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[Prom the WiBCotmIn Academy of ScUncJ
LIBRARY
Arte, aud Letiurt ]
FIRST FRENCH FOOT-PKINTS BE^
OR, WHAT BROUGET THE FREN^
INTO THE NORTHWEST?
'.fm*^
Br JAMES D. UUTLER, LL. D.
Copper mines in the north, and burialbartows everywhere, be*
speak prehistoric races io Wisconsin. But iu mo'lirn Wisconsin
there was little agricultural settlement before 1836, which we may
accordingly reckon its American birth year.
Between these two developments, however, there was a third, a
sort of midway station between the mound builder or the Indian
and the Anglo-Saxon — namely, the French period. This portion
of our annals seems worthy of more attention than it has yet
received.
The French were early on Lake Huron, and even in Wiscon-
sin. They were there before the cavaliers in Virginia, the Dutch
at Albany, and the Puritans of Boston had pushed inland much
more than a day's journey. The Mississippi was mapped before
the Ohio. Champlain sailed on Lake Huron in 1615, only seven
years after ttie settlement of Quebec. A monk had arrived there
a month or two before Champlain.
On early maps the contrast between French knowledge and
English ignorance is at once plain to the eye. On the map drawn
by Champlain, in 1632, we see the Lakes which we call Ontario,
Huron, Superior and Michigan, while no one of them, nor indeed
any river St. Lawrence, is discoverable on Peter Heylin's atlas,
the one best known in London twenty years afterward. On the
blank, where those inland seas should have figured, we read the
words America Mexicana, as if Mexico liad extended to Hudson's
Bay.
But wbiie the English on the Atlantic coast were ignorant of
western geography, and before the French in Canada numbered
ten thousand, Joliet and Marquette, in 1673, traversed Wisconsin
from lake to river. They were long supposed to be among the
earliest explorers of Wiacpnsin. In 1853, however, the Catholic
iB
mm^
P«9B
historiaD, J. G. Shea, pointed out in a volume of Jesuit Relations
the following words, written from Quebec to France, in 1640, by
Father Ls Jeune : " M. Nicollet, who has penetrated into the
most distant regions, has assured me that if he had pushed on
three days longer down a great river which issues from the second
lake of the Hurons (evidently meaning Lake Michigan), he would
have found the sea."
The word Mississippi, meaning " great water," was ambiguous,
and, though really denoting a river, might well be mistaken for a
sea, especially by an adventurer who knew the sea to be in that
direction, and who believed it by no means remote.
On the strength of this Jesuit testimony, Parkman remarks :
*' As early as 1 639, Nicollet ascended the Green Bay of Lake
Michigan and crossed to the waters of the Mississippi." This was
within nine years after the founding of Boston, which claims to be
of all northern cities the most ancient.
But in the lowest deep a lower deep still opens. According to
the latest researches of Benjamin Suite, Nicollet was in Wiscon-
sin four or five years earlier than 1639. He started west from
Canada in 1634, and returned the year following. The best
Canadian investigators assure us that be never traveled west
again, but, marrying and becoming interpreter at Three Rivers,
below Montreal, he remained there or thereabouts thenceforward
till his death. All agree that Nicollet visited Wisconsin. If it
is proved that be was not here in 1639 or afterward, he must have
been here before. There is some reason for holding that Nicollet
had penetrated into Wisconsin at a date still earlier than 1634.
Chicago is not known to have been visited by any European
before 1673. In the autumn of that year Marquette, returning
from his voyage down the Mississippi, was conducted from the
Illinois river by Indians to that spot as affording the shortest port-
age to Lake Michigan. The next year that missionary, on a coast-
ing tour along the lake, after a voyage of forty-one days from
Green Bay, reached Chicago, — which was then uninhabited. As
sickness disabled him from going further, his Indian oarsman
built him a hut, and two French traders who already had a post a
few leagues inland, ministered to him till the next spring, wbec
he so far recovered as to proceed to St Joseph. Another Jesuit
was also met at Chicago by four score warriors of the Illinoia
tribe in 1676.
Three years afterward, in 1679, La Salle found no inhabitants
there. On his map made the next year he described it as a port-
age of only a thousand paces, yet thought it in no way suited
for communication between the lake and Illinois river, as the latter
at low water was for forty leagues not navigable. Within two
yearri after that, however, in 1681, he preferred this route for his
own passage. On the sixteenth of December starting from Chi-
cago with canoes on sleds, he arrived at the mouth of the Mis-
sissippi in one hundred and seven days, — that is on the sixth of
the following April.
The Chicago portage was traversed by Tonty, La Salle's most
trusted and trust- worthy lieutenant, June, 1683, and by Durantye in
1686. La Salle's brother detained there in 1688 by a stonn,
made maple sugar, and in one hundred and ten days after leaving
its harbor, had made his way to Montreal.
After eleven years more, St. Cosme found a house of the
Jesuits there established, at which, as at a sort of post office,
Father Gravier obtained in 1700, letters from Paris. From that
point La Salle had written a letter to La Barre, Governor of
Canada, in 1683, and in the map by Franquelin, royal hydro-
grapher at Quebec, dated 1684, eighty houses, — meaning wig-
wams, are set down on the site of Chicago. It was then viewed
as a 'northern out post of La Salle's central castle — the Rock of
St. Louis, — that marvellous natural fortress which the French
explorer found ready to his hand, — " his wish exactly to hia
heart's desire," now called Starved Rock, near the confluence of the
Big Vermilion with the Illinois river, a few miles west of Ottawa.
All the way down from this era of La Salle the French as
rovers, traders, settlers, soldiers and missionaries in our North-
west, are traceable generation after generation. The chain is as
unbroken as that of apostolical succession has ever been fancied.
How shall we account for the phenomenon I have now sketched,
that the French penetrated so far inland so early and so persist-
ently? My answer to this question is implied in the words Fun,
Faith, Fur, False Fancies, Finesse and Feudalism.
Nicollet, it xa admitted, was west of Lake Michigan before La
Salle was born. What brought him thus early into the heart of
the continent ?
My answer is that he came for sport ; yes, just for the fun of
the thing — or the romance and exhilaration of adventure.
Where is the community in which it is not [iroverbial to this
day that worlds of fun lie in camping? What amount of civili-
zation can kill off lovo for a feast of tabernacles, or relish for
camp-meetings ? What boy reads Kobinson Crusoe without a
passion to run away ? Hunting, fishing, boating, discovering new
lakes and streams, new varieties of woodland and opening, attack-
ing or eluding antagonists — whether men or beasts — fire, frost,
flood, famine ; " foemen worthy of their steel," for what man
that is young, strong and brave, must not these excitements have
charms? When will the English give up their Alplc^ club ? In
France no man was more of a sportsman than the King, Louis
XIV, and in his era especially, French country gentlemen spent
most of their time hunting and fishing. Accordingly for the French
those pursuits had dignified associations. The first French party
that ever wintered on the shore of Lake Erie thus wrote home,
more than two centuries ago : '* We were in a terrestrial paradise.
Fish and beiver abounded. We saw more than a hundred roe-
bucks in a single band, and half as many fawns. Hear's meat
was more savory than any pork in France, We dried or buc-
caned the meat of the nine largest. The grapes were as large and
sweet as any at home. We even made wine. No lack of prunes,
chestnuts and lotus fruit all the autumn. None of us were home-
sick for Montreal." Far west was the happy hunting ground of
Indian fable. There too the French found it in fact
The late Judge Baird of Green Bay used to describe as the hap-
piest three weeks of his life, the time when, taking his family and
friends, with a crew of Indian oarsmen, he voyaged in a bark
canoe from our great lake to our great river, along the track of
Joliet and Marquette. Every day the ladies gathered flowers as
fair as Proserpine plucked in the field of Enna, while the men
were never without success as fishers and hunters. They camped,
usually early in the afternoon, wherever inclination was attracted
by natural beauty or romantic appearance. After feasting on
I
efore La
heart of
; fun of
e.
il to this
of civili-
elish for
ithoat a
iring new
5, attack-
ire, froat,
hat man
jnta have
lub? Id
ng, Louis
len spent
le French
nch party
)te home,
laradise.
red roe-
ar'a meat
or buc-
arge and
prunes,
re home-
round of
the hap-
rally and
a bark
track of
3wers as
the men
camped,
ttracted
ting on
venison, fish and wild-fowl, they slept beside plashing waters till
roused by morning birds. At every turn in the rivers, new scen-
ery opened upon them. Overhanging groves, oak openings,
prairies, rapids, Baraboo bluffs, outcrops of rock, ravines, mouths
of branches, each was a pleasant surprise. That merry month of
May, 1830, recalled to the voyager, in the long lapse from youth
to age, no other like itself. How many would give half their
lives for such a wild-wood memory !
In the light of such an experience, it is easy to see how Nicol-
let was drawn on and on into the unknown west No wonder
that, only ten years after Quebec was occupied, we find him, in
1618, wintering half-way from that new-born post to Lake Huron,
in the Isle of Allumette. He had no longing for the security of
dwellers beneath the guns of Quebe'.\ Amid his perils he de-
spised them, as Caudle-lectured husbands despise those couples
who vegetate together for years without a cross word, but in such
a stupid style that they never know they are born.
Nicollet was a representative of a large element among French
Canadians. In 1609, at one of Champlain's first interviews with
Indians from the remote interior, a young man of his company
had boldly volunteered to join them on their homeward journey,
and to winter among them. He remembered Pierre Gambie, a
page of Laudonniere in Florida, who being allowed to go freely
among the Indians, had become prime favorite with the chief of
the island of Edelano, married his daughter, and in his absence
reigned in his stead. Champlain's retainer was among the first of
a class — up to everything, down to everything — who " followed
the Indians in their roamings, grew familiar with their language,
allied themselves with their women, became oracles in the camp
and leaders on the war-path."
Their fun was as fast and furious as Tam O'Shanter's :
" Kings may be great, bat they were glorious,
O'er all the ills of life victorious."
For them civilization was no longer either cold or hot — but so
lukewarm that they spewed it out of their mouths. Something
of their feeling burned in their best historian, Francis Park man,
who exchanged Boston for the Black Hills before one miner had
pushed into thoir fastnesses. His strongest youthful passion was
to share in unaltered Indian life, and his loudest cry was : " Sav-
agery, with all thy lacks I love thee still !"
Preference for Indian life has grown up even in FawZee captives,
and, what is most surprising, in females.
A well-known instance was the daughter of Williams — the
Massachusetts minister — who refused to be redeemed from cap>
tivity in a Canadian tribe. Some will suggest that having been
brought up in a parsonage of grim and vinegar aspect, she
thought nothing could be more repulsive than a Puritan strait-
jacket But many similar instances occurred during Bouquet's
expedition west of the Ohio, which was undertaken in order to
rescue whites from Indian bondage. Several women, and those
not of ministerial families at all, when compelled to return to
white settlements, soon made their escape to the woods, prefer-
ring wigwams to their native homes. No thrice-driven bed of
down was so soft to them as a couch which, as their phrase was,
had never been made up since the creation. Many captive wen,
when given up to Bouquet, and bound fast to prevent their es-
cape, sat sullen and scowling that they were forced back into
society.
In civilized society there was no sweet savor of romance for
" A wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts."
No wonder, then, adventurers into the great west, who would
rather be scalped at Mackinaw than live in Montreal, became a
permanent class. No wonder when la Salle, first of white men,
had burst into the heart of Illinois, six of his soldiers deserted,
and that as many more of his little band had ran away in the far
north. One oi these last absconders was encountered by Henne-
pin in the W\\<\% of Minnesota. Another in that region was a run-
away from Hennepin himself. Nothing less than throwing them-
selves overboard from all social restraints could give scope for
that superabundant vitality which philosophers hold is pre-
eminently a French characteristic.
el
9
miner had
assion was
as: "Sav-
jeoaptives,
ima — the
from cap-
viog been
apect, she
tan strait-
Bouquet's
order to
and those
return to
h, prefer-
en bed of
traHe was,
tive men,
their es-
»ack i nto
ice for
would
lecame a
ite men,
eserted,
Q the far
Henne-
is a run-
ig them-
!ope for
is pre-
The roving class was all the larger, because settled oolonisis
were vassals, both in soul and body. In Canada, individuals
existed for the government, not the government for individuals.
Cooped up in the dull exile of petty forts, their prayer was
that of the country mouse when entrapped in a city mansion —
" O give me but a hollow tree,
A crast of bread and liberty."
La Hontan — a young officer fresh from France — thus wrote
home from Montreal : " A part of the winter I was hunting with
the Algonquins, the rest of it I spent here very disagreeably.
One can neither go on a pleasure party, nor play cards, nor visit
the ladies, without the cur^ preaching about it; and masqueraders
he excommunicates."
Other writers add that no dances were allowed in which both
sexes took part.
Allowing dances to one sex only was about as satisfactory to
gay and festive youth as a father confessor's permitting a fair
penitent to rouge onlj' one side of her face; or letting out an
American lady to walk the Parisian boulevards only on condi-
tion that she never goes alone, never wears colors, and never looks
into a shop window. Anti-dancing laws — it is needless to add, —
were doubly vexatious to a Frenchman, since his feet when he's
sleeping seem dreaming a dance.
Fathers who neglected to marry sons till they were twenty, or
daughters till they were sixteen, were fined. Bachelors were
barred out from the Indian trade, and even branded with marks
of infamy.
In Quebec chronicles for 1671 we read that Paul Dupuy, having
said that when the English cut ofY the head of Charles I. they did
a good thing, the council declared him guilty of words tending to
sedition, and condemned him to be led in his shirt, with a rope
about his neck and a torch in his hand, from prison to the castle,
there to ask pardon of the king; to be branded on the cheek, set
in stocks, laid in irons, eta
At the same period Louis Gaboury. charged with eating meat
in Lent, was sentenced to be tied tnree hours to a stake, and then
on his knees to ask pardon at the door of the chape). Swearers,
for the sixth offense, hid the upper lip cut with a hot iron, and if
thej still uttered oat.hs, h^d the tongue cut out altogether. Two
men were shot at Quebec tor selling brandy to Indians.
Not a few French immigrants had been tramps in the old world,
and transportation to the new world gave them no new nature.
The Bohemian element was in them as an instinct, and was as
lure to come out by natural selection as ducklings hatched by a
hen are to take to water. The Saint Liwrenco flowed in one di-
rection : the sinful loafers steered in t(uite another.
Other Canadians had been convlrts and so would naturally re-
gard all walls as stifling imprisonment. They were not a pious
race, but one prayer they never forgot, namely . '' From red-tape
and ritualism, good Lord, deliver us !"
An order of Indian Knights sprung up — young men who
thought nothing so tine as to go tricked out like Trdians, and
nothing so attractive as Indian life ; doing nothing, oaring for
nothing, following every inclination, and getting out of the way
of all correcrion. This club miy have been a natural reaction
from a socieiy of matron.s and maiden.s established to promote
gossip pure and simple. Meetings were held every Thursday at
which each member was bound by a <fnspel oath to confe.s.s — not
his own sins, but other people's — that is. all she knew, alike ^ood
and bad, regarding her acquaintance.
