In the preceding chapter, the story was told how, in the year 1634, only
fourteen years after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Jean Nicolet
was sent by Governor Champlain, of Quebec, all the way out to Wisconsin,
to make friends with our Indians, and to induce them to trade at the
French villages on the lower St. Lawrence River. Whether any of them
did, as a result of this visit, go down to see the palefaces at Three
Rivers or Quebec, and carry furs to exchange for European beads,
hatchets, guns, and iron kettles, we do not know; there is no record of
their having done so, neither are we aware that any white man soon
followed Nicolet to Wisconsin.
Fur traders were in the habit of wandering far into the woods, and
meeting strange tribes of Indians; sometimes they would not return to
Quebec until after years of absence, and then would bring with them many
canoe-loads of skins. The fur trade was under the control of the Company
of the Hundred Associates. The laws of New France declared that there
could be no traffic with the Indians, except what this great company
approved; for they had bought from the king of France the right to do
all the trading and make all the profits, and New France really existed
only to make money for these rich Associates. The fur trade laws
provided severe punishments for those violating them; nevertheless,
although the population was small, and everybody knew everybody else in
the whole country, there were many brave, daring men who traveled
through the deep forests, traded with the Indians on their own account,
and paid no license fees to the Associates. These men, whom an
oppressive monopoly could not keep down, were the most venturesome
explorers in all this vast region; they were known as _coureurs des
bois_, or "wood rangers." La Salle, Duluth, Perrot, and many other early
Western explorers, were, at times in their career, _coureurs des bois_.
Now, as a _coureur de bois_ was an outlaw, because he wandered and
traded without a license, naturally he was not in the habit of telling
where he had been or what he had seen; then again, though brave men, few
of these outlaws were educated, hence they seldom wrote journals of
their travels. For these reasons, we are often obliged to depend on
chance references to them, in the writings of others, and to patch up
our evidence as to their movements, out of many stray fragments of
information.
So far as we at present know, there were no white men in Wisconsin
during the twenty years following the coming of Nicolet. It is uncertain
when the next white men came upon our soil, but there is good reason to
believe that it was in the autumn of 1654. These men were Pierre-Esprit
Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers. Like so many others in New
France, they were from the northern part of old France, and came to
Canada while yet lads, Groseilliers in 1641, and Radisson ten years
later. In 1653, Groseilliers married a sister of Radisson, and after
that the two men became inseparable companions in their long and
romantic wanderings.
They experienced a number of thrilling adventures with Indians, both as
traders to the forest camps of savages friendly to New France, and as
prisoners in the hands of the French-hating Iroquois of New York.
Nevertheless they had grown accustomed to the hard, perilous life of the
wilderness, and were thoroughly in love with it. It was, as near as we
can ascertain, early in the month of August, 1654, when these two
adventurers started out "to discover the great lakes that they heard the
wild men speak of." They followed, most of the way, in the footsteps of
Nicolet, up the Ottawa River, and by the way of Lake Nipissing and
French River to Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. This had now become a
familiar route to the fur traders and Jesuit missionaries; but of the
country west of the eastern shore of Lake Huron scarcely anything was
yet known, except what vague and often fanciful reports of it were
brought by the savages.
Like Nicolet, our two adventurous explorers traveled by canoes, with
Indians to do the paddling. Passing between the Manitoulin Islands, in
the northern waters of Lake Huron, they visited and traded with the
Huron Indians there, thence proceeded through the Straits of Mackinac,
and across to the peninsula of Door county, which separates Green Bay
from Lake Michigan. Here they spent the winter with the Pottawattomies;
they held great feasts with them, at which dogs and beavers, boiled in
kettles into a sort of thick soup, were the greatest delicacies; they
smoked pipes of peace with them, at wordy councils which often lasted
through several days; they hunted and fished with them, in a spirit of
good fellowship; and, in general, they shared the fortunes of their
forest friends, whether feasting or starving, after the manner of all
these early French explorers and fur traders. In the curious journal
afterward written in wretched but picturesque English by Radisson, he
says, "We weare every where much made of; neither wanted victualls, for
all the different nations that we mett conducted us & furnished us with
all necessaries."
Springtime (1655) came at last, and the two traders proceeded merrily up
the Fox River, still in the wake of Nicolet, past the sites of the
present cities of Green Bay, De Pere, Kaukauna, Appleton, Neenah, and
Menasha. They frequently had to carry their boats around the rapids and
waterfalls, but after passing Doty's Island they had a smooth highway.
Paddling through Lake Winnebago, and past the site of Oshkosh, then an
Indian village, they pushed on through the winding reaches of the Upper
Fox, and at last came to a broad prairie near Berlin, whereon was
stationed the village of the Mascoutins, or Fire Nation.
