The Life and Writings of Harriet Shikoski: Bluffton

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 BLUFFTON - STAR OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER 2 BLUFFTON - PART OF THE MASCOUTIN TERRITORY

CHAPTER 3 JEAN NICOLET - THE FIRST WHITE MAN TO COME

CHAPTER 4 JESUIT MISSIONARIES VISIT THE BLUFFTON AREA

CHAPTER 5 FRENCH FUR TRADERS ARRIVE

CHAPTER 6 FATHER DABLON COMES TO THE BLUFFTON AREA

CHAPTER 7 FRANCE CLAIMS THE BLUFFTON AREA

CHAPTER 8 THE JESUITS ESTABLISH MISSIONS

CHAPTER 9 FATHER MARQUETTE AND LOUIS JOLIET PASS THROUGH

CHAPTER 10 THE COUREURS DE BOIS

CHAPTER 11 THE DECLINE OF THE MISSIONARIES

CHAPTER 12 THE MASCOUTINS LEAVE THE BLUFFTON AREA

CHAPTER 13 THE FOX TRIBE OCCUPY THE FOX VALLEY

CHAPTER 14 THE FOX WARS

CHAPTER 15 THE NEAR EXTERMINATIONS OF THE FOX TRIBE

CHAPTER 16 ENGLISH SUPREMACY

CHAPTER 17 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

CHAPTER 18 THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE OF 1787

CHAPTER 19 FOX VALLEY INDIANS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER 20 THE WINNEBAGO INDIANS

CHAPTER 21 THE DECORAHS

CHAPTER 22 THE FOX-WISCONSIN WATERWAY

CHAPTER 23 DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER 24 THE WAR OF 1812

CHAPTER 25 THE WINNEBAGO WAR

CHAPTER 26 THE INFLUX OF THE NEW YORK INDIANS

CHAPTER 27 THE BLACK HAWK WAR

CHAPTER 28 THE IMPACT OF THE BLACK HAWK WAR ON THE WINNEBAGOES

CHAPTER 29 THE OWNERSHIP OF LAND

CHAPTER 30 SETTLERS

CHAPTER 31 THE BLUFFTON MILL

CHAPTER 32 THE FOX RIVER IMPROVEMENTS

CHAPTER 33 A FURROW STRAIGHT AND LONG

CHAPTER 34 CORN - THE SETTLER'S GOLD

CHAPTER 1 BLUFFTON -- STAR OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

There is a beautiful place where the water flows in its unrelenting search for the sea. The place is called Bluffton; the stream is called the Puckyan River. They are located in the Town of Brooklyn, Green Lake County, Wisconsin.

This place has seen the quiet hot summer days, the seething fury of winter blizzards, the beautiful golden colors of autumn and the bird-song-filled lush springs. It has heard the crow scolding overhead, the owl hooting at night and the honking of geese from their overhead flying wedge. It has felt the footsteps of the bear and the bison, of the elk, the rabbit, the fox, the wolf, the porcupine and the muskrat, of the moccassined red man and the booted white. It has known good times and bad, seasons of plenty and of famine. It has known the friendly Mascoutins who opened their arms to strangers, and the treacherous Fox who made it a part of a "dark and bloody ground." Here men struggled, loved, raised families, educated their children, held fast to their religious beliefs and hoped for a better future.

When the nineteenth century dawned it was not yet named Bluffton. It was a part of the vast Northwest territory that was so vague and unknown in the original states. It had been ceded by Great Britain to the United States in 1783, but the Americans living along the eastern coast, who had fought the British in the revolutionary War, neither knew nor cared what happened there, and their fledgling government was staggering under more immediate problems.

The present always depends on the past, and to understand the nineteenth century it is necessary to know what happened earlier. The past of the pioneer days goes back through days of exploration, through prehistoric days of the ancestors of the Indians, to the days of the animal kingdoms, the dawning of plants and the time of the lifeless ice age.

Long before the last glacier passed, an ancient river existed approximately where the present day Fox flows. The Niagara limestone ridge which runs through Wisconsin roughly parallet to the shore of Lake Michigan prevented streams from flowing to the east and so the river took a north-easterly direction. When that last glacier came it followed the ancient valley, making it wider and deeper. As the glacier retreated water again flowed in this valley forming the river known today as the Fox River, which is considered the oldest river in North America.

It was out of the cold and barren glacier warmed by the sun that the place called Bluffton was first formed. As the sun grew warmer the ice receded, leaving the land near its present formation. The lakes and streams appeared and began their search for lower ground. Green Lake formed, gathering water from many acres of land, emptying it into the Puckyan which flowed past Bluffton into the Upper Fox River. The Upper Fox meanders with a sluggish flow dropping an average of only about four inches to a mile, finally emptying into Lake Winnebago. From there the Lower Fox descends more rapidly into Green Bay, then out to the Atlantic through the st. Lawrence Seaway.

As this system developed the small plants and animals began to thrive and in turn supplied sustenance to the larger plants and animals. There was a time when the huge mastadoon roamed here, when prehistoric people hunted for food, fled from the dangers of the huge beasts, sought shelter where they could and managed to live and love and raise families. The mound builders came. They left their mounds upon the earth and disappeared. Other tribes of Indians wandered in and out. Perhaps some Norsemen wandered through this place. The buffalo, the caribou, the deer and the elk knew well this place, grazing upon its prairie or marsh plants and refreshing themselves by the mineral springs and flowing water. But the records of men do not mention it until the seventeenth century.

CHAPTER 2 BLUFFTON - PART OF MASCOUTIN TERRITORY

The earliest knowledge of the general area around Bluffton was preserved by the Jesuits in their missionary accounts. The first known people to occupy this area were the Mascoutin Indians. The site of their village has been the subject of much speculation and disagreement. While we have descriptions of it, no one seems to have proof of the exact spot. The early maps and accounts found in the Jesuit Relations indicate that it was at least twenty miles up the Fox River from the junction of the Fox and Wolf Rivers, and about seventy miles from the Fox-Wisconsin portage. It was on the south side of the Fox near where a canoe could land on a non-marshy bank of that river. It was reached by walking two miles, more or less, across a prairie from the landing of the canoe. It was on fairly level, elevated ground, from which the surrounding country could be seen in every direction. It had a mineral spring or springs.

While historians have not agreed on a particular spot as the site of the village, the consensus places it somewhere near the present city of Berlin. Prof. C. W. Butterfield places it "in Green Lake County." Some think that it is near the site where the village of St. Marie once existed. George Gary in his Studies in Early History of the Fox River Valley places the Mascoutin village site on the east half of Section 32 in Township 18 North of Range 14 East, in the Town of Rushford, Winnebago County. In his opinion this is the only place south of the Fox River which fulfills the descriptions of the Jesuit Fathers' and Joliet's map. John J. Wood, Jr. of Berlin, Wiscosnin, in his paper read before the X-ray Club, Berlin, on the 9th of February, 1907 (written for the Wisconsin Historical Society) also uses the maps and descriptins of the Jesuits and the map of Joliet. He places the site in section 24 in Township 17 North of Range 13 East in the Town of Berlin, Green Lake County. (See map of Possible Sites of Mascountin Village.) Wood said this site is the crest of an elevated fertile prairie of several hundred acres. From here could be seen at least sixty miles of the Fox Valley. Rush Lake can be seen a few miles away. From the higher points near the southern edge of the highlands, two miles to the south, can be seen Green Lake sparkling in the landscape.

Gary describes ill-smelling, ill-tasting mineral springs near his alleged canoe landing as the mineral waters of the Mascoutins. He also describes a large spring of pure water toward the southwest part of the site he describes. Wood names Winchell spring as the Mascoutin mineral waters. Its water is said to have a medicinal value and is delightful to drink. A brook flows from it to the Fox River.

Joliet's map does not show the village of the Mascoutins but gives the location of the region occupied by them. It shows a lake with its outlet running northerly to the Fox River. Gary has assumed that this is Ruch Lake and its outlet. Wood asserts that the lake and its outlet is Green Lake and the Puckyan River flowing into the Fox, and the Mascoutins are represented as being at or near Green Lake.

Are these sites far apart? Not really. The sites suggested by Gary and Wood are only four and a half miles apart as the crow flies. Both are on that fertile paririe that stretches across the Green Lake-Winnebago County line. It was known to the pioneers as Democrate Prairie.

How far Bluffton is from where the actual Mascoutin Village was we do not know. It is about ten miles from Gary's proposed site and only six miles from Wood's site. It is also six miles from the site of St. Marie but in the opposite direction than the other two sites proposed above.

We do not know whether the old Indian burial ground located on the right bank of the Fox river and west of the Puckyan is the site of a fierce and deathly battle as Charles Owen indicated in his poem, "The Old Puckyan," or whether it was a regular Indian place of interment, as John J. Wood, Jr. hinted in his description of the Mascoutin Village. If, in fact, it was a Mascoutin burial ground than Bluffton was in the midst of Mascoutin Territory. Certainly the Mascoutins, their friends and allies controlled this area.

Father Claude Allouez's description of the Mascoutin land is very brief, calling it a very attractive place with beautiful plains and fields as far as one could see. Louis Joliet wrote that he had never seen, even in France, anything more beautiful than the prairies. They were a pleasing variety of groves and forests, where one could gather plums, pomegranates, lemons, apples, mulberries and fruits not known in Europe. He mentioned quail, parrots, fish, buffalo and turkeys. Father James Marquette calls it beautiful and very pleasing. He mentions the eminence on which the Mascoutin Village was placed, from which one could see pariries on every side extending farther than the eye could see. The prairies were interspersed with groves of lofty trees. It was the prairies on which they lived that gave the Mascoutins their name which means "an open country" or "a treeless country."

The Mascoutins were an Algonquin tribe related to the Ottawas, Chippewas, Sauks, Fox, Pottawatomis and Illinois. These tribes were known for their rude manners and war-like character. They lived by hunting, fishing and primitive agriculture. The Mascoutins around Bluffton seem to have been less war-like than their relatives, for after Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medart Chouart des Groseillers visited them the two Frenchmen reported that these people (including the Miamis who lived with them) were of a very gentle disposition.

The Mascoutins built their village on an elevated, fertile, rolling prairie, supplied with an abundance of spring water. They lived in a palisade enclosure. The height on which they lived commanded and extensive view of the Fox Valley. Smoke or fire signals could be seen as far away as the Montello ridge to the west, and to the east as far away as the high ridge along the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago. It did not take many signal stations to pass information to the Mascoutins from Green Bay or Lake Michigan on the east, or from the Mississippi on the west.

The forest region extending across northern Wisconsin did not extend to the vast grassland of the Mascoutin country, though elms, oaks, and similar trees grew in groves scattered across the fertile prairies, mostly along banks of streams. Bark canoes and wigwams could not be made from these trees but needed the bark from the birch or related trees.. Father Allouez says that for this reason the Mascoutins did not have birch bark canoes and so did not use the streams as highways. This was a great handicap in warring with other peoples. They made their homes mostly from reeds or rushes woven together into mats. Walls and roofs were made from these mats lashed to sapling frames. They did not give great protection against wind and rain but were easily transported. The Indians

made packages of them and took them along with them when they went hunting.

They raised Indian corn, squashes, beans and tobacco, and gathered large quantities of plums, grapes, and other wild fruits.

CHAPTER 3

JEAN NICOLET - FIRST WHITE MAN TO COME

The first white man known to have reached this area was Jean Nicolet, a young Frenchman from Normandy. He was of good character, had a deep religious feeling and an excellent memory. Soon after his arrival in Canada in 1618, Samuel de Champlain, Governor of New France, wishing him to become an interpreter for the Canadian Government, sent him to reside among friendly Algonquin tribes to be trained in their customs, language and habits. He lived among the Nipissing in his own cabin nine or ten years.

Champlain heard of a tribe to the west (of a different lineage than the tribes known to the French) who were reported to have come from the shores of a salt sea, somewhere far to the southwest. They were called "men-of-the-sea" (Winnebagoes) by the Algonquins. They were sometimes visited by another people without hair or beards (Sioux) who made their journeys to the sea tribe in large canoes "on a great water." The French still searching for a new way to reach the orient with its rare metals and rare spices, hoped taht these tribes would lead them to a water route to China and Japan.

Because Nicolet had tact, courage, knowledge of the Indian character and skill in Indian customs and languages, Champlain selected him to visit this distant tribe to establish peace and to open trade relations between them and the French.

In the summer of 1634 Nicolet accompanied by seven Hurons paddled up the Ottawa River, portaged a difficult 4 miles to the French River, entered the Georgian Bay and passed through Lakes Huron and Michigan to Green Bay. It was said that he traveled one thousand one hundred miles in a birch-bark canoe. He sent one of the Hurons ahead to the Winnebagoes to announce his appproach. The messenger was well received and some Winnebagoes went out to meet Nicolet and escort him and his companions to their village near the mouth of the Fox River. Nicolet dressed in a large flowing robe of Chinese silk damask strewn with birds and flowers of various gay colors. as he stepped ashore he held a pistol in each hand and fired a salute to signal his arrival. The frightened women and children fled from the place.

The news of Nicolet's coming spread rapidly among the tribes and over four thousand Indians gathered to see him. He gave the chiefs gifts of trinkets and beads. Each of the chiefs welcomed him and had a feast prepared for him. A hundred and twenty beavers were roasted and eaten at one of these banquets.

Nicolet made a treaty with the Winnebagoes who promised to keep the peace with all tribes east of them, a promise they broke almost as soon as he was out of their sight. Nicolet then ascended the Fox River, passing through Lake Winnebago and reaching the village of the Mascoutins. In 1634, just one hundred years after the discovery of the mouth of the St. Lawrence by Cartier and only fourteen years after the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Nicolet became the frist know white man to gaze upon the waters of Lake Michigan, Green Bay, and the Fox River, and to paddle his canoe to the country of the Mascoutins, the country of Bluffton.

Nicolet may have been illiterate as he himself left no written report of his journey. How long he stayed among the Mascoutins is unknown, but it was long enough to learn that the Sioux were not mandrins from China, and he had no need for his silk damask robe. He returned to the Winnebagoes, visited a neighboring tribe of Pottawatomies, spent the winter somewhere among these tribes and returned to New France in Canada in 1635. Champlain died in December of that year. His succesor did not encourage explorations. Champlain's death together with continuing war with the Iroquois apparently put an end to French explorations for a time.

It must have been a wondrous event in the lives of the Mascoutins when a white man visited them. Yet one white man was hardly a force to change anything and it was another generation before the next known white man visited the Bluffton area.

In 1658 Pierre Esprit Redisson and his brother-in-law, Medart Chouart des Grosilliers, formed a wandering partnership to "travell and see countreys." In 1659 they visited the Mascoutins, "a faire proper nation; they are tall and bigg & very strong." "When we arrived there weare extraordinary banquets. There they never have seen men with beards, because they pull their haires as soon as it comes out [a mistaken notion]; but much more astonished when they saw our arms, especially our guns which they worshipped by blowing smoake of tobacco instead of sacrifice." The Mascoutins told them they were "in warres" with the Sioux, a strong nation.

Of this country Radisson said that it was so beautiful and fruitful that it grieved him that the world could not see it and discover such an enticing place to live. He said this because the land shortage of the Europeans caused them to fight one another "for a rock in the sea."

CHAPTER 4 JESUIT MISSIONARIES VISIT THE BLUFFTON AREA

In 1634, the same year that Jean nicolet came to Wisconsin, two Jesuit fathers went to the Hurons to establish permanent missions among them. The high hopes which followed the success of this work were suddently blasted when a powerful war party of the Iroquois attacked in 1649. About this time the Dutch let the Iroquois have guns. This act unleashed upon the Hurons what was probably the most potent Indian military confederacy in North America. The Hurons as a nation broke up, some fleeing east to their French friends. Some were found later in the wilds of Wisconsin. Many Algonquins also fled the Iroquois. A remnant of the Miamis, an Algonquin tribe, appeared near Lake Winnebago. When the Sioux drove them from there they sought refuge with the Mascoutins near Bluffton.

The Jesuits, upon hearing that somewhere in the wilds of Wisconsin there was a band of Hurons among whom were some baptised Christians and Neophytes who had been instructed in the Faith, determined to send missionaries to serve them.

Father Claude Allouez was the first missionary to labor among the Indians of Wisconsin. With six Frenchmen and more than four hundred savages of different tribes, he embarked on August 8th, 1665, at Three Rivers, Quebec Province, bound for Lake Superior. On October 1st he arrived at Chegoimagon on Lake Superior where he said the first mass offered up in Wisconsin. There was a great Indian village with a population of eight hundred warriors, from seven different nations. They lived in peace with each other, planted corn and led a stationary life.

In the summer of 1667 Father Allouez returned to Quebec to get help to Christianize these Indians. After remaining in Quebec for two days, he came back with Father Louis Nicholas and one lay brother. The next year he again returned to Quebec with some Iroquois captives whom he had ransomed from their captors, and came back to Chegoimagon Bay with Father Claude Dablon, who was sent to act as superior of the upper missions. In 1669, Father Allouez celebrated the first mass ever offered in Green Bay. Eight Frenchmen attended this mass. It is probable that Nicholas Perrot was one of them.

The Indians had already taken up their winter quarters when Father Allouez arrived in Green Bay. He found collected in one village Sauks, Pottawatomis, Fox and Winnebagoes to the number of about six hundred. Three other Indian villages not as large were within twenty miles. Among these Father Allouez worked through the winter, waiting for spring when he could go to the villages of the Fox and the Mascoutins. Some of the Indians of these tribes he had instructed at the Point of the Holy Ghost on Chegoimagon Bay, and he wished to give them more knowledge of the mysteries of the Faith.

On April 12, 1670, the ice broke up on the river in Green Bay and on April 16th Father Allouez embarked on his journey up the Fox River, which he named the St. Francois River. He saw clouds of "swans, bustards and ducks." The Indians set snares for them and caught as many as fifty in one night.

About ten miles up the river he found a village of Sauks. They made a barricade across the river by driving down large stakes so that there was a kind of bridge over the stream for the fishermen. With the help of a small weir they easily caught sturgeon and other kinds of fish which this dam stopped, though the water kept flowing through the stakes. This was effective during the spring and part of the summer.

As Father Allouez walked along the bank of the river during the portage around the rapids at Kaukauna he found apple trees and vine stocks in abundance.

On the evening of the 19th he reached Lake Winnebago which he name Lake St. Francois. The area around it was uninhabited because it was visited by the Sioux who were dreaded by the other tribes.

father Allouez entered the upper Fox early in the afternoon of the 20th. He entered Lake Poygan which was bordered with wild rice. As he entered he saw a pair of turkeys perched on a tree. They were just like the ones he had seen in France, same size, same color, and same cry. Ducks, geese, bustards and swans were abundant. He also saw large and small stags, bears and beavers in great numbers.

Father Allouez ascended the Wolf River and on the 24th he arrived at the Fox Village. The Indians welcomed the "Manitou," and led him and his companions to a cabin, treating them with respect. They were different than the Algonquin tribes father Allouez knew but they could understand him, although he had very much trouble understanding them.

There were more than four hundred warriors and numberous women and children. It was common for each man to have four to ten wives. This "sin" was a grievious obstacle to the good Jesuits.

The Fox Nation was more provident than most of the Algonquins but the other nations considered the Fox to be greedy, stingy, thieving, quick-tempered, and quarrelsome. They made war upon the Sioux, but did not make war on the Iroquois, though often killed by them, because, like the Mascoutins, the Fox people had no canoes for easy maneuverability. To escape the Iroquois these Fox had settled in a remote region, but the soil was black and productive. They raised Indian corn and other vegetables. During the winter they hunted, returning to their cabins toward the end of the winter.

They used fish to season the corn they had hidden the previous autumn.

In the center of a clearing they had a strong, palisaded fort. Their cabins erected around the fort were made of heavy bark, but on journeys they had mats for shelter.

Before Father Allouez arrived two French traders had come among them and had behaved so very badly that the Fox had a very low opinion of the French. The good father explained his own motive in coming among them and tried to give them a better idea of the whole french nation.

Father Allouez planted a cross in the Fox Village and named the place the Mission of St. Marc.

The French left the Fox Nation on twenty-seventh, entered the upper Fox River on the twenty-ninth, and landed opposite the Mascoutin Village on the thirtieth. Leaving the canoe at the water's edge, they walked to the Mascoutin fort. When the Indians saw them they hastened to meet them, accompanied them to the chief's cabin, and gave them refreshments. They oiled the feet and legs of the French paddlers. This was probably not a a ceremony but a massage of the muscles to relax them from the cramped position taken to paddle the canoe.

Afterwards a feast was prepared. When all were seated a dish of powdered tobacco was brought. It was offered to Father Allouez in a sacrificial ceremony similar to that which they used to worship idols or honored objects. They asked him to let the earth yield corn and the rivers give them fish; and not let disease kill them or famine to treat them harshly.

Father Allouez was scandalized by this show of worship. In his turn he presented them with glass beads, knives and hatchets, telling them that he was not the Manitou but His creature, trying to explain the Christian Faith.

There were only a few Miamis in the village as the main body was out hunting. The priest felt that their language was in harmony with their disposition; he found them gentle, pleasant, calm, dignified and slow speaking.

About ten miles from the Mascoutins were the Kickapoo and Kitchigamich who spoke the same language as the Mascoutins. On May 1st Father Allouez went to visit them in their cabins. He found them kind and docile, but they had their superstitions and practiced polygamy like the other savages. They made him sit down on a fine new piece of fur and presented him with a handful of tobacco which they placed at his feet. They brought him a kettle full of fat, meat and Indian corn. They asked him to guard their land, come often and teach them how to speak to that great Manitou.

The French did not stay long with them. On May 3, 1670, Father Allouez left these people who lived near and in the Bluffton area and returned to Green Bay, being three days on the passage back. On May 20th he returned to Sault Ste. Marie.

CHAPTER 5

FRENCH FUR TRADERS ARRIVE

When Father Allouez celebrated that first mass at Green Bay in 1669 there were eight Frenchmen present. Father Allouez had only two French companions with him. Who were the others? Probably fur traders. Two fur traders had visited the Fox Indians before Father Allouez had, giving them a poor opinion of the French.

The fur trade had traveled quickly from the eastern seacoast to the interior of the continent. By the mid 1630s beaver and other furs that had been trapped in the Wisconsin and upper Mississippi Valley region were leaving French ports. They had been brought by Indian middlemen. The Ottawa and Huron tribes were the leading agents. The Iroquois, supplied by Dutch traders, were their competitors. As the beaver grew scarce in their own territory the Iroquois became desparate for furs to trade, and attacked fur-laden canoes of their Huron rivals. In the 1640s they swept into Huron lands burning villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. By 1650 the Ottawa and Huron Indians living east and south of Lake Huron had been practically destroyed. The survivors fled, some as far away as the upper Mississippi and Lake Superior region.

The expulsion of the Hurons from the region between Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario had repercussions in Wisconsin. Pushed by fear of the Iroquois and/or drawn by the productive fur-bearing regions, the Indians rounded Lake Michigan or paddled over the great waterway. The large number and variety of the incoming tribes brought about a relocation of the tribes already in Wisconsin. At the time of Nicolet's journey in 1634 the powerful Winnebagoes occupied a large region around Green Bay. At first they defended themselves vigorously against the invading refugee tribes. But this constant warfare reduced their numbers. Further decline came from plagues (probably smallpox) and by famine, as food supplies were depleted by the great numbers of invading Indians. Pestilence, disaster and war had reduced the Winnebago population to one-sixth of what it had been. This population decline allowed other tribes to move into the area.

As these refugees established themselves along the upper and lower Fox, the lower Wolf and Green Bay, their trading operations became organized. The Ottawa paddled fleets of canoes down the st. Lawrence, trading furs for firearms, fabrics, and metal tools. Wisconsin tribes received European implements of trade from the Ottawas before actually being visited by the whites. They soon learned the superiority of iron knives and axes over those of stone.

A few hopeful French traders and missionaries accompanied the Ottawas in their travels. As early as 1662 anonymous coureurs de bois were living with Chippewa bands along the south shore of Lake Superior.

The French aristocrats wanted beaver furs to make the felt hats then so stylish in France and other European countries. The best beaver skins were those from animals trapped in the cold weather when the furs were thickest. The Indians scraped and rubbed the inside of each pelt, trimmed them into rectangular shapes and sewed them together for a robe. The Indians then wore these robes with the fur toward their bodies. The oils from their bodies kept the skins soft and the long hairs fell out leaving only the soft downy fur. These were more desireable and brought a higher price than unworn furs. One wonders what the reaction would be if a French lady would suddenly learn that her luxurious fur hd been worn for months by an Indian "savage."

Nicholas Perrot was known in Green Bay before the Jesuit Mission was established. He was intelligent and fearless. He was an expert in handling Indians who both loved and feared him. By the spring of 1668 he and his partner, Toussaint Baudry, had been invited to visit Green Bay by a group of Pottawatomi. They brought iron tools and weapons to trade. The Pottawatomi had just returned from Montreal where they had been greatly impressed and became ambitious to replace the Ottawa as middlemen. They notified many surrounding tribes--Fox, Miami, Mascoutin, Kickapoo and Illinois--that they could bring their furs to Green Bay and trade for French goods which the Pottawatomi would bring from Montreal. The two French traders looked upon this as a threat to their own trading business, and they quickly made as many visits as possible to nearby Indians. They visited the Mascoutin and Miami village near Bluffton. They were met by a chief at the head of more than 3,000 men and escorted into the village. In May, 1670, they joined three other traders in forming the largest flotilla of canoes that had ever left the upper Great Lakes, Nine hundred Indians left Green Bay carrying furs to Montreal. Besides the beaver skins there were pelts of otter, marten, raccoon, mink, bear and lynx. The great glut of furs caused the price ot plunge so low that their profit was not as great as they had hoped.

No record was kept of which area supplied what kind of skins. No doubt some of them came from the Bluffton area, but probably not many beaver pelts. The habitat of the beaver covered a large area of the American continent where there were aspen, poplar, cottonwood or willow trees growing along streams where they could build their dams. Bluffton did not have these trees so it is unlikely that it had any abundance of beaver. It is highly likely that it supplied otter, muskrat and other furs.