There \< a pliyskal reason why thosn who have learned to live
in the open nir cannot live in houses. Sleeping under roofs they
exchange oxygen for miasma.
The Circassian mountain chief, S hamyl, when a Russian pris-
oner, was luxuriously housed, but at the end of a week told his
keepers he must commit suicide unless they would allow him to
lodge above the roof instead of under it. So, too, our Texan hero,
Sam Houston, when, after open air campaigns, he entered the
hall of congress, compared himself to a mouse under an air
pump.
" Yes, there is sweetness in the prairie air,
And life that bloated ease can never hope to share."
During several jenrs uf frontier life, I have constantly fallen in
with frontier men, who hover in the wilderness beyond the ut-
most verge of settlement Villages, or at least ranchmen, follow
them but only, as Paddy prays the ble-osing of the Lord may fol-
low his enemies all the days of their lives — that is, so as never to
overtake them at all. Change of base and new departures are as
familiar to them as to any politician. The only grain they ever
sow is wild oats.
The French found more fun in woodcraft than the English
could. The one could thrive where the other would starve. It
is an old saying that a French cook will make more out of the
shadow of a chicken than an English one can of its substance.
When a French army, near Salamanca, was cut oflE from supplies
for a week by Wellington, he thought it a miracle that they did
not surrender. The truth was that they had subsisted all the
while on acorns. For more than a week Nicollet's only food was
bark, seasoned with bits of the moss which the Canadians named
rock-tripe. But he wns not starved out The Koman empire
spread widely ea.st and west, but never very far north. The fact
is strange, l^o account for it, some say that Roman noses were
t<x) long, and so were nipped off by Jack Frost. The French are
a enub-no.^ed race and so could better brHve bliz/.ards.
There is a strange elatiov when we di^'eover with how many so-
called necessaries we can dispense, and while having nothing, yet
possess all things which we absoluiely nted. Detecting new
capabilities, whether of daring doing or enduring, we seem to
become new beings and of a higher order. We discover new
Americas within ourselves.
According to the Greek sage, he is nearest the Gods who has
fewest wants. In proportion, then, as we become self-sufficing,
we approximate to the Gods. Not without exultation did the
adventurer learn to make all things of bark — not only baskets,
dishes, boats and beds, but houses and food. Every tree^ when
he perceived its bark to be rougher and thicker on the north side, —
became for him a compass-plant In his whole manner of life
" the forester gained," says Parkman, •* a self-sustaining energy,
as well as powers of action and perception before unthought of, —
10
T
a subtlety o( sense more akin to the instinct of brutes than to hu-
man reason. He could approach like a fox, attack like a lion,
vanish like a bird."
The Homeric and earliest ideal of an adventurer, single-handed,
into unknown regions, was Ulysses. It is true he goes grumbling
all through the Odyssey, — but for all that he is happier to the
very core than he could be with Circe or Calypso in any castle of
Indolence. He thrives under evil, and at every new stage of his
wanderings has new greatness thrust upon hira. More than this :
According to Dante, who met him in the Inferno, he soon tired
of the Ithacan home he had sought so earnestly, and quitted it
for enterprises more distant and perilous than ever.
Many of the early French pushed westward in pilgrimages
longer and more varied than that of the most wide-wandering
Greek. Their motto was :
'* No pent-up citadel contracts our powers.
But the whole boundless continent is ours."
They pushed into the heart of the continent faster and farther
thanks to matchless highways, — I mean rivers and lakes, — styled
by their wisest contemporary, Pascal, " roads which march and
carry us whithersoever we wish to go." Thanks also to bark ca-
noes, they flew as on the wings of eagles into the recesses of the
west. When wishing to traverse Indian routes they had sense
enough to avail themselves of Indian ioa/.s, doing in Rome as Ro-
mans do. For nine dollars worth of goods the voyageurs bought
a bark twenty feet by two that would last six years. It would
carry four men and more than their weight in baggage, yet was
not too heavy for one man to carry across the portage between
river and river, or round rapids which no boat could climb. Hen-
nepin's bark weighed only fifty pounds. At night or in rains it
was a better shelter than a tent. Thus the boatman was as inde-
pendent as a soldier would be who could carry on his shoulders
not only his horse and baggage, but also his barracks. Previous
to the year 1678, no boat of wood had ever ascended above Mon-
treal. The bark canoe of Judge Baird, of which I have spoken,
was on a larger scale — about thirty feet long and five broad. It
carried thirteen people and all their needments with ease.
to
hi
thJ
11
lan to hu-
ike a lion,
ie-handed,
grumbling
ier to the
J castle of
age of his
than this :
soon tired
quilted it
ilgrimages
vandering
nd farther
}, — styled
narch and
0 bark ca-
ses of the
had sense
6 as Ro'
|rs bought
It would
yet was
between
b. Hen-
n rains it
as inde-
ihoulders
Previous
ve Mon-
spoken,
iroad. It
Year after year La Salle risked life and lost fortune laboring
to build a forty ton vessel for descending the Mississippi. After
heart-breaking failures he trusted himself to a native canoe, and
thanks to this new departure, easily gained the goal of his ambi-
tion. Had he found the great river hedged up by Niagaras — as
was reported by natives — his progress would not have been
stopped. He could have carried his boat till his boat could carry
him.
A man who riding for the first time in a cab and asked where
he was going answered, " To Glory ! " spoke out the exultation
which thrilled every French adventurer with his face set toward
the western unknown, his hands skilled in paddling a bark canoe
and himself encumbered witti no more baggage than the ship-
wrecked rascal who said he had lost everything except his
character.
Throughout the orient the name of doctor is a sesame open.
When Mo.slems overhear a traveler addressed as doctor they unbar
for him even their harems, no matter how often he tells them that
it is only in law or divinity or farriery, that he is a doctor.
Among savages everywhere every civilized man passes in spite
of himself for a physician. Relying on this reputation the early
French ventured into the infinite west. Nor was their quackery
less successful than that of an English monarch touching for the
king's evil when
" Strangely visited people
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures."
When Hennepin was a captive among the Sioux, whose blood
had before been drawn only by the sucking mouths of medicine
men, he bled their asthmatics, he treated other patients with a
confection of hyacinth (a sort of squills) and desperate cases with
orvietum, a theriac compounded of three score and four drugs.
The more ingiedients the more certain, as men thought, the cure,
as the more bullets in a volley the more surely some of thoni will
hit A decade earlier, Per;ot having dosed a surfeited ^'utton
with the same theriac, had succeeded as well as the druggist, who,
when vox populi was prescribed, gave nux vomica. The next
la
night Perrol was waked by chiefs who came for more theriac.
His supply was so small that he only allowed them to hold their
noses over the vial. The odor, however, proved a panacea They
beat their breasts and declared that it had made them immortal.
For this sanitary smell they insisted on paying Perrot ten beaver-
skins. They believed, what no doctor has been able to beat into
Christian patients, that no medicine could do any good if it was
not paid for.
The.^e patients were Miamis. The Sauks, on the otiier hand,
thought no medicine efficacious unices it was V>estowed without
money and without price. One of their tribe who had been bauly
scalded, declared himself cured the moment he was presented
with a gratuitous plug of tobacco.
Relish for the romantic was a considerable element even m r/ti<s-
sionary zeal. Thus Hennepin admits that a passion for travel and
a burning desire to visit strange lands had no .'^uuill part in his
own inclination for missions.
Again, many early bush-rangers belonged to that ciasa who
would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. La Salle fell in
with one tribe in mourning for .the death of a chief, and he said :
"Dry your tears ! T will raise him from the dead. Whatever he
was to wife, children or tribe, that I will be, feeding them and
fighting for them. He is dead no longer."' Thereupon he was
hailed as chief.
Still others dashed among distant cannibals, in hopes, like Brig-
ham Young among Mormons, to become Gods on earth. It paid
for all privations to hear cringing Calibans cry out : " We pray
thee be our God I We'll fish for thee ; we'll kiss thy foot."
Saint Castinc, who had nothing saintly but the name, roaming
with Indians not far from the seaport in Maine which keeps [his
name in me* lory, gained such a supremacy that his aboriginal as-
sociates deemed him the prince of the power of the air.
In 1683, Perrot having built a fort near the outlet of Lake
Pepin, paid a visit to the Sioux up the great river. He was
placed by them on their car of state, which was a buffalo robe.
He was thus lifted on high by a score of warriors, not like Sancho
Panza tossed in a blanket, but borne as reverentially as the Pope
e theriac.
hold their
sa They
immortal,
^n beaver-
beat into
I if It was
iier haod,
id without
)een batily
presented
eu m mis-
travel and
art in his
clasis who
ille fell in
1 he said :
latever he
them and
he was
ike Brig-
It paid
We pray
3t."
1 Gaming
ceeps [his
ginal as-
ol: Lake
He was
ilo robe.
3 Saneho
he Pope
18
on hig seiiin (jestatoria, or portable throne, into the house of council.
There, holding a bowl of brandy which the Indians thought to
be water, he set it on fire. He thus made them believe that he
could at will burn up their lakes and rivers. A score of years
before, — certainly as early as 1665, — he had become a potentate
among Pottawatoinies near Green Bay. Pcrrot was worshipped
with clouds of incense from a hundred calumets, because he
brought iron, — especially in the shape of guns and tomahawks.
The further west he went the more uidieard of his iron and pow-
der, and the more they proved him a God.
One mode of reverence was to break ofl:' branches of trees and
sweep the path his feet were about to tread. But tlie divine honors
paid to Perrot were not always delightful. The lowas, whom he
pronounces the greatest weepers in the worlJ, wept most eflusively
at his coming. Their welcome, he tells us, was bathing his face
with their tears— "the etTusions of their eyes, and alas ! of their
mouths and noses too I "
Other French adventurers threw up rockei.<^ and thus record the
sensation : '" When the Indians saw the fireworks in the air and
the stars fall from heaven, the women and children began to fly,
and the most courageous of the men to cry for mercy and implore
us very earnestly to stop the play of that wonderful medicine.
Had there been any accidental explosion of chemicals so that
one of the braves was blown up, he would have deemed it all a
part of the show, and as soon as he caught breath would have
exclaimed: 'What next? What in the world will the.«^e magi-
cians do next ?' "
The simplest French conveniences were sublime in aboriginal
eyes. The Mascoutins, when Pcrrot a[)pcared among them, knew
no mode of producing fire except by rubbing two sticks together.
Such friction was ineffectual whenever the sticks were at all wet,
and they were often too damp to kindle — an Irishman would
say — till one had made a fire and dried them. Naturally, Per-
rot's tinder-box was venerated as an angel from heaven. No
wonder that a hundred dozen of these Promethean fire-bringers
are set down in the outfit of La Salle. One of an antique pat-
tern, lately discovered in an Illinois Cave, was shown me in
14
Ottawa, Possibly it is one of the twelve hundred imported by-
La Salle. Had lucifera been known to the French, starting
camp-fires in a twinkling, they must have converted every Indian
into a fire- worshipper and conquered the continent.
The Indians wished that their children should grow up bald,
aside from scalp locks. Their style of hair-cutting had been to
burn childish scalps with red hot stones. Hennepin's razor,
though none of the keenest, was clearly a better depilatory, and
so was hailed as a miracle of mercy.
Nicollet met in council four thousand Wisconsin warriors, who
feasted on six score of beaver. He appeared before them in a
many-colored robe of state, adorned with flowers and birds.
Approaching with a pistol in each hand, he fired both at once.
The natives hence named him " thunder-bearer.' Such a spec-
tacular display was in keeping with the policy which marked the
old French regime in two worlds, and which for centuries proved
equally sovereign in both. The apothecsis of Nicollet would
have been complete if he could have carried a Colt revolver —
the thunderbolt of Jove in the thimble of Minerva, omnipotent
as ever, yet so small that Cupid would steal it, as no longer too
heavy for him to lift or too hot for him to handle.
Of all Europeans the French only gained the ajjedlons of
naiives. From the beginning they fraternized witii them ad the
British never could.
They never sold Indian captives for slaves on southern planta-
tions as the English did. Through hatred of New Englanders
fifty families of Indians there flying west became retainers of La
Salle, and some of them were his most trusty oarsmen and braves
in discovering the Mississippi. Four score years, said La Salle,
have we had Indian allie:^. Never has one of them proved false
to France, We can safely trust them with arms. From first to
last the Illinois tribes were faithful to the French. When the
French, after their loss of Illinois, went west of the Mississippi
in 1763, the Indians followed them. Each tribe loved the French
with an affection so ardent as to be jealous, and strove to keep
them all to itself, resenting their dealing with any other tribe as a
sort of adulterous infidelity. For a score of rears Nicholas
tt
wl
hi
16
nported by
ch, starting
very ludian
3w up bald,
had been to
pin's razor,
ilatory, and
irriors, who
e tliem in a
and birds.
)th at once,
ich a spec-
marked the
ries proved
llet would
revolver —
3mni potent
longer too
'fections of
em as the
rn planta-
nglunders
ners of La
nd braves
La Sille,
Dved false
)m first to
Vhen the
ississippi
le French
e to keep
tribe as a
Nicholas
I
i
Perrot won golden opinions among the Ou*agamies. After his de-
parture they declared in council with the governor of Canada,
that their fathers having gone they had no more any breath, or
soul.
The French captivated the Indians and the Indians captivated
them. For them, then, there was a fullness of fun — yes patadise
where John Bull would have felt himself in such a purgatory that
he could not fare worse by going farther.
One P^nglishman who had been forced to make trial of savage
life, when asked how he liked it, answered : " The more I see In-
dians, the better I love dogs."' But amid the same horrors a
Frenchman enjoyed himself so well that he declares he was ready
to burn his cook books ' What oould Frenchman do more?
In no long time most northwestern tribes were tinctured with
French blood. Perrot treats of French among fugitive Sauteurs
on the south shore of Lake Superior as early as IGfU. The
first permanent settler in Wisconsin, Charles Langlade, was
a French half-breed. So was was the first S(|uatter at Madison —
(long before the Peck family), St. Cyr, the only saint we could
ever boast. In 1816, when the United^tates forces took posses-
sion of Wisconsin, the natives being assembled for treaties, said:
" Pray do not disturb our French hroOon-'^.
Adventurers among western aborigines in time became fur-
traders or interpreters and factors for such traders, as well as mis-
sionaries or other ofhcials both military and civil. But their
first impulse to plunge into the depth of the wilderness, and to
abide there, was because they liked it. To their imaginations
forest-life was as charming as the grand tour of Europe a genera-
tion ago to ours, or as is girdling the terraqueous globe at the
present day, or as roughing it on the Yellowstone to General
Sherman, or on the great divide to Lord Duil'erin, or rounding
the world on horseback to Sir George Simpson, or Beltrami's sol-
itary scamper to the sources of the Mississippi, or the tliree years
cruise of the Challenger to Lord Campbell, whose Log Letters
skimming olT the cream of all climes and finding no drop sour,
cry out in every line, " 0 what Fun ! " It was much more tiiau
all this, and can only be compared to the wild dedication of him-
IC
self to unpathed waters, undreamed shores and sands and miser-
ies enough by Stanley, in quest of Livingston, or the sources of
the Nile and Congo.
