The Indian trails were also largely used by the traders in seeking the natives in their villages; later these trails developed into public roads, when American settlers came to occupy the country. Thus we see that Wisconsin was quite thoroughly explored, its principal cities and highways located, and its water ways mapped out by the early French, long before the inrush of agricultural colonists.
IN THE OLD FRENCH DAYS
In establishing their chain of rude forts, or trading posts, along the Great Lakes and through the valley of the Mississippi, the French had no desire to plant agricultural settlements in the West. Their chief thought was to keep the continental interior as a great fur bearing wilderness; to encourage the Indians to hunt for furs, by supplying all their other wants with articles made in Europe; and to prevent them from carrying any of their furs to the English, who were always underbidding the French in prices.
The officers of these forts were instructed to bully or to persuade the Indians, as occasion demanded; and some of them became very successful in this forest diplomacy. Around most of the forts were small groups of temporary settlers, who could hardly be called colonists, for they expected when they had made their fortunes, or when their working days were over, to return to their own people on the lower St. Lawrence River. It was rather an army of occupation, than a body of settlers. Nearly every one in the settlement was dependent on the fur trade, either as agent, clerk, trapper, boatman, or general employee.
Sometimes these little towns were the outgrowth of early Jesuit missions, as La Pointe (on Chequamegon Bay), or Green Bay (De Pere); but sooner or later the fur trade became the chief interest. Most of the towns, however, like Milwaukee, La Crosse, or Prairie du Chien, were the direct outgrowth of commerce with the savages. There were trading posts, also, on Lakes Chetek, Flambeau, Court Oreilles, and Sandy, but the settlements about them were very small, and they never grew into permanent towns, as did some of the others.
At all these places, the little log forts served as depots for furs and the goods used in trading with the Indians; they were also used as rallying points for the traders and other white inhabitants of the district, in times of Indian attack. They would have been of slight avail against an enemy with cannon, but afforded sufficient protection against the arrows, spears, and muskets of savages.
The French Canadians who lived in these waterside hamlets were an easy-going folk. Nearly all of them were engaged in the fur trade at certain seasons of the year. The bourgeois, or masters, were the chiefs. The voyageurs were men of all work, propelling the canoes and bateaux when afloat, carrying the craft and their contents over portages, transporting packs of goods and furs along the forest trails, caring for the camps, and acting as guards for the persons and property of their employers. The coureurs de bois, or wood rangers, were everywhere; they were devoted to a life in the woods, for the fun and excitement in it; they conducted trade on their own account, far off in the most inaccessible places, and were men of great daring. Then there were the habitants, or permanent villagers; sometimes these worked as voyageurs, but for the most part they were farmers in a small way, cultivating long, narrow "claims" running at right angles to the river bank; one can still find at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, traces of some of these old "French claims." The object of having them so narrow was, that the habitants could live close to one another, along the waterside.
They were of a very social nature, these French habitants. They liked to meet frequently, enjoy their pipes, and tell stories of the hunt or of old days on the St. Lawrence. They were famous fiddlers, too. No wilderness so far away that the little French fiddle had not been there; the Indians recognized it as a part of the furniture of every fur trader's camp. Music appealed strongly to these warm natures, and the songs of the voyageurs, as they propelled their canoes along the Wisconsin rivers, always greatly interested travelers. French Canadians are still living in Wisconsin, who remember those gay melodies which echoed through our forests a hundred years ago.