It has been pointed out that wandering fur traders were in Wisconsin at
a very early date. We have seen that Nicolet, Radisson, and Groseilliers
made Wisconsin known to the world, at a time when Massachusetts colony
was still young. It will be remembered that when Father Menard went to
Lake Superior, in 1660, to convert the Indians, there were several
French fur traders with him. As early as the spring of 1662, these same
traders had gone across country to the mouth of the Fox River. Three
years later the Menominees and Pottawattomies, then living on both sides
of the bay, were visited by Nicolas Perrot, a daring young spirit from
Quebec, who had come to the then Far West to make his fortune in trading
with the red men.
Perrot was one of the most picturesque characters in Wisconsin history.
In Canada he had been a servant of the Jesuit missionaries, acquiring in
this work an education which was slight as to books, but broad as to
knowledge of the Indians and of forest life. He was now twenty-one years
of age, and started out for himself as soon as he was his own master.
For five years Perrot wandered up and down the eastern half of
Wisconsin, frequently visiting his friends, the Mascoutins and Miamis,
on the Fox River. He smoked pipes of peace with them and with other
forest and prairie tribes, and joined in their feasts of beaver, dog,
and other savage delicacies.
In 1670 he and four other Frenchmen, packing their furs into bundles of
convenient size, joined a large party of Indians going down to Montreal
in canoes, to trade. Perrot did not return with his companions, but
visited Quebec, and there received an appointment from the government to
rally the Western tribes in a great council at Sault Ste. Marie. Here a
treaty was to be made, binding the savages to an alliance with France.
The French were very jealous of the English, who had, through the
guidance of Radisson and Groseilliers, commenced fur trade operations in
the Hudson Bay country. It was feared that they would entice the Indians
of the upper Great Lakes to trade with them, for the English offered
higher prices for furs than did the French.
Perrot spent the winter in visiting the tribes in Wisconsin and along
the northern shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, and succeeded in
inducing large bands of them to go to the Sault early in May (1671). The
council was attended by an enormous gathering, representing tribes from
all over the Northwest, even from the north shores of Lake Superior and
Hudson Bay. Father Marquette was there with the Ottawas, and several
other famous missionaries came to the council. The interpreter, who knew
Indian dialects by the score, was no less a person than Louis Joliet.
The French government was represented by Saint Lusson, who concluded
the desired treaty, with great ceremony, took formal possession of all
this country for the king of France, and reared on the spot a great
cedar pole, to which he fastened a lead plate bearing the arms of his
country. This symbol the simple and wondering savages could not
understand: and as soon as the Frenchmen had gone home again, they tore
it down, fearing that it was a charm which might bring bad luck to the
tribesmen.
And now we find Perrot suddenly losing his office, and forced for ten
years to live a quiet life in the French settlements on the lower St.
Lawrence. He married a well-to-do young woman, reared a considerable
family, and became a man of some influence. But he was always eager to
be back in the forest, wandering from tribe to tribe, and engaging in
the wilderness trade, where the profits were great, though the risks to
life and property were many. In 1681 he returned to the woods, but not
till three years later was he so far west as Mackinac.
In 1685 he appeared once more at Green Bay, this time holding the
position of Commandant of the West, with a little company of twenty
soldiers. He now had almost unlimited authority to explore and traffic
as he would, for the only salary an official of that sort used to get,
in New France, was the right to trade with the Indians. He had already
lost money in working for the government as an Indian agent, and his
present operations were wholly directed toward getting it back again. He
went up the Fox and down the Wisconsin, and then ascended the
Mississippi to trade with the wild Sioux tribe. For headquarters, he
erected a little log stockade on the east bank of the Mississippi, about
a mile above the present village of Trempealeau, and south of the mouth
of Black River. In the year 1888, the site of this old stockade was
discovered by a party of historical students, and many of the curious
relics found there can now be seen in the museum of the State Historical
Society, at Madison.
All through the winter of 1685-86, Perrot traded here with the Sioux. He
had a most captivating manner of treating Indians; for a long time, few
of them ventured to deny any request made by him. Chiefs from far and
near would come to the Trempealeau "fort," as it was called, and hold
long councils and feasts with the great white chief, and more than once
he was subjected to the curious Sioux ceremony of being wept over. A
chief would stand over his guest and weep copiously, his tears falling
upon the guest's head; when the chief's tear ducts were exhausted, he
would be relieved by some headman of the tribe, who in turn was
succeeded by another, and so on until the guest was well drenched. This
must have been a very trying experience to Perrot, but he was shrewd
enough to pretend to be much pleased by it.
