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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
spairing but defiant, withdrew again into their entrenchments.
Fortune came at last to their rescue. One night there was a heavy rain-storm, and under cover of its darkness, the Foxes slipped silent- ly away. The fight had lasted for nineteen days.
Next morning, the French confederates baulked and furious, set out in hot pursuit. Twelve miles above Detroit they came up with one division of the Foxes who had encamped by the side of Lake St. Clair. "Not perceiving the enemy's entrenchments," the French ex- pected to find an easy prey, and with yells of triumph fell upon the fugitives like wolves up- on a flock of sheep. Being driven back in dis- order, they began a new siege with great cau- tion. The Foxes fought bravely, but hope- lessly; they were hemmed in upon every side, either by the lake or the enemy; the French cannon, which had been brought up from De- troit, battered down their weak defences and finally on the fifth day of the second siege they surrendered at discretion.
No mercy was shown. "The allies and the French," writes' Charlevoix, "commenced a deadly slaughter, destroying all the warriors
(1) Charlevoix, History of New France, V, 265.
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THE BETRAYAL OF THE FOXES.
except about one hundred and fifty, who, with the women and children, were distributed as slaves among the Indians; but the latter did not keep them long for they were all massacred before they separated." The slain, according to the statements of Charlevoix and Ferland, numbered two thousand souls; 1 one thousand, according to the exculpatory and wholly unreliable report of Du Buisson, the French commander. Certain it is that not a man, woman or child who fell into the hands of the enemy was permitted to live. 2
The dark annals of Indian history record no- thing quite as black as this transaction, begun in vile treachery and ending in unpicturable horrors. The lovely nights of early June, the tranquil lake, the forests newly robed in beauty-all this was lighted up by hundreds upon hundreds of fires, at each of which some man, woman or child, was being slowly burned to death. No wonder that the French were not willing to assume all the responsibility for this affair at Detroit. "It is God," writes the commandant, Du Buisson, "who has suffered these two audacious nations to perish."
(1) Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada, II, 388.
(2) Report to M. de Vandreuil. Smith, Documentary History of Wisconsin.
1
CHAPTER VI. THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
1712-1716.
But the Wisconsin Indians were by no means so nearly exterminated as the French authorities had fondly dreamed. "Although the number of the dead is very great," wrote the missionary, Marest,' "the Fox nation is not destroyed." According to his estimate there still remained about Green Bay, four hundred good warriors, besides others scattered in the great flight. Nor had the slaughter at Detroit broken the spirit of these indomitable savages; it had only deepened their old dislike of the French into a grim, undying hatred. Even the next year the governor and the intendant complain to the Minister at Paris that "the Fox Indians are daily becoming more insolent." 2
Disaster however had disciplined these wild warriors. Henceforth they will be more con- ciliatory in their intercourse with surrounding
(1) Letter to M. de Vaudreuil. Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 299.
(2) Letter of De Vaudreuil and Begon, Nov. 15, 1713. Abstract in Canadian Archives, 1886, p. XLIV.
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
nations, seeking far and wide for helpers and friends in the great struggle to which they had devoted themselves. The first fruits of their new policy was an alliance with the Sioux, with whom they had been at war from time immemorial. But in 1714 the two nations had joined hands against the Illinois, the wards and abject servants of the French. No great expedition was organized; war was waged by piecemeal. Some young warrior, eager for glory, would gather around him a band of com- rades and sally forth out of the forests of North- ern Wisconsin, across the prairies, to surprise the Illinois in their villages or to fall upon them in their hunting parties. If the warriors succeeded, they came back in triumph, waving their trophies and shouting their battle songs; but if they failed, they returned as men dis- graced, waiting on the outskirts of the village until the dead of night and then stealing, silent and crestfallen, into their cabins.' But in either case the war went on.
Thus blow after blow fell upon the Illinois. Charlevoix has indeed exaggerated or rather anticipated events when he says that so early as 1714 these Indians were driven from their old homes on the Illinois river, never to return. 2
(1) Wisconsin Hist. Collections, III, 446.
(2) History of New France, V. 309,
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
So late as 1722 one tribe still clung to their famous stronghold, Rock St. Louis; but the rest had fled far southward and had settled under French protection on the Kaskaskia.
