1700-1732.
THE OUTAGAMIE WAR.
The Western Posts.--Detroit.--The Illinois.--Perils of the West.--The
Outagamies.--Their Turbulence.--English Instigation.--Louvigny's
Expedition.--Defeat of Outagamies.--Hostilities renewed.--Lignery's
Expedition.--Outagamies attacked by Villiers; by Hurons and
Iroquois.--La Butte des Morts.--The Sacs and Foxes.
The rulers of Canada labored without ceasing in their perplexing task of
engrossing the fur-trade of the West and controlling the western tribes
to the exclusion of the English. Every day made it clearer that to these
ends the western wilderness must be held by forts and trading-posts; and
this policy of extension prevailed more and more, in spite of the league
of merchants, who wished to draw the fur-trade to Montreal,--in spite of
the Jesuits, who felt that their influence over the remoter tribes would
be compromised by the presence among them of officers, soldiers, and
traders; and in spite of the King himself, who feared that the diffusion
of the colony would breed disorder and insubordination.
Detroit, the most important of the western posts, struggled through a
critical infancy in the charge of its founder, La Mothe-Cadillac, till,
by a choice not very judicious, he was made governor of Louisiana.
During his rule the population had slowly increased to about two hundred
souls; but after he left the place it diminished to a point that seemed
to threaten the feeble post with extinction. About 1722 it revived
again; _voyageurs_ and discharged soldiers settled about the fort, and
the parish register shows six or eight births in the course of the
year.[320]
Meanwhile, on the banks of the Mississippi another settlement was
growing up which did not owe its birth to official patronage, and yet
was destined to become the most noteworthy offspring of Canada in the
West. It was known to the French as "the Illinois," from the name of the
group of tribes belonging to that region. La Salle had occupied the
banks of the river Illinois in 1682; but the curious Indian colony which
he gathered about his fort on the rock of St. Louis[321] dispersed after
his death, till few or none were left except the Kaskaskias, a sub-tribe
of the Illinois. These still lived in the meadow below Fort St. Louis,
where the Jesuits Marquette, Allouez, Rale, Gravier, and Marest labored
in turn for their conversion, till, in 1700, they or some of them
followed Marest to the Mississippi and set up their wigwams where the
town of Kaskaskia now stands, near the mouth of the little river which
bears the same name. Charlevoix, who was here in 1721, calls this the
oldest settlement of the Illinois,[322]--though there is some reason to
believe that the village of Cahokia, established as a mission by the
Jesuit Pinet, sixty miles or more above Kaskaskia, and nearly opposite
the present city of St. Louis, is, by a few weeks, the elder of the two.
The _voyageurs_, _coureurs de bois_, and other roving Canadians made
these young settlements their resort, took to wife converted
squaws,[323] and ended with making the Illinois their home. The missions
turned to parishes, the missionaries to curés, and the wigwams to those
compact little Canadian houses that cause one to marvel at the ingenuity
which can store so multitudinous a progeny within such narrow limits.
White women from Canada or Louisiana began to find their way to these
wilderness settlements, which with every generation grew more French and
less Indian. The river Mississippi was at once their friend and their
enemy. It carried their produce to New Orleans, but undermined their
rich alluvial shores, cut away fields and meadows, and swept them in its
turbid eddies thirteen hundred miles southward, as a contribution to the
mud-banks of the delta.
When the Mississippi Company came into power, the Illinois, hitherto a
dependency of Canada, was annexed to Louisiana. Pierre Dugué de
Boisbriant was sent to take command of it, and under his direction a
fort was built on the bank of the Mississippi sixteen miles above
Kaskaskia. It was named Fort Chartres, in honor of the Duc de Chartres,
son of the Regent, who had himself once borne the same title. This work,
built at first of wood and earth, was afterwards rebuilt of stone, and
became one of the chief links in the chain of military communication
between Canada and Louisiana.
Here, with the commandant at its head, sat the council of three which
ruled over the little settlement.[324] Here too was a garrison to
enforce the decrees of the council, keep order among the settlers, and
give them a protection which they greatly needed, since they were within
striking distance of the formidable Chickasaws, the effects of whose
hostility appear year after year on the parish register of deaths at
Kaskaskia. Worse things were in store; for the gallant young Pierre
d'Artaguette, who was appointed to the command in 1734, and who marched
against the Chickasaws with a band of Frenchmen and Indians, was
defeated, captured, and burned alive, astonishing his torturers by the
fortitude with which he met his fate. The settlement had other foes not
less dangerous. These were the Outagamies, or Foxes, between whom and
the tribes of the Illinois there was a deadly feud. We have seen how, in
1712, a band of Outagamies, with their allies, the Mascoutins, appeared
at Detroit and excited an alarm, which, after a savage conflict, was
ended with their ruin. In 1714 the Outagamies made a furious attack upon
the Illinois, and killed or carried off seventy-seven of them.[325] A
few years later they made another murderous onslaught in the same
quarter. They were the scourge of the West, and no white man could
travel between Canada and Louisiana except at the risk of his life.
