USA > Wisconsin > Racine County > Racine > Racine, belle city of the lakes, and Racine County, Wisconsin : a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 4
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In return for these lands the confederated tribes were to receive a reservation of equal extent west of the Mississippi River, but were given permission to retain possession of their old hunt- ing grounds for three years, or until they were needed for white occupation. They requested the Government to place them where they could be together, as they had been in the past, but the request was not granted, the Ottawa and Potawatomi being given reservations in Kansas and the Chippewa in Northern Minnesota. The tract ceded extended from the Illinois line to the Milwaukee River, and from Lake Michigan to the boundary of the Winnebago cession of the preceding year. It included the present Counties of Kenosha, Racine and Walworth, and parts of Milwaukee, Wau- kesha, Rock and Jefferson.
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HISTORY OF RACINE COUNTY
INDIAN TRAILS
Within the limits of Racine County there were at least five well defined Indian trails when the first settlers came to this part of Wisconsin. The most important was doubtless the one leading from Chicago to the Milwaukee River. This trail passed up the west bank of the Desplaines River and the west bank of the South Fork of the Root River, through Kenosha County and the present Towns of Yorkville and Raymond, in Racine County. It was used by both the Indians and the white traders and early settlers.
Another trail ran from the lake shore near the present City of Racine, via Skunk Grove, in Mount Pleasant Township, to Waukesha Springs. It crossed the Root River near the old Vil- lage of Thompsonville, not far from where Claque's bridge was afterward built, through the present Town of Norway, and crossed the western boundary of Racine County near the northwest corner.
A third trail ran from about where the City of Racine now stands to the Fox River and from there to the Rock River. It passed near the present Village of Rochester and followed closely the line upon which the Racine and Janesville plank road was afterward built.
The fourth trail started at the Fox River near Burlington and ran northward, via Rochester and Waterford, to Big Bend, in what is now Waukesha County. A branch left this trail near the Village of Rochester, passed by Indian Hill and along the west shore of Wind Lake to the month of the Milwaukee River.
The fifth trail might be considered a "main traveled road," as it connected the Indians of Green Bay with those living near the head of Lake Michigan, following the shore of Lake Michigan. The Chicago & Northwestern Railroad follows the line of this trail from Chicago to Milwaukee. In some places traces of these old trails may still be seen.
With the conclusion of the treaty of 1833, what is now South- eastern Wisconsin became the domain of the white man. The lands once used as hunting grounds by the Ottawa and Potawat- omi are now cultivated fields. The whistle of the locomotive has supplanted the war-whoop of the painted savage, and the Indian trail has become an improved highway. Great steamers pass back and forth upon the waters of Lake Michigan, where once the Indian paddled his bark canoe. The howl of the wolf has
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given way to the lowing of kine and the hum of peaceful industry. The primeval forest has disappeared and the giant trees have been manufactured into lumber to build homes for civilized man, or into furniture for his comfort. Where once stood the totem pole the church spire now points toward the skies; the school house has taken the place of the tepee; halls of legislation have superseded the tribal council, and in the place of the Indian vil- lages have been built cities with paved streets, electric lights, public libraries, street railways, and all the evidences of modern progress. And all this has been accomplished within a period of four score and two years. To tell the story of this progress is the province of the subsequent chapters of this history.
CHAPTER III
THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION
EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA - SPAIN, ENGLAND AND FRANCE LAND GRANTS TO THE LONDON AND PLYMOUTH COMPANIES - THE JESUITS - MARQUETTE AND JOLIET-LA SALLE-OTHER EARLY FRENCH EXPLORERS -CONFLICT OF CLAIMS -THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR-PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY -THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR- THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY - WISCONSIN UNDER VARIOUS JURISDICTIONS - WISCONSIN TERRITORY - WISCONSIN AS A STATE - RECAPITULATION.
