We have seen in previous chapters why Wisconsin, with her intermingling
rivers, was considered the key to the French position in the interior of
North America; why it was that fur traders early sought this State, and
erected log forts along its rivers and lakes to protect their commerce
with the people of the forest. It remains to be told what were the
conditions of this widespreading and important forest trade.
The French introduced to our Indians iron pots and kettles, which were
vastly stronger than their crude utensils of clay; iron fishhooks,
hatchets, spears, and guns, which were not only more durable, but far
more effective than their old weapons of stone and copper and bone;
cloths and blankets of many colors, from which attractive clothing was
more easily made than from the skins of beasts; and glass beads and
silver trinkets, for the decoration of their clothing and bodies, which
cost far less labor to obtain than did ornaments made from clam shells.
To secure these French goods, the Indians had but to hunt and bring the
skins to the white men. The Indian who could secure a gun found it
easier to get skins than before, and he also had a weapon which made him
more powerful against his enemies. It was not long before the Indian
forgot how to make utensils and weapons for himself, and became very
dependent on the white trader. This is why the fur trade was at the
bottom of every event in the forest, and for full two hundred years was
of supreme importance to all the people who lived in the Wisconsin
woods.
All trade in New France was in the control of a monopoly, which charged
heavy fees for licenses, severely punished all the unlicensed traders
who could be detected, and fixed its own prices for everything. French
traders were obliged, therefore, to charge the Indians more for their
goods than the English charged for theirs; and it was a continual and
often bloody struggle to keep the Indians of the Northwest from having
any trade with the English colonists from the Atlantic coast, who had
with great labor crossed the Alleghany Mountains and were now swarming
into the Ohio River valley. It was impossible to prevent the English
trade altogether, but the policy was in the main successful, although it
cost the French a deal of anxiety, and sometimes great expense in
military operations.
During the greater part of the French regime in Wisconsin, the bulk of
the goods for the Indians came up by the Ottawa River route, because the
warlike Iroquois of New York favored the English, and for a long time
kept Frenchmen from entering the lower lakes of Ontario and Erie.
Finally, however, after the fort at Detroit was built (1701), the lower
lakes came to be used.
It was, by either route, a very long and tiresome journey from Quebec or
Montreal to Wisconsin, and owing to the early freezing of the Straits
of Mackinac, but one trip could be made in a year. It was not, however,
necessary for every trader to go to the "lower settlements" each year.
At the Western forts large stocks of goods were kept, and there the furs
were stored, sometimes for several seasons, until a great fleet of
canoes could be made up by bands of traders and friendly Indians; and
then the expedition to Montreal was made, with considerable display of
barbaric splendor. When the traders reached Montreal, the inhabitants of
the settlement turned out to welcome their visitors from the wilderness,
and something akin to a great fair was held, at which speculators bought
up the furs, feasts were eaten and drunk, and fresh treaties of peace
were made with the Indians. A week or two would thus pass in universal
festivity, at the end of which traders and savages would seek their
canoes, and, amid volleys of cannon from the fort, martial music, the
fluttering of flags, and the shouts of the _habitants_, the fleet would
push off, and soon be swallowed again by the all-pervading forest.
When the French were driven out of Canada, in 1760, and the British
assumed control, the English Hudson Bay Company began spreading its
operations over the Northwest. But in 1783, at the close of the
Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with
headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our
Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. Soon
sailing ships were introduced, and many goods were thus brought to
Mackinac, Green Bay, and Chequamegon Bay; nevertheless, canoes and
bateaux, together with the more modern "Mackinac boats" and "Durham
boats," were for many years largely used upon these long Western
journeys from Montreal. To a still later date were these rude craft sent
out from the Mackinac warehouses to Wisconsin, or from Mackinac to the
famous headquarters of the company at the mouth of Pigeon River, on the
western shore of Lake Superior, the "Grand Portage," as it was called.
It was a life filled with great perils, by land and flood; many were the
men who lost their lives in storms, in shooting river rapids, in deadly
quarrels with one another or with the savages, by exposure to the
elements, or by actual starvation. Yet there was a glamour over these
wild experiences, as is customary wherever men are associated as
comrades in an outdoor enterprise involving common dangers and
hardships. The excitement and freedom of the fur trade appealed
especially to the volatile, fun loving French; and music and badinage
and laughter often filled the day.
After the Americans assumed control, in 1816, Congress forbade the
British to conduct the fur trade in our country. This was to prevent
them from influencing the Western Indians to war; but turning out the
English traders served greatly to help the American Fur Company, founded
by John Jacob Astor, and having its headquarters on the Island of
Mackinac. Nevertheless the agents, the clerks, and the _voyageurs_ were
still nearly all of them Frenchmen, as of old, and there was really very
little change in the methods of doing business, except that Astor
managed to reap most of the profits.
[Illustration: JOHN JACOB ASTOR]
The fur trade lasted, as a business of prime importance to Wisconsin,
until about 1835. It was at its greatest height in 1820, at which time
Green Bay was the chief settlement in Wisconsin. By 1835 new interests
had arisen, with the development of the lead mines in the southwest, and
with the advent of agricultural settlers from the East, upon the close
of the Black Hawk War (1832).
The fur trade led the way to the agricultural and manufacturing life of
to-day. The traders naturally chose Indian villages as the sites for
most of their posts, and such villages were generally at places well
selected for the purpose. They were on portage trails, where craft had
to be carried around falls or rapids, as at De Pere, Kaukauna, Appleton,
and Neenah; or they were on portage plains, between distinct water
systems, as at Portage and Sturgeon Bay; or they were at the mouths or
junctions of rivers, as at Milwaukee, Sheboygan, Oshkosh, Lacrosse, and
Prairie du Chien; or they occupied commanding positions on lake or river
bank, overlooking a wide stretch of country. Thus most of the leading
cities of Wisconsin are on the sites of old Indian villages; for the
reasons which led to their choice by the Indians held good with the
white pioneers in the old days when rivers and lakes were the chief
highways. Thus we have first the Indian village, then the trading post,
and later the modern town.
The Indian trails were also largely used by the traders in seeking the
natives in their villages; later these trails developed into public
roads, when American settlers came to occupy the country. Thus we see
that Wisconsin was quite thoroughly explored, its principal cities and
highways located, and its water ways mapped out by the early French,
long before the inrush of agricultural colonists.