Although the Northwest was obtained for the United States by the treaty
with Great Britain in 1783, the fur trade posts on the Upper Great Lakes
were openly held by the mother country until the new republic could
fully meet its financial obligations to her. After thirteen years, a new
treaty (1796) officially recognized American supremacy. Nevertheless,
for another thirteen years English fur traders were practically in
possession of Wisconsin, operating through French Canadian and
half-breed agents, clerks, and _voyageurs_, until John Jacob Astor
(1809) organized the American Fur Company, and English fur traders were
forbidden to operate here.
The military officers in Canada were firmly convinced that the Americans
could not long hold the Northwest. They believed that some day there
would be another war, and the country would once more become the
property of Great Britain. Therefore they sought to keep on good terms
with our Indians and French, giving them presents and employment.
Thus, when our second war with Great Britain did break out, in 1812,
nearly all the people living in Wisconsin, and elsewhere in the wild
northern parts of the Northwest, were strong friends of the British
cause. To them the issue was very clear. British victory meant the
perpetuation of old times and old methods, so dear to them and to their
ancestors before them. American victory meant the cutting down of the
forests, the death knell of the fur trade, and the coming of a swarm of
strange people, heretofore almost unknown to Wisconsin. These people had
been described to them as an uneasy, selfish, land grabbing folk, who
knew not how to enjoy themselves, and were for turning the world upside
down with their Yankee notions. Naturally, the easy-going, comfort
loving Wisconsin French looked upon their coming with great alarm.
The principal event of the war in Wisconsin was the capture of Prairie
du Chien by the British, in 1814. Wisconsin was then a part of Illinois
Territory, and west of the Mississippi River lay the enormous Missouri
Territory. General William Clark, a younger brother of George Rogers
Clark, was governor of Missouri Territory, and had in charge the conduct
of military operations along the Upper Mississippi River.
Governor Clark had heard that the British, by this time strongly
intrenched on Mackinac Island, intended to send an expedition up the Fox
River and down the Wisconsin, to seize upon Prairie du Chien, which had
not been fortified since the old French days. Clark recognized that the
power that held Prairie du Chien practically held the entire Upper
Mississippi River, and controlled the Indians and the fur trade of a
vast region. Accordingly, early in June (1814) he ascended the river
from his headquarters at St. Louis, with three hundred men in six or
eight large boats, including a bullet-proof keel boat, and erected a
stockade on the summit of a large Indian mound which lay on the bank of
the Mississippi a mile or two above the mouth of the Wisconsin. The name
given to this stockade was Fort Shelby. Lieutenant Joseph Perkins was
left in charge of the garrison, which was divided between the fort and
the keel boat, the latter being anchored out in the Mississippi.
The British expedition from Mackinac had been greatly delayed. During
the preceding autumn, Robert Dickson, an English fur trader, had been
engaged in recruiting a large band of Indians in the neighborhood of
Green Bay, and with them intended to occupy Prairie du Chien. But the
Indians were evidently afraid to fight the Americans, and delayed
Dickson so that the canoes of his party were caught in the ice on Lake
Winnebago (December, 1813), and he was obliged to go into winter
quarters on Island Park (known to the white pioneers as Garlic Island).
Poor Dickson had a sorry time with his war party. As soon as it was
learned that provisions were being freely given out at this island camp,
Indians from long distances came to visit him, under pretense of
enlisting under the banner of the British chief. Councils innumerable
were held, presents and food had to be given the visitors continually,
and Dickson was put to sore straits to keep them satisfied. He found it
impossible to get sufficient supplies from British headquarters on
Mackinac Island, and was being severely criticised by the officers
there, for his exorbitant demands upon them. Nevertheless, unless he
kept his Indians good-natured, they would promptly desert him. He was,
therefore, forced to rely upon the French of Green Bay for what food he
needed. This came grudgingly, and at so high prices that Dickson roundly
scolded the Green Bay people, and promised to report them for punishment
to the British king, for daring to take advantage of his Majesty's
necessities.
