In 1673, or four years after the establishment at the Bay of Puans, now Green Bay (1673), Father Joseph Marquette, accompanied by Joliet, went up the Neenah (Fox) river, crossed the portage, and descending the Wisconsin, discovered the Mississippi on the 17th of June. The Legislature has very properly named a country on the Neenah in memory of the first white man who ever saw the "Father of Waters" in this part of its course. It was six years after this discovery that La Salle made his voyage up the lakes in the first vessel (the Griffin) built above the Falls of Niagara, and who claimed the honor of having first discovered the Mississippi. An interesting account of this voyage was published by Louis Hennepin, in Paris, and is preserved in the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society. The Griffin was about sixty tons burden, and carried five small guns. She sailed on the 7th of August, 1679, with thirty-four men, and on the 2d of September, they left Mackina, for the Bay of Puans. "Mr. La Salle," says Hennepin, "without taking anybody's advice, resolved to send back the ship to Niagara, laden with furs and skins, to discharge his debts. Our pilot, and five men with him, were therefore sent back. They sailed on the 18th, with a westerly wind. It was never known what course they steered, nor how they perished, but it is supposed the ship struck upon the sand, and was there buried. This was a great loss to Mr. La Salle, and other adventurers, for that ship, with its cargo, cost about sixty thousand livres." Thus the want of harbors on Lake Michigan began to be felt more than a century and a half ago, and the fate of the Griffin was only a precursor of a thousand similar disasters. The adventurers continued their voyage in four canoes, along the coast of the lake by Milwaukee, to "the mouth

See

* Marquette was not the first discoverer of the Mississippi-that honor belongs to Hernando de Soto, who crossed it in 1541. Bancroft's Hist. U. S., i., p. 51. From this work we have taken many of the facts and dates given above.

of the river Miamis " (Chicago?) where a fort was erected. During this voyage they experienced one of those severe storms which are still so much dreaded on this lake. "The violence of the wind obliged us to drag our canoes sometimes to the top of the rocks, to prevent their being dashed to pieces. The stormy weather lasted four days, during which we suffered very much, and our provisions failed us; we had no other subsistence but a handful of Indian corn, once in twenty-four hours, which we roasted or else boiled in water; and yet rowed almost every day from morning till night. Being in this dismal stress, we saw upon the coast a great many ravens and eagles, from whence we conjectured there was some prey, and having landed upon that place, we found above the half of a fat wild goat which the wolves had strangled. This provision was very acceptable to us, and the rudest of our men could not but praise the Divine Providence who took so particular care of us."

From this place La Salle returned, and Hennepin with two men (Picard and Ako) crossed over to the Illinois, and descended that stream and the Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico, being thus the first to discover the mouth of that mighty river. While returning they were taken by a party of Indians, and travelled with them nineteen days up the Mississippi to within six leagues of the Falls of St. Anthony, a name then first applied to this romantic place in honor of the patron saint of the expedition. From thence they travelled for sixty leagues, on foot, to the habitations of the Indians, where they were joined by Sieur de Luth, and five men. Towards the end of September (1680), they descended the river named by them the St. Francis, to the Mississippi, and passing by way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, arrived at Green Bay, where they found many Canadians, come there for the purpose of trade.

The Baron La Hontan, who published an account of his wanderings in 1703, visited Green Bay in 1689; from thence he went across to the Mississippi. His account of

Long river, a branch of the Mississippi from the west, has been supposed to be entirely fabulous, but according to Mr. I. N. Nicollet the Cannon (or Canoe) river of Iowa agrees very well with this account.

