BLACK HAWK
At the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, Black Hawk naturally allied himself with Tecumseh and the British. After burying the hatchet, he settled down into the customary routine of savage life, hunting in winter and loafing about his village in summer, improvidently existing from hand to mouth, although surrounded with abundance. Occasionally he varied the monotony by visits to Malden, whence he would return laden with provisions, arms, ammunition, and trinkets, his stock of vanity increased by wily flattery, and his bitterness against the Americans correspondingly intensified. It is not at all surprising that he hated the Americans. They brought him naught but evil. The even tenor of his life was continually being disturbed by them; and a cruel and causeless beating which some white settlers gave him, in the winter of 1822-23, was an insult which he treasured up against the entire American people.
In the summer of 1823, squatters, covetous of the rich fields cultivated by the "British band," as Black Hawk's people were often called, began to take possession of them. The treaty of 1804 had guaranteed to the Indians the use of the ceded territory so long as the lands remained the property of the United States and were not sold to individuals. The frontier line of homestead settlement was still fifty or sixty miles to the east; the country between had not yet been surveyed, and much of it not explored. The squatters had no rights in this territory, and it was clearly the duty of the general government to protect the Indians within it so long as no sales were made.
The Sacs would not have complained had the squatters settled in other portions of the tract, and not sought to steal the village which was their birthplace and contained the cemetery of their tribe. There were outrages of the most flagrant nature. Indian cornfields were fenced in by the intruders, squaws and children were whipped for venturing beyond the bounds thus set, lodges were burned over the heads of the occupants. A reign of terror ensued, in which the frequent remonstrances of Black Hawk to the white authorities were in vain. Year by year the evil grew. When the Indians returned each spring from the winter's hunt, they found their village more of a wreck than when they had left it in the fall. It is surprising, in view of their native love of revenge, that they acted so peaceably while the victims of such harsh treatment.
Returning to his village in the spring of 1831, after a gloomy and profitless winter's hunt, Black Hawk was fiercely warned away by the whites; but, in a firm and dignified manner, he notified the settlers that, if they did not themselves remove, he should use force. This announcement was construed by the whites as a threat against their lives. Petitions and messages were showered in by them upon Governor John Reynolds, of Illinois, setting forth the situation in exaggerated terms that would be amusing, were it not that they were the prelude to one of the darkest tragedies in the history of our Western border.
The governor caught the spirit of the occasion, and at once issued a flaming proclamation calling out a mounted volunteer force to "repel the invasion of the British band." These volunteers, sixteen hundred strong, coöperated with ten companies of regulars in a demonstration before Black Hawk's village on the 25th of June. During that night the Indians, in the face of this superior force, quietly withdrew to the west bank of the Mississippi, whither they had previously been ordered. On the 30th they signed a treaty of capitulation and peace, solemnly agreeing never to return to the east side of the river without express permission of the United States government.
The rest of the summer was spent by the evicted savages in a state of misery. It being now too late to raise another crop of corn and beans, they suffered for want of the actual necessaries of life. White Cloud, the eloquent and crafty Prophet of the Winnebagoes, was Black Hawk's evil genius. He was half Sac and half Winnebago, a hater of the whites, an inveterate mischief maker, and, being a "medicine man," possessed much influence over both tribes. He was at the head of a Winnebago village some thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Rock, on the east side of the Mississippi; and to this village he invited Black Hawk, advising him to raise a crop of corn there, with the assurance that in the autumn the Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies would join him in a general movement against the whites in the valley of the Rock.
Relying on these rose-colored promises, Black Hawk spent the winter on the west bank of the Mississippi, recruiting his band, and on the 6th of April, 1832, crossed the great river at Yellow Banks, below the mouth of the Rock. Thus he invaded the State of Illinois, in the face of his solemn treaty of the year before. With him were his second in command, Neapope, a wily scoundrel, who was White Cloud's tool, and about five hundred Sac warriors with their women and children, and all their belongings. Their design was to carry out the advice of the Prophet, in regard to the corn planting, and if possible to take up the hatchet in the autumn.
But it became evident to Black Hawk, before he reached the Prophet's town, that the main body of the Pottawattomies, now controlled by the peace loving Chief Shaubena, did not intend to go to war; and that the rascally Winnebagoes, while cajoling him, were preparing as usual to play double. He tells us in his autobiography that, crestfallen, he was planning to return peacefully to the west side of the Mississippi, when of a sudden he became aware that the whites had raised an army against him, and he was confronted with a war not in the time and manner of his asking.