While Dickson was thus engaged in Lake Winnebago, a British captain was
drilling a number of young Frenchmen at Green Bay, and trying to make
soldiers of them; at Mackinac, a similar work was being done among the
_voyageurs_ by the two leading fur traders of Prairie du Chien, Brisbois
and Rolette. On the other hand, at Prairie du Chien, the American Indian
agent, Boilvin, was issuing circulars calling on the people to claim
American protection before it was too late.
Late in June the leaders of the expedition started from Mackinac, under
the command of Major William McKay, and at Green Bay, Lake Winnebago,
and Portage picked up various parties of French and Indians. These bands
were much reduced from those who had been so liberally maintained during
the winter, for most of the Indians were anxious to keep away from the
fighting until it should be evident which side would win, and many of
the French were of the same mind. By the time Fox River had been
ascended by the fleet of canoes, and the descent of the Wisconsin begun,
the allied forces consisted of but a hundred twenty whites and four
hundred fifty Indians. All of the latter, according to McKay's report,
proved "perfectly useless."
On the 17th of July, the British war party landed at Prairie du Chien,
to find the Americans, some sixty or seventy strong, protected by a
stockade and two blockhouses, on which were mounted six small cannon. In
the river, the keel boat contained perhaps seventy-five men and fourteen
cannon. The British had, besides their muskets, only a three-pounder,
and the situation did not look promising.
Perkins was summoned to surrender, but he declared that he would "defend
to the last man." For two days there was a rather lively discharge of
firearms on both sides. Apparently, the British were the better gunners;
their cannonading soon forced the men on the keel boat to desert their
comrades on shore, and McKay then centered his attention on the fort.
The Indians were unruly, being principally engaged in plundering the
Frenchmen's houses in the village. The British supply of ammunition had
quite run out by the evening of the 9th, and McKay was seriously
contemplating a retreat, when he was surprised to see a white flag put
out by the garrison.
It appears that the stock of food had become exhausted in the fort, and
Perkins had formed an exaggerated idea of the strength of the invaders.
The British guaranteed that the Americans should march out of Fort
Shelby at eight o'clock in the morning of the 20th, with colors flying
and with the honors of war, and that the Indians should be prevented
from maltreating them. This last agreement McKay found it very difficult
to carry out, for the savages wished, as usual, to massacre the
prisoners. To the honor of the British, it should be recorded that they
exercised great vigilance, and spared neither supplications nor threats,
to insure the safety of their prisoners, whom they soon sent down the
river to the American post at St. Louis.
When the British flag was run up on the stockade, the name was changed
to Fort McKay, in honor of the British leader. During the long autumn
and succeeding winter, the British experienced their old difficulties
with the Indian allies. The warriors sacked the houses of the French
settlers, all over the prairie, and destroyed crops and supplies.
Council after council was held at Fort McKay, and large bands of lazy,
quarrelsome savages, encamped about the fort, were fed and were loaded
with presents; altogether, the occupation of Wisconsin proved an
expensive luxury. It was no doubt with some relief that the British
garrison at last learned, late in May 1815, of the treaty of peace
signed on the previous 24th of December, and made arrangements to
withdraw up the Wisconsin and down the Fox, and across the great lake to
Mackinac.
In point of fact, the withdrawal of Captain Bulger, at that time in
charge of Fort McKay, was in reality a hasty and undignified retreat
from his own allies. The Indians had learned with amazement that the
British palefaces were going to surrender to the American palefaces,
without showing fight, and simply because somewhere, far away in another
part of the world, some other palefaces, whom these Englishmen had never
even seen, had held a peace council and buried the hatchet. This sort of
thing could not be understood by the savages encamped outside the walls
of Fort McKay, save as an evidence of rank cowardice. They called the
redcoats a lot of "old women," became insolent, and even threatened
them.
Captain Bulger saw that it would not do to await the arrival of the
American troops from St. Louis, so he sent an Indian messenger with a
letter to the American commander, telling him to help himself to
everything in Fort McKay. Then, only forty-eight hours after the arrival
of the peace news, he pulled down his flag and hurried home as fast as
he could, fearful all the way that an Indian war party might be at his
heels. Thus ignominiously ended the last British occupation of
Wisconsin.