CHAPTER 6

FATHER DABLON COMES TO THE BLUFFTON AREA

When Father Allouez came back to Green Bay from Sault Ste. Marie on September 6, 1670, Father Claude Dablon accompanied him. They found trouble there. Fur traders were complaining that the natives were ill-treating them in deeds and words, stealing their merchandise and acting insolent and indignant. The trouble seems to have started when some of the natives had taken their furs to Montreal and had been badly treated, especially by some of the French soldiers. After returning to Green Bay, the Indians organized about forty of their young men into a company of "soldiers" and, in imitation of the French, had placed guards at the quarters of the French, similar to the actions of the French soldiers who had stationed guards at the Indian quarters in Montreal. The priests tried to appease them as well as they could and called a council of the tribes represented. At the appointed time for the assembly, two of these "soldiers," with muskets on their shoulders and tomahawks stuck in their girdles for swords, came to summon the fathers. The good fathers had trouble restraining their mirth at the appearance of the sentries who paraded in front of the cabin where the council was held. The Indians expressed satisfaction in seeing Father Allouez. The older ones promised to abate the "soldier" nuisance, blaming it on hot-headed "young men," but denying that they had been treating anyone as badly as the French soldiers had treated them.

The main purpose of Father Dablon's visit seems to have been to visit the tribes (Mascoutins, Miamis and Kickapoos) on the upper Fox River. Father Allouez's description of them, their country and their comparatively settled stationery life had impressed him that it would be a very promising field for missionary work.

Father Dablon gave us the first full written description of the upper Fox River Valley. To him it had the beauty of a terrestial paradise, and the way leading to it bore some likeness to the narrow path leading to heaven. The "narrow path" referred to the eight or nine miles of rapids in the lower Fox. They were very difficult because the men had to walk barefoot over stones so sharp that it was hard to withstand the swift current. But after successfully completing the rough and dangerous journey, they were compensated with entering the "fairest land possible to behold." Prairies stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see, cut by a river which meandered through it so gently that it rested the traveler to paddle his canoe with such ease.

The hills and forests had been left behind. Only occassional small grove-planted "openings" were present which offered shade from the sun's heat, pleasure to the eyes, and wood to man who could not get along without it. Only elms, oaks and similar trees were seen--no trees whose bark could be used for cabins or canoes. Grapes, plums and apples invited the traveler to land and taste. They were sweet and very abundant. The banks of the river were covered with wild rice that attracted birds and all sorts of game. Wild cows were frequently seen in herds of four or five hundred head. They were so abundant that the savages were not obliged to scatter by families during their hunting season as did savages elsewhere.

Father Dablon also mentioned buffaloes, which resembled the French bulls in size and strength. They differed, though, in being more prolific; the females bearing three or four young at a time. They had horns double in size than those which the French bulls had, though they were similar in form and color. Their horns were nearly two feet long. Their hair was thick, heavy, dark-colored and resembled the wool of sheep, but was much coarser and thicker. It was used in making robes and garments which were warmer than those made from any other furs in the country. Their flesh was excellent, and the fat, when mixed with wild rice, most delicious.

Father Dablon describes birds (pelicans) which from a distance resemnled swans to him. He described them as having white plumage, long necks, and swan-sized bodies and feet. However the beak seemed much different to him, being at least as thick as a man's arm. He said they usually carried it resting its weight upon their neck, which they bent backward for that purpose. Father Dablon thought it wonderful to see how they used their beaks for fishing. Beneath the beak was a sort of net which opened or shut according to the supply of fish enclosed. This net, made of skin, was fine and elastic. When it was gathered up it fit so well and snugly under the beak that it could not be seen, and the fish were not frightened from it. At the proper time the birds could enlarge it rapidly and open it so widely that it could hold a man's head. Swimming to meet the fish and at the same time stretching this fishing-net, they scooped up the fish and promptly shut the net lest the fish escape.

On the 13th of September, 1670, Fathers Allouez and Dablon arrived at the Mascoutin Village. Living with the Mascoutins were the Miamis, all together numbering three thousand souls, each tribe able to furnish four hundred warriors for defence against the Iroquois who pursued them even into these remote districts.

The missionaries began instructing the Indians. Father Allouez reviewed what he had told them in the spring, then proceeded to tell them about Paradise and Hell. He showed them a picture of the Last Judgement, describing the happiness of the saints and the torments of the damned. The Indians looked with wonder at this picture, never having seen anything like it. They listened with attention and respect.

Fr. Dablon thought this was a fine opening for him to make known to the Indians "Him, who is the great master of our lives." He told them that the missionaries were only the servants and deputies of the Diety. The Indians had no dodubt that the "servants and deputies" could surely bring them victory, success, material abundance and happiness.

Many feasts were prepared for the missionaries, but they were not so much for the sake of eating as they were for ceremonial requests for recovery from their ailments or success in hunting and war. Some of the feasts were to entertain the fathers. Some of the oldest men would appear, dressed as if playing a comedy, and dance to the music of some very tuneful airs, which they sang in excellent harmony. They gave the missionaries free access to their dwellings. The fathers preached, instructed and visited the sick.

Father Dablon was more impressed with the Miami than with the Mascoutins. They told him about the great river of the west (Mississippi) which Father Dablon judged discharged into either the Vermillion Sea (Gulf of California) or the Florida Sea (Caribbean). He saw some warriors who had descended the river so far that they had seen men resembling the French who "split trees with knives and had houses on water." They had seen the Spanish settlers who sawed boards and had ships.

At the time of this visit most of the Miamis were living west of the Mississippi River. Those who were living with the Mascoutins had separated from the main tribe. Many from beyond the "Great River" had come to join their countrymen. Father Dablon hoped that more would come for he felt that no nation was better fitted for receiving Christian influences than the Miamis, and it was too far for the missionaries to go to them.

The Miamis, esspecially their chief, showed Fathers Allouez and Dablon a great deal of politeness and affection. This chief was treated with more ceremony than the chiefs of other Algonquin tribes. The formal respect given him in his cabin was almost like that of a prince in his palace. He was surrounded by the leading men of the village, who, like courtiers, showed their respect and esteem for him. The duties of the kitchen were not performed in his presence or in that of the missionaries. When it came time for the fathers to hold evening prayers the chief was eager to have a bright shining fire that would give light for reading, and imposed silence upon all who were present.

Although the chief was regarded as a great warrior, he had a gentle and winning countenance. It was their gentle manner as well as their eagerness to receive instructions that impressed Father Dablon that they were so worthy to receive the Word of Christ. He was also impressed with their lack of superstitions. They did not offer sacrifice to various spirits as the Fox and other tribes did. They worshipped only the sun. Father Dablon thought perhaps the reason they did not sacrifice to many spirits was because they did not fish, but lived on Indian corn which was easily raised in the fertile lands, and on game which was so plentiful that they were never in want. He thought that it was savages who had had their nets carried off in storms, or who had known friends or relatives who had perished in canoe accidents or by breaking through the ice, that believed in water spirits who might drown them or destroy their nets.

When Fathers Dablon and Allouez left the chief, the leading men and part of the village accompanied them, as a mark of honor, to their place of embarkation. The Indians were already preparing to build a chapel.

CHAPTER 7

FRANCE CLAIMS BLUFFTON AREA

In 1670, Jean Talon, the Intendent of New France, ordered Daumont de St. Lussen to search for copper mines on Lake Superior and to take possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France. Nicholas Perrot went with St. Lussen as his interpreter. Perrot was a prominent figure among the French "voyageurs". He had a clear head, was energetic and had an accomplishment most bushrangers did not have. He could read and write, and he left a manuscript, a memoir of his life and what he saw.

While St. Lussen wintered at the Manatoulin Islands, Perrot sent messages to the northern tribes inviting them to meet St. Lussen at Sault Ste. Marie in the following spring. He then returned to Green Bay to induce the tribes in that vicinity to attend the proposed gathering of the nations. It is said that when he visited the Miamis near Bluffton, they entertained him with an Indian ballgame and a sham battle. His description of the ceremony and pomp surrounding the Miami chief parallels that of Father Dablon.

The idea was that the chiefs of the various tribes should surrender the claim of sovereignty over their lands to the King of France in return for French protection and the advantages of trade. The Indians would become children of New France. It appears that the chiefs of the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos did not attend the great council. The stately potentate of the Miamis may have been recognized as the Mascoutin chief, since those tribes lived together. However the Miami chief was persuaded by the Pottawatomies that the trip would be too tiresome for him, and he allowed them (the Pottawatomis, who were relatives of the Mascoutins) to represent him in council. The wiley and hot-tempered Foxes who developed a hatred for the French (excepting Perrot and the missionaries) gathered with the other Indians at Green Bay. When Perrot sailed from Green Bay for Sault Ste. Marie with an imposing fleet of canoes, the Fox turned back to their homes. It was not known whether they simply changed their minds or whether the change was part of a devious scheme prompted by their treacherous nature.

On June 14, 1671, St. Lussen led his men to small hill near the village of the Chippewas. There was a colorful crowd with French ssoldiers in full dress uniform armed and equipped; four blackrobed missionaries; fifteen Indian chiefs in their best savage dress with paint and feathers; and fur traders with their leather breeches, bright sashes and fringe. Some two thousand Indians from a wide area attended the impressive ceremony. A large cross was erected and blessed by Father Dablon. A cedar post near it bore a small plate engraved with the royal arms. The "Vexilla Regis" was sung at the erection of the cross and St. Lussen's followers sang the "Exaudiat." After a prayer for the king, offered by one of the fathers, St. Lussen advanced with a sword in one hand, and elevating a clod of turf in the other, prompously claimed the whole country, declaring, "In the name of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Redoubted Monarch, Louis, Fourteenth of that name, Most Christian King of France and Navarre, I take possession of the said place of Ste. Mary of the Falls as well as of Lakes Huron and Superieur, the island of Caietonton [Manitoulin] and of all other countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries, contiguous and adjacent thereunto, as well discovered and to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the Northern and Western seas and on the other side by the South Sea [Pacific Ocean} including all its length or breadth."

The French fired their muskets shouting "Vive le Roi [Long live the King]. The Indians joined in the din with their savage yelps and exclamations. Fr. Allouez then spoke to the Indians in their own language, stressing the glory, power, riches and magnificence of the French king, how no one dares make war on him but humbly submits to him and begs for peace.

And so France, whose king lived half a continent and a broad ocean away, claimed thousands of square miles of land, including the site of the future Bluffton. She claimed the territory of the Mascoutins in the name of her king, though neither the king nor any Mascoutins were present, though that tribe may have been represented by the Pottawatomies.

CHAPTER 8

JESUITS ESTABLISH MISSIONSISSIONS

Before going to the great council at Sault Ste. Marie in 1671. Father Allouez made a winter journey to the Fox tribe. Indians from several other nations had increased the population of their village. There were more than two hundred cabins each containing five or six families with some as many as ten families in a cabin. The disorder of these people reminded the priest of Babylon. Some of them had been to French settlements the summer before and had received such harsh tratment they were planning to kill some Frenchmen in retaliation. The traders were afraid to go among them. Father Allouez exposed his life in order to bring them the Gospel and peace. On the twentieth of February he left the Bay des Puans (Bay of the Winnebagoes or Green Bay) and traveled nearly sixty miles in six days over ice and snow. He visited from cabin to cabin, encouraging some with the hope of Paradise and frightening others with fear of Hell. He endured their ridicule, mockery and rebuffs. He felt horror when he entered cabins of chiefs who had as many as eight or ten wives. But his patience won the day. They began to listen to him with respect and even with some kindness. When he left the old men promised to erect a chapel when he returned.

Father Allouez and Father Louis Andre erected a bark chapel and a cabin for themselves at De Pere which they called the Mission of St. Francis Xavier. The site selected for the chapel was at the place where many tribes gathered for fishing and hunting. Fish and wild fowl were sometimes taken in the same net at the same time. At this place a broad strip of prairie on each side of the river was backed by woods of tall timber not very dense in which wild-cats, deer and bears were found. The fishing device of a barricade of stakes across the river was used here.

Fathers Allouez and Andre divided the labor of their various missions, Father Andre working among the bay shore tribes and Father Allouez among the Fox and other tribes living on the Fox River. The mission among the Fox Indians on the Wolf River was known as the Mission of St. Marc. Like other missions a large cross was planted in their village. Father Allouez told them the story of Constantine and the sign in the heavens. A Fox war party had been planning to go against the Sioux. After marking crosses on their shields the warriors rushed into combat with such vigor that they won a great victory.

A bark Chapel named after St. Jacques (James) was built in the Mascoutin Village near Bluffton. It was filled several times a day by Indians who went there to pray. In May, 1672, Father Allouez found 200 cabins occupied by five tribes in this village.

By 1674 the Mascoutin Village contained as many as twelve tribes, speaking three different languages and had an estimated population of twenty thousands souls. The mission of St. Jacques advanced slower than that of St. Marc because Father Allouez was unable to attend it except by short visits. Father Antoine Silvy was sent to help him. In his Jesuit report Fater Allouez stated that this mission alone would require two missionaries because of the different nations who lived there and because of the great numbers of people who were continually arriving to make their home there.

Father Allouez praised the Mascoutins for the great respect they had for their cross. A heavy gale broke one of its arms throwing it down. They housed it very carefully and returned it to the priest. The Miamis also held the cross in great respect. An itinerant French trader became angry, drawing his sword to avenge himself for the theft of some of his goods. The Miami Captain pointed out the cross, telling him that the tree of the Blackgown teaches us to pray and not to lose our temper.

After the death of Father Marquette in 1675, Father Allouez was sent to take his place. Father Silvy was also sent to another mission and Father Bonnault was sent to take charge of the Missions of St. Jacques and St. Marc.

CHAPTER 9

FATHER MARQUETTE AND LOUIS JOLIET PASS THROUGH

Louis de Buade de Frontenec, governor of New France, and Jean Talon, Intendent of New France, decided to send an expedition to find and explore the Mississippi. To go on this trip they picked Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest.

Joliet was a young merchant, a fur trader and explorer. He was born in Quebec and educated by the Jesuits. He had experience and knowledge of the language and country of the Ottawas. He had tact and prudence, but most important of all, he had courage to dread nothing where everything was to be feared.

Father Marquette was a native of the City of Laon in Northeastern France, hale and hardy physically, with a gentle, retiring, and deeply religious disposition. The Jesuits in France had sent him to do missionary work among the Indians of North America. He had replaced Father Allouez at the Mission of the Holy Ghost at La Pointe when Allouez had been sent to establish a mission at Green Bay. He had met some Illinois Indians at Holy Ghost Mission, had been as favorably impressed by them as Father Dablon had been with the Miamis, and wished to go among them as a missionary. To prepare himself for such an undertaking he learned all he could of that tribe and hired one of them to teach him their language. Circumstances interferred with his efforts to leave for the Illinois country and he had lost all hope of going. In 1671 troubling activities of the Sioux forced Fr. Marquette to flee from La Pointe to Macinac, where he founded the Mission of St. Ignace. On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin (December 8), 1672, when Fr. Marquette was at the Mission of St. Ignace, Joliet reached him with orders from Talon for him to accompany Joliet on the expedition. Fr. Marquette was delighted to think that now he had the opportunity to go to the Illinois country.

On the 17th of May, 1673, they set out from St. Ignace with two birch bark canoes, five other Frenchmen and a supply of Indian corn and smoked meat. Joliet had two other Frenchmen with him in his canoe; Fr. Marquette had three because, being a priest, he was not expected to paddle, while Joliet was. Fr. Marquette placed their voyage under the care of the Blessed Virgin Immaculate, promising her that if they reached the Great River they would name it in honor of her Immaculate Conception.

The way to Green Bay was already a well-known route. They were welcomed by the Jesuits at the Mission of St. Frances Xavier. On their way they visited the Menomonees, named after the wild rice that grew so abundantly in their country. Fr. Marquette remarked that it resembled the wild oats that grew among French wheat. The rice grew in small rivers with muddy bottoms, and in swampy places. The stems were hollow and jointed. It emerged above the water about June and continued growing several feet higher. The grain was not larger around than wild French oats but was twice as long and yielded much more meal. Each year in September the Menomonees went in canoes through these fields and shook the grain from both sides into their canoes. To remove the kernels of grain from the husks they dried them upon a wooden grate. A very slow fire underneath the grate was maintained for some days. When thoroughly dry they put the rice in a bag made from a skin, put the bag in a hole dug for the purpose, and tread it with their feet so long and vigorously that the grain separated from the straw and could very easily be winnowed. The Indians then pound it into flour, or boiled it whole and seasoned it with fat.

When the Menomonees learned of the journey planned by Joliet and Father Marquette they tried to discourage them with tales of savage tribes, horrible monsters in the Great River, and excessive heat that caused death.

No dates or much detail is given in Marquette's narrative until their arrival at the village of the Mascoutins and Miamis near Bluffton on June 7th. As they approached it, Father Marquette, out of curiosity, stopped to drink the mineral waters of the river not far from the village. He also took time to find a medicinal plant about which a savage had told him. For snake bite its root was masticated and then placed on the bite to counteract the poison. He put some of these plants in his canoe so he could examine them more carefully when he had time.

Father Marquette found three nations in the village, Miamis, Mascoutins and Kickapoos. He found the Miamis were the most civil, the most liberal and the most shapely. They were regarded as warriors who almost always were successful in their expeditions. They were docile and listened quietly to the religious instructions given them. The Mascoutins and Kickapoos were more rude and seemed like peasants compared to the Miamis.

Father Marquette was delighted to find still standing in the middle of the village the large white cross erected by Father Allouez. It was adorned with many white skins, red belts, and bows and arrows which the Indians had offered in thanksgiving for an abundance of game during the winter.

Joliet told the Indians about the plan to discover new countries, telling them that they needed two guides. The French then gave them a present, thereby asking them for guides. The Indians gave them a present to show their consent to furnish the guides. It was a mat which served as a bed during their whole journey.

On June 10th they left the Mascoutin Village. The river was broken by so many swamps and small lakes that, without the guides, it would have been easy to lose their way, especially as the river was so full of wild rice. The guides helped them transport their canoes over the 2,700-pace portage from the Fox to the Wisconsin River. Then the Miamis left for home, leaving the French in an unknown country in the hands of providence. The French had left the region of waters flowing to Quebec, that French capital more than a thousand miles away. They launched out upon the waters flowing through strange lands where they thought no white man had ever before paddled a canoe. Radisson and Grosilliers had probably paddled there fifteen years before, but if they had, it was unknown by Fr. Marquette and Joliet.

On June 17 they arrived at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. They had reached the Great River and named it "Le Fleuve de l'Immaculate Conception" in the Virgin Mary's honor. One hundred and fifty years before the Spanish had named it "Rio del Espiritu Santo" after the Holy Spirit. But the name that endured was "Michi-Sipi," the Algonquin word for "Great Water."

Fr. Marquette and Joliet did not return to the Mascoutin area, but reached Green Bay by way of the Illinois and Chicago (Des Plaines) Rivers and Lake Michigan. Fr. Marquette's health was greatly impaired by the hardships of this voyage to explore the Mississippi. After traveling 2,700 miles he was worn out and sick with dysentry. When he returned to Green Bay he sought rest at St. Francis Xavier Mission, remaining there from September 1673 to November 1674. During this rest he wrote a report and drew a map of his voyage. Meanwhile Joliet traveled back to Quebec without Fr. Marquette. Just above Montreal the bold and fearless Joliet had his canoe upset and he lost all his manuscripts, books and papers. It was the records of Fr. Marquette that preserved most of the knowledge of their voyage.

In 1674-75 Fr. Marquette attempted to establish a mission to the Illinois tribe but his health became worse and he died while attempting to return to St. Ignace. He was 38 years old.

Fr. Allouez was selected as Marquette's successor. Passing near Potawatomies on his way to the Illinois country he heard that a young Indian man whom he had baptised at the Mission of the Holy Ghost had been killed by bears. He turned aside to comfort the parents. The natives avenged the death by a great bear hunt. They informed him that they had killed more than five hundred bears.

Since Jean Nicolet's exploration in 1634-35 the Bluffton-Mascoutin area had been the western-most known region of New France. The 1673 explorations of Fr. Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, which were documented in their journals and reports, greatly extended French knowedge of westerly lands beyond this area. Bluffton was no longer on the outer fringes of a French colonial empire.

Other French explorer-traders passed through this area. In 1682 Robert Cavelier La Salle descended the Mississippi and in a ceremony at its mouth claimed its entire valley for France. When Spain had discovered the mouth of the Mississippi she claimed all of the lands drained by this Great River and its tributaries. Her claim had not been challenged before. By 1700 France controlled the mouth of the Mississippi. A boundary between Spanish and French lands was never established. Neither country sought land for settlement but exploided it for furs and minerals.

Louisiana was extended to include the Illinois country, but the northern boundary, like the boundary between French and Spanish lands, was never established. Bluffton became a part of the great undefined boundary between New France and Louisiana, the center of the French "crescent" that stretched through North America from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi.

Though the boundary between Louisiana and Canada was never determined, the competition for the fur trade between the two colonies was insignificant. Furs shipped through the lower Mississippi with its warm climate suffered heavy losses due to worms and rapid spoilage. Furs and hides from Missouri and Illinois were taken up the Illinois-Chicago River route rather than through Green Bay because of the rapids in the Mississippi. But furs from Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin regularly passed over the Wisconsin-Fox-Green Bay route.

Yes, France possessed a waterway through North America the length of which equaled the breadth of an ocean. It offered more than one course through it, but none were traversed more than the Fox-Wisconsin route past Bluffton.

CHAPTER 10

COUREURS DE BOIS

The purpose of the colony of "New France" was the fur trade. The French were not there to cut down forests, clear farm land and build communities, but to make as much money as fast as possible so they could go back to France and live a life of luxury.

The French Government believed that the fur trade would be more orderly and more profitable to those engaged in it if it were confined to a few big companies who did all their trading at Montreal. Legally the trade was never open to just anyone who wished to engage in it. The Royal licenses that were required were obtained from the governor and were limited. In Quebec or Montreal the trader could sell beaver furs only to a single buyer at governmentally controlled prices.

The government discouraged permanent settlement away from the principal fur-trading centers. Politically-minded Frenchmen dreamed of extending French influence, building up a great Indian empire under the control and sovereignty of France in which streams and forests would be left to fur bearing animals and the Indians who hunted them. The Indians were to pursue their uncivilized ways and continue bringing furs to French trading posts.

The discovery of new western lands spurred young Frenchmen to seek their fortunes in furs from these territories. It was impossible to keep them from going out on their own. The ease of evading restrictions, the attractions of life in the open and the lure of profits drew a number of colorful adventurers. It was the only field open to youths of New France as well as for many who came across the sea. Bushrangers remaining away from settlements, sometimes for years, managed to find a market and profit in forbidden trade. The government never found a satisfactory way of dealing with the problem of unlicensed traders. If it punished them too harshly they took their furs to English posts, those rivals of the french. The meagerly paid government officials were expected in some way to mend their fortunes. Officials, who would gladly have enforced the law against their rivals, were themselves profiting from the same illicit traffic. At times even the governor shared in the illegal profits. Until the end of the French reign the King and his officers continued to swing between empty threats of punishments and promises of forgiveness.

The term "coureurs de bois" means "wood rangers" and was first applied to traders who went without permits as distinct from "voyageurs" who were licensed, or were hired by a licensed man to carry trade goods and paddle a canoe. Eventually "coureurs de bois" was used to refer to all traders who were out in the woods with the natives. The "coureurs de bois" were mostly young men, hardy, enterprising and energetic, but away from all restraints of a civilized social state, reckless in their disregard of the laws of God and man. This lawless class passed among the Indians, adding the vices of savage life to the vices of civilization. They had to be hardy to carry boats and goods, enduring, skillful in shooting rapids, knowing how to mend canoes, and able to speak Indian languages as well as hunt, trap and bale furs.

To increase the activity in the fur trade French traders used guns and particularly brandy as trade goods. The Indian was as eager to get the white man's goods as the trader was to get the Indian's furs. This was the basis for an understanding mutually agreeable to both Indians and traders. This trade could not have flourished with the desire of the Indians for the white man's trade goods and their willingness to fight each other for that trade. The Indians were eager for knives, blankets, cloth, combs and mirrors as well as brandy and guns.

The adoption of new lliving habits and new articles was not entirely one-sided. The white man adopted the Indian's birch-bark canoe, moccasins, snow-shoes, tobacco and toboggan. He learned to use wild rice, maple sugar, pemmican, tallow and other native foods as well as buckskin clothing.

Indians of the greater Bluffton area first carried on trade with French traders dealing at Montreal. Later posts were established at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, on the opposite ends of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. The fur trade tempered the warlike spirit of the native tribes and brought them under the domination of the white man. The Ottawa, the original middlemen between Wisconsin Indians and French explorers, were replaced by French traders.

CHAPTER 11

THE DECLINE OF THE MISSIONARIES

In the seventeenth century France was the greatest Roman Catholic country in the world. She was sometimes referred to as the eldest daughter of the Church. Religious martyrs were her national heroes. The highest ambition was to suffer and die for Christianity which would assure their instant passage to Heaven.

The Jesuit missionaries who traveled across the ocean and up the St. Lawrence Seaway left comfortable lives behind to face suffering and hardship far from their native France. Their aims were the conversion of the savage tribes to Christianity and the building of missions, including churches, schools, colleges and warehouses at the the centers of Indian population. They wanted to teach the natives religion and such arts of civilization that the Jesuits selected for them. They were accused of engaging in the fur trade themselves in violation of the mandates and orders of the king, which they did not deny except as to the extent of their trade and the use made of the profits. They regarded the French traders and soldiers as a demoralizing influence.

From the first the missionaries had struggled against the sale of brandy to the Indians. The profits from its sale were great and probably no other commodity of the same value could buy as many beaver skins or peltries as brandy. It was reported that on La Salle's second trip to the country of the Illinois, he was detained three weeks at Macinac trying to purchase a supply of corn. He could not get any in exchange for goods or money. Finally he was forced to offer liquor for corn and got sixty sacks in one day.