In vain the French parleyed with them; threats and blandishments were
useless alike. Their chiefs would promise, sometimes in good faith, to
keep the peace and no more offend their father Onontio; but nearly all
the tribes of the Lake country were their hereditary enemies, and some
bloody revenge for ancient wrongs would excite their young warriors to a
fury which the elders could not restrain. Thus, in 1722 the Saginaws, a
fierce Algonquin band on the eastern borders of Michigan, killed
twenty-three Outagamies; the tribesmen of the slain returned the blow,
other tribes joined the fray, and the wilderness was again on fire.[326]
The Canadian authorities were sorely perplexed, for this fierce
inter-tribal war threatened their whole system of western trade.
Meanwhile the English and Dutch of New York were sending wampum belts
to the Indians of the upper lakes, inviting them to bring their furs to
Albany; and Ramesay, governor of Montreal, complains that they were all
disposed to do so. "Twelve of the upper tribes," says Lord Cornbury,
"have come down this year to trade at Albany;" but he adds that as the
Indians have had no presents for above six years, he is afraid "we shall
lose them before next summer."[327] The governor of Canada himself is
said to have been in collusion with the English traders for his own
profit.[328] The Jesuits denied the charge, and Father Marest wrote to
the governor, after the disaster to Walker's fleet on its way to attack
Quebec, "The protection you have given to the missions has drawn on you
and the colony the miraculous protection of God."[329]
Whether his accusers did him wrong or not, Vaudreuil felt the necessity
of keeping the peace among the western Indians and suppressing the
Outagamie incendiaries. In fact, nothing would satisfy him but their
destruction. "They are the common enemies of all the western tribes," he
writes. "They have lately murdered three Frenchmen and five Hurons at
Detroit. The Hurons ask for our help against them, and we must give it,
or all the tribes will despise us."[330]
He put his chief trust in Louvigny, formerly commandant at
Michilimackinac. That officer proposed to muster the friendly tribes and
march on the Outagamies just as their corn was ripening, fight them if
they stood their ground, or if not, destroy their crops, burn their
wigwams, and encamp on the spot till winter; then send out parties to
harass them as they roamed the woods seeking a meagre subsistence by
hunting. In this way he hoped to cripple, if not destroy them.[331]
The Outagamies lived at this time on the Fox River of Green Bay,--a
stream which owes its name to them.[332] Their chief village seems to
have been between thirty and forty miles from the mouth of the river,
where it creeps through broad tracts of rushes, willows, and wild rice.
In spite of their losses at Detroit in 1712, their strength was far from
being broken.
During two successive summers preparations were made to attack them; but
the march was delayed, once by the tardiness of the Indian allies, and
again by the illness of Louvigny. At length, on the first of May, 1716,
he left Montreal with two hundred and twenty-five Frenchmen, while two
hundred more waited to join him at Detroit and Michilimackinac, where
the Indian allies were also to meet him. To save expense in pay and
outfit, the Canadians recruited for the war were allowed to take with
them goods for trading with the Indians. Hence great disorder and
insubordination, especially as more than forty barrels of brandy were
carried in the canoes, as a part of these commercial ventures, in
consequence of which we hear that when French and Indians were encamped
together, "hell was thrown open."[333]
The Outagamies stood their ground. Louvigny says, with probable
exaggeration, that when he made his attack their village held five
hundred warriors, and no less than three thousand women,--a disparity of
sexes no doubt due to the inveterate fighting habits of the tribe. The
wigwams were enclosed by a strong fence, consisting of three rows of
heavy oaken palisades. This method of fortification was used also by
tribes farther southward. When Bienville attacked the Chickasaws, he was
foiled by the solid wooden wall that resisted his cannon, being formed
of trunks of trees as large as a man's body, set upright, close
together, and made shot-proof by smaller trunks, planted within so as to
close the interstices of the outer row.[334]
The fortified village of the Outagamies was of a somewhat different
construction. The defences consisted of three rows of palisades, those
of the middle row being probably planted upright, and the other two set
aslant against them. Below, along the inside of the triple row, ran a
sort of shallow trench or rifle-pit, where the defenders lay ensconced,
firing through interstices left for the purpose between the
palisades.[335]
Louvigny had brought with him two cannon and a mortar; but being light,
they had little effect on the wooden wall, and as he was provided with
mining tools, he resolved to attack the Outagamie stronghold by regular
approaches, as if he were besieging a fortress of Vauban. Covered by the
fire of three pieces of artillery and eight hundred French and Indian
small-arms, he opened trenches during the night within seventy yards of
the palisades, pushed a sap sixty feet nearer before morning, and on the
third night burrowed to within about twenty-three yards of the wall. His
plan was to undermine and blow up the palisades.
