Chapter V: Part 5

Four years after the coming of the Halls, there arrived at the island village a worthy Austrian priest, Father (afterward Bishop) Baraga. In a small log chapel by the side of the Indian graveyard, this new mission of the older faith throve apace. Baraga visited Europe to beg money for the cause, and in a few years constructed a new chapel; this is sometimes shown to summer tourists as the original chapel of Marquette, but no part of the ancient mainland chapel went into its construction. Baraga was a man of unusual attainments, and spent his life in laboring for the betterment of the Indians of the Lake Superior country, with a self-sacrificing zeal which is rare in the records of any church. At present, the Franciscan friars, with headquarters at Bayfield, on the mainland, are in charge of the island mission.

La Pointe has lost many of its old-time characteristics. No longer is it the refuge of squalid Indian tribes; no longer is it a center of the fur trade, with gayly clothed _coureurs de bois_, with traders and their dusky brides, with rollicking _voyageurs_ taking no heed of the morrow. With the killing of the game, and the opening of the Lake Superior country to the occupation of farmers and miners and manufacturers, its forest trade has departed; the Protestant mission has followed the majority of the Indian islanders to mainland reservations; and the revived mission of the Mother Church has also been quartered upon the bay shore.

WISCONSIN TERRITORY FORMED

What we now know as Wisconsin was part of the vast undefined wilderness to which the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century, gave the name Florida. Spain claimed the country because of the early discoveries of her navigators and explorers. Her claim was undisputed until there came to North America the energetic French, who penetrated the continent by means of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes, and gradually took possession of the inland water systems, as fast as discovered by their fur traders and missionaries. It should be understood, however, that there were very few, if any, Spaniards in all this vast territory, except on or near the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1608 Quebec was founded. It is supposed that twenty-six years later the first Frenchman reached Wisconsin, which may, from that date (1634) till 1763, be considered as a part of French territory. When Great Britain conquered New France, Wisconsin became her property, and so continued till the treaty of 1783, by which our Northwest was declared to be American soil.

Owing to the vague and undefined boundaries given by the British government to its original colonies on the Atlantic slope, several of the thirteen States claimed that their territory extended out into the Northwest; but finally all these claims were surrendered to the general government, in order that there might be formed a national domain, from which to create new States. By the famous Ordinance of 1787, Congress created the Northwest Territory, which embraced the wide stretch of country lying between the Great Lakes and the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. The present Wisconsin was a part of this great territory.

In the year 1800 Indiana Territory was set off from the rest of the Northwest Territory, and took Wisconsin with it. Nine years later Illinois Territory was formed, Wisconsin being within its bounds. Nine years after that, when Illinois became a State, all the country lying west of Lake Michigan was given to Michigan Territory; thus was the ownership of Wisconsin once more changed, and she became a part of Michigan.

By this time settlers were coming into the region west of the lake. There had long been several little French villages; but, in addition to the French, numerous American farmers and professional men had lately arrived. The great distance from Detroit, at a time when there were no railways or telegraphs, was such as to make it almost impossible to carry on any government here. Hence, after a good deal of complaint from the frontiersmen living to the west of Lake Michigan, and some angry words back and forth between these people and those residing east of the lake, Congress was induced, in 1836, to erect Wisconsin Territory, with its own government.

Thus far, this region beyond Lake Michigan had borne no particular name. It was simply an outlying part of the Northwest Territory; or of the Territories of Indiana, Illinois, or Michigan, as the case might be. But, now that it was to be a Territory by itself, a name had to be adopted. The one taken was that of its principal river, although "Chippewau" was preferred by many people. Wisconsin is an Indian name, the exact meaning of which is unknown; some writers have said that it signifies "gathering of the waters," or "meeting of the waters," but there is no warrant for this. The earliest known French form of the word is "Misconsing," which gradually became crystallized into "Ouisconsin." When the English language became dominant, it was necessary to change the spelling in order to preserve the sound; it thus, at first, became "Wiskonsan," or "Wiskonsin," but finally, by official action, "Wisconsin." The "k" was, however, rather strongly insisted on by Governor Doty and many newspaper editors, in the days of the Territory.

The first session of the legislature of the new Territory of Wisconsin was held at the recently platted village of Belmont, in the present county of Lafayette. The place of meeting was a little story-and-a-half frame house. Lead miners' shafts dimpled the country round about, and new stumps could be seen upon every hand. There were many things to be done by the legislature, such as dividing the Territory into counties, selecting county seats, incorporating banks, and borrowing money with which to run the new government; but the matter which occasioned the most excitement was the location of the capital, and the bitterness which resulted was long felt in the political history of Wisconsin.

A month was spent in this contest. The claimants were Milwaukee, Racine, Koshkonong, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Wisconsinapolis, Peru, Wisconsin City, Portage, Helena, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville, Cassville, Belleview, and Dubuque (now in Iowa, but then in Wisconsin). Some of these towns existed only upon maps published by real estate speculators.