There is no doubt that the missionaries had reason to complain of the liquor traffic, the licentiousness of the "coureurs de bois," and the unjust exploitation of the Indians by the traders. These were great hinderances to the success of the missions.

At one time the missionaries were so distraught over the brawling and disorder among the Indians when they drank that they appealed to the King of France. He ruled that the transportation of liquor to Macinac for unrestricted trade was prohibited. This prohibition law was unsuccessful. The Indians took their furs to English trading ports at Albany and Hudson Bay to trade for rum. Rum was cheaper than brandy making it possible to get as drunk on a minkskin's worth of rum as they could on a highly prized beaverskin's worth of brandy. Captain La Mothe Cadillac, Commandant of Macinac, bitterly opposed the brandy ordinance. The dispute resulted in Cadillac complaining that he could not get absolution and the Jesuits denouncing the morals of the officials.

Even to the priests the prohibition of brandy was not entirely satisfactory. It caused the Indians to come in contact with the English, exposing them to the protestant Church of England which they regarded with horror as detrimental to the souls of the Indians.

How much the example and influence of the other "Christians" with whom they came in contact contributed to the decline of missionary influence among the Indians can only be guessed, but it seems that that the red men learned the vices of the white men as well as their religion.

A greater cause of the decline of missionary effort was the sharp decline of interest in, and enthusiasm for, missionary work in France. Jansenism was very powerful in the later half of the seventeenth century. Fewer and fewer of the better class of French youths entered the religious life. With the decline in the numbers of Jesuits came a decline in quality, and their missions became poorly staffed.

The natives had welcomed the first missionaries as "manitous" who could secure success in hunting, victory over enemies and good crops. As they became more familiar with them and their human nature, the respect and confidence in the power of the missionaries waned.

The ideals of the "blackrobe" and the red man were incompatible. Every Indian boy wished to be a great warrior, proud and self-dependent. The missionary's humility and patience only increased the Indian's contempt. The tribes most open to missionary training lost, in the eyes of the other tribes, their manliness, and became prey of more savage natives.

The Jesuit missions among the tribes on the Upper Fox and Wolf Rivers (including St. Jacques near Bluffton) had been abandoned by 1685 when Nichlas Perrot on his journey found that Fr. John Elranjan at St. Francis Mission was the only priest left west of Lake Michigan. In 1687 this mission church at De Pere was looted and burned by Indians. The church was never rebuilt.

The Jesuits exhibited enormous efforts and great heroism, but when the priests died or were no longer able to serve, they were not replaced. Without the offering of mass, the sacramental life of the Indians withered. However Christian influences continued. The Winnebagoes, known for their offensiveness before the advent of the white man, became an honorable, amenable tribe by the time the settlers came in the mid 1800s. At that time their tribal beliefs of creation and the Great Spirit held a great similarity to Christian beliefs of Creation and God.

French missionary priests served in the Fox River Valley from the time Fr. Allouez celebrated his first mass at Green Bay in December, 1669, until 1687 when the St. Francis mission at De Pere was burned. For eighteen years a "handful" of priests labored here. In contrast French fur traders were already present at that first mass and continued to work this region until France ceded it to the British in 1763, a period of 94 years. Also their numbers were much greater than the number of priests. The wonder is not that the missionaries had less influence on the Indians than the traders, but that they had any permanent effects at all.

With great sacrifice the missionaries served their God and the people among whom they labored. Sincere, dedicated and enduring, they lived with, and like, the Indians to plant the seeds of Christianity in their lives. They deemed no hardship too great if through it they could reach some dying Indian to bring him the sacraments. No missionary accounts in the world except those of the Jesuit missions in Japan record so long a list of martyrs (in proportion to their numbers) as the Jesuits in New France, though none were martyred along the Fox Valley.

The missionaries imparted knowledge of the natives to the French, as well as French civilization to the natives. They were invaluable in pacifying irate Indians, in deterring the traders from debauchery and bringing to all an example of earnest service to God.

CHAPTER 12

MASCOUTINS LEAVE THE BLUFFTON AREA

At the same time that the Iroquois from western New York drove Indians into Wisconsin from the east, the Sioux invaded from the west. These pressures worked to concentrate Wisconsin tribes in the Green Bay-Fox-Wisconsin region where the waterway provided a way of escape under almost all conditions. At this time more Indians from a larger number of tribes lived at Green Bay than at any other period in history.

By 1679 the Jesuits reported that there were: on the Bay des Puants (Green Bay) six nations speaking two different languages; among the Fox four nations; and among the Mascoutins twelve nations, speaking three different languages, with at least 20,000 souls gathered in their village. The great increase in population was attributed to refugees fleeing from the Iroguois or the Sioux. If this estimate of twenty thousand people was correct, then the Mascoutin village was the largest city ever known to have existed in the Green Lake County area.

As the shortage of food developed and the Iroquois threat declined, a slow outward movement began.

Early in 1680 Fr. Louis Hennapin had ascended the Mississippi River from Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois River. He and two companions were captured by Sioux Indians. In the summer of that year they were released to Daniel Greysolon de Dulhut who had come from Lake Superior. They returned to New France by the Wisconsin-Fox Rivers. From Fr. Hennapin's account it appears that the Miamis had left the Mascoutins. He found Mascoutins, Kickapoos and Fox along the Fox River.

Before the traders came the Mascoutins were self-sufficient farmers. They lived on a fertile prairie where they grew corn (their staple food), squash and other vegetables. They gathered wild plums, grapes and other berries and fruit, drying them for winter use. They also dried roots that they had gathered such as wild potatoes. Wild rice supplied food for themselves and the wild fowl they hunted. Green Lake, the Puckyan Stream and the Fox River supplied fish. Near by roamed plentiful game easily taken with bow and arrow or crude snares. The marshes yielded reeds which they wove into shelters, baskets and other objects.

Like other Indians, when the Mascoutins came in contact with whites who presented them with steel knives and hatchets, their desires for more trade goods grew rapidly. The Indians wanted these tools that cut so much more efficiently than their own stone and shell ones. They became hunters and trappers who worked for the white man and became dependent upon him for their necessities. Besides the metal tools they wanted firearms and ammunition, cooking pots, cotton or woolen cloth and decorative materials, notably glass beads. As their desires grew the need for furs to trade became greater. The native animals had to supply not only the Indian's own necessities of food, clothing and shelter, but the enormous desires of the European aristocracy for luxury furs. Game became less and they were forced to go further away and become more proficient in hunting and snaring. The white man's steel traps and guns became necessities as game became too scarce to secure by the old methods. The art of pottery-making fell into disuse as women acquired brass or iron pots and kettles.

As hunting and trading increased so did competiton, and with that, war. Warfare, hunting and trading were men's concerns; gardening, pottery-making and weaving were women's concerns. As the relative economic importance of women declined, so did their prestige and the value their society gave to family life. The longer absence of the father on the hunt crated stress on the family. For the Mascoutins it was the beginning of the end. By 1680 the Miamis had already left the Mascoutin Village; they again became a migratory tribe. As continued overpopulation further depleted the available game and other resources the Mascoutins also left. La Hontan's map shows the Kickapoos were on the Fox River when he passed in 1689, but shows no Mascoutins.

La Salle built forts in the Illinois country to defend the area against the powerful Iroquois. He wanted to form a great Indian confederacy to oppose that mighty nation. It is believed that the Mascoutins and Kickapoos left the Bluffton area partly to join this confederacy and partly because of the population pressures. A 1684 map locates them in northern Illinois, from Lake Michigan to the Rock River. At times Mascoutin tribes were located in southern Michigan, northern Indiana and Illinois, and central and southeastern Wisconsin. For a time they established villages along the St. Joseph River in Michigan. In 1728 some Mascoutins and Kickapoos were located on the lower Wisconsin and the Mississippi Rivers.

The Mascoutins are no longer known to living history. There has been about as much speculation as to where they went as there has been about where their Fox River Valley village was located. Wars, disease and famines probably took their toil. Some historians theorize that the remaining remnant of their tribe united with the Kickapoo. The Sauk tribe may also have absorbed some of them.

It was the practice of the United States Government to asign an Indian agent to any tribe with whom they had signed a treaty. One duty of the agent was to study and keep records of the language and customs of the tribe. Because the Mascoutins signed no treaty with the United States, they had no agent assigned to them and so no nineteenth century government study was made of them. There is less information known about this tribe than about those who did sign treaties.

The Mascoutins, who extended a hospitable reception to Nicholet, who entertained Radisson and Grosilliers, who was so ready to receive the gospel of the Jesuits, who supplied needed information to Fr. Marquette and Joliet before they pushed off into unknown regions, who hunted wild cattle and buffaloes on the prairies of Green Lake, Winnebago and Fond du Lac Counties, disappeared from history!

Bluffton was no longer a "suburb" of a populous Indian capital, nor did she ever again become an urban region though she tried in the nineteenth century. Her greatness lay not in the concentration of people, but in the quality of the life-giving support she gave humanity by her fertility and her beauty.

Her resources had been drained, but as her population dwindled, her recovery began. As the hunting and trapping for food, clothing, shelter and trade decreased, the number of animals made a slow recovery. Bluffton became and for a while remained a part of a vast prairie where the only inhabitants were transient traders or hunters.

CHAPTER 13

FOX TRIBE OCCUPY FOX VALLEY

The next Indian tribe to control the Bluffton area after the departure of the Mascoutins and their allies were the Fox Tribe. They had not remianed on the Wolf River where they were first found by the French. They established their main village on the north side of the lower Fox where they could control trffic over the Fox-Wisconsin water route, that route so close to Bluffton.

The Sioux Indians were beginning to have direct access to European goods. Other tribes objected to the Sioux, their traditional enemies, receiving weapons that could be used against them. The Fox, the Pottawatomies and Sauks tried to prevent traders from crossing Wisconsin. Very shortly after the Fox established their villages on the Fox River, they took a toll on goods passing through their country. They seized all firearms, determined that none should reach their enemies. The toll collectors were the able-bodied male population. The amount collected was regulated by the whim of the Fox men at the time, taking into consideration the strength or weakness of the party passing through.

There was conflict between the bushrangers and La Salle, who claimed his grant included the exclusive right to trade on the Fox River. It is said that La Salle gave permission to the Indians to plunder any trader who did not have a commission from him. The unruly Fox, who were willing to plunder anybody, considered this sufficient authority, and some fierce and bloody battles ensued. In 1685 in order to quiet the disturbance on the Fox River, Nicholas Perrot received the title of "Commandant of the West," and was placed in charge of Green Bay, the Fox River and their surrounding areas. He was given the authority to build forts and stockades which were to be paid for out of the profits of the fur trade which these forts secured, similar to the arrangement which La Salle had in Illinois.

The Fox Indians brought Perrot presents of bear and other skins, and smoked the calumet with him, but they did not remain quiet very long.

In 1687 at De Pere the St. Francis Xavier Mission church and its surrounding buildings enclosed in a stockade were looted and burned by savages. This raid was said to have been a conspiracy between the Fox, the Mascoutins and the Kickapoos. The purpose of the raid was to procure the guns and ammunition stored there. The Ottawa route to Montreal had been so dangerous because of the hostility of the Iroquois that the canoes had not gone down in two years, thus denying the Wisconsin Indians access to the trade they had come to depend upon.

As Commandant of the West Perrot visited the Sioux who were not inclined to trade with the French because of the activities of the Fox. Soon after his arrival they stold a box of his. Perrot ordered a cup of water be brought to him into which he poured some brandy. Then he told the Sioux that if the stolen goods were not returned he would dry up all their marshes. At the same time he set fire to the brandy. Convinced of his supernatural power they detected the thief and Perrot's goods were returned.

By 1690 The Fox controlled the Fox River and environs. They were wily, treacherous, quarrelsome and powerful. The other tribes did not care to offend them. Among the other Indians they were considered "penurious, avaricious, thievish, choleric and quarrelsome." They called themselves "Musquakies" meaning "men of the red earth." Tradition says that they had lived on the high bluff known as "The Red Banks" on the eastern shore of Green Bay. The other tribes called them "Outagamis" meaning "foxes" because of their character. The French called them "Renards," the French name for "Foxes," and the English in their turn thought "foxes" as apt designation.

The Fox were newcomers to the Fox Valley; the French had discovered and utilized the Fox-Wisconsin passage before the Fox had moved down from the banks of the Wolf River. When they stopped all French traffic, the French had to either drive away the Fox or abandon the Fox-Wisconsin water route. They could not drive them away as long as there were very many warriors left. They had either to exterminate the Fox or give up the great highway to their western possessions, the highway they had discovered and used before the Fox were located along its banks.

For the French things were generally in an uproar. Two conflicting opinions influenced the policies of the government of New France. The governor wanted to develope the western territory by building forts and trading posts to protect French interests and fur trade, and to prevent the English from taking over the area. Opposed to the govenor were the intendant (as sort of King's overseer), the Jesuits and the farmers and merchants around Quebec. They wanted to abandon the western lands and have the Indians bring their furs to Montreal as they had orgininally. They did not want young Frenchmen to leave the settlements along the St. Lawrence River where they were needed on the farms, nor did they want them to live the lawless life of the wilderness, destroying by their bad example the Christianization of the Indians. In 1696 the king revoked the licenses of all traders. Macinac was abandoned by the French officials, but bootleg traders continued flitting through the woods.

In 1699 Perrot, the only Frenchman who seemed to have had an influence with the Fox, was recalled from his post at Green Bay. The Fox Indians quietly took advantage of the situation and increased their demands of tribute from any white man who passed.

About the beginning of the eighteenth century the Kickapoos and Mascoutins appear to have been at the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois. Their friendship with the Fox continued, but evidence points to an intense hatred of the Fox on the part of the Hurons, Ottawas, Potawatomis, and the Menomonees who remained around their old home on the west side of Green Bay.

The Mascoutins had departed from the environs of Bluffton. It was the Fox tribe who controlled that area. Though it seems the Fox did not have any village there, they effectively prevented any other tribe from occupying it.

CHAPTER 14

THE FOX WARS

In 1701 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who had been commandant at Macinac, received permission to erect a fort at Detroit. It was hoped that moving the fur trade center from Macinac to Detroit would keep the rival British traders from the upper Great Lakes. At that time the best beaver hunting in the west was in the southern peninsula of Michigan. Hurons and Ottawas deserted their villages near Mackinac and moved near Detroit. Traders with their squaw wives settled near the fort. Within a few years there were almost 6,000 Indians gathered there.

Although the events at detroit happened far away from Bluffton, the repercussions were felt all along the Fox Valley. In 1710 Cadillac, in an effort to control the Fox, invited these war-like tribesmen (along with other Indians from the Green Bay area) to come and live near Detroit. After they arrived, Cadillac was sent to Louisiana as governor. The new commandant, Joseph Guyon Dubuisson, did not have Cadillac's ability to deal with the Indians.

During the winter of 1711-1712 a band of Mascoutins along the St. Joseph River were attacked by the Ottawa. The Fox, Mascoutin allies, attacked the Ottawa and Hurons in revenge. The Detroit commandant allowed the Ottawa and Hurons refuge in the French fort. The Fox then hastily built their own stockade. With the Fox were Mascoutins and some Sauks. There were, in all, more than a thousand Indians, of which three hundred were warriors and the rest were women and children. While these Indians were troublesome yet they made no assault nor took any lives.

In May the crudely palisated camp of the Fox was assaulted by the French aided by Potawatomis, Menomonees, Illinois, Missouris and other remote tribes. The Fox Chief, Pamoussa, offered to surrender to Dubuisson, saying, "My father, I come to you to demand life. It is no longer ours. You are the masters of it. All the nations have abandoned us. But do not believe that I am afraid to die. It is the life of our women and children that I ask of you." He spoke for the Mascoutins as well as the Fox; the Sauks had deserted them.

Dubuisson confessed afterward that he had been touched with pity but asserted that war and pity do not agree. He understood that they were paid by the English, and he wanted an example to strike terror in the British and in the Indians.

After a ninetten day seige, the Fox, nearly famished, attempted to escape by stealing out on a dark rainy night. They were pursued and many were slain. After they were forced to surrender, their Indian captors divided the women and children making slaves of them. The victors gave no quarter to the captured warriors and amused themselves by shooting five or six daily. In the end their chief Pamoussa escaped with only about a hundred warriors. The power of the Fox was not destroyed as only a part of the tribe was there. An estimated four hundred warriors were at Green Bay with others scattered in different places. Those that survived were more furious than ever.

The Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo and Mascoutin Indians formed a military alliance at Green Bay. In the Fox Valley they left no Frenchman or French-allied Indian in peace. The hunted tribesmen complained to the French that they were starving because they dared not hunt in the forests for fear of the vengeful Fox. No person was allowed to pass the Fox-Wisconsin waterway lest they furnish fire-arms to Fox enemies. The fur trade was effectively driven north to the Lake Superior route or south to the Illinois River-Chicago River-Lake Michigan route. Western traders were thus exposed to the perils of canoe trips the whole length of Lake Superior or of Lake Michigan.

The French governor, Marquis de Vaudreuil, felt that the friendly tribes must be protected or the trade would be lost. Much of it was already going to the British. Contrary to the advice of Perrot and others, The French authorities felt that nothing short of extermination of the Fox tribe would relieve the situation.

Fort Macinac was built in 1715 and on March 14th, 1716, a large expeditionary force of about 425 French and several hundred Indians started for Green Bay led by Louis de Louvigny. Composed of soldiers, militia and Indians, equipped with mortars and small ammunition, this was the first white armed force to invade Wisconsin. They laid seige to the Fox stockade near Little Lake Butte des Morts. When the Indians pleaded for a truce, de Louvigny gave them honorable terms, requiring that the rebels pay for the war by hunting beaver for the French. Besides hunting furs for the French they agreed to make peace with all the tribes friendly to the French, to give up all prisoners held by them, to give six chiefs or sons of chiefs as hostages to guarantee their future good behavior, and to cede their territory to the French king.

To save expense the French who joined this expedition had been allowed to bring trade goods with them to bargain with the Indians. Among these goods were forty barrels of brandy. After their victory, when the French and Indians of the expedition camped together, some barrels were broken open and "hell was thrown open." But in October de Louvigny reached Quebec with his six hostages. The Fox did not keep the terms of this agreement.

In 1717 to show French conquest and the re-opening of the Fox-Wisconsin trade route, a fort was built at Green Bay. For a time the show of power by the French seemed to have the desired effect. in 1718 some of the Fox chiefs visited Montreal and renewed their submission to the French. Though the conditions de Louvigny asked had not been fulfilled, Governor Vaudreuil accepted their submissions and the hostages were released.

In 1724 a great council was held at Green Bay for the purpose of making peace between the Indians and the French. Fox, Sauks and Winnebagoes took part. A truce was agreed upon, but it had not included the Illinois Indians. June 7, 1726 a second council was held in which a general peace was agreed.

But treaties were not strong enough to control Fox tempers. Long-standing enemies of the Fox had too many old scores to pay to resist opportunities to repay them, and the Fox would again retaliate. But the French hesitated to act. If they failed to entirely subdue or exterminate them, disasterous consequences might follow.

The Fox under their chief Kiala formed an alliance against the French. The alliance included not only their long-time allies the Kickapoos, Sauks and Mascoutins, but other tribes including the Winnebago, Abnaki, Seneca, Missouri, Oto, Iowa and Sioux. Kiala, like Pontiac and Tecumseh who later attempted similar plans, hoped for a pan-Indian union against the French which would lead to utter annihilation of the French.

In 1727 the French governor was informed that the Fox, responding to messages from the English, had promised to kill all the French in their territory. Whether or not the Fox had in fact promised to kill all the French is hard to tell, but to counteract the rumor Governor Charles de Beauharnois authorized an expedition under Constant de Lignery, which left Montreal in June, 1728.

There was some incompetency in the leadership of this expedition of four hundred Frenchmen and close to a thousand Indians. It was expected to move quickly in order to surprise the Fox, yet they stayed at Mackinac for ten days. When, on the 15th of August, they landed among the Menomonees, who had always been French allies, the French "provoked" them into a fight and "entirely defeated" them. The next day they camped at the mouth of a river that their Indians might hunt for fresh meat. Yet, after these delays, they halted from noon unti evening in order to "surprise" the Fox by night. When they surrounded the village at midnight, they found only four people there, one Fox and three Winnebagoes.

The next village they came to belonged to the Winnebagoes. It was deserted. Though the expedition was against the Fox tribe only, they destroyed the village and the corn growing near it. As they passed up the Fox River, they burned several deserted, or nearly deserted, Fox villages. They destroyed every Indian dwelling and growing crop they found. Somewhere on the river at or above Lake Butte des Morts the soldiers refused to go any further.

The force then returned to Macinac. As they passed through Green Bay they burned the fort there. The missionaries and military men stationed there accompanied them back to Fort Macinac leaving a lone trader at Green Bay during the winter of 1728-1729. The reason given for destroying the fort was that the garrison there would most likely be too weak to defend it against the Fox who would understandably be irritated by the destruction of their villages and crops. De Lignery had trouble explaining the destruction of the fort to the governor. The governor had much more trouble trying to explain it to the king.

The Fox soon returned and enforced their tariff more arrogantly than before. Even though de Lignery's expedition was not successful, Kiala's confedercy began to fall apart. The arrogance, treacherousness and quarrelsomeness of the Fox Indians made them disagreeable to the other tribes. The Sioux, their traditional enemy, were watched by the French and no longer gave the Fox refuge, as they had done for a while. The French even persuaded the Mascoutins and Kickapoo, old Fox allies, to turn against them.

There was little activity in the Bluffton area. Traffic on the nearby Fox River was greatly reduced. While the Fox tribe controlled the area, driving away traders, adventurers and other hunters, they apparently did not have villages in the vicinity. They continued to have their main village along the Fox River just below the outlet of Lake Winnebago, though they most likely hunted the Bluffton region periodically.

CHAPTER 15

NEAR EXTERMINATION OF THE FOXES

Conflicts with other tribes reduced the number of Fox. In May, 1730, a Fox party of buffalo hunters was attacked by Ottawas, Chippewas, Menomonees and Winnegagoes. Eighty Fox warriors and three hundred women and children were killed. In late summer of the same year a French and Indian army under Sieur de Villiers, commander at St. Joseph, Illinois, killed two hundred Fox warriors and six hundred of their women and children. At Starved Rock nine hundred men and women were destroyed.

There is an interesting story that rests on tradition not credited by all historians. It is the story told to his grandson (August Grignon) by Charles de Langlade of events which happened in his lifetime. The main event took place at the outlet of Lake Winnebago. Between the mainland and Doty Island is a channel known at that time as the Winnebago Rapids. The current through this half mile or more channel was too strong for paddling so canoes had to be poled or hauled up through it. West of the mouth of this channel the Fox had their principal village. Here it was convenient for the Fox to watch for approaching canoes and extract their tolls.

The story goes that after one of Captain Paul Marin's men had been killed at this place for resisting Fox exactions, he (Marin) resolved to put an end to Fox tributes. He raised a volunteer force at Macinac and Green Bay of traders, voyageurs and friendly Indians. One tradition is that a large number of Menomonees accompanied him. It is said that he sent a boat ahead with a large supply of brandy, with orders to let the Fox plunder it without resistence. If true, they were probably drunk when attacked. Marin's force was divided. Part went around to the Fox village by land. The rest were concealed in canoes, covered with tarpaulins made of oiled skins used to protect cargoes from storms. They had firearms loaded and ready to use. Two voyageurs paddled each canoe. When the Fox put out a torch, the usual signal to land and pay tribute, the canoes approached the shore, the tarpaulins were thrown off, the armed men rose up and emptied their guns into the astonished Fox. A swivel gun in one of the canoes sent a charge of grape and canister shot among them. Then the flanking party closed in, firing as rapidly as they could reload their muskets. It was estimated that more than a thousand out fifteen hundred Fox perished. The survivors fled up the Fox River.

Some time in the same season Marin attacked them at their new camp. A battle was fought--probably with more fighting and less slaughter than the previous one. Again the Fox fled after considerable loss. The survivors located on the northern bank of the Wisconsin about 21 miles from its mouth.

When Marin learned of their new location, he organized a winter expedition. His men traveled on foot about two hundred miles up the Fox and down the Wisconsin, carrying snowshoes for use if they were needed. So unexpected was his attack that he found the few warriors there engaged in an amusement known as "jeu de paille," the game of straw. He surrounded and came upon them suddenly. Some were killed, others surrendered. There remained only about twenty warriors and a large number of women and children. They were released on condition that they go and remain beyond the Mississippi River.

There is no official account of this campaign; the year it occurred is unknown. It is believed that it took place soon after the severe Fox losses suffered from de Villiers in 1730 if not before.

In May 1730 Joseph Guyon Dubuisson, commander at Macinac, was ready with four hundred men to start an expedition against the Foxes when Paul Marin arrived. Marin and nine men with him joined Dubuisson's troops. The Fox were severely defeated by them.

Dubuisson was censured because his expedition had been without orders from higher authorities. He was related to Marin; probably he was an uncle to Marin's wife. It may have been that, to protect Dubuisson, Marin took responsibility for the resounding defeat of the Foxes at Butte des Morts in 1730, thus giving rise to the unofficial story related previously.

In the autumn of 1732 Detroit Indian allies of the French attacked the Fox village on the Wisconsin near the mouth of the Kickapoo River. Three hundred Fox men, women and children were massacred. A party of survivors went to Green Bay to sue for mercy. Among them was Chief Kiala. In 1733 he and three other chiefs gave themselves up, asking for mercy for themselves and the fifty surviving braves. The French Commander, Nicholas-Antoine Coulon de Villiers accepted and took his prisoners to Montreal. He was ordered to return, kill off the rest of the Fox warriors, and take only women and children as prisoners. These were to be sold into slavery. Kiala was sold and ended his days in Martinique, one of the West Indies.

De Villiers returned to the Sauk village at Green Bay demanding the Fox remnant who had taken refuge there. In the subsequent battle de Villiers was killed by a 12 year old Sauk boy who later became famed as the Sauk Chief Blackbird. The French, Sauk and Fox all lost heavily.