The news of his second invasion had spread like wildfire throughout the Illinois and Wisconsin settlements. The United States was appealed to for a regiment of troops; and meanwhile, under another fiery proclamation from the governor of Illinois, an army of eighteen hundred militiamen was quickly mustered. Amid intense popular excitement, during which many settlers fled from the country, and others hastily threw up log forts, the army was mobilized by General Atkinson, who appeared at the rendezvous with three hundred regulars. There were many notable men upon this expedition: Abraham Lincoln, then a rawboned young fellow, was captain of a company of Illinois rangers; Zachary Taylor, famous for his bluff manner, was a colonel of regulars; and Jefferson Davis, who was wooing Taylor's daughter, was one of his lieutenants; also of the regulars, was Major William S. Harney, afterward the hero of Cerro Gordo in the Mexican War; and the mustering-in officer was Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who was to become famous in connection with Fort Sumter.
Black Hawk was foolish enough to send a message of defiance to General Atkinson, and, retreating up the Rock, he came to a stand at Stillman's Creek. Here he repented, and sent out runners with a flag of truce, to inform the white chief that he would surrender; but the drunken pickets of the militia advance wantonly killed these messengers of peace. This so angered the Hawk that with a mere handful of thirty-five braves, on foot, and hid in the hazel brush, he turned in fury upon the two hundred seventy-five horsemen who were now rushing upon him. The cowardly rangers, who fled at the first volley of the savages, without returning it, were haunted by the genius of fear, and, dashing madly through swamps and creeks, did not stop until they had reached Dixon, twenty-five miles away. Many kept on at a keen gallop till they reached their own firesides, fifty or more miles farther, carrying the absurd report that Black Hawk and two thousand bloodthirsty warriors were sweeping northern Illinois with the besom of destruction.
Rich in supplies captured in this first encounter, and naturally encouraged at the result of his valor, the Hawk thought that so long as the whites were determined to make him fight, he would show his claws in earnest. Removing the women and children to far-away swamps on the headwaters of the Rock River, in Wisconsin, he thence descended with his braves for a general raid through northern Illinois. The borderers flew like chickens to cover, on the warning of the Hawk's foray. There was consternation throughout the entire West. Exaggerated reports of his forces, and of the nature of his expedition, were spread throughout the land. His name became coupled with fabulous tales of savage cunning and cruelty, and served as a household bugaboo the country over. The effect on the Illinois militia was singular enough, considering their haste in taking the field; in a frenzy of fear, they instantly disbanded!
A fresh levy was soon raised, but in the interval there were irregular hostilities all along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, in which Black Hawk and a few Winnebago and Pottawattomie allies succeeded in making life miserable enough for the frontier farmers of northern Illinois and the lead miners of southwest Wisconsin. In these border strifes fully two hundred whites and nearly as many Indians lost their lives; and there were numerous instances of romantic heroism on the part of the settlers, men and women alike.
In about three weeks after Stillman's defeat the reorganized militia took the field, reënforced by the regulars under Atkinson. Black Hawk was forced to fly to the swampy region of the upper Rock; but, when the pursuit became too warm, he hastily withdrew with his entire band westward to the Wisconsin River. Closely following upon his trail were a brigade of Illinois troops under General James D. Henry, and a battalion of Wisconsin lead mine rangers under Major Henry Dodge, afterwards governor of Wisconsin Territory.
The pursuers came up with the savages at Prairie du Sac. Here the south bank of the Wisconsin consists of steep, grassy bluffs, three hundred feet in height; hence the encounter which ensued is known in history as the Battle of the Wisconsin Heights. With consummate skill, Black Hawk made a stand on the summit of the heights, and with a small party of warriors held the whites in check until the noncombatants had crossed the broad river bottoms below, and gained shelter upon the willow-grown shore opposite. The loss on either side was slight, the action being notable only for the Sac leader's superior management.
During the night, the passage of the river was accomplished by the fugitives. A large party was sent downstream upon a raft, and in canoes begged from the Winnebagoes; but those who took this method of escape were brutally fired upon near the mouth of the river by a detachment from the garrison at Prairie du Chien, and fifteen were killed in cold blood. The rest of the pursued, headed by Black Hawk, who had again made an attempt to surrender his forces, but had failed for lack of an interpreter, pushed across country, guided by Winnebagoes, to the mouth of the Bad Ax, a little stream emptying into the Mississippi about forty miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin River. His intention was to get his people as quickly as possible on the west bank of the Mississippi, in the hope that they would there be allowed to remain in peace.
