Stories of the Badger State Part 2

The course they took was, no doubt, that followed through nearly two hundred years thereafter by persons journeying in canoes from Mackinac to Green Bay. They paddled along the northern sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan and Green Bay, until they could cross over through the stormy water known as "Death's Door," to the islands beyond the Door county peninsula; and then crept down the east sh.o.r.e of Green Bay, under the lee of the high banks.

They seem to have made good time, for on the 7th of June they reached the village of the Mascoutins, on the south sh.o.r.e of Fox River, near where Berlin now is, the same village, it will be remembered, where Nicolet, Radisson, and Allouez had already been entertained. We do not know upon what day our two explorers had reached De Pere, where the Jesuit mission was established, but they probably stayed among their friends there for some days, before going up the Fox.

In his journal, the good missionary described nearly everything he saw, with much detail. The Menominee Indians interested him greatly; he calls them "the People of the Wild Oats," and tells how they gather the grain of these wild oats (or wild rice), by "shaking the ears, on their right and left, into the canoe as they advance" through the swamps. Then they take the grain to the land, strip it of much of the chaff, and "dry it in the smoke on a wooden lattice, under which they keep up a small fire for several days. When the oats are well dried, they put them in a skin of the form of a bag, which is then forced into a hole made on purpose in the ground; then they tread it out, so long and so well, that the grain being freed from the chaff is easily winnowed; after which they reduce it to meal." There are still to be seen, on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Koshkonong, and several other Wisconsin lakes and rivers, the shallow, bowl-like holes used by the Indians in thres.h.i.+ng this grain, as described by Marquette two and a quarter centuries ago.

The Mascoutin village also claims much attention in the missionary's diary. The Mascoutins themselves are rude, he says; so also are the Kickapoos, many of whom live with them. At this village are also many Miami Indians, who had fled from their homes in Indiana and Ohio, through fear of the fierce Iroquois of New York. These Miamis are, Marquette tells us, superior to the Wisconsin Indians, being "more civil, liberal, and better made; they wear two long earlocks, which give them a good appearance," and are brave, docile, and devout, listening carefully to the missionaries who have visited them. The Father also describes the site of the village: "I felt no little pleasure in beholding the position of this town; the view is beautiful and very picturesque, for from the eminence on which it is perched, the eye discovers on every side prairies spreading away beyond its reach, interspersed with thickets or groves of lofty trees. The soil is very good, producing much corn; the Indians gather also quant.i.ties of plums and grapes, from which good wine could be made, if they chose. As bark for cabins is rare in this country, they use rushes, which serve them for walls and roof, but which are no great shelter against the wind, and still less against the rain when it falls in torrents. The advantage of this kind of cabins is that they can roll them up, and carry them easily where they like in hunting-time."

Above the Mascoutin village, the Fox begins to narrow, being hemmed in, and often choked, by broad swamps of reeds and wild oats. The canoe traveler who does not know the channel, is sometimes in danger of missing it, and getting entangled in the maze of bayous. Two Miami guides were therefore obtained from their hosts, and on the 10th of June the travelers set off for the southwest, "in the sight of a great crowd, who could not wonder enough to see seven Frenchmen alone in two canoes, dare to undertake so strange and so hazardous an expedition." The guides safely conducted them to the place where is now situated the city of Portage, helped them over the swampy plain of a mile and a half in width, and, after seeing them embarked upon the broad waters of the Wisconsin River, left them "alone in an unknown country, in the hands of Providence."

The broad valley of the Wisconsin presents a far different appearance from that of the peacefully flowing Upper Fox, with its outlying marshes of reeds, and its numerous lakes. The Wisconsin, or Meskousing, as Marquette writes it, is flanked by ranges of bold, heavily wooded bluffs, which are furrowed with romantic ravines, while the channel is, at low water, studded with islands and sand bars, and in times of flood spreads to a great width. Marquette himself describes it thus: "It is very broad, with a sandy bottom, forming many shallows, which render navigation very difficult. It is full of vine-clad islets. On the banks appear fertile lands diversified with wood, prairie, and hill. Here you find oaks, walnut, whitewood, and another kind of tree with branches armed with long thorns. We saw no small game or fish, but deer and moose in considerable numbers." About ninety miles below Portage, they thought that they discovered an iron mine.

