Warfare between the English and the French in America again was to seriously affect the western tribes. This conflict, lasting from 1744 to 1748, saw the fur trade with the western tribes reach extremely low proportions. Goods were very scarce due to the loss of French ships at the hands of British fighting vessels, and this failure to produce sufficient goods for the Indians, in addition to the already declining prestige of the French, encouraged some of the western tribes to seek more favorable relations with the British. Most of the Huron, under Chief Nicolas, began trading with the British, and many other western tribes exhibited the same inclination.
The end of the current conflict with the English enabled the French to regain control of these tribes, but the Miami had moved into Ohio and established a large village called Pickawillany which became a fairly permanent camp for a number of English traders. Several expeditions against this village by the French failed. In 1752, however, Charles de Langlade, later famed as one of Wisconsin’s pioneer French settlers at Green Bay, who was part French and part Ottawa and who thus had tremendous influence among the Indians, led an expedition against Pickawillany which enjoyed remarkable success. The village was destroyed, the English traders captured, and the Miami returned to French allegiance.
For a while France again enjoyed supremacy in the West. In 1755, Langlade and his contingent of Wisconsin and Mackinac braves participated in the famous battle culminating in “Braddock’s Defeat”. Chippewa, Menomini, Potawatomi, and Winnebago were said to be present at this engagement, and for many years thereafter trophies of this battle were to be found in Wisconsin Indian lodges. Despite this severe defeat of the British and American Colonials, the fortunes of the French were destined to take a turn for the worse. By 1761, Wisconsin was under British control, and in 1763, France formally surrendered the rest of her American possessions to England. She had ceded Louisiana to Spain the year before.
Much had happened to Wisconsin’s Indians during this period, roughly from 1700 to 1760. The long and bloody Fox Wars had wrought hardship on the other tribes as well as on the Fox. The Sioux-Chippewa war had resulted in the Sioux being forced to relinquish most of their Wisconsin territory to the Chippewa. The Potawatomi Indians, who had fought under Langlade and participated in the killing of the unarmed English and Americans at Fort William Henry, were visited by a grim vengeance in the form of smallpox, contracted from the English soldiers and brought back by the tribes to their own country where it raged virtually unchecked. Great numbers of Indians lost their lives as a result.
Other tribes left Wisconsin, some never to return. The Kickapoo and Mascouten were now in Illinois and Indiana. The Potawatomi were below Lake Michigan at St. Joseph. Thus many of the tribes here when the French traders and missionaries first arrived, no longer were in the Wisconsin scene. The tribes remaining here were destined to know new masters, the British, who were to control the fur trade in Wisconsin until the end of the War of 1812.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PERIOD OF BRITISH CONTROL
PONTIAC.