Seekers of pleasure in the pathless woods followed Nicollet
into Wisronsiit, as well as elsewhere in the Mississippi Valley.
Their race endured, and it still endures. Some survivals of it
were met with in the first decade of our century far up the Mis-
souri, by Lewis and Clark, and by I 'ike at the sources of the
Mississippi. Within the last ten years, the British Major Butler,
with whom I traveled down the lied River of the North in 1872,
encountered them on his })ilgri mages throughout the great lone
land and tho wild north land to the shores of the Pacific.
Enamoured of wild sports, tiie French more than two centuries
ago rushed from Lower Canada into tho borders of the Upper
Lakes. They came the sooner tlianks to unrivaled facilities for
boating, hunting and fishing, — to an appetite for open air which
grows by what it feeds on, — to their feeling at home in wigwams,
to their ])assion to break loose from law martial and monkish, and
to enjoy unbounded license, a.s well as to the pro eminence which
knowledge gave them among barbarians. To the love of fun,
then, and the full feast of it fresh as tlie woods and waters that
inspired it, — with which lie could fill himself in western wilds,
we in Wisconsin owe the explorations of Nicollet and others of
like temper, and so our most ancient historic land mark.s. One
of the first j-'rench foundations here was laid in fun: Fun then
was /'//(damental.
But if fun led the way to exj)loring the far West, jaifh also
was there, and not least in Wisconsin, a French foundation.
Faith followed hard after fun, and sometimes outstripped it.
The friar, Le Curon, was on Lake Iluron before Nicollet had pene-
trated half way there. Nicollet lingered in the Isle of Allamette,
several hundred miles short of Lake iluron, till 1620. But,
five years earlier, mass had been already said on that lake by the
Franciscan with sandaled feet and girt with his knotted cord.
The monks passage had been paid by the governor, but he worked
his own passage and that bare-footed, since shoes would injure the
bark canoe. He thus wrote to his superior: " It would be hard
•m
1
t
1^
Pi
Tl
tc
Ol
r
ds and miser-
the sources of
owed Nicollet
issippi Valley,
iurvivals of it
• up the Mis-
OLirces of the
Major Butler,
^orth in 1872,
he great lone
Pacific.
two centuries
f the Upper
I facilities for
en uir which
! in wigwams,
monkish, and
incnce which
love of fun,
waters that
ostern wilds,
1 others of
larks. One
Fun then
jaifh also
ation.
:stripped it.
t had pene-
AL'amette,
620. But,
ake hy the
•tted cord.
he worked
injure the
d be hard
17
to tell you how tired I was with paddling all day among the In-
dians, wading the rapids a hundred times and more, through mud
and over sharp stones that cut my feet, carrying the canoe and
luggage through the woods to avoid cataracts, and half starved
the while, for we had nothing to eat but porridge, of water and
pounded maize, of which they gave me a very small allowance."
Through the winter of 1615 in a hermitage a thousand miles west
of (Quebec which was itself an ultima Thule, — this friar was mak-
ing catechisms or struggling with the difficulties of the Huron
tongue, or expounding the faith in broken Indian, and by way of
object lesson showing *' four great likenesses of the Madonna sus-
pended on a cord."
As early as 1614, when the French first ascended the Ottawa,
they planted crosses of white cedar on its shores and islands. In
1625 the Jesuit Brebeuf began a three years' sojourn on Huron
waters. Onward from 1634 a permanent mission was maintained
there for fifteen years until the Ilurons were scattered to the four
winds. Missionaries followed them in their dispersion. In sum-
mer plying the paddle all day or toiling through pathless thickets,
bending under a canoe or portable chapel heavy as a peddler's
pack, veritable colporters, while famine, snow storms, cold, treach-
erous ice of the lake, smoke and filth were the luxuries of their
winter wanderings. We underrate the arduousness of mission
journeys until we consider how greatly storms, cold and famine
retarded them, Allouer's voyage from ^Mackinaw to Green Bay
consumed thirty-one days. Marquette was ten da3's more on his
passage from Green Bay to Chicago.
Yet, in 1642, Madame de la Peltric, — a tender and delicate
woman, — reared in Parisian refinements, was seized at Quebec
with a longing to visit the Ilurons, and to preach in person at that
most arduous station. In 1641, the year before one house was
built in Montreal, Fathers Jogues and Raymbault were distribut-
ing rosaries at the mouth of Lake Superior. Previous to 1640
they had become acquainted with Wisconsin Winnebagoes. The
earliest Iroquois baptism was in 1669, but thirty years before,
scores of Hurons had been baptized hundreds of leagues further
west.
2b
18
The first clear trace of a priest in Wisconsin was in 1660. In
that year Father Menard, paddling alonj; the south shore of Lake
Superior for many a weary week, near its western extremity,
reached La Pointe — one of the most northern peninsulas in the
region which is now Wisconsin.
"lie evangelized the natives who flocked together there."
Such are the words of the old chronicler. The meaning is, not
that the Jesuit dispensed the whole gospel to the Indians, nor yet
all that he could give, but only so much of it, such a homuio-
pathic dose — as they would receive.
PJarly travelers into the Orient when they there met certain
albinos thought them the posterity of blacks converted by St.
Thomas and whitened by baptism. It seemed doubtful, how-
ever, whether such a skin-bleaching was a real improvement. In
like manner, may it be questioned whether the western mission-
aries who had chosen St. Thomas for their patron were any more
successful than he.
However we may speculate on this matter, wo must feel that
Menard's motives were the best. Sometimes he had no altar but
his paddles supported by crotched sticks and covered with his
sail. Moreover, he dared not celebrate mass in the presence of
those he had there baptized, because it was be3'ond his power to
convince them that that sacrament was not a juggling trick to se-
cure for the priest slaves in the life beyond life. Father Allouez
was less scrupulous. lie boasts as of some great thing that he
had taught one Wisconsin tribe to make the sign of the cross
and to daub its figure on their shields. When one of these con-
verts had married three sisters at once and was censured for it by
La Salle, his defense was : " I was made a Christian against my
will by Father Allouez." In 1672 this father was welcomed by
Mascoutins whose head-center seems to have been not far from
Portage City.
With Father Menard, in 1660, were three lay-helpers, whom he
next year dispatched .southward into Wisconsin to certain Ilurons
who had sought an asylum at the mouth of Green Bay. Having
labored nine years for those Ilurons in their old home, he soon
followed his fugitive converts, but perished in the wilderness of the
1 1660. In
loreof Lake
1 extremity,
jsulas in the
thcr there."
ming is, not
ans, nor yet
ih a homuso-
mct certain
irted by St.
ubiJul, how-
vemcnt. In
ern mission-
(re any more
ist feel that
no altar but
rod with his
presence of
is power to
trick to se-
er Allouez
ng that he
if the cross
these con-
d for it by
gainst my
Icomed by
t far from
3, whom he
lin Ilurons
Having
le, he soon
mess of the
I
19 f ''^'^X
Black river. It is believed that he was miirdcve<^ liy^JphCf^ktuxy^
for among them his breviary and robe were 'n^fs^ve rod y tars
afterward. That stream, now called //o/.s- lindi', fo>4^ft^eJbaNn(l-
ary between Wisconsin and Michigan, and it is not iNitijg^3fMi<'
which .^id' of it Menard lost his life, lioth states may, therefore,
with equal plausibility, glory in him as their o/'/i protomartyr.
Wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping
forests, drenched with rains, braving every variety of unknown
horror, faint, yet pursuing to the last, well may we, people of both
states, count him worthy of double honor! Doubtless his last re-
gret was that he had not a whole life to lay down for the salvation
of each state.
Four year^ after, in 1605, Father Allouez succeeded Menard at
La Pointe, and carried on his work. Very likely, as in the early
days of Montreal, his only altar lamp was a vial full of fire flies.
When he returned to Quebec for recnforcements, he remained
there only two nights before startmg back again with volunteer
co-workers. La Pointe was then a four months' voyage from
Quebec. lie was saying mass at Green Pay to six hundred In-
dians and eight French traders in 1G69, and the next year exhib-
ited a picture of the last judgment, at Neenah, on Lake Winne-
bago. A silver monstrance, the case in which tlie sacramental
wafer is held up for veneration, presented to the chapel of Allouez
by the French governor, Nicolas Perrot, and bearing the date of
168G, was dug up, in 1802, at De Pere near the head of Green
Bay, and is now treasured in the ambry of the cathedral there.
In 1671, a chart (34x38 centimeters) was drawn, entitled Lake
Tracy or Superi'ir^ with the dependencies of the Mission of the
Holy Spirit [that is La. Pomtc\. It is still extant in Parisian ar-
chives, at the depot of marine charts. Two years later in the
Jesuit relation of 1673, a map of their missions on the Lake of
the Illinois [that is Michigan] was published.
In the same year the first white men, one of them a missionary,
of whose journey a contemporary record remains, crossedsWis-
consin from east to west. These adventurers were Joliet and
Marquette — a noble brace of brothers. Equals in enthusiasm,
the faith of Marquette, the Jesuit, rivaled the rage for discovery
r
^
■M
in Joliet, tlio officer. These explorers were cultivated men, and
experienced observers. For five years Marcjuettc had been a
western pioneer, partly in Wist-onsin, and Joliet, while voya<^ing
on Lake Superior some time before, had also probably trod Wis-
consin soil. From Indian reports they had drawn a map of
the region they purposed to p(!netrate, and kei)t it at hand as they
rowed up Fox river, threaded the marshy maze at the grand
divide and carrying place ^ — now Portage City — and among herds
of elk and deer, floated down the Wisconsin to the great river.
Reaching this grand goal on the seventeenth of June, they glided
with the current of the ^Mississippi for a month, and probably to
the latitude of Memphis, which, according to their t>elicf, was no
more than two degrees north of the Mexican Gulf.
On the return voyage .Toiiet wintered at Green ]iay, where he
had found many good Christians the spring before. The next
season, when he was about to land at AFontreal, his boat capsi/ed
and he was only rescued himself after being four hours in the
water. Ilis journal was lost — a sad loss for Wisconsin, which
was thus bereaved of the wayside notes of the earliest traveler
throughout its whole breadth — a record which who would will-
ingly let drown ?
After all \yho knows but Joliet's loss may have turned out for
our gain? and will still? Who shall count the investigators
that, mourning for Joliet' s misfortune, have thus, or shall, become
doubly zealous to gather up and commit to the custody of our
Historical Society — or of the art preservative of all arts —
every fragment of our annals, letting nothing — no fraction — be
lost?
Throughout the last third of the seventeenth century and in
all generations since, priests of the Catholic faith may be traced
in or near Wisconsin. There AUouez labored for a quarter of a
century onward from 1665. In 1677 Frontenac speaks of the
Green Bay mission as no new thing. All tribes near that Bay
are mentioned in the missionary report for 1658. In 1680 and
for seven years thereafter, Enjalran was stationed there. lie had
been preceded there by Fathers Andre and Albanel, and within a
decade was followed by Nouvel, and three others whose names
men, and
d been a
voyn«,'ing
trod Wis-
i map of
id as they
Lbe grand
long herds
roat river,
ley glided
robably to
ef, was no
, where he
The next
it capsized
ars in the
sin, which
3t traveler
rould will-
ed out for
^estigators
, become
dy of our
I arts —
ition — be
ry and in
be traced
irter of a
cs of the
that Bay
1680 and
lie had
within a
se names
I
I
21
are preserved. As early as 1(>71 their headquarters were Macki-
naw, but they were constantly making excursions and establi^liing
out-stations in the parta beyond. In 1721 Father Chardon had
already labored among the Sacs about (Ireen liuy till he had
given them u}) as beyond hope, and was studying Winnebago in
order to preach to the tribe of that name. Other missionaries are
mentioned at later periods, and the town of Do Pere, meaning
Fadirrs, is said to derive its name from the fact that two Jesuits
BufTercd martyrdom there in 17t!5. In the interior of Wisconsin
there were also stations among the Kickaj)0O3 and ^[enornoiiies.
Downward from the expedition of Joliet and Marquette, Wis-
consin was the favorite thorou''lifare of missionaries as well as
others bound for the southwest. Such way-farers shunned the
east shore of Lake Michigan as infested by the Iroquois. If they
could buy permission of the Foxes they glided down the Wis-
consin river as the shortest and easiest route. Tiiose who failed
to win Indian favor paddled along the Wisconsin shore of Lake
Michigan.
It is a natural question, " W/nit l>rou<ilit the Catholic fathers to
the farthest west at so early a day, while Protestant missionaries,
though abroad in New England before one European dwelt in
Montreal, had not penetrated half-way to the Hudson river?"
It might have been predicted from the out-set by a philosoph-
ical historian, that 1'' reach missionaries would out-do all others
among our aborigines. They had already showed themselves
pre-eminent elsewhere. The French originated the crusades, and
from first to last they were the chief crusader.s. It was natural
for them, changing tactics with the times, to be as zealous against
the infidels of the Occident a3 they had approved themselves
against those of the orient, and as persistent with litany and mass
as they had been with lance and mace. The presence and per-
sistence of Jesuits on our upper lakes and beyond them, more
than two centuries ago, is accounted for by one single word —
yes, by one syllable, namely Faiili — their peculiar faith.
The views I now present of Jesuit missions are of course those
of a non-Catholic. They must be or they could not be my own,
and no one would wish me eith'^r to dissimulate my own opinions
22
or to simulate those of otlier«. My information, however, all
comes frotii Catholic witnossen. No others existed then and there.
My account of the I'Vonch missionaries must bo the more one-
sided because my present purpose will not let nie expatiate upon
their tact patience and heroic endurance amid all vexiitions, cul-
minating in martyrdom. In temptations which we cannot bear
to read of, their virtues found a fit emblem in that light from
heaven which they came to bring, -sunbeams which, descending
to the lowest depths of earth, and however rellccted and refracted
in abodes of pollution, remain unsullied and continue sunbeams
still.
The Jesuits arc the Pope's standing army (Loyola's own name
for them was a battalion), and the title of their head is general.
At the beck of superiors subortlinates plunged into the vast un-
known of our continent with the un(|uestioning alacrity of regular
troo[)H.
Not theirs to ([Uestion why.
Not theirs to mukc reply;
Theirs but to do, or die.
They knew no west or east, no nortii or south.
But in addition to his vow of obedience, each missionary was
impelled by a faith which inspired him with tenfold more zeal
and intrepidity. That faith was this : that he bestowed a clear
title to heaven on all whom he bapti/.ed, unless they lived to com-
mit mortal sins afterward. Ilence when one had sprinkled a
couple of dying children he writes in his diary : " Two little
Indians changed today into two angels, by one drop of water.
O, my n pture as I saw them expire two hours after baptism."