At last, on the 17th of June, they swiftly glided through the picturesque delta of the Wisconsin, near Prairie du Chien, and found themselves upon the Mississippi, grateful that after so long and tiresome a journey they had found the object of their search. Joliet's instructions were, however, to ascertain whether the great stream flowed into the "Southern Sea"; so they journeyed as far down as the mouth of the Arkansas. There they gathered information from the Indians which led them to believe that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; thus the old riddle of the supposed waterway through the heart of the North American continent was left unsolved.

In returning, Joliet and Marquette came up the Illinois River, and reached Lake Michigan by portaging over to the Chicago River. They were back at the Jesuit mission at De Pere, in September. Marquette having fallen ill, Joliet was obliged to return to Quebec alone, leaving the missionary to spend the winter with his Wisconsin friends. When almost within sight of the French settlement at Montreal, at the mouth of the Ottawa River, poor Joliet lost all his papers in the dangerous Lachine rapids, and could make only a verbal report to the government. He later prepared a map of his route, with great care, and forwarded that to France; it is one of the best maps of the interior parts of North America made in the seventeenth century. Joliet, as the leader of the expedition, had hoped to receive, either in office or lands, substantial rewards for his great discoveries; but there were now new officials at Quebec, with whom he had little influence, and the recompense of this brave spirit was small. Others reaped what advantages there were in the opening of the Mississippi valley to the fur trade.

On the other hand, the unworldly priest who was his friend and companion, and who neither desired nor needed special recognition for what he had done, has, all unconsciously, won most of the glory of this brilliant enterprise. Under the rules of the Jesuit order, each missionary in New France was obliged to forward to his superior at Quebec, once each year, a written journal of his doings. Marquette prepared his report at leisure during the winter, while at De Pere, and in the spring sent it down to Quebec, by an Indian who was going thither to trade with the whites. Accompanying it was a crudely drawn but fairly accurate map of the Mississippi basin. The journal and map arrived safely, but for some reason neither was then printed; indeed, they remained almost unknown to the world for a hundred and seventy-nine years, being at last published in 1852. Marquette never learned the fate of either Joliet's elaborate records or his own simple story of the expedition, for he died in May, 1675, on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, worn out by disease and by excessive labors in behalf of the Indians.

By the time Marquette's journal was finally published, Joliet had been well-nigh forgotten; and to Marquette, because his journal was the only one printed, is given the chief credit in nearly every American history.

The legislature of Wisconsin has placed a beautiful marble statue of the gentle Marquette, as the discoverer of the Mississippi, in the capitol in Was.h.i.+ngton; whereas the name of his st.u.r.dy chief is perpetuated only in the princ.i.p.al prison city of Illinois.

THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES

In planting settlements in Canada (or New France, as it was then called), the French had two princ.i.p.al objects in view: the fur trade with the Indians, and the conversion of these Indians to the Christian religion. Roman Catholic missionaries from France therefore accompanied the first settlers, and were always prominent in the affairs of the colony. Governor Champlain brought to Quebec some missionaries of the Recollect order, a branch of the Franciscans; but after a few years, the difficulties of their task proved so great that the Recollects asked the Jesuits, a much stronger order, to come over and help them. It was not long before nearly all the Franciscans returned home, and the Jesuits were practically the only missionaries in New France.

During the first few years, these missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went out to meet the Indians in their summer camps. It was soon found, however, that greater persistence was needed; and after that, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the savages upon their winter hunts.