The Outagamies had made a furious resistance, in which their women took
part with desperation; but dreading the threatened explosion, and unable
to resist the underground approaches of their enemy, they asked for a
parley, and owned themselves beaten. Louvigny demanded that they should
make peace with all tribes friendly to the French, give up all
prisoners, and make war on distant tribes, such as the Pawnees, in order
to take captives who should supply the place of those they had killed
among the allies of the French; that they should pay, in furs, the costs
of the war, and give six chiefs, or sons of chiefs, as hostages for the
fulfilment of these conditions.[336]
On the twelfth of October Louvigny reached Quebec in triumph, bringing
with him the six hostages.
The Outagamie question was settled for a time. The tribe remained quiet
for some years, and in 1718 sent a deputation to Montreal and renewed
their submission, which the governor accepted, though they had evaded
the complete fulfilment of the conditions imposed on them. Yet peace was
not secure for a moment. The Kickapoos and Mascoutins would not leave
their neighbors, the Illinois, at rest; the Saginaws made raids on the
Miamis; and a general war seemed imminent. "The difficulty is
inconceivable of keeping these western tribes quiet," writes the
governor, almost in despair.[337]
At length the crisis came. The Illinois captured the nephew of Oushala,
the principal Outagamie war-chief, and burned him alive; on which the
Outagamies attacked them, drove them for refuge to the top of the rock
on which La Salle's fort of St. Louis had been built, and held them
there at mercy. They would have starved to death, had not the victors,
dreading the anger of the French, suffered them to escape.[338] For this
they took to themselves great credit, not without reason, in view of the
provocation. At Versailles, however, their attack on the Illinois seemed
an unpardonable offence, and the next ship from France brought a letter
from the colonial minister declaring that the Outagamies must be
effectually put down, and that "his Majesty will reward the officer who
will reduce, or rather destroy, them."[339]
The authorities of Canada were less truculent than their masters at the
court, or were better able to count the costs of another war. Longueuil,
the provisional governor, persisted in measures of peace, and the Sieur
de Lignery called a council of the Outagamies and their neighbors, the
Sacs and Winnebagoes, at Green Bay. He told them that the Great Onontio,
the King, ordered them, at their peril, to make no more attacks on the
Illinois; and they dutifully promised to obey, while their great chief,
Oushala, begged that a French officer might be sent to his village to
help him keep his young warriors from the war-path.[340] The pacific
policy of Longueuil was not approved by Desliettes, then commanding in
the Illinois country; and he proposed to settle accounts with the
Outagamies by exterminating them. "This is very well," observes a
writer of the time; "but to try to exterminate them and fail would be
disastrous."[341]
The Marquis de Beauharnois, who came out as governor of Canada in 1726,
was averse to violent measures, since if an attempt to exterminate the
offending tribe should be made without success, the life of every
Frenchman in the West would be in jeopardy.[342] Lignery thought that if
the Outagamies broke the promises they had made him at Green Bay, the
forces of Canada and Louisiana should unite to crush them. The
missionary, Chardon, advised that they should be cut off from all
supplies of arms, ammunition, and merchandise of any kind, and that all
the well-disposed western tribes should then be set upon them,--which,
he thought, would infallibly bring them to reason.[343]
The new governor, perplexed by the multitude of counsellors, presently
received a missive from the King, directing him not to fight the
Outagamies if he could help it, "since the consequences of failure would
be frightful."[344] On the other hand, Beauharnois was told that the
English had sent messages to the Lake tribes urging them to kill the
French in their country, and that the Outagamies had promised to do so.