Madison was a beautiful spot, in the heart of the wild woods and lakes of central southern Wisconsin. It was unknown save to a few trappers, and to the speculators who had bought the land from the federal government, and thought they saw a fortune in inducing the legislature to adopt it as the seat of government. Madison won, upon the argument that it was halfway between the rival settlements on Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and that to build a city there would assist in the development of the interior of the Territory.

When Madison was chosen, a surveyor hurried thither, and in a blinding snowstorm laid out the prospective city. The village grew slowly, and it was November, 1838, before the legislature could meet in its new home.

WISCONSIN BECOMES A STATE

Some of the people of Wisconsin were not long content with a Territorial government. The Territory was only two years old when a bill was introduced in Congress for a State government, but the attempt failed. In 1841 Governor Doty, the leader in the movement, had the question put to popular vote; but it was lost, as it also was in the year following. In 1843 a third attempt was defeated in the Territorial council (or senate); and in 1845, still another met defeat in the Territorial house of representatives (or assembly).

But at last our Territorial representative in Congress gave notice (January 9, 1846), "of a motion for leave to introduce a bill to enable the people of Wisconsin to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union." He followed this, a few days later, by the introduction of a bill to that effect; the bill passed, and in August the measure was approved by President Polk.

Meanwhile, the council and house of Wisconsin Territory had favorably voted on the proposition. This was in January and February, 1846. In April the question of Statehood was passed upon by the people of the Territory, the returns this time showing 12,334 votes for, and 2487 against. In August, Governor Dodge issued a proclamation calling a convention for the drafting of a constitution.

The convention was in session in the Territorial capitol at Madison, between October 5 and December 16, 1846. But the constitution which it framed was rejected by the people. The contest over the document had been of an exciting nature; the defeat was owing to differences of opinion upon the articles relating to the rights of married women, exemptions, banks, the elective judiciary, and the number of members of the legislature.

As soon as practicable, Governor Dodge called a special session of the Territorial legislature, which made provisions for a second constitutional convention. Most of the members of the first convention declined reelection; six only were returned. The second convention was in session at Madison from December 15, 1847, to February 1, 1848. The members of both conventions were men of high standing in their several communities, and later many of them held prominent positions in the service of the State and the nation.

The constitution adopted by the second convention was so satisfactory to most people, that the popular verdict in March (16,799 ayes and 6384 noes) surprised no one. Arrangements for a new bill in Congress, admitting Wisconsin to the Union, were already well under way. Upon the very day of the vote by the people, before the result was known, the Territorial legislature held its final meeting, and left everything ready for the new State government.

The general election for the first State officers and the members of the first State legislature was held May 8. President Polk approved the congressional act of admission May 29. Upon the 7th of June, Governor Nelson Dewey and his fellow-officials were sworn into office, and the legislature opened its first session.

In the old lead mining days of Wisconsin, miners from southern Illinois and still farther south returned home every winter, and came back to the "diggings" in the spring, thus imitating the migrations of the fish popularly called the "sucker," in the south-flowing rivers of the region. For this reason the south-winterers were humorously called "Suckers." On the other hand, lead miners from the far-off Eastern States were unable to return home every winter, and at first lived in rude dugouts, burrowing into the hillsides after the fashion of the badger. These burrowing men were the first permanent settlers in the mines north of the Illinois line, and called themselves "Badgers." Thus Wisconsin, in later days, when it was thought necessary to adopt a nickname, was, by its own people, dubbed "The Badger State."

THE BOUNDARIES OF WISCONSIN

In the Ordinance of 1787, whereby Congress created the old Northwest Territory out of the triangle of country lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and Lake of the Woods and the Great Lakes, it was provided that this vast region should eventually be parcelled into five States. The east-and-west dividing line was to be "drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan"; south of this line were to be erected three States, and north of it two. "Whenever," the ordinance read, "any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted" to the Union.

It should be said, in explanation of this east-and-west line, that all the maps of Lake Michigan then extant represented the head of the lake as being much farther north than it was proved to be by later surveys. The line as fixed in the ordinance proved to be a bone of contention in the subsequent carving of the Northwest Territory into States, leading to a good deal of angry discussion before the boundaries of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the five States eventually formed from the Territory, became established as they are to-day.

Ohio, the first State to be set off, insisted that Maumee Bay, with the town of Toledo, should be included in her bounds, although it lay north of the east-and-west line of the ordinance. Michigan, on the other hand, stoutly insisted on the line as laid down in the law. In 1835 and 1836 there were some popular disturbances along the border; one of these, though bloodless, was so violent as to receive the name of "the Toledo war." Congress finally settled the quarrel by giving Ohio the northern boundary which she desired, regardless of the terms of the ordinance; Michigan was compensated by the gift of what we now call the "northern peninsula" of that State, although it had all along been understood that the country lying west of Lake Michigan should be the property of the fifth State, whenever that was created. Thus, in order that Ohio might have another lake port from Michigan, Wisconsin lost this immense tract of mining country to the north.

When Indiana came to be erected, it was seen that to adopt the east-and-west line, established by the ordinance, would be to deprive her entirely of any part of the coast of Lake Michigan. In order, therefore, to satisfy her, Congress took another strip, ten miles wide, from the southern border of Michigan, and gave it to the new State. Michigan made no objection to this fresh violation of the agreement of 1787, because there were no important harbors or towns involved.