No matter though the sprinkling was effected by pious fraud,
when Jesuits unable otherwise to approach sick infants, pretended
to administer a medicine of sweetened water, but spilled some
drops of it on their heated brows, while whispering sacramental
words with motionless lips. The little ones were sent to paradise
by these waters none the less surely because secretly. Seeing
that death quickly followed baptism, Indians soon inferred that it
was occasioned by those priestly drops. They were hence prone
to scalp a Father if they detected him administering the sacred
rite.
wever, all
and there.
more one-
itiato upon
itioiis, cul-
nnot bear
light from
icscLMuling
1 refraetoil
sunbeams
own name
is jreiicral.
10 vast un-
o! regular
t
onary was
more zeal
etl a elear
d to com-
)rinkled a
Two little
of water.
baptism."
us fraud,
retendeJ
led some
ramental
paradise
Seeing
d that it
Ice prone
le sacred
18
We hear with a sliock of hnrnui'i prisoners nUvi', Hut the
fathers had little to suy against the eustom. On the other hand,
such an execution seemed to them a means of conversion akin to
a Spanish mitn 'l<i fa, and oijually efUcacious. One of the mi.ssion-
aries wrote home as follows-
" An Iro(piois was to bo burned some way oIT. What con.solation
is it to .«ct forth in the hottest summer to deliver this victim fn>m
hell. The father approaches, and instructs him even in the midst
of his torments. Forthwith the faith linds a place in his heart,
Ife adores as the author of his life Ilim whose name ho had
never heard till the hour of his own death, lie receives baptism,
and in his place of torture cries: " I am about to die but I go to
dwell in heaven." How history repeats itself I In 1877 the last
words of Jlenry Norfolk on the scall'ald in Anna{)oIis were : " I
am here to hang for the murder of my wife, but I thank (iod I
am going to glory !"
Again, the record is : On the day of the visitation of the IToly
Virgin, the chief Aontarisati was taken prisoner by our Indians,
instructed by our fathers, ba{)ti/cd, burnt, and a.scended to heaven,
all on the same day. I doubt not that he thanked the Virgin for
his misfortune and the blessing that followed. Uappy thought!
Another missionary writes : " We have very rarely indeed seen
the burning of an Iroquois without feeling sure that he was on
the path to Paradise, and wc never know one of them to be on
that path without seeing him burnt." Happy thought.
The conclusion of the whole matter then is: " The only way to
save Indians is to burn them,' or as they now say in Texas:
"Scalp them first, and then preach to them.''
Powerful motives then hurried the Jesuits wherever an infant
was death-struck, or a captive in torture.
arious secuhir inlluences speeded the missionaries on their
western way.
First, the spirit of religion was reinforced by that passion for ro-
mantic adventure which we have just been surveying. Then,
according to Father Biard, the French hiivj, the most dissolute of
men, initiated the Jesuit ])roje2t. Preachers who were over-
zealoua he liked to ship off, and so transfer their soul-stinging ser-
t
24
mons to the other side of the Atlantic. lie thus parried thrusts
which might have hit his conscience more effectually, and yet
more covertly, than the German duke can whose cathedral pew is
hedged about with sliding windows, so that, when he pleases, he
can shut out unpalatable doctrines. Again, the French mon-
arch was as liberal in land-grants to Canadian priests as our con-
gress has been to railroads.
Many of his courtiers too, whose idea of Lent was a month
when they hired their servants to fast .or them, paid roundly for
sending so much gospel to the heathen as to leave very little of
it for themselves. Others too who would not give a sou of their
own money importuned their neighbors till they forced them to
contribute, as the fox while sparing his own fur tore skin off the
bear's back to make a plaster for the sick lion. Such beggary
they thought was a means of grace.
While in lower Canada the Jesuits were to some extent subject
to the secular arm, and occasionally were forced to beg the gov-
ernor's pardon. The powers that were said to them : " Show us
the way to heaven, but we will show you yours on the earth,"
When a Jesuit in a (Quebec pulpit declared the King had ex-
ceeded his powers by licensing the trade in biandy inspiteof the
bishop's interdict, the governor, Frontenac, threatened to put him
in a place where he would learn to hold his peace.
The same magistrate sent another priest — brother of the author
of Tclemachus — to France for trial owing to some disrespect, and
wrote to the king : " The ecclesiastics want to join to their spirit-
ual authority an absolute power over things temporal. They aim
to establish an inquisition worse than that of Spain."
Amid this conflict of authorities the government was glad to
transport the missionaries, and they were equally glad to be trans-
ported deep into the wilderness; for there all power in heaven and
on earth, temporal and spiritual alike, and each doubling the
other, was theirs, theirs alone, without rival. Every whisper
against them was admitted to be " injurious to the glory of God."
They held it better to reign monarchs of all they surveyed among
Menomonies than to hold divided empire in Montreal.
When once the Jesuits were planted in the far west they suf-
95
arried thrusts
ally, and yet
hedral pew is
le pleases, he
French mon-
;S as our con-
was a month
d roundly for
very little of
a sou of their
)rccd them to
e skin off the
Such beggary
3xtent subject
beg the gov-
n : " Show us
>n the earth."
ving had cx-
in spite of the
d to put him
of the author
[isrespect, and
I their spirit-
Thcy aim
was glad to
to be trans-
heaven and
loubling the
[ery whisper
)ry of God."
reyed among
II.
3St they suf-
fered no more from'governmental jealousies. On the other hand
trade-policy and military power leaned on missions as their main
support. Missions were to explore the Mississippi, missions were
to win over savage hordes at oncoto the faith and to France. At
a momentous crisis, in ItJSo, the Jesuit, Engelran, at Mackinaw
adroitly kept the lake tribes from defection. The Marquis Du
Quesne used to say that Father Picquet was worth ten regiments.
One tribe was taught by the Fathers that Christ was a Frenchman
murdered by the English, and that the way to gain his favor was
to revenge his death. No wonder a chief; called out, " 0, that I
and my braves had caught those English crucificrs. We would
have taken oit all their scalps."
In those times, when the question arose which we are still vainly
essaying to answer, " IIow was America peopled ? how came the
Aborigines here? " it was a common saying of theologians that
the devil had led the Indians hither that they might be out of the
way of the gos])el. Accordingly, whoever penetrated into the
utmost corner of the West was sure that he beyond all others
was storming the donjon keep of Satan.
This Jesuit storming party, full of hope and misnamed forlorn,
roved at will without passports, while others, if they lacked such
credentials, were put to death.
Their first acquaintance with mosquitoes is thus recorded : " The
woods were full of a species of flies similar to the gnats which in
France are called cousins (that is, I suppose, ' poor relations ' ).
They arc so importunate that one always has a multitude around
him watching for a chance to light on his face or on some })art of
his body where the covering is so thin that their stings can easily
pierce it. As soon as they light they draw out blood and substi-
tute for it venom, which excites a strange uneasiness and a tumor
of two or tlirce hours' duration." When they first saw a fire fly
they must have thought like Paddy that a mosquito had taken a
lantern in order to find his victims in the dark.
In sending their underlings into the heart of New France,
Jesuit superiors were assured they could there repeat those
miracles of conversion and reconstruction which their order had
lately wrought in South America.
I i
2G
In Paraguay they had built up a model state. The natives be-
came tolerant of their culture and eompliant to their bidding in
every particular. They rose and sought their beds, were married
and given in rnariiage, weaned their children, removed from place
to place, raised stock or grain, lixed prices, and used their gains
at the dictation of spiritual guides. They were docile, but unde-
veloped, or develo])ed only in some single prescribed direction.
They were literally sheep, submissive when fleeced and even
flayed and slaughtered at the pleasure of their shepherds. But
their development was arrested. At their best they never became
men, but remained children of larger growth, or rather became
weaker in mind as they grew stronger in muscle, The purpose
was to build up a second Paraguay in North America. An ex-
periment, tried in Lower Canada, had failed. Its want of success
was attributed to the roving habits of the tribes and the impossi-
bility of persuading them to renounce nomadic life. It was tried
again, with more sanguine hopes, on Lake Huron, for the tribes
there were fixed through the year in one abode. When the llurons
had been overpowered by foes and driven into Wisconsin, the
experiment was repeated there.
The westward exodus of llurons into Wisconsin began as early
as 1050. Onward from that time the French became known there,
and that most favorably, as a race superhuman in arm?, in arts
and in benevolence. Such must have been the report concerning
them which fell from the lips of fugitive converts. It roused the
braves on the farthest shores of the farthest lakes to set sail in
quest of the admirable strangers.
Missionaries were the more encouraged to venture far west;
thanks to iiivitalio)is horn the aborigines. As early as 1611, the
first lleet of llurons that descended the St. Lawrence to meet
Champlain said to him, " Come to our country, teach us the true
faith." In IGoo it is chronicled that llurons vied with each other
for the honor of carrying missionaries home with them in their
boats of bark. The volume of Jesuit lldatlons for ItJlO, states
that fathers, invited by AlgorKjuins on Lake Superior, were on
the point of pushing forward even to that most western sea.
In 1679 an Outagami chief, espying friars among La Salle's corn-
pa
arr
tbil
l?ec
27
he natives be-
3ir bidding in
were married
ed from place
id their gains
ilc, but undc-
jcd direction,
led and even
pherds. But
never became
ather became
The purpose
'ica. An ex-
ant cf success
I the impossi-
It was tried
or the tribes
n the Ilurons
Wisconsin, the
egau as early
known there,
arm?, in arts
It concerninG;
^t roused the
set sail in
re far west ;
Is 1611, the
ice to meet
I us the true
each other
;m in their
-•ilO, states
)r, wore on
sea.
5alle's com-
pany near Chicago, cried out : " We love those gray robes. They
go barefoot as we do; they care nothing for beaver ; they have no
arms to kill us; they fondle our infants ; they have given up every-
thing to abide with us. So wc learn from our people who have
l?een to carry fur to French villages."
Statior > far inland and dissevered from their bnse on the sea-
board, were also preferred as being undisturbed by the influx and
iDfluence of non-missionary and anti-missionary whites, — godless
sailors who swarmed on the rock of Quebec, — and above all from
the heretical psalmody of Huguenots which could not there be
silenced.
Aside from the moral advantages of a mission in the heart of
the land, the fathers and their employes, whether paid or volun-
teering without pay, were most numerous and useful when remote
from other whites, because they were able to ])ush trade in fur,
free from competitors. The lay brothers together with brandy
sold scapularies or belts of the \'irgin which were of such sovereign
virtue that nobody who wore one at his death could, possibly sink
to perdition. The missionaries, according to Governor Frontenac,
■wished to keep out of sight the trade which they always carried on
hi the woods. They also claimed that their profits never exceeded
five hundred per cent. Parkman wrote his •/I'sniLs more than a
decade ago. Tie was tiien doubtful whether those missionaries
euL'^aged in fur tradinc^. But the letters of Frontenac, often writ-
ten in cipher for secrecy (lately discovered by P. Martrry and pub-
lished by our congress), leave us no doubt on this ])oint. In 1674
he wrote Colbert that when he urged the Black llobes to labor near
white settlements, they answered that their coming into America
was to indoctrinate savages — or rather to draw in beaver. He
accuses them of dealing in peltries. In 1GS2 La Sallo wrote that
the (Jreen Bay Jesuits held the real key o the castor country,
wiiile their blacksmith brother and his two hel[)ers converted
more iron into fur than all the fathers could turn pagans into
proselytes.
A furtlier narrative by La Salle regarding Jesuit tactics, reads
as follows: "A savage named Kiskirinaro, that is to say, "Wild < )x,
of the Mascoutin tribe, a considerable war chief among his people,
1 1
28
says that in a little river to which he wished to lead me, he had
picked up a quantity of white metal, a portion of which be brought
to Father Allouez, a Jesuit, and that brother Giles, a goldsmith
who resides at Green liay ("the bay of the Puans"), having
wrought it, made the sun-shaped article [soleil] in which they put
the holy bread. He meant the ostensory which this same brother
has there made. He says that Father Allouez gave him a good
deal of merchandise by way of recompense, and told him to keep
the matter secret because | the metal] was a manitou — this is to
say a great si)irit who was not yet developed."
Nor were the most distant fathers altogether at the mercy of
savages. A seminary for Huron boys at Quebec was projected in
the outset, and was begun in 16o(3, two years before the building
of Harvard College. One reason for founding this educational in-
stitution was that the Indian children in this Do-the-Boys Hall,
would be hostages for the safety of raissionarie?, however distant
in the interior.
It is a merciful ordination of Providence that the tragic sug-
gests the comt'r, and all miseries have a ludicrous side.
The crew of Captain Nares in (|uest of the North Pole would
have died of hypo in a darkness which outlasted a hundred times
the space that measures day and night to us, had they not dipped
deep in comic theatricals. Nor in the worse than Arctic gloom
around them would the Jesuits have fared better, had not their
eyes now and then rested on a silver lining of their sable cloud.
Burdens, otherwise too heavy, they threw oil by sportive notes
in their diaries. Thus they must have felt a grim pleasure in
writing down skunks as wfauls of (]ie (Icvil. Father Allouez
relates that while publishing the gospel in the midst of Wiscon-
sin he found himself in a sort of monkey France. Certain of the
sequestered natives having carried beaver to Montreal had there
beheld military i)omp. "Wishing to pay the missionaiy fitting
honors, they stuck feathers in tl eir hair, and organized the naked
braves into a militia company who gravely mimicked every
evolution of the governor's guard. The Jesuit discoursed to
them ot heaven and hell, but the unseasonable parody of French
parade did not cease for an instant. 'The Black Robe could not
kec
Ev^
Spf
\I
face
lost
tobJ
flecl
timj
l]
betil
unnl
raisJ
5
1
i
29
ul me, he had
lich he brought
s, a goldsmiili
fins"), having
^hich they put
! same brother
e him a good
i him to kee|)
u — this is to
the mercy of
s projected in
the building
ducational in-
be-Boys IJall,
wcver distant
3 tragic sug-
e.
Tole would
indred times
not dipped
Lrctic gloom
ad not their
able cloud.
ortive notes
pleasure in
er Allouez
of "Wiscon-
rtain of tiie
had there
ary fittino:
the naked
ved every
Joursed to
of i'Vench
could not
keep his countenance, but his guard of honor did keep theirs.
Every savage executed every punctilio of his part with more than
Spanish gravity.
When an Indian had been so scalded as to lose the skin of his
face, a Jesuit writes: "It would have been very well if he had
lost his old heart with his old hide.'
Another Iluron, finding no missionary assurance that there was
tobacco in heaven, declared he would never go there. The re-
flection chronicled by the Father is : " Unhappy infidel ! all his
time spent in smoke and his eternity in fire."
llobes and ritual inspired a divine awe. This was sometimes
betrayed in odd ways. No Black Kobe's risibles could remain
unmoved when he overheard converts who feared to address a
missionary, but asked the most solemn questions of his dog.
