your God; the supreme object of your affections, and your portion forever. You cordially acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ in all his mediatorial offices, Prophet, Priest and King, as your only Saviour and final Judge;—and the Holy Spirit, as your Sanctifier, Comforter and Guide.

"You humbly and cheerfully devote yourself to God in an everlasting covenant of grace. You consecrate all your powers and faculties to his service and glory; and you promise to take the Holy Scriptures as the rule of your life and conversation: and that, through the assistance of His Spirit and grace, you will cleave to Him as your chief good, and that you will give diligent attention to his Word and ordinances, to family and secret prayer, to public worship, and to the conscientious observance of the Sabbath; that you will seek the honor of his name and the interests of his Kingdom, and that henceforth, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, you will live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

"You do now cordially unite yourself to this church as a church of Christ, promising to submit to its discipline, so far as conformable to the rules of the gospel, and you solemnly covenant to promote its edification, purity and peace, and to walk with its members in Christian love, faithfulness, circumspection, sobriety and meekness. All this you promise to do with humble reliance on the grace of God, and with an affecting belief that your vows are recorded on high, and will be reviewed in the day of judgment.

"Thus you solemnly covenant, promise and engage?"

Response in behalf of the church:

"We do now receive you into our communion and fellowship, and we promise to watch over you with Christian affection and tenderness, ever treating you in love as a member of the body of Christ, who is head over all things in the church. This we do, earnestly imploring the great Shepherd of Israel, our Lord and Redeemer, that both you and we may have wisdom and grace to be faithful in his covenant, and to glorify him with that holiness which becometh his house for ever. Amen."

CHAPTER XII.

BY THE MIZI SIBI.1

In the structure of colonial intercourse that the French built in North America, the Fox-Wisconsin route may be described as the key of an arch, one of whose abutments rested on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the other on the Gulf of Mexico. Accordingly the early history of this region stands related not only, as we have seen, to that of New France, or Canada, but also to that of LouisiApparently the line of demarkation between these provinces was not well defined and the authorities of the two came often into somewhat of conflict.

ana.

White settlement on the lower Mississippi had almost its beginning in John Law's knavish scheme. Nor did the new colony escape the curse of slavery. This was permitted and regulated by a decree of Louis XV. "given at Versailles, in the year of Grace one thousand seven hundred and twenty-four."

While most of this decree is taken up with matters regarding to slavery, -in which respect it seems to be neither better nor worse than its time,—— it contains certain other commands that make the expression "year of Grace seem like bitter irony. The "precise orders" given by Louis XIII. "that no Huguenot should settle in New France" find their counterpart in this decree issued almost a century later by his great-great-grandson.

Here is the bidding of "his Most Christian Majesty,"—"the eldest son of the church," etc.:

1 The Indians never speak of the Mississippi as the Father of Waters, but invariably refer to it as the Big River. The Winnebagoes called it Nee koonts-Hah-ta kah the former part of that compound word meaning river, and hah-ta kah, large. The Sioux called it Wat-paTon ga; wat pa, river, and ton-ga, large. The Sauks designated it as Me-cha-Sa-po; the Menominees, Me-che-Se pua; the Kickapoos, Me-che-Se-pe; the Chippewas, Me-ze-Ze-be; and the Ottawas, Mis-sis-Se pi. Me-cha, me-che, me-ze, and mis-sis, all mean the same thing-large or big; and sa po, se pua, se pe, ze-be and sepi, all mean river."-B. W. BRISBOIS, Hist. Coll., IX. Ignorant as I am of the Algonquian language, in the Ojibway or any other dialect, I am convinced that "Mississippi" does not mean simply the "great river," but that Mr. W. H. Wheeler of Beloit is substantially correct in translating it as the "everywhere river." This he affirms from his own knowledge of the language. But any one of us can get an Ojibway Testament. In reading this, we are to remember that the vowels are used according to the French or German, rather than an English, system of orthoepy. Thus mizi is pronounced mee-zee, with the last syllable shortened perhaps, in time of utterance. This word seems to have the meaning of every" in relation to place. We find it in Luke IX. 6, where the locative sense is apparent, and in Philippians IV. 12, where the translators of the Ojibway Testament may have followed the Authorized Version in its rendering of the Greek en panti. Miziue (mee-zee-way) in the sense of "everywhere" is found in Acts XVII. 30 and XXVIII. 22; in I. Cor. IV. 17, and II. Timothy II. 8. Kiji is the Ojibway word for "great or "large." 2 See page 15.

