Chapter FIVE: The Period of American Settlement

Wisconsin’s Indians, under the French and British had become increasingly dependent upon the white man. Without the invaders’ tools, weapons, utensils, and various other things which the Indian had come to depend upon, he found himself unable to supply himself with the necessities of life. The French and British traders, of course, were interested almost exclusively in procuring furs from the Indians, and as long as the aborigines could obtain furs for them, the traders would supply their needs.

The Americans, however, were primarily interested in exploiting and settling the Indians’ land; fur trading was secondary. As they pushed into the new territory in ever increasing numbers, first to exploit the lead mines of southwestern Wisconsin, and then to farm the fertile soil, the Indian was doomed to be relentlessly pushed aside. He had lost his independence. Now he was to lose his land and the very means of his livelihood.

The arrival of the Americans upon the Wisconsin scene pleased neither the Indians nor the French traders. Both relied to a great extent on the fur trade, and they knew that the clearing of land by the settlers would hasten the end of this activity. Many of the French, too, had Indian blood and considered their cause as one with the Indians. The United States government first showed poor judgment in its attempt to make these people conform to American standards. For example, the French and Indians were warned that common-law marriages between the two races would no longer be tolerated, but must be legalized by either a civil or church ceremony, and violators would face punishment. Both the French and Indians bitterly fought what seemed to them oppression, and eventually later decisions recognized the legality of common-law unions of earlier regimes.

Wisconsin’s Indian agents were for a time under the authority of two superintendents of Indian affairs. Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory, of which Wisconsin was a part from 1818 to 1836, was in charge of the Indian agent at Green Bay. The agent at Prairie du Chien worked under the direction of William Clark who, as Superintendent of St. Louis from 1807 to 1838, had authority to the source of the Mississippi River. These agents distributed annuities and payments due the Indians and attempted to keep white settlers from squatting on Indian land. The settlers, however, rudely took over Indian land and, in the inevitable conflict that followed, the militia and army would be called out to protect the whites. In the ensuing “peace treaty” the Indians would be forced to cede their lands and move westward.

Wisconsin’s early territorial period was also the era of the frontier fort manned by the regular U. S. Army. Since the pay for the ordinary soldier was very small, the army attracted men who could not succeed elsewhere, or immigrants who wished to desert at the first opportunity and travel westward. The officers, however, were of different character entirely. Educated at West Point, they were by far the most educated and cultured men in the frontier settlements. With their wives, they represented the cream of Wisconsin society of this period.

Wisconsin had three main forts along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. Fort Howard was erected at Green Bay in 1816, the same year that Fort Crawford was established at Prairie du Chien. Fort Winnebago was built at what is now Portage in 1828, shortly after the Red Bird rebellion. The United States army did its best to maintain peace between the Indians and whites, and to protect the Indians from unlicensed traders, and sometimes legitimate ones, who illegally sold whiskey to them. In their efforts in this direction they often found themselves in conflict with civil authorities who sometimes protected the traders apprehended in such violations.

The fur trade continued in Wisconsin while the population was primarily Indian, but by 1835 it was no longer of any significance in this area. Following the War of 1812, the United States Government set up fur trade “factories” at Prairie du Chien and Green Bay, hoping by this means to control some of the evils, one of the most vicious of which was the peddling of whiskey to the Indians. The whiskey was usually diluted with water, and adulterants such as turpentine, or even corrosive acids, added to restore the “bite.”

The government entry into the fur trade was unsuccessful. The factors, as the proprietors of the trade “factories” were called, lacked experience in dealing with the Indians. They did not give credit advancements to them as did the other traders, and the American Fur Company applied pressure on Congress to end this system. Gradually this Company acquired the fur trade monopoly in this area; Solomon Juneau, Milwaukee’s famous founder, was one of the American Fur Company’s agents in what is now the State of Wisconsin. The gradual decadence of the fur trade, of course, increased the hardships of Wisconsin tribes.

As settlers began encroaching on the Indians’ land, conflicts were inevitable. John C. Calhoun, the Secretary of War in 1825, sponsored a plan for the removal of eastern tribes across the Mississippi to the western plains. It was believed that by furnishing them with equipment for hunting and farming they could survive readily and would be safe from further pressure by white homesteaders. No one realized at this time how soon these western lands would be overrun by the relentless pressure of the American pioneer. The land purchased from the Indians was to be made available to American settlers. The lands of certain tribes of Wisconsin Indians were to be included in this overall plan.

Unfortunately for the smooth functioning of this operation, the Indians did not care to leave the land on which they and their ancestors had hunted for so long a time, and travel to new hunting grounds. In many instances they were not removed without a show of force, sometimes with considerable blood being shed by both whites and Indians.

