Stories of the Badger State Part 7

During the night, the pa.s.sage of the river was accomplished by the fugitives. A large party was sent downstream upon a raft, and in canoes begged from the Winnebagoes; but those who took this method of escape were brutally fired upon near the mouth of the river by a detachment from the garrison at Prairie du Chien, and fifteen were killed in cold blood. The rest of the pursued, headed by Black Hawk, who had again made an attempt to surrender his forces, but had failed for lack of an interpreter, pushed across country, guided by Winnebagoes, to the mouth of the Bad Ax, a little stream emptying into the Mississippi about forty miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin River. His intention was to get his people as quickly as possible on the west bank of the Mississippi, in the hope that they would there be allowed to remain in peace.

The Indians were followed, three days behind, by the united army of regulars, who steadily gained on them. The country between Wisconsin Heights and the Mississippi is rough and forbidding in character; there are numerous swamps and rivers between the steep, thickly wooded hills.

The uneven pathway was strewn with the corpses of Sacs who had died of wounds and starvation; and there were frequent evidences that the fleeing wretches were sustaining life on the bark of trees and the flesh of their f.a.gged-out ponies.

On Wednesday, the 1st of August, Black Hawk and his now sadly depleted and almost famished band reached the junction of the Bad Ax with the Mississippi. There were only two or three canoes to be had, and the crossing of the Father of Waters progressed slowly and with frequent loss of life. That afternoon there appeared upon the scene a government supply steamer, the _Warrior_, from Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien), at the mouth of the Wisconsin. The Indians a third time tried to surrender, but their white flag was deliberately fired at, and round after round of canister swept the camp.

The next day the pursuing troops arrived on the heights above the river bench, the _Warrior_ again opened its attack, and thus, caught between two galling fires, the little army of savages soon melted away. But fifty remained alive on the spot to be taken prisoners. Some three hundred weaklings had reached the Iowa sh.o.r.e through the hail of iron and lead. Of these three hundred helpless, half-starved, unarmed noncombatants, over a half were slaughtered by a party of Sioux, under Wabashaw, who had been sent out by our government to waylay them. So that out of the band of a thousand Indians who had crossed the Mississippi over into Illinois in April, not more than a hundred and fifty, all told, lived to tell the tragic story of the Black Hawk War, a tale that stains the American name with dishonor.

The rest can soon be told. The Winnebago guerrillas, who had played fast and loose during the campaign, delivered to the whites at Fort Crawford the unfortunate Black Hawk, who had fled from the Bad Ax to the Dells of the Wisconsin River, to seek an asylum with his false friends. The proud old man, shorn of all his strength, was presented to the President at Washington, imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, forced to sign articles of perpetual peace, and then turned over for safe keeping to the Sac chief, Keokuk, his hated rival. He died on a small reservation in Iowa, in 1838. But he was not even then at peace, for his bones were stolen by an Illinois physician, for exhibition purposes, and finally were accidentally consumed by fire in 1853.

Black Hawk, with all the limitations of his race, had in his character a strength and manliness of fiber that were most remarkable, and displayed throughout his brief campaign a positive genius for military evolutions.

He may be safely ranked as one of the most interesting specimens of the North American savage to be met with in history. He was an indiscreet man. His troubles were brought about by a lack of mental balance, aided largely by unfortunate circ.u.mstances. His was a highly romantic temperament. He was carried away by mere sentiment, and allowed himself to be deceived by tricksters. But he was honest, and was more honorable than many of his conquerors were. He was, above all things, a patriot.

The year before his death, in a speech to a party of whites who were making a holiday hero of him, he thus forcibly defended his motives: "Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my town, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for them." No poet could have penned for him a more touching epitaph.