"ARTICLE I. We enjoin the directors general of said company, 1 and all our officers, to remove from said country all the Jews who may have taken up their abode there — the departure of whom, as declared enemies of the Christian name, we command within three months, including the day when these presents are published, under pain of forfeiture of their bodies and estates.

"ARTICLE III. [First Part]. We prohibit any other religious rites than those of the Apostolic Roman Catholic church; requiring that those who violate this shall be punished as rebels disobedient to our commands."

With the colony thus inauspiciously begun, the western part of what is now Wisconsin, had easy communication by way of the Mississippi. This in the early time was not regarded as a line of division. Thus it was on the east side of the Great River, at Post St. Antoine, 2 that Nicholas Perrot, who in 1685 had been appointed "commandant of the West,"3 formally took possession 1689, May 8th, in the name of the French king, of the entire region drained by the St. Peter or Minnesota, the St. Croix and the upper Mississippi. Seven years previously,-1682, March 14th, and April 9th,- La Salle had taken possession of the lower Mississippi region. Indeed, he then laid claim to the whole country "along the river Colbert or Mississippi, and rivers which discharge themselves therein from its source." So that Perrot's proces-verbal was, in a sense, merely supplementary to the more extensive claim made by La Salle.4 Thus early and in this interesting way is the history of the western part of Wisconsin connected with that of Louisiana,- the vast Louisiana that was but an official name for the valley of the Mississippi,- a name not restricted to the region on the westward side of the Great River until after the treaty of Paris in 1763.

But early explorations in the upper part of this vast region,- those of Radisson, Joliet, Perrot and others,- were made by parties that descended the Wisconsin rather than by those that ascended the Mississippi. Soon both routes came to be commonly used and France possessed in North America, a waterway the extent of which equaled the breadth of oceans,- a water-way that, as we have seen, offered, in the interior, more courses than one to the trader and explorer. Of these, none was traversed more frequently than that by way of the Fox and the Wisconsin. Hence, after their long and disastrous war with the French, it was "with characteristic sagacity," as Mr. Hebberd remarks, that the Outagamies selected the site of Prairie du Chien as that whereon they could still use most effectively whatever of power was left them.

Of this place Captain Jonathan Carver gives some account in his famous book, "Three Years' Travels throughout the Interior Parts of North America." 1 The "Company of the Indies," established 1717, August, under the management of the famous John Law.

2 The site of which is on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Pepin and between the villages of Stockholm and Pepin.

3 The winter following he spent at an encampment near the majestic bluff that has given name to the village of Trempealeau See page 134.

4 We must remember, however, that Perrot held his commission, not from La Salle, but from the authorities of New France.

Thus begins his "Journal:" "In June, 1766, I set out from Boston, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara to Michillimackinac,1 a fort situated between the lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles." This place he left on the 3rd of September, and "on the 18th arrived at fort La. Bay. * On the 20th of September I left the Green Bay.

*

*

2

* On the 25th I arrived at the great town of the Winnebagoes, situated on a small island, just as you enter the east end of the lake Winnebago. Here the queen who presided over this tribe instead of a Sachem, received me with great civility, and entertained me in a very distinguished manner, during the four days I continued with her. 3 On the 7th of October [we] arrived at the great Carrying Place [Portage], which divides it [the Fox river] from the Ouisconsin. On the 15th of October, we entered that extenWe may presume that on the same day he arrived

sive river, the Mississippi."