"This," writes the governor, "compels us to make war in earnest. It will
cost sixty thousand livres."[345]
Dupuy, the intendant, had joined with Beauharnois in this letter to the
minister; but being at the time in a hot quarrel with the governor, he
soon after sent a communication of his own to Versailles, in which he
declares that the war against the Outagamies was only a pretext of
Beauharnois for spending the King's money, and enriching himself by
buying up all the furs of the countries traversed by the army.[346]
Whatever the motives of the expedition, it left Montreal in June, under
the Sieur de Lignery, followed the rugged old route of the Ottawa, and
did not reach Michilimackinac till after midsummer. Thence, in a
flotilla of birch canoes carrying about a thousand Indians and five
hundred French, the party set out for the fort at the head of Green
Bay.[347] Here they caught one Outagamie warrior and three Winnebagoes,
whom the Indian allies tortured to death. Then they paddled their canoes
up Fox River, reached a Winnebago village on the twenty-fourth of
August, followed the channel of the stream, a ribbon of lazy water
twisting in a vague, perplexing way through the broad marsh of wild rice
and flags, till they saw the chief village of the Outagamies on a tract
of rising ground a little above the level of the bog.[348] It consisted
of bark wigwams, without palisades or defences of any kind. Its only
inmates were three squaws and one old man. These were all seized, and,
to the horror of Père Crespel, the chaplain, were given to the Indian
allies, who kept the women as slaves, and burned the old man at a slow
fire.[349] Then, after burning the village and destroying the crop of
maize, peas, beans, and squashes that surrounded it, the whole party
returned to Michilimackinac.[350]
The expedition was not a success. Lignery had hoped to surprise the
enemy; but the alert and nimble savages had escaped him. Beauharnois
makes the best of the miscarriage, and writes that "the army did good
work;" but says a few weeks later that something must be done to cure
the contempt which the western allies of the French have conceived for
them "since the last affair."[351]
Two years after Lignery's expedition, there was another attempt to
humble the Outagamies. Late in the autumn of 1730 young Coulon de
Villiers, who twenty-four years later defeated Washington at Fort
Necessity, appeared at Quebec with news that the Sieur de Villiers, his
father, who commanded the post on the St. Joseph, had struck the
Outagamies a deadly blow and killed two hundred of their warriors,
besides six hundred of their women and children. The force under
Villiers consisted of a body of Frenchmen gathered from various western
posts, another body from the Illinois, led by the Sieurs de Saint-Ange,
father and son, and twelve or thirteen hundred Indian allies from many
friendly tribes.[352]
The accounts of this affair are obscure and not very trustworthy. It
seems that the Outagamies began the fray by an attack on the Illinois at
La Salle's old station of Le Rocher, on the river Illinois. On hearing
of this, the French commanders mustered their Indian allies, hastened to
the spot, and found the Outagamies intrenched in a grove which they had
surrounded with a stockade. They defended themselves with their usual
courage, but, being hard pressed by hunger and thirst, as well as by the
greatly superior numbers of their assailants, they tried to escape
during a dark night, as their tribesmen had done at Detroit in 1712. The
French and their allies pursued, and there was a great slaughter, in
which many warriors and many more women and children were the
victims.[353]
The offending tribe must now, one would think, have ceased to be
dangerous; but nothing less than its destruction would content the
French officials. To this end, their best resource was in their Indian
allies, among whom the Outagamies had no more deadly enemy than the
Hurons of Detroit, who, far from relenting in view of their disasters,
were more eager than ever to wreak their ire on their unfortunate foe.
Accordingly, they sent messengers to the converted Iroquois at the
Mission of Two Mountains, and invited them to join in making an end of
the Outagamies. The invitation was accepted, and in the autumn of 1731
forty-seven warriors from the Two Mountains appeared at Detroit. The
party was soon made up. It consisted of seventy-four Hurons, forty-six
Iroquois, and four Ottawas. They took the trail to the mouth of the
river St. Joseph, thence around the head of Lake Michigan to the Chicago
portage, and thence westward to Rock River. Here were the villages of
the Kickapoos and Mascoutins, who had been allies of the Outagamies, but
having lately quarrelled with them, received the strangers as friends
and gave them guides. The party now filed northward, by forests and
prairies, towards the Wisconsin, to the banks of which stream the
Outagamies had lately removed their villages. The warriors were all on
snow-shoes, for the weather was cold and the snow deep. Some of the
elders, overcome by the hardships of the way, called a council and
proposed to turn back; but the juniors were for pushing on at all risks,
and a young warrior declared that he would rather die than go home
without killing somebody. The result was a division of the party; the
elders returned to Chicago, and the younger men, forty Hurons and thirty
Iroquois, kept on their way.