In the spring of 1686, the same year in which he gave the silver
_ostensorium_ to the Jesuit chapel at De Pere, the commandant proceeded
up the Mississippi to the broadening which was, about this time, named
Lake Pepin by the French. On the Wisconsin shore, not far above the
present village of Pepin, he erected another and stronger stockade,
Fort St. Antoine. It was here, three years later, that, after the manner
of Saint Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie, he formally took possession, in the
name of his king, of all the Upper Mississippi valley.
Several other forts were built by Perrot along the Mississippi, none of
them more than groups of stout log houses. These were surrounded by a
stockade wall of heavy logs well planted in the ground, sharpened at the
top, pierced for musket fire, and sometimes surmounted by a small
cannon. The stockade whose ruins were unearthed at Trempealeau, measured
about forty-five by sixty feet. One of his stockades, Fort Perrot, was
on the Minnesota shore of Lake Pepin; still another, Fort St. Nicholas,
was near the "lower town" of the Prairie du Chien of to-day, at the
confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi; and it also appears
that he had a stockade lower down the Mississippi, to guard a lead mine
which he had discovered near Galena, because lead was an important
article for both fur traders and Indians. Sometimes traders fought among
themselves, for the possession of a lead mine.
Perrot made frequent voyages to the settlements on the St. Lawrence
River, and engaged in some of the French expeditions against the hostile
Iroquois of New York. While, on the whole, he was successful in holding
the Western tribes in friendship to New France, his position was not
without grave perils. One time his old friends, the Mascoutins, rose
against him, claiming that he had killed one of their warriors. The
claim may have been true, for he was a man of violent temper, and ruled
the Wisconsin forests after the despotic fashion of an Asiatic prince.
The Mascoutins captured Perrot, in company with a Pottawattomie chief,
and carrying them to their village, robbed the commandant of all his
furs, and decided to burn the prisoners at the stake. But while being
conducted to the fire, the two managed by artifice to escape, and at
last reached in safety their friends at the mouth of the Fox River.
Another time, the Miamis captured Perrot, and would have burned him
except for the interference of the Fox Indians, with whom he was
friendly.
In 1699, owing to the uprising of the Foxes, the king ordered that all
the Western posts be abandoned, and their little garrisons removed to
Montreal and Quebec. Thus suddenly ended the career of Perrot, who
returned a poor man, for his recent losses in furs had been heavy, and
his expenses of keeping up the posts large. Again and again he sought
redress from the government, and the Wisconsin Foxes earnestly pleaded
that he be sent back to them, as "the best beloved of all the French who
have ever been among us." But his star had set, he no longer had
influence; and it had just been decided to punish his friends the Foxes.
Perrot lived about twenty years longer, on the banks of the Lower St.
Lawrence, and died in old age, like Joliet, in neglect and poverty.
During much of the time that Perrot was commandant of the West, several
other great fur traders were conducting operations in Wisconsin. The
greatest of these was the Chevalier La Salle, the famous explorer, who
plays a large part on the stage of Western history, particularly in the
history of the Mississippi valley. It has been claimed for La Salle that
he was in Wisconsin in 1671, two years before Joliet, and actually
canoed on the Mississippi River, but this is more than doubtful. We do
know that in 1673 one of his agents was trading with the Sioux to the
west of Lake Superior; and that in 1679 he came to Green Bay in a small
vessel called the _Griffin_, the first sailing craft on the Great Lakes
above the cataract of Niagara. La Salle was a _coureur de bois_, most of
this time, for he operated in a field far larger than that for which he
had a license. Leaving his ship, which was afterward wrecked, he and
fourteen of his men proceeded in canoes southward along the western
coast of Lake Michigan, visiting the sites of Milwaukee and other
Wisconsin lakeshore cities. Finally, after many strange adventures, they
ascended St. Joseph River, crossed over to the Kankakee River, and spent
the winter in a log fort which they built on Peoria Lake, a broadening
of the Illinois River.