This battle combined with the devastating reduction of Fox population resulted in the Fox and Sauk nations uniting, becoming one tribe for all practical purposes. They fled west of the Mississippi. Gradually their numbers increased as Fox prisoners were released by tribes now secretly in sympathy for the harassed Fox.

Some chiefs of western tribes sought mercy for their Fox and Sauk allies. Governor Charles de Beauharnois sent Paul Marin to make peace and urge them to return to their Green Bay habitat. Through his conciliation the Fox wars were brought to an end. On October 16, 1737, Beauharnois announced peace had been established with the Sauks and Fox. In 1742 the French distributed presents to the Sauks and Fox whom they had tried to destroy.

In avoiding the Fox-Wisconsin passageway traders explored and developed the other routes through the "French Crescent" to a greater extent than they would have done otherwise. If we reckon the Fox War as beginning from the destruction of the St. Frances mission at De Pere in 1687 and ending in 1737 when Beauharnois announced peace, it lasted 50 years. Half a century of such fighting had weakened the power of the French and had almost exterminated the Fox tribe. The Fox wanted to have complete control of all and grab the trader's profits for themselves. They had failed to drive the French out and they failed to take control of the fur trade. But the blow they gave the French was a great aid in the undermining of French power in North America. Without this weakening of the French, the English might not have driven them from the continent, and the American revolution might have been vastly different.

During the Fox War Bluffton was indeed a part of a "dark and bloody ground" where no one was safe or could live in peace, neither red nor white. They dared not rest there, revel in her beauty or live on her bounty.

CHAPTER 16

ENGLISH SUPREMACY

The French had discovered and explored the Fox River Valley. They were well acquainted with the Puckyan and Green Lake. For years they controlled the fur trade from this area. But English traders were casting covetous eyes on it. When Dongan was governor of New York he made claims (based on concessions from the Iroquois) to lands extending to the Mississippi Valley. When Dongan was recalled, the claims were temporarily discontinued. The Iroquois, however, found much profit in acting as middlemen between the English traders and the tribes of the upper Great Lakes, especially the Fox who controlled the Bluffton area.

The English gave the Indians better prices for their furs and paid in better quality of goods. The easy allegiance of the Indians to the French was not strong enough to overcome the better bargains. For eight pounds of gunpowder the Indians paid the British one beaver skin, compared with four beaver skins they had to pay the French. For a blanket they paid the British one beaver skin, compared with two to the French, and for a gun two beaver skins compared to five.

The frequent blocking of the Fox-Wisconsin route to the Mississippi had driven French traders nearer the English colonists who were moving into the Ohio Valley.

As the Indians became more acquainted with the variety and quality of European goods they were also expanding their range of wants. They had lost their primitive skills and needed the white man's wares. They had no care at all which European nation furnished their needed merchandise.

British naval superiority greatly reduced the amount of French trade goods arriving on this continent and raised their price. The French counteracted by sending out a military expedition to stake out a claim to the Ohio Valley. It was the beginning of the war to determine the North American supremacy of France of Britain. In 1756 they declared war on each other.

The Fox River Valley was too remote from the hostilities in the "French and Indian War" to see any of its action. One significant fact was that Marin, commander at Fort St. Francis at Green Bay, and the brother of the governor made 312,000 francs in a very short time manipulating the fur trade and the king's purse.

The surrender of Vaudreuil to Amherst included a few small cities along the St. Lawrence and a number of scattered and isolated posts in the wilderness. In September, 1761, the English Captain George Etherington with a small garrison took possession of Macinac. The next month in October Captain Balfour and Lieutenant James Gorrell entered La Baye and took possession of Fort St. Francis, a deserted post, with not even a trader or Indian on hand. Captain Balfour remained long enough to raise the British flag over the fort and re-christen it Fort Edward August in honor of King George's brother. He soon departed leaving Lieutenant Gorrel with a garrison of one sergeant, one corporal and fifteen soldiers to guard and protect all the region from Green Bay to the Mississippi River.

In the Treaty of Paris ratified in 1763 France ceded to England her land east of the Mississippi, including Bluffton. Upon ratification of this treaty Voltaire congratulated King Louis XV on having gotten rid of "fifteen hundred leagues of snow." (A league was about two and a half miles.) France gave to England a vast empire reaching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico.

Though the Indians were vitally afffected by the handing over of their territory, they had neither been consulted nor considered. They believed that their great father, the king of France, had been sleeping to let the English overcome him and that he would yet awake and drive the hated English from the lands of his Indian children. The French residents were given the option of departing or submitting to British rule. This did not greatly affect the Bluffton area as there were no known permanent white residents west of Lake Michigan. At Detroit, Macinac and especially in the Illinois country, French population diminished. Many crossed the Mississippi where they could still be residents of a French colony, but when Louisiana was ceded to Spain they had no further opportunity to live under French rule on the American Continent. Under British rule the French traders were given the same privileges they enjoyed under their own previous government. Also the British traders found it to their advantage to form partnerships with the more experienced French traders.

The Green Bay trading center supplied the Menomonees who resided near by, the Winnebagoes who then lived around Lake Winnebago and the upper Fox River, the Sauks who lived on the Wisconsin River, the Fox remnant who lived near or with the Sauks, and the Sioux who lived on the upper Mississippi River. Lieutenant James Gorrell estimated that 39,000 warriors, not counting women and children, depended on Green Bay for their supplies.

Lieutenant Gorrell is an example of the right man in the right place at the right time. He bent all his energies toward peace and friendship with the Indians. He assembled the chiefs in council, made speeches and gave them presents. Along the Fox Valley his diplomatic treatment of the Indians, and the fact that the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago and Menomonee tribes still held some resentment against the French, brought these tribes over to the English. Cheaper trade goods and promises of medals also helped.

This loyalty to the British was important in 1763 when Pontiac, chief of an Ottawa tribe, led a widespread uprising. Pontiac was well suited to lead his race in the desperate struggle against the encroaching domination of the hated whites. He had a superior intelligence and a noble character or purpose in life, but these qualities were combined with cunning, trickery and sneaky treachery. Like Kiala had a generation earlier, he planned to unite the Algonquin tribes, drive all the British and the colonists into the sea, and bring back the Indian's right to determine their own affairs.

Chippewa Indians took Fort Macinac by trickery. June 4th was the king's birthday and was to be suitably celebrated. The Chippewas requested permission to play an Indian game of La Crosse with some Sauks who were there. Captain George Etherington granted his permission and proposed to bet on the Chippewas. They played on the level space in front of the fort.

Etherington had ignored warnings from traders who felt an uneasiness among the tribes. He believed instead the solemn pledges of those chiefs who were plotting against him. Seemingly accidentally, the Indians purposefully sent the ball over the palisades into the fort. The players then rushed after the ball, at the same time seizing weapons from the Indian women who had concealed the arms under their blankets while watching the game. Many of the people in the fort were massacred before they could defend themselves. The rest were taken prisoner.

Captain Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie were outside the fort watching the game when they were seized and made prisoners. The Chippewas took them into the forest and prepared to burn them at stakes. Before the torch was applied Charles de Langlade, a half-breed, appeared with friendly Indians (probably Ottawas) and cut the cords that bound the two Englishmen.

This action of Langlade broke the spirit of the Chippewas to war for Pontiac. Tradition states that their incantations before the outbrak had revealed to them that for success it was necessary to sacrifice the officers of the first post captured. When they were prevented from offering this sacrifice they believed they were doomed to failure and did not respond when Pontiac sent messengers to the Chippewas urging them to come help capture Detroit.

Fort Edward August at Green Bay was probably saved from a similar fate by the loyalty of the Menomonee, who were friendly to both French and English. They never shared the hatred which many of the tribes held against the English. Fox, Sauk and Winnebago Indians also refused to take part in Pontiac's uprising. The timely arrival of some Sioux, the traditional enemies of the Chippewas also helped.

On June 15th an Ottawa messenger brought a letter from Captain Etherington to Lt. Gorrel at Fort Edward Augustus. In it he told of his misfortunes and ordered Lt. Gorrel and his whole garrison to report to him at L'Arbor Croche, twenty miles from Macinac. Gorrel abandoned the Green Bay fort, hastening to the assisstance of Etherington and Fort Macinac's other wretched survivors. With the aid of 90 Indians from the friendly Wisconsin tribes, he secured their release from the Chippewas. The party then retrated to Montreal. The British did not again occupy Wisconsin militarily until the War of 1812.

Upon learning that the French had made peace with the English (The Treaty of Paris) Pontiac gave up the seige of Detroit. The English began to re-occupy posts that had been taken over by Indians but they did not send another garrison to Fort Edward August.

Immediately after the treaty with France in 1763 the king of England issued a proclamation. It forbid governors of the colonies and provinces to grant any warrants for survey or pass any patents for lands beyond the head waters of the rivers which flow into the Atlantic, or for any land which had not been purchased by, or ceded to, the King. This consideration for Indian land titles had not been shown earlier in colonial life. It established a policy, which was continued by the United States, of extinguishing Indian titles before surveying or granting lands.

When the fort at Macinac was rebuilt in 1764 it became the seat of Wisconsin's fur trade. There was no other fort northwest of Detroit manned by government officers and Indian agents. The Indians had become so dependent on trade that any interference with its flow created great hardship on them. The trade was controlled by Montreal investors, mostly English, but the actual traders were mostly French.

When on Septemger 18, 1766, Captain Jonathan Carver arrived in Green Bay, there was no garrison, only a few families living in fort Edward Augustus and a few settlers on the east side of the Fox River.

Peace and tranquility reigned in Bluffton. Some canoes passed up and down the river, and the songs of light hearted voyageurs were heard as they collected furs for the few traders at Green Bay, where the only people were those in the fur trade.

When the revolutionary War broke out, the cruel and savage warfare that raged along the western fringe of the English colonies was so remote that it produced no effect in the Fox Valley. It was half a century after Gorrell abandoned it before a flag again flew over the garrison at Green Bay. Then it was the Stars and Stripes.

CHAPTER 17

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

The Bluffton area was not a part of any of the colonies, so sisnce 1763 it was without any non-Indian government except that of the military at Macinac.

In 1774 the English parliament enacted the Quebec Act. It abolished representative government in that province, vesting the power, including that of taxation, in the governor and council; and it extended the boundaries of that province so as to include the territory northwest of the Ohio River. Thus Bluffton was put under the direct control of the Quebec government--a government allowing no representation but having the power to tax.

The Atlantic colonies reacted violently. The hated Quebec Act was one of the precipitating causes of the American Revolution.

Virginia, under various charters which she held from the crown, claimed she had rightful jurisdiction over all the Northwest Territory which had been attached to Quebec. Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, and his council, commissioned George Rogers Clark to raise a force and occupy the Illinois Country as the Northwest Territory was called. In 1778 he crossed the Ohio River at night, found the gates of Fort Kaskaskia open and unguarded, and took possession without bloodshed. Virginia soon established the County of Illinois and appointed a commandant for that region. Virginia was laying claim to an area including Bluffton.

Wisconsin Indians did not participate strongly in the American Revolution. They were too disinterested in the white man's war to be very eager to make long trips east to aid the British. No fighting was done around Green Bay or in the Fox Valley.

Trading continued during the Revolutionary War. The Indians felt that their territory was safe from seizure by British traders who had no interest in farm land; whereas the American frontiersmen, bringing families and household goods, were a threat to Indian lands and life. Both sides wooed the Indians whose loyalty often wavered but generally sided with those who brought them goods and ammunition. As Canada was in a better position to import supplies, it was the British who could supply their needs the best.

In 1780 there was a large store of peltries in Prairi du Chien belonging to traders at Green Bay and Macinac. There was only a small force protecting them. It was feared that Americans would ascend the Mississippi and raid them. A special rescue expeditin recovered 300 packs (all their canoes could carry,) and burned the remaining sixty packs to prevent their falling into enemy hands. The Americans arrived at Prairie du Chien five days after the expedition left for Macinac going up the Wisconsin River and down the Fox River past the mouth of the Puckyan.

In 1783 while the treaty was being negotiated to establlish the independence of the United States, the sovereinty of Spain over all the country west of the Mississippi was acknowledged. Spain was at war with England and hoped to acquire that part of the old French province of Louisiana that was east of the Mississippi. France had guaranteed United States independence and those two countries agreed not to conclude peace with England until they both did. During negotiations France tried to aid Spain in limiting the western boundaries of the United states to the headquarters of rivers flowing to the Atlantic.

Some Spaniards from west of the Mississippi even went so far as to gain the good will of the Indians that they sent an agent with a wampum belt to the motley band at Milwaukee. A Spanish force at one time crossed from St. Louis and took possession of St. Joseph on Lake Michigan. Had Spain succeeded in her designs, Bluffton, the Fox River Valley and all of the Northwest might have become Spanish territory.

The Treaty of Paris in 1783 established the northern boundary of the United states through the middle of the Great Lakes and connecting rivers. Thus the Fox Valley with the territory north and west of the Ohio River became a territory of the United States. This was achieved by diplomacy rather than arms. British Americans could not understand why this territory, held continuously by Britain until the very end, was ceded, nor why there were no provisions made for the Indians. Indian agents and military officers found it hard to explain to both white and red men why Britain had abandoned them.

British commanders loosely interpreted the treaty promise to evacuate their posts "with all convenient speed." Fur trade interests were not easily given up. That trade continued with no outward sign that the ownership of the vast territory was conveyed.

In August, 1786, the British held an Indian council at Macinac. Members of the Winnebago tribe attended as well as representatives of Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Sioux, Menominee and branches of the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes. Besides agreeing to keep the peace and honor the trading agreements, they promised to acknowledge the King of England as their ruler. Gifts given the Indians at this time were expensive, but it was money well spent, because for the next twenty years there was very little trouble among the Indians of the Northwest, or between Indians and whites.

In 1795 Jay's Treaty was ratified. It provided for the British to withdraw from all border posts, finally surrendering them to the United States. All traders and settlers were to continue holding their poperty unmolested. American citizens, British subjects and Indians were free to pass from and to the territories of the others. American forces now held the forts, but British post commanders and Indian agents simply moved across the border: from Macinac Island to St. Joseph's Island 40 miles away, and from Detroit to Amherstburg across the river. They continued to control the fur trade by holding Indian councils and supplying gifts.

Macinac was not occupied by an American garrison until 1796. Green Bay was not garrisoned at all--neither by English or Americans. The quiet Valley of the Fox was not disturbed by the fierce struggle over the terms of Jay's Treaty. Furs taken from the Bluffton area continued to pass down the Fox River through British hands to Europe.

CHAPTER 18

THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE OF 1787

After the Revolutionary War there was a push from the original states to settle the western frontier. In 1780 Virginia set up a land office in Kentucky. It was flooded with prospective settlers and land speculators. The Continental Congress was anxious to control the West north of the Ohio River. It desperately needed money and wanted to sell land there to obtain it. It had never had a chance to get any land south of the Ohio. When Virginia offered to cede land claims north of the Ohio with reserves for veterans but no other strings, Congress accepted. Other state claims to western land were also settled (1784-1785.) By these state cessions the United States became a colonial power. Congress came face to face with Western questions which had been debated and decided in London before the War. Should white settlement of the Indian country be supported or hindered? In what ways? Should Congress plan for a long colonial status to protect the Indians and fur traders, or should it abandon the Indians?

By 1784 the Continental Congress reached its lowest point. When it was run out of Philadelphia it moved to Princeton in June of 1783, to Annapolis in November of that year, to Trenton in 1783 and a year later to New York where it stayed until the confederacy faded out. Yet during this time it passed a series of ordinancres vitally affecting Wisconsin and Bluffton.

In 1780 the basic principle was established--that any lands ceded to the Confederacy of the United States would be settled, developed into distinct republican states, and become members of the Federal Union.

The Territorial Ordinance of 1784 was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and resulted from Virginia's land cession. In it each United States Territory was promised its own territorial government and eventual statehood.

On May 20, 1785, Congress adopted the principle of rectangular survey of public land prior to sale. Land was to be surveyed into townships six miles square, each consisting of 36 sections of 640 acres, each section one mile square. Section 16 in each township was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. After being surveyed land must be sold at public auctions, even-numbered townships by sections and off-numbered townships as a whole.

By 1787 four ranges of townships beginning at the western boundary of Pennsylvania had been surveyed and were ready for sale. The Ohio Company proposed to buy 1,500,000 acres for a dollar an acre in continental currency. Congress needed the money desperately. It had fallen so low that the number necessary to do business was seldom present, but the prospect of securing money induced enough members to attend early in July, 1787, to make a quorum of eight states. Nathan Dane of Massachusetts drafted the Territorial or Northwest Ordinance that had been asked for by the Ohio Company as a prerequisite for its purchase. On July 13, by a vote of eight states, represented by only eighteen men, the Continental Congress passed this vital ordinance. It set the fundamental principles of the American system of admitting states to the Union which was followed even through the admission of Alaska and Hawaii. It provided for a territorial assembly under a governor appointed by Congress as soon as a district had a population of 5,000 free souls. Statehood was promised when a district attained 60,000 people. A bill of rights was established "as articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory," forever to remain inalterable.

While the Continental Congress was passing the Northwest Ordinance in New York, the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia. On July 13, 1787, the Constitution was signed and sent to Congress. On September 28 Congress sent it to the states for ratification. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution and caused it to become effective. Thus the Northwest Ordinance became effective before the United States Constitution.

Although the authority of the Continental Congress to legislate for the West was doubtful, both state and federal courts have held that the Northwest Ordinance is still superior to all constitutions and laws subsequently passed by the states created from the Northwest territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.)

This ordinance laid down basic principles which have endured. It established the precepts of the free state, the free church, and the free school for the Northwest Territory and the states formed from it. Its sixth article, abolishing slavery within their borders, in substance became the thirteenth amendment to the United States constitution in 1865. It was essentially the source of the Wisconsin constitution whose ant-slavery clause was taken directly from it. It established equal rights of inheritance by abolishing primogeniture and entail.

Bluffton and all other Northwest areas had been bequeathed an inheritance rich in ideals, a blueprint for a model government.

CHAPTER 19

FOX VALLEY INDIANS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Much had happened to Wisconsin's Indians during the eighteenth century. The Fox and Sauks had been expelled from the Fox Valley and were living east of the Mississippi and north of the Wisconsin River. The long and bloody Fox Wars were hard on the other tribes as well as the Fox. Except for the Menomonee, eastern Wisconsin's population had been greatly reduced. The Sioux had been forced to surrender most of their Wisconsin terrritory to the Chippewa. The Potawatomi who had been decimated by smallpox lived near St. Joseph at the south end of Lake Michigan. The Ottawas lived north of them in the Michigan peninsula. The Kickapoo and Mascoutins had moved to the mouth of the Rock River and to other parts of Illinois and Indiana. Some of the Menomonees had moved down from the Menomonee River to the vicinity of Green Bay.

The Menomonees were strong, energetic people and their warriors brave, but they were noted for their peaceful disposition. They had a tradition that all the Wisconsin tribes except theirs joined in the conspiracy of Pontiac. Their complexion was several shades lighter than the other Algonquin tribes, and their dialect differed greatly. From the beginning they were friendly with the white men. Even the attack on them made by de Lignery's expedition did not produce a permanent estrangement. They, almost alone, were not guilty of treachery toward their white friends. Except for the Miamis who lived with the Mascoutins, the Menomonees were the most intelligent of the tribes among whom Fathers Allouez and Andre worked. By the end of the eighteenth century they and the Winnebagoes were the only tribes remaining on the Fox River.

The Winnebagoes had moved up the river before de Lignery's expedition in 1728. They settled in the vicinity of Lake Winnebnago and south of it. There were villages of them at Doty's Island, at Garlic Island (Island Park), Black Wolf (six or seven miles south of Oshkosh) and Taycheedah. They also had villages at Green Lake and Lake Puckaway. They claimed as their territory the whole Fox Valley above the outlet of Lake Winnebago (including Bluffton) and as far south as the Milwaukee River at West Bend. By the end of the century they claimed territory along the Wisconsin River and most of southwest Wisconsin.

Wisconsin natives had reached a "pan-Indian" civilization. Cultural differences, especially economic ones, between tribes were greatly reduced. The trade items that they wanted had expanded over the previous century. They now wanted guns with enlarged trigger guards, steel traps and hatchets, saws, nails, augers, mills to grind corn and burning glasses. While they still used stone pipes for ceremonial rites, they wanted clay pipes for other occassions. They imported tobacco. Many of their clothes and blankets were made from European goods. Horses had been obtained and they wanted silver bits, bridles and other horse gear. Silver ornaments such as armbands, neck-pieces, earrings, pins, cradle ornaments and gun decorations were in demand.

One common characteristic which continued in spite of the variety of goods available was the Indian indifference to acquiring wealth (goods) beyond immediate need. The aggressive traders who wanted the Indians to collect more furs interpreted this as lazyness. This was a major reason why some traders introduced liquor which became a common commodity in the fur trade. Indians addicted to alcohol produced more furs than those who hunted only to make a living. Addiction to it was wide-spread among both whites and Indians. A late eighteenth century minister claimd that New England rum had killed more Indians than their wars and sickness, and that it did not spare white people, especially when made into flip. Flip was rum mixed with a small beer and muscovado sugar (an unrefined sugar obtained from the juice of sugarcane by evaporation and draining off the molasses.) Indian leaders frequently protested against liquor being urged upon their people. The practice was also condemned by Indian agents, religious leaders and others concerned with Indians and their affairs, but the practice continued.

The traditional life of the Indians moved with the seasons. Winter was the time for hunting; spring was the time to plant corn, squash, melons, beans and other vegetables; summer was the time to gather for social and religious celebrations, to travel and to trade; fall was the time to gather wild rice, dry berries and harvst their vegetables. Fur traders relied upon them for much of their food, buying their wild rice, dried venison, bear's grease, honey and other food stuffs.

CHAPTER 20

THE WINNEBAGO INDIANS

After the Fox and Sauk tribes had been expelled from the Fox River Valley it was occupied by the Winnebagoes. They used the Puckyan River to travel to and from their village on Green Lake. Their tribe had changed greatly since the advent of the white man.

When the French first visited Wisconsin they found Winnebagoes living near Green Bay. At that time they had very few tools with which to work--bows and arrows, a fire-starter worked with a bow, and natural objects for scraping and cutting. These natural artifacts were of clay, shell, bone, wood, antlers or turtle claws. Few objects were made of stone. They had no iron tools, and did not make their own stone arrow heads or axes, but used those made by Algonquin tribes. If they found a sharp stone or arrow head it was considered sacred and they offered tobacco to their manitou for it.

Their bows were simple, consisting of sticks with ends made pointed by rubbing them on stones. The bowstring was made of sinew. They had five types of arrows: (1) a bird arrow made entirely of wood, usually hickory; (2) a rabbit (small mammal) arrow also made of wood; (3) a deer (large mammal) arrow made of wood with a turtle claw head attached; (4) an arrow with a fragment of flint attached as an arrowhead, used in battle; and (5) an arrow which was merely a pointed stick also used in battle.

Fishing was done by spearing or shooting. The spear was a long stick with a bone or horn point attached. Spearing was often done at night with light provided by pine pitch torches. In shooting fish a regular bow was used with a long arrowlike stick pointed at the tip and frayed at the base. They also trapped fish with a triangular weir held in place by a stone at the base. This was placed at the head of a waterfall resulting from building a dam in a stream.

In their permanent villages the Winnebagoes raised corn, squash and beans. Corn was planted in small circular mounds arranged in rows.

In addition to their vegetable garden they had small fields of tobacco which they regarded as very sacred. Sacred gourds were also grown in their tobacco fields. These gourds were dried and shaken rhythmically at religious ceremonies.

In the fall men, women and children all went out in parties picking berries, especially cranberries and whortleberries, which they dried.

From the Menomonee they learned to make canoes and to gather wild rice by paddling into standing stalks and beating them with sticks. The Fox River from its source to Lake Winnebago was very productive of this grain.

The wild rice has a tough hull which must be removed before it can be eaten. The Winnebagoes did this by curing the grain on a rack of lattice work with a very slow fire built under it. When the hulls were dry and brittle they were threshed by pouring the grain on a rush mat or deerskin spread on the ground. Along three sides a screen of similar material was erected. On the open side the man used a straight stick in each hand and flailed it until the grain was released from the hulls. Then the women winnowed it by pouring it from a height upon a skin or mat.

Shelled corn was steamed by digging a hole in the ground, putting in red hot stones, then a layer of husks, the corn and then another layer of husks. Four holes were made in the husks into which four pails of water were poured. The whole was covered with a thick layer of earth and left overnight. In the morning the corn was entirely cooked.

Squash had the skin and seeds removed, was cut into strips and dried. Fruits including berries were also dried. Various roots were gathered and eaten, especially wild potatoes.

Meats were broiled either on stakes, over a rack, or under hot ashes. They were very fond of soups made from meat with vegetables or berries. Other Winnebago dishes were: dried corn boiled with bear's ribs; jerked meat with bear's fat; and dried corn boiled with fruit.

Shells of various kinds and sizes were used for eating. A few wood utensils were made by burning maple knots, a very tedious process. Sticks were used for knives. Clay cooking pots were made from a special blue clay found near Green Bay. It was mixed with shell fragments, glue from sturgeon vertebrae and gelatin obtained from the horns of deer. The fresh clay mixture was shaped by the hands, or in holes dug in the ground to the desired shape and size. The pots were then dried over a slow fire.

Skins were tanned by scraping off the hair and flesh, and soaking the skin in a mixture of deer's brains and water for some time. Then the skin was thoroughly washed and rubbed with a wooden implement while it dried in order to make it pliable. After that it was sewed into a cylindrical shape, and tied at the top. It was suspended from a stick angled over a shallow hole. A very slow fire was built in the hole, and the bottom edge of the skin was fastened to the ground around the edge of the hole. It was the women who did the tanning.

