Wisconsin was important, from a geographical point of view, because here
were the meeting places of waters which flowed in so many directions;
here were the gates which opened upon widely divergent paths. The
explorer and the fur trader soon discovered this, and Wisconsin became
known to them at a very early period. France had two important colonies
in North America, New France (or Canada), upon the St. Lawrence River,
and Louisiana, extending northward indefinitely from the Gulf of Mexico.
It was found necessary, in pushing her claim to the ownership of all of
the continent west of the Alleghany Mountains and east of the Rockies,
to connect New France and Louisiana with a chain of little forts along
the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The forts at Detroit,
Mackinac, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and Kaskaskia (in Illinois) were
links in this chain, at the center of which was Wisconsin; or, to use
another figure, Wisconsin was the keystone of the arch which bridged the
two French colonies.
There were six principal canoe routes between the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi: one by way of the Maumee and Wabash rivers, another by way
of St. Joseph River and the Kankakee and the Illinois, another by way
of the St. Joseph, Wabash, and Ohio rivers, still another by way of the
Chicago River and the Illinois, and we have already seen that from Lake
Superior there were used the Bois Brule and the St. Croix routes. But
the easiest of all, the favorite gateway, was the Fox-Wisconsin route,
for all the others involved considerable hardship; this is why Wisconsin
was so necessary to the French military officers in holding control of
the interior of the continent.
Affairs went well enough so long as the French were on good terms with
the warlike and crafty Fox Indians, who held control of the Fox River.
But after a time the Foxes became uneasy. The fur trade in New France
was in the hands of a monopoly, which charged large fees for licenses,
and fixed its own prices on the furs which it bought, and on the Indian
goods which it sold to the forest traders. On the other hand, the fur
trade in the English colonies east of the Alleghanies was free; any man
could engage in it and go wherever he would. The result was that the
English, with the strong competition among themselves, paid higher
prices to the Indians for furs than the French could afford, and their
prices for articles which the Indians wanted were correspondingly lower
than those of the French.
The Indians were always eager for a bargain; and although the French
declared that those trading with the English were enemies of New France,
they persisted in secretly sending trading parties to the English, who
were now beginning to swarm into the Ohio valley. The Foxes, in
particular, grew very angry with the French for charging them such high
prices, and resented the treatment which they received at the hands of
the traders from Quebec and Montreal. At one time they told Perrot that
they would pack up their wigwams, and move in a body to the Wabash River
or to the Ohio, and form a league with the fierce Iroquois of New York,
who were friends and neighbors of the English. Had they done so, the
French fur trade in the West would have suffered greatly.
The Foxes began to make it disagreeable for the French in Wisconsin.
They insisted on collecting tolls on fur trade bateaux which were being
propelled up the Fox River, and even stopped traders entirely; several
murders of Frenchmen were also charged to them. The French thereupon
determined to punish these rebellious savages who sat within the chief
gateway to the Mississippi. In the winter of 1706-07, a large party of
soldiers, _coureurs des bois_, and half-breeds, under a captain named
Marin, ascended the Fox River on snowshoes and attacked the Foxes,
together with their allies, the Sacs, at a large village at Winnebago
Rapids, near where is now the city of Neenah.
Several hundreds of the savages were killed in this assault, but its
effect was to make the Foxes the more troublesome. A few summers later,
this same Marin arranged again to surprise the enemy. His boats were
covered with oilcloth blankets, in the manner adopted by the traders to
protect the goods against rain; only two _voyageurs_ were visible in
each boat to propel it. Arriving at the foot of Winnebago Rapids, the
canoes were ranged along the shore, and nearly fifteen hundred Indians
came out and squatted on the bank, ready to collect toll of the traders.
All of a sudden the covers were thrown off, and the armed men appeared
and raked the Indians with quick volleys of lead, while a small cannon
in Marin's boat increased the effectiveness of the attack. Tradition
says that over a thousand Foxes and Sacs fell in this massacre; this is
one of the many incidents in white men's relations with the Indians,
wherein savages were outsavaged in the practice of ferocious treachery.