The Indians were followed, three days behind, by the united army of regulars, who steadily gained on them. The country between Wisconsin Heights and the Mississippi is rough and forbidding in character; there are numerous swamps and rivers between the steep, thickly wooded hills. The uneven pathway was strewn with the corpses of Sacs who had died of wounds and starvation; and there were frequent evidences that the fleeing wretches were sustaining life on the bark of trees and the flesh of their fagged-out ponies.
On Wednesday, the 1st of August, Black Hawk and his now sadly depleted and almost famished band reached the junction of the Bad Ax with the Mississippi. There were only two or three canoes to be had, and the crossing of the Father of Waters progressed slowly and with frequent loss of life. That afternoon there appeared upon the scene a government supply steamer, the Warrior, from Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien), at the mouth of the Wisconsin. The Indians a third time tried to surrender, but their white flag was deliberately fired at, and round after round of canister swept the camp.
The next day the pursuing troops arrived on the heights above the river bench, the Warrior again opened its attack, and thus, caught between two galling fires, the little army of savages soon melted away. But fifty remained alive on the spot to be taken prisoners. Some three hundred weaklings had reached the Iowa shore through the hail of iron and lead. Of these three hundred helpless, half-starved, unarmed noncombatants, over a half were slaughtered by a party of Sioux, under Wabashaw, who had been sent out by our government to waylay them. So that out of the band of a thousand Indians who had crossed the Mississippi over into Illinois in April, not more than a hundred and fifty, all told, lived to tell the tragic story of the Black Hawk War, a tale that stains the American name with dishonor.
The rest can soon be told. The Winnebago guerrillas, who had played fast and loose during the campaign, delivered to the whites at Fort Crawford the unfortunate Black Hawk, who had fled from the Bad Ax to the Dells of the Wisconsin River, to seek an asylum with his false friends. The proud old man, shorn of all his strength, was presented to the President at Washington, imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, forced to sign articles of perpetual peace, and then turned over for safe keeping to the Sac chief, Keokuk, his hated rival. He died on a small reservation in Iowa, in 1838. But he was not even then at peace, for his bones were stolen by an Illinois physician, for exhibition purposes, and finally were accidentally consumed by fire in 1853.
Black Hawk, with all the limitations of his race, had in his character a strength and manliness of fiber that were most remarkable, and displayed throughout his brief campaign a positive genius for military evolutions. He may be safely ranked as one of the most interesting specimens of the North American savage to be met with in history. He was an indiscreet man. His troubles were brought about by a lack of mental balance, aided largely by unfortunate circumstances. His was a highly romantic temperament. He was carried away by mere sentiment, and allowed himself to be deceived by tricksters. But he was honest, and was more honorable than many of his conquerors were. He was, above all things, a patriot. The year before his death, in a speech to a party of whites who were making a holiday hero of him, he thus forcibly defended his motives: "Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my town, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for them." No poet could have penned for him a more touching epitaph.
Chequamegon Bay, of Lake Superior, has had a long and an interesting history. Nearly two and a half centuries ago, in the early winter months of 1659, two adventurous French traders, Radisson and Groseilliers, built a little palisade here, to protect the stock of goods which they exchanged with the Indians for furs. This was on the southwestern shore of the bay, a few miles west of the present city of Ashland, and in the neighborhood of Whittlesey's Creek.
These men did not tarry long at Chequamegon Bay. For the most part, they merely kept their stock of goods hid in a cache there, while for some ten months they traveled through the woods, far and wide, in search of trade with the dusky natives. But they made the region known to Frenchmen in the settlements at Quebec and Montreal, as a favorite meeting-place for many tribes of Indians who came to the bay to fish.
The first Jesuit mission on Lake Superior was conducted by Father René Ménard, at Keweenaw Bay; but he lost his life in the forest in 1661. In 1665 the Jesuits determined to reopen their mission on the great lake, and for that purpose sent Father Claude Allouez. Having heard of the advantages of Chequamegon Bay, Allouez proceeded thither, and erected his little chapel in an Indian village upon the mainland, not far from Radisson's old palisade, and possibly at the mouth of Vanderventer's Creek. He called his mission La Pointe.
Conversions were few at La Pointe, and Allouez soon longed for a broader field. He was relieved in 1669 by Father Jacques Marquette, a young and earnest priest. But it was not long before the Sioux of Minnesota quarreled with the Indians of Chequamegon Bay; and the latter, with Marquette, were driven eastward as far as Mackinac.
