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hend that the storm would burst upon them, and judged that it was safer for them to leave the place. They retired to the Lake of the Hurons. Father Marquette was obliged to follow his flock, submitting the same fatigues and encountering the same dangers with them." The Hurons went to "Missilimackinac," the mainland north of the island now called Mackinaw though the name was applied to both. The "Outaouacs" found a home on the island of Ekaentouton, now called Manitoulin. Not until our own Mr. Ayer came in 1830 was the gospel of Christ again proclaimed on the shores of Chequamegon bay. Then another Indian nation, the Ojibways, held the land.

But before the mission of the Holy Spirit came to an end, another had been established. Reference has already been made to the large aboriginal population about Green bay. To the mouth of the Fox river or thereabout, came Allouez on the 2nd of December, 1669. French traders. were there ahead of him,1 and on the following day, dedicated in the calendar of the church of Rome to St. Francis Xavier, eight of them attended mass. This mission, named from the day on which its first service was held, was maintained for almost sixty years. It may be that Allouez built its first chapel somewhere between the mouth of Fox river and Sturgeon bay. In 1671 the headquarters of the mission were established where is now the village of De Pere (originally Des Peres; that is, "of the father").

Following the establishment of the mission of St. Francis Xavier came the formal act of taking possession of this continent by the deputy of the French king. This took place 1671, June 14th, at a great gathering of the Indian tribes held at Sault Ste. Marie. Nicholas Perrot gathered the Indians together. Allouez was there, and made an address to the Indians concerning the king in terms that lead us to wonder what more he could have said had he been speaking of the Lord of earth and heaven. The ceremony is spoken of in the "Jesuit Relations" as one "worthy of the eldest son of the church and of a mast Christian sovereign." These expressions are not meant for irony, though the king spoken of is no other than the infamous Louis XIV. who was so soon (1685), with the support and almost certainly at the instigation of Jesuits, to drive into exile thousands of his best subjects because they were Protestants. It is a curious fact that one time the only forms of religion that would have been tolerated in what is now Wisconsin were Romanism and the various forms of heathenism that prevailed among the Indians.

It is evident from the terms of the proces-verbal, set forth at Sault Ste. Marie by "Simon Francois Daumont, Esquire, Sieur de St. Lusson, commissioner subdelegate of my Lord the Intendant of New France" (Jean Baptiste Talon), that he did not intend that anything should be lost because it had not been claimed. "We take possession of the said place of Ste. Mary of the Falls

1 Despite Bancroft's statement, in regard to the exploration of the interior of North America, that "not a cape was turned, nor a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way," the trader, almost without exception, preceded the missionary. Professor Frederick Jackson Turner of our state university stated, to the writer hereof, in regard to this entire region, that he knew of no case in which a Jesuit led in the work of exploration.

as well as of lakes Huron and Superieur, the island of Caientonton [Manitɔulin] and of all other countries, rivers, lakes and tributaries, contiguous and adjacent thereunto, as well discovered as to be discovered, which are bounded on the one side by the Northern and Western Seas and on the other side by the South Sea (Pacific ocean) including all its length or breadth."

Nicholas Perrot, commanding for the king at the post of the Nadouesioux (Sioux) took formal possession of the country about the Bay des Puants1 and the upper Mississippi at Post St. Anthony, 8th of May, 1689. He called attention to our Wisconsin lead mines, discovered, it is believed, by a previous explorer Le Sueur who came to the Upper Mississippi from Green Bay, in 1683. To human sight it would have seemed, in 1671, that the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys were to be closed forever to other than French and Roman Catholic influence. 2 We honor the early missionaries though they erred both in method and teaching and were the active supporters of an abominable political despotism, and the agents of an ecclesiastical tyranny which has justly brought upon itself the suspicion of the world. “The individual Jesuit might be, and often was, a hero, saint, and martyr, but the system of which he was a part; and which he was obliged to administer, is fundamentally unsound, and in contravention of inevitable laws of nature, so that his noblest toils were forever doomed to failure, save in so far as they tended to ennoble and perfect himself, and offered a model for others to imitate."3 The courage and devotion of men like Menard, Allouez and Marquette are the clean pages upon the blood-stained history of French rule in the region of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. But the Jesuit missions there were failures. To be sure there were many baptisms. Marquette who returned to the mission of St. Francis Xavier late in September, 1673, and spent there possibly the following winter and certainly the next summer puts the number at two thousand. In 1676, a chapel was built at De Pere. This with the mission house was burned eleven years later, by hostile Foxes, Kickapoos and Mascoutins. There was no school house to burn. "No evidence can be found that the Jesuits ever opened a missionary school in Wisconsin before the American troops took possession of Fort Howard."4 No doubt there was oral religious instruction. It is said, how