We have no data at hand from which to estimate the quantities of furs purchased by the French at this early period, and sent to Europe. This constituted almost the sole motive for "locating" in these wild, and till then unknown shores. The French are possessed of the peculiar faculty of making themselves "at home" with the Indians, and lived without that dread of their tomahawks which is so keenly felt by the pioneers of English settlements. They were not able, however, to maintain friendly terms with all the different tribes into which the Indian population was divided, for before the close of the seventeenth century we find them united with the Chippewas and Menomonees, contending with the Sauks and Foxes for a free passage across the country from Green Bay to the Mississippi, in which they met with complete success, by a decisive battle fought at Butte des Morts, or the Hill of the Dead. "The Ottagamies (Foxes) had selected a strong position upon the Fox river, which they fortified by three rows of palisades and a ditch. They here secured their women and children, and prepared for a vigorous defence. Their entrenchment was so formidable that De Louvigny, the French commander, declined an assault, and invested the place in form. By regular approaches he gained a proper distance for mining their works, and was preparing to blow up one of the curtains, when they proposed a capitulation. Terms were eventually offered and accepted; and those who survived the siege were preserved and liberated.* No further difficulties existed between the French traders and missionaries, and the Indians, from that period down to the present time. How different would it probably have been, had al

* Cass-Hist. and Sci. Sketches of Michigan, p. 22 (1834). ̧

most any other nation attempted to penetrate so far into the country of these "wild men of the woods!

P. De Charlevoix made a voyage through Lake Michigan, and thence by way of the Illinois and Mississippi to New Orleans, and published his journal; and also a "History of New France," as this part of the world was then named, in 1721.

Wisconsin remained in possession of the French, and constituted a portion of "New France," until 1763, when it was surrendered to Great Britain, and became subject to her government. This change of government, it may be supposed, produced but little change in the condition of things in places so remote from the seat of government. Green Bay and Prairie du Chien were then the only posts occupied within our limits. British authority was exercised over us from this period until the northwestern country was transferred to the American government, in 1794, being seven years after the date of the ordinance for the establishment of a "Territorial Government" in the same. During this period of thirty-one years, but little change took place in Wisconsin-the Indian continued to hunt the deer, and to trap the beaver unmolested, and bartered his furs at Green Bay, or Mackina, for the trifles, or fire water" of the trader.

As early, however, as 1780, Peosta, the wife of an Ottagamie warrior, discovered lead near the Mississippi river; and in 1778, Julian Dubuque obtained from the Indians at Prairie du Chien, a grant of land, extending seven leagues on the Mississippi, and three leagues deep. This grant was recognized by the Spanish government in 1796, but was not confirmed by our own. For several years the mining operations were quite limited, as may well be supposed; and in 1805, Mr. Dubuque informed Lieut. Pike that he raised from twenty to forty thousand pounds annually. Schoolcraft informs us that the settlement of Prairie du Chien was first begun in 1783, by Mr. Giard, Mr. An

taya and Mr.Dubuque, but that there had formerly been an old settlement about a mile below the site of the present village, which existed during the time the French had possession of the country.

Governor Cass, in 1819, one year after this country was annexed to the territory under his authority, proposed to the Secretary at War (J. C. Calhoun) that an expedition be fitted out to explore it, which was accomplished the following year. The party consisted of Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory; Dr. Alexander Wolcot, physician; Capt. D. B. Douglass, civil and military engineer; Lieut. Eneas Mackay, commanding the soldiers; James D. Doty, secretary to the expedition; Robert A. Forsyth, Charles C. Trowbridge, Alexander R. Chase, and Henry R. Schoolcraft, mineralogist, whose "Narrative Journal," published in 1821, is replete with valuable information relative to this country. From this work we learn that Wisconsin was even then but little more than the abode of a few Indian traders scattered here and there throughout the Territory, as at Lapointe, Fond du Lac-on the Bois Brule-the St. Croix-Sandy Lake-Leech Lake-Milwaukee-and many other points. These posts were usually protected by a stockade, enclosing, perhaps, a hundred feet square; that at Sandy Lake had bastions at two of its angles pierced for musketry. "The pickets were of pitch-pine, thirteen feet above the ground, a foot square, and pinned together with stout plates of the same wood. There were three gates, which are shut whenever liquor was dealt out to the Indians. The stockade enclosed two rows of buildings, containing the provision store, work-shop, warehouse, rooms for the clerks, and accommodations for the men. On the west and southwest angles of the fort were four acres of ground enclosed with pickets, and devoted to the culture of potatoes." This fort was first erected in 1794, by the Northwest Fur Company. The garrisons at Prairie du Chien and at the mouth of the St. Peter's were first established and occupied in 1819.