In order to convert the Indians, the missionaries studied their many languages, their habits, and their manner of thought, lived as they lived, and with them often suffered untold misery, for life in a savage camp is sometimes almost unbearable to educated and refined white men, such as the French Jesuits were. They did not succeed in winning over to Christianity many of their savage companions; indeed, the latter frequently treated them with great cruelty, and several of the missionaries were tortured to death.

Such were the ignorance and superst.i.tion of the Indians, that every disaster which happened to them, poor luck in hunting, famine, accident, or disease, was attributed to the "black gowns," as the Jesuits were called because of their long black ca.s.socks. When the missionaries were performing the rites of their church, baptizing children or sick people, or saying ma.s.s, it was thought by these simple barbarians that they were practicing magic for the destruction of the red men. Thus the Jesuits, during the hundred years or more which they spent in traveling far and near through the forests of New France, seeking new tribes to convert, while still laboring with those already known, were in a state of perpetual martyrdom for the cause of Christianity. No soldier has ever performed greater acts of heroism than these devoted disciples of the cross. Several of the best and bravest of them were among the pioneers of the Wisconsin wilderness.

The first Jesuit missionary to come to Wisconsin was Father Rene Menard (pr. _Ray-nay' May-nar'_). He had sailed from France to Canada in the year 1640, when he was thirty-five years old, and on his arrival was sent to the savages east of Lake Huron, among whom he labored and suffered for eight years. Later, he went to the Iroquois, in New York, and at last had to fly for his life, on account of an Indian plot to murder all the French missionaries in that country. He was for some time the superior of his order, at the Three Rivers mission, on the St.

Lawrence, halfway between Quebec and Montreal, and in the early autumn of 1660 was summoned to go to Lake Superior, which had been made known through the explorations of Radisson and Groseilliers.

These brave adventurers had returned from their second voyage into the Northwest, accompanied by a fleet of Indian canoes; several of the canoes were manned by Hurons from the Black River, who had come down all the way to Montreal to trade their furs for European goods. The red men spent some ten days there, feasting with the fur trade agents, and about the first of September set out on their return. With them were Menard, his servant, and seven other Frenchmen.

Menard was now only fifty-five years old, but so severe had been his life among the Indians, that his hair was white, he was covered with the scars of wounds, and "his form was bent as with great age." The long journey was therefore a severe strain upon the good man, for in addition to the exposure to weather, he was forced to paddle most of the time, to carry heavy packs over the numerous portage trails, and to suffer many indignities at the hands of his hosts. By the time the company had finally made their weary way up the Ottawa River, over to Georgian Bay, and through to Sault Ste. Marie, the missionary was in a deplorable condition. An accident happened to his canoe, and the Frenchmen and three Indians were abandoned on the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior, at Keweenaw Bay. There he was forced to spend the winter in a squalid Ottawa village, and nearly lost his life in a famine which overtook the natives of that region.

In the spring of 1661, while at Keweenaw Bay, Menard received an invitation to visit a band of poor, starving Hurons at the headwaters of the Black River. Several of these Indians had been baptized by Jesuits before the Iroquois had driven them out from their old home to the east of Lake Huron. In spite of his weak condition, and the many perils of this journey of a hundred and fifty miles through the dense forest, the aged missionary bade farewell to the Keweenaw Ottawas, among whom had also wintered several French fur traders, and in July set out to obey the new summons. In his company were his servant and several Hurons who had come to trade with the Ottawas.

They proceeded along the narrow trail which ran from Keweenaw Bay to Lake Vieux Desert, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River, but the feeble missionary's gait was too slow for the Indians, who, after the manner of their kind, promptly deserted their white friends, leaving them to follow and obtain food as best they might. At the lake the Frenchmen embarked in a canoe upon the south-flowing Wisconsin, and paddled down as far as Bill Cross Rapids, some five or six miles above the mouth of Copper River, and not far from where is now the city of Merrill. From the foot of these rapids, they had intended leaving their canoe, and following a trail which led off westward through the woods to the headwaters of the Black, near the present town of Chelsea. Menard's servant took the canoe through the rapids, while the missionary, as usual, to lighten the boat, walked along the portage trail. He must have lost his way and perished of exposure in the depths of the dark and tangled forest, for his servant could not find any trace of him. Thus closed the career of Wisconsin's pioneer missionary, who died in the pursuit of duty, as might a soldier upon the field of battle.

