Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Taavi Kalju and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor History is past Politics and Politics present History.--Freeman NINTH SERIES XI-XII The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin _A Study of the Trading Post as an Institution_ BY FREDERICK J. TURNER, PH.D. _Professor of History, University of Wisconsin_ BALTIMORE THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS PUBLISHED MONTHLY November and December, 1891 COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY N. MURRAY. ISAAC FRIEDENWALD CO., PRINTERS, BALTIMORE. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE. I. INTRODUCTION 7 II. PRIMITIVE INTER-TRIBAL TRADE 10 III. PLACE OF THE INDIAN TRADE IN THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA 11 1. Early Trade along the Atlantic Coast 11 2. In New England 12 3. In the Middle Region 18 4. In the South 16 5. In the Far West 18 IV. THE RIVER AND LAKE SYSTEMS OF THE NORTHWEST 19 V. WISCONSIN INDIANS 22 VI. PERIODS OF THE WISCONSIN INDIAN TRADE 25 VII. FRENCH EXPLORATION IN WISCONSIN 26 VIII. FRENCH POSTS IN WISCONSIN 33 IX. THE FOX WARS 34 X. FRENCH SETTLEMENT IN WISCONSIN 38 XI. THE TRADERS' STRUGGLE TO RETAIN THEIR TRADE 40 XII. THE ENGLISH AND THE NORTHWEST. INFLUENCE OF THE INDIAN TRADE ON DIPLOMACY 42 XIII. THE NORTHWEST COMPANY 51 XIV. AMERICAN INFLUENCES 51 XV. GOVERNMENT TRADING HOUSES 58 XVI. WISCONSIN TRADE IN 1820 61 XVII. EFFECTS OF THE TRADING POST 67 THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE INDIAN TRADE IN WISCONSIN. INTRODUCTION.[1] The trading post is an old and influential institution. Established in the midst of an undeveloped society by a more advanced people, it is a center not only of new economic influences, but also of all the transforming forces that accompany the intercourse of a higher with a lower civilization. The Phoenicians developed the institution into a great historic agency. Closely associated with piracy at first, their commerce gradually freed itself from this and spread throughout the Mediterranean lands. A passage in the Odyssey (Book XV.) enables us to trace the genesis of the Phoenician trading post: "Thither came the Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy merchant-men with countless trinkets in a black ship.... They abode among us a whole year, and got together much wealth in their hollow ship. And when their hollow ship was now laden to depart, they sent a messenger.... There came a man versed in craft to my father's house with a golden chain strung here and there with amber beads. Now, the maidens in the hall and my lady mother were handling the chain and gazing on it and offering him their price." It would appear that the traders at first sailed from port to port, bartering as they went. After a time they stayed at certain profitable places a twelvemonth, still trading from their ships. Then came the fixed factory, and about it grew the trading colony.[2] The Phoenician trading post wove together the fabric of oriental civilization, brought arts and the alphabet to Greece, brought the elements of civilization to northern Africa, and disseminated eastern culture through the Mediterranean system of lands. It blended races and customs, developed commercial confidence, fostered the custom of depending on outside nations for certain supplies, and afforded a means of peaceful intercourse between societies naturally hostile. Carthaginian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman trading posts continued the process. By traffic in amber, tin, furs, etc., with the tribes of the north of Europe, a continental commerce was developed. The routes of this trade have been ascertained.[3] For over a thousand years before the migration of the peoples Mediterranean commerce had flowed along the interlacing river valleys of Europe, and trading posts had been established. Museums show how important an effect was produced upon the economic life of northern Europe by this intercourse. It is a significant fact that the routes of the migration of the peoples were to a considerable extent the routes of Roman trade, and it is well worth inquiry whether this commerce did not leave more traces upon Teutonic society than we have heretofore considered, and whether one cause of the migrations of the peoples has not been neglected.[4] That stage in the development of society when a primitive people comes into contact with a more advanced people deserves more study than has been given to it. As a factor in breaking the "cake of custom" the meeting of two such societies is of great importance; and if, with Starcke,[5] we trace the origin of the family to economic considerations, and, with Schrader,[6] the institution of guest friendship to the same source, we may certainly expect to find important influences upon primitive society arising from commerce with a higher people. The extent to which such commerce has affected all peoples is remarkable. One may study the process from the days of Phoenicia to the days of England in Africa,[7] but nowhere is the material more abundant than in the history of the relations of the Europeans and the American Indians. The Phoenician factory, it is true, fostered the development of the Mediterranean civilization, while in America the trading post exploited the natives. The explanation of this difference is to be sought partly in race differences, partly in the greater gulf that separated the civilization of the European from the civilization of the American Indian as compared with that which parted the early Greeks and the Phoenicians. But the study of the destructive effect of the trading post is valuable as well as the study of its elevating influences; in both cases the effects are important and worth investigation and comparison. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: In this paper I have rewritten and enlarged an address before the State Historical Society of Wisconsin on the Character and Influence of the Fur Trade in Wisconsin, published in the Proceedings of the Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting, 1889. I am under obligations to Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, Secretary of this society, for his generous assistance in procuring material for my work, and to Professor Charles H. Haskins, my colleague, who kindly read both manuscript and proof and made helpful suggestions. The reader will notice that throughout the paper I have used the word _Northwest_ in a limited sense as referring to the region included between the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.] [Footnote 2: On the trading colony, see Roscher und Jannasch, Colonien, p. 12.] [Footnote 3: Consult: Müllenhoff, Altertumskunde I., 212; Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, New York, 1890, pp. 348 ff.; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, xxvii., 11; Montelius, Civilization of Sweden in Heathen Times, 98-99; Du Chaillu, Viking Age; and the citations in Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, 466-7; Keary, Vikings in Western Christendom, 23.] [Footnote 4: In illustration it may be noted that the early Scandinavian power in Russia seized upon the trade route by the Dnieper and the Duna. Keary, Vikings, 173. See also _post_, pp. 36, 38.] [Footnote 5: Starcke, Primitive Family.] [Footnote 6: Schrader, l.c.; see also Ihring, in _Deutsche Rundschau_, III., 357, 420; Kulischer, Der Handel auf primitiven Kulturstufen, in _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, X., 378. _Vide post_, p. 10.] [Footnote 7: W. Bosworth Smith, in a suggestive article in the _Nineteenth Century_, December, 1887, shows the influence of the Mohammedan trade in Africa.] PRIMITIVE INTER-TRIBAL TRADE. Long before the advent of the white trader, inter-tribal commercial intercourse existed. Mr. Charles Rau[8] and Sir Daniel Wilson[9] have shown that inter-tribal trade and division of labor were common among the mound-builders and in the stone age generally. In historic times there is ample evidence of inter-tribal trade. Were positive evidence lacking, Indian institutions would disclose the fact. Differences in language were obviated by the sign language,[10] a fixed system of communication, intelligible to all the western tribes at least. The peace pipe,[11] or calumet, was used for settling disputes, strengthening alliances, and speaking to strangers--a sanctity attached to it. Wampum belts served in New England and the middle region as money and as symbols in the ratification of treaties.[12] The Chippeways had an institution called by a term signifying "to enter one another's lodges,"[13] whereby a truce was made between them and the Sioux at the winter hunting season. During these seasons of peace it was not uncommon for a member of one tribe to adopt a member of another as his brother, a tie which was respected even after the expiration of the truce. The analogy of this custom to the classical "guest-friendship" needs no comment; and the economic cause of the institution is worth remark, as one of the means by which the rigor of primitive inter-tribal hostility was mitigated. But it is not necessary to depend upon indirect evidence. The earliest travellers testify to the existence of a wide inter-tribal commerce. The historians of De Soto's expedition mention Indian merchants who sold salt to the inland tribes. "In 1565 and for some years previous bison skins were brought by the Indians down the Potomac, and thence carried along-shore in canoes to the French about the Gulf of St. Lawrence. During two years six thousand skins were thus obtained."[14] An Algonquin brought to Champlain at Quebec a piece of copper a foot long, which he said came from a tributary of the Great Lakes.[15] Champlain also reports that among the Canadian Indians village councils were held to determine what number of men might go to trade with other tribes in the summer.[16] Morton in 1632 describes similar inter-tribal trade in New England, and adds that certain utensils are "but in certain parts of the country made, where the severall trades are appropriated to the inhabitants of those parts onely."[17] Marquette relates that the Illinois bought firearms of the Indians who traded directly with the French, and that they went to the south and west to carry off slaves, which they sold at a high price to other nations.[18] It was on the foundation, therefore, of an extensive inter-tribal trade that the white man built up the forest commerce.[19] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: Smithsonian Report, 1872.] [Footnote 9: Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 1889, VII., 59. See also Thruston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 79 ff.] [Footnote 10: Mallery, in Bureau of Ethnology, I., 324; Clark, Indian Sign Language.] [Footnote 11: Shea, Discovery of the Mississippi, 34. Catilinite pipes were widely used, even along the Atlantic slope, Thruston, 80-81.] [Footnote 12: Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, I., ch. ii.] [Footnote 13: Minnesota Historical Collections, V., 267.] [Footnote 14: Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, 230, citing Menendez.] [Footnote 15: Neill, in Narrative and Critical History of America, IV., 164.] [Footnote 16: Champlain's Voyages (Prince Society), III., 183.] [Footnote 17: Morton, New English Canaan (Prince Society), 159.] [Footnote 18: Shea, Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, 32.] [Footnote 19: For additional evidence see Radisson, Voyages (Prince Society), 91, 173; Massachusetts Historical Collections, I., 151; Smithsonian Contributions, XVI., 30; Jesuit Relations, 1671, 41; Thruston, Antiquities, etc., 79-82; Carr, Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, 25, 27; and _post_ pp. 26-7, 36.] EARLY TRADE ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST. The chroniclers of the earliest voyages to the Atlantic coast abound in references to this traffic. First of Europeans to purchase native furs in America appear to have been the Norsemen who settled Vinland. In the saga of Eric the Red[20] we find this interesting account: "Thereupon Karlsefni and his people displayed their shields, and when they came together they began to barter with each other. Especially did the strangers wish to buy red cloth, for which they offered in exchange peltries and quite grey skins. They also desired to buy swords and spears, but Karlsefni and Snorri forbade this. In exchange for perfect unsullied skins the Skrellings would take red stuff a span in length, which they would bind around their heads. So their trade went on for a time, until Karlsefni and his people began to grow short of cloth, when they divided it into such narrow pieces that it was not more than a finger's breadth wide, but the Skrellings still continued to give just as much for this as before, or more."