The people of Racine County today enjoy all the comforts and many of the luxuries of modern civilization and development. Surrounded by all these evidences of progress, do they panse to consider the long, tedious process of evolution by which they were obtained ? The old saying. "Rome was not built in a day," applies with equal appropriateness to every city, every political division or subdivision, in the civilized countries of the world. Long before Racine County was ever dreamed of, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus formed the first link in a chain of events that led to the establishment of the Republic of the United States and the division of the central part of North America into states and counties. It is. therefore, deemed advisable to give a brief account of these events, in order that the reader may form some idea of the manner in which the State of Wisconsin and Racine County came into being.
In 1493, the year after Columbus made his first voyage to America, the Pope granted to the King and Queen of Spain "all countries inhabited by infidels." At that time the extent of the continent of North America was unknown to Enropeans, but the inhabitants were regarded as "infidels," and in a vague way this papal grant included the present State of Wisconsin.
It was not long until other European nations began to con- test with Spain the ownership and possession of the newly dis- covered continent. Henry VIl of England, in 1496, granted to John Cabot, an Italian, and his two sons authority to fit out an expedition at their own expense "to search for islands or regions inhabited by infidels and hitherto unknown to Christendom; to take possession in the name of the King of England; to enjoy for
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themselves, their heirs and assigns, forever, the sole right of trading thither; and to pay to the King of England one-fifth of all the profits of such trade."
On the 24th of June, 1497, the Cabots sighted the Atlantic coast near the southeasternmost point of Labrador, and were the first to discover the mainland of the continent. During the next two years they explored the coast as far south as Cape Hatteras and made discoveries upon which England, at the close of the Fifteenth Century, claimed all the central portion of North America.
Farther northward the French, through the discoveries of Jacques Cartier in 1534-35, laid claim to the Valley of the St. Lawrence River and the region about the Great Lakes, from which they subsequently pushed their explorations westward toward the headwaters of the Mississippi River and southward into the Valley of the Ohio.
No settlements were founded by any of these nations for many years. Spain undertook to strengthen her claims, under the grant of the Pope, by sending Hernando de Soto into the interior to ascertain and report the character of the country. He left Havana in May, 1539, and arrived at Tampa Bay a few days later. From that point he marched north, then west, and, after fighting several engagements with hostile tribes of Indians, dis- covered the Mississippi River, not far from the present City of Memphis, Tennessee. Moving westward, he reached the vicinity of Hot Springs, Arkansas, and followed the course of the Arkan- sas River down to the Mississippi, where he died and was buried in the great stream he had discovered. The remnant of his band finally reached the coast and ultimately returned to the Island of Cuba. About 1565 a small Spanish colony was planted at St. Augustine, Florida.
In 1604 Samuel Champlain assisted in bringing out a member of colonists from France and tried to establish a settlement on Dochet Island. After many hardships they moved to Nova Scotia and settled where Annapolis now stands, but their settlement was broken up by the British in 1613. The oldest permanent settle- ment in Canada is Quebec, which was founded by Champlain in 1608.
Early in the Seventeenth Century, two companies known as the London and Plymouth Companies were chartered by the Eng-
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lish crown and authorized to establish settlements in America. The former planted the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the year before Quebec was founded by Champlain, and the latter was expected to occupy the country farther to the north. When the London Company was granted a specific tract of land by a new charter, dated May 23, 1609, the Plymouth Company asked for a similar charter and received what is known as the "Great Patent," granting to that company "the whole of North America from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degrees of north latitude, excepting, however, all places possessed by any other Christian prince or people." This "Great Patent" included all the present State of Wisconsin, though no attempt was made to establish settlements in the region by its possessors.
THE JESUITS
As early as 1611 Jesuit missionaries from Quebec and the other French settlements in Canada were among the Indian tribes along the shores of the Great Lakes, but it was not until 1634 that the first white man set foot upon any portion of the territory now comprising the State of Wisconsin. In that year Jean Nic- olet, who had been in Canada for some sixteen years, was sent as a delegate to the Winnebago Indians, who were then at war with the Hurons, to negotiate a peace between the tribes, a mis- sion in which he was successful. One account of Nicolet says he passed up the Green Bay and the Fox River, crossed the portage and descended the Wisconsin River, "until within three days of the Mississippi."
