Chapter III: Part 3

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.

THE COMMERCE OF THE FOREST

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.

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.

IN THE OLD FRENCH DAYS

In establishing their chain of rude forts, or trading posts, along the Great Lakes and through the valley of the Mississippi, the French had no desire to plant agricultural settlements in the West. Their chief thought was to keep the continental interior as a great fur bearing wilderness; to encourage the Indians to hunt for furs, by supplying all their other wants with articles made in Europe; and to prevent them from carrying any of their furs to the English, who were always underbidding the French in prices.

The officers of these forts were instructed to bully or to persuade the Indians, as occasion demanded; and some of them became very successful in this forest diplomacy. Around most of the forts were small groups of temporary settlers, who could hardly be called colonists, for they expected when they had made their fortunes, or when their working days were over, to return to their own people on the lower St. Lawrence River. It was rather an army of occupation, than a body of settlers. Nearly every one in the settlement was dependent on the fur trade, either as agent, clerk, trapper, boatman, or general employee.

Sometimes these little towns were the outgrowth of early Jesuit missions, as La Pointe (on Chequamegon Bay), or Green Bay (De Pere); but sooner or later the fur trade became the chief interest. Most of the towns, however, like Milwaukee, La Crosse, or Prairie du Chien, were the direct outgrowth of commerce with the savages. There were trading posts, also, on Lakes Chetek, Flambeau, Court Oreilles, and Sandy, but the settlements about them were very small, and they never grew into permanent towns, as did some of the others.

At all these places, the little log forts served as depots for furs and the goods used in trading with the Indians; they were also used as rallying points for the traders and other white inhabitants of the district, in times of Indian attack. They would have been of slight avail against an enemy with cannon, but afforded sufficient protection against the arrows, spears, and muskets of savages.

The French Canadians who lived in these waterside hamlets were an easy-going folk. Nearly all of them were engaged in the fur trade at certain seasons of the year. The _bourgeois_, or masters, were the chiefs. The _voyageurs_ were men of all work, propelling the canoes and bateaux when afloat, carrying the craft and their contents over portages, transporting packs of goods and furs along the forest trails, caring for the camps, and acting as guards for the persons and property of their employers. The _coureurs de bois_, or wood rangers, were everywhere; they were devoted to a life in the woods, for the fun and excitement in it; they conducted trade on their own account, far off in the most inaccessible places, and were men of great daring. Then there were the _habitants_, or permanent villagers; sometimes these worked as _voyageurs_, but for the most part they were farmers in a small way, cultivating long, narrow "claims" running at right angles to the river bank; one can still find at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, traces of some of these old "French claims." The object of having them so narrow was, that the _habitants_ could live close to one another, along the waterside.

They were of a very social nature, these French _habitants_. They liked to meet frequently, enjoy their pipes, and tell stories of the hunt or of old days on the St. Lawrence. They were famous fiddlers, too. No wilderness so far away that the little French fiddle had not been there; the Indians recognized it as a part of the furniture of every fur trader's camp. Music appealed strongly to these warm natures, and the songs of the _voyageurs_, as they propelled their canoes along the Wisconsin rivers, always greatly interested travelers. French Canadians are still living in Wisconsin, who remember those gay melodies which echoed through our forests a hundred years ago.

The old French life continued in Wisconsin until well into the nineteenth century. Although New France fell in 1760, and the British came into control, they never succeeded in Anglicizing Wisconsin. English fur companies succeeded the French, and British soldiers occupied the Wisconsin forts; but the fur trade itself had still to be conducted through French residents, who alone had the confidence of the Indians. Great Britain was supposed to surrender all this country to the United States in 1796; but it was really 1816 before the American flag floated over Green Bay, and the American Fur Company came into power. But, even under this company, most of the actual trading was done through the French; so we may say that as long as the fur trade remained the chief industry of Wisconsin, about to the year 1835, the old French life was still maintained, and French methods were everywhere in evidence.

