Stories of the Badger State

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

So long as the fur trade remained the principal business in Wisconsin, the French were still supreme at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien; and, until a third of the nineteenth century had passed away, there existed at these outposts of New France a social life which smacked of the "old régime," bearing more traces of seventeenth-century Normandy than of Puritan New England. With the decline of the fur trade, a new order of things slowly grew up.

There being little legal machinery west of Lake Michigan, before Wisconsin Territory was erected, local government was slow to establish itself. Nothing but the good temper and stout common sense of the people prevented anarchy, under such a condition of affairs. For many years, the few public enterprises were undertaken at private expense. At Green Bay, schools were thus conducted, as early as 1817. In 1821 the citizens of that village raised a fund by popular subscription, and built a jail; and eleven years later, they asked the legislature of Michigan Territory to pay for it. There were some Territorial taxes levied in 1817, but the gathering of them was not very successful. The first county to levy a tax was Crawford, of which Prairie du Chien was the seat, but considerable difficulty appears to have been experienced in collecting the money.

Finally, Wisconsin Territory was organized, and the legislature assembled (1838) in Madison, the new capital. The accommodations at that raw little woodland village were meager, even for pioneer times. The Territorial building of stone, and a few rude frame and log houses in the immediate neighborhood, were all there was of the infant city. Only fifty strangers could be decently lodged there, and a proposition to adjourn to Milwaukee was favored. But as the lakeshore metropolis, also a small village, could offer no better accommodations, it was decided to stay at the capital, and brave it out on the straw and hay mattresses, of which, however, there were not enough to supply the demand.

This was long before railroads had reached Wisconsin. Travel through the new Territory was by boat, horseback, or a kind of snow sledge called a "French train." There were no roads, except such as had been developed from the old deep-worn Indian trails which interlaced the face of the country, and traces of which can still be seen in many portions of the State. The pioneers found that these trails, with a little straightening, often followed the best possible routes for bridle paths or wagon roads. It was not long before they were being used by long lines of teams, transporting smelted lead from the mines of southwest Wisconsin to the Milwaukee and Galena docks; on the return, they carried supplies for the "diggings," and sawmill machinery into the interior forests. Farmers' wagons and stagecoaches followed in due time. Bridges were but slowly built; the unloaded wagons were ferried across rivers in Indian "dugout" canoes, the horses swimming behind, and the freight being brought over in relays.

In 1837 there was a financial crisis throughout the country, and this checked Western immigration for a few years. But there was not enough money in Wisconsin for bank failures materially to affect the people; so, when the tide of settlement again flowed hither, the Badgers were as strong and hopeful as ever.

People coming to Wisconsin from the East often traveled all the way in their own wagons; or would take a lake boat at Buffalo, and then proceed by water to Detroit, Green Bay, or Chicago, thence journeying in caravans to the interior.

Frontier life, in those days, was of the simplest character. The immigrants were for the most part used to hard work and plain fare. Accordingly the privations of their new surroundings involved relatively little hardship, although sometimes a pioneer farmer was fifty or a hundred miles from a gristmill, a store, or a post office, and generally his highway thither was but a blazed bridle path through the tangled forest.

Often his only entertainments throughout the year were "bees" for raising log houses or barns for newcomers, and on these occasions all the settlers for scores of miles around would gather in a spirit of helpful comradery. Occasionally the mail carrier, either afoot or on horseback, would wish accommodation over night. Particularly fortunate was the man who maintained a river ferry at the crossing of some much-frequented trail; he could have frequent chats with strangers, and collect stray shillings from mail carriers or other travelers whose business led them through the wilderness.

Often the new settler brought considerable flour and salt pork with him, in his journey to the West; but it was not at first easy to get a fresh supply. Curiously enough, although in the midst of a wild abundance, civilized man at the outset sometimes suffered for the bare necessaries of life. As soon, however, as he could garner his first crop, and become accustomed to the new conditions, he was usually proof against disaster of this kind; fish and game were so abundant, in their season, that in due time the backwoodsman was able to win a wholesome livelihood from the storehouse of nature.

Satisfactory education for youth was a plant of comparatively small growth. At first there was not enough money in the country to pay competent teachers. The half-educated sons and daughters of the pioneers taught the earliest schools, often upon a private subscription basis; text-books were few, appliances generally wanting, and the results were, for many years, far from satisfactory. As for spiritual instruction, this was given by itinerant missionary preachers and priests, of various denominations, who braved great hardships while making their rounds on horseback or afoot, and deserve to rank among the most daring of the pioneer class. In due time churches and schools were firmly established throughout the Territory.