[21] The account of Verrazano's voyage mentions his Indian trade. Captain John Smith, exploring New England in 1614, brought back a cargo of fish and 11,000 beaver skins.[22] These examples could be multiplied; in short, a way was prepared for colonization by the creation of a demand for European goods, and thus the opportunity for a lodgement was afforded. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 20: Reeves, Finding of Wineland the Good, 47.] [Footnote 21: N.Y. Hist. Colls., I., 54-55, 59.] [Footnote 22: Smith, Generall Historie (Richmond, 1819), I., 87-8, 182, 199; Strachey's Travaile into Virginia, 157 (Hakluyt Soc. VI.); Parkman, Pioneers, 230.] NEW ENGLAND INDIAN TRADE. The Indian trade has a place in the early history of the New England colonies. The Plymouth settlers "found divers corn fields and little running brooks, a place ... fit for situation,"[23] and settled down cuckoo-like in Indian clearings. Mr. Weeden has shown that the Indian trade furnished a currency (wampum) to New England, and that it afforded the beginnings of her commerce. In September of their first year the Plymouth men sent out a shallop to trade with the Indians, and when a ship arrived from England in 1621 they speedily loaded her with a return cargo of beaver and lumber.[24] By frequent legislation the colonies regulated and fostered the trade.[25] Bradford reports that in a single year twenty hhd. of furs were shipped from Plymouth, and that between 1631 and 1636 their shipments amounted to 12,150 _li_. beaver and 1156 _li_. otter.[26] Morton in his 'New English Canaan' alleges that a servant of his was "thought to have a thousand pounds in ready gold gotten by the beaver when he died."[27] In the pursuit of this trade men passed continually farther into the wilderness, and their trading posts "generally became the pioneers of new settlements."[28] For example, the posts of Oldham, a Puritan trader, led the way for the settlements on the Connecticut river,[29] and in their early days these towns were partly sustained by the Indian trade.[30] Not only did the New England traders expel the Dutch from this valley; they contended with them on the Hudson.[31] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 23: Bradford, Plymouth Plantation.] [Footnote 24: Bradford, 104.] [Footnote 25: _E.g._, Plymouth Records, I., 50, 54, 62, 119; II., 10; Massachusetts Colonial Records, I., 55, 81, 96, 100, 322; II., 86, 138; III., 424; V., 180; Hazard, Historical Collections, II., 19 (the Commissioners of the United Colonies propose giving the monopoly of the fur trade to a corporation). On public truck-houses, _vide post_, p. 58.] [Footnote 26: Bradford, 108, gives the proceeds of the sale of these furs.] [Footnote 27: Force, Collections, Vol. I., No. 5, p. 53.] [Footnote 28: Weeden, I., 132, 160-1.] [Footnote 29: Winthrop, History of New England, I., 111, 131.] [Footnote 30: Connecticut Colonial Records, 1637, pp. 11, 18.] [Footnote 31: Weeden, I., 126.] INDIAN TRADE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES. Morton, in the work already referred to, protested against allowing "the Great Lake of the Erocoise" (Champlain) to the Dutch, saying that it is excellent for the fur trade, and that the Dutch have gained by beaver 20,000 pounds a year. Exaggerated though the statement is, it is true that the energies of the Dutch were devoted to this trade, rather than to agricultural settlement. As in the case of New France the settlers dispersed themselves in the Indian trade; so general did this become that laws had to be passed to compel the raising of crops.[32] New York City (New Amsterdam) was founded and for a time sustained by the fur trade. In their search for peltries the Dutch were drawn up the Hudson, up the Connecticut, and down the Delaware, where they had Swedes for their rivals. By way of the Hudson the Dutch traders had access to Lake Champlain, and to the Mohawk, the headwaters of which connected through the lakes of western New York with Lake Ontario. This region, which was supplied by the trading post of Orange (Albany), was the seat of the Iroquois confederacy. The results of the trade upon Indian society became apparent in a short time in the most decisive way. Furnished with arms by the Dutch, the Iroquois turned upon the neighboring Indians, whom the French had at first refrained from supplying with guns.[33] In 1649 they completely ruined the Hurons,[34] a part of whom fled to the woods of northern Wisconsin. In the years immediately following, the Neutral Nation and the Eries fell under their power; they overawed the New England Indians and the Southern tribes, and their hunting and war parties visited Illinois and drove Indians of those plains into Wisconsin. Thus by priority in securing firearms, as well as by their remarkable civil organization,[35] the Iroquois secured possession of the St. Lawrence and Lakes Ontario and Erie. The French had accepted the alliance of the Algonquins and the Hurons, as the Dutch, and afterward the English, had that of the Iroquois; so these victories of the Iroquois cut the French off from the entrance to the Great Lakes by way of the upper St. Lawrence. As early as 1629 the Dutch trade was estimated at 50,000 guilders per annum, and the Delaware trade alone produced 10,000 skins yearly in 1663.[36] The English succeeded to this trade, and under Governor Dongan they made particular efforts to extend their operations to the Northwest, using the Iroquois as middlemen. Although the French were in possession of the trade with the Algonquins of the Northwest, the English had an economic advantage in competing for this trade in the fact that Albany traders, whose situation enabled them to import their goods more easily than Montreal traders could, and who were burdened with fewer governmental restrictions, were able to pay fifty per cent more for beaver and give better goods. French traders frequently received their supplies from Albany, a practice against which the English authorities legislated in 1720; and the _coureurs de bois_ smuggled their furs to the same place.