Illinois next knocked at the door of the Union. The same conditions applied to her as to Indiana; a strict construction of the ordinance would deprive her of an opening on the lake. The Illinois delegate who argued this matter in Congress was shrewd; he contended that his State must become intimately connected with the growing commerce of the northern lakes, else she would be led, from her commercial relations upon the south-flowing Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to join a Southern confederacy in case the Union should be broken up. This was in 1818, and shows how early in our history there had come to be, in the minds of some far-seeing men, a fear that the growing power of slavery might some time lead to secession. The argument prevailed in Congress, and there was voted to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles wide, lying north of the east-and-west line.

Thus again was the region later to be called Wisconsin deprived of a large and valuable tract. When Wisconsin Territory was created, there was a great deal of indignation expressed by some of her people, at being deprived of this wide belt of country embracing 8500 square miles of exceedingly fertile soil, numerous river and lake ports, many miles of fine water power, and the sites of Chicago, Rockford, Freeport, Galena, Oregon, Dixon, and numerous other prosperous cities.

An attempt was made in 1836, at the time the Territory was established, to secure for Wisconsin's benefit the old east-and-west line, as its rightful southern boundary. But Congress declined to grant this request. Three years later, the Wisconsin Territorial legislature declared that "a large and valuable tract of country is now held by the State of Illinois, contrary to the manifest right and consent of the people of this Territory."

The inhabitants of the district in northern Illinois which was claimed by Wisconsin, were invited by these resolutions to express their opinion on the matter. Public meetings were consequently held in several of the Illinois towns interested; and resolutions were adopted, declaring in favor of the Wisconsin claim. The movement culminated in a convention at Rockford (July 6, 1839), attended by delegates from nine of the fourteen Illinois counties involved. This convention recommended the counties to elect delegates to a convention to be held in Madison, "for the purpose of adopting such lawful and constitutional measures as may seem to be necessary and proper for the early adjustment of the southern boundary."

Curiously enough, the weight of public sentiment in Wisconsin itself did not favor the movement. At a large meeting held in Green Bay, the following April, the people of that section passed resolutions "viewing the resolutions of the legislature with concern and regret," and asking that they be rescinded. With this, popular agitation ceased for the time; and in the following year the legislature promptly defeated a proposition for the renewal of the question.

Governor Doty, however, was a stanch advocate of the idea, and at the legislative session of 1842 contrived to work up considerable enthusiasm in its behalf. A bill was reported by the committee on Territorial affairs, asking the people in the disputed tract to hold an election on the question of uniting with Wisconsin. There were some rather fiery speeches upon the subject, some of the orators going so far as to threaten force in acquiring the wished-for strip; but the legislature itself took no action. However, in Stephenson and Boone counties, Illinois, elections were actually held, at which all but one or two votes were cast in favor of the Wisconsin claim.

Governor Doty, thus encouraged, busily continued his agitation. He issued proclamations warning Illinois that it was "exercising an accidental and temporary jurisdiction" over the disputed strip, and calling on the two legislatures to authorize the people to vote on the question of restoring Wisconsin to her "ancient limits." At first, neither the legislatures of Illinois nor Wisconsin paid much attention to the matter. Finally, in 1843, the Wisconsin legislature sent a rather warlike address to Congress, in which secession was clearly threatened, unless the "birthright of Wisconsin" were restored. Congress, however, very sensibly paid no heed to the address, and gradually the excitement subsided, until eventually Wisconsin was made a State, with her present boundaries.

We have seen that the northern peninsula was given to Michigan as a recompense for her loss of Toledo and Maumee Bay. But when it became necessary to determine the boundary between the peninsula and the new Territory of Wisconsin, now set off from Michigan, some difficulty arose, owing to the fact that the country had not been thoroughly surveyed, and there was no good map of it extant.

There were various propositions; one of them was, to use the Chocolate River as part of the line; had this prevailed, Wisconsin would have gained the greater part of the peninsula. But the line of division at last adopted was that of the Montreal and Menominee rivers, by the way of Lake Vieux Desert. This line had been selected in 1834, because a map published that year represented the headwaters of those rivers as meeting in Lake Vieux Desert; hence it was supposed by the congressional committee that this would make an excellent natural boundary. When, however, the line came to be actually laid out by the surveyors, six years later, for the purpose of setting boundary monuments, it was discovered that Lake Vieux Desert had no connection with either stream, being, in fact, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River; and that the running of the line through the woods, between the far-distant headwaters of the Montreal and Menominee, so as to touch the lake on the way, involved a laborious task, and resulted in a crooked boundary. But it was by this time too late to correct the geographical error, and the awkward boundary thus remains.

As originally provided by the Ordinance of 1787, Wisconsin, as the fifth State to be created out of the Northwest Territory, was, even after being shorn upon the south and northeast, at least entitled to have as her western boundary the Mississippi to its source, and thence a straight line running northward to the Lake of the Woods and the Canadian boundary. But here again she was to suffer loss of soil, this time in favor of Minnesota.