The death of Menard left the Lake Superior country without a missionary; but four years later (1665), another Jesuit was sent thither in the person of Claude Allouez (pr. _Al-loo-ay'_), who chose Chequamegon Bay for the seat of his labors. There he found a squalid village, near Radisson and Groseilliers' old forts, on the southwest sh.o.r.e; it was composed of remnants of eight or ten tribes, some of whom had been driven westward by the Iroquois and others eastward by the Sioux. He called his mission La Pointe, from the neighboring long point of land which, projecting northward, divides Chequamegon Bay from Lake Superior.

Allouez could make little impression upon these poor savages. After four years of hard service and ill-treatment, he was relieved by Jacques Marquette, a youthful and enthusiastic priest. Late in the autumn of 1669, Allouez went to Fox River, and there he founded the mission of St.

Francis Xavier, overlooking the rapids of De Pere.[1] This was a more successful mission than the one at Chequamegon Bay; for, during the next summer, the western Sioux furiously attacked the Indian neighbors of Marquette and sent them all flying eastward, like dry leaves before an October gale. The zealous Marquette accompanied them, and, with such bands as he could induce to settle around him, opened a new mission on the mainland near Mackinac Island, at the Point St. Ignace of to-day.

[Footnote 1: Called by the early French _Rapides des Peres_, or "The Fathers' Rapids"; but it was soon shortened into _Des Peres_, and finally, by the Americans, into _De Pere_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SITE OF THE MISSION AT DE PERE]

Meanwhile, Allouez continued his mission at De Pere, making long trips throughout Wisconsin, preaching to the Indians, and establis.h.i.+ng the mission of St. Mark on the Wolf River, probably on or near Lake Shawano, where the Chippewas then lived in great numbers. Later, he opened St.

James mission at the Mascoutin village near Berlin. His churches were mere huts or wigwams built of reeds and bark, after the manner of the natives. Another Jesuit, Louis Andre, was sent to Wisconsin to a.s.sist this enterprising missionary, and they traveled among the tribes, preaching and healing the sick in nearly every Indian village in the wide country between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. The career of these good missionaries was not one of ease. Their lives were frequently in peril; they suffered severely from cruel treatment, hunger, cold, and the many hards.h.i.+ps of forest travel; and were rewarded by few conversions.

Allouez remained in Wisconsin until 1676, when he departed to carry on a similar work in Illinois, dying thirteen years later, after a score of years spent in Western missions. In Wisconsin, he was succeeded, in turn, by several others of his order; chief among them were Fathers Silvy, Albanel, Nouvel, Enjalran, and Chardon. Chardon was the last of his kind, for he, with other Frenchmen, was driven out of Wisconsin in 1728, at the time of the Fox War.

It was during the time of Enjalran, at De Pere, that Nicolas Perrot, a famous fur trader, was military commandant for the French in the country west of Lake Michigan. In all this vast district, Enjalran was then the only priest. In token of his appreciation of its work, Perrot presented to the mission a beautiful silver _ostensorium_ (or _soleil_) made in Paris. The _ostensorium_ is one of the vessels used at the altar, in celebrating the ma.s.s. This was in the year 1686; the following year, during one of the frequent outbursts of Indian hostility against the missionaries, Enjalran was obliged to fly for his life. In order to lighten his burden, he buried this silver vessel, evidently intending to return some time and regain possession of it.

