USA > Wisconsin > History of Wisconsin under the dominion of France > Part 3
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La Salle's own statement deserves no credit; for since one part of his story is confessedly false, the maxim, falsus in uno, must prevail. His claim, however, has seemed to have a real support in Joliet's map of 1674, on which the Ohio is laid down with an inscription to the effect that it had been explored by La Salle. But a closer scrutiny reveals that the route of La Salle has been drawn by a later hand, after the map was finished.' The only support therefore vanishes. And in a note below I have given some additional reasons for believ- ing that La Salle's discovery of the Ohio was but another invention of his own unscrupulous brain. 2
(1) Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, IV, 215. "The route of La Salle is seemingly drawn by a later hand and the stream is without the coloring given to the other rivers. In its course, too, it runs athwart the vignette surrounding the scale at the bottom of the map as if added after that was made."
(2) The account given both in the Paris memoir and in that to Frontenac is so absurdly incorrect as to prove that La Salle was only repeating reports gathered from the Iroquois amongst whom he wintered in 1669. The rapids at Louisville described as a very high fall and the great
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
Claiming almost the whole West by virtue of these pretended discoveries, La Salle in 1682 began to entrench himself on Rock St. Louis by the side of the Illinois river. In his wooden castle, on this formidable cliff, he was to reign as a feudal lord over half a continent, gather- ing the Western savages around him as his vassals. Wisconsin and the whole Upper Mis- sissippi region were to become tributary to his
error as to their location, the "very large river" from the north flowing into the Ohio above the fall and the marshy country in which the river sinks and is lost below the fall, the six or seven leagues that separate Lake Erie from the Ohio. the twenty-four men who desert and flee some to New England and some to New Holland - it is wonderful that so many blunders and absurdities could be crowded into fifteen lines .- Parkman, La Salle, 23-4, gives both accounts without suspicion.
Perrot (Moeurs des Saurages, 119-120,) says that in the summer of 1670, he met La Salle hunting on the Ottawa with a party of Iroquois. The account states that La Salle separated from the priests, Sept. 30, 1669, being then sick of a fever, made a visit to the Onondagas, thence made an exploring trip to the Ohio and return, of 800 leagues. Who can believe that all this took place in time for La Salle to go far north on the Ottawa for a leisurely summer hunt?
The manner of putting forth this claim-the long silence, the sudden assertion in 1677 and 1678, the subsequent silence-is proof enough. In the Relation des Decouvertes, 1681, it is stated that a violent fever obliged him to quit the priests at the beginning of their explorations. and there is not a hint of any subsequent journey of his own to the Ohio .-- (Margry, II, 436.
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ambition; the Jesuits at Green Bay were to be checkmated in their evil designs. " La Salle keeps in the background," Frontenac's succesor wrote to the Minister, "with the idea of at- tracting the inhabitants to him and building up an imaginary kingdom for himself by de- bauching all the bankrupts and idlers of this country."
The scheme, according to his own assertions, prospered wonderfully. In a memorial to the king, he reports the number of Indians col- lected around Rock St. Louis at four thousand warriors, or more than twenty thousand souls. This great concourse of savages had fled to him for protection; organized by his genius and obedient to his will, they formed a mighty barrier to any future invasions of the West by the Iroquois. "The diplomacy of La Salle," writes his eloquent panegyrist, "had been crowned with a marvelous success."
But La Salle's claim is wholly fraudulent, and the only marvel about it is, that the fraud should have gone so long undetected.
In Franquelin's map of 1684, the colony is laid down in detail, the different villages lo- cated and the number of warriors in each vil- lage noted-all this information having been
(1) Parkman, La Salle, 297. 4
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given by La Salle himself who had reached Quebec on his way to France, the autumn be- fore the map was finished. On this map the Shawanoes are estimated at 200 warriors and the Illinois at 1200, the latter being doubtless .greatly over-estimated. How now are the re- maining 2600 made up? By the extremely simple device of counting the same people twice. The Miamis are first located as one body and their numbers estimated at 1 300. Then the different tribes into which the Miamis were divided1- the Ouiatenons or Weas, the Peanghichias or Piankeshaws, etc .- are sepa- rately located and their respective numbers assigned to each.