As a Territory, Wisconsin had been given sway over all the country lying to the west, as far as the Missouri River. In 1838, all beyond the Mississippi was detached, and erected into the Territory of Iowa. Eight years later, when Wisconsin first sought to be a State, the question arose as to her western boundary. Naturally, the people of the eastern and southern sections wished the one set forth in the ordinance. But settlements had by this time been established along the Upper Mississippi and in the St. Croix valley. These were far removed from the bulk of settlement elsewhere in Wisconsin, and had neither social nor business interests in common with them. The people of the northwest wished to be released from Wisconsin, in order that they might either cast their fortunes with their near neighbors in the new Territory of Minnesota, or join a movement just then projected for the creation of an entirely new State, to be called "Superior." This proposed state was to embrace all the country north of Mont Trempealeau and east of the Mississippi, including the entire northern peninsula, if the latter could be obtained; thus commanding the southern and western shores of Lake Superior, with the mouth of Green Bay and the foot of Lake Michigan to the southeast.

The St. Croix representative in the legislature was especially wedded to the Superior project. He pleaded earnestly and eloquently for his people, whose progress, he said, would be "greatly hampered by being connected politically with a country from which they are separated by nature, cut off from communication by immense spaces of wilderness between." A memorial from the settlers themselves stated the case with even more vigor, asserting that they were "widely separated from the settled parts of Wisconsin, not only by hundreds of miles of mostly waste and barren lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but equally so by a diversity of interests and character in the population." All of this reads curiously enough in these days, when the intervening wilderness resounds with the hum of industry and "blossoms as the rose." But that was long before the days of railroads; the dense forests of central and western Wisconsin then constituted a formidable wilderness, peopled only by savages and wild beasts.

Unable to influence the Wisconsin legislature, which stubbornly contended for the possession of the original tract, the St. Croix people next urged their claims upon Congress. The proposed State of Superior found little favor at Washington, but there was a general feeling that Wisconsin would be much too large unless trimmed. The result was that when she was finally admitted as a State, the St. Croix River was, in large part, made her northwest boundary; Minnesota in this manner acquired a vast stretch of country, including the thriving city of St. Paul.

Wisconsin was thus shorn of valuable territory on the south, to please Illinois; on the northeast, to favor Michigan; and on the northwest, that some of her settlers might join their fortunes with Minnesota. The State, however, is still quite as large as most of her sisters in the Old Northwest, and possesses an unusual variety of soils, and a great wealth of forests, mines, and fisheries. There is a strong probability that, had Congress, in 1848, given to Wisconsin her "ancient limits," as defined by the Ordinance of 1787, the movement to create the proposed state of "Superior" would have gathered strength in the passing years, and possibly would have achieved success, thus depriving us of our great northern forests and mines, and our outlet upon the northern lake.

LIFE IN PIONEER DAYS

So long as the fur trade remained the principal business in Wisconsin, the French were still supreme at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien; and, until a third of the nineteenth century had passed away, there existed at these outposts of New France a social life which smacked of the "old regime," bearing more traces of seventeenth-century Normandy than of Puritan New England. With the decline of the fur trade, a new order of things slowly grew up.

There being little legal machinery west of Lake Michigan, before Wisconsin Territory was erected, local government was slow to establish itself. Nothing but the good temper and stout common sense of the people prevented anarchy, under such a condition of affairs. For many years, the few public enterprises were undertaken at private expense. At Green Bay, schools were thus conducted, as early as 1817. In 1821 the citizens of that village raised a fund by popular subscription, and built a jail; and eleven years later, they asked the legislature of Michigan Territory to pay for it. There were some Territorial taxes levied in 1817, but the gathering of them was not very successful. The first county to levy a tax was Crawford, of which Prairie du Chien was the seat, but considerable difficulty appears to have been experienced in collecting the money.

Finally, Wisconsin Territory was organized, and the legislature assembled (1838) in Madison, the new capital. The accommodations at that raw little woodland village were meager, even for pioneer times. The Territorial building of stone, and a few rude frame and log houses in the immediate neighborhood, were all there was of the infant city. Only fifty strangers could be decently lodged there, and a proposition to adjourn to Milwaukee was favored. But as the lakeshore metropolis, also a small village, could offer no better accommodations, it was decided to stay at the capital, and brave it out on the straw and hay mattresses, of which, however, there were not enough to supply the demand.

This was long before railroads had reached Wisconsin. Travel through the new Territory was by boat, horseback, or a kind of snow sledge called a "French train." There were no roads, except such as had been developed from the old deep-worn Indian trails which interlaced the face of the country, and traces of which can still be seen in many portions of the State. The pioneers found that these trails, with a little straightening, often followed the best possible routes for bridle paths or wagon roads. It was not long before they were being used by long lines of teams, transporting smelted lead from the mines of southwest Wisconsin to the Milwaukee and Galena docks; on the return, they carried supplies for the "diggings," and sawmill machinery into the interior forests. Farmers' wagons and stagecoaches followed in due time. Bridges were but slowly built; the unloaded wagons were ferried across rivers in Indian "dugout" canoes, the horses swimming behind, and the freight being brought over in relays.