It is surprising how strongly marked upon our Wisconsin are the memories of the old French days. A quiet, unobtrusive people, were those early French, without high ambitions, and simple in their tastes; yet they and theirs have displayed remarkable tenacity of life, and doubtless their effect upon us of to-day will never be effaced. Our map is sprinkled all over with the French names which they gave to our hills and lakes and streams, and early towns. We may here mention a few only, at random: Lakes Flambeau, Court Oreilles, Pepin, Vieux Desert; the rivers Bois Brule, Eau Claire, Eau Pleine, Embarrass, St. Croix; the counties Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, La Crosse, Langlade, Marquette, Portage, Racine, St. Croix, Trempealeau; the towns of Racine, La Crosse, Prairie du Chien, Butte des Morts. Scores of others can readily be found in the atlas. In the cities of Green Bay, Kaukauna, Portage, and Prairie du Chien, and the dreamy little Fox River hamlet of Grand Butte des Morts, are still to be found little closely-knit colonies of French Creoles, descendants of those who lived and ruled under the old French regime.

The time must come, in the molding of all the foreign elements in our midst into the American of the future, when the French element will no longer exist among us as an element, but merely as a memory. If our posterity can inherit from those early French occupants of our soil their simple tastes, their warm hearts, their happy temperament, their social virtues, then the old French regime will have brought a blessing to Wisconsin, and not merely a halo of historical romance.

THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH

Upon the eighth day of September, 1760, the French flag ceased to fly over Canada. In a long and bitter struggle, lasting at intervals through an entire century, French and English had been battling with each other for the control of the interior of this continent; and the former had lost everything at the decisive battle on the Plains of Abraham, before the walls of Quebec.

Reduced to the last extremity, the authorities of New France had ordered her fur traders, _coureurs de bois_ and all, to hurry down to the settlements on the St. Lawrence, and aid in protecting them against the English. Thus in the Wisconsin forests, when the end came, there were left no Frenchmen of importance. Leaving their Indian friends, and many of them their Indian wives and half-breed families, they had obeyed the far away summons, and several lost their lives in the great battle or in the skirmishes which preceded it. The others, who at last returned, were quick to show favor to the English, for little they really cared who were their political masters so long as they were let alone. The Indians, too, although personally they preferred the French to the English, were glad enough to see the latter, because they brought better prices for furs.

Wisconsin was so far away that it took a long time for British soldiers to reach the deserted and tumbledown fort at Green Bay. About the middle of October, 1761, there arrived from Mackinac Lieutenant James Gorrell and seventeen men to hold all of this country for King George. The station had been called by the French Fort St. Francis, but the name was now changed to Fort Edward Augustus.

It was a very lonely and dismal winter for the British soldiers, for nearly all the neighboring savages were away on their winter hunt and did not return until spring. Mackinac, then a poor little trading village, was two hundred forty miles away; there was a trading post at St. Josephs on the southeast shore of Lake Michigan, four hundred miles distant; and the nearest French villages on the Mississippi were eight hundred miles of canoe journey to the southwest. All between was savagery: here and there a squalid Indian village, with its conical wigwams of bark or matted reeds, pitched on the shore of a lake, at the foot of a portage trail, or on the banks of a forest stream. Now and then a French trading party passed along the frozen trails, following the natives on the hunt and poisoning their minds against the newcomers, who were struggling to make their poor old stockade a fairly decent shelter against the winter storms.

But, when the savages returned to Green Bay in the spring, they met with fair words from Gorrell, a plentiful distribution of presents, and good prices for furs, and their hearts were won. In 1763 occurred the great uprising led by Pontiac against the English in the Northwest, during which the garrison at Mackinac was massacred. This disturbed the friendship of Gorrell's neighbors, with the exception of a Menominee band, headed by chief Ogemaunee; and in June of that year the little garrison, together with the English traders at Green Bay, found it necessary to leave hastily for Cross Village, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, escorted by Ogemaunee and ninety painted Menominees, who had volunteered to protect these Englishmen from the unfriendly Indians.