The trick is incredibly transparent. And there are other misstatements not quite so manifest. Only a part of the Miamis could have been with the colony, since a large body of them, including their king, were with the Mascoutins, at first on Fox river and then on the Wisconsin, from 1669 to 1690.2 Their numbers are also exaggerated; since in 1736 -they having enjoyed peace and prosperity in the meantime-the whole nation was estimated
(1) Consult Shea. Indian Tribes of Wisconsin, Wis. Hist. Coll., III, 134, on divisions of Miamis.
(2) Relation, 1671. La Potherie, II, 251.
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at 550 warriors. 1 Again, the Illinois had long dwelt around Rock St. Louis, and La Salle, instead of collecting them there, had merely established his fort in their midst. In a word, a fraction of the Miamis and possibly two hundred Shawanoes-in all, perhaps seven hundred warriors-had temporarily located in the Illinois country. And this had been brought about not by La Salle's diplomacy, but by fear of an Iroquois invasion.
That such a trick should not have been de- tected in far-away Paris is not surprising; al- though it does almost take away one's breath to find La Salle: coolly proposing, in a memorial to the king, to lead his four thousand imagin- ary Indians from Rock St. Louis to Mexico, promising with them to overthrow the Span- iards and to conquer an empire as large as half of Europe." But it is wonderful that this fraud should have lived on for two centuries, that an eminent historian should have accepted it without suspicion and made it the chief factor in that preposterous glory which he was bent upon wreathing around the brow of La Salle. History holds few such examples of triumphant mendacity.
(1) Enumeration of Indian Tribes N. York Col. Docu- ments, IX, 1052. But this is a very low estimate.
(2) Parkman, La Salle, 326.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
La Salle's enterprise, although but a bubble of fraud, exerted a very malign influence by arousing the suspicions of the large Indian population massed in Wisconsin. Even before this the Foxes had become distrustful of the French; but now the eyes of the Mascoutins were opened and upon La Salle's first arrival among the Illinois in 1680, they sent their chief Monso to warn the latter people against the en- croachments of the French. 1 La Salle, as usual, ascribed this interference to the intrigues of the Jesuit missionaries; with how much truth it would be difficult to say. But it is certain that from this time the two chief tribes of Wis- consin, the Foxes and Mascoutins, together with the Kickapoos became firm allies, united by a common sentiment of distrust and latent animosity toward the French.
But this rising distrust of the savages did not prevent large numbers of French traders or coureurs de bois from pressing forward into Wisconsin and other northern regions. These brave and hardy men were exposed to a double danger, the suspicions of the savages and the regulations of the fur trade. For, the royal edicts, in the interests of monopoly, prohibited
(1) Ibid., 161-4.
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the colonists from going into the wilderness to trade, under the heaviest penalties; for the first offense, whipping and branding; for the second perpetual imprisonment in the galleys.1 But despite these severities and perils the flight westward went on year by year, in ever in- creasing numbers. As early as 1676, there were already in the woods nearly five hundred young men, "the best in Canada, besides others on the way."2 Three years later there were eight hundred out of a total Canadian popula- tion of 10,000 souls. Canada was being rap- idly drained of its best young blood. "There is not a family," the intendant Du Chesnau, wrote "of any condition or quality, whatso- ever, that has not children, brothers, uncles and nephews among the coureurs de bois. "3
Monopoly and despotism had made these men outlaws. But to accept outlawry under such conditions was an act of virtue and a proof of manhood. "The men," says a dis- tinguished authority,4 "who have been driven
(1) Lettre du Roi, 30.April, 1681. Coll. de Manuscripts, I, 280. Also La Houtan, Voyages, I, 85-6.
(2) La Chesnaye. Memoire sur le Canada. Coll. de Manuscripts, I, 255. In Margry, VI, 3, this memoir is wrongly dated.
(3) New York Coll. Documents, IX, 140-152.
(4) Campbell, Political History of Michigan, 14-15.
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to the forests by feudal oppressions and mo- nopolies have assuredly been possessed of many useful qualities which a better government could have turned to a great advantage."
And as it was, they were of incalculable ser- vice to New France. The most faithful ser- vants of the crown confessed it, while deplor- ing the violation of the royal edicts. "No doubt," wrote Begon, ' "the trade they carry on with the nations is advantageous to the colony. The French should carry to the savages all that they need lest they be attracted to the English, and thus the fur trade in Canada which is our main dependence would be ruined. The savages would also array themselves against us in the first war, as they always take the part of those with whom they trade."