In 1837 there was a financial crisis throughout the country, and this checked Western immigration for a few years. But there was not enough money in Wisconsin for bank failures materially to affect the people; so, when the tide of settlement again flowed hither, the Badgers were as strong and hopeful as ever.

People coming to Wisconsin from the East often traveled all the way in their own wagons; or would take a lake boat at Buffalo, and then proceed by water to Detroit, Green Bay, or Chicago, thence journeying in caravans to the interior.

Frontier life, in those days, was of the simplest character. The immigrants were for the most part used to hard work and plain fare. Accordingly the privations of their new surroundings involved relatively little hardship, although sometimes a pioneer farmer was fifty or a hundred miles from a gristmill, a store, or a post office, and generally his highway thither was but a blazed bridle path through the tangled forest.

Often his only entertainments throughout the year were "bees" for raising log houses or barns for newcomers, and on these occasions all the settlers for scores of miles around would gather in a spirit of helpful comradery. Occasionally the mail carrier, either afoot or on horseback, would wish accommodation over night. Particularly fortunate was the man who maintained a river ferry at the crossing of some much-frequented trail; he could have frequent chats with strangers, and collect stray shillings from mail carriers or other travelers whose business led them through the wilderness.

Often the new settler brought considerable flour and salt pork with him, in his journey to the West; but it was not at first easy to get a fresh supply. Curiously enough, although in the midst of a wild abundance, civilized man at the outset sometimes suffered for the bare necessaries of life. As soon, however, as he could garner his first crop, and become accustomed to the new conditions, he was usually proof against disaster of this kind; fish and game were so abundant, in their season, that in due time the backwoodsman was able to win a wholesome livelihood from the storehouse of nature.

Satisfactory education for youth was a plant of comparatively small growth. At first there was not enough money in the country to pay competent teachers. The half-educated sons and daughters of the pioneers taught the earliest schools, often upon a private subscription basis; text-books were few, appliances generally wanting, and the results were, for many years, far from satisfactory. As for spiritual instruction, this was given by itinerant missionary preachers and priests, of various denominations, who braved great hardships while making their rounds on horseback or afoot, and deserve to rank among the most daring of the pioneer class. In due time churches and schools were firmly established throughout the Territory.

In addition to these farmer colonists, there came many young professional and business men, chiefly from New York and New England, seeking an opening in the new Territory for the acquisition of fame and wealth. Many of these were men of marked ability, with high ambition and progressive ideas, who soon took prominent part in molding public opinion in the young Wisconsin. There are, all things considered, no abler, more forceful men in the Wisconsin of to-day than were some of those, now practically all passed away, who shaped her destinies in the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century.

The sessions of the legislature were the principal events of the year. Prominent men from all over Wisconsin were each winter attracted to Madison, as legislators, lobbyists, or visitors, crowding the primitive little hotels and indulging in rather boisterous gayety; for humor in those pioneer days was often uncouth. There was overmuch "horseplay," hard drinking, and profanity; and now and then, as the result of a warm discussion, a tussle with fists and canes.

The newspapers were given to rude personal attacks upon their enemies; one would suppose, to read the columns of the old journals, that editors thought it their chief business in life to carry on a wordy, bitter quarrel with some rival editor or politician. But this was largely on the surface, for effect. As a matter of fact, strong attachments between men were more frequent then than now. There was a deal of dancing and miscellaneous merrymaking at these legislative sessions; and travelers have left us, in their letters and journals, statements which show that they greatly relished the experience of tarrying there on their winter journeys across the Territory, and of being entertained by the good-hearted villagers.

Pioneers, in their stories of those early years, are fond of calling them the "good old times," and styling present folk and manners degenerate. No doubt there was a certain charm in the rude simplicity of frontier life, but there were, as well, great inconveniences and rude discomforts, with which few pioneers of our day would wish to be confronted, after having tasted the pleasures arising from the wealth of conveniences of every sort which distinguishes these latter days. As far back in time as human records go, we ever find old men bewailing prevalent degeneracy, and sighing in vain for "the good old times" when they were young. It is a blessing given to the old that the disagreeable incidents of their youth should be forgotten, and only the pleasant events remembered. As a matter of fact, we of to-day may well rejoice that, while Wisconsin enjoyed a lusty youth, she has now, in the fullness of time, grown into a great and ambitious commonwealth, lacking nothing that her sisters own, in all that makes for the prosperity and happiness of her people.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROADS

When white men first came to our land, the Indian trails formed a network of narrow, deep-sunken paths over the face of the country, as they connected village with village, and these with the hunting and fishing resorts of the aborigines. Many of the most important trails simply followed the still earlier tracks of the buffalo, which in great herds wandered from plain to plain, in search of forage, or in hiding from man, through the dark forest and over the hills. The buffalo possessed an unerring instinct for selecting the best places for a road, high ridges overlooking the lowlands, and the easy slopes of hills. In the Far West, they first found the passes over the Rockies, just as, still earlier, they crossed the Alleghanies by the most favorable routes.