The French authorities became greatly alarmed. The policy by which all the nations of the West were to be marshalled as retainers and supporters of a great French Empire stretching across the continent, was about to be defeated by the stubborn and bitter hate of a single tribe. The Foxes were allying with themselves not only the tribes of Wisconsin, but the Sioux and other distant peoples. By their settlement on Fox river they were mas- ters of the chief channel of communication be- tween the East and the West; by driving the Illinois off from the river of the same name they were gaining almost complete control of the only other great highway. Communica- tions were becoming very difficult. Travellers to and fro were always at the mercy of the Foxes; many were plundered and killed. The vast but fragile Empire of New France was al- most split asunder by these implacable savages of Wisconsin.
Various means of meeting this danger were suggested. It was even proposed to sweep away the old commercial system with its mo-
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
nopolies, restrictions and exactions. In 1714 the governor and the intendant of the colony wrote to the colonial minister that "trading must be made free for a few years at least," 1 Such a policy, adopted, not for a few years, but permanently, would have changed the whole future of the colony; the rising discon- tent of the Indians would have been overcome; their affection for the French maintained. New France, already entrenched in the fairest portions of the West and commanding all its chief avenues of trade, would have entered upon a boundless prosperity and her supremacy over the continent been assured for ages to come. But the proposal was too revolutionary, too subversive of all the traditions of French despotism; and although suggested again and again,? met with little favor from the court.
Instead of this, it was proposed to again at- tempt the extermination of the Foxes. In vain, the wisest and most experienced people of the colony protested against a policy so brutal and so foolish. Perrot, who for half a
(1) De Vaudreuil and Begon to the Minister, Sept. 20, 1714. Canadian Archives, 1886. XLIV.
(2) A letter of De Vaudreuil and Begon, Oct. 14, 1716, contains a draft of proposed measures for freedom of trade -not to begin before Jan. 1, 1718. Can. Archives, 1886, XLVII.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
century had been better versed than any other man in the affairs of the West, defended the Foxes and presented a memoir in their favor to the Governor General. Although now past seventy years of age, he offered to once more brave the hardships of the wilderness in order to treat with the savages who still had a per- fect trust in the one Frenchman who had never betrayed their confidence. "If I had gone with De Louvigny," he said afterwards, "I would have made peace with the Foxes with- out fighting or bloodshed."I
But folly prevailed. And on the 14th of March, 1716, an expedition led by a brave and tried officer, De Louvigny, set out from Que- bec to destroy the Foxes. On the route they were joined by allied Indians until the com- mand numbered eight hundred men. In due time they reached Green Bay, the first hostile expedition of white men that ever touched the shores of Wisconsin.
Thence they toiled up the rapids of the Fox river until they came to the town of the Foxes which, according to tradition, was located at Little Butte des Morts, a slight eminence close to the west bank of the river and nearly oppo-
(1) Perrot, Moeurs des Savages, 153. Also La Poth- erie.
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
site to the site of the city of Neenah. Here the savages had fortified themselves in the rude way known to their engineering art, hav- ing run a triple row of oaken palisades arouud their town and in the rear dug a deep, wide ditch. Within the enclosure were five hundred warriors and three thousand women and child- ren.
The Foxes at this time were in all the per- fection of savage wildness. Their dislike of the French had kept them free from the touch of civilized vices and miseries. The Jesuit missionaries noted the absence of sickness among them, having found on their first visit but one person seriously ill, a consumptive child .? "They abound in women and child- ren," says a French Memoir of 1718. "They are as industrious as can be. The people live well on account of the abundance of meat and fish. The hunting is excellent and the river is full of fish. The men wear scarcely any
clothing in the summer time. But the girls are robed in black or brown fawn skins, embellished all around with little bells
(1) The Chicago & Northwestern Railway was laid out through this famous mound and almost the entire hill has been dug away.
(2) Relation, 1671.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
or similar ornaments. They are pretty enough."1
Such were the savages who had gathered behind their oaken palisades to await the com- ing of De Louvigny and his destroying army. "Everybody believed," writes Charlevoix, 2 "that the Fox nation was about to be de- stroyed; and so they themselves judged when they saw the storm gathering against them; they therefore prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible."