Again, certain Christian Indians having caught a warrior of a
heathen tribe, named Wolf, the Jesuits let them burn him, having
first instructed and baptized him. Then with a pun on his name
they recorded it as a marvel indeed, that a Wolf was at one
stroke changed into a lamb ; and through the baptism of fire
entered at once into that fold which he came to ravage.
Priestly humor was sometimes unconscious. Thus IlennepiD re-
marks that no sooner had he declared a fraction of the heroic
virtues of " the most high, puissant, most invincible " (Almighty?
no I but) King of France, to savages" than they at once *' received
the gospel and revered the cross."
Again when he had set forth certain mvsteries the Indians told
him some of their fables. But these, he told them, were false.
Their answer was, we believed your lies; had you been as polite
as we were, you would have believed ours." Again, the question
whether the quid of a tobacco chewer, taken in the morning
before mass, broke his fast, was discussed pro and con by casuists.
To them it seemed a question altogether serious, however ludi-
crous on all sides it appears to us.
Again, when they noticed that a certain beardless \\nQ^\, was a
special favorite with natives, they sent to France for pictures of
Christ painted without a beard.
After some analogous scrutiny of Indian tastes they wrote in
30
their next order for j)aintings, " one view of celestial rapture is
enough, but you cannot send too many scenes of infernal torments."
Again, '• if three four or five devils were painted torturing a
soul with diHerent punishments, one applying fire, another ser-
pents, another tearing him with pincers, another holding him fast
"with a chain, this would have a good effect, especially if every-
thing were made distinct, and misery, rage and desperation ap-
peared plainly in the victim's face."
Within liftecn years after Jesuits began work in earnest among
Ilurons, that tribe was either annihilated or expelled by the Iro-
quois. But for tliat catastrophe the faith of the Jesuit might
have been to Miis day more dominant in Upper Canada than it is
in Lower.
Some tincture of it has survived everything in all Indian dis-
persions. One of the first English adventurers to A[uine was
greeted by the natives with a pantomime of bows and flourishes
■which in his judgment could have been learned of nobody but a
Frenchman. The aborigines in general were inoculated with
French faith and French fashions so that they took about as much
of one as of the other, — and not much of either. ])isciples who
ran wild in the woods retained some prayers and chants learned
by rote. The divine vision which roused Pontiac and his com-
patriots to war, was a woman arrayed in white. Had they not
been taught concerning the Virgin Mary, it could hardly have
taken this form. In 1877, a white man who had been caught by
a Rocky Mountain tribe chained to his wagon- wheel and half
burnt, when he made the sign of the cross was snatched out of
the fire. The hunting c: mps of tribes in ^fanitoba are to-day
called Missions.
Missionaries, then, burning to propagate their faith, more than
two centuries ago penetrated into our Northwest, some of them
into Wisconsin. They there discovered tribes having fixed abodes,
over whom their knowledge and tact gave them power, so that
they molded them as clay in the hand of a potter, where their
influence was unchecked by white intruders, and where they could
so trade as to make their enterprise self-supporting.
The third stepping-stone of the French into the northwest, and
thus into Wisconsin, was fur.
81
stial rapture is
'nal torments."
id torturing a
?, another ser-
Iding him fast
ialiy if every-
ssperation ap-
larnest among
-id by the Iro-
Jesuit might
ada than it is
11 Indian dis-
J Maine was
nd flourishes
lobody but a
culated with
•out as much
)isciples who
xnts learned
md his corn-
ad they not
hardly have
caught by
and half
hed out of
are to-day
more than
le of them
ed abodes,
er, so that
here their
they could
iwest, and
II
The fur trade would have drawn them thither, even if fun and
faith had not paved their way. Indeed, that trade began to at-
tract them to American shores before either fun or' faith had
worked at all in that direction.
After all, jish was the ///•■•it magnet which drew Frenchmen
across the Atlantic. According to a manuscript in the library at
A'crsailles, when Cabot (before Columbus had landed on conti-
nental America) discovered Newfoundland, he heard the word
larcalaos there in use for "cod-fish." But " baccalaos" is the Bre-
ton-French word for that fish. It is possible then that Bretons,
next to the Norse, were the true discoverers of America — pre-
Columbian and pre-Cabotian.
However this may be, fish, indispensable for fasts and not un-
welcome at feasts, were sought by Bretons off Newfoundland, a
century before Quebec was founded. In 1578, there were one
hundred and fifty French vessels there.
But peltries, already scarce in Europe, filled the land in that
quarter no less than fish the sea, and were hunted as early. Before
the close of the sixteenth century, forty convicts, left on a Nova
Scotia island, had accumulated a (juantity of valuable furs.
But, what is far more surprising, Mencndez relates that fifty-
live years before the landing from the ^fay Flower — in loG5 —
buffalo skins had been brought by Indians down the l*otomac,
and thence along shore in canoes to the French about the St.
Lawrence at the rate of three thousand a year.
But not content with coast traffic, and with a view to escape the
rivalry and hostility of Dutch and i"]nglish, as well as in quest of
firsh far fields, traders pushed inland. Before the year IGOO they
had a post at Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, and in
1G03 established themselves at Quebec,
To thi'^ emporium Indian (lotilla-:, year by year larger and
larger, and from districts more and more remote, resorted. They
came laden with furs, and drawn thither by what they counted
miracles of beauty and ingenuity, which, bartered on the coast
by the first comers, had glided up the St. Lawrence and all
its tributaries, and even to the great lakes, where beaver were
most and best.
89
5
They were further attracted by the presents and invitations of
Champlain, who, in lGir>, within seven years after the first tree
was felled at (Quebec, had hehl councils on Lake Huron, and
bidden the natives to bring down their furs. Western Indians were
still more stimulated to trafTlc by adventurers, who, as we have
seen, had in 1000 begun to be domesticated among the aborigines
and to share their hunts. Wrapped in furs, striding on snow
shoes with bodies half bent, through the gray forests and frozen
pine swamps, among black trunks and dark ravines, these young
Frenchmen, though they meant not so, were commercial travelers,
and they fulfilled their mis.sion as shrewdly as those who now
sally from Chicago. Those Chicago emissaries are dextrous deal-
ers, yet very po.ssibly might learn some new tricks of trade could
they recover the lost arts of their forerunners whoso palace cars
were bark canoes, and their commercial hotels wigwams. Drum-
mers from the lake metropolis now encounter men of their own
stamp from St. Louis. So did the early French agents conflict
even in Illinois and Michigan with those who had been dispatched
from the Hudson. In order to get beyond New York competitors,
the French hurried still further ?6w/ than they otherwise would
have ventured.
Again, these roving and fraternizing Frenchmen did not long
go among the aborigines empty-handed, or even selling by sam-
ples. They took with them into the heart of the land those
goods — light and cheap — for wdiieh the Indian demand was the
greatest.
At sight of an iron hatchet, says Perrot, Wisconsin tribes
raised their eyes blessing heaven for sending them a race able to
furnish so powerful a deliverer from all tiieir woes. Every bar
of iron was in their eyes a divinity. But hnindij was from first
to last the one thing needful in a trader's outfit. It was indeed
contraband according to the dignitaries of both church and state.
Yet then as now it had free course on some underground railroad.
It was more easily carrkd because, before exposed for sale, it was
■icatercd as profusely as the stock of our railroads. Each gallon
of proof liquor swelled to six. The lowest price for brandy was
a chopine for a beaver skin. How much a French chopine
4
88
nvitations of
the first tree
Huron, and
ndians were
as we have
c aborigines
ig on snow
I and frozen
hese young
al travelers,
3e who now
ctrous deal-
trade could
l)alace cars
fis. Drum-
f their own
nts conflict
dispatched
ompctitors,
wise would
id not long
g by sam-
and those
k1 was the
isin tribes
ce able to
very bar
"rorn first
as indeed
and state.
railroad.
c, it was
ih gallon
andy was
chopine
amounted to you cannot easily learn from books. French and
English measures wereineommensurable. But what I long s)ught
in vain, I have learned from tfie casual remark of an ancient fur-
trader, that a chopine was so small a quantity as would not make
an Indian drunk more than onre. An Indian is quite unlike an
Tri'iliiiiau. But in one thing they agree. Neither is consciously
guilty of a bull when he says : "Give me the superfluities of life
and I will give up the necessaries. Traders too scrupulous to sell
liquor to an Indian, would still exact a beaver of him for a single
four pound loaf of bread.
French c )mmer».'ial men bore a dmrmed life. The fiercest sav-
ages sptred both them and their goods, lest no more of th:it desira-
ble class should come among their tribes. They had too much
loi.t to kill the geese who were their only hope of golden eggs.
La Salle's testimony is: (M. 2,281) ''The savages take better
care of us French than of their own children. From us only can
they get guns and good.-^." Hennepin relates that he would have
been scalped by his Indir.n captors had they not judged that his
death would hinder others of his countrymen from bringing them
iron.
French traders soon brought with them more merchandise than
they could transport overland. They were thus led to establish
trading ywsAs on nivigab'e streams and at carrying-p!aces. We
naturally think such comrnerciil stations would be set up first
along the St. Lawrence and L'lke Ontario, those natural highways
to and from the west. They were not. Those waters were watched
by the Iroquois ; fiercest in fight of all Indians, foes of France,
allies of Holland and England. Accordingly the thoroughfare
of western Indians to Quebec and of French traders to the ujiper
lakes, was by the Oltaica, a river which, lying farther north, was
comparatively safe from Iroquois ambuscades, which were with
reason more dreaded than cold, famine, storm and cataract.
Hence it came to pass that the French while they still knew
nothing of Lake Erie and Niagara, were familiar with Lake
Superior. Two of their traders had penetrated into that inland
sea in 1658.
Even after the French were at peace with the Inuians on the
3b
8i
south of tliG St. Lawrence and Liko Ontario, they were no match
on those waters for Dutch and English rivals in fur tradinj:^. The
latter could afTord to pay four times as much for furs as the French
could. Nine pence was the export duty on a beaver at New
York ; in (iuebce it was six limes as much. In New York fur-
trade was free. At (Juebec seven humlred crowns were charged
for permission to send a single boat up ihe Ottawa. fJood reason
then liad the French to seek furs so fur norliiwest that they could
escape Kuropean competitors.
The result was that they had reiched Like Huron in 1(515, and
soon hurried on to Michigan, while they had no port on the
nearer lake, Ontario, till two generations afterward in l(')7o, when
they threw up Fort Frontenac at its outlet, when- Kinii;ston now
stands. Its builder, Frontenac, intended it mcnly as a bise of
operations for fur trade so far west that he would be imlependent
of the governor of Montreal. Seven years af erward in 1070,
La Salli', having launched the (\r<t sloop ever built on Lake Erie,
voyage! in her through St. Clair, Huron and Michigan to the
mouth of Green Bay.
His vessel Vv'as there freighted with rich furs, but as she was
lost on her first pisssag>3 eastward. La Salle's experiment did not
recommend the lower lakes. On the contrary it tended to make
the upper, or Ottawa route, more popular thin ever.
The doors into Wisconsin were two, — Li Poirite and Green
Bay, and these two were about e(|Uil favorites. The first mis-
sionary arrived at La Pointe in 1600. Fur traders came iri/Ii him.
Nine years after, in 1069, when Fathrr Alloucz reached Green
Bay to found a mission, fur traders were on the ground, and had
become so domineering in that end of the world, that the mis-
sionary was brought by the Indians from Lake Superior as a
protector.
Nicholas Perrot, who in 1683 built a fort near the month of the
Chippewa river, though on the west bank of the Mississippi, had
enterel Green Bay eighteen or twenty years earlier. He wrote
a volume, — not for pablication — but fir the inft)rniation of the
Canadian government. In this work which was first printed less
than twenty years ago, in 1864, he describes a score of journeys in
4
i
i
85
no match
ling. The
,he French
r at New
York far-
c charged
)()(! reason
ihey could
l()ir),and
)rt on the
(173, when
g^ton now
I a bise of
dependent
I in IfiTO,
Lake Krie,
run to the
g she was
!nt did not
1 to make
nd Green
first mis-
ir/'/Ii him.
ed Green
and had
it the mis-
erior as a
nth of the
sippi, had
le wrote
ion of the
in ted less
)urne7sin
all parts of Wisconsin, all of thetn having something to do with
fur. IIow fully even in Id.s lifetitno the region between Luke
Michigan and the great river had become known to iho French, i.s
plain from the early geographical nitiiic< being largely French.
Le Sueur, who passed up the Mississippi in the year 1700, men-
tions between the Wisconsin and the St. Croix, six rivers with
French names, all apparently of long standing. Tiiese rivers
were Au.x Canots, Cachee, Au.x Ailes, Des llusins, I'ascpiilenette
and Bon Secours. In other parts of Wisconsin not a few French
names run back as far as these on its western border.
In U')o4: Father L? Mercier at tlie outlet of Like Superior
wrote that about Green Buy, nine days' journey distant, there
were Algompiins, and that if thirty French were sent there they
would not only gain niany souls to God but would nceive pecu-
niary profit, because the finest peltries came from those (piarlers.
The next year fifty c:vnoes of ihe-e Indians visited (Quebec, and
thirty Frenciimen returned with them. Among Oitawas bctwcim
Green Bay and Lake Suj)erior Frencli traders are mentioned in
l(iy9. In 1605 I'errot was buying beaver of Outagamies in or
near the Wisi-onsin county in the name of which tliey still live,
and in tlie following year the second flotilla of Pottawatomies had
reached ^^(Jntreal.
French fur-factors penetrate! the further into western fastnesses,
becau-e by this means they j)ractically crjoyed J'rvc (radr. Mak-
ing bark canoes far inland they evaded tlie crushing imposts on
all canoes allowed to p'jss up. While motliers'ates were nil at
war, they plied friendly commerce witii Dutch and iMiglish mid-
dlemen as well as their Indian con'ederates. Thus th.eir beaver
were either ex|)oried through New York, dodging the French tax,
or they were bartered there for blankets eheaj)er and better than
were to be had in Canada.
As a rule the French governor and intendant were at swords'
points with eich other. Kach would charge the otlicr with a
heinous ofTense — carrying furs to the English province. The
truth is that each of them was determined to be the on/// sinner
in that line. Each thus resembled the usurer who was delighted
with a sermon against usury, paid ioY in-uiUng it and said to the
86
preacher, " Make more 'such discourses ! Stop everybody from
taking hij^h interest — ■ ex !e()t me. Tiieti I (jan monopolize the
whole busine«!>." As his rec'>mpon<»e for risks and outlays in
westprn (li"»oovcry, \.i SiUc asked nothing but the exclusive right
to sell the skins of bnfTaloPS.
Royal monojjolics of fur-trading, lavished in Paris on court
favorites or on corporations as the Hundred Associates, r/v)>/)Avi
thut traffic near the roasL But tht»y drove the bulk of that bus!-
ni ss into the //'v;/7 of the continent, where it fell into the hands
of traders so (list »nt, shrewd an 1 self sufTi.'itjg that it could not
be cri[)i)led. Over a region vaster than any European kingdono,
the bush- rangers carried on thd fur-tracle afier their own pleasure,
and lunghed at royal restrictions on their dealings.