[37] As early as 1666 Talon proposed that the king of France should purchase New York, "whereby he would have two entrances to Canada and by which he would give to the French all the peltries of the north, of which the English share the profit by the communication which they have with the Iroquois by Manhattan and Orange."[38] It is a characteristic of the fur trade that it continually recedes from the original center, and so it happened that the English traders before long attempted to work their way into the Illinois country.[39] The wars between the French and English and Iroquois must be read in the light of this fact. At the outbreak of the last French and Indian war, however, it was rather Pennsylvania and Virginia traders who visited the Ohio Valley. It is said that some three hundred of them came over the mountains yearly, following the Susquehanna and the Juniata and the headwaters of the Potomac to the tributaries of the Ohio, and visiting with their pack-horses the Indian villages along the valley. The center of the English trade was Pickawillani on the Great Miami. In 1749 Celoron de Bienville, who had been sent out to vindicate French authority in the valley, reported that each village along the Ohio and its branches "has one or more English traders, and each of these has hired men to carry his furs."[40] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 32: New York Colonial Documents, I., 181, 389, §7.] [Footnote 33: _Ibid._ 182; Collection de manuscrits relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, I., 254; Radisson, 93.] [Footnote 34: Parkman, Jesuits in North America; Radisson; Margry, Découvertes et Établissemens, etc., IV., 586-598; Tailhan, Nicholas Perrot.] [Footnote 35: Morgan, League of the Iroquois.] [Footnote 36: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 408-9; V., 687, 726; Histoire et Commerce des Colonies Angloises, 154.] [Footnote 37: N.Y. Col. Docs., III., 471, 474; IX., 298, 319.] [Footnote 38: _Ibid._ IX., 57. The same proposal was made in 1681 by Du Chesneau, _ibid._ IX., 165.] [Footnote 39: Parkman's works; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 165; Shea's Charlevoix, IV., 16: "The English, indeed, as already remarked, from that time shared with the French in the fur trade; and this was the chief motive of their fomenting war between us and the Iroquois, inasmuch as they could get no good furs, which come from the northern districts, except by means of these Indians, who could scarcely effect a reconciliation with us without precluding them from this precious mine."] [Footnote 40: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 50.] INDIAN TRADE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES. The Indian trade of the Virginians was not limited to the Ohio country. As in the case of Massachusetts Bay, the trade had been provided for before the colony left England,[41] and in times of need it had preserved the infant settlement. Bacon's rebellion was in part due to the opposition to the governor's trading relations with the savages. After a time the nearer Indians were exploited, and as early as the close of the seventeenth century Virginia traders sought the Indians west of the Alleghanies.[42] The Cherokees lived among the mountains, "where the present states of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas join one another."[43] To the west, on the Mississippi, were the Chickasaws, south of whom lived the Choctaws, while to the south of the Cherokees were the Creeks. The Catawbas had their villages on the border of North and South Carolina, about the headwaters of the Santee river. Shawnese Indians had formerly lived on the Cumberland river, and French traders had been among them, as well as along the Mississippi;[44] but by the time of the English traders, Tennessee and Kentucky were for the most part uninhabited. The Virginia traders reached the Catawbas, and for a time the Cherokees, by a trading route through the southwest of the colony to the Santee. By 1712 this trade was a well-established one,[45] and caravans of one hundred pack-horses passed along the trail.[46] The Carolinas had early been interested in the fur trade. In 1663 the Lords Proprietors proposed to pay the governor's salary from the proceeds of the traffic. Charleston traders were the rivals of the Virginians in the southwest. They passed even to the Choctaws and Chickasaws, crossing the rivers by portable boats of skin, and sometimes taking up a permanent abode among the Indians. Virginia and Carolina traders were not on good terms with each other, and Governor Spottswood frequently made complaints of the actions of the Carolinians. His expedition across the mountains in 1716, if his statement is to be trusted, opened a new way to the transmontane Indians, and soon afterwards a trading company was formed under his patronage to avail themselves of this new route.[47] It passed across the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah valley, and down the old Indian trail to the Cherokees, who lived along the upper Tennessee. Below the bend at the Muscle Shoals the Virginians met the competition of the French traders from New Orleans and Mobile.[48] The settlement of Augusta, Georgia, was another important trading post. Here in 1740 was an English garrison of fifteen or twenty soldiers, and a little band of traders, who annually took about five hundred pack-horses into the Indian country. In the spring the furs were floated down the river in large boats.[49] The Spaniards and the French also visited the Indians, and the rivalry over this trade was an important factor in causing diplomatic embroilment.[50] The occupation of the back-lands of the South affords a prototype of the process by which the plains of the far West were settled, and also furnishes an exemplification of all the stages of economic development existing contemporaneously. After a time the traders were accompanied to the Indian grounds by _hunters_, and sometimes the two callings were combined.[51] When Boone entered Kentucky he went with an Indian trader whose posts were on the Red river in Kentucky.