THE STORY OF CHEQUAMEGON BAY

Chequamegon Bay, of Lake Superior, has had a long and an interesting history. Nearly two and a half centuries ago, in the early winter months of 1659, two adventurous French traders, Radisson and Groseilliers, built a little palisade here, to protect the stock of goods which they exchanged with the Indians for furs. This was on the southwestern sh.o.r.e of the bay, a few miles west of the present city of Ashland, and in the neighborhood of Whittlesey's Creek.

These men did not tarry long at Chequamegon Bay. For the most part, they merely kept their stock of goods hid in a _cache_ there, while for some ten months they traveled through the woods, far and wide, in search of trade with the dusky natives. But they made the region known to Frenchmen in the settlements at Quebec and Montreal, as a favorite meeting-place for many tribes of Indians who came to the bay to fish.

The first Jesuit mission on Lake Superior was conducted by Father Rene Menard, at Keweenaw Bay; but he lost his life in the forest in 1661. In 1665 the Jesuits determined to reopen their mission on the great lake, and for that purpose sent Father Claude Allouez. Having heard of the advantages of Chequamegon Bay, Allouez proceeded thither, and erected his little chapel in an Indian village upon the mainland, not far from Radisson's old palisade, and possibly at the mouth of Vanderventer's Creek. He called his mission La Pointe.

Conversions were few at La Pointe, and Allouez soon longed for a broader field. He was relieved in 1669 by Father Jacques Marquette, a young and earnest priest. But it was not long before the Sioux of Minnesota quarreled with the Indians of Chequamegon Bay; and the latter, with Marquette, were driven eastward as far as Mackinac.

Although the missionaries had deserted La Pointe, fur traders soon came to be numerous there. One of the most prominent of these was Daniel Grayson Duluth, for whom the modern lake city of Minnesota was named.

For several years he had a small palisaded fort upon Chequamegon Bay, and, with a lively crew of well-armed boatmen, roamed all over the surrounding country, north, west, and south of Lake Superior, trading with far-away bands of savages. He had two favorite routes between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. One was by way of the narrow and turbulent Bois Brule, then much choked by fallen trees and beaver dams; a portage trail of a mile and a half from its headwaters to those of the St. Croix River; and thence, through foaming rapids, and deep, cool lakes, down into the Father of Waters. The other, an easier, but longer way, was up the rugged St. Louis River, which separates Wisconsin from Minnesota on the northwest, over into the Sand Lake country, and thence, through watery labyrinths, into feeders of the Mississippi.

Another adventurous French forest trader, who quartered on Chequamegon Bay, was Le Sueur, who, in 1693, built a fort upon Madelaine Island.

During the old Fox War the valleys of the Fox and the Wisconsin were closed to Frenchmen by the enraged Indians. This, the most popular route between the Great Lakes and the great river, being now unavailable, it became necessary to keep open Duluth's old routes from Lake Superior over to the Upper Mississippi. This was why Le Sueur was sent to Chequamegon Bay, to overawe the Indians of that region. He thought that his fort would be safer from attack upon the island, than upon the mainland. As La Pointe had now come to be the general name of this entire neighborhood, the island fort bore the same name as the old headquarters on land. It is well to remember that the history of Madelaine Island, the La Pointe of to-day, dates from Le Sueur; that the old La Pointe of Radisson, Allouez, Marquette, and probably Duluth, was on the mainland several miles to the southwest.

In connection with the La Pointe fort protecting the northern approach to Duluth's trading routes, Le Sueur erected another stockade to guard the southern end, the location of this latter being on an island in the Mississippi, near the present Red Wing, Minnesota. The fort in the Mississippi soon became "the center of commerce for the Western parts"; and the station at La Pointe also soon rose to importance, for the Chippewas, who had drifted far inland with the growing scarcity of game, were led by the presence of traders to return to Chequamegon Bay, and ma.s.s themselves in a large village on the southwest sh.o.r.e.

Although Le Sueur was not many years in command at the bay, we catch frequent glimpses thereafter of fur trade stations here, French, English, and American in turn, most of them doubtless being on Madelaine Island. We know, for instance, that there was a French trader at La Pointe in 1717; also, that the year following, a French officer was sent there, with a few soldiers, to patch up and garrison the old stockade.