In U>Sl Ilnnnepin. at Mackinaw, met with forty two Canadians
who hid come thither to tra le in furs, defiant of the orders of
their viceroy. Tnesc foresters were not without a sort of con-
srienre, for they all begged the Jesuit to give thjrn the cord of St.
Francis, which was believed to make their salv^ition sure if they
died wearing it as a girdle, and t'ley all gained their request.
Hennepin w.is then journeying eastward from Green B ly, where
he had been entertained by the same class of contraban 1 tralTicKers.
There similar adventurers — Li Salle informs us — liad a perma-
nent po3t in 1677, and that bay had even been visited by a brace
of voyag'TS more than twenty years before, in 1051. Before La-
Salle began his exploration^ in 107i), his e.Tiployes were familiar
with far western tribes. One of them, Acaault, had spent two
winters and a summer in Wisconsin. Before 1680, JJultiih, with
a score of followers, was trading as far inland as the city which
now bears his name. He proclaimed that he feared no authority
and would force the government to grant him amnesty. (M. 2, 251.)
The sloop which La Salle in 1(579 had dispatched to Niagara
before he started from Green Bay for Illinois, according to his
conviction was scuttled by her crew, who plundered her and
struck into the northwestern wilderness, meaning to join hands
with Duluth. (\f. 2, 827.) Years afterward La Salle heard of a
French captive on the upper Mississippi whom he identified as his
pilot, and learned that hand-grenades, which could only have come
87
m]y from
polize the
r>uflnyfl in
isivo right
on court
s, crippled
that busi<
he hands
JO II hi not
king(iora,
pleasure,
^lanadinns
orders of
•t of COU'
Drd of St.
re if they
r request.
»y, where
[•afTiclcers.
a penna-
y a brace
before La-
; familiar
pent two
lutJi, with
ity which
authority
A. 2, 251.)
> Niagara
ng to his
. her and
)in hands
I card of a
led as his
tavc come
from iho missing vcsiel, had been taken by savages from that
captive.
In order to buy cheaper of Indian trupper.^ wandering fur
buntcrs would report itcdilrun' as prevailing i«i Montreal, and thus
frighten suvages from paddling down the rivtr. Such fur factors
were outlawed on the upper lakes, and they could not dam up
their outlets, but they intercepted many a flotilla an.xiously ex-
pected from above in Montreal. Thus masters of the situation,
they resembled those cunning Athenians who Aristnphuries tells
us were su.^Jpended in a sort of balloon, stopping incense as it rose
from Jove's altar.s, and letting no savor of it reach Olympian
iiostiils, but keeping all for themselve.*'.
On a lotig march every thing not totally indispensable is dropped.
Ilcricc the far western dealer carried no scales or steel yards, liut
he was hinuself a better weighing tnachine, for liitnself at least,
than any witty invention of Fairbanks with all Howe's improve-
ments superadded. So the saying was about Du'uth : " Duluth,
an honest mun, bought all by weight, and made the ignorant
savages believe tiiat his right foot exactly weighe I a pound. By
this for many years he bouglit their furs, and died in (juiet like
an honest dealer."
In selling to Indians, however, the pound was no doubt (i[uitea
different v\ eight. In the journal of a missionary at the outlet of
Lake Superior I find th it in 1070 a beaver was there valued at
either four ounces of powder, or one fathom of tobacco, or the
same length of blue serge or six knives.
Wood- ranging fur men seemed an evanescent race. Neverthe-
less they outlasted French empire in America. In latter times
when English and Yankee fur companies were orgmi/.ed in
Montreal and New York they were unable to di?pen?-e with the
French operatives, "to the manner born." Generation after gen-
eration they retained them as practical men fittest for all works
relating to fur. In all governmental departments the higher
functionaries, when first elected (and too often to the very end of
their career), need to be taught official routine. Hence officials
of lower grade who have learned to run the machine, are retained
without regard to political revolutions. These factotums are sig-
80
nificantly called "tiry- nurses." Such dry-nurses for English and
American fur kings were discovered in French underlings.
Fun and faith both gave a new impulse to the fur trade. With
it they formed a three fold cord vyhich drew the French from end
to end of the Mi.ssissippi, as well as to the farthest fountains of the
St. Liwrence, and even further. La Salle deserves deathless fame,
and will have it, because he was first to follow the Mississippi
down to the gulf. But his grand object was to secure an outlet
for fur that was not half the year frozen up, and the other half
infested by English rivals, Iroquois ambushes, and worse than all,
Canadian farmers of the royal revenue. Duluth, whose name we
have seen revived and bestowed on a mushroom metropolis, " the
zenith city of the unsaited sea," two centuries ago had ppnetrnted
beyond the farthest corner of our innermost and uppermost lake.
His mission was to intrigue and foil the English on Hudson Bay,
Ere long a French fort rose on the Saskatchawan, two thousand
miiej, as men traveled, from the seaboard. This station cune up
under the auspices of the French Company of the Northwest, in-
corporated in 1676, in antagonism to the Hudson Bay Company,
which came into existence six years earlier. It long bore sov-
ereign sway over a wide savage domain.
The natives preferred the manufactures of the English, but the
manners of the French. L'ke all savages, they were swayed by
impulse more than by interest. They would give more for one
plug of tobacco brought to their wigwams than they could buy
twenty for in Albany or Hudson Bay. Hence they traded with
the French, and became their tools. One result was that in 1684,
and again three years after, Nicolas Perrot, the supreme fur
trader and Indian negotiator of his time, persuaded five hundred
Indians from Wisconsin and near it to paddle their canoes all the
way to Niagara in order to fight for the French.
In 1724, Bourgmont was already exploring the Upper Missouri.
But on this line of Western research Verendrye outstripped all
others. Pushin:» on s'.ep by step for ten years, he discovered the
liocky Mountains in 1743 on New Year's day, sixty-one years
before our Liwis and Clirke. The point of his discovery was
just above where the Yellowstone joins the Missouri. That re-
a
t
3Q
glish and
'S.
le. With
from end
ins of the
ess fame,
issis«ippi
m outlet
her half
than all,
r>ame we
lis, "the
metrated
ost lake.
Jon Bay.
housand
cune up
west, in-
)mpany,
ore sov-
but the
ijed by
for one
»1(1 buy
eiJ with
n 1684,
me fur
undred
all the
issouri.
psd all
'ed the
I years
y was
liat re-
gion was so full of fur that the governor's share in the profits of
a trading compan}' soon amounted to 300,000 francs.
Those who, from mere love of fun, explored unknown woods
and waters, learned strange tongues and ceased to bn strangers
among strange tribes, and unawares accjuired all the requisites for
successful commerce in beaver. Missions also, though founded
in faith, by faith and for faith, furnished as gool a ba-!e for the
enterprises of furriers as if they had owed their origin to the
spirit of merc.mtile speculation.
There is no danger of overrating the pervasiveness of French
fur dealings in the Northwest centuries ago. We may well be-
lieve no cove, no navigable stream was unplowed by their boats
of bark; no tribe, no council unvisiied.
The demand f )r fur in France was stimulated by royal decrees.
In 1670 one of them prohibited the manufacture of derni castors,
a sort of hats that were only half mide of beaver. S )on after-
ward a prohibitory duty was laid in France on all furs not from
French colonies.
Statistics are stU|, afying, and there is some wit in the quip, " A.
fig for your (/t<to/" After all a few figures are necessary if we
would understand how spt;edily and how grandly the trade in
skins was developed, or how long and how widely fur was king
as truly as cjtton or corn has bjcome so in our times.
In KUO, ten years before the landing of the forefathers at
Plymouth, the boats of fur traders were at the outlet of Lake
Champlain. Tliree ye irs after forty canoes came down to Mon-
treal bringing fur. In liiDO their number was 103; three years
after, it ro-«e to two hundrel. For a decade before KM'J, the
Huron beaver harvest was valued at half a million frano^ a year.
Fifty francs would then feel a man for a twelvemonth, and one
nundred and fifty would pay a soldier. In 107-1, the skins im-
ported into 11 )elielle were 31 1,815. The governor of Montreal,
whose salary wa-5 a thousand crowns, soon clecrei fifty thousand
by illicit lur dea'itig.
As early as 1070 there is mention of a fur fleet embarking at
Green Bay for Montr,?al. p]ven before this, as we have seen, ad-
venturers to Wisconsin waters and its interior, paid the charges
.*
40
of exploration by an incident.il trade in fur. Just afterward, the
first Indians whom Marqiiette met on the Mi'sissipj)!, were wear-
ing French cloth. During the winter of l()74-o, when that mission-
ary lav sick at Chicago, two traders were already encamped in the
vicinity.
For more than a hundred years, the Northwestern beaver trade
flowed on with a colossal and all-pervading stream. In 1791, the
skins collected there for M >ntreal merchan's amounted to more
than ha'f a million (o65,U00). A few years after J.)hn Jacob
Astor, *'sap;acious of his quarry from afar," engig'd in i\\\A traffic
with hundreds of boats, thousanils of men and millions of capital.
Green Bay was his point of departure, as Mackinaw had been
that of the French for many generations. But his employes
pushed through the continent to the western ocean, ^forst of his
fortune came from fur, and it would have been twice as large, but
for the war of 1812. But even Actor's fur agents of all classes
were largely de-cendants of French voyageurs who had taken up
their abodo in the Northwest ag<^s before.
Falsehood and false fancies were also among the forces which
first hurried the French far west.
It is through no longing for alliterative initials that I add false
fancies and falsehood as a fourth force to fun, faith and fur. At
that pf^riod all travelers, if not Munchausens themselves, believed
Munchausen stories, and when peo[)le are willing to be deceived,
they are deceived. Demand for lies never lacks supply..
One Frenchman in Florida, when he saw a squaw so wrinkled
that there was no room for one furrow more, b(^lieved the report
that she had outlived five generations. Another, near Newfound-
land, landed on an isle of demons not without wings, lions and
tail?. A third, when certain Canadian chie'^s told liim of a race
who had but one leg and lived without food, to )k them to France
for repeating their story to the king. These were s)ns of men
who hid been ere lul)us to Venetian merchants, who, selling spices
for their weight in gold, advertised them as no pro luot of the
vulgar e^irth, but plucked from branches tlirown doAn fi' »m the
battlements of E len by compas-ionate cherubim. The age of
faith was not yet over. As recently as the last year of the seven-
wl
41
irward, the
were wear-
at mission-
r)eil Iq the
s.'iver trade
1 1791, the
'd to more
>hn Jacob
this traffic
i of capital.
J had been
employes
Tost of his
^ large, but
all classes
1 taken up
rces which
add false
1 fur. At
s, believed
deceived,
) wrinkled
the report
^•wfound-
lons and
of a race
to France
of men
mg spices
ct of the
fi' »m the
le age of
he seven-
teenth century a company formed in France to work a mine of
green earth reported to exist at the sources of the Mis.-is-»ippi,
sent a party of thirty miners up that river. Thtir voyage up
stream last d ten month?.
Among the earliest volunteers from the retainers of Champlain
to ascend the Ottawa with savages, who had descended (rom a
country no white man had ever trod, was Vign:m, in KUO. On
his return next season, he declared that he had puslnd on to a
salt .=ea, seen the wreck of an English ship, and he ml of Cathay
and Zipango, — so China and Japan were then called — as not far
away.
The spark fell in priinpowder. Champlain heard not only what
he wii^hed to btdieve, but what all men of his time and a century
after held for certain, that a short Northwest pa-sngi; to the East
Indies cxisteiJ, and would at once double the wealth of any nation
which could appropriate it by right of discovery. His own fliet
had been equipped in IflOS, not merely to colonize Acadia, but
" to penetrate inland even to the Occidental sta and arrive some
day at China."
He believed that in IGOO a ves?el, clearing from Acapulco, — a
Mexican p irt on the Pjcific, lost its reckonmg in a storm, but
after two months found iself in Ireland, — and that the King of
Spain had ordered the journal of the pilot to be burned t-o as to
keep foi'cighcrs from knowing the course followed, but vhich
was supp\«cd t) be north of Canada. The m;jp of Vt rrazano,
then still an authorit}', in addition to the Isthmus of Panama
showed another no less narrow near the latitude of New York
with the Pad fie beyond it on the West.
More than three score years afterwai'd, Li Salle sought that
East Indian route by way of the Mississip{)i. His estate just above
Montreal was, and is still, cdled or nick-named, L'l CIn'ne, that is
China, because he started from there bound for the Empire of
Celestials. Years afier he had stood at the mou'h of the Missis-
sippi, he spoke of that river as Feparated from the China sea only
by the breadth of the province of Culiacan, and was confident of
meeting not far fi'om the mouth of the Missouri, with rivers
which flowed into the ocean he sought.
43
England shared in the delusion that the Pacific was near the
Atlantic Hence a barge was sent over to John Smith in Vir-
ginia with oiders to row it up the Potomac, carry it over the
mountains, and launch it on some stream that flowed into the
South sea, which was afterward made the western boundary of
Connectii-'Ut.
The truth is that French and English alike had a short cut to
China on tiie brain. No sooner then had Chatnplain lieard the
story of Vignan than he hastenel up the Ottawa with a crew of
entbusiast-". Thirty five carrying-places and an infinity of hard-
ships seemed nothing to him. Wlien half way to Like Huron —
at the Isle of Allumette, — hedeticted the imposition which Yig-
nan had practiced upon him. Ciiiimplain was more magnanimous
than ceitain pro-peclors lately led into the Black IJiIls by a guide
who promiscJ them di^'ging-j that would yield thirtji cents a pan,
and fin ling him a liar straightway strung him up on the nearest
tree. Champlain was more disappointed than the jiroi^pectors —
yet he forgave the impostor.
The next year, 1615, taking a fresh start, he re;iched the head
of the Ottawa, cro^^sed to Like Huron, — held councils with divers
nations on that inlan.l sea, hearing of still other seas beyond —
and saying to one and all : " Bring furs down to Quebec and
show me the way to China," Plainly he thought one request as
easy to grant as the other.
The name of thd first Wisconsin tri'ie with whijh the French
became acquainted, and that before 1040, namely, Wiundutfjoes^
was understood by them to signify Sdllivaler m^r», and western
saltwater they associated only with the Pacific. Ni 'olet, the first
white man on the Wisconsin (?), having voyage! down that river
within some five and thirty leagues of the Mi.ss's.-ipp', believed
himself within three days march of the great ?ea of tiie west.
The Iiiiiiaris were always notorious for reporting whatever they
perceived that whites desired to hear. They thus hoi.xed them
all alike. Spaniards they tickled with stories of gold, New Eng-
land Pu'itans by legends concerning the Great Spiiir, and so they
amused the Ficnch, who came with a passion for China, with ac-
counts of a Celestial empire.
rou
nor
Th(
4B
i near the
;ith in Vir-
t over the
oil into the
)undary of
bort cut to
heard the
. a crew of
:y of hard-
e Huron —
which V^ig-
ignanimous
by a guide
.•en Is a pan,
the nearest
)spector3 —
id the head
wiih divers
oeyond —
• aobec and
request as
10 French
innclnfjoes,
d western
t, the first
iliat river
, believed
west,
itever they
xed them
New Eng-
nd so they
, with ac-
At thit era various nations were rivals in searching for new
routes to China, — the English through Hudson Bay, the Dutch
north of Lip'anH, and the French by way of the Great Lakes.
