Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent

by Archer Butler Hulbert

But though these men passed over this route to the discovery of the Mississippi, they were not the first white men to traverse it. Jean Nicolet, the first of Europeans, came over this course in 1634, but did not descend the Wisconsin.[91]

Two score years later the bold missionaries, Joliet and Marquette, entered the Fox River and came to Maskoutens, “the fire Nation.” “Here,” wrote Marquette, “is the limit of the discoveries which the french have made, for they have not yet gone any farther.” Of Radissou and Groseilliers no memory was left among the savages, and of them Marquette had never heard. “No sooner had we arrived,” Marquette wrote in his Journal, “than we, Monsieur Jollyet and I assembled the elders together; and he told them that he was sent by Monsieur Our Governor to discover New countries, while I was sent by God to Illumine them with the light of the holy Gospel. He told them that, moreover, the sovereign Master of our lives wished to be known by all the Nations; and that in obeying his will I feared not the death to which I exposed myself in voyages so perilous. He informed them that we needed two guides to show us the way; and We gave them a present, by it asking them to grant us the guides. To this they very Civilly consented; and they also spoke to us by means of a present, consisting of a Mat to serve us as a bed during the whole of our voyage. On the following day, the tenth of June two Miamis who were given us as guides embarked with us.... We knew that, at three leagues from Maskoutens, was a River which discharged into Mississippi. We knew also that the direction we were to follow in order to reach it was west-southwesterly. But the road is broken by so many swamps and small lakes that it is easy to lose one’s way, especially as the River leading thither is so full of wild oats that it is difficult to find the Channel. For this reason we greatly needed our two guides, who safely Conducted us to a portage of 2,700 paces, and helped us to transport our Canoes to enter That river; ... Thus we left the Waters flowing to Quebeq, 4 or 500 Leagues from here, to float on Those that would thenceforward Take us through strange lands.”[92]

By the feet of such undaunted heroes the Fox-Wisconsin portage path was made hallowed ground. But the importance of this route, in the days when Georgian Bay was the entering point of the French into the Great Lakes, did not rapidly diminish; through all pioneer history, when Mackinac and Detroit were the key of the Lakes, this route to the Mississippi was important. For instance, in the fur trade of the West and of Wisconsin in particular, this portage was of utmost moment.[93] In the preceding pages this matter of the fur trade on portages has not been sufficiently suggested; it is, however, a subject on which important and exhaustive histories should be written. The portages were, in numerous instances, the keys of the fur trade.

In the Revolutionary War, the Fox-Wisconsin portage bore a more or less important part in British plans of gaining the alliance of the Indians of the upper Mississippi Basin.[94] The awakening in the Northwest is evidenced by the increasing importance of this pathway in the War of 1812.[95] This was the route of British trade with the Mississippi Indians until the very last.[96] The commercial and economic history of this route, the establishment of Fort Winnebago, the question of government ownership of land, the improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, the Military Road across the portage, the days of the Durhams boats, and the building of the canal make this route more interesting than any other west of Niagara.[97]

It would be a serious omission not to include in this catalogue at least a mention of the portages which completed the line of communication along the chain of the Great Lakes—or from the St. Lawrence across to the extremity of Lake Superior. The importance of the portage from the Ottawa to Lake Nipissing and French River has been fully suggested, in our emphasis of the use of the Ottawa route, by which the French avoided the Iroquois and gained the western lakes. The historic and economic phase of the Niagara River offers a magnificent untouched field for historic study. The series of forts and their varying flags which defended this key of the Lakes; the struggle for their possession; the portage routes here that were of such vital importance to all the West; the earliest systems of transportation around Niagara Falls; the supplementary roundabout routes, such as up Grand River; and finally, the building of the Welland Canal, offer a splendid topic for study and field work. At the extremity of Lake Superior was the Grand Portage, which joined the Great Lakes with Hudson Bay, by way of Pigeon River and the Lake of the Woods. It was first found by Radissou and Groseilliers in 1662, fortified in 1737, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century was “the Headquarters or General Rendezvous, for all who trade in this part of the world.”[98]

In concluding this review of portage paths the author finds a final opportunity to offer a plea for the wide study of historic sites and for placing there monuments of some kind for the purposes of identification before it be all too late.

We cannot realize in the slightest degree the great interest that will be felt in our historical beginnings one, two, and three centuries from now, as our nation grows richer and hundreds give themselves up to the study of the past where ten can do so today. It is fair to believe that we cannot realize how precious every relic and every accurate piece of information—every monument and tablet—will seem when at last the days of Braddock and Johnson, Washington and Clark and Wayne are lost in three hundred years of change and evolution. Therefore we cannot fully realize the precious duty that falls upon the present generation—and upon us particularly.

The reason is evident: within a generation there will not be left in our land a single son of one of the genuine pioneers of, for instance, New York or Ohio. Even those of the second generation remember with really little distinctness and accuracy the days of which their fathers told; often their stories are entirely unreliable. This very fact is in itself alarming, and is it not then the duty of all interested persons to secure immediately every item of information from such of that second generation as are found to be accurate and clear? In every State there are a hundred historic sites for which, in time, people generally will be inquiring. We speak easily of Fort Necessity and Fort Bull and Fort Laurens—but where are they? The sites of these historic embankments are known today, but of the New York and Pennsylvania sites doubts are beginning to pass current. The location of Fort Laurens—the first American fort built west of the Ohio River—is pretty definitely known. It is fair to say that in a generation or two the spots, if left unmarked, will never be located correctly. A small stone, with a plain legend, costing a mere trifle, would insure the future against such a misfortune.

The subject of portage paths naturally suggests the matter of locating historic sites and marking them for the reason that so many such points were on these portages. A mere catalogue of the forts mentioned in preceding pages prove this conclusively. Add to these the mission houses, trading stations and treaty houses here erected and we have a sum total of vitally important historic sites which could be equalled only by looking to the river valleys. And very frequently indeed the real significance of many a fort at a river’s mouth lay in the fact that at that river’s head lay a strategic carrying place. What else did Fort Defiance, Fort Venango, Fort Oswego, Fort Niagara, Fort Miami on the St. Joseph mean?

These portage routes should be presented to all local and State historical societies as important fields of study in the very immediate present if the many historic sites here are to be correctly marked. They are easy fields of investigation because as a rule a great amount of geographic lore is treasured up in a small compass; many a portage, like the Oneida portage at Rome, New York, was not over a mile in length; yet here are the sites of at least half a dozen forts, some of them of world-wide renown. Take the famous portage at Fort Wayne, Indiana, from the Maumee (St. Mary) to the Wabash (Little River); the field here is of great importance yet the ground to be covered is exceedingly limited. A few dollars invested in slight monuments could now establish markers along this route with some degree of accuracy and conscientious satisfaction. Later on this will not be possible. Each year lessens the probability of accuracy, takes from the neighborhood one and another of the aged men who would be of assistance, changes more and more the face of the landscape—in short tends to rob all future students of something of real value that we might confer upon them.