Although the missionaries had deserted La Pointe, fur traders soon came to be numerous there. One of the most prominent of these was Daniel Grayson Duluth, for whom the modern lake city of Minnesota was named. For several years he had a small palisaded fort upon Chequamegon Bay, and, with a lively crew of well-armed boatmen, roamed all over the surrounding country, north, west, and south of Lake Superior, trading with far-away bands of savages. He had two favorite routes between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. One was by way of the narrow and turbulent Bois Brulé, then much choked by fallen trees and beaver dams; a portage trail of a mile and a half from its headwaters to those of the St. Croix River; and thence, through foaming rapids, and deep, cool lakes, down into the Father of Waters. The other, an easier, but longer way, was up the rugged St. Louis River, which separates Wisconsin from Minnesota on the northwest, over into the Sand Lake country, and thence, through watery labyrinths, into feeders of the Mississippi.
Another adventurous French forest trader, who quartered on Chequamegon Bay, was Le Sueur, who, in 1693, built a fort upon Madelaine Island. During the old Fox War the valleys of the Fox and the Wisconsin were closed to Frenchmen by the enraged Indians. This, the most popular route between the Great Lakes and the great river, being now unavailable, it became necessary to keep open Duluth's old routes from Lake Superior over to the Upper Mississippi. This was why Le Sueur was sent to Chequamegon Bay, to overawe the Indians of that region. He thought that his fort would be safer from attack upon the island, than upon the mainland. As La Pointe had now come to be the general name of this entire neighborhood, the island fort bore the same name as the old headquarters on land. It is well to remember that the history of Madelaine Island, the La Pointe of to-day, dates from Le Sueur; that the old La Pointe of Radisson, Allouez, Marquette, and probably Duluth, was on the mainland several miles to the southwest.
In connection with the La Pointe fort protecting the northern approach to Duluth's trading routes, Le Sueur erected another stockade to guard the southern end, the location of this latter being on an island in the Mississippi, near the present Red Wing, Minnesota. The fort in the Mississippi soon became "the center of commerce for the Western parts"; and the station at La Pointe also soon rose to importance, for the Chippewas, who had drifted far inland with the growing scarcity of game, were led by the presence of traders to return to Chequamegon Bay, and mass themselves in a large village on the southwest shore.
Although Le Sueur was not many years in command at the bay, we catch frequent glimpses thereafter of fur trade stations here, French, English, and American in turn, most of them doubtless being on Madelaine Island. We know, for instance, that there was a French trader at La Pointe in 1717; also, that the year following, a French officer was sent there, with a few soldiers, to patch up and garrison the old stockade. Whether a garrisoned fort was kept up at the bay, from that time till the downfall of New France (1763), we cannot say; but it seems probable, for the geographical position was one of great importance in the development of the fur trade.
We first hear of copper in the vicinity, in 1730, when an Indian brought a nugget to the La Pointe post; but the whereabouts of the mine was concealed by the savages, because of their superstitions relative to mineral deposits.
The commandant of La Pointe, at this time, was La Ronde, the chief fur trader in the Lake Superior country. He and his son, who was his partner, built for their trade a sailing vessel of forty tons burden, without doubt the first one of the kind upon the great lake. We find evidences of the La Rondes, father and son, down as late as 1744; a curious old map of that year gives the name of "Isle de la Ronde" to what we now know as Madelaine.
We find nothing more of importance concerning Chequamegon Bay until about 1756, when Beaubassin was the French officer in charge of the fort. The English colonists were harassing the French along the St. Lawrence River; and Beaubassin, with hundreds of other officers of wilderness forts, was ordered down with his Indian allies to the settlements of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec, to defend New France. The Chippewas, with other Wisconsin tribes, actuated by extravagant promises of presents, booty, and scalps, eagerly flocked to the banner of France, and in painted swarms appeared in fighting array on the banks of the St. Lawrence. But they helped the British more than the French, for they would not fight, yet with large appetites ate up the provisions of their allies.