[52] After the game decreased the hunter's clearing was occupied by the _cattle-raiser_, and his home, as settlement grew, became the property of the _cultivator of the soil_;[53] the _manufacturing era_ belongs to our own time. In the South, the Middle Colonies and New England the trade opened the water-courses, the trading post grew into the palisaded town, and rival nations sought to possess the trade for themselves. Throughout the colonial frontier the effects, as well as the methods, of Indian traffic were strikingly alike. The trader was the pathfinder for civilization. Nor was the process limited to the east of the Mississippi. The expeditions of Verenderye led to the discovery of the Rocky Mountains.[54] French traders passed up the Missouri; and when the Lewis and Clarke expedition ascended that river and crossed the continent, it went with traders and voyageurs as guides and interpreters. Indeed, Jefferson first conceived the idea of such an expedition[55] from contact with Ledyard, who was organizing a fur trading company in France, and it was proposed to Congress as a means of fostering our western Indian trade.[56] The first immigrant train to California was incited by the representations of an Indian trader who had visited the region, and it was guided by trappers.[57] St. Louis was the center of the fur trade of the far West, and Senator Benton was intimate with leading traders like Chouteau.[58] He urged the occupation of the Oregon country, where in 1810 an establishment had for a time been made by the celebrated John Jacob Astor; and he fostered legislation opening the road to the southwestern Mexican settlements long in use by the traders. The expedition of his son-in-law Frémont was made with French voyageurs, and guided to the passes by traders who had used them before.[59] Benton was also one of the stoutest of the early advocates of a Pacific railway. But the Northwest[60] was particularly the home of the fur trade, and having seen that this traffic was not an isolated or unimportant matter, we may now proceed to study it in detail with Wisconsin as the field of investigation. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 41: Charter of 1606.] [Footnote 42: Ramsay, Tennessee, 63.] [Footnote 43: On the Southwestern Indians see Adair, American Indians.] [Footnote 44: Ramsay, 75.] [Footnote 45: Spottswood's Letters, Virginia Hist. Colls., N.S., I., 67.] [Footnote 46: Byrd Manuscripts, I., 180. The reader will find a convenient map for the southern region in Roosevelt, Winning of the West, I.] [Footnote 47: Spottswood's Letters, I., 40; II., 149, 150.] [Footnote 48: Ramsay, 64. Note the bearing of this route on the Holston settlement.] [Footnote 49: Georgia Historical Collections, I., 180; II., 123-7.] [Footnote 50: Spottswood. II., 331, for example.] [Footnote 51: Ramsay, 65.] [Footnote 52: Boone, Life and Adventures.] [Footnote 53: Observations on the North American Land Co., pp. xv., 144, London, 1796.] [Footnote 54: Margry, VI.] [Footnote 55: Allen, Lewis and Clarke Expedition, I., ix.; _vide post_, pp. 70-71.] [Footnote 56: _Vide post_, p. 71.] [Footnote 57: _Century Magazine_, XLI., 759.] [Footnote 58: Jessie Benton Frémont in _Century Magazine_, XLI., 766-7.] [Footnote 59: _Century Magazine_, XLI., p. 759; _vide post_, p. 74.] [Footnote 60: Parkman's works, particularly Old Régime, make any discussion of the importance of the fur trade to Canada proper unnecessary. La Hontan says: "For you must know that Canada subsists only upon the trade of skins or furs, three-fourths of which come from the people that live around the Great Lakes." La Hontan, I., 53, London, 1703.] NORTHWESTERN RIVER SYSTEMS IN THEIR RELATION TO THE FUR TRADE. The importance of physical conditions is nowhere more manifest than in the exploration of the Northwest, and we cannot properly appreciate Wisconsin's relation to the history of the time without first considering her situation as regards the lake and river systems of North America. When the Breton sailors, steering their fishing smacks almost in the wake of Cabot, began to fish in the St. Lawrence gulf, and to traffic with the natives of the mainland for peltries, the problem of how the interior of North America was to be explored was solved. The water-system composed of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes is the key to the continent. The early explorations in a wilderness must be by water-courses--they are nature's highways. The St. Lawrence leads to the Great Lakes; the headwaters of the tributaries of these lakes lie so near the headwaters of the rivers that join the Mississippi that canoes can be portaged from the one to the other. The Mississippi affords passage to the Gulf of Mexico; or by the Missouri to the passes of the Rocky Mountains, where rise the headwaters of the Columbia, which brings the voyageur to the Pacific. But if the explorer follows Lake Superior to the present boundary line between Minnesota and Canada, and takes the chain of lakes and rivers extending from Pigeon river to Rainy lake and Lake of the Woods, he will be led to the Winnipeg river and to the lake of the same name. From this, by streams and portages, he may reach Hudson bay; or he may go by way of Elk river and Lake Athabasca to Slave river and Slave lake, which will take him to Mackenzie river and to the Arctic sea. But Lake Winnipeg also receives the waters of the Saskatchewan river, from which one may pass to the highlands near the Pacific where rise the northern branches of the Columbia. And from the lakes of Canada there are still other routes to the Oregon country.[61] At a later day these two routes to the Columbia became an important factor in bringing British and Americans into conflict over that territory. In these water-systems Wisconsin was the link that joined the Great Lakes and the Mississippi; and along her northern shore the first explorers passed to the Pigeon river, or, as it was called later, the Grand Portage route, along the boundary line between Minnesota and Canada into the heart of Canada. It was possible to reach the Mississippi from the Great Lakes by the following principal routes:[62] 1. By the Miami (Maumee) river from the west end of Lake Erie to the Wabash, thence to the Ohio and the Mississippi. 2. By the St. Joseph's river to the Wabash, thence to the Ohio. 3. By the St. Joseph's river to the Kankakee, and thence to the Illinois and the Mississippi. 4. By the Chicago river to the Illinois. 