The English were of the same opinion, and saw in these hardy voyageurs the chief pro- moters of French exploration and commerce. "We shall never be able to rancounter the French," wrote Livingston, the Indian commis- sioner of New York," "except we have a nur- sery of bushlopers as well as they." It was manifestly true. For lack of just such a class,
(1) Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 309-310.
(2) Report of Journey to Onondaga, N. Y. Col. Docu- ments, IV, 650.
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the English even in 1750, had hardly found their way across the Alleghanies, while the French had pushed on to the base of the Rocky Mount- ains. 1
And yet these forest rangers have been savagely traduced even in modern times. The same eloquent historian who has clothed the sorry figure of La Salle in a halo of romance, describes the coureurs de bois as "standing examples of unbridled license," and as, "drunk- en rioters stalking about the streets as naked as a Pottawattamie or a Sioux." Doubtless there were wild spirits among so many men; but La Hontan, an eye-witness, does not paint their revelries in any such gross colors as the above; and he expressly adds that "many were married men who on reaching the settle- ments betook themselves quietly and soberly to the bosom of their families." The great fault of these men was that they had rendered themselves odious to the aristocrats and mon- opolists of Canada. "They swagger about like lords," complains the Marquis Denonville, "they despise the peasantry whose daughters they will not marry although they are peasants
(1) Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, 174-a generous tribute to the forest rangers.
( ) Parkman, La Salle, 166 and Old Regime, 312.
( ) Voyages, I, 31. Letter VI. Montreal, 14 Juin, 1684.
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themselves." The French voyagers had, doubtless, many faults; their lives were thoroughly human admixtures of good and evil. But after all their chief crime seems to have been their love of liberty.
A bitter strife constantly went on between these out-lawed fur traders of the forest and men like La Salle, who were acting as secret agents of corrupt official rings that were striv- ing to monopolize the trade of the West.1 In this strife Wisconsin became the headquarters of the forest rangers, to whom the missionaries at Green Bay gave as much sympathy and sup- port as they dared. Thus during the French dominion, the white population of Wisconsin came to be mainly made up of these gay and daring adventurers." But all in all, the state need not be ashamed of these, her early pio- neers.
(1) Gravier, Cavelier de La Salle, 75-77. This French panegyrist of La Salle describes his troubles and the rigors dealt out to the forest rangers as both due to the Jesuits.
(2) Mackinac was indeed their great rendezvous, but this was but the gateway to Wisconsin. La Motte Cadillac complained that his designs at Detroit were constantly thwarted by the opposition of the Jesuits and "of the people of Canada, because their great project is the estab- lishment of Mackinac and the coureurs de bois." Also, Lettre a Pontchartrain, Detroit, Sept. 15, 1708.
CHAPTER IV. NICOLAS PERROT-FRANCE TAKES POSSESSION
OF THE WEST. 1689.
Small craft glide gaily into port while great ships have to wait for the rising tide. And thus it seems often to happen that small men sweep into distinction, while the great and the true stick on the sand-bars of history and have to bide their time. Only thus can one account for that strangely blended fate of oblivion and dishonor that has gathered around the name of Nicolas Perrot. And it is the chief joy of the historian-the full and almost sole reward for much delving in the dry and dusty records of the past, -if he may be able to help one such name onward into the place of honor where it really belongs,
Perrot, born in 1644, came at a very early age to the New World. The first years of his wilderness career were passed in the employ of the Jesuits; but about 1665, he began life for himself as a trader among the Indian tribes of Wisconsin. Thence he soon extended his travels throughout the Northwest.
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In 1670, the French authorities determined to take formal possession of the West, with solemn and imposing ceremonies. They looked around for some one fitted, by his prestige among the Indians, to go as an envoy and gather the tribes in a grand assembly at Sault St. Marie, where the ceremonies of occupation were to take place.' "No one," writes Charle- voix, "was" better adapted for this import- ant duty than Nicholas Perrot;"? and he was sent. After dispatching messages to the tribes north of Lake Superior, he went in person to those of Wisconsin. His visit was crowned with success; and the next spring the young envoy returned to Sault Ste Marie at the head of a great fleet of canoes filled with the guile- less barbarians who had come to surrender their land to the crown of France. When the as- sembly was convened, St. Lusson- a non- entity of noble birth-acted as master of cere- monies; but Perrot had done the real work.