At Cross Village were several soldiers who had escaped from Mackinac, and the two parties and their escorts soon left in canoes for Montreal, by the way of Ottawa River. This old fur trade route was followed in order to escape Pontiac's Indians, who controlled the country about Detroit and along the lower lake. They arrived safely at their destination in August. The following year there was held a great council at Niagara, presided over by the famous Sir William Johnson, who was then serving as British superintendent for the Northern Indians. At this council Ogemaunee was present representing the Menominees of Wisconsin. In token of his valuable services in escorting Lieutenant Gorrell's party to Montreal, and thereby delivering them safely from the great danger which threatened, Ogemaunee was given a certificate, which reads as follows:--

[SEAL OF WAX] By the Honourable Sir William Johnson Baronet,
His Majesty's sole agent and superintendent of the affairs of
the Northern Indians of North America, Colony of the six United
Nations their allies and dependants &c. &c. &c.

To OGemawnee a Chief of the Menomings Nation:

Whereas I have received from the officers who Commanded the Out
posts as well as from other persons an account of your good
behaviour last year in protecting the Officers, Soldiers &c. of
the Garrison of La Bay, and in escorting them down to Montreal
as also the Effects of the Traders to a large amount, and your
having likewise entered into the strongest Engagements of
Friendship with the English before me at this place. I do
therefore give you This Testimony of my Esteem for your
Services and Good behaviour.

Given under my hand & Seal at Arms at
Niagara the first day of August 1764.

Wm. Johnson.]

This piece of paper, which showed that he was a good friend of the English, was of almost as great importance to Ogemaunee as a patent of nobility in the Old World. He carried it with him back to Wisconsin, and it remained in his family from one generation to another, for fully a hundred years. One day a blanketed and painted descendant of Ogemaunee presented it to an American officer who visited his wigwam. This descendant, doubtless, knew little of its meaning, but it had been used in his family as a charm for bringing good luck, and in his admiration for this kind officer he gave it to him, for the Indian is, by nature, grateful and generous. In the course of years the paper was presented to the State Historical Society, by which it is preserved as an interesting and suggestive relic of those early days of the English occupation of Wisconsin.

WISCONSIN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

We ordinarily think of the Revolutionary War as having been fought wholly upon the Atlantic slope. As a matter of fact, there were enacted west of the Alleghanies, during that great struggle, deeds which proved of immense importance to the welfare of the United States. Had it not been for the capture from the British of the country northwest of the Ohio River by the gallant Virginia colonel, George Rogers Clark, it is fair to assume that the Old Northwest, as it came to be called, the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, would to-day be a part of the Dominion of Canada.

After the brief flurry of the Pontiac conspiracy (1763), the Indians of the Old Northwest became good friends of the British, whose aim was to encourage the fur trade and to keep the savages good-natured. The English have always been more successful in their treatment of Indians than have Americans; they are more generous with them, and while not less firm than we, they are more considerate of savage wants. The French and the half-breeds, too, were very soon the warm supporters of British policy, because English fur trade companies gave them abundant employment, and evinced no desire other than to foster the primitive conditions under which the fur trade prospered.

The English were not desirous of settling the Western wilderness with farmers, thereby driving out the game. Our people, however, have always been of a land-grabbing temper; we have sought to beat down the walls of savagery, to push settlement, to cut down the forests, to plow the land, to drive the Indian out. This meant the death of the fur trade; hence it is small wonder that, when the Revolutionary War broke out, the French and Indians of the Northwest upheld the British and opposed the Americans.

A number of scattered white settlers and a few small villages had appeared along the Ohio River and many of its southern tributaries. In Kentucky there were several log forts, around each of which were grouped the rude cabins of frontiersmen, who were half farmers and half hunters, tall, stalwart fellows, as courageous as lions, and ever on the alert for the crouching Indian foe, who came when least expected. The country northwest of the Ohio River was then a part of the British province of Quebec. Here and there in this Old Northwest, as we now call it, were small villages of French and half-breed fur traders, each village protected by a little log fort; some of these villages were garrisoned by a handful of British soldiers, and others only by French Canadians who were friendly to the English. Such were Vincennes, in what is now Indiana; Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in the Illinois country; Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, in Wisconsin; and Mackinac Island and Detroit, in Michigan. Detroit was the headquarters, where lived the British lieutenant governor of the Northwest, Henry Hamilton, a bold, brave, untiring, unscrupulous man.