The Indian followed in the footsteps of the buffalo, both to pursue him as game, and better to penetrate the wilderness. The white man followed the well-defined Indian trail, first on foot, then on horseback; next (after straightening and widening the curving path), by freight wagon and by stagecoach; and then, many years later, the railway engineer often found his best route by the side of the developed buffalo track, especially in crossing the mountain ranges. The Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific railways are notable examples of lines which have simply followed well-worn overland roads, which were themselves but the transcontinental buffalo paths of old.

An interesting story might be written concerning the development of the principal Indian trails in Wisconsin into the wagon roads of the pioneers, and some of these into the military roads made by the federal government for the marching of troops between the frontier forts. Without fairly good roads, at least during the winter and summer months, it would have been impossible for Wisconsin to grow into a great State; for good roads are necessary to enable settlers, tools, and supplies to get into the country, and to afford an outlet for crops. For this reason, in any newly settled region, one of the first duties of the people is to make roads and bridges.

We have still much to do in Wisconsin, before we can have such highways as they possess in the old eastern States. In many parts of our State, the country roads in the rainy seasons are of little credit to us. But the worst of them are much better than were some of the best in pioneer days, and some of our principal thoroughfares between the larger cities are fairly good.

The federal government set a good example by having its soldiers build several military roads, especially between Forts Howard (Green Bay), Winnebago (Portage), and Crawford (Prairie du Chien). In Territorial and early Statehood days, charters were granted by the legislature for the building and maintenance of certain tollroads between large towns; some of these were paved with gravel or broken stone, others with planks. Many of the plank roads remained in use until about 1875; but before that date all highways became the property of the public, and tollgates were removed. Bridges charging tolls are still in use in some parts of the State, where the people have declined to tax themselves for a public bridge, which therefore has been built by a private company in consideration of the privilege of collecting tolls from travelers.

Early in the year when Wisconsin Territory was erected (1836), and while it was still attached to Michigan Territory, there was a strong movement, west of Lake Michigan, in favor of a railway between Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien, connecting the lake with the Mississippi River. Congress was petitioned by the legislative council of Michigan to make an appropriation to survey the proposed line. There were as yet very few agricultural settlers along the route; the chief business of the road was to be the shipment of lead from the mines of the southwest to the Milwaukee docks; thence it was to be carried by vessels to Buffalo, and sent forward in boats, over the Erie Canal, to the Hudson River and New York.

This was in January; in the September following, after Wisconsin Territory had been formed, a public meeting was held in Milwaukee, to petition the Territorial legislature to pass an act incorporating a company to construct the proposed lead-mine road, upon a survey to be made at the expense of the United States, and there was even some talk of another road to the far-away wilderness of Lake Superior.

But this early railway project was premature. Wisconsin had then but twenty-two thousand inhabitants, and Milwaukee was a small frontier village. Then again, railroading in the United States was still in its infancy. In Pennsylvania there was a small line, hardly better than an old-fashioned horse car track, over which a wheezy little locomotive slowly made occasional trips, and the Baltimore and Ohio railway had not long before experimented with sails as a motive power. It is not surprising, therefore, that Congress acted slowly in regard to the overambitious Wisconsin project, and that it was nearly fourteen and a half years before a railway was actually opened in this State.

Indeed, many people thought at that time that canals, costing less in construction and in operation, were more serviceable for Wisconsin than railways. The people of northern Wisconsin were particularly eager for canals; in the southern part, railways were most popular. The most important canal project was that known as the Fox and Wisconsin rivers improvement. From the earliest historic times, these two opposite-flowing rivers, whose waters approach within a mile and a half of each other at Portage, had been used as a boat route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. We have seen, in preceding chapters, what an important part was played by this route in the early history of Wisconsin. But when large vessels became necessary to the trade of the region, and steam navigation was introduced, it was found that the historic water way presented many practical difficulties: the Fox abounds in rapids below Lake Winnebago, and in its upper waters is very shallow; the Wisconsin is troubled with shifting sand bars. In order to accommodate the traffic, a canal was necessary along the portage path, and extensive improvements in both rivers were essential.

As early as 1839, Congress was asked to aid in this work, and from time to time such aid has been given. But, although several millions of dollars have, through all these years, been spent upon the two streams, there has been no important modern navigation through them between the Great Lakes and the great river. The chief result has been the admirable system of locks between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay, making available the splendid water power of the lower valley of the Fox.

Another water way project was that of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal. This was designed to connect the waters of the Milwaukee and Rock rivers, thereby providing an additional way for vessels to pass from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. A company was incorporated, with a capital of a million dollars, and Congress made a large grant of land to Wisconsin Territory. But after some years of uncertainty and heavy expense the project was abandoned as impracticable.

The Territorial legislature began to charter railway companies as early as 1836, but the Milwaukee and Mississippi was the first road actually built. The track was laid in 1851 and a train was run out to Waukesha, a distance of twenty miles. In 1856 the line reached the Mississippi. This was the modest beginning of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul system.

The Chicago and Northwestern Railway entered Wisconsin from Chicago about the same time (1855). Numerous small lines were built before the War of Secession, nearly all of them being soon swallowed up by the larger companies. During the war, there was stagnation in railway building, but when peace was declared there was renewed activity, and to-day Wisconsin is as well provided with good railways as any State of its size and population in the Union.

