28 (page [page 29]).—For other Canadian boat-songs, see Hunt’s Merchants' Magazine, vol. iii, p. 189; Bela Hubbard’s Memorials of a Half Century, and Ernest Gagnon’s Chanson Populaires du Canada.
29 (page [page 30]).—The Grignon family are prominently identified with Wisconsin pioneer history. Their progenitor was Pierre, who had been a voyageur on Lake Superior at an early date, and an independent fur-trader at Green Bay before 1763. For his second wife he married Louise Domitilde, a daughter of Charles de Langlade, the first permanent settler of Wisconsin (about 1750). By her, Pierre Grignon had nine children—Pierre Antoine (1777), Charles (1779), Augustin (1780), Louis (1783), Jean Baptiste (1785), Domitilde (1787), Marguerite (1789), Hippolyte (1790), and Amable (1795). The elder Pierre died at Green Bay in 1795, his widow subsequently marrying Jean Baptiste Langevin. Of the sons of Pierre Grignon, most won prominence as fur-traders—Augustin, whose valuable “Seventy-Two Years' Recollections of Wisconsin” are given in vol. iii of Wisconsin Historical Collections, is best known to students of Western history.
30 (page [page 31]).—Variously spelled in contemporary documents, Grand Kaccalin, Cacalin, Cockolin, Kackalin, Kakalin, and Kokolow; but later crystallized into Kaukauna, the name of the modern manufacturing town now situated upon the banks of this rapid. Dominic Du Charme was the first white settler there (1793), being followed by Augustin Grignon (1812). A Presbyterian Indian mission was established at the place in 1822 (see [Note 31]).
31 (page [page 32]).—Rev. Cutting Marsh was born in Danville, Vt., July 20, 1800. Prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., he graduated from Dartmouth in 1826, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1829. In October, 1829, he departed for the Northwest as missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, in the employ both of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. The Stockbridges were originally a New England tribe who had been moved to New York. In 1822-23, along with Oneidas, Munsees, and Brothertowns, they went to the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin. The mission to the Stockbridges was first established at what is now South Kaukauna (see [Note 30]), and was called Statesburg; later (1832), it was moved to Calumet County, east of Lake Winnebago, the new village being called Stockbridge. Their first missionary in Wisconsin was Jesse Miner, who died in 1829. Marsh served from 1830-48; thereafter he was an itinerant Presbyterian missionary in northern Wisconsin, and died at Waupaca July 4, 1873. Marsh’s letter-books and journals, a rich mine of pioneer church annals, are now in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society; his annual reports to the Scottish Society were published in Vol. XV of the Wisconsin Historical Collections. They bear a curious resemblance in matter and style to the Jesuit Relations of New France, in the seventeenth century.
32 (page [page 32]).—Rev. Eleazer Williams was an Episcopalian missionary to the Oneida Indians, some of whom moved to Wisconsin from New York in 1821-22. In 1853, Williams, who was imbued with a passion for notoriety, suddenly posed before the American public as Louis XVII., hereditary sovereign of France, claiming to be that son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette who was officially reported to have died in prison after his parents had been beheaded by the Paris revolutionists. Although he was too young by eight years to be the lost dauphin, was clearly of Indian origin, was stoutly claimed by his dusky parents, and every allegation of his in regard to the matter was soon exposed as false, many persons of romantic temperament believed his story, and there are those who still stoutly maintain that his pretensions were well founded. Williams died in 1858, discredited by his church, but persisting in his absurd claims to the last. A considerable literature has sprung up relative to this controversy, pro and con; the most exhaustive account is W. W. Wight’s monograph, Parkman Club Papers (Milwaukee), No. 7.
33 (page [page 40]).—Petit Butte des Morts (little hill of the dead) is a considerable eminence rising from the shores of the Fox River in the western outskirts of the present city of Menasha; a widening of the river at this point bears the name of the butte. The hill, still a striking feature of the landscape, although much reduced from railway and other excavations, commanded the river for several miles in either direction, and appears to have been used in early days as the site of an Indian fort; as such, it was probably the scene of several notable encounters during the Fox War, in the first third of the eighteenth century. Because of these traditions, and the existence of a large Indian mound on its summit, it was long supposed by whites that the entire hill was a gigantic earthwork, reared to bury as well as to commemorate the thousands of Indians whom the French are alleged to have here slain. But this is now known to be mere fancy; the hill is of glacial origin, although no doubt it was at one time used as an Indian cemetery. Grand Butte des Morts, upon the upper waters of the Fox River, above the present Oshkosh, has similar traditions as to its inception, but is of like character; and does not appear to have been the scene of any important fight.
34 (page [page 45]).—The present Island Park, an Oshkosh summer resort.
35 (page [page 46]).—See Gardner P. Stickney’s “Use of Maize by Wisconsin Indians,” Parkman Club Papers, No. 13. This contains numerous bibliographical citations. An exhaustive treatise on the use of wild rice among the northern tribes, by Alfred E. Jenks, will soon be published by the American Bureau of Ethnology.
36 (page [page 48]).—John Lawe, whose father was an officer in the British army. John came to Green Bay in 1797, when but sixteen years old, as assistant to his uncle, Jacob Franks, an English Jew, who represented at Green Bay the fur-trade firm of Ogilvie, Gillespie & Co., of Montreal. On the outbreak of the War of 1812-15, Franks returned to Montreal, turning over his large business to Lawe, who was, until his death in 1846, one of the leading citizens of Green Bay; not only conducting a large fur trade, but serving the public as magistrate and in other capacities.