The tribe changed greatly after their first contact with the whites. They had a tradition that when the French first appeared in the middle of Green Bay the Winnebago went to the edge of the water with offerings of tobacco and white deerskins. When the French were about to come ashore they fired their guns as a salute to the Indians. The Indians who had never heard a gun before called the French "Thunderbirds." When they landed the French extended their hands to the Indians for a friendly handshake. The Winnebagoes had never heard of the custom of shaking hands and didn't know what they were expected to do. They put tobacco in the hands of the French. The French did not not know what to do with the tobacco. They tried to talk but could not make themselves understood. After awhile the French discovered that the Indians were without tools. They showed them as ax and how it was used to chop down a tree. The red man were afraid of it and thought the ax was holy. Suddenly a Frenchman saw an old man smoking. Knowing nothing about the use of tobacco, he poured water on him to put the fire out.

Gradually the two races got to know each other. The Indians learned how to handle the guns, knives, axes and needles of the whites. Trading began even before they understood each other's oral language.

CHAPTER 21

THE DECORAHS

There was a tribal tradition that a French leader took a liking to a Winnebago girl, a chief's daughter named Glory-of-the-Morning. He had asked her parents if he could marry her but was told that her two brothers, who had taken over the leadership of the Winnebao tribe, had the right to give her in marriage. The brothers consented and two boys were born.

When these boys were a little older it was agreed that the father would take the oldest son to France to learn the French ways, and the other son would be raised by his mother in the Winnebago tribe.

The people in France liked the Winnebago, treated him well and gave him presents, but he became homesick and would not eat. They were afraid he would become sick and die. The father brought him back to the tribe and agreed that his sons be brought up by the Indians.

The French army officer who married Glory-of-the-Morning was Sebrevoir (Joseph) Des Caris. His descendants were variously called De Carrie, De Kaury, Dekorra, Decorah or Decora. In 1728 he had marched up the Fox River with French soldiers. They stopped at a Winnebago village on Doty Island. It was here that he met Glory-of-the-Morning.

In 1729 Des Caris resigned his army commission and made his living trading in furs with the Winnebagoes on Doty Island. During the French and Indian War he re-enlisted in the French army, was wounded and died in Montreal in 1760. Glory-of-the-Morning became Queen of the Winnebagoes and a legend in her own time. Her lodge remained on Doty Island.

When Captain Jonathan Carver passed up the Fox River in 1766 he found the main village of the Winnebagoes on Doty Island. They also had a smaller village about forty miles father up the river. There were about two hundred warriors in all.

Carver visited Glory-of-the-Morning as head chief, or queen, of the Winnebagoes. He wrote that she was old and small. Her village had several hundred people living in about fifty lodges. She entertained him for four days with great hospitality. He frequently "saluted" her to gain her favor and she would assume an air of juvenile gaiety and smile with pleasure at his attention. The maidens who attended her were also pleased at this show of respect.

Carver asked for the permission of the council of chiefs to pass through their country. This pleased them and they gravely and solemnly granted it. Their dialect was so different from the Algonquins that they had to converse in the Chippewa tongue, which seemed to be a universal language among the Indians.

There arose a Winnebago tradition that since the time of Glory-of-the-Morning all Winnebago chiefs had French blood; that only a Winnebago with French blood could achieve anything among the whites. The Indians thought the De Carries were the most intelligent people and what they did was the best that could be done.

The descendants of the De Carries formed a clan more numerous than any of the other Winnebago clans. They were proud of the Indian and French heritage and were friendly to both Indians and Europeans. The Decorahs became well-known in the Green Lake-Bluffton area.

When Glory-of-the-Morning died her oldes son, Spoon, became head chief. When a lad he had gone into the woods fasting for a month. When he returned he said the Earthmaker Spirit had spoken to him, telling him to spend his life serving his people. That is what he always tried to do. He fought with the British in the War of 1812. In 1816 he signed a "peace and friendhip with the United States" treaty. This was the first treaty between the Winnebagoes and the American government.

Spoon's oldest son, called "The Eldest De Kaury" or "Old Decorah," became chief of his tribe upon the death of his father. He had a village on the Fox River near Lake Puckaway before moving his tribe across the Fox-Wisconsin portage to a new village several miles from that portage.

Old Decorah had a dignified aristocratic bearning. His very neat, appropriate clothing and courteous manner at all times made him greatly respected. The top of his head was bald, but he had a long silvery cluster of hair falling behind his shoulders which he kept neatly tied. He died in 1826 before the Winnebagoes ceded all their land to the United States.

When American settlers tried to get Indian children to come to state schools Old decorah stated that the Father, the Great Spirit made the white man and the Indian, but He did not make them alike. He taught the white man to live in towns, build houses and make books, but He taught the Indian to live in the woods and to go hunting and fishing. The white man does not want to live like the Indian, and neither does the Indian want to live like the white man. The Great Spirit did not make them that way.

CHAPTER 22

THE FOX-WISCONSIN WATERWAY

Bluffton's situation of the Puckyan River so close to the Fox River made that well-traveled waterway very important to her.

The Fox-Wisconsin portage which traders and travelers such as Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette used is unique in the closeness of two rivers belonging to two different great drainage systems. They are divided by the Niagara ridge which runs through Wisconsin roughly parallel to the western shore of Lake Michigan.

The Fox River rises in the eastern part of Columbia County, collects some water run-off from southern Green Lake County, and meanders timidly westerly until within the present limits of the City of Portage. There it turns abruptly northward, slowly hides herself in the reeds and marshes that chokes her way, until emerging from her obscurity she moves on in a northeasterly direction, flows through the northwestern corner of Green Lake County and passes on until she unites with the Wolf River, mingles with the water of Lake Winnebago, and goes on to Green Bay and Lake Michigan.

The Wisconsin River rising in extreme northern Wisconsin flows southerly, until at the portage, rushing and swirling from the northwest it hits the Niagara ridge, bounds suddenly westward, and continues to the Mississippi River.

The waters of these two rivers come within about a mile and a quarter of each other, but they seldom meet until through the Gulfs of Mexico and St. Lawrence, they are mingled in the eternal ocean. That narrow strip of land where the two rivers so nearly meet is the western extremity of the Fox River Valley. Normally the water in the Fox is about eight feet lower than the water in the Wisconsin, but at extreme flood height there is a difference of 18 to 20 feet between them. In its natural state flood waters could and would leave the Wisconsin a few miles upstream of the portage and spread over the lowlands, eventually reaching the Fox. Very often in spring Indians could paddle their canoes from the Wisconsin to the Fox without the necessity of portaging.

While the Indians who lived along the banks of these two rivers knew nothing of the distant seas to which these waters ran, they appreciated the advantages of the nearness of the two streams to each other. They honored the deity who granted them this favor and made tobacco offerings to him.

Even before Father Marquette's 1673 trip, the Fox-Wisconsin route to the Mississippi had seen canoes of travelers, adventurers and traders pass up and down the placid waters of the upper Fox and the turbulent rapids of the river below Lake Winnebago.

In 1680 after Daniel Greysolon de Dulhut secured the release of Father Louis Hennapin and his two companions, they returned to Canada by the Fox-Wisconsin route. In describing the descent of the Fox, Father Hennapin says it "winds wonderfully" "for after six hours of sailing we found ourselves opposite the place where we started." It is not improbable that they wandered among bayous instead of keeping the channel. They did not have guides through the marshes and wild rice beds such as Father Marquette had had seven years before.

For one hundred and twenty years after Father Marquette and his companions carried their canoes, traders, Indians and explorers had labored to make the portage. Many, many weary trips were made across that portage; trips made by men laden with goods, peltries and canoes on their backs or shoulders. Then in the spring of 1793 Laurent Barth, a Macinac trader arrived and saw the opportunity of an enterprise.

About 1790 a band of Winnebagoes, under the leadership of Old Decorah, had established a village on the Wisconsin River two or three miles above the portage. Barth procured from them a franchise to establish a transportation line across the portage. He built a house, and, with a Canadian pony and cart, drove back and forth across the portage for the accomodation of traders for fifty cents a hundred pounds.

In 1798 his monopoly came to an end. It is unkown whether or not it had been agreed that his franchise be an exclusive one. In that year John (Jean) Lecuyer came. His wife was a sister to Old Decorah, a chief and a great man among the Winnebagoes. The Winnebagoes gave Lecuyer a fanchise to transport across the portage also. He had several horses and carts and a wagon with a long reach on which large canoes could be hauled. Competition brought the rate down to forty cents per hundred pounds.

About 1803 Barth sold out to Archibald Campbell. Shortly afterwards Campbell sold his fixtures to Lecuyer. Lecuyer expected to have a monopoly, but Campbell's franchise had not been included in the deal. Soon there came Campbell's son, John, with teams and wagons and a long heavy wagon on which barges could be transported. John Campbell later became the American Indian Agent at Prairie du Chien.

For many years the transportation across the portage was the principle business. Gradually it became the center of a permanent settlement. After Lecuyer's death his businees passed to Francis LeRoy who had come from Green Bay and married Lecuyer's daughter, Therese. Lecuyer and his successors kept a stock of merchandise which they sold, and for several years it was a winter trading point for Indians also.

Those Indians who made use of Wisconsin waterways had canoes made of birch bark. While the materials used were all gathered from nature, building a canoe was not a spur-of-the-moment thing. The cedar or spruce wood used for the framework had to be dried several years before being split and shaped. Roots for sewing had to be taken in early summer. Birch bark had to be taken in early June for best results. Great care was taken in selecting trees whose bark was of good quality. Bark that was completely white or whose outer surface had small strips separating was not chosen. A cut was made around the birch tree near the bottom of the trunk and another about head high. A vertical cut was made from one ring to the other and the bark was pealed from the tree. So careful were the Indians in taking the bark that the tree was not killed but continued to grow, though its bark would never again be of quality suitable to harvest.

These birch strips were sewed together with the long, slender, tough threadlike roots of larch or balsam trees. Black spruce roots could be used by skinning them with a piece of wood dull enough not to cut them, splitting them in halves (or quarters, depending upon the size,) and then scraping them flat. White spruce roots could not be used because they crack when dry. Both bark and roots were kept moist until used to keep them limber.

The bark was cut and shaped to fit the cedar or spruce framework. Roots were also used to lash the bark to the frame. The canoe was then waterproofd with a mixture of balsam, pine or spruce gum, animal fat and charcoal.

Various tribes had their own distinct pattern or style, some very beautiful. They were about 15 feet long, graceful and very light. They could ride the water like a cork, be used in shallow water, and could be carried easily upon a man's head. The Indian could handle his canoe so skillfully that it glided smoothly. He braved all kinds of waters, shooting rapids of swiftly flowing rivers and riding waves of the Great Lakes. The white man often got a dunking in his first attempts to use a bark canoe. The life expectancy of these canoes was about one year.

Besides Indians, the Fox-Wisconsin waterway was used by missionaries, explorers, traders, soldiers and adventurers. The first of these followed the Indians in using their small bark canoes, often using Indian guides to travel unknown regions. Sometimes a larger canoe was used like the 36-foot Montreal canoe manned by a twelve-man crew. Like the smaller canoes they were made from materials found in the woods and could be easily repaired, and carried across portages or around rapids.

When Fr. Allouez was assigned to replace Fr. Marquette at the mission to the Illinois Indians he left Green Bay near the end of October, 1675. He was stopped by ice before he had gone very far. He had to wait until the ice was strong enough to support the party. He and his two companions improvised a sail which they put on their canoe and with the wind sailed toward Sturgeon Bay. When the wind failed they dragged the canoe with ropes. It is thought that they cut small saplings to make a cradle equipped with runners to support the canoe and protect its bottom.

In the mid-1700s traders began to use boats called bateaux (batteau). They were 30 to 40 feet long, over five feet wide, about three feet deep and had flat bottoms. They too were made of bark of the white birch cut into proper strips and sewen together, then lashed to a strong frame of split cedar, and pitched at the seams. It was propelled with long oars and had a crew of six rowers, one steersman and usually a commander who worked for a fur company. The bundles of furs were packed in the center and covered against inclement weather. It also carried food and tents for camping at night. Often the French boatmen sang merry songs as they paddled along. On open water a sail could be raised to relieve the rowers. They did not enture far from shore.

Durham boats were in use as late as 1852. They had running boards along their sides and were propelled by men with long poles and steered by a man at the stern with a long oar.

CHAPTER 23

DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

When the nineteenth century dawned Bluffton lay like an unplished gem, unknown and unappreciated. The fertile soil, destined to nourish the great agricultural growth that developed in the 1800s, lay under thick prairie grass. Along the Puckyan marsh grass grew giving cover to water fowl and acquatic animals.

Bluffton was a part of the United States. While that fledgling country was not strong enough to terminate British dominance in this area, it had made giant strides in the formation of a great country. It had adopted a constitution which has endured; it had passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; it had quieted individual state claims to western lands (like Virginia's claim to this area); it had developed a land system to survey and convey governmental lands to private individuals; and in general had laid down the blueprints upon which could be built a society proclaiming equality, liberty and justice. Those blueprints were not, and are not, always followed, but they are there, and striving for their ideals has made this country great.

When the nineteenth century began what is now Wisconsin was the westernmost political frontier of the United States, but it was unorganized and without a distinctive name or a defined area. In 1800 it was made a part of the Indiana Territory. In 1803 when the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase it ceased to be the westernmost political frontier, but it still had no political direction or control outside of Indian tribal councils.

The earliest attempt of Americans to exercise any jurisdiction in the Fox River Valley was the appointment by Harrison, Governor of Indiana Territory, of Charles Raume as a justice of the peace. Before this time marriages were entered into by contract in front of witnesses, there being no clergymen or magistrates. Disputes were arbitrated. Justice Raume arrived in Green Bay in 1792 and administered justice in a very eccentric way.

About 1790 the population in Green Bay began to grow. The rigors of life on the frontier developed their kindness and hospitality not only among themselves but with strangers who came among them. Agriculture was carried on to the extent necessary to supply their own needs. Implements were few. The horses used were Canadian ponies, small but strong and hardy, and often fleet of foot. Carts were used for dray purposes. There were no carriages but there were sleds, carioles drawn by dog or horse and other vehicles for business or pleasure when snow and ice closed canoe navigation.

They raised wheat to make their flour from the time of the first permanent settlement, and ground it in hand mills worked with two cranks, with which two persons could grind about half a bushel in an hour. In 1809 Jacob Franks built the first saw and grist mill in the Fox River Valley on Devil River, two or three miles east of De Pere. This ended the necessity of their hand grinding flour.

Their fields were plowed with a wooden plow having an iron point with a long plow-beam supported on small wheels and drawn by oxen. A straight yoke was lashed across their horns and attached to the plow by thongs of hide.

Bluffton belonged to the Winnebagoes. The elk and the bison were no longer plentiful, but deer, muskrats, ducks and geese abounded. The Puckyan River was a passageway for canoes traveling between the Fox River and Green Lake, where a large Winnebago village thrived for many years along the eastern end of the lake near the Silver Creek Inlet.

The fur trade continued under British domination, but after years of extensive trapping, fur bearing animals were becoming less plentiful in the Wisconsin area. Trappers were tapping new regions farther to the west and northwest, even as far as the Rocky Mountains. Settlers from the East were demanding more and more territory. The Indians were resisting their encroachments.

The United States government continued the theory started by the British that the Indian tribes were independent nations with their own sovereign rights. When the government wanted to obtain Indian lands they held treaty councils where terms were agreed upon, arrangements made to transfer the land, and tribal leaders signed the documents which were then sent to the Senate for ratification. This ideal did not always work out in practice. Wherever a growing and greedy white population overflowed into Indian-held lands there was trouble. The trouble did not come from evil whites or evil Indians but rose out of errors of judgement, rumors or incomplete information, and fears. Errors and fears were common to both races and included fears of treachery, murder, violation of wives and children, and destruction of property. Too many American frontiersmen had little concern for negotiation but their government tried to prevent them from rushing into Indian lands before they were formally purchased. Conversely too many Indian hunters had little concern for white trespassers though their chiefs tried to prevent them from killing.

Treaty sessions usually awaited some special event or influence, like a misdeed for which a tribe was to be punished, or pressure on Congress by an influential person or group who wanted Indian land. Other issues were discussed at the councils but the main item was sale of land to the United States, usually for a stated amount with payment to be made to the tribe annually in money, goods or services. After the treaty was signed gifts were distributed--silver metals, swords and officer's coats to the chiefs; supplies, tobacco and liquor to all.

Gradually two other considerations entered the negotiations, the "civilization" of the Indians and their "removal." In the "civilization" program Indians were to be given agricultural tools, blacksmith equipment, hogs and cattle, seeds, gristmills, spinning wheels and looms. They were to be given the services of poeple to teach them how to use these things--blacksmiths to shoe horses, repair guns and make traps; farmers to show planting and harvesting skills; and women to teach spinning, weaving and household skills.

The Indians were expected to give up hunting and trapping to become farmers and homemakers in fixed locations. Schools were to be provided for their children who would thus be assimilated into the white culture. Indian tribes whose ancestors had been urged ot give up their self-sufficient agriculturally-oriented life in order to hunt and trap for whitemen, were now condemned for following the hunt. In the Indian mind plows, hoes and mills carried the stigma of "woman's work." They would rather have had the money. Cattle and oxen were welcomed but too often appreciated more for their meat than for their milk and butter or their work as a beast of burden.

As relations between whites and Indians living in close contact deteriorated because of cultural clashes, the concept of "the Indian must go" gained favor. Before the 1800s this had little to do with Bluffton and Wisconsin. Settlers had not yet penetrated this far; the British who influenced the Indians in the region cared only for the fur trade and did not threaten them with settlements. This changed during the nineteenth century.

Some events have long and far-reaching effects. So it was with the events that happened to the Sauk and Fox tribes. They led directly to the Black Hawk War and indirectly to the Winnebagoes selling the territory which included Bluffton.

After the Sauk and Fox tribes left the Fox Valley they settled along the Wisconsin River. Between 1780 and 1800 these tribes, with the help of the Iowas, drove away Osage, Missouri and Kansas hunters from the region west of the Mississippi, between the Missouri and Des Moines Rivers.

By 1804 the relations between Sauk-Fox and Americans were getting tense. The Sauks complained that the Americans had no treaty with them and gave them no gifts wlthough whites trespassed on their lands; and that the Americans favored the Osage, Sauk enemies, with whom the Americans did have a traty and to whom they did give gifts. In spite of this the Sauk tribal councils advocated patience and attempted to control their young men.

In 1804 four Sauk hunters killed some white settlers who were trespassing on Indian hunting grounds. The Sauk chiefs were greatly alarmed. Four Sauk bands living the farthest down the Mississippi withdrew from the proximity of the Americans. In September two chiefs went to St. Louis to proclaim their disapproval of the killings. These chiefs were given a demand that the murderers be given up under implied threat of war; they also were given an invitation to a treaty council with William Henry Harrison (then governor of the Territory of Indiana which included Wisconsin.) Harrison had been instructed to obtain land cessions from the Sauks, but there is no evidence that the Sauks were informed that major land cessions would be a part of the treaty.

In October a Sauk delegation headed by an Indian named Quashquame met with Gov. Harrison. They were acting as a party responsible for the killings to settle the matter before the Americans launched a war. They brought with them one of the murderers for trial and possible punishment.

The details of the nurders and the details of the negotiations appear in no records. A treaty was signed by Quashquame and four other Indians at least one of whom was a Fox. Among other provisions it ceded to the United States a vast territory in present Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri, bounds exceeding the territory occupied by or even claimed by the Sauks and Fox. A stipulation read "As long as the lands which are now ceded to the United States remain their property, the Indians belonging to the said tribes, shall enjoy the privilege of living and hunting upon them." What did these Indians, who were not even the main leaders of their tribe and who were dealing in a foreign language, understand by this?

The Indian murderer who gave himself up was "pardoned" although the pardon arrived after he had been shot "when attempting to make his excape."

The Sauk Council quickly learned that the treaty was regarded by the United States as a land cession. They accepted it as an accomplished fact and did not reject it, for to do so would bring war with the United States. In 1805 at a formal council in St. Louis the Sauk chiefs asked that their message be sent to the President. It expressed their regret and discontent with the treaty and asked for a reasonable payment for the loss of their lands.

This treatment of the Sauks was known by the Winnebagoes whose territory overlapped that of the Sauks and who were friendly to them. The United States had not made a favorable impression on any of the Wisconsin Indians. The Winnebago, Sauk and Potawatomi tribes were especially hostile toward the Americans.

CHAPTER 24

WAR OF 1812

Spain had ceded Louisiana back to France and Napoleon had sold it to the United states in 1803. The trading posts on the Upper Great Lakes had been turned over to the Americans under Jay's Treaty, but the British still dominated the fur trade from across the border.

Robert Dickson, a Scotchman, had been engaged in the fur trade as an agent of the Northwest Company for a good many years. He had married a sister of a Sioux chief and had acquired an influence among the Indians similar to that of Nicholas Perrot more than a century earlier. They called him the "Red Head" because of the color of his hair. About 1810 Dickson and some other Egnlish traders ran over $50,000 worth of Indian trade goods past Macinac in the night in batteau and got them safely to Green Bay. There was no American soldiers stationed at Green Bay or the Upper Mississippi. Prairie du Chien was occupied by English traders and a few other men.

The continued domination of Wisconsin Indians by the British was resented by the Americans, but while they challenged British domination they made no special preparations for war. They had only three military posts near Wisconsin; Fort Madison on the Mississippi, Fort Dearborn at Chicago and Fort Macinac. The total strength of the three forts were about 150 men.

War was declared by Congress June 18, 1812, and the proclamation by the president was issued the next day. For some odd reason the declaration was known at all British posts on the frontier before the commanders at the American posts received any notice of it. The American commandant at Macinac, Porter Hanks, had heard only rumors of a possible war. He did not know his country was actually at war until he realized that the enemy had dragged a cannon up a hill above his fort and was demanding his surrender. The fort fell before a single shot was fired.

Soon after Fort Macinac fell, Fort Dearborn was burned. The Detroit garrison surrendered without resistence. Fort Madison withstood an attack but the surrounding buildings were destroyed and it was abandoned a year later. The Indians, pro-British before, were now very hostile to all Americans, and U. S. citizens fled from Green Bay, Prairie du Chien and all points between. That the posts were in British hands was much to the advantage of Dickson.

In 1813 the British fell back from Amherstburg, the point which furnished trade goods to Macinac. That fort was left short of supplies, and Dickson was late in getting started from Macinac for Prairie du Chien with an assortment of Goods deemed necessary for the winter support of the Indians for whom they were intended. He had expected to winter on the Mississippi. By November 13th he was at Lake Winnebago, but the lakes were frozen and he was forced to remian at or near the Winnebago village on Garlic Island (later known as Island Park.) The winter was a hard one and he was constantly troubled with half starved Indians who came and ate up his supplies. Normally the few settlers at Green Bay had plenty but they were not used to furnishing agricultural supplies outside their own use. Demands for Macinac, for Dickson, and for roving Indians was too much for their store. They were out of flour and had to send wheat and a hand mill to Dickson. They were in danger of being left without seed for spring sowing. In April Dickson was able to get his goods to Prairie du Chien. After a short stay he returned to Macinac.

That spring (of 1814) the Americans ascended the Mississippi and in June built a fort named Fort Shelby at Prairie du Chien. They raised the first American flag known to fly over a Wisconsin building.

To have an American force in control of a fort at Prairie du Chien would be ruinous to the British fur trade. When news of this fort reached Macinac, an expedition was sent out commanded by William McKay. Volunteers were recruited from voyageurs, Michigan settlers and Indians. When they reached Green Bay on the 4th or 5th of July they found no American force to oppose them. The U. S. government had never really taken possession of the place. They hurried over the Fox-Wisconsin route to Prairie du Chien, and beseiged the American fort for three days before it surrendered, leaving the British with a new American-built fort which they renamed Fort McKay.

At the time of the British attack on the American fort at Prairie du Chien a party of Winnebagoes, including some Decorahs, were living at Little Green Lake. While some of their relatives joined the British in this attack, the peacable Winnebagoes near Little Green did not want to be at war with any whites, and did not go.

Fort McKay was placed under the command of Captain Andrew Bulger. Though the Americans were unsuccessful in recovering Macinac, they prevented the British from furnishing supplies to Fort McKay, leaving that place without news, and without provisions--not even "a glass of grog or a pipe of tobacco."

Long dull days of wintering in the isolated fort with little food was exceedingly unpleasant. The Indians werre constantly shifting and hard to control. The Indian agents irritating, the Michigan volunteers complaining and the townspeople poverty-striken. These inhabitants were requested to deliver one fourth part of all their wheat to the king's store which left them with barely enough on which to survive. Even grain that had been set aside for seed dwindled away. One trader wrote that he expected two thousand Indians to show up for supplies but that they did not have a pipe of tobacco or a shot of powder to give them. He mentioned "hard-times--two ruffles and no shirt--plenty of land and no wheat."

In the spring (May 22, 1815), they learned that a treaty had been signed. When Bulger received orders to evacuate, he destroyed the fort and retreated to Macinac.

The Treaty of Ghent concluded in December of 1814 was little different from the treaty signed in 1783. Again the British Americans in Wisconsin felt that the crown had abandoned them. Green Bay inhabitants had been loyal subjects of the British crown. The drain on their resources in supplying the garrison at Macinac, Dickson's expedition and Indian allies of the British had reduced them to near famine. But traders, after taking an oath of allegiance to the United States, continued their business. It was the Indians that suffered the worst effects of the war. They had supported the British and had successfully prevented American occupation of the region. They were now at the mercy of their recent foes whom they had been led to fear and distrust. Their knowledge of the Americans had come from anti-American British traders, contacts with settlers encroaching on Indian lands in Ohio and warnings from Indian leaders who had wanted to drive the whites back to the place from which they had come.

On June 3, 1815, at a council held at Macinac by the British leader McDouall, a Winnebago chief stated that they hated the "Big Knives," (the name the Indians gave to the Americans), and that "Our Great Father" beyond the "Great Lake" had not reflected when he agreed to put the Indians in the power of their great enemy. Protests were in vain. At noon, July 19th, the British flag was withdrawn from Macinac as McDouall withdrew to Canadian soil. The last royal authority that claimed the land of Bluffton had passed away.