Despite the great slaughter, there appear to have been enough Foxes left
to continue giving the French a great deal of annoyance. There were
fears at Quebec that it might be necessary to abandon the attempt to
connect New France and Louisiana by a trail through the Western woods,
in which case the English would have a free run of the Mississippi
valley. There seem, however, not to have been any more warlike
expeditions to Wisconsin for several years. But in May, 1712, the
French induced large numbers of the Foxes, with their friends, the
Mascoutins, the Kickapoos, and the Sacs, to come to Detroit for the
making of a treaty of peace. At the same time the French also assembled
there large bands of the Pottawattomies and Menominees from Wisconsin,
with Illinois Indians, some camps from Missouri, and Hurons and Ottawas
from the Lake Huron country; all of these were enemies of the Foxes.
The records do not show just why it happened; but for some reason the
French and their allies fired on the Foxes and their friends, who were
well intrenched in a palisaded camp outside the walls of Detroit. A
great siege ensued, lasting nineteen days, in which the slaughter on
both sides was heavy; but at last the Foxes, worn out by loss of
numbers, hunger, and disease, took advantage of a dark, rainy night to
escape northward. They were pursued the following day, but again
intrenched themselves with much skill, and withstood another siege of
five days, when they surrendered. The French and their savage allies
fell upon the poor captives with fury and slew nearly all of them, men,
women, and children.
The poor Foxes had lost in this terrible experience upward of fifteen
hundred of the bravest of their tribe, which was now reduced to a few
half-starved bands. But their spirit was not gone. Next year the
officers at Quebec wrote home to Paris: "The Fox Indians are daily
becoming more insolent." They had begun to change their tactics; instead
of wasting their energies on the French, they began to make friends
with, or to intimidate, neighboring tribes. By means of small, secret
war parties, they would noiselessly swarm out of the Wisconsin forests
and strike hard blows at the prairie Indians of Illinois, who preferred
to remain their enemies. In this manner the Illinois Indians were
reduced to a mere handful, and were compelled to seek shelter under the
guns of the French fort at Kaskaskia. At the same time the Foxes were in
close alliance with the Sioux and other great western tribes, who helped
them lock the gate of the Fox-Wisconsin rivers, and plunder and murder
French traders wherever they could be found throughout Wisconsin.
Again it seemed evident that New France, unless something were done,
could never maintain its chain of communication with Louisiana, or
conduct any fur trade in the Northwest. The something decided on was an
attempt to destroy the Foxes, root and branch. For this purpose there
was sent out to Wisconsin, in 1716, a well-equipped expedition under an
experienced captain named De Louvigny, numbering eight hundred men,
whites and Indians. The Foxes were found living in a walled town upon
the mound now known as Little Butte des Morts, on the west side of Fox
River, opposite the present Neenah. The wall consisted of three rows of
stout palisades, reenforced by a deep ditch; tradition says there were
here assembled five hundred braves and three thousand squaws and other
noncombatants.
The French found it necessary to lay siege to this forest fortress, just
as they would attack a European city of that time; trenches and mines
were laid, and pushed forward at night, until, at the close of the third
day, everything was ready to blow up the palisades. At this point the
Foxes surrendered, but they gained easy terms for those days, for De
Louvigny was no butcher of men, and appeared to appreciate their
bravery. They gave up their prisoners, they furnished enough slaves to
the allies of the French to take the place of the warriors slain, they
agreed to furnish furs enough to pay the expenses of the expedition, and
sent six hostages to Quebec to answer for their future behavior. The
next year, De Louvigny returned to the valley of the Fox, from Quebec,
and made a treaty with the Foxes, but nothing came of it. Treaties were
easily made with Indian tribes, in the days of New France, and as easily
broken by either side.
In the very next year, the Foxes were again making raids on the
French-loving Illinois, and the entire West was, as usual, torn by
strife. It was evident that the Foxes were trying to gain control of the
Illinois River, and thus command both of the principal roads to the
Mississippi. The French were at this time enthusiastic over great
schemes for opening mines on the Mississippi, operating northward from
Louisiana; agriculture was beginning to flourish around Kaskaskia; and
grain, flour, and furs were being shipped down the Mississippi to the
French islands in the West Indies, and across the ocean to France. More
than ever was it necessary to unite Louisiana with Canada by a line of
communication.
But just now the Foxes were stronger than they had been at any time.