THE PHALANX AT CERESCO

In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century there was much agitation, both in France and America, over the teachings of a remarkable man named Francois Marie Charles Fourier. He claimed that if people would band themselves together in communities, in the proper spirit of mutual forbearance and helpfulness, and upon plans laid down by him, it would be proved that they could get along very well with no strife of any sort, either in business, or religion, or politics. Then, if the nations would but unite themselves in the same way, universal peace would reign.

During the stirring times of the French Revolution and of the great Napoleon, there had been much social agitation of the violent sort. A reaction had come. The talk about the rights of man was no longer confined to the violent, revengeful element of the population; it was now chiefly heard among the good and gentle folk, among men of wealth and benevolence, as well as those of learning and poverty.

In France, Fourier was the leader among this new class of socialists. In France, England, and Holland, colonies more or less after the Fourier model were established; and it was not long before communities came to be founded in the United States. The most famous of these latter was Brook Farm, in Massachusetts, because among its members were several well-known authors and scientists, who wrote a great deal about their experiences there. But the only community in America conducted strictly on Fourier's plan, flourished in Wisconsin.

The _New York Tribune_, edited by Horace Greeley, a noted reformer, was earnest in advocating Fourierism, as it was called, doing much to attract attention to "the principle of equitable distributions." One of the many readers of the _Tribune_ was Warren Chase, of Kenosha, a young New Hampshire man, thirty years of age, who became much attached to the new idea.

This was during the winter of 1843-44. Chase gathered about him at Kenosha a group of intelligent men and women, some of whom had property, and they formed a stock company, incorporated under the laws of Wisconsin Territory, but based strictly on the plans laid down by Fourier.

Having purchased six hundred acres of government land, in a gentle valley within the present Ripon township, in Fond du Lac county, nineteen pioneers, led by Chase, made their way thither in May. There were no railroads in those days, and the little company proceeded overland through flower-decked prairies, and over wooded hills, in oxcarts and horse wagons, with droves of cattle, and tools and utensils.

The reformers called their colony "Ceresco," after Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. Plowing was commenced, buildings were erected, shops and forges established. Very soon some two hundred men, women, and children had arrived, and in due time many branches of industry were in full operation.

The Ceresco community was, as suggested by Fourier, styled a "phalanx." The members were classified, according to their capacity to labor, in educational, mechanical, and agricultural series, each series being divided into groups. The government was headed by a president and nine councilors; each series had a chairman, and each group a foreman.

Labor was voluntary, the shops being owned by the community at large; while the land was divided equally among all the members, old and young, save that no family might possess over forty acres. As the community grew, more land was purchased for their use. The council laid out the work to be done, or the policy to be pursued. When there was a question to be decided, the series interested voted upon it; but in some important cases, the matter was referred for final action to the several groups. Each person received pay according to his value as a worker, the record being kept by the foreman of his group. They were not paid upon the same scale; for instance, the members of the council and the school-teachers received more than skilled mechanical laborers, and these in turn more than ordinary workmen.

The phalanx at first lived in temporary quarters, and a year later erected a large building "four hundred feet in length, consisting of two rows of tenements, with a hall between, under one roof." Each family lived in its own compartments, but all ate in common at a boarding house called the "phalanstery," where a charge was made of seventy-five cents a week for each person. The "unitary" was a large building used for business and social meetings, these being held in the evenings; each Tuesday evening the literary and debating club met, Wednesday evening the singing school, and Thursday evening a dancing party.

Unlike many other communities, the Fourier colonies were not religious in character. Each member of the phalanx at Ceresco might worship as he pleased. At various times, for the membership fluctuated somewhat, ministers of different denominations were members of the colony, and frequently there were visits from wandering missionaries.

None of the colonists were allowed to use intoxicating liquors as a beverage. There must be no vulgar language, swearing, or gambling; and one of the by-laws commanded that "censoriousness and fault-finding, indolence, abuse of cattle or horses, hunting or fishing on the first day of the week, shall be deemed misdemeanors, and shall be punishable by reprimand or expulsion." These punishments were the only ones which the community could inflict upon its members, for it had no judicial powers under the law.

But there was small need of punishments at Ceresco. Its members were, as a rule, men and women of most excellent character. There was never any dishonesty, or other serious immorality, within the phalanx; the few neighboring settlers regarded the reformers with genuine respect. All the proceedings of the community were open, and its carefully kept accounts and records might be inspected by any one at any time. Whenever charges were brought against a member, they were laid before the full assembly at the next weekly meeting; a week elapsed before consideration, in order to give ample opportunity for defense; then the entire body of colonists, women as well as men, voted on the question, acquitting the offender or reprimanding him or, by a two-thirds vote, expelling him from the phalanx.

Wisconsin was then sparsely settled at best; the peaceful little valley of Ceresco was equally far removed from the centers of population at Green Bay and in the southern portion of the Territory. Yet many pioneers came toiling over the country, to apply for admission to this Garden of Eden. But it is recorded that not one in four was taken into fellowship, for the phalanx desired "no lazy, shiftless, ne'er-do-well members," and only those believed to be wise, industrious, and benevolent were taken into the fold.