It is worthy of note that the proud Foxes were not at the council. They had a great friendship for Perrot and followed him as far as Green Bay, but there they turned back.
(1) Perrot, Moeurs des Sauvages. Tailhan's Notes, 258.
(2) History of New France, III, 165.
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Not even he could persuade them to pay homage to the French. I
Soon afterward Frontenac, the monopolist and the fierce foe of the Jesuits, was made governor of New France, Under such an ad- ministration there was no chance for Perrot, an honest man and-like all the great explor- ers, Nicolet, Radisson, Joliet2-a friend of the missionaries. During this period, therefore, Perrot lived in retirement.
But this blameless obscurity has given the opportunity for a frightful stab at Perrot's fame. The anonymous memoir which contains the lying account of La Salle's discoveries, also tells of an alleged attempt to poison him by a domestic in his service named Nicolas Perrot.
Even if it was declared that our famous voyageur was meant, the charge would not deserve serious attention; since it would have no support except an anonymous doc- ument full of falsehoods and calumnies. But no such declaration is made. It has been reserved for a modern historian to give cur- rency to the charge. 3 And so far as I know
(1) Perrot, Memoire, 127. (2) Voyages of Radisson, 175. A hearty defence of the Jesuits.
(3) Parkman, La Salle, 104. Even that acute critic, Dr. Butler, expresses himself doubtfully. Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII, 205-6 ..
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no attempt has ever been made to clear Perrot from the infamy thus cast upon him.
Thanks to a Canadian census list, we know something of Perrot at this period. It thus appears that about 1671, he married Made- leine Raclos, a young lady of good family and possessed of a considerable fortune; in 1681, he was living quietly, with his wife and six children, upon his estate.1 Is it not absurd to think of him as La Salle's menial and a cut- throat to boot, who had been put in irons and publicly disgraced for having attempted to poison his master?
In 1683 the friends of Perrot returned to power and he was forthwith sent West to gather up the Indians for a campaign against the Iroquois. In 1685, he was made governor of the Northwest with headquarters at Green Bay. "I was sent to this Bay, "he writes," with a commission to command there and in the most distant countries of the West, and also in all those I might be able to discover."2 He arrived at Green Bay just in time to medi- ate between the Chippewas and the Foxes, then on the eve of war; thence he hastened to the Mississippi to establish posts and make
(1) Tailhan in Perrot, Memoire, 331. Note.
(2) Ibid., 156.
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explorations in the countries beyond. But he had hardly reached Black River before winter set in. And here Perrot, who had an artist's eye for the picturesque, fixed his habitation not far from Mount Trempeleau, that solitary peak which rises like a rocky exhalation from the midst of the Mississippi.
The next season Perrot was recalled to again lead his Indians against the Iroquois. Before setting out on this campaign he presented to the little mission chapel at De Pere, a silver ostensorium -the pious offering of a brave and devout soul. This precious relic was dug up in 1802 near the site of the old chapel, and is now deposited with the Wisconsin Historical Society.I
The campaign finished, Perrot hastened back to Green Bay, where there was urgent need of his presence. The long smouldering discon- tent of the Foxes and their allies was now bursting forth into open violence against the French. They were enraged by the establish- ment of the trading posts on the Mississippi by which their mortal enemies, the Sioux, were being supplied with munitions of war. Besides, they had suffered all manner of abuse and wrongs from the hands of the traders, as the
(1) Butler, Early Historic Relics of the Northwest. Wis. Hist. Coll., VIII, 195-206.
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colonial authorities confessed. "The violence and brutality of the French have been carried to such extremes," Denonville, the governor- general, wrote in 1686, "that it is a wonder that the savages do not rise and slay them
The malign influence of La Salle also, had greatly aggravated these disorders. Claiming almost everything in the West, he had faltered at nothing in order to enforce his mad preten- sions. "He had even ordered the savages," Charlevoix says," "to plunder the goods of any one who had no commission from him." Out of this chaos of conflicting claims, violence and iniquity, came a natural result. In 1687 the Foxes, Kickapoos and Mascoutins con- spired to pillage the French establishment at Green Bay in order to provide themselves with guns and other munitions of war. The plot was carried out, the mission chapel burned, everything valuable was carried off or de- stroyed.
Perrot was the chief sufferer. For his pub- lie services he had neither received nor ex- pected any reward save the profits of his trade with the Indians. And, like all the merchants
(1) Lettre a Seignelay, 12 Juin, 1686. Tailhan, 312.