*

* *

at Prairie du Chien. Thither the people had come, they told him, about thirty years before from a place not far distant which had been their home but which the Great Spirit, speaking in an audible voice, had told them that he wished for himself. Carver supposes that the Indians were victims of some trick played by French or Spaniards. "The people soon after their removal," he continues, built a town near the Ouisconsin at a place called by the French La Prairie des Chiens, which signifies the Dog Plains; it is a large town and contains about three hundred families. I saw here many horses of a good size and shape. This town is the great mart where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit the most remote branches of the Mississippi, annually assemble about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the tradBut it is not always that they conclude the sale here; this is determined by a general council of the chiefs, who consult whether it would be more conducive to their interest, to sell their goods at this place or carry them to Louisiana, or Michilimackinac. According to the decision of this council, they either proceed further, or return to their different homes."

ers.

Before the permanent settlement of Prairie du Chien by whites, American colonial troops may have come thither. We have already had a report, in Sinclair's letter, of the British expedition which returned to Mackinaw probably in May, 1780. From that place in the same year a second expedition was sent, perhaps in June, to secure furs left at Prairie du Chien by the traders. Captain J. Long, a British Indian-trader, was in command. In their nine canoes he and his men carried off about three hundred packs of furs. Sixty packs more they burned, probably by setting fire to the buildings in which the furs had been stored. The reason for this is easily inferred from Long's statement that "about five days after our departure we were informed that the Americans 1 Carver's "Michillimackinac " is the "old fort on the southern side of the strait. 2. The island lying between Neenah and Menasha.

3 In reference to note 1, page 75, it should be said that Carver noticed the radical difference between the Ojibway language and that of the Winnebagoes.

This store-house and the old French "fort" are probably one and the same. The "fort," however, may have been a similar structure of logs built earlier, perhaps as soon as 1745, for a like purpose

came to attack us; but to their extreme mortification we were out of their reach."

.

Notwithstanding the popular impression that Prairie du Chien is as old as Philadelphia,” no evidence appears of permanent settlement there by whites prior to 1781. As Prairie du Chien was on one of the great water-courses from the Upper Lakes to the more distant interior, traders and others from New France were often there before any whites made a permanent settlement in the place. Some may have remained even for years.

The t first official report by any United States officer in regard to Prairie du Chien is by Lieutenant (afterwards Brigadier-General) Zebulon Montgomery Pike. On the 9th of August, 1805, he left St. Louis on an exploring expedition toward the headwaters of the Mississippi. He reports that, with three houses on the west side of the river, there were in Prairie du Chien and vicinity thirty-seven in all, which it will not be too much to calculate at ten persons each. This calculation will not answer for the spring or autumn as there are then at least five hundred or six hundred white persons."

Prairie

Uuder date of 1811, February 2nd, Nicholas Boilvin, an Indian agent already spoken of, made a report to William Eustis, secretary of war: du Chiens is an old Indian town which was sold by the Indians to the Canadian traders about thirty years ago, where they have ever since rendezvoused, and dispersed' their merchandise in various directions. The Indians also sold them at the same time a tract of land measuring six leagues up and down the river, and six leagues back of it. The village contains between thirty and forty houses, and on the tract just mentioned about thirty-two families, so that the whole settlement contains about one hundred families. The men are generally French Canadians, who have mostly married Indian wives; perhaps not more than twelve white females are to be found in the settlement:"

J.

British and Canadian influence continued to be supreme at Prairie du Chien until after the war of 1812. We have already had mention of Robert Dickson and Lieutenant-Colonel McKay, honorable men both, who as far as possible, restrained the Indians from outrages against their American enemies. On the return of peace the place was evacuated by the British 1815, May 24th. But it was not until the 21st of June, 1816, that the fort which the Americans had named Shelby and the British called MeKay was re-occupied by United. States troops. These were under command of Colonel Thomas A. Smith, brigadier-general by Brevet. He and his men were most unwelcome. They occupied and repaired the old fort, thereafter known as Fort Crawford in honor of William Harris Crawford of Georgia, then secretary of the treasury. In the spring of 1817 Colonel Talbot Chambers succeeded Smith. Complaint is made that he treated the inhabitants as conquered people. Probably there was reason for his doing so. With the subsequent commanders save one, Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterward President, we have no special concern. He succeeded Major Stephen Watts Kearney in 1829, probably in June.

The old fort stood on low ground as described hereafter. One of stone