Hamilton's chief business was to gather about him the Indians of the Northwest, and to excite in them hatred of the American settlers in Kentucky. In 1777, war parties sent out by him from Detroit, under cover of the forts of Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia, swept Kentucky from end to end, and the whole American frontier was the scene of a frightful panic. The American backwoodsmen were ambushed, many of the blockhouse posts were burned, prisoners were subjected to nameless horrors, and it seemed as if pandemonium had broken loose. By the close of the year, such had been the rush of settlers back to their old homes, east of the mountains, that but five or six hundred frontiersmen remained in all Kentucky. Had the British and the Indians succeeded in driving back all of the settlers, they would have held the whole interior of the continent, and the American republic might never have been permitted to grow beyond the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge; hemmed in to the Atlantic slope, this could never have become the great nation it is to-day.

Prominent among the defenders of Kentucky in 1777 was George Rogers Clark. He was but twenty-five years of age, had come from a good family in Virginia, and had a fair education for that day, but had been a wood rover from childhood. He was tall and commanding in person, a great hunter, and a backwoods land surveyor, such as Washington was. With chain and compass, ax and rifle, he had, in the employ of land speculators, wandered far and wide through the border region, knowing its trails, its forts, its mountain passes, and its aborigines better than he knew his books. Associated with him were Boone, Benjamin Logan, and others who were prominent among American border heroes.

Clark saw that the best way to defend Kentucky was to strike the enemy in their own country. Gaining permission from Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, for Kentucky was then but a county of Virginia, and obtaining some small assistance in money, he raised, in 1778, a little army of a hundred fifty backwoodsmen, clad in buckskin and homespun, who came from the hunters' camps of the Alleghanies. The men collected at Pittsburg and Wheeling, and in flatboats cautiously descended the Ohio to the falls, where is now the city of Louisville. Here, on an island, they built a fort as a military base, and the strongest of the party pushed on down the river to the abandoned old French Fort Massac, ten miles below the mouth of the Tennessee, from which they marched overland, for a hundred twenty miles, to Kaskaskia in western Illinois.

Capturing Kaskaskia by surprise (July 4), and soon gaining the good will of the French there, Clark sent out messengers who easily won over the neighboring Cahokia; and very soon even Vincennes, on the Wabash River, sent in its submission. It was not long before Hamilton, at Detroit, heard the humiliating news. He at once sent out two French agents, Charles de Langlade and Charles Gautier, of Green Bay, to raise a large war party of Wisconsin Indians. They succeeded so well, that Hamilton set out from Detroit in October, to retake Vincennes. His force consisted of nearly two hundred whites (chiefly French) and three hundred Indians. Such were the obstacles to overcome in an unbroken wilderness, that he was seventy-one days in reaching his destination. Clark had left but two of his soldiers at Vincennes, and as their French allies at once surrendered, there was nothing to do but to give up the place.

Now came one of the most stirring deeds in our Western history. Clark, at Kaskaskia, soon learned of the loss of Vincennes; at the same time, it was told him that the greater part of Hamilton's expedition had disbanded for the winter, the lieutenant governor intending to launch a still larger war party against him in the spring. Thereupon Clark determined not to await an attack, but himself to make an attack on Hamilton, who had remained in charge of Vincennes.

The distance across country, from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, is about two hundred thirty miles. In summer it was a delightful region of alternating groves and prairies; in the dead of winter, it would afford fair traveling over the frozen plains and ice-bound rivers; but now, in February (1779), the weather had moderated, and great freshets had flooded the lowlands and meadows. The ground was boggy, and progress was slow and difficult; there were no tents, and the floods had driven away much of the game; and Clark and his officers were often taxed to their wits' ends to devise methods for keeping their hard-worked men in good spirits. Often they were obliged to wade in the icy water, for miles together, and to sleep at night in soaked clothes upon little brush-strewn hillocks, shivering with cold, and without food or fire.

But at last, after nearly three weeks of almost superhuman exertion and indescribable misery, Vincennes was reached. The British garrison was taken by surprise, but held out with obstinacy, and throughout the long moonlight night the battle raged with much fury. The log fort was on the top of a hill overlooking the little town; it was armed with several small cannon, but Clark's men had only their muskets. They were, however, served freely with ammunition by the French villagers; and, being expert marksmen, could hit the gunners by firing through the loopholes, so that by sunrise the garrison was sadly crippled. The fight continued throughout the following morning, and in the afternoon the British ran up the white flag. Hamilton and twenty-six of his fellows were sent as prisoners overland to Virginia.