The Americans had never really been in actual possission of Bluffton or any of the region between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. It was the Indians who held it, who were nurtured by its abundance and who were vitally concerned about its welfare.

In the summer of 1815 Colonel John Bowyer, the first American Indian agent at Green Bay, arrived there. He was socially popular with the traders and merchants, but unpopular with the Indians. Soon after Major Matthew Irwin came and operatd an American government trading post, or "factory,"

In July 1816 three schooners entered the mouth of the Fox River, a sight never before seen in Wisconsin. They brought the first American garrison for Green Bay commanded by Colonel John Miller.

Colonel Miller upon his arrival was careful to treat the Indians with respect and tried to gain their confidence and friendship. He formally asked the Menomonees for permission to build a fort. After some deliberation the Menomonees gave their consent, in a short speech which indicated that they knew they would not be able to stop it.

A delegation of Winnebago came from the principal village on Lake Winnebago. When told that the Americans came in peace the chief is reported to have implied that if the purpose was peace they brought too many men, but if the purpose was war they had too few. The argument was consluded by showing him ten or twelve cannons as a reserve force which he ha not seen.

Fort Howard was erected without active opposition from the Indians. The "Stars and Stripes" had come to Green Bay to govern the Fox River Valley.

CHAPTER 25

THE WINNEBAGO WAR

After the War of 1812 the Fox and Sauks made separate peace treaties with the United States, both assenting to the Treaty of 1804. In 1817 both tribes accepted annuities after being told that doing so did not establish a new cession of land. It seems clear that the chiefs, the recognized authorities in the tribes, consistently accepted what the United States authorities said were the terms of the treaty, and just as clear that they protested its injustice and asked for reasonable payment. Quashquame insisted he had not intended to sell any lands north of the Rock River. Moreover the Sauks may not have realized how severely they had been cheated until 1831.

The conciliatory policy of the chiefs was not popular with many of the warriors. Sauk and Fox hunters continued to invade lands of neighboring tribes.

In 1825 a conference of Wisconsin tribes was held at Prairie du Chien to establish definite boundaries between tribes , to eliminate friction between them, and facilitate future land purchases. Among the participants was Chief Old Deccorah and One-Eyed Decorah (also known as "Big Canoe"). One of the reasons that the United States called this council was that they feared the Sauk and Fox aggressions would arouse a general Indian war. The resulting treaty set many intertribal boundaries, Sauk and Fox expansion was recognized and their chiefs pledged to restrain their young men from further acts of violence. Black Hawk was not one of the Sauk chiefs who attended.

The treaty had promised peace, but when the news spread that there were lead mines in southwest Wisconsin, American frontiersmen overran Indian lands. The southern bands of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi, the Sauk and Fox, and the Winnebago tribes all held claims to the lead region. It was the Winnebagoes living near the present day City of La Crosse who reacted the most violently.

At the conference of 1825 the Winnebagoes had claimed as their territory land reaching from Lake Winnebago to Rock Island in Illinois, and northwest from the Fox-Wisconsin portage to the Black River. They resented whites violating their lands. Asserting their rights they harassed travelers and blocked water routes through their territory, sometimes imitating the old practice of the Fox Indians and levying a tariff on goods passing the portage. Individuals or small groups went father. In 1826 some Winnebagoes murdered a family of whites making maple sugar near their camp. The tribe refused to bring the culprits to justice. For the first time the Winnebagoes showed an unwillingness to conform to their own custom of bringing in criminals for justice.

The Winnebagoes believed a rumor that two braves from their tribe who had been prisoners at Prairie du Chien had been taken to Fort Snelling by soldiers and killed. The two returned some time later, but before they did a Winnebago council, acting on the rumor, chose Red Bird to avenge the "killings."

In June of 1827 Chief Red Bird and three other Winnebagoes entered a home on the outskirts of Prairie du Chien and murdered two men and scalped a child. Red Bird had obeyed the laws of his people, but he had broken the laws of the United States. The frightened villagers sent frantic appeals for help. The militia was ordered out. Forces under General Henry Atkinson gathered from as far away as Illinois areas. The Indians fled up the Wisconsin River. The same day four traders in a boat were killed by Winnebagoes. The guilty ones were never found.

The Winnebago chiefs had been informed that they would be held responsible for the murders committed by Red Bird if he was not delivered up to the Americans. Soldiers put Old Decorah in prison with instructions to shoot him if Red Bird did not surrender. Old Decorah was ill. Upon his promise to return at night he was allowed to leave prison during the day. Every evening he stood at the gates waiting for his jailers. When friends told him to escape he asked if they thought he praised life above honor. He stated he would not betray a trust even for the sake of saving his life.

Walking Turtle, principle chief of the Winnebago Nation, was among those who persuaded Red Bird to surrender.

In September Red Bird and The Sun, one of his two accomplices, rather than engage their people in a hopeless war against the Americans, surrendered at Portage to Major William Whistler of Fort Howard, who with his men had traveled up the Fox River. Red Bird came singing his death song. His face was painted red on one side, and green and white intermixed on the other. He wore a Yankton suit of beautiful new elk-skin, soft as a kid glove and pure white with long fringes. On his shoulders were preserved red birds in place of epaulettes. Around his neck he wore a collar of blue and white wampum. It was rimmed with the claws of a wild cat, their points turned inward. Hanging around his neck were strings of wampum of different lengths. His hair had been cut after the civilized fashion and no attempt was made to decorate it. His war pipe, at least three feet long and ornamented with dyed horse hair, feathers and bills of birds, was bound tightly across his chest in diagonal position. In one hand he carried the white flag of truce; in the other the calumet or pipe of peace.

Facing Major Whistler, Red Bird said that he was ready. He asked that he not be put in irons; he had given away his life and would not take it back. He stooped to pick up dust between his thumb and finger, then blew the dust away to symbolize that his life was gone.

He was not put in irons. A party of Winnebagoes including Walking Turtle went to Washington to plead for Red Bird and his accomplices, explaining that their acts were in accord to the Winnebago idea of justice. That winter Red Bird died a prisoner at Fort Crawford before he came to trial. He had fixed his mind on the Spirit Land and had refused to eat. Little Buffalo, Red Bird's other accomplice, was captured after the surrender of Red Bird and The Sun. These two accomplices were convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but were pardoned in 1828 by President John Quincey Adams.

The Winnebago party that had been at Little Green Lake in 1814 when the British took Fort Shelby were also there at the time of Red Bird's surrender. They had no general hatred of the whites, feeling that Red Bird had had a private revenge to satisfy and had murdered the white family totally on his own accord. They had no strong feelings about these events. There was no sympathy for Red Bird, but they feared he would cause them trouble with the Americans.

No real fighting had occurred in the "Winnebago War". After Red Bird's surrender arrangements were made for Americans to use the lead mines until a treaty could be made.

A war chief by the name of Yellow Thunder was one of the Winnebago leaders who advocated peace beytween the Indians and the settlers. He was born about 1774 and had lived around Green Bay. From 1828-1832 his band had a village northwest of Rush Lake, not far from and on the same side of the Fox River as Bluffton. He was one of the fifteen Winnebago chiefs accompanied by Indian Agent John Kinzie who visited Washington D. C. in 1828 to see the wonders of the United States and confer with President John Quincey Adams. They had been invited in order to impress upon them the greatness of the Americans and the futility of warring against them. Yellow Thunder's wife was the only woman to make the trip. Afterwards she was known as Washington Woman.

At a Grand Council held in July 1829 at Prairie du Chien over 350 Winnebago men and almost twice that number of their women and children assembled with Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians. Chief after chief stood to declare their unwillingness to part with more land, objecting to Americans pushing farther and farther into Indian territory. But in time the Indians were persuaded to sell their lands. In their speeches the Winnebago recognized the futility of resisting the encroachment of the Americans. The complaints of the Indian chiefs was in stark contrast to the joyous welcome the first whitemen received from the Winnebagoes.

The United States agreed to pay the Winnebagoes $18,000 plus 3,000 pounds of tobacco and 50 barrels of salt to be paid annually, part at Prairie du Chien and part at Fort Winnebago, plus $30,000 in goods immediately and $20,000 in claims against the tribe; to set aside tracts of land for half-breeds and to maintain a driver, a cart, and two yoke of oxen at the portage for thirty years. The rich lead region was then cleared of Indian titles.

As a result of the "Winnebago War" the Americans continued to show "white power" as a warning to the Indians. In 1829 a new fort was built at the Fox-Wisconsin portage on the very hill where Red Bird surrendered. It was named Fort Winnebago. Lieutenant Jefferson Davis commanded a detail of men who cut logs along the Yellow River and floated them down the Wisconsin to Portage. The fort there was built with the lumber from these logs. Lt. Davis, who later became president of the Confederated States, is thought to be the first lumber man on the Wisconsin River.

Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien was regarrisonned and shortly afterward it was replaced by a stone fort farther away from the hazardous waterfront. The pressure of "white power" was felt by Bluffton,s Winnebagoes. Once again a tribe had lost title to land because of the misdeeds of a few tribesmen.

CHAPTER 26

INFLUX OF NEW YORK INDIANS

American emigration to Green Bay was at first very slow and none to other parts of the Fox Valley for twenty years after the American garrison took over at Fort Howard.

In February 1820 Secretary of War Calhoun commissioned Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D. to visit the scattered tribes and report their numbers and condition. He was the author of a popular textbook, "Morse's Geography." and the father of Samuel Morse who invented the electric telegraph.

When Rev. Morse was in Green Bay in 1820 the only Americans he found there were the garrison, the Indian agent and the factor of the government trading post. He reported that the American government factory system (trading posts) was a failure because the government traders did not advance trade goods to the Indians before receiving their furs, and did not furnish them with whiskey. The kinds and quality of their trading goods were more suitable to making money than furnishing the needs of the Indians. The factory system temporarily established in 1811 and continued by later acts of Congress was abolished in May, 1822. It had been expensive and had proved to be a dismal failure.

The French and English traders had made presents of large quantities of goods to the Indians every year, but the Americans did not give anything to them until the treaties had been signed. When the Americans gave goods and money it was usually to pay for cessions of land.

Morse in his report estimated that there were 3,900 souls of the Menomonees who resided in a number of villages on Lake Winnebago, Fox River, Green Bay and Menomonee River; and 5,800 souls of the Winnebagoes who resided in the river country on Lake Winnebago and southwest of it to the Mississippi River. Another estimate put the number of Winnebagoes at 4,000.

A unique wave of immigration reached and settled in the Fox Valley. While Indiana and Illinois were receiving a rapid increase in white settlers, this valley received more Indians.

There arose a grand scheme of unknown origin to reserve the whole territory between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River north of the northern boundary of Illinois for Indians. It would exclude all white settlers, receiving instead Indians of the Six Nations and other remnants of tribes in New York and elsewhere. In time, if possible, it would become a state peopled by Indians only.

There are indications that when Rev. Morse was commissioned to inspect and observe the Wisconsin Indians, the suggestion came from himself, with the intention of furthering this ambition. There was no hint in any document that this was the purpose of the commission but President Monroe and Secretary of War Calhoun must have favored this plan. Rev. Morse was greatly encouraged by Rev. Eleazer Williams, a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1821 a delegation headed by Rev. Williams, with the approval of the government visited Green Bay. Colonel John Bowyer had died. There was no Indian agent at the Bay when they arrived. The Menomonees and Winnebagoes had no notice of their coming. They were at first against any negotiations or sale of their lands, but were eventually persuaded to sell a strip of their lands for $1,500.00 to be paid in goods.

The next year a larger delegation came to pay for that purchase and to negotiate for additional land. The $1,500.00 paid in goods consisted of blankets, calico and other cloth; guns with gun powder, lead and shot; barrels of flour and pork; and tobacco. Two equal piles were made of the goods--one for each tribe. The rest of the day was spent in feasting.

The next day an effort was made to get the two tribes to cede more land. The Winnebagoes flatly refused, but decided to give a dance first. The warriors who danced wore only a breech-cloth and had their bodies painted with blue, green, red, black and white. Their eyes were circled; their faces fiercely startling. They were armed with knives, spears and tomahawks. As the tempo of their dance increased their tread began to shake the earth and their ear-splitting cries filled the air.

After the Winnebagoes left the council the Menomonees agreed that the emigrant Indians could occupy their lands jointly with themselves.

In 1823 and 1824 about one hundred fifty Oneidas, about the same number of Stockbridges and a remnant of the Brothertowns settled in the Fox River Valley area. The rest of the Oneida and other tribes of the Six Nations could not be induced to come. The scheme to colonize Wisconsin with Indians failed, though it resulted in the addition of a few hundred Indians of tribes not previously inhabitants.

Troubles and disputes arose between the Wisconsin Indians and the emigrants from New York. By the Treaty of Butte des Morts on August 11, 1827, the Menomonees and Winnebagoes agreed to refer the problem to the President of the United States. The presidents's decision would be final. Under Monroe's decision commissioners were appointed. The Oneidas were assigned their present reservation; the Stockbridges and Brothertowns were assigned lands on the east side of Lake Winnebago.

Under the agreement reached in 1831 the Menomonees ceded their land on the east side of Lake Winnebago and the government promised to furnish: five farmers who are capable, industrious and of good character to assist the Menomonee men for ten years in their business of farmong; five females of good character to teach the Menomonee women for ten years in "useful housewifery"; to build a limited number of houses; to supply $6,00 worth of household articles, horses, cows, hogs, sheep and farming utensils; to build a grist and saw mill on the Fox River for the benefit of the Menomonees; to erect a blacksmith shop complete with a quantity of iron for exclusive use of the Menomonee; and support for the Menomonee schools for ten years.

By the Treaty of Green Bay, October 27, 1832, further cessions were made by the Menomonees. In 1852 they were entirely removed from the Fox Valley to their reservation on the Wolf River. The Winnebagoes had already ceded their Fox Valley territory. The Valley was left clear for migrants but it was not the Indians from New York who wanted to move to it.

CHAPTER 27

THE BLACK HAWK WAR

Some of the public lands held by the United States were not offered for sale for many years. The lands around the lower Rock River ceded by the Sauks in 1804 were first advertised for sale in 1829. Until then the Sauk and Fox residents remained in their villages undisturbed.

In the spring of 1829 after the news of the rich lead mines spread, squatters began pouring into the region before the Indians returned from their winter hunt. The whites enclosed the corn fields of the Sauks with fences and tore down many of their lodges.

The main Sauk leader was Keokuk, the speaker of the council and war chief of the major moiety. He consistently used his influence to promote conciliation with the whites and to restrain high-spirited warriors from acts of violence. But the Rock River Indians also included what was known as the "British band" of Sauks. Their sympathetic cooperation with the British as well as their anti-American feelings were well known. They had fought with Tecumseh and the British against the Americans in the War of 1812. They were led by Black Hawk who thought the Sauks should defend their rights.

There was trouble all summer. The squatters, though trespassing, would not be ordered off by the Indian agent. Black Hawk refused to be ordered off either by the Indian agent or by Sauk chiefs, declaring that they had never sold the land, and that the land contained the bones of their fathers which they would defend as long as they existed.

White men fought with each other over Indian cornfields; Indians destroyed white men's fences and sheds; Indians were beaten by white men, but there was no gunfighting that summer.

Keokuk's efforts to keep peace cost him the fruits of a normal summer's buffalo hunt and brought him the disapproval of the chiefs of both the Sauks west of the Mississippi and of the mutinous band. In the fall the Indians went off on their winter hunt. Keokuk vowed never to return, but Black Hawk returned the next spring.

Peace remained very fragile. Sioux and Sauk/Fox hunters encroached on each other's territory. In spite of this, United States officials managed to drive the white intruders away from the mineral lands and negotiated a treaty at Prairie du Chien in July, 1830. Resentment continued. Deaths occurred, were avenged, the avengers were avenged and the cycle repeated again, and again.

When Black Hawk and his band appeared in their villages in the spring of 1831, the Indian agent had been removed and the new agent was unkilled in Indian affairs and sympathetic to the frontier settlers. John Reynolds, (Governor of the Territory of Michigan which then included Wisconsin) determined to remove Black Hawk's band "dead or alive" to across the Mississippi. Black Hawk refused to go insisting that the land had not been sold, that they had planted corn and that it was too late to plant more somewhere else. The Indians were promised corn to replace what they would have harvested from that which they had planted. In June the Federal troops which Reynolds had asked for arrived. They assailed the Sauk village only to find that it had been deserted by the Indians the night before.

On June 30 under the shadow of the superior United states army, and prompted by the persuasion of Keokuk, Black Hawk signed a treaty agreeing to the 1804 cession and agreed to move west of the Mississippi. (Black Hawk later said that he signed to give his band corn to eat in place of what they had left growing in the field. The corn given was inadequate. Their women and children were hungry and to satisfy them the braves had gone in the night to steal corn from their own fields.)

Governor Reynolds was disconcerted to learn that the settlers were digging up the bones in the old Indian graveyard and burning them.

The Winnebagoes were vitally interested in the Sauks and their relationship to the Americans. They sympathized with them for the intrusions of the whites, but like the Sauk chiefs the Winnebago chiefs advocated peace.

An Indian known as the Winnebago Prophet, thought to be half Sauk, half Winnebago, was the head man of a small village on the Rock River. The inhabitants of his village operated a ferry used by whites going to the lead mines. He had a great religious following among the Winnebagoes and was also influential among the Sauks and Fox. He was younger than Black Hawk, but like Black Hawk was originally conscientious, desiring to lead a good moral life, willing to be friendly and peaceful with the whites, but stubbornly maintaining what he considered his rights. Like Black Hawk he was rejected by the chiefs of his tribe. His small band of several hundred mixed Winnebago and Sauk Indians lived on the border between the two tribes.

Little is known of his teachings except that he advocated a return to moral purity among the Indians, and that he claimed to have prophetic visions. These visions were said to include divine promises that the Rock River Indians would not be dispossessed. He maintained that the Americans were bound to respect the rights of Indians by the Treaty of Ghent, which they (the Americans) had signed at the end of the War of 1812,

In 1827 The Prophet had been invited by the Sauks to winter with themm on the lower Rock River. During the winter of 1831-32 The Prophet sent two mesengers to invite Black Hawk and his band to live with him at his village. Very early in April he let the Sauk and Fox Indian agent know this. He was informed that the 1831 treaty prohibited those tribes from crossing the Mississippi and that he too might be ordered from his village by the whites if he received them.

The winter of 1831-32 was very hard on Black Hawk's band. Heavy winter snows had hampered their hunting. This loss of meat combined with the loss of their cornfields the previous summer left them with very little to eat. On April 5, believing that he was justifably right and that he had the support of other tribes of Indians and of the British, Black Hawk led his band across the Mississippi. It was estimated at about 1,000 Indians, half of whom were women and children. They were carrying with them the furs and skins taken in their winter hunt. They proceded up the east side of the river with women, children and heavy baggage in canoes and the men on horseback. They turned up the Rock River and reached The Prophet's village on April 20. Though there had been no murders, stealing or property destruction, they received a formal demand from Gen. Atkinson to recross the Mississippi. Black Hawk replied that he was peaceable and would not return. He decided to accept an earlier invitation from a few of the Winnebagoes living farther up the Rock. This invitation was rescinded. The Winnebago chiefs said they had no objection to the Black Hawk band "making corn" at The Prophet's village but did not wish them to ascend the Rock any farther. The Potawatomis also refused to supply corn or to help. The only thing the band could do was to go back.

During the first half of May Black Hawk made plans to descend the Rock River, but with the militia down stream they dared not descend for fear of being annihilated.

On May 14 an undisciplined detachment of Illinois militia, under Major Isaiah Stillman, made camp about eight miles below Black Hawk's camp. Black Hawk sent three unarmed men under a white flag to meet them and discuss holding a council. Many of the soldiers were drunk, some mistrusted the truce flag, and none understood the Sauk language. They ignored the white flag and seized the three as hostages. Frightened by seeing Indian observers on the hill, they opened fire on the hostages, only one of whom escaped. They stampeded after the Indians almost to their camp. Black Hawk and his men, angered by this treachery, attacked Stillman's men in what Black Hawk himself condiered a suicide charge. Only a few dozen Indians engaged in this battle as most of the warriors were out hunting at the time. The vastly superior white force upon seeing the charging braves, fled in panic, spreading word that Black Hawk had ambushed them with 2,000 warriors.

Black Hawk scattered his band into small groups and took the women and children up the Rock River to the Lake Koshkonong area where they were somewhat safe from attack and could forage for desparately needed food. For several months he and his warriors raided settlements along the Wisconsisn-Illinois frontier. Around two hundred whites and maybe as many Indians lost their lives in these border raids.

The army lost the trail of the Indians as they passed through marshy unmapped country. They build a blockhouse at Fort Atkinson. On a return trip from Fort Winnebago, where they had gone to obtain supplies, a detail discovered the fugitives' trail.

The vastly superior force of volunteer militia and regular United States army troops pursued Black Hawk. He and his band fled through the Madison area but were overtaken while attempting to cross the Wisconsin River on July 21, 1832, at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights. The braves held back the Americans while the tribe crossed. The next morning a brave made a surrender speech in the Winnebago language, but there was no one in the American camp who understood it. The Indians again fled.

Black Hawk divided his people into two groups. One group obtained canoes and rafts from friendly Winnebagoes and proceeded down the Wisconsin River to Iowa. Most of them were captured or shot by soldiers from Prairie du Chien. The other group fled overland toward the Mississippi, pursued by the combined forces of General Atkinson, General Henry and Major Dodd. Their only hope was to outrun their pursuers. The old, the sick and the starving dropped along the way. They left behind them a trail of blankets, cooking pots, farm tools, old people and dead horses. The trail was also marked by slashed trees where the Indians had taken the bark to eat.

At the Mississippi River the Indians were met by the steamboat "Warrior". Black Hawk again attempted to surrender but the captain of the "Warrior" chose to think it was a trick and opened fire. As the infantry arrived behind the Indians they forced men, women and children into the river at bayonet point. Many drowned, others were picked off by sharpshooters. A band of Sioux, having received word from General Atkinson, waited on the opposite bank and killed most of thsose who had managed to swim across.

Of the thousand Indians who had crossed the Mississippi with Black Hawk four months before only about 150 survived.

At the time of the Black Hawk war at least some of the Indians who had lived at Little Green Lake in 1814 and 1827 were living at Portage. They knew the officers at Fort Winnebago and were friendly to them. But they were also friends of the Sauks. In July, 1832, ten families started out from Portage on their summer's hunt. A messenger came into their camp with the news of Black Hawk, and that the Sauks were heading toward them. Although they were told the Sauks were friendly, they also knew that some Winnebagoes were with the Americans, and felt that if the Sauks were driven into Winnebago hunting grounds they might be revengeful. As these Winnebagoes had left old people and women at Portage, they returned there. Other hunting parties also returned upon hearing the news from runners. Black Wolf and Dandy were among the principal chiefs there.

Upon learning of the Battle of Wisconsin Heights, the Winnebagoes feared that Black Hawk would consider them enemies and would attack them at Portage. Winnebago sympathy was with the whites and felt bound to them by trading interests and treaties, but they did not want to fight old friends. Some wanted to move out of the way but others wanted to stay. They argued between themselves until the danger passed.

After the battle of Bad Axe some Winnebagoes living in the area of western Wisconsin went on their fall hunt. One day a party of young men happened upon the camp of Black Hawk. Knowing that the Americans had ordered all Winnebagoes to capture the Sauk chief, they were uncertain what they should do. They returned to their own camp without revealing themselves to the Sauks. The Winnebago village held a council which lasted all night and all the next day. The day after the council three young men were asked to go to Black Hawk, tell him that the Winnebagoes had been ordered by General Street, the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien to take him whenever they saw him and bring him to Fort Crawford.

When the three Winnebagoes delivered this message to Black Hawk they advised him to go peaceably and doubtless he would not be harmed. Black Hawk answered, "You want us to be killed by the whites; as you so wish it, we will go."

A number of Winnebago warriors went with Black Hawk and the Sauk warriors who camped with him to Prairie du Chien and surrendered him to general Street.

Black Hawk was taken on a tour through the eastern states to impress upon him with the power of the United States government, and prove how useless it was to fight against them. When he met General Jackson in Washington, Black Hawk stated, "The white men do not scalp the heads, but they do worse--they poison the heart." He was released in June, 1833, and died in October of that year on a small reservation in Iowa that had been given to his tribe.

Shortly after his release Black Hawk had dictated an autobiography to explain his actions. He told of being lied to and tricked by both whites and other Indians. When he crossed the Mississippi in April, 1832, he mistakenly believed that if they returned in peace and showed evidence of their desire to raise crops and be left alone, the whites would not object. After he had been attacked at Stillman's Run he felt duty bound by the warrior's code to defend his followers.

Eighty percent of the Sauk/Fox Indians under leaders like Keokuk had kept peace with the United States government, yet as a ressult of pressure applied by negotiators, they ceded (on September 21, 1832, a little more than a month after Black Hawk's defeat) a strip of land known as the Black Hawk Purchase. It was much of the best tribal land and included the rich lead deposits near Dubuque. The tribes received about $.10 an acre for it--about $4.00 for each Indian.

CHAPTER 28

IMPACT OF THE BLACK HAWK WAR ON THE WINNEBAGOES

The impact of the Black Hawk War had far reaching resultsd on the history of the Bluffton area. It further impresed upon the Winnebagoes living there the futility of resisting the advancement of white frontiersmen. In September, 1832, a month after Black Hawk's defeat, the Winnebagoes ceded all their land south and east of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. They received one and a fraction cent per acre for it. Thus Bluffton was no longer legally owned by Indians, but by the United States government. Only seven years before the Winnebagoes had claimed land as far south as Rock Island in Illinois and as far east as Lake Winnebago. After this cession their only land left east of the Mississippi was what they had claimed north and west of the Wisconsin River.