5. By Green bay, Fox river, and the Wisconsin river. 6. By the Bois Brulé river to the St. Croix river. Of these routes, the first two were not at first available, owing to the hostility of the Iroquois. Of all the colonies that fell to the English, as we have seen, New York alone had a water-system that favored communication with the interior, tapping the St. Lawrence and opening a way to Lake Ontario. Prevented by the Iroquois friends of the Dutch and English from reaching the Northwest by way of the lower lakes, the French ascended the Ottawa, reached Lake Nipissing, and passed by way of Georgian Bay to the islands of Lake Huron. As late as the nineteenth century this was the common route of the fur trade, for it was more certain for the birch canoes than the tempestuous route of the lakes. At the Huron islands two ways opened before their canoes. The straits of Michillimackinac[63] permitted them to enter Lake Michigan, and from this led the two routes to the Mississippi: one by way of Green bay and the Fox and Wisconsin, and the other by way of the lake to the Chicago river. But if the trader chose to go from the Huron islands through Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, the necessities of his frail craft required him to hug the shore, and the rumors of copper mines induced the first traders to take the south shore, and here the lakes of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota afford connecting links between the streams that seek Lake Superior and those that seek the Mississippi,[64] a fact which made northern Wisconsin more important in this epoch than the southern portion of the state. We are now able to see how the river-courses of the Northwest permitted a complete exploration of the country, and that in these courses Wisconsin held a commanding situation,[65] But these rivers not only permitted exploration; they also furnished a motive to exploration by the fact that their valleys teemed with fur-bearing animals. This is the main fact in connection with Northwestern exploration. The hope of a route to China was always influential, as was also the search for mines, but the practical inducements were the profitable trade with the Indians for beaver and buffaloes and the wild life that accompanied it. So powerful was the combined influence of these far-stretching rivers, and the "hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade," that the scanty population of Canada was irresistibly drawn from agricultural settlements into the interminable recesses of the continent; and herein is a leading explanation of the lack of permanent French influence in America. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 61: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., VIII., 10-11.] [Footnote 62: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 224, n. 1; Margry, V. See also Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., map and pp. 38-9, 128.] [Footnote 63: Mackinaw.] [Footnote 64: See Doty's enumeration, Wis. Hist. Colls., VII., 202.] [Footnote 65: Jes. Rels., 1672, p. 37; La Hontan, I., 105 (1703).] WISCONSIN INDIANS.[66] "All that relates to the Indian tribes of Wisconsin," says Dr. Shea, "their antiquities, their ethnology, their history, is deeply interesting from the fact that it is the area of the first meeting of the Algic and Dakota tribes. Here clans of both these wide-spread families met and mingled at a very early period; here they first met in battle and mutually checked each other's advance." The Winnebagoes attracted the attention of the French even before they were visited. They were located about Green bay. Their later location at the entrance of Lake Winnebago was unoccupied, at least in the time of Allouez, because of the hostility of the Sioux. Early authorities represented them as numbering about one hundred warriors.[67] The Pottawattomies we find in 1641 at Sault Ste. Marie,[68] whither they had just fled from their enemies. Their proper home was probably about the southeastern shore and islands of Green bay, where as early as 1670 they were again located. Of their numbers in Wisconsin at this time we can say but little. Allouez, at Chequamegon bay, was visited by 300 of their warriors, and he mentions some of their Green bay villages, one of which had 300 souls.[69] The Menomonees were found chiefly on the river that bears their name, and the western tributaries of Green bay seem to have been their territory. On the estimates of early authorities we may say that they had about 100 warriors.[70] The Sauks and Foxes were closely allied tribes. The Sauks were found by Allouez[71] four leagues[72] up the Fox from its mouth, and the Foxes at a place reached by a four days' ascent of the Wolf river from its mouth. Later we find them at the confluence of the Wolf and the Fox. According to their early visitors these two tribes must have had something over 1000 warriors.[73] The Miamis and Mascoutins were located about a league from the Fox river, probably within the limits of what is now Green Lake county,[74] and four leagues away were their friends the Kickapoos. In 1670 the Miamis and Mascoutins were estimated at 800 warriors, and this may have included the Kickapoos. The Sioux held possession of the Upper Mississippi, and in Wisconsin hunted on its northeastern tributaries. Their villages were in later times all on the west of the Mississippi, and of their early numbers no estimate can be given. The Chippeways were along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Their numbers also are in doubt, but were very considerable.[75] In northwestern Wisconsin, with Chequamegon bay as their rendezvous, were the Ottawas and Hurons,[76] who had fled here to escape the Iroquois. In 1670 they were back again to their homes at Mackinaw and the Huron islands. But in 1666, as Allouez tells us, they were situated at the bottom of this beautiful bay, planting their Indian corn and leading a stationary life. "They are there," he says, "to the number of eight hundred men bearing arms, but collected from seven different nations who dwell in peace with each other thus mingled together."