French Exploration, Settlement, andFur Trade in Wisconsin |
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Compiled by Dan Huebsch |
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Wisconsin's French Connection This is a virtual monument to honor the memory and continued presence of French speaking people from many nations who, over the last 350 years, have helped make Wisconsin and the midwest United States what they are today. Today, from one end of Wisconsin to the other French sounding names remain as reminders of the people who passed through, and frequently remained. Coincidental to the celebration of Wisconsin's 150th anniversary of statehood that took place statewide in 1998, the Wisconsin's French Connections Project seeks to involve as many people as possible who have an interest in gathering and sharing information on this important part of Wisconsin's history. WisHis Timeline Wisconsin Histical Society produced web page that shows a timeline of major events in Wisconsin history from prehistory to the present.
La Baye La Baye is section of a Heritage Hill State Park that has replicas of historial buildings with actors depicting what life was like in the French settlements in the Green Bay area of Wisconsin. This particular website gives visual images as well as background information about what life was like in this village. Landfall of Jean Nicolet in Wisconsin Oil Painting by Edward Deming depicting the arrival of Jean Nicolet on Wisconsin soil in 1634. The discovery of Wisconsin Shares a brief history of Samuel de Champlain and his relationship with Jean Nicolet. Nicolet traveled throughout the great lakes and eventually landed near Green Bay. He came to shore firing pistols hoping to impress the natives living in the area. Great feasts were prepared and he was greeted by many area chiefs near modern day Green Bay. Some notable visitors to early Wisconsin Reuben Gold Thwaites.
Radisson's Account of His Third Journey, 1658-1660 After about 1640, Indian wars in the St. Lawrence valley prevented the French from traveling to Wisconsin. The Sieur des Groseilliers and his brother-in-law Pierre-Esprit Radisson, who embarked in 1654, were the first Europeans to reach the upper lakes in two decades. This memoir describes how they crossed Lake Huron and lower Michigan before arcing across Lake Michigan into Wisconsin; the Wisconsin portion begins on page 47. It includes several speeches by Indian leaders with whom they talked. It is impossible to trace their route exactly during the two years they spent collecting furs, but they appear to have visited Green Bay, Sault St. Marie, and Lake Superior as well as spending 4 months going from river to river in the interior. They returned to Montreal in 1656 with a flotilla of Indian canoes loaded with furs, having fought their way through Iroquois attacks both coming and going and having introduced the first firearms to Wisconsin Indians.
Father Allouez's Journey to Lake Superior, 1665-1667 The Jesuit priest Jean Claude Allouez (1620-1689) was ordained in 1655 and spent seven years in the Canadian settlements on the lower St. Lawrence before undertaking the journey described here. In the early years of the seventeen century the French had established trading posts and Jesuit missions among the Algonquian-speaking nations of the eastern Great Lakes. During the 1640s, wars with the Iroquois drove those tribes west from their traditional homelands to the forests surrounding Lake Superior, in what today is Wisconsin, Minnesota, and western Ontario. For two decades the French in Montreal and Quebec had little or no contact with their former allies. This 1665-67 journey by Father Allouez was one of the first successful trips through hostile Iroquois territory to re-establish relations between the French and the exiled Indian nations. After completing this journey, Father Allouez stayed only two days in Quebec before heading west again, on the trip described in AJ-048. He spent most of the next decade in missions at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, before taking over the Illinois mission of Father Jacques Marquette in 1675. Allouez died in 1689 at the mission to the Miami nation on St. Joseph River in southwestern Michigan, having baptized more than 10,000 Indian converts to Christianity during his twenty-four years in the wilderness.
The Mississippi Voyage of Jolliet and Marquette, 1673 Facsimile of the autograph map of the Mississippi or Conception River Marquette and Jolliet Exploring the Upper Mississippi Painting depicts Father Marquette and Lois Jolliet as they exlored the upper Mississippi River. Painting completed in 1921 by Frank Zeitler, a German born artist noted for his work in churches of Milwaukee.
Memoir on the Sioux Country, 1678-1682 Daniel Graysolon Duluth, born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France in 1636, was an aristocrat who joined the French army at the age of twenty. Rising by family station as an officer in the elite King’s Guard at twenty-eight years old, he fought the Dutch and traveled twice to the New World before he turned forty. From his garden in Montreal he resolved to explore the western Great Lakes, where he turned his mix of charm and domination toward the Sioux. The Dakota of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota were then in the midst of a long-term war against the Ojibwa or Chippewa Indians, who claimed divine manifest over the wild rice lakes that traditionally sustained the Dakota. Carte des Lacs du Canada As the offical cartographer of the French government, Jacques Bellin (1703-1772) made hundreds of maps, including dozens for Antoine François Prévost (1697-1763). Prevost's Histoire Générale des Voyages took more than 40 years to produce (1746-1789), and appeared in a deluxe edition of 20 large quarto volumes and a popular edition of 80 pocket-sized ones (from which this small map is taken). Apart from its imaginary islands in Lake Superior, this map shows the Great Lakes with reasonable accuracy on the eve of the British conquest in 1760. Map of the surveyed part of Wisconsinsin Territory; compiled from public surveys as returned to the Surveyor General's Office In 1785, the Federal Government began using the rectangular survey system to organize, divide, and sell government-owned frontier land. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 marked the beginning of land surveying in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region. Land surveying in Wisconsin began after the War of 1812, when effective control of the region passed from the British to the Americans. These surveys led to the division of Wisconsin into townships that could be divided and sold to settlers. Western States & Territories Wilderness outpost in a stirring age Seventy-two years' recollections of Wisconsin Augustin Grignon was the last in a long line of French fur-traders that stretched back to Charles de Langlade, the first European to live in Wisconsin. From 1805-1835 Grignon controlled the crucial portage at Grand Kaukalin on the Fox River, at present-day Kaukauna. He therefore knew every important person and was involved somehow in every important event that touched the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. Near the end of his life, Grignon recalled his own experiences and those of his forebears, from the French and Indian War and Pontiac's uprising to the invention of the railroad and the great waves of 19th-century European immigration. This document is consequently one of the most important sources on the early history of Wisconsin. The early history of Fort Winnebago as narrated by Hon. Sat. Clark at the court house in Portage Article descibing early life at Fort Winnebago and the surrounding area. Readers are given insights as to the daily life and early settlement of Wisconsin. Territorial Forts of Wisconsin Website gives a brief overview of the three historical territorial forts located in early Wisconsin. Describes the location, purpose, and history at each of each of the forts. |