Nearly a quarter of a century passed after Nicolet's visit before the next white men came to Wisconsin. In the fall of 1658 two fur traders penetrated to the southern shore of Lake Superior, where they spent the winter, trapping and trading with the natives. They remained in the country until the summer of 1660, when they returned to Quebec with sixty canoes laden with furs and accompanied by about three hundred Indians. This was the beginning of the great fur trade of the Northwest, though it was several years later before any further explorations were made in that direction.
In 1665 Father Claude Allouez, one of the most zealous of the Jesnit missionaries, went among the tribes of Northern Wis- consin and established a mission. He erected a small chapel -
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the first structure of any kind ever built by civilized man in Wisconsin. On October 1, 1665, he held a council with repre- sentatives of the leading Indian tribes of the Northwest at the Chippewa village, near where the City of Ashland now stands. At this council were chiefs of the Chippewa, Sioux, Sac, Fox, Potawatomi, Ottawa and Illini. Allouez promised the Indians the protection of the great French father and thus opened the way for a profitable trade. At the council some of the Sionx and Illini chiefs told the missionary of a great river farther to the westward, "called by them the Me-sa-sip-pi, which they said no white man had yet seen (they knew nothing of De Soto's expe- dition), and along which fur-bearing animals abounded."
At La Pointe, in what is now Ashland County, Wisconsin, Allonez established the mission of the Holy Ghost, and in 1668 he and another missionary, Father Claude Dablon, founded the mission of St. Mary, the oldest white settlement within the present State of Michigan. The reports carried back to Quebec by Nicolet and the missionaries led the French authorities in Canada to send Nicholas Perrot as the accredited agent of the Government to arrange for a grand couneil with the Indians. The council was held at St. Mary's in May, 1671, and before the close of that year Father Jacques Marquette, another Jesuit missionary, founded the mission among the Huron Indians at Point St. Ignace. For many years this mission was regarded as the key to the great unexplored West.
MARQUETTE AND JOLIET
Father Marquette was born at Laon, France, in 1637, and at the age of seventeen years entered the Jesuit Order. In 1666 he was sent as a missionary to Canada and two years later estab- lished the mission at Sault Ste. Marie. Soon after coming among the Indians about the Great Lakes, he heard of the great river and was filled with a desire to discover it, but was deterred from doing so until after Perrot's council, which resulted in establish- ing friendly relations between the French and Indians. In the spring of 1673 he received authority from the Canadian officials to make the attempt, and Louis Joliet was appointed by the French governor to accompany him.
Joliet was born at Quebec in 1645 and was educated for the priesthood, but became a fur trader. He joined Marquette at
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Michilimackinac, where they began making preparations for their voyage. It is said that friendly Indians there tried to dissuade them from the undertaking by telling them that the Indians along the great river were vindictive and ernel, and that the river itself was the abode of mighty monsters that could easily swallow both canoes and men. If these stories had any effect upon the two intrepid Frenehmen it was only to make them more determined, and on May 13, 1673, accompanied by five voyageurs, or boatmen, in two large canoes, they left Michilimackinac. Passing up the Green Bay to the mouth of the Fox River, they aseended that stream to the portage, crossed over to the Wisconsin River, floated down that stream and on June 17, 1673, drifted out upon the broad bosom of the Mississippi - the first white men ever to cross the State of Wisconsin.
Turning their canoes southward. they descended the Missis- sippi, carefully noting the landmarks as they passed along, until they reached the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they met with some Indians whose language they could not understand, and, knowing that they were approaching the territory claimed by the Spaniards, they decided to return to Canada. Upon arriv- ing at the month of the Illinois River on the return voyage, they passed up that stream, crossed the portage, and reached Lake Michigan near the present City of Chicago. Following the west shore of the lake, they arrived at an Indian village on the shore of Green Bay late in September, having traveled over two thou- sand five hundred miles in their frail canoes. On their voyage down the lake shore they passed near the present City of Racine, and who knows but they may have landed somewhere in what is now Racine County? Father Marquette remained at Green Bay, while Joliet went on to Quebec to make a report of their discoveries to the authorities.
