From various causes, the lead trade of the Upper Mississippi region had sadly declined by 1857. Among these causes was the finding of gold in California (1849), which attracted large numbers of the miners to a more profitable field; again, the surface or shallow diggings having been exhausted, much more capital was required to operate in the lower levels; more serious was the lack of sufficient transportation facilities, and these did not come until the great silver mines of the Rocky Mountains had been opened, lead being thenceforth more profitably produced in connection with silver.
The effect of the lead industry upon the development of Wisconsin was important. Many years before farmers would naturally have sought southern Wisconsin in their pushing westward for fresh lands, the opening of the mines brought thither a large and energetic industrial population, and a considerable capital, and awakened popular interest in land and water transportation routes.
THE WINNEBAGO WAR
The world over, white men, representing a higher type of civilization, have wrested, or are still wresting, the land from the original savage occupants. This seems to be inevitable. It is one of the means by which civilization is being extended over the entire globe. We glory in the progress of civilization; but we are apt to ignore the hardship which this brings to the aborigines. While not relaxing our endeavor to plant the world with progressive men who shall make the most of life, we should see to it that the savage races are pushed to the wall with as kindly and forbearing a hand as possible; that we apply to them humane methods, and give them credit for possessing the sentiments of men who, like us, dearly love their old homes, and are willing to fight for them. These sentiments have certainly not often been applied in the past, by our Anglo-Saxon race, to the Indians of North America.
We have failed to appreciate that the Indian, in being driven from his lands, has retaliated from motives of patriotism. His methods of fighting are often cruel and treacherous; but it must be remembered that he is in a stage of development akin to that of the child, and that white men upon the frontier have often been quite as cruel and treacherous toward the Indian as he was toward them, for such are ever the methods of the weak and the primitive. The Indian is blamed for his custom of wreaking vengeance upon all white men, when but an individual has injured him; yet, on the border, it has always been seen that white men have retaliated on the Indians in exactly the same spirit. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," has been their motto, the offense of one Indian being considered the offense of all. Our dealings with the red men, both as individuals and as a nation, have, for over a hundred years, often been such as we should blush for. We are doing better now than formerly; but our treatment of the weak and unfortunate aborigines is still far from being to our credit.
The story of the Winnebago War, in Wisconsin, is illustrative of the old-time method of treating our barbaric predecessors. No doubt it would have been better if the United States had, from the first, held all the Indians to be subjects, and forced them to obey our laws. But the tribes were considered in theory to be distinct nations, over whom we exercised supervision, and with whom we held treaties. This at first seemed necessary, owing to the patriarchal system among the Indians, by which heads of families or clans are supposed to control the younger members, all affairs being decided upon in councils, in which these wise old men participate. It was thought that, through the chiefs, binding agreements could be made with entire tribes. It was not then generally understood that each Indian is, according to the customs of those people, really a law unto himself; that the chiefs, in signing a treaty, are seldom representative in the sense that we use the word, and that they generally represent no one but themselves; that the only way in which they can commit their tribes is through the respect or fear which they may foster in the minds of their followers.
In the month of August, 1825, when Wisconsin was still a part of Michigan Territory, there was a treaty signed at Prairie du Chien between the United States and the Indians of what are now Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The treaty set boundaries between the quarrelsome tribes, and agreed on a general peace upon the border. Like most Indian treaties, this document was drawn up by the officers of the general government; and the chiefs, knowing little of its contents, were simply invited to sign their names to it. They signed as requested, but went home in bad temper, because the American commissioners would not make them costly presents of guns, ammunition, beads, hatchets, cloths, and rum, as the British in Canada always did; and the savages were not even allowed to celebrate the treaty by a roistering feast. The Americans, from their cold, businesslike conduct, impressed the Indians as being "stingy old women."