The garrison being withdrawn from La Pointe, Madelaine Island became a camping-ground for unlicensed traders, who had freedom to plunder the country at their will, for New France, tottering to her fall, could no longer police the upper lakes. In the autumn of 1760 one of these parties encamped upon the island. By the time winter had set in upon them, all had left for their wintering grounds in the forests of the far West and Northwest, save a clerk named Joseph, who remained in charge of the goods and what local trade there was. With him were his wife, his small son, and a manservant. Traditions differ as to the cause of the servant's action; some have it, a desire for plunder; others, his detection in a series of petty thefts, which Joseph threatened to report. However that may be, the servant murdered first the clerk, then the wife, and in a few days, stung by the child's piteous cries, killed him also. When the spring came, and the traders returned to Chequamegon, they inquired for Joseph and his family. The servant's reply was at first unsatisfactory; but when pushed for an explanation, he confessed to his terrible deed. The story goes, that in horror the traders dismantled the old French fort, now overgrown with underbrush, as a thing accursed, sunk the cannon in a neighboring pool, and so destroyed the palisade that to-day certain mysterious grassy mounds alone remain to testify of the tragedy. They carried their prisoner with them on their return voyage to Montreal, but he is said to have escaped to the Huron Indians, among whom he boasted of his act, only to be killed by them as too cruel to be a companion even for savages.
Five years later a great English trader, Alexander Henry, who had obtained the exclusive trade on Lake Superior, wintered on the mainland opposite Madelaine Island. His partner was Jean Baptiste Cadotte, a thrifty Frenchman, who for many years thereafter was one of the most prominent characters on the upper lakes. Soon after this, a Scotch trader named John Johnston established himself on the island, and married a comely Chippewa maiden, whose father was chief of the native village situated four miles across the water, on the site of the Bayfield of to-day.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century, Michel, a son of old Jean Baptiste Cadotte, took up his abode on the island; and from that time to the present there has been a continuous settlement there, which bears the name La Pointe. Michel, himself the child of a Chippewa mother, but educated at Montreal, married Equaysayway, the daughter of White Crane, the village chief on the island, and became a person of much importance thereabout. For over a quarter of a century this island nabob lived at his ease; here he cultivated a little farm, commanded a variable but far-reaching fur trade, first as agent of the Northwest Company, and, later, of the American Fur Company, and reared a large family. His sons were educated at Montreal, and become the heads of families of traders, interpreters, and voyageurs.
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.
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.
Owing to the vague and undefined boundaries given by the British government to its original colonies on the Atlantic slope, several of the thirteen States claimed that their territory extended out into the Northwest; but finally all these claims were surrendered to the general government, in order that there might be formed a national domain, from which to create new States. By the famous Ordinance of 1787, Congress created the Northwest Territory, which embraced the wide stretch of country lying between the Great Lakes and the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. The present Wisconsin was a part of this great territory.
In the year 1800 Indiana Territory was set off from the rest of the Northwest Territory, and took Wisconsin with it. Nine years later Illinois Territory was formed, Wisconsin being within its bounds. Nine years after that, when Illinois became a State, all the country lying west of Lake Michigan was given to Michigan Territory; thus was the ownership of Wisconsin once more changed, and she became a part of Michigan.
By this time settlers were coming into the region west of the lake. There had long been several little French villages; but, in addition to the French, numerous American farmers and professional men had lately arrived. The great distance from Detroit, at a time when there were no railways or telegraphs, was such as to make it almost impossible to carry on any government here. Hence, after a good deal of complaint from the frontiersmen living to the west of Lake Michigan, and some angry words back and forth between these people and those residing east of the lake, Congress was induced, in 1836, to erect Wisconsin Territory, with its own government.
Thus far, this region beyond Lake Michigan had borne no particular name. It was simply an outlying part of the Northwest Territory; or of the Territories of Indiana, Illinois, or Michigan, as the case might be. But, now that it was to be a Territory by itself, a name had to be adopted. The one taken was that of its principal river, although "Chippewau" was preferred by many people. Wisconsin is an Indian name, the exact meaning of which is unknown; some writers have said that it signifies "gathering of the waters," or "meeting of the waters," but there is no warrant for this. The earliest known French form of the word is "Misconsing," which gradually became crystallized into "Ouisconsin." When the English language became dominant, it was necessary to change the spelling in order to preserve the sound; it thus, at first, became "Wiskonsan," or "Wiskonsin," but finally, by official action, "Wisconsin." The "k" was, however, rather strongly insisted on by Governor Doty and many newspaper editors, in the days of the Territory.
The first session of the legislature of the new Territory of Wisconsin was held at the recently platted village of Belmont, in the present county of Lafayette. The place of meeting was a little story-and-a-half frame house. Lead miners' shafts dimpled the country round about, and new stumps could be seen upon every hand. There were many things to be done by the legislature, such as dividing the Territory into counties, selecting county seats, incorporating banks, and borrowing money with which to run the new government; but the matter which occasioned the most excitement was the location of the capital, and the bitterness which resulted was long felt in the political history of Wisconsin.