One can but dimly imagine the scene: thousands of men, women and children tran- quilly awaiting their doom; the busy prepa- rations for war, the few guns made ready, spears sharpened, the stone arrow-heads se- curely fastened to their shafts; the council fires around which the warriors crouched, row upon row, in solemn conclave; the long fastings, for the Foxes, very devout after their own fashion, would often fast ten days at a time on the eve of battle;3 their incessant war dances now slow and measured, now growing fast and furious until the forests rang with their wild songs and cries of defiance.
(1) N. Y. Col. Documents. Memoir upon the Indians of Canada, IX, 889.
(2) Charlevoix, History of New France, IV, 155.
(3) Relation, 1671.
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
The French, taught wisdom at Detroit, pro- ceeded with the utmost caution. Unwilling to risk an open assault against the redoubtable Foxes, they beseiged them in regular form. For three days the French toiled in the trench- es, "sustained by a continuous fire of fusileers with two pieces of cannon and a grenade mor- tar." The Foxes, on their part, fought with their wonted valor. From the first they had been expecting a re-inforcement of three hun- dred men, doubtless Mascoutins. Disappoint- ed and desperate they made a furious assault upon the enemy, but were finally driven back behind their palisades.
The trenches which had opened at seventy yards distance, had been pushed forward to within twenty-four yards of the fort. On the third night, De Louvigny was ready to explode two mines under the defenses and to storm the place. At the last moment the Foxes offered to surrender, but the French commander re- fused to listen to them. He had come not to negotiate, but to destroy.
The deputies came forth a second time to sue for peace. Why DeLouvigny should now have acceded to their proposition is a mys- tery not worth the unravelling; perhaps he knew that the long expected reinforcements 7
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
were close at hand; or very likely he doubted the nerve of his allies when brought face to face with the Foxes. At any rate, in his official report he tried to throw the responsi- bility for the peace upon the allied Indians. "I submitted to them the enemy's proposition and they consented to it." But this the French Indians indignantly denied. Five years after- ward an attempt was made to once more unite them in a crusade against the Foxes and they refused; " it is difficult," they said "to place confidence in the French who had once before united the nations to assist in exterminating the Foxes and then had granted peace without even consulting the allies."1
The conditions of surrender were remarkably mild, showing plainly that something had gone wrong in the project of extermination. The Foxes were to give up their prisoners; they were to hunt to pay the expenses of the war; they were to take slaves from different nations and deliver them to the allies to replace the dead; six chiefs, or children of chiefs, were also to be taken to Quebec as hostages. Peace con- cluded, De Louvigny set out on his home- ward march, arriving at Quebec on the 12th of October. The next day he made a report to
(1) New York Col. Documents, IX.
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
the council, ending with the boast that " he had reunited the nations and left that country en- joying universal peace."
The next spring De Louvigny was sent back to secure the full performance of the conditions. During the winter, however, three of the Fox chiefs held at Quebec, had died of the small- pox, another, apparently the only remaining one, had lost an eye, and with but this solitary and disfigured hostage the French officer was compelled to return. He himself, a little tim- idly perhaps, stopped at Michillimackinac, and thence sent forward the one-eyed hostage, with two French interpreters to perfect the treaty.
After their arrival among the Foxes, several days were spent in mourning for the dead. This to the savages was the most sacred of all solemnities. "Their toils and their com- merce," writes the Jesuit Brebeuf,' "seem.to have no other end than to amass the means of honoring the departed; they have nothing too precious for this object; often in mid-winter you will see them going almost naked, while they have at home good and costly robes which they keep in reverence for the dead." And now the Foxes were bewailing the loss of their
(1) Relation des Hurons, 1636, 128.
L. of C.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
three principal chiefs -above all, of the re- nowned Pemoussa, who had commanded them at Detroit and had led the remnant of the nation safely back to its Wisconsin home. It was a common grief shared by every member of the tribe. Day after day they lay, face downward, upon their mats, speechless or else chanting the death-songs dolorously.1
These solemn duties discharged, a council was called to consider the treaty with the French. The one-eyed hostage gravely harangued his countrymen upon their failure to keep the stipulations of the surrender. They, on their part, were very contrite and made many promises. They even signed an agree- ment in writing that they would send deputies to Montreal, the next spring, to finish the treaty. Armed with this precious document the hostage, with the two French interpreters, set out for Michillimackinac.