And thus the Ceresco phalanx seemed mightily to prosper. Its stock earned good dividends, its property was in excellent condition, the quality of its membership could not be bettered. Far and near were its praises sung. The _New York Tribune_ gave weekly news of its doings, and was ever pointing to it as worthy of emulation; the Brook Farm paper hailed it as proof that socialism had at last succeeded.

Had each member been equally capable with his fellows, had the families been of the same size, had there been no jealousies, no bickerings, had these good folk been without ambition, had they, in short, been contented, the phalanx might have remained a success. They were clothed, fed, and housed at less expense than were outsiders; they had many social enjoyments not known elsewhere in the valley; and, according to all the philosophers, should have been a happy people.

The public table, the public amusement rooms, and all that, had at first a spice of pleasant novelty; but soon there was a realization that this had not the charm of home life, that one's family affairs were too much the affairs of all. The strong and the willing saw that they were yoked to those who were weak and slothful; there was no chance for natural abilities to assert themselves, no reward for individual excellence.

Wisconsin became a State in 1848. Everywhere, ambitious and energetic citizens in the rapidly growing commonwealth were making a great deal of money through land speculations and the planting of new industries, everywhere but in Ceresco, where the community life allowed no man to rise above the common level. The California gold fields, opened the following year, also sorely tempted the young men. The members of the phalanx found themselves hampered by their bond. Caring no longer for the reformation of society, they eagerly clamored to get back into the whirl of that struggle for existence which, only a few years before, they had voted so unnecessary to human welfare.

In 1850 the good folk at Ceresco voted unanimously, and in the best of feeling toward one another, to disband their colony. They sold their lands at a fair profit to each; and very soon, in the rush for wealth and for a chance to exercise their individual powers, were widely distributed over the face of the country. Some of them ultimately won much worldly success; others fell far below the level of prosperity maintained in the phalanx, and came to bemoan the "good old days" of the social community, when the strong were obliged to bolster the weak.

A MORMON KING

In the year 1843 there came from New York to the village of Burlington, Racine county, an eccentric young lawyer named James Jesse Strang. Originally a farmer's boy, he had been a country school-teacher, a newspaper editor, and a temperance lecturer, as well as a lawyer. Possessed of an uneasy, ambitious spirit, he had wandered much, and changed his occupation with apparent ease. Strang was passionately fond of reading, was gifted with a remarkable memory, and developed a fervent, persuasive style of oratory, which he delighted in employing. He often astonished the courts by the shrewd eloquence with which he supported strange, unexpected points in law. It is related of him that, soon after he came to Wisconsin, he brought a suit to recover the value of honey which, he claimed, had been stolen from his client's hives by the piratical bees of a neighbor, and his arguments were so plausible that he nearly won his case.

In less than a year after his arrival in Burlington, the village was visited by some Mormon missionaries. They came from Nauvoo, Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River, where there was a settlement of so-called Latter-Day Saints, who lived under the sway of a designing knave named Joseph Smith. Strang at once became a convert, and entered into the movement with such earnestness that, with his oratory, his ability to manage men, and his keen zest for notoriety, he became one of the most prominent followers of the faith.

Six months after Strang's conversion, Joseph Smith, the president and prophet of the Mormons, was killed by an Illinois mob. At once there arose a desperate strife among the leaders, for the successorship to Joseph. Two of the number, Brigham Young and Strang, were men of ability, and the contest soon narrowed down to them. Young had the powerful support of the council of the church, known as "the twelve apostles"; but Strang produced a letter said to have been written by Joseph just before his death, in which Strang was named as his successor, with directions to lead the Mormons to a new "city of promise" in Wisconsin, to be called "Voree."

The "apostles" at Nauvoo denounced Strang as an impostor, declared that his letter was a forgery, and attacked him bitterly in their official newspapers, published at Nauvoo and at Liverpool, England. But Strang was not easily put down. A great many of the fanatics at Nauvoo believed in this impetuous young leader, who defended his cause with tact and forceful eloquence; and for a time it looked as if he might win.

However, in the end the "apostles" had their way, and the adroit Young was elected to the headship of the church. Strang at once called forth his followers, and in April, 1845, planted the "City of Voree" upon a prairie by the side of White River, in Walworth county, Wisconsin. It soon became a town of nearly two thousand inhabitants, who owned all things in common, but were ruled over, even in the smallest affairs of life, by the wily President Strang, who claimed to be divinely instructed in every detail of his rigorous government.

The people dwelt "in plain houses, in board shanties, in tents, and sometimes, many of them, in the open air." Great meetings were held at Voree, and the surrounding settlers gathered to hear Strang and his twelve "apostles" lay down the law, and tell of the revelations which had been delivered to them by the Almighty. Strang, who closely imitated the methods of Joseph, pretended to discover the word of God in deep-hidden records. Joseph had found the Book of Mormon graven upon plates dug out of the hill of Cumorah, in New York; so Strang discovered buried near Voree similar brazen plates bearing revelations, written in the rhythmic style of the Scriptures, which supplemented those in the Book of Mormon.