We are about to give the play _Glory of the Morning_. I am
under the impression that there was such a character in
Wisconsin as “Glory of the Morning,” and that she was
married to a Frenchman, and deserted by him, as in the play.
Can you give me any information concerning her?
(MRS.) F. H. ANDERSON,
_Brooklyn, Wisconsin_.
“Glory of the Morning” was an historical character, and one of the
staff on the Wisconsin Historical Society related to Professor Leonard
the incident on which he founded the play. He has taken poet’s license
with certain parts--with the names, for instance, of the son and
daughter; but in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, VII, 345, you can
read the story as told by a French-Canadian trader. “Glory of the
Morning” was a Winnebago chieftess, and Jonathan Carver, when very
old, saw her at her village near Menasha, Wisconsin. The French
officer whose name was Sabrevoir Decorah (also spelled DeCarrie,
DesCarie, DeKaury, and other ways), came to Wisconsin probably during
the Fox wars of the early eighteenth century. He married the daughter
(“Glory of the Morning”) of the head chief of the tribe; resigned from
the army, and became a trader. They had two sons and a daughter. When
the French and Indian War began Decorah was summoned to become a
soldier, and he took his daughter with him to be educated in Canada.
The father was killed at the battle of Ste. Foye in 1760. The girl
married a Montreal merchant and her son or grandson, Laurent Fily,
came to Wisconsin as a trader and lived for many years with Augustin
Grignon at Kaukauna. Many of his letters are in the Wisconsin
Historical Library.
The two sons of the chieftess became chiefs of the tribe, and had many
descendants. The Decorah family in the nineteenth century was the most
powerful of the Winnebago families. Several of its members still live
in Nebraska. Two years ago an educated Indian girl, teacher of art at
Carlisle Indian School, visited Madison. Her maiden name was Angel
Decorah, and she traced her lineage directly to “Glory of the
Morning.” The Winnebago name of the chieftess was Hopokoékaw.