In 1802, a hundred and fifteen years later, a man was digging a cellar in Green Bay, several miles lower down the bank of the Fox River than is De Pere, when his pickax ran through this piece of silver. It was brought to light, and for safe keeping was given to the Catholic priest then at Green Bay. Nobody would have known its story except for the clearly engraved inscription on the bottom; the words are in French, but in English they signify: "This soleil was given by Mr. Nicolas Perrot to the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at the Bay of the Puants, 1686"; for the early French name for Green Bay was "Bay of the Puants." The old ostensorium, with its inscription just as plainly to be read to-day as when engraved over two centuries ago, can now be seen among the treasures of the State Historical Society, at Madison. It is an enduring memorial to the labors and the sufferings of Wisconsin's first missionaries.
[1] French Rapides des Pères, or "The Fathers' Rapids"; but it was soon shortened into Des Pères, and finally, by the Americans, into De Pere.
SOME NOTABLE VISITORS TO EARLY WISCONSIN
It has been pointed out that wandering fur traders were in Wisconsin at a very early date. We have seen that Nicolet, Radisson, and Groseilliers made Wisconsin known to the world, at a time when Massachusetts colony was still young. It will be remembered that when Father Ménard went to Lake Superior, in 1660, to convert the Indians, there were several French fur traders with him. As early as the spring of 1662, these same traders had gone across country to the mouth of the Fox River. Three years later the Menominees and Pottawattomies, then living on both sides of the bay, were visited by Nicolas Perrot, a daring young spirit from Quebec, who had come to the then Far West to make his fortune in trading with the red men.
Perrot was one of the most picturesque characters in Wisconsin history. In Canada he had been a servant of the Jesuit missionaries, acquiring in this work an education which was slight as to books, but broad as to knowledge of the Indians and of forest life. He was now twenty-one years of age, and started out for himself as soon as he was his own master. For five years Perrot wandered up and down the eastern half of Wisconsin, frequently visiting his friends, the Mascoutins and Miamis, on the Fox River. He smoked pipes of peace with them and with other forest and prairie tribes, and joined in their feasts of beaver, dog, and other savage delicacies.
In 1670 he and four other Frenchmen, packing their furs into bundles of convenient size, joined a large party of Indians going down to Montreal in canoes, to trade. Perrot did not return with his companions, but visited Quebec, and there received an appointment from the government to rally the Western tribes in a great council at Sault Ste. Marie. Here a treaty was to be made, binding the savages to an alliance with France. The French were very jealous of the English, who had, through the guidance of Radisson and Groseilliers, commenced fur trade operations in the Hudson Bay country. It was feared that they would entice the Indians of the upper Great Lakes to trade with them, for the English offered higher prices for furs than did the French.
Perrot spent the winter in visiting the tribes in Wisconsin and along the northern shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, and succeeded in inducing large bands of them to go to the Sault early in May (1671). The council was attended by an enormous gathering, representing tribes from all over the Northwest, even from the north shores of Lake Superior and Hudson Bay. Father Marquette was there with the Ottawas, and several other famous missionaries came to the council. The interpreter, who knew Indian dialects by the score, was no less a person than Louis Joliet. The French government was represented by Saint Lusson, who concluded the desired treaty, with great ceremony, took formal possession of all this country for the king of France, and reared on the spot a great cedar pole, to which he fastened a lead plate bearing the arms of his country. This symbol the simple and wondering savages could not understand: and as soon as the Frenchmen had gone home again, they tore it down, fearing that it was a charm which might bring bad luck to the tribesmen.
And now we find Perrot suddenly losing his office, and forced for ten years to live a quiet life in the French settlements on the lower St. Lawrence. He married a well-to-do young woman, reared a considerable family, and became a man of some influence. But he was always eager to be back in the forest, wandering from tribe to tribe, and engaging in the wilderness trade, where the profits were great, though the risks to life and property were many. In 1681 he returned to the woods, but not till three years later was he so far west as Mackinac.