Clark remained as master of the Northwest until the close of the Revolutionary War. The fact that the flag of the republic waved over Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia when the war ended, had much to do with the decision of the peace commissioners to allow the United States to retain the country lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes.

During the Revolution, none of the forts in Wisconsin were occupied by British soldiers, and they were allowed to tumble into decay. Wisconsin was, however, used as a recruiting ground for Indian allies. Not only did Langlade and Gautier raise a war party of Wisconsin Indians to help Hamilton in his expedition against Vincennes, but they were frequently in Wisconsin on similar business during the war. In 1779 Gautier led a party of Wisconsin Indians to Peoria, in the Illinois country, where there was an old French fort which, it was thought, might fall into the hands of the Americans. Gautier burned this fort, and then hastily retreated because he found that Clark was making friends with all the Illinois Indians.

Clark's agents traded as far north as Portage, in Wisconsin. At Prairie du Chien they induced Linctot, a famous French fur trader, to join the Americans. Linctot put himself at the head of a party of five hundred French and half-breed horsemen, who were of much assistance to Clark in his various movements after the capture of Vincennes. Meanwhile another large party, chiefly of Indians, assembled at Prairie du Chien in the British cause, led by three French traders, Hesse, Du Charme, and Calve. They raided the upper Mississippi valley, capturing provisions intended for the Americans, and making a futile attack on the Spanish village of St. Louis, which was thought to be assisting Clark.

Despite these military operations in Wisconsin, the English fur trade continued in full strength, with headquarters upon the Island of Mackinac, but with French agents and boatmen, whose principal dwelling places were at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. Upon Lake Superior large canoes and bateaux were used; but upon Lake Michigan were three small sloops, the _Welcome_, the _Felicity_, and the _Archangel_, which carried supplies and furs for the traders, and made frequent cruises to see that the "Bostonians," as the French used to call the Americans, obtained no foothold upon the shore of the lake.

Just before the close of the war, the British commander at Mackinac Island, Captain Patrick Sinclair, held a council with the Indians, and for a small sum purchased for himself their claims to that island and to nearly all of the land now comprising Wisconsin. But the treaty of 1783, between the British and the Americans, did not recognize this purchase, and Sinclair found that he was no longer the owner of Wisconsin. It had become, largely through the valor of Clark, and the persistence of our treaty commissioners, a part of the territory of the United States.

THE RULE OF JUDGE REAUME

By the treaty of peace with Great Britain, in 1783, the country northwest of the Ohio River was declared to be a part of the territory of the United States; but it was many years before the Americans had anything more than a nominal control of Wisconsin, which was a part of this Northwestern region. The United States was at first unable to meet all of its obligations under this treaty; hence Great Britain kept possession of the old fur trade posts on the Upper Lakes, including Mackinac, of which Wisconsin was a "dependency." A British garrison was kept at Mackinac, thus controlling the fur trade of this district, but no troops were deemed necessary within Wisconsin itself.

To the few white inhabitants of the small fur trade villages of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, there was slight evidence of any of these various changes in political ownership. Beyond the brief stay among them of Lieutenant Gorrell and his little band of redcoats, in the years 1761-63, the French and half-breeds of Wisconsin led much the same life as of old.

In 1780, an English fur trader, John Long, passed up the Fox River and down the Wisconsin, and bought up a great many furs in this region. Some years later he wrote a book about his travels, and from this we get a very good idea of life among the French and Indians of the Northwest. Long was at Green Bay for several days, and tells us that the houses there were covered with birch bark, and the rooms were decorated with bows and arrows, guns, and spears. There were in the village not over fifty whites, divided into six or seven families. The men were for the most part engaged as assistants to the two or three leading traders; they spent their winters in the woods, picking up furs at the Indian camps, and in summer cultivated their narrow strips of gardens which ran down to the river's edge. It mattered little to them who was their political master, so long as they were left to enjoy their simple lives in their own fashion.

