The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin Part 5

[Footnote 129: _Ibid._ IV., 597.]

[Footnote 130: Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 149; Smith, Wisconsin, II., 315.]

[Footnote 131: Coll. de Ma.n.u.s., III., 622.]

[Footnote 132: See Hebberd's account, Wisconsin under French Dominion; Coll. de Ma.n.u.s., I., 623; Smith, Wisconsin, II., 315.]

[Footnote 133: Margry, VI., 543.]

[Footnote 134: Tailhan, Perrot, _pa.s.sim_; N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 570, 619, 621; Margry, VI., 507-509, 553, 653-4; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 422, 425; Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 154.]

[Footnote 135: N.Y. Col. Docs., V., 726 ff.]

[Footnote 136: _Ibid._ IV., 732, 735, 796-7; V., 687, 911.]

[Footnote 137: Margry, VI., 553, 563, 575-580; Neill in _Mag. Western History_, November, 1887.]

[Footnote 138: Perrot, 148; Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 42; Hebberd, Wisconsin under French Dominion, chapters on the Fox wars.]

[Footnote 139: Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 190-1.]

[Footnote 140: Oneida county.]

[Footnote 141: Sawyer county.]

[Footnote 142: Margry, VI.]

[Footnote 143: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 84, and citations; _vide post_, p. 41.]

FRENCH SETTLEMENT IN WISCONSIN.

Settlement was not the object of the French in the Northwest. The authorities saw as clearly as do we that the field was too vast for the resources of the colony, and they desired to hold the region as a source of peltries, and contract their settlements. The only towns worthy of the name in the Northwest were Detroit and the settlements in Indiana and Illinois, all of which depended largely on the fur trade.[144] But in spite of the government the traffic also produced the beginnings of settlement in Wisconsin. About the middle of the century, Augustin de Langlade had made Green Bay his trading post. After Pontiac's war,[145]

Charles de Langlade[146] made the place his permanent residence, and a little settlement grew up. At Prairie du Chien French traders annually met the Indians, and at this time there may have been a stockaded trading post there, but it was not a permanent settlement until the close of the Revolutionary war. Chequamegon bay was deserted[147] at the outbreak of the French war. There may have been a regular trading post at Milwaukee in this period, but the first trader recorded is not until 1762.[148] Doubtless wintering posts existed at other points in Wisconsin.

The characteristic feature of French occupancy of the Northwest was the trading post, and in ill.u.s.tration of it, and of the centralized administration of the French, the following account of De Repentigny's fort at Sault Ste. Marie (Michigan) is given in the words of Governor La Jonquiere to the minister for the colonies in 1751:[149]

"He arrived too late last year at the Sault Ste. Marie to fortify himself well; however, he secured himself in a sort of fort large enough to receive the traders of Missilimakinac.... He employed his hired men during the whole winter in cutting 1100 pickets of fifteen feet for his fort, with the doublings, and the timber necessary for the construction of three houses, one of them thirty feet long by twenty wide, and two others twenty-five feet long and the same width as the first. His fort is entirely furnished with the exception of a redoubt of oak, which he is to have made twelve feet square, and which shall reach the same distance above the gate of the fort. His fort is 110 feet square.

"As for the cultivation of the lands, the Sieur de Repentigny has a bull, two bullocks, three cows, two heifers, one horse and a mare from Missilimakinac.... He has engaged a Frenchman who married at Sault Ste.

Marie an Indian woman to take a farm; they have cleared it and sowed it, and without a frost they will gather 30 to 35 sacks of corn. The said Sieur de Repentigny so much feels it his duty to devote himself to the cultivation of these lands that he has already entered into a bargain for two slaves[150] whom he will employ to take care of the corn[151]

that he will gather upon these lands."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 144: Fergus, Historical Series, No. 12; Breese, Early History of Illinois; Dunn, Indiana; Hubbard, Memorials of a Half Century; Monette, History of the Valley of the Mississippi, I., ch. iv.]

[Footnote 145: Henry, Travels, ch. x.]