In 1802, a hundred and fifteen years later, a man was digging a cellar in Green Bay, several miles lower down the bank of the Fox River than is De Pere, when his pickax ran through this piece of silver. It was brought to light, and for safe keeping was given to the Catholic priest then at Green Bay. n.o.body would have known its story except for the clearly engraved inscription on the bottom; the words are in French, but in English they signify: "This soleil was given by Mr. Nicolas Perrot to the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at the Bay of the Puants, 1686"; for the early French name for Green Bay was "Bay of the Puants." The old _ostensorium_, with its inscription just as plainly to be read to-day as when engraved over two centuries ago, can now be seen among the treasures of the State Historical Society, at Madison. It is an enduring memorial to the labors and the sufferings of Wisconsin's first missionaries.

SOME NOTABLE VISITORS TO EARLY WISCONSIN

It has been pointed out that wandering fur traders were in Wisconsin at a very early date. We have seen that Nicolet, Radisson, and Groseilliers made Wisconsin known to the world, at a time when Ma.s.sachusetts colony was still young. It will be remembered that when Father Menard went to Lake Superior, in 1660, to convert the Indians, there were several French fur traders with him. As early as the spring of 1662, these same traders had gone across country to the mouth of the Fox River. Three years later the Menominees and Pottawattomies, then living on both sides of the bay, were visited by Nicolas Perrot, a daring young spirit from Quebec, who had come to the then Far West to make his fortune in trading with the red men.

Perrot was one of the most picturesque characters in Wisconsin history.

In Canada he had been a servant of the Jesuit missionaries, acquiring in this work an education which was slight as to books, but broad as to knowledge of the Indians and of forest life. He was now twenty-one years of age, and started out for himself as soon as he was his own master.

For five years Perrot wandered up and down the eastern half of Wisconsin, frequently visiting his friends, the Mascoutins and Miamis, on the Fox River. He smoked pipes of peace with them and with other forest and prairie tribes, and joined in their feasts of beaver, dog, and other savage delicacies.

In 1670 he and four other Frenchmen, packing their furs into bundles of convenient size, joined a large party of Indians going down to Montreal in canoes, to trade. Perrot did not return with his companions, but visited Quebec, and there received an appointment from the government to rally the Western tribes in a great council at Sault Ste. Marie. Here a treaty was to be made, binding the savages to an alliance with France.

The French were very jealous of the English, who had, through the guidance of Radisson and Groseilliers, commenced fur trade operations in the Hudson Bay country. It was feared that they would entice the Indians of the upper Great Lakes to trade with them, for the English offered higher prices for furs than did the French.

Perrot spent the winter in visiting the tribes in Wisconsin and along the northern sh.o.r.es of Lakes Michigan and Huron, and succeeded in inducing large bands of them to go to the Sault early in May (1671). The council was attended by an enormous gathering, representing tribes from all over the Northwest, even from the north sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior and Hudson Bay. Father Marquette was there with the Ottawas, and several other famous missionaries came to the council. The interpreter, who knew Indian dialects by the score, was no less a person than Louis Joliet.

The French government was represented by Saint Lusson, who concluded the desired treaty, with great ceremony, took formal possession of all this country for the king of France, and reared on the spot a great cedar pole, to which he fastened a lead plate bearing the arms of his country. This symbol the simple and wondering savages could not understand: and as soon as the Frenchmen had gone home again, they tore it down, fearing that it was a charm which might bring bad luck to the tribesmen.

And now we find Perrot suddenly losing his office, and forced for ten years to live a quiet life in the French settlements on the lower St.

Lawrence. He married a well-to-do young woman, reared a considerable family, and became a man of some influence. But he was always eager to be back in the forest, wandering from tribe to tribe, and engaging in the wilderness trade, where the profits were great, though the risks to life and property were many. In 1681 he returned to the woods, but not till three years later was he so far west as Mackinac.