Their shrewd warriors had organized a great confederacy to shut out the
French, and thereby advance the cause of English trade, although it is
not known that the English assisted in this widespread conspiracy. Fox
warriors were sent with pipes of peace among the most distant tribes of
the West, the South, and the North, and it seemed as if the whole
interior of the continent were rising in arms. A French writer of the
period says of the Foxes: "Their fury increased as their forces
diminished. On every side they raised up new enemies against us. The
whole course and neighborhood of the Mississippi is infested with
Indians with whom we have no quarrel, and who yet give to the French no
quarter."
This condition lasted for a few years. But Indian leagues do not
ordinarily long endure. We soon find the Foxes weak again, with few to
back them; in 1726, at a council in Green Bay, they were apologizing for
having made so much trouble. The French were, however, still afraid of
these wily folk, and two years later (1728) a little army of four
hundred Frenchmen and nine hundred Indian allies advanced on the Fox
villages by way of the Ottawa River route and Mackinac. The Foxes,
together with their Winnebago friends, had heard of the approach of the
whites, and fled; but the white invaders burned every deserted village
in the valley, and destroyed all the crops, leaving the red men to face
the rigor of winter with neither huts nor food.
Fleeing from their native valley before the onset of the army, the
unhappy fugitives, said to have been four thousand in number, descended
the Wisconsin and ascended the Mississippi, to find their Sioux allies
in the neighborhood of Lake Pepin. But the Sioux had been won by French
presents, distributed from the fur trade fort on that lake, and turned
the starving tribesmen away; the ever-treacherous Winnebagoes of the
party sided with the Sioux; the Sacs expressed repentance, and hurried
home to Green Bay to make their peace with the French; the Mascoutins
now proved to be enemies. Thus deserted, the disconsolate Foxes passed
the winter in Iowa, and sent messengers to the Green Bay fort, begging
for forgiveness.
But there was no longer any peace for the Foxes. Indians friendly with
the French attacked one of their Iowa camps; and in the autumn of 1729
they sought in humble fashion to return to the valley of the Fox; but
they were ambuscaded by a French-directed party of Ottawas, Menominees,
Chippewas, and Winnebagoes, and after a fierce fight lost nearly three
hundred by death and capture; the prisoners, men, women, and children,
were burned at the stake.
Turning southward, the greater part of the survivors of this ill-starred
tribe sought a final asylum upon the Illinois River, not far from
Peoria. Three noted French commanders, heads of garrisons in the Western
country, now gathered their forces, which aggregated a hundred and
seventy Frenchmen and eleven hundred Indians; and in August, 1730, gave
battle to the fugitives, who were now outnumbered full four to one. The
contest, notable for the gallant sorties of the besieged and the
cautious military engineering of the besiegers, lasted throughout
twenty-two days; probably never in the history of the West has there
been witnessed more heroic conduct than was displayed during this
remarkable campaign. It was inevitable that the Foxes should lose in the
end, but they sold themselves dearly. Not over fifty or sixty escaped;
and it is said that three hundred warriors perished in battle or
afterwards at the stake, while six hundred women and children were
either tomahawked or burned.
It is surprising, after all these massacres, that there were any members
of the tribe left; yet we learn that two years later (1732) three
hundred of them were living peaceably on the banks of the Wisconsin
River, when still another French and Indian band swept down upon and
either captured or slaughtered them all. Of another small party, which
sought mercy from the officer of the fort at Green Bay, several,
including the head chief of the Foxes, Kiala, were sent away into
slavery, and wore away their lives in menial drudgery upon the tropical
island of Martinique.
The remainder took refuge with the Sacs, on Fox River; and the following
year the French commander at Green Bay asked the Sacs to give them up.
This time the Sacs proved to be good friends, and refused; and in the
quarrel which followed at the Sac town, eight French soldiers were
killed. This led to later retaliation on the part of the French, but in
the battle which was fought both sides lost heavily; and then both Sacs
and Foxes fled from the country, never to return. They settled upon the
banks of the Des Moines River, in Iowa, whither French hate again sought
them out in 1734. This last expedition, however, was a failure, and the
Fox War was finally ended, after twenty-five years of almost continuous
bloodshed. During this war not only had the great tribe of the Foxes
been almost annihilated, but the power of France in the West had
meanwhile been greatly weakened by the persistent opposition of those
who had held the key to her position.