The Indians in Wisconsin's History

by John M. Douglass

The Marquis de Beauharnois, appointed governor of Canada to replace Vaudreuil, was determined that the raids on the Illinois and the French at Kaskaskia must be stopped. A French army once more was sent against the Fox. This time, headed by the Sieur de Lignery, the expedition numbered about four hundred French and approximately one thousand Indians. Warned by the Potawatomi, the Fox escaped from their villages and the army arrived at each to find it deserted. At Little Lake Butte des Morts the soldiers refused to go farther and Lignery had to be satisfied with the burning of the Fox and Winnebago villages and their stores of food.

Despite the poor showing of Lignery’s expedition against the Fox, Kiala’s confederacy began to fall apart. Even their old allies, the Mascouten and Kickapoo, were persuaded by the French to turn against them, and the Sioux, closely watched by the French, no longer could give the Fox refuge in their country. Discouraged by these losses and defeated by the French under the capable Paul Marin, the Fox decided to flee to the Iroquois country. The Fox had long been secretly treating with the English and the Seneca, a member tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy and hoped to find a friendly reception in their country.

Warned by the Mascouten and Kickapoo regarding the plans of the Fox, French officers from nearby posts hastily gathered together Indian allies and prepared to attack their fleeing enemies. The Fox, warned by their scouts of the force advancing against them, hastily erected a stockade and prepared to fight for their lives. They managed to fight off the besiegers for twenty-three days. Then on a stormy night they attempted flight but were quickly overtaken. Almost all of the band were either slaughtered or taken as slaves.

After the few survivors of this disaster, seeking refuge in their village near the mouth of the Wisconsin River, were attacked by Detroit Indians, Kiala and three other chiefs offered to give themselves up, asking mercy for themselves and the fifty surviving warriors, supposedly all that were left of the entire tribe. De Villiers accepted the surrender and hastened to Montreal with his prisoners. De Villiers was ordered to return and kill off the rest of the Fox, taking only the women and children as prisoners. These were to be sold into slavery, like Kiala, who was fated to end his days as a slave in the West Indies.

De Villiers returned to the Sauk village at Green Bay and demanded that the Sauk release the remnant of Fox survivors. The Sauk declined to release warriors with whom they had strong blood ties, and in an attempt to force an entrance, one of de Villiers’ sons was killed. The French quickly retaliated and in the exchange of fire de Villiers himself was killed by a twelve year old boy, who later became renowned as the Sauk Chief Blackbird. In the battle that followed, the Sieur Duplessis, the Sieur de Repentigny, and six other Frenchmen quickly met the same fate. The Sauk and Fox, too, lost heavily and fled to the vicinity of the present-day city of Menasha. The bloody battle that ensued there, it is said, accounts for the name Butte des Morts, or Hill of the Dead.

As a result of this battle, the remainder of the Fox and the Sauk amalgamated and for all practical purposes became one tribe. They fled into Iowa where they erected a new fort, and gradually their ranks were swelled by Fox released from captivity by tribes now secretly in sympathy with the Sauk and Fox. One more expedition was sent against them, led by the Sieur de Noyelles, but although he followed the Sauk and Fox to the vicinity of the Des Moines River, they were so well entrenched that it was impossible to dislodge them and the expedition returned home without success. Eventually the Fox Wars were brought to an end through a policy of conciliation inaugurated in 1740 by Paul Marin, the new commandant at La Baye. Force had, in the long run, proven a failure in the campaign to completely subjugate the Fox.

SAUK AND FOX CHIEF (FROM GEO. CATLIN).

Throughout the first half of the Eighteenth Century the French, as we have seen, had been occupied with more or less constant warfare with the Fox. This warfare was the dominant note in the history of Wisconsin for this period, and in general, the role of other Wisconsin tribes during this era was that of serving as allies either of the French or of the Fox.

The failure of Noyelles’ expedition against the Fox had helped to lower French prestige among the western tribes, and in 1736 the Sioux, angered by French friendship for the Chippewa and Cree, murdered a French officer, a priest, and a party of nineteen voyageurs. From this time on the Sioux could no longer be numbered among the allies of the French. By 1739, the Sioux-Chippewa War flamed into action and the Sioux were driven westward from the areas in Wisconsin now held by the Chippewa.