1 "Bay des Puants,"-Bay of the Bad Smell,-was the unpleasant name given to Green bay by the French who first came thither. They sometimes, also, applied the name to Lake Michigan. The reference, however, is to the Winnebago Indians, and to them not on account of their habits as might well be the case, but because of the tradition that they originally came from the "ill-smelling," that is the salt, water. The Bay," says Marquette, "bears a name that has not so bad a meaning in the Indian language, as they call it Salt Bay rather than Fetid Bay, although among them it is about the same."

2 On the western side of the Mississippi the profession of any form of Christian faith save Romanism was illegal until (1800, October 1st) Spain receded the province of Louisiana to France. In practice, however, there was tolerance to the American settlers who even at that early day had found homes beyond the Mississippi. An inquisitor who came to New Orleans to exercise the functions of his Holy Office,"-which a son of General Sherman thinks so beneficient in its practical working,-was shipped back to Spain by (acting) Governor Estavan Miro.

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3 Rev. R. F. Littledale, LL. D., D. D., D. C. L.

4 Rev. W. C. Whitford, ex superintendent of public instruction.

ever, that there was a school at Michilimackinac (Point Ste. Ignace).

But the pagan Indians were not the worst foes whom the early missionaries had to encounter. Nor was the fact that most of their "converts" continued in practical heathenism, the only charge brought against them. "With the Jesuits the conversion of souls is but a pious phrase for trading in beaver skins." These bitter words of Frontenac, governor of New France from 1672 tɔ 1682, and again from 1688 until his death in November, 1698, show a feeling which he did not possess alone. La Salle accuses the Jesuits of plotting against his life. Yet it dulls the edge of these charges to know that they were mide by those who were virtually business rivals, and that one of the points of controversy between Frontenac and the ecclesiastical authorities was in regard to the sale of liquor to Indians, which the missionaries wished to forbid. And I believe the frightful accusation made by La Salle to be wholly false. must grant that the Jesuits should not have gone into the fur trade. their missions here came to an end under suspicion and reproach. authorities and rival orders within the church of Rome itself were alike hostile to them. Thus Louis Hennepin,-a Franciscan of the stricter sort known as Recollects, who, in his wanderings with La Salle in 1679, came into Green Bay 2 ignores the existence of the mission of St. Francis Xavier. This is the mɔre remarkable because in the following year, 1680, he enjoyed the hospitality of those laboring there.

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Besides this strife within New France there was a contest between the authorities of that province and those of Louisiana. A bad government at home naturally produced its like in the colonies. Corruption in administration seems to have been expected as a matter of course. Burdensome monopolies were made legal. Unchristian intolerance and exclusion were expressly commanded. "Precise orders were given by Louis XIII. that no Protestant should settle in Canada, and that no other religion than the Catholic should be tolerated." 3 There was not even the thought of popular education.

That the government of New France was less oppressive than that of the mother country was merely because men in Canada could easily find the freedom of lake, forest, and prairie, a freedom, however, that was purely natural and not legal. Thus the fur trade monopolies could not prevent the existence of a large class of unlicensed traders, or coureurs de bois. Among these were found some of the most venturesome explorers, men like Radisson and Groseilliers. The trader rather than the priest was the first who found a path in the

1 No true judgment of the church of Rome can be formed which ignores the denominational divisions within her ranks. These are known as "orders," and the history of their mutual contests forms some of the worst chapters of sectarian controversy.

2 This was soon after his discovery (1680) of the falls at the present city of Minneapolis. These, called Rara by the Dakotas from irara to laugh, he named after St. Anthony of Padua (Italy). Five hundred feet was the hight he gave them in his narrative as first published. Later he put it at six hundred feet.