At least one priest was thought necessary in every well-equipped
exploring expedition. La Salle had quarreled with the Jesuits, and hated
them; hence the ministers of religion in his party were three Franciscan
friars, one of them being Father Louis Hennepin, who afterward became
famous. When La Salle determined to spend the winter at Peoria Lake, he
sent Hennepin forward with two _coureurs de bois_, to explore the upper
waters of the Mississippi. These three adventurers descended the
Illinois River in their canoe, and then ascended the Mississippi to the
Falls of St. Anthony, where now lies the great city of Minneapolis;
there they met some Sioux, and went with them upon a buffalo hunt. But
the Indians, although at first friendly, soon turned out to be a bad
lot, for they robbed their guests, and practically held them as
prisoners.
This was in the early summer of 1680. Luckily for Hennepin and his
companions, the powerful _coureur de bois_, Daniel Graysolon Duluth (_du
Luth_) appeared on the scene. Duluth was, next to Perrot, the leading
man in the country around Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi
valley. He had been spending the winter trading with the Sioux in the
lake country of northern Minnesota, and along Pigeon River, which is now
the dividing line between Minnesota and Canada. With a party of ten of
his boatmen, he set out in June to reach the Mississippi, his route
taking him up the turbulent little Bois Brule River, over the mile and a
half of portage trail to Upper Lake St. Croix, and down St. Croix River
to the Mississippi. On reaching the latter, he learned of the fact that
Europeans were being detained and maltreated by the Sioux, and at once
went and rescued them. The summer was spent among the Indians in company
with Hennepin's party, who, now that Duluth was found to be their
friend, were handsomely treated. In the autumn, Duluth, Hennepin, and
their companions all returned down the Mississippi, up the Wisconsin,
and down the Fox, and spent the winter at Mackinac. After that, Duluth
was frequently upon the Fox-Wisconsin route, and traded for buffalo
hides and other furs with the Wisconsin tribes.
Another famous visitor to Wisconsin, in those early days, was Pierre le
Sueur, who in 1683 traveled from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, over
the Fox-Wisconsin route, and traded with the Sioux at the Falls of St.
Anthony and beyond. His fur trade grew, in a few years, to large
proportions; for he was a shrewd man, and was related to some of the
officials of New France. This enabled him to secure trading licenses for
the Western country, and other valuable privileges, which gave him an
advantage over the unlicensed traders, like Duluth, who had no official
friends. In 1693, Le Sueur was trading in Duluth's old country; and, in
order to protect the old Bois Brule and St. Croix route from marauding
Indians, he built a log fort at either end, one on Chequamegon Bay, and
the other on an island in the Mississippi, below the mouth of the St.
Croix. A few years later, Le Sueur was in France, where he obtained a
license to operate certain "mines of lead, copper, and blue and green
earth," which he claimed to have discovered along the banks of the Upper
Mississippi. In the summer of 1700, he and his party opened lead mines
in the neighborhood of the present Dubuque and Galena, and also near the
modern town of Potosi, Wisconsin. He does not appear to have been very
successful as a miner; but his fur trade was still enormous, and his
many explorations led to the Upper Mississippi being quite correctly
represented on the maps of America, made by the European geographers.
A missionary priest, Father St. Cosme, of Quebec, was in Green Bay in
October, 1699, and proposed to visit the Mississippi region, by way of
the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. But the warlike Foxes, who were giving
the French a great deal of trouble at this time, had forbidden any white
man passing over this favorite waterway, so St. Cosme was obliged to go
the way that La Salle had followed, up the west shore of Lake Michigan
and through Illinois. The party stopped at many places along the
Wisconsin lake shore, but the only ones which we can identify are the
sites of Sheboygan and Milwaukee, where there were large Indian
villages.
It is not to be supposed that these were all the Frenchmen to tarry in
or pass through Wisconsin during the latter half of the seventeenth
century. Doubtless there were scores, if not hundreds of others, fur
traders, _voyageurs_, soldiers, and priests; we have selected but a few
of those whose movements were recorded in the writings of their time.
Wisconsin was a key point in the geography of the West; here were the
interlaced sources of rivers flowing north into Lake Superior, east and
northeast into Lake Michigan, and west and southwest into the
Mississippi River. The canoe traveler from Lower Canada could, with
short portages, pass through Wisconsin into waters reaching far into the
interior of the continent, even to the Rocky Mountains, the lakes of the
Canadian Northwest, and the Gulf of Mexico. This is why the geography of
Wisconsin became known so early in the history of our country, why
Wisconsin Indians played so important a part on the stage of border
warfare, and why history was being made here at a time when some of the
States to the east of us were still almost unknown to white men.