In 1685 he appeared once more at Green Bay, this time holding the position of Commandant of the West, with a little company of twenty soldiers. He now had almost unlimited authority to explore and traffic as he would, for the only salary an official of that sort used to get, in New France, was the right to trade with the Indians. He had already lost money in working for the government as an Indian agent, and his present operations were wholly directed toward getting it back again. He went up the Fox and down the Wisconsin, and then ascended the Mississippi to trade with the wild Sioux tribe. For headquarters, he erected a little log stockade on the east bank of the Mississippi, about a mile above the present village of Trempealeau, and south of the mouth of Black River. In the year 1888, the site of this old stockade was discovered by a party of historical students, and many of the curious relics found there can now be seen in the museum of the State Historical Society, at Madison.

All through the winter of 1685-86, Perrot traded here with the Sioux. He had a most captivating manner of treating Indians; for a long time, few of them ventured to deny any request made by him. Chiefs from far and near would come to the Trempealeau "fort," as it was called, and hold long councils and feasts with the great white chief, and more than once he was subjected to the curious Sioux ceremony of being wept over. A chief would stand over his guest and weep copiously, his tears falling upon the guest's head; when the chief's tear ducts were exhausted, he would be relieved by some headman of the tribe, who in turn was succeeded by another, and so on until the guest was well drenched. This must have been a very trying experience to Perrot, but he was shrewd enough to pretend to be much pleased by it.

In the spring of 1686, the same year in which he gave the silver _ostensorium_ to the Jesuit chapel at De Pere, the commandant proceeded up the Mississippi to the broadening which was, about this time, named Lake Pepin by the French. On the Wisconsin sh.o.r.e, not far above the present village of Pepin, he erected another and stronger stockade, Fort St. Antoine. It was here, three years later, that, after the manner of Saint Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie, he formally took possession, in the name of his king, of all the Upper Mississippi valley.

Several other forts were built by Perrot along the Mississippi, none of them more than groups of stout log houses. These were surrounded by a stockade wall of heavy logs well planted in the ground, sharpened at the top, pierced for musket fire, and sometimes surmounted by a small cannon. The stockade whose ruins were unearthed at Trempealeau, measured about forty-five by sixty feet. One of his stockades, Fort Perrot, was on the Minnesota sh.o.r.e of Lake Pepin; still another, Fort St. Nicholas, was near the "lower town" of the Prairie du Chien of to-day, at the confluence of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi; and it also appears that he had a stockade lower down the Mississippi, to guard a lead mine which he had discovered near Galena, because lead was an important article for both fur traders and Indians. Sometimes traders fought among themselves, for the possession of a lead mine.

Perrot made frequent voyages to the settlements on the St. Lawrence River, and engaged in some of the French expeditions against the hostile Iroquois of New York. While, on the whole, he was successful in holding the Western tribes in friends.h.i.+p to New France, his position was not without grave perils. One time his old friends, the Mascoutins, rose against him, claiming that he had killed one of their warriors. The claim may have been true, for he was a man of violent temper, and ruled the Wisconsin forests after the despotic fas.h.i.+on of an Asiatic prince.

The Mascoutins captured Perrot, in company with a Pottawattomie chief, and carrying them to their village, robbed the commandant of all his furs, and decided to burn the prisoners at the stake. But while being conducted to the fire, the two managed by artifice to escape, and at last reached in safety their friends at the mouth of the Fox River.

Another time, the Miamis captured Perrot, and would have burned him except for the interference of the Fox Indians, with whom he was friendly.

In 1699, owing to the uprising of the Foxes, the king ordered that all the Western posts be abandoned, and their little garrisons removed to Montreal and Quebec. Thus suddenly ended the career of Perrot, who returned a poor man, for his recent losses in furs had been heavy, and his expenses of keeping up the posts large. Again and again he sought redress from the government, and the Wisconsin Foxes earnestly pleaded that he be sent back to them, as "the best beloved of all the French who have ever been among us." But his star had set, he no longer had influence; and it had just been decided to punish his friends the Foxes.

Perrot lived about twenty years longer, on the banks of the Lower St.

Lawrence, and died in old age, like Joliet, in neglect and poverty.