In 1674 Father Marquette again passed up the west shore of Lake Michigan - this time with ten canoes - for the purpose of founding a mission among the Illinois Indians. The following year he started to return to his mission at Point St. Ignace, but fell ill and died before reaching Michilimackinae.
LA SALLE
Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, was born in France in 1643, the son of a wealthy merchant of Rouen, but by becoming
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a Jesuit novice he forfeited the right to inherit his father's for- time. In 1667 he came to Canada and was granted a large tract of land on the St. Lawrence River, about eight or nine miles above Montreal. From stories told by the Indians he learned of the Ohio River and in 1669 descended that river to about where the City of Louisville now stands. Two years later, acting under authority of the French Canadian officials, he led an expedition to discover the Mississippi, but it ended in failure. He then went to France and in 1678 Lonis XIV, then King of France, gave him a patent "to explore the western part of New France." Accom- panied by Henri de Tonti and twenty men, he passed up the east shore of Lake Michigan in 1679, built Fort Miami at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, ascended the St. Joseph as far as he could, crossed over to the Kankakee and went down that river to the Illinois. Near the present City of Peoria, Illinois, he built a fort (Fort Crevecoeur), where he left Tonti and a few men and returned to Canada. On his return voyage he passed down the west shore of the lake and doubtless saw the country now included in Racine County, though there is no account of a landing in Wisconsin. One of the twenty men with La Salle on this voyage of exploration was the friar, Louis Hennepin, who ascended the Mississippi from the month of the Illinois to St. Anthony's Falls, and was no doubt the first white man to explore the western shore of Wisconsin. On his return he passed up the Wisconsin River and down the Fox, fianlly arriving at Green Bay.
In May, 1681, La Salle and Tonti met at Michilimackinac for another voyage to the Mississippi. This time La Salle's efforts were crowned with success. On February 6, 1682, the expedition reached the mouth of the Illinois and began the descent of the great river. On the 6th of April it arrived at the head of the delta, where the river divided into three branches. Dividing his men into three parties, La Salle sent one down each of the arms of the river and all reached the Gulf. They then returned to the head of the delta, where La Salle, on April 9, 1682, took formal possession of "all the territory drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries" in the name of France, giving the country the name of Louisiana, in honor of the French king. Under this claim all that part of Wisconsin drained by tributaries of the great Father of Waters became a French possession.
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OTHER EARLY FRENCH EXPLORERS
France, through an agent, Daumont de St. Lusson, had taken formal possession of the country about the upper Great Lakes in 1671. After the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi by La Salle, de St. Lusson's claim was considered somewhat indefi- nite. and in the spring of 1689 Nicholas Perrot, acting under authority of the Canadian governor, was sent to the Upper Mis- sissippi Valley to lay claim to that part of the great valley. On April 8, 1689, he reported that he had followed instructions and had built a fort and trading post on a river, to which he gave the name of St. Nicholas. To extend the dominion of New France "over places more remote," Jean Francois de St. Cosme was sent up the west shore of Lake Michigan in 1699, and a year later Le Sueur passed up the Mississippi seeking some lead mines, which Indian traditions said existed somewhere along the river, but it was not until many years later that the mines were discov- ered by white men. Thus matters stood at the close of the Sev- enteenth Century.
CONFLICT OF CLAIMS
During the Seventeenth Century the frontier of civilization was pushed gradually westward. The Hudson's Bay Company, which was chartered by the English Goverment on May 2. 1670, sent its trappers, traders and agents into all parts of the coun- try about the Great Lakes, in spite of the French claim to the territory. In 1712 the French Government granted to Antoine Crozat, a wealthy merchant of Paris, a charter giving him ex- elusive control of the trade with Louisiana. He sent his agents to America to open up the trade, but found the Spanish ports on the Gulf of Mexico closed to his vessels, because Spain, while recognizing the claim of France to the Territory of Louisiana, was jealous of French ambitions.