A month was spent in this contest. The claimants were Milwaukee, Racine, Koshkonong, Fond du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Wisconsinapolis, Peru, Wisconsin City, Portage, Helena, Belmont, Mineral Point, Platteville, Cassville, Belleview, and Dubuque (now in Iowa, but then in Wisconsin). Some of these towns existed only upon maps published by real estate speculators.
Madison was a beautiful spot, in the heart of the wild woods and lakes of central southern Wisconsin. It was unknown save to a few trappers, and to the speculators who had bought the land from the federal government, and thought they saw a fortune in inducing the legislature to adopt it as the seat of government. Madison won, upon the argument that it was halfway between the rival settlements on Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and that to build a city there would assist in the development of the interior of the Territory.
When Madison was chosen, a surveyor hurried thither, and in a blinding snowstorm laid out the prospective city. The village grew slowly, and it was November, 1838, before the legislature could meet in its new home.
Some of the people of Wisconsin were not long content with a Territorial government. The Territory was only two years old when a bill was introduced in Congress for a State government, but the attempt failed. In 1841 Governor Doty, the leader in the movement, had the question put to popular vote; but it was lost, as it also was in the year following. In 1843 a third attempt was defeated in the Territorial council (or senate); and in 1845, still another met defeat in the Territorial house of representatives (or assembly).
But at last our Territorial representative in Congress gave notice (January 9, 1846), "of a motion for leave to introduce a bill to enable the people of Wisconsin to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of such State into the Union." He followed this, a few days later, by the introduction of a bill to that effect; the bill passed, and in August the measure was approved by President Polk.
Meanwhile, the council and house of Wisconsin Territory had favorably voted on the proposition. This was in January and February, 1846. In April the question of Statehood was passed upon by the people of the Territory, the returns this time showing 12,334 votes for, and 2487 against. In August, Governor Dodge issued a proclamation calling a convention for the drafting of a constitution.
The convention was in session in the Territorial capitol at Madison, between October 5 and December 16, 1846. But the constitution which it framed was rejected by the people. The contest over the document had been of an exciting nature; the defeat was owing to differences of opinion upon the articles relating to the rights of married women, exemptions, banks, the elective judiciary, and the number of members of the legislature.
As soon as practicable, Governor Dodge called a special session of the Territorial legislature, which made provisions for a second constitutional convention. Most of the members of the first convention declined reëlection; six only were returned. The second convention was in session at Madison from December 15, 1847, to February 1, 1848. The members of both conventions were men of high standing in their several communities, and later many of them held prominent positions in the service of the State and the nation.
The constitution adopted by the second convention was so satisfactory to most people, that the popular verdict in March (16,799 ayes and 6384 noes) surprised no one. Arrangements for a new bill in Congress, admitting Wisconsin to the Union, were already well under way. Upon the very day of the vote by the people, before the result was known, the Territorial legislature held its final meeting, and left everything ready for the new State government.
The general election for the first State officers and the members of the first State legislature was held May 8. President Polk approved the congressional act of admission May 29. Upon the 7th of June, Governor Nelson Dewey and his fellow-officials were sworn into office, and the legislature opened its first session.
In the old lead mining days of Wisconsin, miners from southern Illinois and still farther south returned home every winter, and came back to the "diggings" in the spring, thus imitating the migrations of the fish popularly called the "sucker," in the south-flowing rivers of the region. For this reason the south-winterers were humorously called "Suckers." On the other hand, lead miners from the far-off Eastern States were unable to return home every winter, and at first lived in rude dugouts, burrowing into the hillsides after the fashion of the badger. These burrowing men were the first permanent settlers in the mines north of the Illinois line, and called themselves "Badgers." Thus Wisconsin, in later days, when it was thought necessary to adopt a nickname, was, by its own people, dubbed "The Badger State."
In the Ordinance of 1787, whereby Congress created the old Northwest Territory out of the triangle of country lying between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and Lake of the Woods and the Great Lakes, it was provided that this vast region should eventually be parcelled into five States. The east-and-west dividing line was to be "drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan"; south of this line were to be erected three States, and north of it two. "Whenever," the ordinance read, "any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted" to the Union.
It should be said, in explanation of this east-and-west line, that all the maps of Lake Michigan then extant represented the head of the lake as being much farther north than it was proved to be by later surveys. The line as fixed in the ordinance proved to be a bone of contention in the subsequent carving of the Northwest Territory into States, leading to a good deal of angry discussion before the boundaries of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the five States eventually formed from the Territory, became established as they are to-day.