[77] And the Jesuit Relations of 1670 add that the Illinois "come here from time to time in great numbers as merchants to procure hatchets, cooking utensils, guns, and other things of which they stand in need." Here, too, came Pottawattomies, as we have seen, and Sauks. At the mouth of Fox river[78] we find another mixed village of Pottawattomies, Sauks, Foxes, and Winnebagoes, and at a later period Milwaukee was the site of a similar heterogeneous community. Leaving out the Hurons, the tribes of Wisconsin were, with two exceptions, of the Algic stock. The exceptions are the Winnebagoes and the Sioux, who belong to the Dakota family. Of these Wisconsin tribes it is probable that the Sauks and Foxes, the Pottawattomies, the Hurons and Ottawas and the Mascoutins, and Miamis and Kickapoos, were driven into Wisconsin by the attacks of eastern enemies. The Iroquois even made incursions as far as the home of the Mascoutins on Fox river. On the other side of the state were the Sioux, "the Iroquois of the West," as the missionaries call them, who had once claimed all the region, and whose invasions, Allouez says, rendered Lake Winnebago uninhabited. There was therefore a pressure on both sides of Wisconsin which tended to mass together the divergent tribes. And the Green bay and Fox and Wisconsin route was the line of least resistance, as well as a region abounding in wild rice, fish and game, for these early fugitives. In this movement we have two facts that are not devoid of significance in institutional history: first, the welding together of separate tribes, as the Sauks and Foxes, and the Miamis, Mascoutins and Kickapoos; and second, a commingling of detached families from various tribes at peculiarly favorable localities. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: On these early locations, consult the authorities cited by Shea in Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 125 _et seq._, and by Branson in his criticism on Shea, _ibid._ IV., 223. See also Butterfield's Discovery of the Northwest in 1634, and _Mag. West. Hist._, V., 468, 630; and Minn. Hist. Colls., V.] [Footnote 67: Some early estimates were as follows: 1640, "Great numbers" (Margry, I., 48); 1718, 80 to 100 warriors (N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 889); 1728, 60 or 80 warriors (Margry, VI., 553); 1736, 90 warriors (Chaurignerie, cited in Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes, III., 282); 1761, 150 warriors (Gorrell, Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 32).] [Footnote 68: Margry, I., 46.] [Footnote 69: Jes. Rels., 1667, 1670.] [Footnote 70: 1718, estimated at 80 to 100 warriors (N.Y. Col. Docs., IX.,889); 1762, estimated at 150 warriors (Gorrell, Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 32).] [Footnote 71: Jes. Rels., 1670.] [Footnote 72: French leagues.] [Footnote 73: 1670, Foxes estimated at 400 warriors (Jes. Rels., 1670); 1667, Foxes, 1000 warriors (Jes. Rels., 1667); 1695, Foxes and Mascoutins, 1200 warriors (N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 633); 1718, Sauks 100 or 120, Foxes 500 warriors (2 Penn. Archives, VI., 54); 1728, Foxes, 200 warriors (Margry, V.); 1762, Sauks and Foxes, 700 warriors (Gorrell, Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 32). This, it must be observed, was after the Fox wars.] [Footnote 74: Jes. Rels., 1670; Butterfield's Discovery of the Northwest.] [Footnote 75: In 1820 those in Wisconsin numbered about 600 hunters.] [Footnote 76: On these Indians consult, besides authorities already cited, Shea's Discovery, etc. lx.; Jes. Rels.; Narr. and Crit. Hist. of Amer., IV., 168-170, 175; Radisson's Voyages; Margry, IV., 586-598.] [Footnote 77: Jes. Rels., 1666-7.] [Footnote 78: Jes. Rels., 1670.] PERIODS OF THE WISCONSIN INDIAN TRADE. The Indian trade was almost the sole interest in Wisconsin during the two centuries that elapsed from the visit of Nicolet in 1634 to about 1834, when lead-mining had superseded it in the southwest and land offices were opened at Green Bay and Mineral Point; when the port of Milwaukee received an influx of settlers to the lands made known by the so-called Black Hawk war; and when Astor retired from the American Fur Company. These two centuries may be divided into three periods of the trade: 1. French, from 1634 to 1763; 2. English, from 1763 to 1816; 3. American, from 1816 to 1834. FRENCH EXPLORATION IN WISCONSIN. Sagard,[79] whose work was published in 1636, tells us that the Hurons, who traded with the French, visited the Winnebagoes and the Fire Nation (Mascoutins),[80] bartering goods for peltries. Champlain, the famous fur-trader, who represented the Company of the Hundred Associates,[81] formed by Richelieu to monopolize the fur trade of New France and govern the country, sent an agent named Jean Nicolet, in 1634,[82] to Green bay and Fox river to make a peace between the Hurons and the Winnebagoes in the interests of inter-tribal commerce. The importance of this phase of the trade as late as 1681 may be inferred from these words of Du Chesneau, speaking of the Ottawas, and including under the term the Petun Hurons and the Chippeways also: "Through them we obtain beaver, and although they, for the most part, do not hunt, and have but a small portion of peltry in their country, they go in search of it to the most distant places, and exchange for it our merchandise which they procure at Montreal." Among the tribes enumerated as dealing with the Ottawas are the Sioux, Satiks, Pottawattomies, Winnebagoes, Menomonees and Mascoutins--all Wisconsin Indians at this time. He adds: "Some of these tribes occasionally come down to Montreal, but usually they do not do so in very great numbers because they are too far distant, are not expert at managing canoes, and because the other Indians intimidate them, in order to be the carriers of their merchandise and to profit thereby."[83] It was the aim of the authorities to attract the Indians to Montreal, or to develop the inter-tribal communication, and thus to centralize the trade and prevent the dissipation of the energies of the colony; but the temptations of the free forest traffic were too strong. In a memoir of 1697, Aubert de la Chesnaye says: "At first, the French went only among the Hurons, and since then to Missilimakinak, where they sold their goods to the savages of the places, who in turn went to exchange them with other savages in the depths of the woods, lands and rivers. But at present the French, having licenses, in order to secure greater profit surreptitiously, pass all the 'Ottawas and savages of Missilimakinak in order to go themselves to seek the most distant tribes, which is very displeasing to the former. _It is they, also, who have made excellent discoveries;_ and four or five hundred young men, the best men of Canada, are engaged in this business.... They have given us knowledge of many names of savages that we did not know; and four or five hundred leagues more remote are others who are unknown to us."