Following the usage of nations, Spain, France and England all claimed certain lands in America "by right of discovery." As no definite boundaries could be determined, it is not surprising that in course of time a controversy arose among these three great European powers as to the extent of their domain. At the end of five years, Crozat, umable to overcome the Spanish opposition in a way to render his trade profitable. surrendered his charter. He was succeeded by John Law, who organized the Mississippi
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Company, which collapsed in 1720. It has become known in his- tory as the "Mississippi Bubble." On April 10, 1732, he surren- dered his charter and Louisiana again became a crown province of France.
In the meantime the English traders had been extending their operations into French territory. In 1712, the same year Crozat received his charter, the English incited the Fox Indians to hostilities against the French. The first open rupture between France and England did not come, however, until in 1753, when the former nation began building a line of forts from the Great Lakes to the Ohio River to prevent the English from extending their posts and settlements west of the Allegheny Mountains. The territory upon which most of these forts were built was claimed by Virginia. Governor Dinwiddie of that colony sent George Washington, then just turned twenty-one, to demand of the French commandant an explanation for this invasion of Eng- lish domain while the nations were at peace. The reply was inso- lent, according to the British point of view, and the following year Washington, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was sent with a detachment of troops into the disputed territory.
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
Washington's instructions were "to complete the fort already commenced by the Ohio Company at the forks of the Ohio, and to capture, kill or drive out all who attempted to interfere with the English posts." This aroused the indignation of France and in May, 1756, that nation formally declared war against Great Britain. The conflict which followed is known in European his- tory as the "Seven Years' War," but in this country it is univer- sally referred to as the "French and Indian War." For seven years the American colonies of both nations and the Indian tribes were kept in a state of turmoil, and during that period but little progress was made toward the development of the country.
The war was concluded by the preliminary Treaty of Fon- tainebleau, November 3, 1762, in which France agreed to cede to Great Britain "all that part of the Province of Louisiana lying east of the Mississippi River, except the City of New Orleans and the island upon which it is situated." This treaty was ratified by the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, at which time it was announced that, by an agreement previously made in secret, that
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portion of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi was ceded to Spain. Thus the jurisdiction of France, in what is now the United States, was brought to an end and Wisconsin became a part of the British possessions in America.
Many of the Indian tribes, who had been firm friends of the French, were dissatisfied with the turn of affairs which surren- dered the territory to the English. Pontiac, the leading chief of the Ottawa Nation, formed a conspiracy to drive out the English. Wily, brave, and a good general, he went cautiously to the chiefs of other tribes and enlisted their co-operation. The general up- rising came in June, 1763, but after a short and fierce struggle Pontiac and his followers were forced to yield to the superiority of the white man's arms.
Prior to the French and Indian War, the French had estab- lished several trading posts in what is now the State of Wiscon- sin. They were mere stockades, without artillery, mainly for the protection of the traders, and were not intended for military occu- pation. One of these posts, where the City of Fort Howard, in Brown County, is now located, was occupied by the British in October, 1761, and a Captain Balfour, with a small detachment of troops, was left to garrison the place. The post was called by the British Fort Edward Augustus, but it was abandoned in June, 1763, when the garrison learned that the fort at Mackinaw had been captured by Pontiac.
In 1766 Jonathan Carver, in his journey across Wisconsin and up the Mississippi River, noted the ruins of Fort Edward Augustus in his report. About that time independent English trappers and traders visited the country about the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi Valley. They operated without the sanction and support of the English colonial anthorities and were not always strictly within the limits of the law in their transac- tions. This was the beginning of the Northwest Fur Company, which a few years later contested with the French traders for the patronage of the Indians of the Northwest. This company estab- lished a number of trading posts about the Great Lakes, a few of them in what is now Wisconsin.
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
Following the French and Indian War, the British occupied most of the French posts in the territory ceded by the treaty of
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HISTORY OF RACINE COUNTY
1763 and established some new ones, the most important of which were at Detroit, Vincennes, Indiana, and Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Illinois. Then came the American Revolution, which again changed the map of Central North America. When the people living in that part of Louisiana that was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris learned what had been done, many of them refused to acknowledge allegiance to the new government and removed to the west side of the Mississippi. Shortly after the beginning of the Revolutionary War a large number of these peo- ple recrossed the river and allied themselves with the colonists in their struggle for independence.
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