But when they had gone about ten leagues, the hostage began to hesitate. He felt it his duty, he said, to go back to his people and labor with them in order that they might keep faith with the French. So saying, the savage diplo- mat turned his back upon his fellow travelers
(1) Hale. Book of Iroquois Rites, 71.
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THE GAUNTLET TAKEN UP.
and was soon lost to view in the depths of the forest. And that was the end of the treaty with the Foxes.
Shall we pause to bewail the faithlessness of the Foxes? They had been schooled in per- fidy by the French, and the events at Detroit were still fresh in their memories; their suspic- ions had been roused by the mysterious death of their chiefs at Quebec; they were struggling for home and liberty against a host that had united for their destruction. It may be that their conduct was open to criticism. But let him that is without sin, just cast a stone at them.
It is no part of my design to idealize the Fox Indians. Doubtless they were savages addicted to nudity, lying and other unsavory habits. Placed under the microscope of exact research, they became as unromantic as other human beings. But after all, the story of their resistance to the French, and of its wide- sweeping results, has about it as much of the heroic and the grand, as the hard realism of history will ever permit.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREAT CONFEDERACY.
1716-1726.
The expedition of De Louvigny had accom- plished nothing but evil. Instead of being destroyed, the Foxes had only been roused to fiercer efforts; now that the old chiefs were dead, slain by the small-pox at Quebec, there was no check upon the hot-headed impetuosity of the young warriors;" and the next year after the attempt to perfect the peace, they had joined with the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos in another war against the Illinois .? Everywhere else tranquility reigned. But this wrath of the Wisconsin Indians against the French and their vassals was the black thunder-cloud that seemed all the more ominous amidst the uni- versal sun-shine. "All would be peace on this continent," De Vaudreuil in 1719 wrote plaintively to the king, "if it were not for this
(1) Alluded to so late as 1727. Cass Manuscripts. Wis- consin Hist. Collections, III, 163.
(2) De Vaudreuil to the Minister, Oct. 30, 1718. Cana- dian Archives, 1886, p. LVII.
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THE GREAT CONFEDERACY.
perpetual war of the Foxes and their allies against the Illinois."I
It was now the period of John Law and his celebrated Mississippi scheme. France, im- poverished by the gilded follies of Louis XIV, suddenly became a perfect fairy-land of mock prosperity.2 Of course, the valley of the Mis- sissippi shared in this glamour; nothing was too absurd to be believed concerning its hidden wealth. Pearl-fisheries were said to abound in its waters. The prairies of Illinois were under- laid with vast deposits of gold and silver; and in 1719, Renault, Director-General of the Mines of Louisiana was sent, with two hundred miners and artificers to unearth these fabulous treasures. The wool of the buffaloes also was to furnish inexhaustible material for the man- ufacture of cloth and hats; for this purpose they were to be 'domesticated, gathered in parks, and transported to France. 3 Forty years before, indeed, the mad brain of La Salle had given birth to this plan for utilizing the buffaloes. 4
(1) New York Coll. Documents, IX, 893.
(2) Justamond, Lewis XV, vol. 1, page 82, gives a list of immense fortunes suddenly acquired. Consult also Buckle. Hist. Civilization, 1, 516.
(3) Charlevoix, Hist. New France, III, 389.
(4) Parkman, La Salle.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
The bubble soon burst, but it left behind it some solid benefits. Many colonists were for- warded; "persons without means of liveli- hood," according to St. Simon,' "sturdy beg- gars, male and female, and a quantity of pub- lic creatures were carried off;" but they entered upon a new life amidst the wilds of the Missis- sippi. A considerable settlement was formed below the Kaskaskia. Trade and agriculture flourished; not only furs but grain and flour were shipped down the river to France or to the West Indies. Fort Chartres was built with walls of solid masonry -the key-stone in that great arch of forts which stretching from Que- bec to the mouth of the Mississippi was de- signed to shut the English up in the narrow strip of land along the Atlantic, and to establish the unity of the French Empire in the West.
The Foxes, thererefore, in their struggle to destroy the Illinois Indians and to gain control of the Illinois river, were aiming their blows at the very heart of the French Dominion. The colonial authorities fully realized the dan- ger. "The nation," wrote Charlevoix in 1721, 1 "which for twenty years past has been the
(1) Memoires of St. Simon, III, 236.