To this primitive community there came one day, in 1803, a portly, pompous, bald headed little Frenchman, named Charles Reaume. Wisconsin was then a part of Indiana Territory, of which William Henry Harrison was governor. It was for the most part a wilderness; dense woods and tenantless prairies extended all the way from the narrow clearing at Green Bay to the little settlement at Prairie du Chien. There were small clearings at Portage, Milwaukee, and one or two other fur trading posts. There was no civil government here, and the few white people in all this vast stretch of country practically made their own laws, each man being judge and jury for himself, so long as he did not interfere with other people's rights.

Reaume bore a commission from Governor Harrison, appointing him justice of the peace at Green Bay, which meant nearly all of the country west of Lake Michigan. Thus "Judge Reaume," as he was called, was the only civil officer in Wisconsin, and although apparently never reappointed, he retained this distinction by popular consent until after the War of 1812-15; indeed, for several years after that, he was the principal officer of justice in these parts.

The judge was a good-hearted man, when one penetrated beneath the crust of official pomposity with which he was generally enveloped. He appears to have owned a volume of Blackstone, but the only law he understood or practiced was the old "Law of Paris," which had governed Canada from the earliest time, and which still rules in the Province of Quebec, and it is related that he knew little of that. His decisions were arbitrary, but were generally based on the right as he saw it, quite regardless of the technicalities of the law.

A great many queer stories are told of old Judge Reaume. He loved display after his simple fashion, and invented for himself an official uniform, which he wore on all public occasions. This consisted of a scarlet frock coat faced with white silk, and gay with spangled buttons; it can still be seen in the museum of the State Historical Society. He issued few warrants or subpoenas; it is told of him that whenever he wanted a person to appear before him, either as witness or principal, he sent to that person the constable, bearing his honor's well-known large jackknife, which was quite as effectual as the king's signet ring of olden days.

Quite often did he adjudge guilty both complainant and defendant, obliging them both to pay a fine, or to work so many days in his garden; and sometimes both were acquitted, the constable being ordered to pay the costs. It is even said that the present of a bottle of whisky to the judge was sufficient to insure a favorable decision. The story is told that once, when the judge had actually rendered a decision in a certain case, the person decided against presented the court with a new coffee-pot, whereupon the judgment was reversed.

There may be some exaggeration in these tales of the earliest judge in Wisconsin, but they appear to be in the main substantiated. Nevertheless, although there doubtless was some grumbling, it speaks well for the old justice of the peace, and for the orderly good nature of this little French community without a jail, that no one appears ever to have questioned the legality of Reaume's decisions. These were strictly abided by, and although he was never reappointed, he held office under both American and British sway, simply because no one was sent to succeed him.

Not only was Reaume Wisconsin's judge and jury during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, but as there was, during much of his time, no priest hereabouts, he drew up marriage contracts, and married and divorced people at will, issued baptismal certificates, and kept a registry of births and deaths. He certified alike to British and American military commissions; drew up contracts between the fur traders and their employees; wrote letters for the _habitants_; and performed for the settlers all those functions of Church and state for which we now require a long list of officials and professional men. He was a picturesque and important functionary, illustrating in his person the simple fashions and modest desires of the French who first settled this State. We are now a wealthier people, but certainly there have never been happier times in Wisconsin, all things considered, than in the primitive days of old Judge Reaume and his official jackknife.

THE BRITISH CAPTURE PRAIRIE DU CHIEN

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.

THE STORY OF THE WISCONSIN LEAD MINES

It was the fur trade that first brought white men to Wisconsin. The daring Nicolet pushed his way through the wilderness, a thousand miles west of the little French settlement at Quebec, solely to introduce the traffic in furs to our savages, and others were not long in following him. Soon it was learned that there were lead mines in what is now southwest Wisconsin.

It is not probable that the aborigines, before the coming of white men, made any other use of lead than from it to fashion a few rude ornaments. But the French at once recognized the great value of this mineral, in connection with the fur trade. They taught the Indians how to mine it in a crude fashion, and to make it into bullets for the guns which they introduced among them.