But the Black Hawk War had another devastating effect on the Indians near Bluffton. General Winfield Scott had been sent from the East to help General Atkinson. The war was over by the time these troops arrived in Wisconsin, but they had spread the dreaded cholera from the Atlantic coastal states to Detroit, Chicago and the Wisconsin frontier. The epidemic took a terrible toll of lives. At the same time small pox raged through the Indian population. In 1834 it was estimated that one-fourth of the Winnebagoes had fallen victim to this dreaded disease. When it raged through the Winnebago village at Green Lake, the inhabitants fled down the Fox River, leaving their dead and dying behind, trying to excape the terrible malady. They returned after the epidemic subsided.

The utter defeat of the Indians in the Black Hawk War, and Indian land cessions about that time opened up the southern part of Wisconsin to settlement.

At the time that Fort Winnebago was being built a tribe of Winnebago Indians had a village eight miles south of the portage with an estimated number of lodges of over a hundred. Their chief was a grandson of Sebrevois and Glory-of-the-Morning called Old Decorah or War Eagle. He was very dignifed, plain but neatly dressed with a courteous manner. He was bald but had a tuft of long silvery hair falling back on his shoulders which he kept neatly tied. The winter of 1831-32 was severe. Heavy snows hampered hunting. Old Decorah went to the portage to ask for food for his tribe. Someone offered him flour for his family. He refused saying that if his people could not be fed he would starve with them.

In 1836 the commander at Fort Howard sent investigators south of the Fox-Wisconsin Rivers. They reported that the Winnebagoes were extremely poor, their traders kept only whiskey in exchange for furs, and they had to steal food and provisions in order to survive.

In 1837 a delegation was sent to Washington by Governor Henry Dodge. The delegation included Yellow Thunder (who had been to Washington once before), One Eyed Decorah (also known as Big Canoe) and Waukon Decorah.

They had been told only that the purpose of the trip was to get acquainted with the "Great Father". The real reason was to persuade them to sign a treaty giving up their land. The Indians refused to sign saying they had not received authority from their nation to do so, and asked that they be returned home. Instead they were forced to sign against their will by being kept in Washington until they had signed.

On November 1, 1837, at Washington, the Winnebago chiefs signed away all their land east of the Mississippi and agreed to move across the Mississippi. They understood that they could continue to live on their land for "eight years." The treaty actually said "eight months" but no one had told them "eight months."

The members of the Winnebago Nation were indignant at the injustice, felt that they had been tricked, and continued to frequent their old grounds. Yellow Thunder asserted that he would not leave. Only a few tribes had crossed the Mississippi when General Atkinson received order to move the rest.

The soldiers believed that Yellow Thunder was planning a revolt. He was lured to a meeting at Portage. When he arrived he was put in irons and held until he was forcefully taken to Iowa.

In 1840 a force of more than a thousand men moved the Winnebagoes across the river into Iowa where Fort Atkinson was built and a new Winnebago Indian agency was established. Some of the Winnebagoes fell o their knees begging the soldiers to kill them as they would rather die and be buried with their ancestors than go beyond the Mississippi. Others knelt and kissed thr ground crying before obeying orders to move.

These woodland people were expected to survive on a dry open plain, where dust storms blew daily, where not even grass grew well, where there was no water for their crops, no wood for homes or fuel, and no game. Their only neighbors were the Sioux, their bitter enemies. The promised farming equipment did not come. If it had it would have been useless in such an area.

Many of the Winnebagoes, homesick for Wisconsin and afraid of the Sioux, wandered back. It was said that Yellow Thunder reached Portage before the troops who took him away returned.

As white settlers wanted their lands, the Indians were shifted from place to place, from Iowa to the Minnesota River, from there to Eagle Creek, Minnesota, from there to Crow Creek, South Dakota, eventually ending up on a reservation in Nebraska. Many died of disease. They were kept on the reservation only by force. About as many came back to Wisconsin as those who reached the reservation. Those who returned lived as fugitives.

Spoon Decorah, son of Old Decorah and grandson of the other Spoon Decorah, tried very hard to seek help for his people. He went to Madison several times. He asked Governor Rusk to ask the president of the United States not to take away Indian land, the

streams and woods where their fathers hunted and trapped.

CHAPTER 29

OWNERSHIP OF LAND

The Indians did not view ownership of land in the same way as the Americans and this caused much difficulty when the United States sought to acquire Indian lands. The hunting grounds of the Winnebagoes, like those of the Sauks and Fox, were tribally, not individually owned. A tribal council decided each year where each hunter should go. Taken into consideration were the location of the trading posts, the state of peace or war in the area, and the rotation of areas for the purpose of conservation. The Indians realized that the continuouss taking animals could kill off the species, but by restricting hunting and trapping the desired animals could maintain reproduction. The Indians recognized tribal boundaries and had definite ideas of who could rightfully hunt in what places. Friendly tribes might hunt the same area by agreement. They could win or lose hunting grounds by war, they could abandon them or they could move into a region if found vacant. The women owned the lodges and cornfields, but the tribal goverment retained the right to regulate the use of tribal hunting grounds.

The Indians were familiar with the earlier French and British practice of making formal claims to vast territories without dispossessing the native population or encroaching on any of their rights or previous activities. They did not understand the American system of a permanent, individual ownership or realize that in ceding their lands they would be so completely dispossessed.

Although the tribal council made the formal decision to cede land it was necessary to have the permission of the tribe as a whole to so act. Whenever there was a treaty council between whites and Indians, a large assembly of Indian men, women and children gathered near by that the Indian council might receive their permission to accept or reject the proposed treaty after the treaty terms had been presented at the general council. In 1831 Sauk and Fox women claimed that the 1804 treaty was not valid because the women, who owned the corn fields, had not agreed to the sale nor had they even been consulted.

In his autobiography Black Hawk stated his belief that land cannot be sold, but rather that it was given to His children by the Great Spirit, to live upon, to cultivate and to use. As long as people occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil, but if they willingly leave it, then others may come and use it, but it cannot be sold--only things that can be carried away can be sold.

When France granted land to French settlers along the Fox River at Green Bay, no rectangular system was followed. Each grantee received so many arpents of land along the river running as deep as desired--as much as a league or so. (An arpent was about 200 feet. The word "arpent" could also be ba measure of area; an arpent being a little over an acre.) This resulted in many pie-shaped and odd-shaped plots. The earliest French settlers were not disposed to seek out the best land regardless of how lonely it might be. Their social life was as essential to their comfort and happiness as food and clothing. They wanted their cottage or cabin near the river close to each other to enjoy the social advantages of village life. As the population density increased and the residents desired to subdivide, the odd shapes caused confusion and inconvenience.

Bluffton was saved from such a disorganizing way of platting by the orderly arrangement of the rectangular system set forth in one of the earlies ordinances of the Continental Congress. This act forming the "Land System of the United States" bcame a law May 7, 1785 and provided for the surveying and disposing of the public domain. The rectangular system of survey adopted by this ordinance has served well for its accuracy and for its convenience.

All land surveyed is measured for its distance north or south of one of the designated base lines, and east or west of one of the designated prime meridians. After these base and meridian lines are established, the territory is divided into land description townships which are six miles square.

When the Black Hawk War and Indian cessions opened up the entire southern part of Wisconsin to settlement as far as the Wisconsin-Fox River line, that region was fully surveyed into townships and sections in only four years, 1832-1836. Bluffton is in section 7 of that township which is the sixteenth township north of the base line which divides Wisconsin and Illinois, and is in the thirteenth range of townships east of the fourth principal meridian which runs north and south through central Wisconsin a short distance west of Madison and through Reedsburg.

Yellow Thunder, who became head chief of the Winnebago nation, was fortunate to understand ownership of property. Few Winnebagoes did. Sometime after he returned to Portage from Iowa he went to the Land Office at Mineral Point and took a land patent on forty acres in Sauk County, located on the west side of the Wisconsin River about eight miles above the portage. As land owners, he and his wife could not be sent away. Yellow thunder lived on his land the rest of his life. A few other Winnebago families also lived there. They built log homes and raised corn, beans and potatoes. Hundreds of Winnebagoes came each year to celebrate for a week on Yellow Thunder's "acres." In a deerskin pouch he placed a kernel of corn for every dollar he paid in taxes. Shortly before he died in 1874 he sold the land for as many dollars as he had kernels of corn.

CHAPTER 30

SETTLERS

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century a great westward migration began across the Appalacians. There were a number of factors contributing: the American victory in the War of 1812; the building of the national road and other highways; the development of the steamboat along with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825; the depleted soil of the long settled land; and the disturbed economic and social conditions. Streams of settlers from New England, New York and the middle Atlantic states traversed the Erie Canal and continued westward by wagon, sailboat or steamer.

In 1820 Wisconsin was still unnamed. In 1800 it had been made a part of the Indiana Territory, and in 1818 a part of the Michigan Territory. It was still regarded as a fur-trading region, the habitat of the wild beast and untamed Indians, inaccessible by road. Many Easterners mistakenly considered prairie lands not very fertile because they did not produce trees. Its land had not yet been surveyed. The federal census of 1820 reported 651 civilians and 804 military (soldiers, with their wives, children and servants) living in what is now Wisconsin. Green Bay and Prairie du Chien were the only villages. A few isolated settlers lived on the route between them.

When the nineteenth century dawned the Green Bay village had horses of the small, hardy "Canadian" breed. They also had hogs, cattle and fowls. In the late 1700s Pierre Grignon had purchased seven head of sheep at Macinac and brought them to Green Bay where they increased rapidly. They raised potatoes, garden vegetables, spring wheat and some oats.

By 1830 settlers were pushing into the lead mining region and around fur trading and military establishments. Some kinds of game like elk and buffalo were already depleted and beaver nearly so. The "fine" furs like marten, fisher and otter were no longer plentiful, though their smaller relatives, the mink and muskrat were still abundant. In the 1830s muskrats accounted for 95% of the furs shipped from the Wisconsin area with deer skins second. Most of the goods traded for furs (blankets, cloth, knives and guns) were manufactured in Europe.

While furs were the main commodity, traders bought many other articles including feathers, wild rice, maple sugar, beeswax, ginseng root, mats and "Indian curiosities."

The devastating defeat of the Indians in the Black Hawk War and the acquiring of Indian lands in its wake eliminated the fears of Indian uprisings in southern Wisconsin and opened up the region to settlement. As the fur trade dwindled the traders acquired new interests. Not only mining but lumbering, land speculation and townsite promotion attracted them.

By 1836 all land south and east of the Fox-Wisconsin line had been surveyed, ready for sale, and immigration invited. The financial crash of 1837 reduced many families in the East to bankruptcy. They sought new homes and new opportunities to build their fortunes. Some came over the Great Lakes and up the rivers. Others came overland--the first ones over Indian trails or making their own trails.

The first trails were made by animals going to a watering place of grazing ground. As they followed the path of least resistance in a more or less direct passage they were followed by Indians. By the time Wisconsin was opened to settlement many trails criss-crossed the country.

But traveling these trails was difficult and dangerous. The settlements of Green Bay and Prairie du Chien were far from places of government authority. In fact, that authority shifted frequently as new states were formed and territories rearranged. It was hard to find literate citizens who would remain in one place long enough to be appointed to civil offices.

In 1829 Judge James Duane Doty and two attorneys rode on horseback from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien, the first known journey across Wisconsin by land.

The United States had established Fort Howard at Green Bay, Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien and Fort Winnebago at Portage. The Fox Wisconsin waterway connected them, but there was a great demand for a road between them, both for rapid land transit of Military men and their baggage, and for travel of civilian settlers and traders. In 1832, during the Black Hawk War when national concern for security was at its highest, Congress appropriated $5,000 for surveying a road to connect these three forts. The commandants of the forts were put in charge of the road construction, each in their own jurisdiction, the military men doing the work.

The military road had to be built south of the Fox River as the Indian title to lands north of it had not yet been "quieted." It followed Indian trails along the higher ridges where the wind tended to sweep away snow in winter, and where it avoided spring floods and muddy marshes found along the Fox River. It avoided if possible heavy woods, large river crossings, hills and swamps. It led from Green Bay down along the high ridge east of Lake Winnebago, curved toward the west passing south of Green Lake to Fort Winnebago, dipped southerly toward Madison, then westerly south of the Wisconsin River, and crossed that river near Prairie du Chien. This Military Road was the first public improvement in Wisconsin. It was surveyed and built at federal expense while Wisconsin was still a part of Michigan Territory. By the time it was finished in 1837 the sections first completed were deteriorating and improvements were made from time to time until 1845. It was little more than a lane through timber and a pathway over prairie, but streams were bridged and swamps ditched. This military route was passable in more kinds of weather than a route along the the rivers, but the route along the rivers was shorter and more desireable when the weather was good.

The route close to and along the south side of the Fox River became a well developed pathway which crossed the Puckyan River just above the Rapids at Bluffton. In 1853 the Wisconsin Gazatteer stated "The roads from Sheboygan to La Crosse, from Green Bay to Fort Winnebago, and from Oshkosh to the Upper Fox River all cross the rapids at this place" [Bluffton]. Bluffton had become an important crossroad..

CHAPTER 31

THE BLUFFTON MILL

"The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places." Helps

In addition to being a crossroad and accessible by water, Bluffton had another feature attractive to speculators and settlers. It had a rapids. True, the rapids were not large, but any rapids that could power a mill was welcome in an area where the Fox flowed for one hundred and four miles with a total fall of only 33.1 feet (measurements between Oshkosh and Fort Winnebago as surveyed by United states army engineers in 1866.)

Just when the grist mill was built at Bluffton we do not know except that it was sometime between 1847 and 1853. An 1875 atlas of Green Lake County states, "The nearest grist mill till 1847 was at Watertown or Columbus. Ten days to two weeks time was no unusual thing for a trip to the mill." Anson Dart and John C. Sherwood built saw and grist mills in Dartford (now the City of Green Lake) in 1847. The Wisconsin Gazatteer for 1853 states "Bluffton * * * the rapids afford a fine water power. It has 1 hotel, 1 mill, and a congregational and methodist denomination."

The Hadley Mill (later called the Bluffton Mill) was built on one of the "forties" patented to Clark P. Hadley on June 1, 1848. The 1850 census for the Town of Brooklyn lists Clark P. Hadley, the son of Moses P. Hadley, as 12 years old in June of that year, two years after he had acquired title to the land. (When an abstract was written for this land in 1885 no patent was on record. The abstract stated "by certified plat from the Land office (not recorded) it appears that the E 1/2 of NE 1/4 Sec. 7, Township 16 North Range Thirtten East was entered by Clark P. Hadley.") It is almost a certian conclusion that it was Moses who planned and executed the building of the mill.

According to a diagram drawn by C. Palmer, a civil engineer who surveyed the premises of the Hadley mill site in March, 1879, the water wheel was horizontal and submerged.

This type of mill wheel had not been used much in the original colonies. East of the Appalachians, especially in New England, the waters come tumbling down the mountains on short courses to the sea, producing many good mill sites. In such places a vertical water wheel was more advantageous. Where the fall of water was not great the verticle wheels were vulnerable to obstruction by backwater, especially during floods. A water wheel that would run submerged was more releable in situations of floods and backwater.

Such wheels were not very well known in the United States, but had been used extensively in southern France where the mountains are older, the land more level and the streams flow gently to the sea. There wheels had a low efficiency but were simple and solid. Their greatest advantage being that they were able to work while submerged as long as there was a marked difference of the level of the water before and after it passed through the wheel. Wheels of this type were forerunners of the modern turbines now widely used on the lower Fox River.

In April 1861, Clark Payson Hadley signed a warranty deed to eighty acres of land, including Hadley's Mill, in favor of Moses Payson Hadley. Dr. Hadley then owned the mill in name as well as having possession of it.

During the Civil War there was a great interest in the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. The War Department wanted larger battleships to pass between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. To accomodate vessels having larger draughts, continuous dredging was maintained on the Fox River, and wing dams with locks were recommended to be built to deepen the channel. In 1866 an army engineer reported that the depth of the Fox River above Berlin (except for a single bar) was five to six feet, until the mouth of the Puckyan was reached. Just above its mouth was a short bar with three and a half feet of water. Another bar like it was at the lower end of Willow Bend. At the mouth of the White River there was a bad bar with only three feet of water. To have built high dams with locks of great lift would overflow too much property, so it was recommended that low wing dams of about three feet be built and then lower the bed of the stream by dredging.

When these wing dams were built it meant ruin for Hadley's Mill. The rise of the height of the water in the Fox, though small, backed up into the Puckyan. Water rose half way up the flume of the mill, effectively cutting the water power in half. The usefulness of the mill was practically destroyed. In order to restore the utility of the mill, a dam was built across the Puckyan in November, 1877, thus maintaining a sufficient head of water to run the water wheel. This rise in the water level flooded land along the river upstream.

In February, 1878, Dr. Hadley deeded the mill site, a lot 66 feet by 132 feet to Harriet Amelia Hadley, Clark P. Hadley's wife.

On March 27, 1879, Shubal D. Owen, who owned land upstream from the mill, filed a lawsuit in Green Lake Circuit Court against Moses P. Hadley, Clark P. Hadley and Harriet A. Hadley. He charged that they had built and erected a dam in and across the stream, eight feet or thereabouts in height, a short distance below, and downstream from the plaintiff's lands, where the defendants had wrongfully kept a grist mill, and that for more than one year had wrongfully kept up and maintained the dam, for the purpose of raising the water in the stream to a sufficient head to work or run said grist mill by water. He charged that in maintaining the dam, they had caused his land to be overflowed for more than a year, rendering it valueless, depriving him of its use and profits, the value of which was three hundred dollars per year had its use not been destroyed.

The next day the summons and complaint were served on C. P. & H. A. Hadley, but no court action seems to have occurred for over a year.

Meanwhile in December, 1879, Harriet Hadley and her husband signed a warranty deed for a half interest in the mill, the mill site and its appurtenances, the machinery and the mill wheel to John N. Freeling. In February, 1880, they sold the other half interest to Geo. M. Stowe. In December of the year John M. Stowe bought both half interests in the mill.

When the case came up in January term of Circuit Court in 1881, E. C. Miller, Sheriff of Green Lake County, certified that "Moses P. Hadley is a resident of the Town of Brooklyn, in [Green Lake County] and that I have made proper and dilligent efforts to serve the within summons and annexed complaint upon him, but that such defendant cannot be found within my County, so that service of the same can be made personally upon him, by such proper dilligence and effort."

The trial was postponed. The following men had been subpoened as witnessess on the part of the plaintiff: A. L. Palmer, David Wilson, Michael Shear, Charles Baird, J. M. Southworth, G. E. Overton, Benj. F. Bodle, Johnathan Bodle, Ezra Parker, Wm. Bodle and C. Palmer. They were paid at the rate of $1.50 per day plus six cents a mile for traveling to the courthouse.

On February 5, 1881, Harriet and Clark Hadley signed a testimony that they had "no interest whatsoever present or prospective in the water power at Bluffton, Green Lake County, Wisconsin or Hadley's Rapids, so called, and never had any further than we rented the water and paid for the use thereof by the year, and never expect to have unless we buy it; and up to this date we have not bought it and do not expect to. Dr. M. P. Hadley at the date of these presents is sole owner and proprietor of said water power and always has been. The mill at Bluffton or Hadley's Rapids, so called, is located on the lot adjoining that on which the water power is located. The mill lot on which the mill stands lies below the dam. The lot on which the water power is located includes the dam and hand gates above the mill. The mill building and the lot sixty-six feet by one hundred and thrity-two feet was bought independant and separate from the water power and the lot on which it is located, therefore we have no claim in law or equity or otherwise in said water power or the lot on which it is located in consequence of having bought said mill building and the lot on which it stands. The appurtenances belonging to the mill extend no further than the bounds of said mill lot and there they end. The appurtenances belonging to the water power, the dam, the head gates, and the right of flowing belong exclusively to the water power and the lot on which it is located, and it was expressly understood by both contracting parties that the sale of the mill did not include the water to run said mill, we having no ownershp in said water power and never had and we hereby deny having gained any ownership in said water power by reason of buying said mill and the lot on which it stands, and no party or parties owning said mill can use the water constituting said water power without paying rent for the same to M. P. Hadley, the owner of said water power. This document was signed in Portage City, Columbia County.

The next June (1881) John M. Stowe sold the mill to J. P. Pallansch. In October of that year J. P. Pallansch sold it to Peter Pallansch.

In the January term of the Circuit Court for Green Lake County, 1882, the case came up for trial. Important parties did not show. It seems that none of the Hadleys appeared. Neither did the plaintiff. John C. McConnell testified that he resided in the Town of Brooklyn, was personally acquainted with the Plainteff [S. D. Owen], that he had seen the plaintiff repeatedly during the last five days, that he had been and was then confined to his bed at his dwelling, that he had been unable to rise from his bed or turn himself over in it, and that his sickness was, as he had been informed by Dr. Aaron Everhard of the City of Ripon, the inflammatory rheumatism.

C. Palmer, the most important witness, signed a deposition in Winnebago County stating that he was about to go out of this state, not intending to return in time for the trial. He was a civil engineer and surveyor, had been the Winnebago County Surveyor for ten years and was then a surveyor for the Chicago & Northwestern R. R. Co. On March 11 and 12, 1879, he had made a survey of the mill dam built by the Hadleys, of the stream and of the property along the stream above the dam. He testified that at the time he took the survey, the dam had a break which was being repaired, that the water was very rapidly being drawn off and that the waste weir was open. Between 3 p. m. March 11th and 10 a. m. March 12th the water at the dam had been drawn down .48 of a foot. The fall of water behind the dam was such that a great deal of the surface of the valley that had been covered with water on the 11th was exposed on the 12th. The lowering of the water on S. D. Owen's property of .43 foot exposed to view and practically drained from 15 to 20 acres. It was the opinion of C. Palmer that if the water was one foot lower than it had been on March 12th the stream would be entirely within its banks. The crest of the dam was 7.41 feet above the floor of the flume.

Other witnesses subpoened in 1882 were: Jon. Bodle, Wm. Bodle, Ezra Parker, A. L. Palmer, Benj. F. Bodle. Michael Shear, Chas. L. Baird, Elmer Owen, James Baird, Perkins, L. D. Patterson and H. B. Law. On January 9, 1882 the jury (William Stewart, foreman) rendered its verdict in favor of the palintiff. They assessed the past damages for the overflowed lands described in the complaint at $75.00 for each year for three years, the annual damages for the future as long as the dam was maintained at the same height at $75.00 per year, and a gross sum for all damages to be thereafter occassioned by such use of the dam and the right of maintaining and using it forever in the same manner of $1,050.00. Thus S. D. Owen was awarded $225.00 for the three years that his land had been overflowed. He was also awarded $104.66 and interest for court costs. The judgement created a lien upon the mill, the mill dam and their appurtenances. The Hadleys did not pay this judgement against them.

After the April, 1882, General Term of the Circuit Court in Oshkosh for Winnebago County a special term for Green Lake County was held. Finch & Barber, attorneys for S. D. Owen, secured an order that execution issue against the defendants in favor of the plaintiff in accordance with the terms of the judgement.. This order was dated Oct. 17, 1882. Three days later on October 20, Peter Pallansch signed a Quit Claim Deed to the mill site in favor of Moses P. Hadley for the sum of one dollar. On October 23 just six days later, a sheriff's sale was held on the court house steps for the "mill and mill dan and thereon appurtenances and all the machinery therein contained together with the land under and adjoining the same * * * which said defendants had March 27, 1879, or which they or their assigns have since acquired." It was sold to S. D. Owen for the sum of $387.51, that being the amount due and he being the highest and best bidder. The amount due was the sum of: the judgement, $329.66; the execution, $.75; the interest, $21.00;the cost of the sale, $35.85; and the cost of filing the Certificate of Sale, $.25. The Sheriff's Certificate of Sale was dated December 13, 1882, and signed by S. J. Ellis, Sr., Sheriff of Green County..

S. D. Owen signed a deed in favor of Moses P. Hadley for one dollar; Dr. Hadley had his property back, apparently without dam or mill machinery. Upon Dr. Hadley's death the property was inherited by his daughter, Harriet Josephine Hadley. In January, 1885, she sold the property known as the "Bluffton Farm" which included the mill and dam sites to L. D. Patterson. The deed she gave him specifically excepted transferring title to the mill wheel. The author does not know what became of that wheel or the mill machinery.

There are some interesting sidelights to this story. The complaint that S. D. Owen filed through his lawyers does not name the Puckyan as such but calls it "a creek or stream of water, known as the outlet to Green Lake, which is not navigable."

Not navigable? Did not the law define streams as "non-navigable" only when they could not float a saw log? Had not the Indians canoed back and forth freely on the Puckyan between the Fox River and Green Lake? Had not Anson Dart (for whom Dartford was named) traveled to Green Lake from Green Bay by way of the Fox and Puckyan Rivers?

The explanation shows the attitudes and concerns of different historical periods. The first water laws affecting this region were written in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. At that time the region that later became Wisconsin had no roads, not even wagon trails. The only highways were the rivers and streams. Water transportation was protected by declaring that all navigable waters flowing into the Great Lakes or the Mississippi were common highways to be forever free, not to be confined by dams or any other structures that would interfer with free passage over them. It was then that the test of floating a saw log was written into a law for this area.

By the nineteenth century times had changed. Wagon trails were rapidly being displaced by roads and railroads. They displaced the streams as highways. Settlers needed grain ground more than they needed water transportation. The attitude grew that any man who first erected a mill in a new section of the country was a public benefactor.

In 1840 Wisconsin's Territorial legislature passed the Mill Dam Act granting in effect the right of eminent domain to mill owners. They could build dams which flooded property belonging to others. Those whose property was overflowed had no legal means of stopping such flowage, but could only attempt to collect just compensation. Neither could he demand at once the full value of the land of which he was deprived but only the yearly damage as determined by a jury. If the mill owner wished to operate permanently he could opt to pay the "gross damage" which the land owner would have to accept in payment for the land taken away from him. Note that S. D. Owen had not tried to stop the flooding of his land by securing an injunction, but tried only to collect damages.

The 1840 law applied only to non-navigable streams. Milling became so much more important than water transportation that the log test was very much disregarded. At least one Wisconsin Supreme Court reasoned that a stream that couldn's float a saw log could hardly power a mill, and that the 1840 law was not intended to be closely interpreted. S. D. Owen and his lawyers in calling the Puckyan non-navigable were not denying its use by small boats, but only acknowledging the prevailing attitude and custom of their time that a mill had a right to be there on that stream.