[Footnote 146: See Memoir in Wis. Hist. Colls., VII.; III., 224; VII., 127, 152, 166.]

[Footnote 147: Henry, Travels.]

[Footnote 148: Wis. Hist. Colls., I., 35.]

[Footnote 149: Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 435-6.]

[Footnote 150: Indians. Compare Wis. Hist. Colls., III., 256; VII., 158, 117, 179.]

[Footnote 151: The French minister for the colonies expressing approval of this post writes in 1752: "As it can hardly be expected that any other grain than corn will grow there, it is necessary at least for a while to stick to it, and not to persevere stubbornly in trying to raise wheat." On this Dr. E.D. Neill comments: "Millions of bushels of wheat from the region west and north of Lake Superior pa.s.s every year ...

through the s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l at Sault Ste. Marie." The corn was for supplying the voyageurs.]

THE TRADERS' STRUGGLE TO RETAIN THEIR TRADE.

While they had been securing the trade of the far Northwest and the Illinois country, the French had allowed the English to gain the trade of the upper Ohio,[152] and were now brought face to face with the danger of losing the entire Northwest, and thus the connection of Canada and Louisiana. The commandants of the western posts were financially as well as patriotically interested. In 1754, Green Bay, then garrisoned by an officer, a sergeant and four soldiers, required for the Indian trade of its department thirteen canoes of goods annually, costing about 7000 livres each, making a total of nearly $18,000.[153] Bougainville a.s.serts that Marin, the commandant of the department of the Bay, was a.s.sociated in trade with the governor and intendant, and that his part netted him annually 15,000 francs.

When it became necessary for the French to open hostilities with the English traders in the Ohio country, it was the Wisconsin trader, Charles de Langlade, with his Chippeway Indians, who in 1752 fell upon the English trading post at Pickawillany and destroyed the center of English trade in the Ohio region.[154] The leaders in the opening of the war that ensued were Northwestern traders. St. Pierre, who commanded at Fort Le Boeuf when Was.h.i.+ngton appeared with his demands from the Governor of Virginia that the French should evacuate the Ohio country, had formerly been the trader in command at Lake Pepin on the upper Mississippi.[155] Coulon de Villiers, who captured Was.h.i.+ngton at Fort Necessity, was the son of the former commandant at Green Bay.[156]

Beaujeau, who led the French troops to the defeat of Braddock, had been an officer in the Fox wars.[157] It was Charles de Langlade who commanded the Indians and was chiefly responsible for the success of the ambuscade.[158] Wisconsin Indians, representing almost all the tribes, took part with the French in the war.[159] Traders pa.s.sed to and from their business to the battlefields of the East. For example, De Repentigny, whose post at Sault Ste. Marie has been described, was at Michillimackinac in January, 1755, took part in the battle of Lake George in the fall of that year, formed a partners.h.i.+p to continue the trade with a trader of Michillimackinac in 1756, was at that place in 1758, and in 1759 fought with Montcalm on the heights of Abraham.[160]

It was not without a struggle that the traders yielded their beaver country.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 152: Margry, VI., 758.]

[Footnote 153: Canadian Archives, 1886, clxxii.]

[Footnote 154: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., 84.]

[Footnote 155: Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 433. Was.h.i.+ngton was guided to the fort along an old trading route by traders; the trail was improved by the Ohio Company, and was used by Braddock in his march (Sparks, Was.h.i.+ngton's Works, II., 302).]

[Footnote 156: Wis. Hist. Colls., V., 117.]

[Footnote 157: _Ibid._, 115.]

[Footnote 158: Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, II., 425-6. He was prominently engaged in other battles; see Wis. Hist. Colls., VII., 123-187.]

[Footnote 159: Wis. Hist. Colls., V., 117.]

[Footnote 160: Neill, in _Mag. West. Hist._, VII., 17, and Minn. Hist.

Colls., V., 434-436. For other examples see Wis. Hist. Colls., V., 113-118; Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 430-1.]