At last, as they neared the Wisconsin, they saw on an open prairie three
Outagamies, who ran for their lives. The Hurons and Iroquois gave chase,
till from the ridge of a hill they discovered the principal Outagamie
village, consisting, if we may believe their own story, of forty-six
wigwams, near the bank of the river. The Outagamie warriors came out to
meet them, in number, as they pretended, much greater than theirs; but
the Huron and Iroquois chiefs reminded their followers that they had to
do with dogs who did not believe in God, on which they fired two volleys
against the enemy, then dropped their guns and charged with the knife in
one hand and the war-club in the other. According to their own story,
which shows every sign of mendacity, they drove back the Outagamies into
their village, killed seventy warriors, and captured fourteen more,
without counting eighty women and children killed, and a hundred and
forty taken prisoners. In short, they would have us believe that they
destroyed the whole village, except ten men, who escaped entirely naked,
and soon froze to death. They declared further that they sent one of
their prisoners to the remaining Outagamie villages, ordering him to
tell the inhabitants that they had just devoured the better part of the
tribe, and meant to stay on the spot two days; that the tribesmen of the
slain were free to attack them if they chose, but in that case, they
would split the heads of all the women and children prisoners in their
hands, make a breastwork of the dead bodies, and then finish it by
piling upon it those of the assailants.[354]
Nothing is more misleading than Indian tradition, which is of the least
possible value as evidence. It may be well, however, to mention another
story, often repeated, touching these dark days of the Outagamies. It is
to the effect that a French trader named Marin, whom they had incensed
by levying blackmail from him, raised a party of Indians, with whose aid
he surprised and defeated the unhappy tribe at the Little Butte des
Morts, that they retired to the Great Butte des Morts, higher up Fox
River, and that Marin here attacked them again, killing or capturing the
whole. Extravagant as the story seems, it may have some foundation,
though various dates, from 1725 to 1746, are assigned to the alleged
exploit, and contemporary documents are silent concerning it. It is
certain that the Outagamies were not destroyed, as the tribe exists to
this day.[355]
In 1736 it was reported that sixty or eighty Outagamie warriors were
still alive.[356] Their women, who when hard pushed would fight like
furies, were relatively numerous and tolerably prolific, and their
villages were full of sturdy boys, likely to be dangerous in a few
years. Feeling their losses and their weakness, the survivors of the
tribe incorporated themselves with their kindred and neighbors, the
Sacs, Sakis, or Saukies, the two forming henceforth one tribe,
afterwards known to the Americans as the Sacs and Foxes. Early in the
nineteenth century they were settled on both banks of the upper
Mississippi. Brave and restless like their forefathers, they were a
continual menace to the American frontiersmen, and in 1832 they rose in
open war, under their famous chief, Blackhawk, displaying their
hereditary prowess both on foot and on horseback, and more than once
defeating superior numbers of American mounted militia. In the next year
that excellent artist, Charles Bodmer, painted a group of them from
life,--grim-visaged savages, armed with war-club, spear, or rifle, and
wrapped in red, green, or brown blankets, their heads close shaven
except the erect and bristling scalp-lock, adorned with long
eagle-plumes, while both heads and faces are painted with fantastic
figures in blue, white, yellow, black, and vermilion.[357]
Three or four years after, a party of their chiefs and warriors was
conducted through the country by order of the Washington government, in
order to impress them with the number and power of the whites. At Boston
they danced a war-dance on the Common in full costume, to the delight of
the boy spectators, of whom I was one.
FOOTNOTES:
[320] Rameau, _Notes historiques sur la Colonie Canadienne du Detroit_.
[321] See "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," 315.
[322] "Ce poste, le premier de tous par droit d'antiquité."--_Journal
historique_, 403 (ed. 1744).
[323] The old parish registers of Kaskaskia are full of records of these
mixed marriages. See Edward G. Mason, _Illinois in the Eighteenth
Century_.
[324] The two other members were La Loire des Ursins, director of the
Mississippi Company, and Michel Chassin, its commissary,--he who wrote
the curious letter to Ponchartrain, asking for a wife, quoted in the
last chapter, pp. 317-318.
[325] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Septembre, 1714._
[326] _Idem, 2 Octobre, 1723._
[327] _N. Y. Col. Docs._, v. 65.
