' "they will ruin the trade, which is my chief reliance." Therefore he was madly jealous of the mission at Green Bay through which the Jesuits controlled the chief water-way to the West and were seeking to build up a rival empire to his own. "They hold the key to the beaver-country," he for- lornly complained.
What rendered La Salle still more jealous was the fact that his own vast claims were ut- terly baseless. The only domain that he could really claim, by right of discovery, was the region of the Mississippi below the mouth of the Arkansas; and even that had been explored by the Spaniards more than a century before. To show any color of right to the country north of the Arkansas, he was driven to the most enormous fabrications.
In an account of La Salle's explorations writ- ten by a nameless friend of his and taken from his own lips, it is asserted that he made two journeys in 1669-71; the one down the Ohio nearly to its mouth, the other down the Illinois to the Mississippi and beyond. The story of
(1) Margry, II, 251.
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LA SALLE-COUREURS DE BOIS.
the last journey is now coldly dismissed as false even by La Salle's most rapt admirer. But the claim to the discovery of the Ohio has heretofore gone unchallenged.
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