In 1825, Lewis Cass and William Clark held a conference of Wisconsin tribes at Prairie du Chien. They hoped to establish definite boundaries for the holdings of the different tribes in order to eliminate friction between them. This would also facilitate future land purchases from the Indians. Roughly these boundaries were recognized: the southwest and southeast corners of Wisconsin were allotted to the southern Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi; the Winnebago held the remainder of southern Wisconsin; the Menomini kept the northeast part of the state from the Milwaukee River up; and the Chippewa held all of northern Wisconsin west of the Menomini. These Indian territories were not to be respected for very long by white squatters, however, and the Winnebago were to be among the first to encounter trouble from this source.

The fact that southwestern Wisconsin was very rich in lead was discovered quite early in the French regime, and it is probable that the French taught the Indians how to mine and smelt the ore. By 1811, the Sauk and Fox are reported to have devoted almost all their attention to lead mining, only hunting to supply themselves with meat. They exchanged the metal with Canadian traders for the goods they needed. Some early American traders who attempted to get in on this trade were killed by the Indians, who feared that once the Americans learned of the value of the lead deposits their cupidity would be aroused and the Indians would lose their land. Later events were to prove the excellence of this reasoning.

Aroused by the rich deposits, Cornish miners, particularly, began to arrive in force by 1827. The Indians were rudely expelled from their diggings and their mines appropriated by armed whites. In the same year, Red Bird, a young Winnebago chief, killed two settlers and scalped a baby who, interestingly enough, survived to become the mother of a large family and live to a ripe old age. Following this attack Red Bird and his warriors, about forty in number, celebrated the scalp taking with a drunken carousal at the mouth of the Bad Axe River, about forty miles north of Prairie du Chien. Two keelboats on their way from Fort Snelling to St. Louis were fired upon by the drunken Winnebago braves, and after a battle of about three hours, the keelboats escaped with a loss of four men dead and several wounded. The Indians were reported to have suffered losses of seven dead and fourteen wounded.

United States troops rapidly arrived at the scene, and after fleeing up the Wisconsin River, Red Bird found himself and his tribe surrounded. The Americans agreed to forget the matter of the keelboats providing the murderers of the settlers would give themselves up for trial. On Sept. 3, 1827, Red Bird, rather than engage his people in a hopeless war against the whites, voluntarily surrendered to Major Whistler at Portage. Arrangements were made for the Americans to use the lead mines until a treaty could be arranged, and in July, 1829, another Grand Council was held at Prairie du Chien. The Winnebago, southern Potawatomi, Chippewa, and Ottawa agreed to cede their land. The United States Government now owned the rich lead mining country of southwestern Wisconsin.

During this period of American settlement, beginning as early as 1821 and lasting through 1834, a migration of Indians from New York occurred which was to add some permanent residents to Wisconsin’s Indian population. The Oneida and Munsee settled near Green Bay, and the Stockbridge and Brotherton Indians settled along the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago. The Menomini ceded 500,000 acres of their land to these tribes in 1831.

Meanwhile the stage had been set for what was to become the most famous, and also, perhaps, the most infamous Indian and white conflict in the Wisconsin area. This was the so-called Black Hawk War, although it was more of a systematic extermination of Indians by whites, hardly deserving the term “war.”

Black Hawk was leader of the “British band” of the Sauk with a large village, said to number about 500 families, situated near the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois. His people were known as the “British band” because of their known sympathies with the English, and also since Black Hawk and his warriors had fought with Tecumseh and the British against the Americans in the War of 1812.

White settlers began squatting on Black Hawk’s land as early as 1823, despite the fact that according to treaty the Indians were not required to give up their land until land offices had been set up, an event which had not occurred. The Indians’ cornfields were fenced in, wigwams were burned, and the women mistreated. Black Hawk went to the British agent in Canada, near Detroit. He was advised that the treaties of 1804 and 1816 were being violated and that he rightfully could resist the settlers and expect the backing of the United States Government. Black Hawk returned and warned the settlers that they would be attacked unless they left at once.

The alarmed settlers sought help from the Illinois militia which was rapidly called to arms in 1831. This show of force compelled Black Hawk to retire to the west side of the Mississippi River with his people, and promise not to return without government permission. Chief Keokuk, head of the combined Sauk and Fox tribes, had already taken all of his people, except the rebellious Black Hawk and his band, into what is now Iowa in 1830, realizing the futility of fighting the tremendously superior white forces.