[328] _Mémoire présenté au Comte de Ponchartrain par M. d'Auteuil,
procureur-général du Roy, 1708._
[329] _Marest à Vaudreuil, 21 Janvier, 1712._
[330] _Vaudreuil et Bégon au Ministre, 15 Novembre, 1713._
[331] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Septembre, 1714._
[332] "Les Renards [Outagamies] sont placez sur une rivière qui tombe
dans la Baye des Puants [Green Bay]."--_Registre du Conseil de la
Marine, 28 Mars, 1716._
[333] "Où il y a des François et des sauvages, c'est un enfer
ouvert."--_Registre du Conseil de Marine, 28 Mars, 1716._
[334] Le Page du Pratz.
[335] _Louvigny au Ministre, 14 Octobre, 1716._ Louvigny's account of
the Outagamie defences is short, and not very clear. La Mothe-Cadillac,
describing similar works at Michilimackinac, says that the palisades of
the innermost row alone were set close together, those of the two other
rows being separated by spaces of six inches or more, through which the
defenders fired from their loopholes. The plan seems borrowed from the
Iroquois.
[336] _Dépêche de Vaudreuil, 14 Octobre, 1716._
[337] _Vaudreuil au Conseil de Marine, 28 Octobre, 1719._
[338] _Paroles des Renards _[Outagamies]_ dans un Conseil tenu le 6
Septembre, 1722._
[339] _Réponse du Ministre à la lettre du Marquis de Vaudreuil du 11
Octobre, 1723._
[340] _Mémoire sur les Renards, 27 Avril, 1727._
[341] _Mémoire concernant la Paix que M. de Lignery a faite avec les
Chefs des Renards, Sakis _[Sacs]_, et Puants _[Winnebagoes]_, 7 Juin,
1726._
[342] _Mémoire sur les Renards, 27 Avril, 1727._
[343] _Ibid._
[344] _Mémoire du Roy, 29 Avril, 1727._
[345] _Beauharnois et Dupuy au Ministre, 25 Octobre, 1727._
[346] _Mémoire de Dupuy, 1728._
[347] Desliettes came to meet them, by way of Chicago, with five hundred
Illinois warriors and twenty Frenchmen. _La Perrière et La Fresnière à
Beauharnois, 10 Septembre, 1728._
[348] _Guignas à Beauharnois, 29 Mai, 1728._
[349] _Dépêche de Beauharnois, 1 Septembre, 1728._
[350] The best account of this expedition is that of Père Emanuel
Crespel. Lignery made a report which seems to be lost, as it does not
appear in the Archives.
[351] _Beauharnois au Ministre, 15 Mai, 1729_; _Ibid., 21 Juillet,
1729_.
[352] _Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 2 Novembre, 1730._ An Indian
tradition says that about this time there was a great battle between the
Outagamies and the French, aided by their Indian allies, at the place
called Little Butte des Morts, on the Fox River. According to the story,
the Outagamies were nearly destroyed. Perhaps this is a perverted
version of the Villiers affair. (See _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
viii, 207.) Beauharnois also reports, under date of 6 May, 1730, that a
party of Outagamies, returning from a buffalo hunt, were surprised by
two hundred Ottawas, Ojibwas, Menominies, and Winnebagoes, who killed
eighty warriors and three hundred women and children.
[353] Some particulars of this affair are given by Ferland, _Cours
d'Histoire du Canada_, ii. 437; but he does not give his authority. I
have found no report of it by those engaged.
[354] _Relation de la Défaite des Renards par les Sauvages Hurons et
Iroquois, le 28 Février, 1732._ (Archives de la Marine.)
[355] The story is told in Snelling, _Tales of the Northwest_ (1830),
under the title of _La Butte des Morts_, and afterwards, with
variations, by the aged Augustus Grignon, in his _Recollections_,
printed in the _Collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society_, iii.;
also by Judge M. L. Martin and others. Grignon, like all the rest, was
not born till after the time of the alleged event. The nearest approach
to substantial evidence touching it is in a letter of Beauharnois, who
writes in 1730 that the Sieur Dubuisson was to attack the Outagamies
with fifty Frenchmen and five hundred and fifty Indians, and that Marin,
commander at Green Bay, was to join him. _Beauharnois au Ministre, 25
Juin, 1730._
[356] _Mémoire sur le Canada, 1736._
[357] Charles Bodmer was the artist who accompanied Prince Maximilian of
Wied in his travels in the interior of North America.
The name Outagamie is Algonquin for a fox. Hence the French called the
tribe Renards, and the Americans, Foxes. They called themselves
Musquawkies, which is said to mean "red earth," and to be derived from
the color of the soil near one of their villages.