They had all been denied access to the E ist Indies either by the
Cape cf Good Ilope or of Horn, — which Spain and I'ortugal re-
spectively blockaded, treating as privateers all who tried to pass.
But their hopes were sanguine of finding anoiher road thither, as
the Italians when at the fall of Constantinople cut oil from their
media'val thoroughfare eastward from the Levant, had set their
faces westw'ird and discovered America. The spirit of the age,
•'the grandeur of which," Froude pronounces " among the most
sublime phenomena which the earth has witnessed," felt that only
a corner of the veil had been lifted. All past findings just gave
enough to wake the taste for more.
Charnpliun was the more thoroughly persuaded that the Pacific
was near Lake Huron because he had himself beheld Pacific
surges at P.mama, the longitude of which is not so far west as
that lake by a dozsn degrees. His sight strengthened his faith,
which was never weak, (iuurtz pebbles picked up on the river
bank at Q lebec he thought diamonds, and gave the rock above
the name it bears to this day — Cape Diamond.
On Joliei's return from d own the Mississippi, Frontenac's first
feelit g WHS regret that that river had not borne the explorer to
the Pacific and to Japan. His next emotion was hope that the
Missouri — still anonymous, but called by Joliet a northwest
branch entering the ^lississippi in latitude 38 degrees — could be
ascended to a lake with an outlet into the Vermilion Sea — his
name for the Gulf of California. Siven years la'er, in 1080,
Duluth, ntar the head waters of the Mississi{)pi, heard of Henne-
pin as a captive among the Sioux. He sought him out, procured
his release and escorted him to Green Bay. But for this call to a
mission of mercy, " my design was," says he, " to push on to the
#ea on the northwest, believed to be the Vermilion Sea, from
which a war party had come among the Sioux. Some of its salt
they g (ve to three Frenchmen that I had sent out as a scout, and
they brought it to me. According to their report it was no more
than twenty da^s' march to a great lake the water of which was
f
44
not fit to drink, and which I had no doubt I could reach without
difficulty."
But all varieties of Frenchmen in America — the fur-hunter,
the votary of fun and frolic and the apostle of faith — whatever
their primary impulses, each man was inspired to dive further
into the west, by a lurking but fixed idea that he was himself the
predestinated Columbus of the grand discovery — that portal
through which men should bring the glory and honor of the
nations to and from farthest India — that world's highway which
lay hid from princes and plebeians till in the fullness of time
California opened wide her Golden Gate on golden hinges turning.
Only tho^e of us who remember when California burst on the
world like a sun-burst, or lightning shining from the west unto
the east, ns El Dorado no longer fabulous, can understand the
fever and frenzy which burned in every man who set his foot
towi : J the western unknown; his assurance that he was to be the
revelator, not of ".n i^jnis fatuus or desert Nile fountain, but o(
greater marvels than are dreamed of in all the Arabian Nights —
a fairyland where urchins play at cherry-pit with diamonds,
where country wenches thread rubies instead of rowan b.'rries for
necklaces, where the pantiles are pure gold and the paving stones
virgin silver. For sujh merchandise who, though n ) pilot, would
not adventure to ihe farthest shore washed by the firihest sea?
"The blood more f-tirs to rouse a lion than to s'art a hare."
Accordingly the illusions, that sheening far ceUstial seemed to be,
of the China-seeker, the mi-sionary and the fun-lover, yes, of the
fur-dealer, roused them to efforts and crowned them with suc-
cesses they could never have made had they seen things as they
really were.
Celestial visions flitting always a little ahead of western wan-
derers were an analogue of Sydney Smith's pitent Tantalus.
This was a bog of oats hung on the pole of his carriage. It
rattled before the noses of his horses, but was a'oout a foot beyond
their reach. In both cases, also, the stimulating influence was
very similar.
Another French foundation was ld;d in the far west by politi
cal finesse and feudalism.
kn
baf
Bel
an(
45
reach without
the fur-hunter,
th — whatever
0 dive further
vas himself the
— that portal
honor of the
ligh'.vay which
illness of time
ainges turning.
1 burst on the
the west unto
inderstand the
a set his foot
3 wa3 to be the
juntain, but o(
3ian Nights —
ith diamonds,
-van b-'rries for
paving stones
> pilot, would
iriliest sea?
s'art a hare."
seemed to be,
er, yes, of the
em with sue-
iing5 as they
western wan-
!nt Tantalu:*.
i carriage. It
a foot beyond
nfluence was
v^est by politi-
The apostles of faith were also political intriguers. They
knew that nothing but the supremacy of France could afford a
basis for permanence in their missions. Accordingly, of them-
Belvcs they worked for French domination as for self- preservation,
and they were often formally appointed ambassadors.
Moreover, they sometimes established a sort of theocratic feu-
dalism, or oriental patriarchate, in which they were themselves
lords paramount.
According to Parkman, " it behooved them to require obedi-
ence from tho.se whom they imagined God had confided to their
guidance. Their consciences then acted in perfect accordance
^ith the love of power innate in ihe human breast.
"These allied forces mingle with a perplexing subtlety. Pride
disgui-ed even from itself walks in the likeness of love and
duty, and a thousand times on the pages of history we find hell
beguiling the virtues of heaven to do its work. The instinct of
domination is a weed that grojvs rank in the shadow of the
temple." (Jesuits, p. 159.)
Always and everywhere Jesuits have been charged with usurp-
ing political sway. In 1667, the Canadian Intendant, Talon, ad-
dressed a remonstrance to Colbert, the French premier, complain-
ing that the Jesuits "grasped at temporalities, encroaching even
on that police which concerned magistrates alone." This com-
plaint related to intermeddling on the St, Liwrence. But on the
Upper Lakes and beyond them, there could not be too much
Jesuit domination to please French statesmen.
But another class of political agents were very early abroad in
the west. Nicoler, whom I have mentioned as in Wisconsin in
163-1:, and probably the first white man ever there, had been dis-
patched to Green Bay as a peace maker between the tribes of that
vicinity and the Ilurons.
Soon after the year 1650 the Iroquois had vanquished all the
tribes east of Lake Michigan. They expelled them from their
old homes, and drove most of them beyond that lake, some of
them even beyond the Mississippi. In this flight theOttawas de-
scending the Wisconsin, and pushing up the Mississippi some
dozen leagues, entered the Little Iowa and sought an asylum on
46
its upper water?. For those tribes who lingered in Wisconsin
there was no hope of fighting the Iroquois firearms without fire-
arms, and no hont^ of lire-arms except from the French. The
governors of New France, to whom the Irociuois were sworn ene-
mies,— at onct? saw the policy of lifting up these fu^itives, unit-
ing them in amity to each other, and to the tribes where tliey had
fled for rLfiigo, supplying them with kettles, tobacco, but above
all with gun-} and powder, — in a word by every mems stealing
their hearts. For this end they disp itched into Wi-onsin and
further a spjoie? of envoys of whi jh Nicjlas Perrot was a good
representative.
This Indian commissioner had been prepare! for his functions
by much western experience. II3 was first ia Jesuit emj)l()y as a
lay-brr*,he', and then bacimc an adventurer in quest of f.in and
fur whore no white man's foot hail trod. No doubt he w;is in
make half In.lian, and when present at a war danc i would lead
it, like Frontenii at thr^e score and ten, wh)oping like the rest,
or ratlier outwho)plng them all. Tiie Indians named him " Pop-
corn," jjsrh q)S becau-se when heited he seemed to them to grow
ten times bigger, like the dwarf who declared that tliough his
avoirdupo':.s in the scjle was ordinarily only one huiulred and
twenty pounds, whenever he got mad he Wrighed a ton.
Ills ollicial career in Wisconsin began at litest in liil!."). After
making fricidsliip with the Pottawatomies at Green Bay, he
pushed up Fox River and into a lake of which it is an outlet.
There he held a council with the Oat;igamies, After this fa-hion
he went on for five years, — at home with tribe after tribe — at
home ii th J customs and diale its of all the enormous ang'e be-
tween the upper jMissi8>5i[)pi and the upper lakes. He brought
many nations into a confederation with each other and against the
Irofiuois. lis fame, like Salomon's, brought visitors into Green
Bay from the uttermost parts of the earth, — some wiio sjoke of
trading with Mexican Spaniards and others who de-cribed white
men f tr north in a house which walked on the water — meaning
the, English on Hudson bay. (2 ITS La Potherie.) How he was
borne aloft on a buflalo robe, reverenced for fashioning iron as
squaws did dough in a kneading trough, and feared as holding in
his hands thunder and lightning, we have eecii heady.
al
tl
c|
ir
k
47
in Wisconsin
I without fire-
'"rencli. The
re sworn ene-
j;i lives, unit-
leio tiiey had
^, but above
5in.s stealing
i-onsin and
t was a good
lis function?;
employ as a
of f>in and
' h-: wjs in
would lead
ilvo the rest,
him " Pi)p-
ern to grow
though his
undred and
)•>. After
in Buy, he
;ui outlet,
lis /a-hion
tribe — at
ang'e be-
e broiiylit
igainst the
tito Green
sjoke of
bed white
- meaning
w he was
II g iron as
olding in
In 1671 he was interpreter for a dox.en nations wliose delegates
largely through his persuasions then gathered at M;i'kin iw and
aeknowleli^ed t'le sovereignly of Fra-ie?. Ills innueni-e over
them was seen in 1084, and again three years after, when, as I
have before stated, he induced five hundred warriors from Wis-
consin, and near it, to [)add'e their cames m my a hundred miles
in order a-? aliie-? of the Feenoh to fi^ht agiins'. t'le I'-oiiuoi^.
Aocoriing to Indian ideis his greatest exploit was delivering
from torture and death a captive whom the savages had resolved
to burn. No common mir.icle was it to make Indians forego the
ecstasy of beholding and glouting on an enemy in af?ony. The
French then aimed to mike the western chiefs do homige to their
king as a su/ceraiti, and figlit sh )u'der to shouhh-r in hi-i battles.
But many adventurer-i from France also sought to become
themselves a port of feudal barons. To this end tliey secured
patents of nobility with land-grants, term.ed s('ig'iiorii\s. Some of
these bor-eivd o!i the Sr. Lawrence and LikeC!i implaiu. But these
eastern et^tatc^s juit gave enough to wake the taste for mue. At
the outlet of Tiike Ontario T/,i Salle possessed a donaii stretch-
ing i\ve leagues along the shore, besides others almost, boundless
on Like Miehigan, and whatever in other unkno vn re^^ions he
could conquer. As Col. C )lt invented a patent revo'ver, so La
Salle ex[);!;'t"d to hold as a patent right the realm ho had re-
vealed. He was sanguine that his principality wou'd bo more at-
tractive to immigrants than Canada. It was prairie which ne:'ded
no clearing, — it was m uv? fertile, of milder clirnitc and more
varied pro luct-, manv of them — as salt, grapes and hemp — un
known in Canada. Not a few similar landelairns ha-ed on gov-
ernmental grants were set up by French occupants wIkmi the
United States assumed juri-diction over Wisconsin. 'Viic Norman
race which (!enturies before harl feudalized all Europe, now meant
to master tho ^lissis^ippi Valley. French wanderers were not
unfrequcntly elected chiefs of tribes. Perrot was so honored
among nine d fTcrent nations. French ofiieers also cam.' with a
retinue of their own countrymen, whom they rule 1 by martial
law, being sometimes jud.'e, jury and executioners all at once.
This one-man power, where no law was known but his will, was
■'u
48
the secret of many a succesji. It inspired a salutary fear whtso
tlie corninori law of England and even the civil law of coniineiiial
Europe vvouM only have j)rovoi<ed contempt.
At Krouteruic La Salle wrougijt wonders. The mtivcs were
compliant to iiis will like clay in the hands of a potter. At his
bitldinj^ they settled near his fort, cleared land, tilled it, worked
on ihe lorliticatiofia and on houses, sent their children to school.
Ac'Coriliii<5 to I'arkrnan, "seignior by royal grant of waterfront
for five leagues, — feudal lord of the forests around, — commander
of a garrison raised and paid by himself, — founder of the mis-
sion,— patron of the church,— he reigned the autocrit of his
lonely empire." Nor was he altogether destitute of feudal trap-
pings,— for, a'cording to his chuplain, Hennepin, on state occa-
sions he wore a scarlet mantle laeed with gold.
On the lliinois river his success was still more marvelous. The
colony he tiierc extemporized was reckoned in IGS-i to contain
4,000 Indian warriors or 20 000 souls, hke the peasantry of the
middle-ages, clustered around his rock fort, "Starved Rock,"
perched higli as an eagle's nest. The region around he had be-
gun to parcel out among his followers.
Feeing tqtml to the grandest enterprises, he had longed for
liberty to beard the Spaniard in Northern Mexico. Having been
granted that liberty, had he not been betrayed on his way back
to the Mississippi, he would have made S'arved Hock the strat-
egic base of active operations against Mexicans. All the region
between that post, styled St. L ^uis, and the South Sea, was sub-
jected to him by his French commission.
Judging by such an experiment, and before the failures in this
direction which followed bard after, it was not unreasonable to
hope for founding feudal baronies far west with French retainers
as henchmen of each dignitary, and a crowd of aboriginal vassals
beneath all the whites; but supporting all by fur and farming in
time of peace, and not less by filling the ranks in time of war.
There still exists an early map of New France with a fort in
every seigniory.
Enterprising Erencbmen, who aspired to the independence of a
mediaeval nobleman, must needs go west in order to find what
m
1
49
fear wlu^ie
I coniineiual
4
utivcs were
er. At his
1 it, worked
1 to school,
waterfront
commander |
of the mis-
>cr;it of his
Feudal trap-
state occa-
elou?. The
to contain
ritry of the
■ed Rock,"
he had be-
longed for
aving been
way back
the strat-
le region
I, was sub-
res in this
onable to
retainers
al vassals
arming in
e of war.
a fort in
ence of a
ind what
they sought. No populous native tribes still survived east of
Lake Huron. The French were hemmed in by the Koglish and
Iroquois on the south, while short days and long winters repelled
them from the north. On the other himd, everything allured
them westward — natural hiy;hways, mild climate, fertile soil,
prairies that needed no clearing, bufT.iloes fancied ready to yield
wool and draw the plow, friendly Indians, and — more than all —
elbow room, safe from Cjnadian dictator.^. The founders of Mon-
treal had been brow-beaten in (iuebcc. The vice-governor at
Montreal was not very subordinate to the royal functionary at
Quebec, but more so than the oHiciala upon Ontario and further
were to his own jurisdiction. They were their own masters.