3 John Law, a eulogist of the Jesuits, addressing the Young Men's Catholic Literary Institute of Cincinnati.

wilderness, and it was commonly in canoes laden with goods for the Indians that the missionary found conveyance to his Western home.

The French, willing to step down almost to the plane of barbarism, were for the most part successful in winning allies among the Indians of the interior. But the cargoes of goods which the traders brought were of course tempting objects of plunder. Soon the Indians, especially the Outagamies, or Foxes, 1 learned enough of the ways of civilization to make themselves toll-gatherers. Their service was to help bring the laden canoes up the Fox river rapids,-— since developed into some of the best water-powers in the United States, and over the portage to the Wisconsin. Their charges were quite as just as those of the French colonial authorities and far more reasonable. Thus the governor demanded of Radisson and Groseilliers, as the price of a license, one-half of all they might get. Refusal to pay forced them to go without legal permission and so exposed them to the exactions from which, as already narrated, they fled to Boston. In the general game of grab, the Outagamies,― crude reasoners of the wilderness!— may have thought themselves entitled to all that they could compel others to pay.

Of the many evils with which New France was afflicted, none was more hurtful to the Indians than the fur-trade monopoly. It lowered the price of what they had to sell and increased the cost of what they wished to buy. They soon learned that the English would give sometimes from four to six times as much for beaver skins as the French did. But these commanded the lakes and were at hand; the English were far away. The sturdiest young men of the Puritan commonwealths and of New York did not go into the wilderness to become semi-savages. The British colonists sought to turn forests into farms and thus found enough to do at home. Moreover, the great water-courses were not open to them, and the frequent wars made their settlements compact and put them much of the time on the defensive.

1 The Foxes were of two stocks: one calling themselves Outagamies, or Foxes, whence our English name; the other, Musquakink, or men of red clay, the name now used by the tribe. They lived in early times with their kindred the Sacs east of Detroit, and some say near the St. Lawrence. They were driven west and settled at Saginaw, a name derived from the Sacs. Thence they were forced by the Iroquois to Green Bay; but were compelled to leave that place and settle on Fox River."-C. W. BUTTERFIELD.

CHAPTER III.

THE OUTAGAMIE WAR.

With the accession of William and Mary to the thrones of England and Scotland began the struggle between the French and the British, elsewhere called the second War of a Hundred Years. During its first distinct phase, known in American history as King William's war, the Outagamies, or Fox` Indians, became bold enough to plunder, as early as 1693, some of the French traders who, they alleged, were furnishing arms to the Sioux, the Outagamies' traditional enemies. The war that followed in the Mississippi valley and the Upper Lake region was virtually the beginning of the struggle by which the French were dispossessed of their North American dominions.

The history of much of this war is obscure as to both time and circumstance. But it is known that few wars of modern time have surpassed it in ferocity or in the number of those slain as compared with the number taking part. There is reason to think that by 1712 the French and their Indian allies had formed the purpose to destroy the Outagamies. In the spring of that year a large force of that tribe, with whom were Mascoutins and some Sauks, encamped near Detroit where a post had been built by the French to keep the British from the upper lakes. Here the Outagamies and their allies made themselves troublesome. But though the fort was virtually at their mercy they made no assault and took no lives. On the 12th of May, Indian allies of the French arrived. The united force immediately beset the camp of the Outagamies, whom the fire of the enemy, hunger and the want of water brought to the humiliation of offering surrender. "My father," said their great war chief Permoussa to Du Buisson, the French commander, "I come to you to demand life. It is no longer ours. You are masters of it. All the nations have abandoned us." (He speaks for the Outagamies and Mascoutins; the Sauks had deserted.) But do not believe I am afraid to die. It is the life of our women and children that I ask of you." "I confess," says Du Buisson, "that I was touched with compassion at their misfortunes; but as war and pity do not agree together, and particularly as I understood they were paid by the English for our destruction, I abandoned them to their unfortunate fate; indeed I has

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1 The charge made by the French that the Outagamies were incited to hostility by the British is not supported by evidence. However, it would be probable enough save for the lack of communication between the English colonies and the distant interior.

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