It appears probable that the date of the discovery of Lake Superior cannot be determined with accuracy, and must remain uncertain unless scholars accept the conclusions of Butterfield and Sulte concerning Brulé. The same is true of the discovery of the upper Mississippi; it has been claimed for Nicolet in 1634, for Radisson in 1659, for La Salle in 1669, all antedating the voyage of Jolliet and Marquette in 1673. The truth is that from the beginning of French settlement on the St. Lawrence there was much roving
to the sources of the great river. Many of these coureurs des bois were brave and courageous explorers, but they kept no records. It is thus dogmatic to say that the visit of the first white man to any given point occurred on such or such a date. We can only say when the first records were made describing such an event. The records for the voyage of Brulé and Grenolle in 1622 have not yet been universally accepted.
THE POTAWATOMI DURING THE REVOLUTION: FATHER ALLOUEZ AMONG THE KICKAPOO
I am sending you some more letters from Quitos. In one of these letters he refers to War Chief Thunder fighting with George Washington against the Canadians. I would like to find out what fight that was. Can you tell me?
I would also like to find out whether Fathers Dablon and Claude Allouez visited the Kickapoo Indians on Milwaukee River in 1670 a few years before Jolliet and Marquette discovered the Mississippi. I have seen something to this effect somewhere.
A. Gerend,
Cato, Wisconsin.
It is an interesting fact that the Potawatomi of the west shore of Lake Michigan, notably those of Milwaukee, and probably those farther north, under the influence of Siggenauk or the Blackbird made a treaty at Cahokia, Illinois, with George Rogers Clark in September, 1778, and were thereafter for a time American allies. There was no actual service under Gen. George Washington, but the chiefs probably received medals or certificates in his name, and thus considered themselves fighting under his care. The Potawatomi returned to the British allegiance later, and opposed the Americans during all of the Indian wars. If our surmise of what Quitos means about Old Thunder is correct, it is a remarkable instance of the persistence of tradition concerning an American alliance, and a corroboration of Col. George Rogers Clark’s testimony about the attitude of the Milwaukee Potawatomi. Clark calls the two chiefs Saguina or “Mr. Black Bird and Nakiowin, two chiefs of the Bands of the sotairs [Chippewa] and Outaway Nation bordering on Lake Michigan and the River St. Joseph.” De Peyster, the British commandant at Mackinac, speaks in his poem or rhymed chronicle of
1779 of “Those runagates at Milwakie” and calls them in a footnote “A horrid set of refractory Indians.” Thus in the Revolution, while most of the Wisconsin Indians were strong British supporters, the mixed band of Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi west of Lake Michigan were American sympathizers.
With regard to your second question: There is no record in the Jesuit Relations of any visit of Allouez and Dablon to Milwaukee in 1670. Such a statement was made before Dr. Thwaites’s edition of the Jesuit Relations appeared. Upon the publication in English of the exact text of the Relations it was seen that Allouez visited the Kickapoo in 1670 (not accompanied by Dablon) at their village four leagues (about fifteen miles) from the Mascouten village which was near the site of the modern Berlin, on the upper Fox River. Thus it was impossible for the Kickapoo village to have been at Milwaukee. It is quite probable that Perrot and other traders may have been at Milwaukee and along the shore of Lake Michigan before Jolliet and Marquette, but there is no recorded voyage before theirs.
THE INDIAN TRIBES OF IOWA