The Indians in Wisconsin's History

by John M. Douglass

FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE (COURTESY OF MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY).

Nevertheless, the story of their efforts to Christianize the tribes, and the valor of these missionaries in exploring unknown territory, makes a fascinating story in our state’s history. Not the least among such heroic deeds was the great voyage of exploration by Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet. Traveling up the Fox River, crossing over on foot at what is now Portage, Wisconsin, and proceeding down the Wisconsin River, the two explorers entered the Mississippi River on the seventeenth of June, 1673. They explored the great river as far south as the Arkansas River and then returned, by way of the Illinois River. This great discovery made known a continuous water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and opened to the French the interior of a vast continent.

It was the desire to exploit and unify this vast wilderness empire that led the French leaders to attempt deliberate changes in the Wisconsin Indian geography and political structure. This was necessary in order to strengthen the Wisconsin tribes and keep them fighting the Iroquois who consistently raided the western Indians and the French settlements along the St. Lawrence.

LaSalle conceived the idea of a great Indian confederacy which, it was hoped, would be able to successfully oppose the mighty Iroquois, and so built forts in the Illinois country to help defend the area. The Wisconsin Mascouten and Kickapoo left this area, partly because of their desire to join the confederacy and partly because of population pressure in the Fox River valley.

The year before the Iroquois invasions of 1680, DuLhut helped to strengthen the French cause by negotiating peace between the Dakota Sioux and their enemy of long standing, the Chippewa, and also reconciling the Dakota Sioux and Assiniboine, who had been warring for thirty years.

Nicolas Perrot probably was the most influential French officer ever to have worked with the Wisconsin tribes. It was mainly through his constant efforts that they were kept from going over to the Iroquois when the tribes felt that the French had abandoned them. Perrot was probably the only Frenchman to remain consistently on friendly terms with the Foxes, who eventually were to engage the French in the bloodiest Indian war ever to be fought on Wisconsin soil. Perrot constantly travelled from village to village organizing raids against the Iroquois, raids which eventually assisted in forcing the Iroquois to sue for peace. The French, through the efforts of men like LaSalle, Perrot, and DuLhut, had once again secured a firm hold on the western tribes, but the Iroquois warfare of the 1680’s had caused a slump in the fur trade. The trade was, moreover, soon to receive a blow which was to almost completely kill all official commerce between the Indians and the French for a number of years. This was the issuance of a royal edict by the French King, May 21, 1696, revoking all fur trade licenses and prohibiting all colonials from carrying goods to the western country.

There were really two main causes for the issuance of this edict. One was a slump in the beaver market caused by the great flood of furs into France and a decline in beaver hat production, due partly to the emigration of the Huguenots who were the main hat felters; the other cause for the edict was the anger of the Jesuits, aroused by the sale of brandy to the Indians by the traders and soldiers.

It was hoped that the Indian tribes would make the journey to Montreal themselves to trade their furs, but it was soon discovered that most tribes either would not or could not make such a journey for purposes of trade. The result, of course, was severe hardship for the Indians of Wisconsin. Lack of gunpowder and lead restricted their hunting abilities and made it more difficult for them to defend themselves against the Iroquois and other hostile tribes. The Indians were becoming increasingly dependent upon the French to the extent that they had lost much of the freedom they had enjoyed as a self-sufficient people.

The rapid abandonment of the western posts followed the fur trade ban. The commanders of these outposts, for the most part, did not consider it worthwhile to stay on in that capacity if they could not enrich themselves by means of the Indian trade.

Peace was finally arranged between the Iroquois and the French and their Indian allies in 1700. The Iroquois had suffered heavily from the raids by the western Indians. They claimed to have lost more than half their warriors. With the fear of Iroquois raids ended, the confederacies of western tribes quickly fell apart, and the latter turned to fighting among themselves as they had always done in the past.