(2) History of New France, III, 246.
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of the colony, ' he had for several years been greatly embarrassed on account of the Iroquois wars, which had prevented the carrying of furs to Montreal. A letter of his to one of his cred- itors has been preserved, the letter of an hon- est, high-minded man who struggles and hopes. But his goods were stored in the mission build- ings at Green Bay; and now all had vanished in smoke and flame. According to Potherie? “M. Perrot lost furs valued at forty thousand livres," a considerable fortune in those primitive times. After so many hardships and perils, and so mnny services rendered to the state, he was left penniless and in debt.
But the courage and serenity of Perrot were unfailing. Soon turning away from this scene of desolation, he hurried on to the Mississippi with a force of forty men. Winter was already at hand and ice had begun to form in Fox river. But daunted by nothing, he pushed forward until he reached Mount Trempeleau and there once more went into winter quarters.
The next season was a busy and prosperous one. Order was restored among the rebellious
(1) " Les marchands sont encore dans un e'tat plus de'- plorable tout leur bien est dans le bois depuis trois ou quatre ans." Letter of Champigny, Intendant of New France, August 9, 1688.
(2) La Potherie, Septentrionale Amerique, II, 209.
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tribes of Wisconsin. The Sioux were induced to move down from the north and fix their habitation around Lake Pepin. Fort St. An- toine was built on the eastern side of the lake, and a tributary post established near the mouth of the Wisconsin, where one Borie Guillot was placed in command. All the tribes being now at peace with each other and thorougly loyal to France, everything had been prepared for the ceremony of occupation. And on the 9th of May, 1689, at Fort St. Antoine, Perrot, as commissioner for the king, formally took pos- ' session of the great Northwest.
Let us pause for a moment at the spot where this memorable ceremony was enacted. The site of Fort St. Antoine can be identified with sufficient certainty, as lying near the base of a lofty bluff on the eastern side of Lake Pepin, and about two miles below the present village of Stockholm.' In the rear the bluff rises pre- cipitously, first covered with woods, then bare and sprinkled with black-mottled rocks, then its summit crowned with stately trees. In front, there is a gentle slope of fifty or sixty feet to the side of the lake. Then the clear
(I) Draper, Early French Forts. Wis. Hist. Coll., X, 368-372.
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and wide expanse of the waters walled in on the other side by another long line of lofty cliffs, steep, grim, regular as a rampart. It is a scene of marvelous beauty; above all, in mid- summer, when one looking across the silvery waters, beholds the gray top of the distant bluffs, flecked here and there by streaks of gold, where the great sun-burned harvest fields beyond are peeping down on the fair lake be- neath.
Such is the setting of the scene. Of the ceremony of taking possession we have no re- cord save the brief official minute signed by Nicolas Perrot, "commissioned to manage the interests of commerce among all the Indian tribes and peoples of the Bay des Puants, Nadouesioux, Mascoutins, and other Western nations of the Upper Misssisippi, and to take possession in the King's name of all the places where he has heretofore been and whither he will go."I There are also subscribed to the document the names of Marest the Jesuit mis- sionary, Borie-Guillot commandant on the Wisconsin, Le Sueur the afterwards noted ex- plorer, and others less known to fame. Among the latter is one Jean He bert, doubt-
(1) Wis. Hist. Coll., XI, 36.
5
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less a scion of that Hebert family who were the first actual settlers of New France.I
Whole chapters of history have been de- voted to describing the pomp with which St. Lusson took possession for France of the rocky barrens around Sault Ste Marie and La Salle of the marshes which embosom the mouth of the Mississippi. But to the thoughtful mind, the quiet scene at Fort St. Antoine will far surpass them both in interest. St. Lusson and La Salle stood amidst uninhabited wastes, but Perrot, at Fort St. Antoine, stood at the centre of the continent, close to what were to be its richest gardens and harvest fields. The date itself was a memorable one. A few weeks before William and Mary had ascended the English throne and the English Revolution had thus been brought to its triumphant close. That date has been universally accepted as the turn- ing-point in the career of Louis XIV. and of European despotism. It seems like a stroke of supernatural irony that that very time should have been chosen for the planting of the stand- ard of this waning despotism in the heart of that continent which above all others had been reserved for liberty.
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