In 1683 Perrot had collected Wisconsin Indians for an attack on the
Iroquois, and again in 1686 he led them against the same enemy. But the
efforts of the Iroquois and the English to enter the region with their
cheaper and better goods, and the natural tendency of savages to plunder
when assured of supplies from other sources, now overcame the control
which the French had exercised. The Sauks and Foxes, the Mascoutins,
Kickapoos and Miamis, as has been described, held the Fox and Wisconsin
route to the West, the natural and easy highway to the Mississippi, as
La Hontan calls it.[118] Green Bay commanded this route, as La Pointe de
Chagouamigon[119] commanded the Lake Superior route to the Bois Brulé
and the St. Croix. One of Perrot's main objects was to supply the Sioux
on the other side of the Mississippi, and these were the routes to them.
To the Illinois region, also, the Fox route was the natural one. The
Indians of this waterway therefore held the key to the French position,
and might attempt to prevent the passage of French goods and support
English influence and trade, or they might try to monopolize the
intermediate trade themselves, or they might try to combine both
policies.
As early as 1687 the Foxes, Mascoutins and Kickapoos, animated
apparently by hostility to the trade carried on by Perrot with the
Sioux, their enemy at that time, threatened to pillage the post at Green
Bay.[120] The closing of the Ottawa to the northern fur trade by the
Iroquois for three years, a blow which nearly ruined Canada in the days
of Frontenac, as Parkman has described,[121] not only kept vast stores
of furs from coming down from Michillimackinac; it must, also, have kept
goods from reaching the northwestern Indians. In 1692 the Mascoutins,
who attributed the death of some of their men to Perrot, plundered his
goods, and the Foxes soon entered into negotiation with the
Iroquois.[122] Frontenac expressed great apprehension lest with their
allies on the Fox and Wisconsin route they should remove eastward and
come into connection with the Iroquois and the English, a grave danger
to New France.[123] Nor was this apprehension without reason.[124] Even
such docile allies as the Ottawas and Pottawattomies threatened to leave
the French if goods were not sent to them wherewith to oppose their
enemies. "They have powder and iron," complained an Ottawa deputy; "how
can we sustain ourselves? Have compassion, then, on us, and consider
that it is no easy matter to kill men with clubs."[125] By the end of
the seventeenth century the disaffected Indians closed the Fox and
Wisconsin route against French trade.[126] In 1699 an order was issued
recalling the French from the Northwest, it being the design to
concentrate French power at the nearer posts.[127] Detroit was founded
in 1701 as a place to which to attract the northwestern trade and
intercept the English. In 1702 the priest at St. Joseph reported that
the English were sending presents to the Miamis about that post and
desiring to form an establishment in their country.[128] At the same
date we find D'Iberville, of Louisiana, proposing a scheme for drawing
the Miamis, Mascoutins and Kickapoos from the Wisconsin streams to the
Illinois, by changing their trading posts from Green Bay to the latter
region, and drawing the Illinois by trading posts to the lower
Ohio.[129] It was shortly after this that the Miamis and Kickapoos
passed south under either the French or English influence,[130] and the
hostility of the Foxes became more pronounced. A part of the scheme of
La Motte Cadillac at Detroit was to colonize Indians about that
post,[131] and in 1712 Foxes, Sauks, Mascoutins, Kickapoos,
Pottawattomies, Hurons, Ottawas, Illinois, Menomonees and others were
gathered there under the influence of trade. But soon, whether by design
of the French and their allies or otherwise, hostilities broke out
against the Foxes and their allies. The animus of the combat appears in
the cries of the Foxes as they raised red blankets for flags and shouted
"We have no father but the English!" while the allies of the French
replied, "The English are cowards; they destroy the Indians with brandy
and are enemies of the true God!" The Foxes were defeated with great
slaughter and driven back to Wisconsin.[132] From this time until 1734
the French waged war against the Foxes with but short intermissions. The
Foxes allied themselves with the Iroquois and the Sioux, and acted as
middlemen between the latter and the traders, refusing passage to goods
on the ground that it would damage their own trade to allow this.[133]
They fostered hostilities between their old foes the Chippeways and
their new allies the Sioux, and thus they cut off English intercourse
with the latter by way of the north. This trade between the Chippeways
and the Sioux was important to the French, and commandants were
repeatedly sent to La Pointe de Chagouamigon and the upper Mississippi
to make peace between the two tribes.[134] While the wars were in
progress the English took pains to enforce their laws against furnishing
Indian goods to French traders. The English had for a time permitted
this, and their own Indian trade had suffered because the French were
able to make use of the cheap English goods. By their change in policy
the English now brought home to the savages the fact that French goods
were dearer.[135] Moreover, English traders were sent to Niagara to deal
directly with "the far Indians," and the Foxes visited the English and
Iroquois, and secured a promise that they might take up their abode with
the latter and form an additional member of the confederacy in case of
need.[136] As a counter policy the French attempted to exterminate the
Foxes, and detached the Sioux from their alliance with the Foxes by
establishing Fort Beauharnois, a trading post on the Minnesota side of
Lake Pepin.[137]
The results of these wars were as follows:
1. They spread the feeling of defection among the Northwestern Indians,
who could no longer be restrained, as at first, by the threat of cutting
off their trade, there being now rivals in the shape of the English, and
the French traders from Louisiana.[138]
2. They caused a readjustment of the Indian map of Wisconsin. The
Mascoutins and the Pottawattomies had already moved southward to the
Illinois country. Now the Foxes, driven from their river, passed first
to Prairie du Chien and then down the Mississippi. The Sauks went at
first to the Wisconsin, near Sauk Prairie, and then joined the Foxes.
The Winnebagoes gradually extended themselves along the Fox and
Wisconsin. The Chippeways,[139] freed from their fear of the Foxes, to
whom the Wolf and the Wisconsin had given access to the northern portion
of the state, now passed south to Lac du Flambeau,[140] to the
headwaters of the Wisconsin, and to Lac Court Oreilles.[141]
3. The closing of the Fox and Wisconsin route fostered that movement of
trade and exploration which at this time began to turn to the far
Northwest along the Pigeon river route into central British America, in
search of the Sea of the West,[142] whereby the Rocky Mountains were
discovered; and it may have aided in turning settlement into the
Illinois country.
4. These wars were a part of a connected series, including the Iroquois
wars, the Fox wars, the attack of the Wisconsin trader, Charles de
Langlade, upon the center of English trade at Pickawillany,[143] Ohio,
and the French and Indian war that followed. All were successive stages
of the struggle against English trade in the French possessions.