In addition to this, French intrigue.-; in the far west were multi-
plied and intensified by pecuniary interest. Nothing but politi-
cal supremacy in that distant realm could assure prosperity in that
fur-trade where lay their sole hope of money-making.
As soon as they had secured sway in any tribe they first said,
"Bring all your fur to our factors!" This point gained, their
second demand was, " Make your neighbors do likewise, peace-
ably if you c'^n, but forcibly if you must." Thus it came to pass
that many a brave was butchered to procure beaver for French
whose policy was that of ^Fsop's monkey :
'* That cunning old pug everybody remembers,
Who, when he saw chestnuts a rosLting in embers,
To spare his own bacon, took pussy's two foots.
And out of the ashes Le hustled his nuts."
Considerations such as these show how powerfully the finesse
of political schemers arid the ambitions of feudalism roused the
French to penetrate into the utmost corner of the west.
The English also, as adventurers, traders, or both, tried to push
into the farthest western wilds. But the French outstripped them,
arrested their factors and explorers and treated them as outlaws.
The motto of the French was :
" It shall go hard,
Bat we will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon."
4b
60
Tlie I'Vcnch foundations in tlic Northwest proved full urea.
When I'^rench olTiecr.s gii/,i d ut the cliarqe of the six hundred at
Balaklava, they cried out: "This is adniirablo, but it is not
war." So I'Vonch founchitions in ihe Noilliwcst were wonderful
beyond all wonder, but they did not constitute a state, one whole
body filly frnined to;iclher, whicii vital in every part cannot but
by anniiiilating, die.
The first foundation was Fun. Fun taken m homeopatiiic
doses is good, butit is by no means substantial food fora life time
much less fora nation's life. At tdl events it either finds or makes
frivolous those towhom it is all inall, — labor and not meiely lux-
ury,— business as well as lecreation. II tdl theyear were playing
holidays, tosport would be as tedious as to work. Savage life, how-
ever fascinating at a distance as to the novelist ( 'oaper, or the sen-
timentalist Ikousteau, loses romance whcTi viewed do.'-c at liand
as by Paikman (Jomieiliaic d among l)ak(-lahs — indeed by the
sober second thought ui any one ea[)uble of appreciating civiliza-
tion and aspiring to progress.
The result was that French fundovers, either like Nicolet
turned from their sportive sallies to dwell among their own pi30-
ple as well as educative and elevating institutions, or on the other
hand, they sunk to the low level of tiie aborigines around them,
perhaps degraded thnn siill lower by the vices of civilization.
The backwoods maxim proved true; that it is the hardest
thing in the world to make a wiiite man out of an Indian, while
it is very easy to make an Indian out of a white man.
The aposMes o^ faith also faded m the far west. Their want of
success was due in part to the extermination by war and plague
of tribes among whom they ministered, in part to inalality to re-
claim other tribes from nomadic habits, and in part to the nature
of their teachings. Tiieir exhibition of Christianity was rather
spectacular than intellec'ual, more emotional than practical.
Among their maxims I lidd ihese: "It is God's will that who-
ever is born a subject should not teason but obey." "Teaciiing
girls to read is robbing them of time." They taught singing but
not reading. No newspaper apfnared in New France till after
the British conquest. At an Indian college which bad flourished
1
\ failures,
liuiulred at
b it is not
wonderful
one wliolo
an not but
)mcopaiiiic
a life time
\a or makes
lerely lux-
>re playing
life, how-
or the sen-
c at liund
od by the
g civili;ia-
icolet
own poo-
tlie other
ind them,
Mlization.
hardest
an, while
want of
plague
ity to re-
le nature
s rather
•raetical.
lat who-
'eaching
ing but
till after
urisbed
61
for a g(!neratioii I-'mntonnc, relates that no student c()id<l speak
French. Iiispteof all pains pupils j)roved Calibans on whom
nurture would never sli(tk. Of one that was taken to France at
a tender ago, bapii/ 'd, ami learned French well, I read that when
brought back to Canadi as an interpreter, he became as rude a
barbarian as any one and held fast, his barbarism to the end.
If the Jesuits had had free course on our Upper Likes, the result
would hiive bo' n naiions submissive but not self-sudicing, peace-
able but unable to defend themselves — having {\\g jy'i'srjiDfl of
men but the puerility of chiklren. They had an oidinance to
hasten the phylrdl weaning of Indian children — but their
mental weaning they would never permit.
Frontenac's re[)ort to the home government was : " The Jesuits
will not civilixe the Indians because they wish to keep them in
perpetual wardship. Their missions are hen(,'e mockeries." They
censured lia Salle because at his fort lie had some fifty Indian
children taught to read and write.
Com{)ared with the sturdy Puritan, the self-reliant ^'ankce, the
products of Jesuit training wouKl s tn those legendary monkeys
who were intended to be men, but . .. '-'^ creation being begun on
Saturday afternoon, was interrupted by the coming on of theSab-
bath, so that they were sent into this breathing world scarce half
made up. Their develo[)mciit remains arrested still. Well is it
said: "A man to hk a man must feel that he holds his fate in his
own hands."
However Jesuits might have succeedo<l, in blowing up a bub-
ble, bright and polished as ^lass and iridescent with rainbow hues,
it must have burst at the first rude shock from without, as did tho
insubstantial pigeanfc which tlioy conjured up in Paraguay.
A heretio would say that their system had not truth enough in
it to make a lasting lie. Hence it was, " The j)crfume and sup-
pliance of a minute."
The fiu-ti-'vkr rejoiced in a longer success than either the votary
of fun or the apostle of faith. But lii-< occupation too ,vas gone
at length. Fur-bearing animals vanished even sooner than the
forests that sheltered them.
Fish began to be taken in Canadian waters before the first furs
6%
were trapped on Canadian shores. The fish continue now as mul-
titudinous as ever, while the fur is no more found. Five and a
half millions have we recently paid for the right to fish in Cana-
dian waters.
Crops springing out of the bosom of the earth are exhaustless
like a living spring. Beasts wandering over its surface, or living
in its dens, pass away, like desert streams in summer, and what
is worse, are never renewed as those streams are.
Beaver Dam as the name of a city in Wisconsin may always
endure, but the cunning handiwork of the beaver, chief favorite
among fur-bearers, is to day scarcely discoverable in all the
State. The beaver's gone beyond redemption, gone with a gallop-
ing consumption. Not all the (j^uacks with all their gumption, will
ever mend him.
The chief Yankee staple was fish ; that of the French was fur.
The contrast between the races was palpable. Accordingly the
natives named the Yankees Jvinshon, which signifies "dsh," and
the French Onontio, that !■», "Big Mountain." The latter name
may have been suggested by Gallic pomposity. r>ut after labors
manifold the mountain brought forth a mouse, and the fish
swallowed him.
The victims lured on by falsehood or false fancies in pursuit of
a short cut to the farthest East, were no less heart breakingl}^ dis-
appointed than the men of fun, fur and faith.
Their chase in the West of an ever-fleeing East, reminds me of
Dp Soto chasing the phantom of a rejuvenating fountain. Both
long roved in a fool's paradise, but at length wasted sinewy vigor,
like thirst-parched pilgrims, running after the mimge when the
sultry mist frowns o'er the desert with a show of waters mocking
men's distress.
But after all both achieved great discoveries, like alchemistsi,
not of what they sought, but of whatever was to be found. De
Soto discovered the lower Mississippi, and French visionaries the
upper, its head- waters, the Yellow Stone and the Rocky Moun-
tain backbone of the continent. They were the first who ever
burst in-o our inmost shrines.
But their aims were luic. At its best their ideal was not to
53
ly always
ef favorite
in all the
li a gallop-
ptioD, will
li was fur.
iingly tlie
'dsh," and
Lter name
fter labors
the fish
)ursuit of
ingly dis-
in
ds me of
Both
wy vigor,
when the
mocking
chemists,
and. De
uies the
y Moun-
vho ever
,s not to
i:
7f
/ou»cZna/w«5 circled by all that exalts and embellishes civilized
life. It was merely to discover a thoroughf;ire to the Pacific and
the Indies ready made to their hand?. T.iis ideal was never
realized, and under the old regime of the French it never could be.
To make such a pathway, or rather more than ro>al highway
was a beau ideal reserved for the Anglo-Saxon of our times, and
his ideal was straightway actualized, — the firstlings of his heart
became the firstlings of his hand. Some of us cannot worship
the heroes of our trans-continental roads. Kven we, however,
must admit that but for their iron will we should even now re-
joice in no iron ways.
Indians and French — path-finders like Fremont — were a
vapor that appeared for a little time — at most an Indian summer.
Yankees brushing them away, working mities of lead and lum-
ber, and then extracting agricultural wealth yet more perennial
and wide-spread, have built on firmer foundations, and are efllo-
rescing in a higher style of culture throughout all departments of
life.
The French who occupied the Northwest either as missionaries
among Indians, and those bound by vow to celibacy, or who
adopted Indian ways of life, naturally proved a race no less
ephemeral than the natives themselves. They vanished all the
sooner because they entered that region in small numbers. Indeed
French immigrants were nowhere numerous in America.
But had one single feature of French policy been dillerent, the
change in American history would have been great beyond cal-
culation. Huguenots, the only class of Frenchmen ready to leave
France were not permitted to enter New France. Uad they been
welcome there, legions of them would have penetrated its wilds
as far as any fanatical Jesuit or jolly rover. They would have
outnumbered the Fnglish American^;, being driven abroad by
worse persecutions at home. They would have furnished mate-
rial for such agricultural and manufacturing centers on the Upper
Likes as Li Salle vainly strove to found in Illinois.
In the next place, most of those French refugees who enriched
Switzerland, Holland, (Icrmany, England, and divers British col-
onies, especially tho.se on the Atlantic coast, with new arts or old
54
ones plied with new skill, would have betaken themselves to
Canada. There no strange language nor strange institutions re-
pelled them. They never willingly expatriated themselves, and in
New France they would have seemed still at norne. It has not
been enough noticed that New France was at first founded by
Ficnch Protestants, and that the early'ad venturers thither were of
the same faith, as well as that outfitters being Calvinists would
not admit Jesuits into their ships. Next, the two religions for a
time there held divided empire. When a pries'i and a minister
there died on the same day, they were laid in the same grave.
"Let us see," it was said, '■ whether they who have always lived
at war will now lie in peace." The first petition of Jesuits that
"reformed religionists," so-called, should bfj forbidden to inhabit
Canada dates from 1(121. llejected at that time by the French
king it was granted six years afterwards.
Had such been the French foundations in our Northwest, they
might still have stood strong there. The Canadians, while scarcelv
a tithe of the English, held their own for a century. What if
they had surpassed them 'in numbers, as much as they did in
unity, military spirit, and friendship for the aborigines?
In all likelihood France and England would to day hold di-
vided empire throughout the territory embraced by the United
States. The settlers, — each race afraid of the other, — would
both have clung to their mother countries, and sought protection
under their wings. During the Napoleonic wars, instead of being
developed by the carrying-trade of I'^urope, — by a market there
for all our produces, and by dedication lo the arts of peace, we
colonists should have been all the while belligerents, — and that
between two fires, pierced by invasions from the west, while our
coast was ravaged and our ports bombarded.
Not a few in this audience are of Eluguenot descent. Their
ancestors in all colonial wars must have fought against those
British provinces for which in fact they fought.
Even if the colonies, — English and French, — had one or both
of them become independent, each race would have forcced the
other to maintain a standing army of P]uropcan proportions, to
build a Chinese wall, or line of forts — "the labor of an age in
65
iselves to
itions re-
Gs, and in
t has not
unded by
3r were of
sts would
ions for a
I minister
no grave,
ays lived
suits that
o inhabit
le French
,vest, they
le scarcely
AVhat [f
ley did in
lold di-
United
— would
'otection
of beinsc
:et there
leaoe, we
and that
liile our
Their
lat those
or both
-'ced the
tions, to
age in
piled stones,"— from the Upper Lakes to the Gulf. Border col-
lisions would daily occur. Wars must have been frequent and
chronic.
Again, had the French centuries ago burst into the Northwest
by thousands instead of by scores, they would have planted their
mcdiieval institutions too deeply to be rooted out. Lords of broad
domains would have monopolized the land. Under them would
have been vassals uneducated save to drudgery or death dealing,
not one in a thousand of them rifling above the low level of that
inglorious throng in which they were born. The Te.xan (question
of a witne.ss, " Do you write your name like a monk, or make
your mark like a gentleman?'' would have been common all tiie
way fron. the tropic to the pole.
The Masses would have remained clannish retainers of heredi-
tary c''iefs. Each seigniory would have been a section cut out
of France with all the prerevolutionary enormities carried over
ocean and continent like the angel-borne holy house of Loretto,
and set down in the Alississippi Valley with all its imperfections
on its head.
Even that earthipiake revolution which tof)pled to the earth
the feudal fabrics of France, would not have extended into the
heart of this continent. It was, in fact, powerless even on the
lower St. Lawrence, so far as not reinforced by British thunder.
On the whole, had Huguenot? been tolerated from the first in
Kew France, a million of them would ha ■ migrated there, and
its population would have been no le.:vs numerous or puissant than
that of British America. All the i'luropean colonies in America
would probably still be subject to their parent states.
At all events they would have so balanced each other, and
their mutual relations would have been so antagonistic, that the
rise, progress and world-wide influence of those institutions and
that forni of society which are distinctively American, would
have been impossible. America would iiave been Europeanized.
There is no room in the universe for both Christ and Belial. So
there was no room in these United States for both freedom and
feudalism.
Well then may we thank God for the intolerance of Louis
56
XIV, or rather for the passing-pleasing tongue of Madam ISfainte-
non, which kept that <irar'l Moiiarqne her unconscious servitor.
Though he meant not so, neither did her heart think so, their pol-
icy was suicidal. Uliey were pioneers clearing the ground for the
undisturbed establishment and expansion of a system — political,
religious, educational, social, — which was ordained by Go 1, and
utilized by man, for rcvolutioni?:ing not only America, but France
and Europe. May that system of ours pervade the world, endure
forever, and prove a survivr.l of the fittest!
In our northwest French and Indians have stamped their
n'itnes forever on many natural features, — lakes, rivers, moun-
tains, and on hamlets which have, or will, be.iome cities. P>ut,
while names are French and Indian, — as ( "hicagoand St. Louis, —
all else, — all distinguishing characteristics bespeak the Anglo-
Saxons. They came out fi'om Great l)ritain in order to build on
a broader basis a liritain yet greater, continental and cosmopoli-
tan, gathering together in one those whom Ivibel scattered abroad.
Hence it has come to pass, that in the world's wide mouth, we to-
day are called, not New French, nor yet Xew English, nor by the
name of any Europeans whatever, bat yl?/2'/-/f7///>', now and for-
ever Americans. That cognomen is already all our own, and this
fact I hail as an omen that the continent also in all its length as
well as breadth will be ours ere long;
"The UNixr and MAiaaEu calm of states."
"^^
Ll?-^RA«t'Y \
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