On April 6, 1832, Black Hawk crossed back into Illinois with approximately 1000 of his people, about 400 of whom were warriors. He had been promised aid by emissaries of the Potawatomi, Winnebago, Ottawa, and Chippewa, but before a month had passed Black Hawk realized he would get little aid either from these tribes or from the British in a war against the settlers. The militia had been called out again in the meantime, and Black Hawk now only desired to make peace and get his people back to Iowa. He sent messengers under a white flag to Major Stillman who was encamped nearby with about 400 volunteers. The white flag was ignored, and three of the Indians were killed. Black Hawk had only forty warriors with him at the time, but angered by this treachery, he attacked Stillman’s men in what he himself called a “suicide charge.”

The tremendously superior force of volunteers, upon seeing Black Hawk’s charging braves, fled frantically with the first volley fired by the Indians. As they fled they spread the alarm over most of northern Illinois, and maintained that Black Hawk had ambushed them with 2000 warriors. Following this event Black Hawk removed his women and children to the Lake Koshkonong area in Wisconsin, so that they could forage for desperately needed food and be relatively safe from attack. Black Hawk and his warriors spent the following two months attacking settlements along the Wisconsin-Illinois frontier. Two hundred whites and possibly as many Indians were killed in these border skirmishes.

Black Hawk soon found himself pursued by a greatly superior force of militia and regular U. S. Army troops. He and his band fled through the Madison, Wisconsin, area and were overtaken attempting to cross the Wisconsin River, where the Battle of Wisconsin Heights took place on July 21, 1832. Black Hawk’s braves succeeded in holding back the Americans while the tribe crossed the river, and the following morning one of his men made a surrender speech in the Winnebago language. No one in the American camp understood the plea for surrender terms, since the Winnebago followers of the Americans were not in their camp at the time. The Indians were again compelled to flee.

Black Hawk then divided his people into two groups, one of which obtained rafts and canoes from friendly Winnebago, and proceeded down the Wisconsin River, hoping to reach the Mississippi River and cross back to Iowa. Soldiers from Prairie du Chien captured or shot most of them. Some others were hunted down in the woods by Menomini Indians led by white officers. As the rest of Black Hawk’s band fled overland toward the Mississippi River, they were pursued by the combined forces of General Atkinson, General Henry, and Major Dodd, a total force of some four thousand men.

When Black Hawk’s band arrived at the Mississippi River, they were met by the steamboat “Warrior.” Black Hawk again attempted to surrender, but the “Warrior’s” captain preferred to believe this a trick and opened fire on the Indians. The infantry then arrived and attacked the Indians from the rear. Men, women, and children were forced into the river at bayonet point. Many were drowned as they attempted to swim the river, and others were picked off by American sharpshooters from the shore. This was the massacre of the Bad Axe River, which lasted three hours, and in which 150 Indians were killed and as many more drowned. A band of Sioux, brought there for the purpose by General Atkinson, set upon the 300 Indians who reached the other bank and killed about half of them.

Only about 150 survivors remained of the thousand Indians who had crossed with Black Hawk into Illinois in April only four months before.

Black Hawk fled to the Winnebago, who later surrendered him to the Americans. He was then taken on a tour through the eastern states to impress him with the power of the American Government, and released in June, 1833. His tribe was given a small reservation in Iowa on the Des Moines River, where he died October 3, 1838. The treatment of Black Hawk and his people in the so-called “Black Hawk War” will always remain a blot on American history and a discredit to the Government.

From the time of the “Black Hawk War” on, Wisconsin Indians were rapidly deprived of their land. In September, 1832, the Winnebago ceded the rest of their holdings south and east of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. Upon promise of payment of about one million dollars to the Indians and their creditors, the southern Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, in a treaty at Chicago, Illinois, turned over their holdings in southern Wisconsin in 1833. The Menomini ceded almost four million acres between Green Bay and the Wolf River to the United States Government in 1836. In 1838, the Oneida ceded most of their land in this same area to the United States. The Chippewa, Sioux, and Winnebago, in three separate treaties, ceded the western half of Wisconsin, above the Wisconsin River, in 1837. With the final cession of some small holdings of the Menomini in the east central part of the state, in 1848, the United States Government now had possession of all Indian land in Wisconsin.

The Indians, in most cases, had western lands assigned to them. The United States army forcibly removed many Winnebago to Nebraska, some of whom remain there today. Other Winnebago, homesick for Wisconsin and afraid of the Sioux, gradually wandered back to Wisconsin where they still are. In 1854 the Menomini were placed on a reservation on the Upper Wolf River. Shortly after this, they sold two townships to the Stockbridge Indians. In 1854, also, three large reservations: Lac Court Oreilles, Lac du Flambeau, and Bad River, were assigned to the Chippewa.