(2) Charlevoix. Letters, London, 1763. Letter XIX, July 21, 1721, p. 211.
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THE GREAT CONFEDERACY.
most talked of in these western parts is the Outagamies or Renards. The natural fierce- ness of their savagery soured by the ill-treat- ment they have received, sometimes without cause, and their alliance with the Iroquois have rendered them formidable. They have since made a strict alliance with the Sioux, a numer- ous nation inured to war; and this union has rendered all the navigation of the upper part of the Mississippi almost impracticable to us. It is not quite safe to navigate the river of the Illinois unless we are in a condition to prevent surprise, which is a great injury to the trade between the two colonies."
But this account does not do full justice to the diplomacy of the Foxes; for, when Charle- voix wrote, they had not completed their work. Year by year they went on extending their league and increasing the uneasiness of the French. "They will array all the upper (western) nations against us," wrote one com- mandant to another.1 And in the end a league was formed, by the side of which Pontiac's famous confederacy, or any other ever estab- lished among Indians, seems but a trivial affair.
(1) M. de Lignery to M. de Siette. Cass Manuscripts. Wisconsin Hist Collections, III, 155.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
This great league comprehended, first, all the nations of Wisconsin, excepting those faith- ful henchmen of the French, the Chippewas. The Mascoutins and Kickapoos, as we have seen, had long been in closest union with the Foxes. The Sauks, even as late as the time of Charlevoix's visit,' had been divided into two factions, for and against the Foxes; but soon afterward they all joined the great confederacy. The Winnebagoes, also, were won over. Even the peaceful Menominees were drawn into the league against the French and were the first to feel their vengeance. 2
These many tribes had hardly anything in common. They were of different races and languages; from the East, the West, the North and the South, they had been driven into Wis- consin like drift-wood flung upon a common shore. The uniting of these diverse, jealous, warring tribes is a wonderful tribute to the wis- dom and patience of the Foxes.
Beyond the Mississippi, the league embraced the formidable Sioux. To break up this alliance and to bring the Sioux into commer- cial dependence upon the Chippewas, instead of
(1) Charlevoix. Letters, 204.
(2) Crespel's Narrative. Wisconsin Hist. Coll., X, 50, The Pottawattamies were faithful to the French, but had now abandoned Wisconsin for Michigan.
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THE GREAT CONFEDERACY.
the Foxes, the French, in 1719 had re-estab- lished their post at Chaquamegon Bay, not now, as formerly at its head, but at its entrance upon Madeleine Island. They had also en- deavored to plant a post somewhere on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. But their efforts availed nothing. The Foxes held the two gateways to the West, and still monop- olized both the trade and friendship of the Sioux.
Thanks to the jealousies which from the first had subsisted between Canada and Louisiana 2 both the Sioux and the Foxes were being amply equipped for war. The commandants in the north and the south, were disputing as to their respective jurisdictions, and were all eager to issue as many licenses as possible; the coureurs de bois, freed from restraint by these rivalries, were supplying the enemies of France with guns, powder and lead in abundance. "This" the Marquis de Vaudreuil complained 3 "con- tributes more than all else to foster the haught- iness of the Sioux and the Foxes. The latter are especially intractable and have a very bad influence upon the former. They have so
(1) Margry, VI, 507.
(2) Memoire d'Iberville. Margry, IV, 611.
(3) Lettre de M. de Vaudreuil, Nov. 4, 1720. Margry, VI, 509-10.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
prejudiced them against us with stories of our treacherous designs that the Sioux turn a deaf ear to all the persuasions of our officers."
The far-reaching diplomacy of the Foxes triumphed, even among the Iowas and the tribes along the Missouri river. The govern- ment of Louisiana was at this time paying the closest attention to the Missouri country and had sent troops to build forts, as far west as the mouth of the Kansas river, to check the raids of the Spaniards from New Mexico.1 In 1724, M. de Bourgemont, the French commis- sioner in that quarter, communicated to the counsel at New Orleans an unpleasant discov- ery. "I have been greatly surprised," he writes, "to hear that the Hotos and the Iowas have made a firm alliance with the Foxes and the Sioux, the enemies of the French." 2
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