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.