Whether a garrisoned fort was kept up at the bay, from that time till the downfall of New France (1763), we cannot say; but it seems probable, for the geographical position was one of great importance in the development of the fur trade.

We first hear of copper in the vicinity, in 1730, when an Indian brought a nugget to the La Pointe post; but the whereabouts of the mine was concealed by the savages, because of their superst.i.tions relative to mineral deposits.

The commandant of La Pointe, at this time, was La Ronde, the chief fur trader in the Lake Superior country. He and his son, who was his partner, built for their trade a sailing vessel of forty tons burden, without doubt the first one of the kind upon the great lake. We find evidences of the La Rondes, father and son, down as late as 1744; a curious old map of that year gives the name of "Isle de la Ronde" to what we now know as Madelaine.

We find nothing more of importance concerning Chequamegon Bay until about 1756, when Beauba.s.sin was the French officer in charge of the fort. The English colonists were hara.s.sing the French along the St.

Lawrence River; and Beauba.s.sin, with hundreds of other officers of wilderness forts, was ordered down with his Indian allies to the settlements of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec, to defend New France.

The Chippewas, with other Wisconsin tribes, actuated by extravagant promises of presents, booty, and scalps, eagerly flocked to the banner of France, and in painted swarms appeared in fighting array on the banks of the St. Lawrence. But they helped the British more than the French, for they would not fight, yet with large appet.i.tes ate up the provisions of their allies.

The garrison being withdrawn from La Pointe, Madelaine Island became a camping-ground for unlicensed traders, who had freedom to plunder the country at their will, for New France, tottering to her fall, could no longer police the upper lakes. In the autumn of 1760 one of these parties encamped upon the island. By the time winter had set in upon them, all had left for their wintering grounds in the forests of the far West and Northwest, save a clerk named Joseph, who remained in charge of the goods and what local trade there was. With him were his wife, his small son, and a manservant. Traditions differ as to the cause of the servant's action; some have it, a desire for plunder; others, his detection in a series of petty thefts, which Joseph threatened to report. However that may be, the servant murdered first the clerk, then the wife, and in a few days, stung by the child's piteous cries, killed him also. When the spring came, and the traders returned to Chequamegon, they inquired for Joseph and his family. The servant's reply was at first unsatisfactory; but when pushed for an explanation, he confessed to his terrible deed. The story goes, that in horror the traders dismantled the old French fort, now overgrown with underbrush, as a thing accursed, sunk the cannon in a neighboring pool, and so destroyed the palisade that to-day certain mysterious gra.s.sy mounds alone remain to testify of the tragedy. They carried their prisoner with them on their return voyage to Montreal, but he is said to have escaped to the Huron Indians, among whom he boasted of his act, only to be killed by them as too cruel to be a companion even for savages.

Five years later a great English trader, Alexander Henry, who had obtained the exclusive trade on Lake Superior, wintered on the mainland opposite Madelaine Island. His partner was Jean Baptiste Cadotte, a thrifty Frenchman, who for many years thereafter was one of the most prominent characters on the upper lakes. Soon after this, a Scotch trader named John Johnston established himself on the island, and married a comely Chippewa maiden, whose father was chief of the native village situated four miles across the water, on the site of the Bayfield of to-day.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Michel, a son of old Jean Baptiste Cadotte, took up his abode on the island; and from that time to the present there has been a continuous settlement there, which bears the name La Pointe. Michel, himself the child of a Chippewa mother, but educated at Montreal, married Equaysayway, the daughter of White Crane, the village chief on the island, and became a person of much importance thereabout. For over a quarter of a century this island nabob lived at his ease; here he cultivated a little farm, commanded a variable but far-reaching fur trade, first as agent of the Northwest Company, and, later, of the American Fur Company, and reared a large family. His sons were educated at Montreal, and become the heads of families of traders, interpreters, and _voyageurs_.

