Stories of the Badger State

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

In the year 1608, the daring French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, founded a settlement on the steep cliff of Quebec, and thus laid the foundations for the great colony of New France. This colony, in the course of a century and a half, grew to embrace all of what we now call Canada and the entire basin of the Mississippi River.

CHAMPLAIN

New France grew slowly. This was largely owing to the opposition of the fierce Iroquois Indians of New York, whom Champlain had greatly angered. Another reason was the changing moods of the Algonkin Indians of Canada and the Middle West; and still another, the enormous difficulties of travel through the vast forests and along streams frequently strewn with rapids. Champlain was made governor of New France, and varied his duties by taking long and painful journeys into the wilderness, thus setting the fashion of extensive exploration. There were two very good reasons for encouraging explorers: in the first place, New France was then largely controlled by a company of merchants, called the Hundred Associates, who desired to push the fur trade far and wide among the savage tribes; in the second place, the French Catholic missionary priests were anxious to reach the Indians, to convert them to the Christian religion. Thus it came about that, during the twenty-five years when the energetic and enterprising Champlain was governor, there was little talked or thought about in New France but exploration, the fur trade, and the missions to the Indians.

In order to carry out his schemes for opening new fields to the traders and missionaries, Champlain found it necessary to train young men to this work. Only those were selected for the task who had a fair education, and were healthy, strong, well-formed, and brave. They were, often when mere boys, sent far up into the country to live among the Indian tribes, to be adopted by them, to learn their habits and languages, and to harden themselves to the rough life and rude diet of the dusky dwellers in the forest. It took several years of this practice, with patient suffering, for a youth to become an expert who could be trusted to undergo any hardship or daring task that might be asked of him. It was one of these forest-bred interpreters who became the first white discoverer of Wisconsin.

In those early days of New France, most of its people were from the west and northwest provinces of France. The crews of the ships which engaged in the trade to New France were nearly all from the ports of Rouen, Honfleur, Fécamp, Cherbourg, Havre, Dieppe, and Caen; in these north-coast cities lived the greater part of the Hundred Associates, and from their vicinity came nearly all of the Jesuit missionaries and the young men who were trained as interpreters.

Jean Nicolet was born in or near Cherbourg, and was the son of a mail carrier. He was about twenty years of age when, in 1618, he arrived in Quebec; "and forasmuch as," says an old Jesuit writer of that time, "his nature and excellent memory inspired good hopes of him, he was sent to winter with the Island Algonkins, in order to learn their language. He tarried with them two years, alone of the French, and always joined the Barbarians in their excursions and journeys, undergoing such fatigues as none but eyewitnesses can conceive; he often passed seven or eight days without food, and once, full seven weeks with no other nourishment than a little bark from the trees." These "Island Algonkins" lived on Allumettes Island in the Ottawa River, nearly three hundred miles from Quebec; their language was the principal one then used by the Indians in the country on the north bank of the St. Lawrence and in the great valley of the Ottawa.

Although the life was so hard that few white men could endure it, Nicolet, like most of the other interpreters, learned to enjoy it; and, passing from one tribe to another, in his search for new languages and experiences, he remained among his forest friends for eight or nine years. He had been with the Algonkins for three or four years when he went, at the head of four hundred of them, into the Iroquois country, and made a treaty of peace with this savage foe, whom the Algonkins always greatly feared. It is related that thence he went to dwell with the Nipissing Indians, living about Lake Nipissing, "where he passed for one of that nation, taking part in the very frequent councils of those tribes, having his own separate cabin and household, and fishing and trading for himself."

Possibly Nicolet might have been recalled from the woods before this, but, between 1629 and 1632, Canada was in the hands of the British; and he remained among the Indians, inspiring them to hostility against the strangers. In 1632, when the country was released to France, Champlain and his fellow-officers returned to Quebec, and Nicolet was summoned thither, and was employed as clerk and interpreter by the Hundred Associates.

Champlain was eager to resume his explorations. He had once been up the great Ottawa River, and thence had crossed over to Lake Huron, and had become keenly interested in what were then termed the "upper waters." Of Lakes Ontario and Erie he knew nothing, for the dreaded Iroquois had prevented the French from going that way; and Lakes Superior and Michigan were, as yet, undiscovered by whites. Vague rumors of these unknown regions had been brought to Quebec by bands of strange savages who had found their way down to the French settlements in search of European goods in exchange for furs.