[84] Two of the most noteworthy of these _coureurs de bois_, or wood-rangers, were Radisson and Groseilliers.[85] In 1660 they returned to Montreal with 300 Algonquins and sixty canoes laden with furs, after a voyage in which they visited, among other tribes, the Pottawattomies, Mascoutins, Sioux, and Hurons, in Wisconsin. From the Hurons they learned of the Mississippi, and probably visited the river. They soon returned from Montreal to the northern Wisconsin region. In the course of their wanderings they had a post at Chequamegon bay, and they ascended the Pigeon river, thus opening the Grand Portage route to the heart of Canada. Among their exploits they induced England to enter the Hudson Bay trade, and gave the impetus that led to the organization of the Hudson Bay Company. The reports which these traders brought back had a most important effect in fostering exploration in the Northwest, and led to the visit of Menard, who was succeeded by Allouez, the pioneers of the Jesuits in Wisconsin.[86] Radisson gives us a good account of the early Wisconsin trade. Of his visit to the Ottawas he says: "We weare wellcomed & made of saying that we weare the Gods and devils of the earth; that we should fournish them, & that they would bring us to their enemy to destroy them. We tould them [we] were very well content. We persuaded them first to come peaceably, not to distroy them presently, and if they would not condescend then would wee throw away the hatchett and make use of our thunders. We sent ambassadors to them wth guifts. That nation called Pontonatemick[87] without more adoe comes and meets us with the rest, and peace was concluded." "The savages," he writes, "love knives better than we serve God, which should make us blush for shame." In another place, "We went away free from any burden whilst those poore miserable thought themselves happy to carry our Equipage for the hope that they had that we should give them a brasse ring, or an awle, or an needle."[88] We find them using this influence in various places to make peace between hostile tribes, whom they threatened with punishment. This early commerce was carried on under the fiction of an exchange of presents. For example, Radisson says: "We gave them severall gifts and received many. They bestowed upon us above 300 robs of castors out of wch we brought not five to the ffrench being far in the country."[89] Among the articles used by Radisson in this trade were kettles, hatchets, knives, graters, awls, needles, tin looking-glasses, little bells, ivory combs, vermilion, sword blades, necklaces and bracelets. The sale of guns and blankets was at this time exceptional, nor does it appear that Radisson carried brandy in this voyage.[90] More and more the young men of Canada continued to visit the savages at their villages. By 1660 the _coureurs de bois_ formed a distinct class,[91] who, despite the laws against it, pushed from Michillimackinac into the wilderness. Wisconsin was a favorite resort of these adventurers. By the time of the arrival of the Jesuits they had made themselves entirely at home upon our lakes. They had preceded Allouez at Chequamegon bay, and when he established his mission at Green bay he came at the invitation of the Pottawattomies, who wished him to "mollify some young Frenchmen who were among them for the purpose of trading and who threatened and ill-treated them."[92] He found fur traders before him on the Fox and the Wolf. Bancroft's assertion[93] that "religious enthusiasm took possession of the wilderness on the upper lakes and explored the Mississippi," is misleading. It is not true that "not a cape was turned, nor a mission founded, nor a river entered, nor a settlement begun, but a Jesuit led the way." In fact the Jesuits followed the traders;[94] their missions were on the sites of trading posts, and they themselves often traded.[95] When St. Lusson, with the _coureur de bois_, Nicholas Perrot, took official possession of the Northwest for France at the Sault Ste. Marie in 1671, the cost of the expedition was defrayed by trade in beaver.[96] Joliet, who, accompanied by Marquette, descended the Mississippi by the Fox and Wisconsin route in 1673, was an experienced fur trader. While Du Lhut, chief of the _coureurs de bois_, was trading on Lake Superior, La Salle,[97] the greatest of these merchants, was preparing his far-reaching scheme for colonizing the Indians in the Illinois region under the direction of the French, so that they might act as a check on the inroads of the Iroquois, and aid in his plan of securing an exit for the furs of the Northwest, particularly buffalo hides, by way of the Mississippi and the Gulf. La Salle's "Griffen," the earliest ship to sail the Great Lakes, was built for this trade, and received her only cargo at Green Bay. Accault, one of La Salle's traders, with Hennepin, met Du Lhut on the upper Mississippi, which he had reached by way of the Bois Brulé and St. Croix, in 1680. Du Lhut's trade awakened the jealousy of La Salle, who writes in 1682: "If they go by way of the Ouisconsing, where for the present the chase of the buffalo is carried on and where I have commenced an establishment, they will ruin the trade on which alone I rely, on account of the great number of buffalo which are taken there every year, almost beyond belief."[98] Speaking of the Jesuits at Green Bay, he declares that they "have in truth the key to the beaver country, where a brother blacksmith that they have and two companions convert more iron into beaver than the fathers convert savages into Christians."[99] Perrot says that the beaver north of the mouth of the Wisconsin were better than those of
{'title': 'The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin by Turner', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}