To this little paradise of the Cadottes there came (in 1818) two sturdy, fairly educated young men from Massachusetts, Lyman Marcus Warren, and his younger brother, Truman Warren. Engaging in the fur trade, these two brothers, of old Puritan stock, married two half-breed daughters of Michel Cadotte. In time they bought out Michel's interests, and managed the American Fur Company's stations at many far-distant places, such as Lac Flambeau, Lac Court Oreilles, and the St. Croix. The Warrens were the last of the great La Pointe fur traders, Truman dying in 1825, and Lyman twenty-two years later.
Lyman Warren, although possessed of a Catholic wife, was a Presbyterian. Not since the days of Marquette had there been an ordained minister at La Pointe, and the Catholics were not just then ready to reënter the long-neglected field. Warren was eager to have religious instruction on the island, for both Indians and whites; and in 1831 succeeded in inducing the American Home Missionary Society to send hither, from Mackinac, the Rev. Sherman Hall and wife, as missionary and teacher. These were the first Protestant missionaries upon the shores of Lake Superior. For many years their modest little church building at La Pointe was the center of a considerable and prosperous mission, both island and mainland, which did much to improve the condition of the Chippewa tribe. In later years the mission was moved to Odanah.
Four years after the coming of the Halls, there arrived at the island village a worthy Austrian priest, Father (afterward Bishop) Baraga. In a small log chapel by the side of the Indian graveyard, this new mission of the older faith throve apace. Baraga visited Europe to beg money for the cause, and in a few years constructed a new chapel; this is sometimes shown to summer tourists as the original chapel of Marquette, but no part of the ancient mainland chapel went into its construction. Baraga was a man of unusual attainments, and spent his life in laboring for the betterment of the Indians of the Lake Superior country, with a self-sacrificing zeal which is rare in the records of any church. At present, the Franciscan friars, with headquarters at Bayfield, on the mainland, are in charge of the island mission.
La Pointe has lost many of its old-time characteristics. No longer is it the refuge of squalid Indian tribes; no longer is it a center of the fur trade, with gayly clothed coureurs de bois, with traders and their dusky brides, with rollicking voyageurs taking no heed of the morrow. With the killing of the game, and the opening of the Lake Superior country to the occupation of farmers and miners and manufacturers, its forest trade has departed; the Protestant mission has followed the majority of the Indian islanders to mainland reservations; and the revived mission of the Mother Church has also been quartered upon the bay shore.
WISCONSIN TERRITORY FORMED
What we now know as Wisconsin was part of the vast undefined wilderness to which the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century, gave the name Florida. Spain claimed the country because of the early discoveries of her navigators and explorers. Her claim was undisputed until there came to North America the energetic French, who penetrated the continent by means of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes, and gradually took possession of the inland water systems, as fast as discovered by their fur traders and missionaries. It should be understood, however, that there were very few, if any, Spaniards in all this vast territory, except on or near the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1608 Quebec was founded. It is supposed that twenty-six years later the first Frenchman reached Wisconsin, which may, from that date (1634) till 1763, be considered as a part of French territory. When Great Britain conquered New France, Wisconsin became her property, and so continued till the treaty of 1783, by which our Northwest was declared to be American soil.