Ohio, the first State to be set off, insisted that Maumee Bay, with the town of Toledo, should be included in her bounds, although it lay north of the east-and-west line of the ordinance. Michigan, on the other hand, stoutly insisted on the line as laid down in the law. In 1835 and 1836 there were some popular disturbances along the border; one of these, though bloodless, was so violent as to receive the name of "the Toledo war." Congress finally settled the quarrel by giving Ohio the northern boundary which she desired, regardless of the terms of the ordinance; Michigan was compensated by the gift of what we now call the "northern peninsula" of that State, although it had all along been understood that the country lying west of Lake Michigan should be the property of the fifth State, whenever that was created. Thus, in order that Ohio might have another lake port from Michigan, Wisconsin lost this immense tract of mining country to the north.
When Indiana came to be erected, it was seen that to adopt the east-and-west line, established by the ordinance, would be to deprive her entirely of any part of the coast of Lake Michigan. In order, therefore, to satisfy her, Congress took another strip, ten miles wide, from the southern border of Michigan, and gave it to the new State. Michigan made no objection to this fresh violation of the agreement of 1787, because there were no important harbors or towns involved.
Illinois next knocked at the door of the Union. The same conditions applied to her as to Indiana; a strict construction of the ordinance would deprive her of an opening on the lake. The Illinois delegate who argued this matter in Congress was shrewd; he contended that his State must become intimately connected with the growing commerce of the northern lakes, else she would be led, from her commercial relations upon the south-flowing Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to join a Southern confederacy in case the Union should be broken up. This was in 1818, and shows how early in our history there had come to be, in the minds of some far-seeing men, a fear that the growing power of slavery might some time lead to secession. The argument prevailed in Congress, and there was voted to Illinois a strip of territory sixty-one miles wide, lying north of the east-and-west line.
Thus again was the region later to be called Wisconsin deprived of a large and valuable tract. When Wisconsin Territory was created, there was a great deal of indignation expressed by some of her people, at being deprived of this wide belt of country embracing 8500 square miles of exceedingly fertile soil, numerous river and lake ports, many miles of fine water power, and the sites of Chicago, Rockford, Freeport, Galena, Oregon, Dixon, and numerous other prosperous cities.
An attempt was made in 1836, at the time the Territory was established, to secure for Wisconsin's benefit the old east-and-west line, as its rightful southern boundary. But Congress declined to grant this request. Three years later, the Wisconsin Territorial legislature declared that "a large and valuable tract of country is now held by the State of Illinois, contrary to the manifest right and consent of the people of this Territory."
The inhabitants of the district in northern Illinois which was claimed by Wisconsin, were invited by these resolutions to express their opinion on the matter. Public meetings were consequently held in several of the Illinois towns interested; and resolutions were adopted, declaring in favor of the Wisconsin claim. The movement culminated in a convention at Rockford (July 6, 1839), attended by delegates from nine of the fourteen Illinois counties involved. This convention recommended the counties to elect delegates to a convention to be held in Madison, "for the purpose of adopting such lawful and constitutional measures as may seem to be necessary and proper for the early adjustment of the southern boundary."
Curiously enough, the weight of public sentiment in Wisconsin itself did not favor the movement. At a large meeting held in Green Bay, the following April, the people of that section passed resolutions "viewing the resolutions of the legislature with concern and regret," and asking that they be rescinded. With this, popular agitation ceased for the time; and in the following year the legislature promptly defeated a proposition for the renewal of the question.
Governor Doty, however, was a stanch advocate of the idea, and at the legislative session of 1842 contrived to work up considerable enthusiasm in its behalf. A bill was reported by the committee on Territorial affairs, asking the people in the disputed tract to hold an election on the question of uniting with Wisconsin. There were some rather fiery speeches upon the subject, some of the orators going so far as to threaten force in acquiring the wished-for strip; but the legislature itself took no action. However, in Stephenson and Boone counties, Illinois, elections were actually held, at which all but one or two votes were cast in favor of the Wisconsin claim.
Governor Doty, thus encouraged, busily continued his agitation. He issued proclamations warning Illinois that it was "exercising an accidental and temporary jurisdiction" over the disputed strip, and calling on the two legislatures to authorize the people to vote on the question of restoring Wisconsin to her "ancient limits." At first, neither the legislatures of Illinois nor Wisconsin paid much attention to the matter. Finally, in 1843, the Wisconsin legislature sent a rather warlike address to Congress, in which secession was clearly threatened, unless the "birthright of Wisconsin" were restored. Congress, however, very sensibly paid no heed to the address, and gradually the excitement subsided, until eventually Wisconsin was made a State, with her present boundaries.