CHAPTER 32

FOX RIVER IMPROVEMENTS

The pressure of arriving settlers and security concerns created agitation for improvements to the Fox-Wisconsin waterway as well as for the Military Road. Demands included a bridge over the Fox at Green Bay, a dam at De Pere and various canals, especially one between the two rivers mentioned.

The War Department took great interest in these improvements which would facilitate the movement of troops and supplies, and also to protect settlers against hostile Indians. In April, 1837, a survey of the Fox was ordered. It was made when the Upper Fox was so overflowed that the chain was buoyed up by floats and stretched on the surface of the water. This survey was so hurried and inaccurat that another one was recommended.

The War Department did not particularly favor the Fox-Wisconsin route but were open to other suggestions for communication between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. The survey ordered suggested three routes: Route 1) up the Wisconsin, thence by canal across the portage to the Fox, thence down this river to Green Bay; Route 2) up the Rock River to the head of its natural navigation, thence by canal into the southern extremity of Lake Winnebago, thence through this lake and lower Fox into Green Bay; and Route 3) up the Illinois River to the head of its navigation, thence by canal along the valley of the unnavigable part of the river to the southwestern part of Lake Michigan.

Route 1 was recommended. Also recommended were canals 40 feet wide at the bottom, fifty-five feet wide at the water-line and five feet deep. The lock chambers were to be one hundred ten feet by thirty feet. Dams and locks were to be built at the portage, Winnebago Rapids at the outlet of Lake Winnebago, Grand Chute, Little Chute, Grand Kakalin, Rapide Croche, Little Kakalin and De Pere.

On August 8, 1846, Congress passed an act granting land along the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers to the State of Wisconsin (to be effective when it was admitted to the Union.) The land granted was equal to one half of three sections on each side for every mile of the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. It was to be sold and the money received for it was to be used for the improvement of the waterway. The river and canal were to be forever a public highway for the use of the Government free from any toll or charge whatever for the transportation of mails, or for any property of the United States, or for any persons in service of its goverment. The state could not sell the lands beyond $20,00 until it certified to the President that half of that sum had been spent on improvements of that waterway. It could then sell lands sufficient to re-imburse the amount expended. The Wisconsin legislature accepted this grant on June 29, 1848. It passed another act in August which put the project under the direction of a "Board of Public Works."

In 1849 contracts were made for guard and lift locks and two sections of canal at Portage, for improvements at Winnebago Rapids, Grand Chute, Rapide Croche and De Pere. A steam dredge was built at a cost of $12,000 and set to work removing bars in the Big Bend at and below Mechan Creek and cutting a new outlet to Lake Puckaway.

In 1850 the lock at De Pere was completed and opened for the passage of boats early in the summer, but the miter-sill was found to be two feet too high. At Rapide Croche the lock and section of canal were completed at considerably higher cost than estimated. The lock had to be sunk a foot lower and the canal made 1,000 feet longer. In April a serious breach in the dam at this place occurred. At Cedar Rapids the dam was completed and a large portion of the lock-pit excavated. At Little Chute the work progressed rapidly until want of funds compelled a suspension. At Winnebago Rapids the dam was completed and about two-thirds of the canal excavated. The Upper Fox River was remarkably low and dredging was employed to deepen the channel at the outlet of Lake Puckaway and Buffalo Lake.

In 1851 the operations were carried out under a new board of public works. The original plan of the locks was changed so as to make locks built thereafter 160 feet by 35 feet with 5 feet on the miter-sills. The contract for the work at Grand Kakana and Little Chute provided for payment being made in scrip. At De Pere the lowering of the old lock two feet was completed in May. at Rapide Croche the old dam was of brush, and a breach occurred in it in the spring of 1850. It was entirely unsuited to the location. It was decided to replace it with a spar-dam. In 1851 crib-work was carried across the river, the abutment of the east side finished and a number of spars in their places. At the Grand Chute the contractors were embarrassed in work by the difficulty in negotiating the warants with which they wer paid, yet the improvement progressed rapidly. On the Upper Fox River the dredge had been active, performing more service than in any previous year. The Portage Canal and locks were finished and accepted. A breach however occurred on September 28. During a flood never before equaled at that season of the year, the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin became so overflowed that the waters from the Wisconsin broke through the canal bank a short distance from the guard-lock, washing away 12 to 15 rods of the embankment. A breach of the same extent occurred near the other end of the canal and a third of lesser extent also occurred.

In 1852 at De Pere work was continued on the rebuilding of the lock. At Rapide Croche a portion of the west dam had been carried and was replaced by a spar-dam bolted to the rock bottom. On the Upper Fox River dredging was continued. At the Portage Canal the right to use the water power at the lift-lock was leased for a term of 30 years at #275 a year.

In 1853 at Great Kaukauna and Little Chute the contractor had so far been paid entirely in scrip, and at other places payments had been granted by certificates or warrants of indebtedness. The sale of lands had proceeded too slowly to meet current expenses when "prosecuting the work in a proper manner," and an interest on the first cost was accruing to add to the amount at final payment. A further grant of land was also required.

Because the Constitution of Wisconsin forbade the creation of public debt, the Board of Public Works could not spend more than they received from the sale of land granted by Congress. As sales of these lands slowed it became increasingly hard to pay workers, many of whom did not wish to work for scrip that could not be cashed immediately.

To meet the needs of the case an issue of State bonds was propsed, but this was held unconstitutional by a majority of the legislature. The legislature resolved to surrender the whole improvement, (the balance of the grant of public lands remaining unsold, and hydraulic privileges of water rights for mills, etc.) to a company that would give guarantees that the work would be finished.

An association called the "Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company" comprising Otto Tank, Morgan L. Martin, Uriah H. Peak, James G. Lawton, Theodore Conkey, Mason C. Darling, Benjamin F. Moore and Edgar Conklin, all of Wisconsin, signed its articles of agreement on June 1, 1853. On July 6, 1853, the legislature granted it an act of incorporation and surrenderd to it the work of improving the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. The company agreeed to complete within three years improvements enabling boats of two feet draught and a breadth of 30 feet to pass with facility during ordinary stages of low watr from Green Bay into the Wisconsin River. It also agreed that the improvement shall in all future times be free for the transportation of United states troops and their munitions of war without payment of any tolls whatsoever. For the purpose of completing this work the company resolved to issue bonds in the amount of $500,000.

The total expenditure by the State up to the surrender was $428,855.83.

In 1853 the legislature of Wisconsin authorized the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien Railway Company to build three bridges across the Wisconsin River, which authorization provided for draws of 50 feet width, and required that the stream where touched or intersected should be restored to its former usefulness. The bridges built under this law, however, were located entirely with regard to the convenience of the railroad alignment. So little regard was paid to the stream that navigation was almost cut off. The bridge piers were maintained by such excessive use of riprap stone that it was difficult to restore navigation without rebuilding the bridges themselves.

By November, 1854, the work at De Pere was finished. At Little Kaukauna materials for the dam and lock were collected. At Rapide Croche the work was finished. At Grand Kaukauna the work was finished except for seining the gates and graveling the dam.

The dredge continued working on the Upper Fox. It was 110 feet long by 28 feet wide with a draught of 30 inches. It removed on the average 850 cubic yards a day for a season of 170 days.

In 1854 navigation on the Upper Fox was confined to one steamboat which ascended daily to Berlin, a distance of about 40 miles, and horse-boats and scows by means of which lumber was carried from the Wolf River, through the Upper Fox into the Wisconsin and down the latter stream to different markets on the Mississippi. A steamboat made weekly trips to Montello, one hundred miles above Lake Winnebago from Oshkosh.

In the session of 1854-55 Congress authorized the State to select in addition to the previous grant, two sections per mile for every mile of improvement. The total grant amounted to five sections per mile the whole length of the Fox River and the lakes through which it ran, a distance of about 210 miles. In consideration for this additional land grant the 1856 Wisconsin Legislature required an increased capacity to the improvement, so that boats drawing four feet of water could navigate the Lower Fox, and those having a draught of three and a half feet could use the Upper Fox. The locks were to be 160 feet long by 35 feet wide admitting passage of boats 144 feet long by 34 feet wide.

The work of increasing the capacity of the improvement was commenced immediately and prosecuted with energy until the revulsion in the money-market in the fall of 1857 when it was in part suspended.

In June, 1856, the navigation from Green Bay to Lake Winnebago was opened but due to the dam and lock not being built at Little Kaukauna, it was suspended in the latter part of the season.

During 1858 there was no interruption of navigation except for a few days around the first of May when a break occurred in the canal at Menasha. Steamboats made their regular trips daily from Green Bay to Oshkosh and Fond du Lac. They also ran from Oshkosh to Berlin and for a considerable portion of the year from Berlin to Montello and Packwauka and occassionally to Fort Winnebago. Navigation was opened April 12th and closed November 27th, making seven and a half months which was nearly one month more than the average of New York canals.

A report made at the end of 1858 disclosed that on the Upper Fox the lock and dam at Montello was over half finished and would be completed by October, 1859; the company had two dredge boats engaged in deepening the Upper Fox at all points necessary; the lock and dam planned for the vicinity of Princeton had been dispensed with and instead two wing-dams were built in the vicinity of Princeton on the bars, which contracted the water and formed a good channel over the bars; that several more wing-dams would be built during the year between Princeton and Berlin; a dam and lock were partially built at Montello; and a new lock had been built at Fort Winnebago on the site of the one built by the State and sunk five feet lower than the old lock.

At the end of 1859 work still proposed to be done was: lengthening the lock at De Pere; enlarging canals on the Lower Fox; graveling dams; completing the lock and dam at Montello; rebuilding the lock at Portage; building a drawbridge at Portage; enlarging the canal at Portage and building wing-dams on the Upper Fox at Portage.

Mr. John F. Seymour, president, reported that the company had paid out for the State indebtedness and construction since October 1856 better than $180,000 more than it received from the sale of land and tolls. The select committee of the legislature stated that they were of the opinion "that the improvement company [had], considering the pecuniary embarrasements of the past two years and the general depression of all kinds of business consequent thereon, done all that could reasonably be expected."

In 1860-61-62 there was little done.

In 1863 it was proposed that the waterway be improved to allow gun boats of six feet draught to pass uninterruptedly from the Mississippi to Lake Michigan, and to increase the depth of the Lower Fox to 12 feet for the purpose of making Lake Michigan a naval station.

In the summer of 1866 the "Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company" having failed to perform fully its agreement with the State, the trustees sold the works of improvement, lands, franchises etc. at public sale, thereby destroying this company. The purchasers organized themselves into "The Green Bay and Mississippi Canal Company."

CHAPTER 33

A FURROW STRAIGHT AND LONG

The Indians who planted corn and other crops before the advent of the white man cleared their plots by burning off the dead vegetation in the spring. This burning produced several benefits besides clearing away dead debris; it released vital nutrients back into the soil to be used by the new growth, and it exposed the ground to the sun. The increased sunlight on the blackened ground warmed the soil faster in spring.

After the spring burning the Indians dropped seed in holes made with a sharpened stick. Cultivating was done with a sharpened stick, or a clam shell or scapula of an animal fastened on the end of a stick.

Before the grassy plains were settled many pioneer farmers thought that prairie soil was not very productive because trees did not grow on it. They believed that the best, most fertile soil was where nut trees grew, not realizing the fertility of the rich soil that lay under the thick prairie grass. When the southern portion of Wisconsin was being settled there came a gradual awareness of the prairie's fertility, and the great ease of "breaking" its soil for initial planting compared to the "breaking" of forested land. Then they began to believe that a location containing both prairie grass (for ease in breaking) and woodland (for logs for building and for fuel) was considered most desirable. Such a place was Bluffton, for while it was situated on the rolling prairie there were trees growing along the Puckyan River. The Indian name "Puckyan" means "little woods"--it was one of the "oak openings" mentioned in the Jesuit Relations.

In 1800 the colonial farmer tilled the land much as his ancestors had. His plow was a crude wooden or iron device pulled by a single horse or ox. He weeded with a hoe. The colonists, like the Europeans before them, had farmed only small patches. With the equipment they had, eight or ten acres was all a family could manage, even with the help of women and children. Never before had they known the opportunity or need to turn the thick prairie grass that stretched "as far as the eye could see."

The first plows used in Green Bay were wooden having only a point of iron. They had long plow-beams supported on small wheels in front to keep them elevated. For a yoke, a settler lashed a hand hewn stick across the oxen horns. Braided bark was used for traces to pull the plow.

The first U. S. patent for a plow was taken out in 1797 by Charles Newbold, of Burlington, New Jersey. It was the first cast iron plow known to be made. It was found to be a good plow for use where the soil was sandy and stony. But there were great prejudices against it because it was believed that the cast iron would "poison" the land and would encourage weeds to grow.

Thomas Jefferson experimented and built excellent plows with blade-like shares (points) that would cut under the soil, and with curved moldboards against which the soil was lifted, turned and pulverized. In 1788 he presented to the Institute of France an original mathematical treatise on the principles for constructing a moldboard plow which would cut resistence to a minimum. It won the gold medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of Paris that year. Afterward he presented his treatise to the board of agriculture in England.

The Department of Agriculture Year Book for 1898 describes a plow used in the eastern states about 1820. It had an eight to ten foot beam and a four foot landside. It required eight to ten oxen to pull it, a man to ride the beam to keep it in the ground and a man to follow with a heavy iron hoe to dig the baulks (ridges of land left between furrows which were missed by the plow). Another plow "had a 10-foot beam and 4-foot land side; your furrows stand up like the ribs of a lean horse in the month of March. A lazy plowman may sit on the beam and count every bout of his day's work." It cost $5.00 a year to keep the shares and coulters fit for work. Wear on the other parts cost at least another dollar.

As the American settlers moved westward, they found that plowing the black prairie soils rich in organic matter was a new experience. The prairie grass had wire-like fibrous roots that intertwined in a thousand different turnings. As much as two-thirds of the weight of prairie grass may be found below the ground as wide-spreading, deep roots. The initial problem was to find a plow that could cut and turn the soil cleanly without clogging or breaking against roots and stones.

In spite of earlier works it took until the 1840s for trial and error together with the observations of farmers and mechanics to come to some conclusion as to the best form for the plow.

In 1837 John Deere, an Illinois blacksmith, made a new kind of plow entirely of steel except for the braces, beam and handles. The one piece share and moldboard of his first steel plow was cut from a mill-saw blade and shaped over a wooden form. This greatly improved plow not only turned over the black prairie sods effectively but "cut by at least one third the animal power needed to do it." Soon such plows were in great demand.

In his book, What Birds Have Done With Me, Dr. Victor Kutchin gives a first-hand account of what it was like to clear the woods and turn the sod along the Puckyan near Dartford. He tries to make the reader "see a real forest with trees that sway in the wind, whose boles are being attacked by actual wood-choppers, who make the chips fly and the giants tremble convulsively and go crashing to earth with the boom of cannons. This, after innumerable repetitions, is followed by the smoking hell of flames that out-rivals the light of the sun, and literally burns a great hole in the night. This precedes the coming of the mighty breaking plow to turn up the virgin soil. It is drawn by four yoke of oxen, following after each other--a great centipede walking with many legs."

Dr Kutchin continues, "'Get up, Jerry; Get up, Bob; Get Up, Harry;' almost sings the driver. Then the plow man shouts to him, 'Why the devil don't you keep those leaders in line? Do you think I'm marking out a circus ring?' Straight to the flag; 'There, that's better!' and away they go. The small boy is in pursuit and will never forget that first furrow. The soft, cool earth at its bottom seemed to have a kiss and caress for his bare feet at every step. Round and round they go, the share of the great plow, sharp as a knife, cutting off roots bigger than his leg, just like they were cheese. But sometimes they are too big, and the driver goes frantic and running along the line of straining oxen, whipping, shouting, and swearing, he finds it no use, they have to leave that particular root. Sometimes the chain will get caught on a stump and the big plow will fairly jump out of the ground, the plowman dropping the handles and dodging just like he was afraid of it. ***

"They plowed six furrows around the great field by noon, and then turned the cattle out to graze with the yokes on, so they would not stray too far. Then they take off the share of the plow that they call the lay, and proceed to sharpen it by putting it in a furious fire until it is red hot; then, holding it with pinchers on a big piece of iron, called an anvil, they pound it, and hammer it till it makes your ears ring."

In 1870 the Oliver chilled plow came on the market. It combined a smooth steel surface on a tough iron base. This was a light, durable plow with a mold board of proper shape to minimize draft and turn the furrow. Improvements multiplied rapidly. Local blacksmiths made many of the plows used by early settlers. A smith who could build good plows was kept busy and could make money. Each had his own designs, and different plows were made for various uses. The three-wheeled sulky or riding plow was invented. Patents proliferated. Prizes were given at Agricultural Fairs for the best made plows turned out by the local blacksmiths.

In his 1871 diary entries L. D. Patterson stated that they had begun to "break up our hog pasture" on the afternoon of March 28. On April 1st he sowed 5 acres of wheat after he had "cultivated the ground over" the day before. This was the first wheat he had sown that year. On April 13th he sowed his "last piece of wheat." It was his birthday. He was 19 years old. On April 14 he "finished dragging out wheat ground" and planted potatoes. On May 4th he wrote, "We went to Dartford and bought a plow (paid $12.00). Steel moulboard and cast point and landside." The entries give no real description of the instrument used to "break up" the land or "cultivate" it before they bought the latest model plow on May 4th. On May 16th he plowed preparing corn ground. Assumably he used the new plow, but he makes no mention of how he liked it.

L. D. mentioned plow repairs in his diary entries. On Sept. 10, 1875, he bought two plow handles for $1.00 and two plow points for $1.50. On Oct. 5 he states, "I put two handles in a plow where they were broken."

In April of the next year he paid 75 cts. apiece for two plow points. In October he again paid $1.50 for two plow shares and in November he paid "25 cts to John Utley for plow and whiffletree repairing.

On June 4, 1877 Pattersons bought a sulky plow for $36.00 from Whiting. (Sulky means that it had wheels and probably a seat to sit on.)

In 1898 the Department of Agriculture reported that "we have sulky plows, gang plows, plows combined with harrow cultivators and with seed drills, sidehill plows, vineyard plows, beet plows, subsoil plows, double-side plows, and lastly, what has been the aim, and seems to be the end of the plow invention, we have the steam gang plow combined with a seeder and harrow, which has reduced the time required for human labor (in plowing, sowing, and harrowing) to produce a bushel of wheat, on an average from 32.8 minutes in 1830 to 2.2 minutes at the present time. (1898)." "It has reduced the cost of human and animal labor in plowing, seeding, and harrowing per bushel of wheat from four cents to one cent."

CHAPTER 34 CORN - THE SYMBOL OF THE AMERICAN PIONEER

The rose may bloom for England,

The lily for France unfold;

Ireland may honor the shamrock,

Scotland her thistle hold;

But the shield of the great Republic,

The glory of the west,

Shall bear a stalk of the tasselled corn--

The sun's supreme bequest!

by Edna Dean Proctor

Freshly turned prairie sod remained rough and hard to handle. Seed was broadcast and seed that fell between lumps germinated at a different time and rate than seed that fell on top of a clod. The smaller grain crops needed very smooth, level ground to insure a fairly even stand so that all plants would germinate, grow and ripen at approximately the same time. Much grain was lost in harvesting if some over-ripe kernels fell to the ground while others were too green to harvest. It was recommended that corn be the first crop raised. The larger size of its seed enabled it to survive rougher conditions that the other grains.

It was corn that sustained the pioneers during the first years of their settlement. Meat was abundant but alone was hardly sufficient. Even if food was available from established neighbors, money was extremely short to pay for it. To plant some corn was a high priority for the newly arrived.

At first corn was planted by dropping seed in holes made by a hoe. The seed was dropped by hand from a basket or pouch carried by the farmer and covered with a hoe. The earliest corn planters were adjustments to the hoe, which permitted the release of grains of corn when the hoe was struck into the ground. Then came the hand planters which opened up a hole, and the planter dropped seed down through a shute into the opening made. The soil was then pressed down around the seed by the foot as the planter stepped upon the previous drop while dropping seed in the next hill.

Next came the idea of of marking rows in both directions with a drag. A long beam with pins in it was dragged both ways across the field by horses, and then the farmer would go along with the hand planter and plant the corn at the intersection of the rows.

Seed corn was obtained by saving the best ears of last year's crop. If a neighbor had more desirable corn, an effort was made to buy some of his corn for seed, or, very often, was obtained through some trade.

In May, 1870, Pattersons sold 1/2 bu. of seed corn to Mr. Moresman at 12 shillings a bushel. They sold 1/2 bu. to Mr. Harding at the same price. Mr. Brown was given 1/2 bu. in payment for grafting trees.

In June of the same year (1870) Pattersons sold 5/8 bu. of corn to Mr. Baird at 60 cts. per bushel. They also bought 1/4 bu. of seed corn from Mr. Baird. No mention was made in the diary as to the price paid for the seed corn.

L. D. Patterson's diary for May 10, 1868, states, "We commenced planting corn today. Ground dry & hard. Rather doubtful whether corn will come up." But the 1868 corn crop must have done all right for on Feb. 22, 1869 they sold in Berlin 34 bushels of corn at $.60 per bu. In April they shelled out seed corn and sold some at $1.50 per bu. and some at $1.12 1/2 per bushel.

On May 12, 1869, his entry read, "It is cold & rainy. It commenced raining about 11 o'clock. I marked out corn ground til noon. I can mark out about 9 acres (both ways) in one day."

Other entries in his diary included:

May 15, 1869, "We planted corn today. There were four of us planting. We planted 10 acres today."

May 22, 1869, "We finished planting corn today."

June 17, 1869, "We plowed corn this forenoon."

July 9, 1869, "I plowed out corn yesterday."

July 17, 1869, "We are plowing corn today."

An entry for July 5, 1871, states, "We finished plowing out corn. Corn looks good. It will average waist high. some comes up to chin,"

This "plowing corn" was not a plowing of the corn out of the ground but a cultivating of the ground around the corn hills.

The original cultivation of corn and other crops planted in rows was by means of a hoe, but in the course of time a shovel plow was used to loosen the earth and to suppress weeds and grass, being drawn twice between the rows and turning the soil against one or the other. Next a tooth harrow was employed, and this was drawn one way between the rows, and afterwards a cultivator with small double-plowshares was used. Then followed the double-shovel cultivator, cutting deep or shallow, as desired, and turning the earth toward two opposite rows at the same time.

On June 8, 1876 L. D. Patterson 50 cts. for a shovel plow point.

By the end of the nineteenth century a corn planter had been invented that could plant two rows at a time. A man sat on the machine and at every point where the drag had crossed at right angles, he moved a lever that dropped the corn which was covered by the wheels that turned and pressed down the soil upon the seed.

Later a check row planter was invented. A wire chain or knotted rope was stretched across the field and anchored at both ends. This passed through the machine as it was driven across the field and dropped some grains of corn every time the knot passed through the machine. It was only necessary to drive backward and forward all day long until the acres were planted, and then the corn could be cultivated in both directions. Later corn planters were invented with or without fertilizer adjustments, so that several rows of corn could be planted at the same time in places at regular distances apart, permitting cultivation in both directions.

In his diary entry for May 29, 1885, L. D. Patterson states, "I paid Clute $28.00 for half corn planter." No description of the planter or co-ownership deal accompanied this statement.

Cultiators also improved by the end of the century. By then the farmer could ride while he cultivated the rows of his crop in both directions.

Two types of field corn were grown--dent and flint. Dent was the leader. It was so named because the top of each kernel was creased or dented. This dent could vary from a dimple to a rough crease. It was caused by the unequal drying of the hard and soft starch of which the kernel is composed. Flint corn differed from dent because it contained very little soft starch. Flint was better for table use, but dent was widely used for animal feed. Some varieties were favored in cold climates because of their ability to germinate at lower temperatures.

Entries in L. D.'s diary included:

May 19, 1875, "We planted 7 acres of the flat south of the barn today to flint corn."

May 21, 1987, "We finished planting our corn today. We planted 10 acres south of the barn to flint & 11 acres in the SE corner field to dent."

Dec. 7, 1875, "Hans helped us sort corn from 11 o'clock until night."

Dec. 31, 1875, "From 21 acres of corn we had nearly 2000 bushels of ears, half of it Canada Flint and is sound but the remainder is dent and is some soft but not bad. Nearly all Dent corn in the country is moulding more or less."

The pioneers harvested their corn by using knives to cut the stalks from the ground and husking the ears by hand. (On Sept. 9, 1875 L. D. bought two corn cutters for 40 cts. By Sept, 1877 he had to pay $1.50 for three of them.) A sharpened wooden peg was often strapped to the hand for opening the husks. The corn was shelled by hand, either on a frying-pan handle or on a shovel or by rubbing the cob against the unshelled ears.

Good weather during the harvesting season was used in cutting the stalks, tying them into bundles and shocking them or hauling them into a barn or shed. During rainy weather they could be husked under a roof.

Corn harvesters drawn by horses were invented that cut the cornstalks and bound them into bundles at the same time.

By the end of the nineteenth century corn shredders had been invented which husked the corn and at the same time cut the husks, stalks and blades (leaves) into feed. They were driven by a belt connected to a steam engine. Cornshellers had also been invented, the first ones being a cylinder turned by a crank.

L. D.'s diary entry for Sept. 7, 1874, stated, "We commenced to build a corn crib today. Hildreth does the carpenter work." On Jan. 1, 1875, he stated, "We have built during the year a corn crib 20 x 30 (It cost about $50.00.)"

On Jan. 11, 1876, Pattersons bought a corn sheller for $12.00 from O. J. Clark & Co. On Jan. 13 of the same year L. D. took it back and traded it for a $13.00 sheller and paid the difference in price.

A Sept. 21, 1876 diary entry stated, "I bought two corn baskets of a man in Princeton for 90 cts. apiece. Amt $1.80.

The Life and Writings of Harriet Shikoski

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