To this little paradise of the Cadottes there came (in 1818) two st.u.r.dy, fairly educated young men from Ma.s.sachusetts, Lyman Marcus Warren, and his younger brother, Truman Warren. Engaging in the fur trade, these two brothers, of old Puritan stock, married two half-breed daughters of Michel Cadotte. In time they bought out Michel's interests, and managed the American Fur Company's stations at many far-distant places, such as Lac Flambeau, Lac Court Oreilles, and the St. Croix. The Warrens were the last of the great La Pointe fur traders, Truman dying in 1825, and Lyman twenty-two years later.

Lyman Warren, although possessed of a Catholic wife, was a Presbyterian.

Not since the days of Marquette had there been an ordained minister at La Pointe, and the Catholics were not just then ready to reenter the long-neglected field. Warren was eager to have religious instruction on the island, for both Indians and whites; and in 1831 succeeded in inducing the American Home Missionary Society to send hither, from Mackinac, the Rev. Sherman Hall and wife, as missionary and teacher.

These were the first Protestant missionaries upon the sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior. For many years their modest little church building at La Pointe was the center of a considerable and prosperous mission, both island and mainland, which did much to improve the condition of the Chippewa tribe. In later years the mission was moved to Odanah.

Four years after the coming of the Halls, there arrived at the island village a worthy Austrian priest, Father (afterward Bishop) Baraga. In a small log chapel by the side of the Indian graveyard, this new mission of the older faith throve apace. Baraga visited Europe to beg money for the cause, and in a few years constructed a new chapel; this is sometimes shown to summer tourists as the original chapel of Marquette, but no part of the ancient mainland chapel went into its construction.

Baraga was a man of unusual attainments, and spent his life in laboring for the betterment of the Indians of the Lake Superior country, with a self-sacrificing zeal which is rare in the records of any church. At present, the Franciscan friars, with headquarters at Bayfield, on the mainland, are in charge of the island mission.

La Pointe has lost many of its old-time characteristics. No longer is it the refuge of squalid Indian tribes; no longer is it a center of the fur trade, with gayly clothed _coureurs de bois_, with traders and their dusky brides, with rollicking _voyageurs_ taking no heed of the morrow.

With the killing of the game, and the opening of the Lake Superior country to the occupation of farmers and miners and manufacturers, its forest trade has departed; the Protestant mission has followed the majority of the Indian islanders to mainland reservations; and the revived mission of the Mother Church has also been quartered upon the bay sh.o.r.e.

WISCONSIN TERRITORY FORMED

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

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

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

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

By this time settlers were coming into the region west of the lake.

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

Thus far, this region beyond Lake Michigan had borne no particular name.

It was simply an outlying part of the Northwest Territory; or of the Territories of Indiana, Illinois, or Michigan, as the case might be.

But, now that it was to be a Territory by itself, a name had to be adopted. The one taken was that of its princ.i.p.al river, although "Chippewau" was preferred by many people. Wisconsin is an Indian name, the exact meaning of which is unknown; some writers have said that it signifies "gathering of the waters," or "meeting of the waters," but there is no warrant for this. The earliest known French form of the word is "Misconsing," which gradually became crystallized into "Ouisconsin."

When the English language became dominant, it was necessary to change the spelling in order to preserve the sound; it thus, at first, became "Wiskonsan," or "Wiskonsin," but finally, by official action, "Wisconsin." The "k" was, however, rather strongly insisted on by Governor Doty and many newspaper editors, in the days of the Territory.

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

A month was spent in this contest. The claimants were Milwaukee, Racine, Koshkonong, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Wisconsinapolis, Peru, Wisconsin City, Portage, Helena, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville, Ca.s.sville, Belleview, and Dubuque (now in Iowa, but then in Wisconsin).

Some of these towns existed only upon maps published by real estate speculators.

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

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