We have seen that the northern peninsula was given to Michigan as a recompense for her loss of Toledo and Maumee Bay. But when it became necessary to determine the boundary between the peninsula and the new Territory of Wisconsin, now set off from Michigan, some difficulty arose, owing to the fact that the country had not been thoroughly surveyed, and there was no good map of it extant.
There were various propositions; one of them was, to use the Chocolate River as part of the line; had this prevailed, Wisconsin would have gained the greater part of the peninsula. But the line of division at last adopted was that of the Montreal and Menominee rivers, by the way of Lake Vieux Désert. This line had been selected in 1834, because a map published that year represented the headwaters of those rivers as meeting in Lake Vieux Désert; hence it was supposed by the congressional committee that this would make an excellent natural boundary. When, however, the line came to be actually laid out by the surveyors, six years later, for the purpose of setting boundary monuments, it was discovered that Lake Vieux Désert had no connection with either stream, being, in fact, the headwaters of the Wisconsin River; and that the running of the line through the woods, between the far-distant headwaters of the Montreal and Menominee, so as to touch the lake on the way, involved a laborious task, and resulted in a crooked boundary. But it was by this time too late to correct the geographical error, and the awkward boundary thus remains.
As originally provided by the Ordinance of 1787, Wisconsin, as the fifth State to be created out of the Northwest Territory, was, even after being shorn upon the south and northeast, at least entitled to have as her western boundary the Mississippi to its source, and thence a straight line running northward to the Lake of the Woods and the Canadian boundary. But here again she was to suffer loss of soil, this time in favor of Minnesota.
As a Territory, Wisconsin had been given sway over all the country lying to the west, as far as the Missouri River. In 1838, all beyond the Mississippi was detached, and erected into the Territory of Iowa. Eight years later, when Wisconsin first sought to be a State, the question arose as to her western boundary. Naturally, the people of the eastern and southern sections wished the one set forth in the ordinance. But settlements had by this time been established along the Upper Mississippi and in the St. Croix valley. These were far removed from the bulk of settlement elsewhere in Wisconsin, and had neither social nor business interests in common with them. The people of the northwest wished to be released from Wisconsin, in order that they might either cast their fortunes with their near neighbors in the new Territory of Minnesota, or join a movement just then projected for the creation of an entirely new State, to be called "Superior." This proposed state was to embrace all the country north of Mont Trempealeau and east of the Mississippi, including the entire northern peninsula, if the latter could be obtained; thus commanding the southern and western shores of Lake Superior, with the mouth of Green Bay and the foot of Lake Michigan to the southeast.
The St. Croix representative in the legislature was especially wedded to the Superior project. He pleaded earnestly and eloquently for his people, whose progress, he said, would be "greatly hampered by being connected politically with a country from which they are separated by nature, cut off from communication by immense spaces of wilderness between." A memorial from the settlers themselves stated the case with even more vigor, asserting that they were "widely separated from the settled parts of Wisconsin, not only by hundreds of miles of mostly waste and barren lands, which must remain uncultivated for ages, but equally so by a diversity of interests and character in the population." All of this reads curiously enough in these days, when the intervening wilderness resounds with the hum of industry and "blossoms as the rose." But that was long before the days of railroads; the dense forests of central and western Wisconsin then constituted a formidable wilderness, peopled only by savages and wild beasts.
Unable to influence the Wisconsin legislature, which stubbornly contended for the possession of the original tract, the St. Croix people next urged their claims upon Congress. The proposed State of Superior found little favor at Washington, but there was a general feeling that Wisconsin would be much too large unless trimmed. The result was that when she was finally admitted as a State, the St. Croix River was, in large part, made her northwest boundary; Minnesota in this manner acquired a vast stretch of country, including the thriving city of St. Paul.
Wisconsin was thus shorn of valuable territory on the south, to please Illinois; on the northeast, to favor Michigan; and on the northwest, that some of her settlers might join their fortunes with Minnesota. The State, however, is still quite as large as most of her sisters in the Old Northwest, and possesses an unusual variety of soils, and a great wealth of forests, mines, and fisheries. There is a strong probability that, had Congress, in 1848, given to Wisconsin her "ancient limits," as defined by the Ordinance of 1787, the movement to create the proposed state of "Superior" would have gathered strength in the passing years, and possibly would have achieved success, thus depriving us of our great northern forests and mines, and our outlet upon the northern lake.
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.