The Mascoutins treated the strangers, as they had Nicolet, with great
kindness. With this village as headquarters, the explorers made frequent
expeditions, "anxious to be knowne with the remotest people." Radisson
quaintly writes, "We ware 4 moneths in our voyage without doeing any
thing but goe from river to river." The explorers cared little, we may
suppose, except to have a good time and make a profitable trade with the
Indians; they do not appear to have made any map. Writing about their
travels, many years after, Radisson says, in one place, that they went
into a "great river" which flowed southward, and journeyed to a land of
continual warmth, finer than Italy, where he heard the Indians describe
certain white men living to the south, who might be Spaniards. It is
supposed by many historians that Radisson meant that he was on the
Mississippi; if this supposition be true, then the two explorers
undoubtedly found the great river by going up the Fox from the Mascoutin
village, carrying their canoe over the mile and a half of intervening
marsh at Portage, and gliding down the Wisconsin to its junction with
the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien. This is important, for the credit
of discovering the Upper Mississippi is usually given to Louis Joliet
and Father Marquette, who took this very course in 1673, eighteen years
later. But the whole question of what "great river" Radisson meant to
describe is so involved in doubt, that very likely we shall never know
the truth about it.
Leaving their Mascoutin friends at last, apparently in the autumn of
1655, the two adventurers returned down the Fox River to Green Bay;
thence on to the large villages of Indians which clustered around the
Sault Ste. Marie. Received there, as elsewhere, with much feasting and
good will, Radisson and Groseilliers conducted trade with their hosts,
and explored a long stretch of the southern coast of Lake Superior, but
do not appear to have ventured so far as the Pictured Rocks. They also
made long expeditions into the country, on snowshoes, to visit and trade
with other tribes in the Michigan Peninsula and northern Wisconsin, and
even as far off as Hudson Bay, at one time being accompanied by a
hundred and fifty Indian hunters.
In this wild fashion they spent the winter of 1655-56, and finally
reached Quebec in August, 1656. They had been absent from home for two
years, and had experienced many singular adventures. It happened that
during their absence the Iroquois had succeeded in keeping the Hurons
and other friendly Indians from visiting Quebec, so that the fur trade,
upon which New France depended, was now quite ruined; for this reason
the arrival of Radisson and Groseilliers, with a great store of furs
from far-away Wisconsin and Lake Superior, was hailed as a joyful event,
and, despite their having departed without a license, they were made
welcome at Quebec, the cannons being fired and the people flocking on
the beach to meet them.
Men who love adventure cannot be kept out of it long, whatever the risk.
Three years later, in the summer of 1659, Radisson and Groseilliers
again set off for Lake Superior, up the old Ottawa and Georgian Bay
routes. This time they were specially bidden by the king's officers at
Quebec not to go, so that they were obliged to slip off secretly, and
join a fleet of Indian canoes returning home after the annual trade at
the French settlements.
At Sault Ste. Marie they spent a short time with their savage friends,
and then paddled westward, along the southern shore of Lake Superior. In
their company were several Huron and Ottawa Indians, who had recently
been compelled to flee to Wisconsin because of Iroquois raids, which now
extended as far west as Michigan. The travelers were obliged to carry
their boats across Keweenaw Point, and at last found their way to
Chequamegon Bay, a noble sheet of water, hemmed in by the beautiful
Apostle Islands, and to-day a popular summer resort.
Not far to the west of where Ashland now lies, somewhere near
Whittlesey's Creek, they built for themselves a rude hut, or fort, of
logs. The place was a small point of land jutting out into the water, a
triangle, Radisson describes it, with water on two sides and land at the
base. The land side of the triangle was guarded with a palisade of
pointed stakes, and to prevent surprises by night, for Indians were
always prowling about looking for plunder, the traders surrounded their
house with boughs of trees piled one upon the other, intertwined with a
long cord hung with little bells.
After staying at their fort for a few weeks, they managed to _cache_
(secretly bury) the greater part of their goods; and then set out on a
hunt with their Huron neighbors upon the headwaters of the Chippewa
River. Unusually severe weather set in, and a famine ensued, for there
was no game to kill, and the snow was so deep that they could hardly
travel.
In the following spring (1660) the Frenchmen went with their Hurons on a
long search for provisions, getting as far west as the Sioux camps in
northern Minnesota. Then they returned to Chequamegon Bay, where they
built another little fort, and from which they visited some Indians on
the northwest shore of Lake Superior. In August they returned home,
again in a fleet of Huron canoes going down to Montreal to trade. But
this time the officers of the colony punished them for being _coureurs
des bois_, and confiscated most of their valuable furs, which meant the
loss of nearly all the property they possessed.
Angered at this treatment, Groseilliers went to Paris to seek justice
from the king; but, obtaining none, he and Radisson offered their
services to the English, whom they told of Hudson Bay and its great
furtrading possibilities. It took several years, however, for
negotiations to be completed; and it was while in London that Radisson,
for the information of the English king, wrote his now famous journal of
explorations in the Lake Superior country. Finally, after some
unfortunate voyages, our explorers, in 1669, reached Hudson Bay in an
English ship; and, as a result, there was formed in England the great
Hudson Bay Company, which from that day to this has controlled the rich
fur trade of those northern waters.
In later years (1678), we find Radisson and Groseilliers, who had been
pardoned by Louis XIV., king of France, for their desertion to the
English, back again in Paris. But after a time, suspicions as to their
loyalty spread abroad, and they again joined the English, to whom they
were useful in attracting Indian trade away from the French to the
Hudson Bay Company. They died at last, in London, considered by the
French as traitors to their own country. They will, however, live in
history as daring explorers, who opened to the fur trade the country now
known as Wisconsin, the waters of Lake Superior, and the vast region of
Hudson Bay.