Wisconsin

In 1668 Green bay was again visited, this time by Nicolas Perrot and Toussaint Baudry who made several trips to inland tribes on the Wolf and upper Fox rivers with whom they con cluded trading treaties. Other traders came. In 1669 Allouez was succeeded at his Chequamegon mission by Father Marquette and went into the Fox river valley where at the first rapids he founded the mission of St. Francois Xavier, one of the most suc cessful of those established by the Jesuits in the west. It became the centre for further missionary efforts to all the surrounding tribes. In 1671 Father Marquette was forced by Indian wars to abandon the Chequamegon mission and in 1673, in company with Louis Joliet, he set off down the Fox-Wisconsin water route to discover the Mississippi river of which the Indians had told them. On July 17 they reached the mouth of the Wisconsin and sailed out upon the Mississippi waters.

In 1679 Daniel Greysolon Du Luth explored the upper Missis sippi, St. Croix and Black rivers. The same year Michel Accault, accompanied by Father Hennepin, explored the Mississippi along Wisconsin's western boundary until they met Du Luth who re turned with them by the Wisconsin-Fox route to the St. Francois Xavier mission. Du Luth continued his explorations on the Missis sippi and Lake Superior until 1689 when he left the west never to return. His work was supplemented by the Mississippi ex peditions of Perrot, who in 1686 built Fort St. Antoine on Lake Pepin, an enlargement of the Mississippi river. Perrot was now the French commandant in Wisconsin and most influential with the Indian tribes. In 1671 Saint-Lusson at Sault Ste. Marie had taken formal possession of the Great Lakes region in the name of the king of France; in 1689 Perrot staged a similar ceremony at his Fort St. Antoine on the Mississippi river. The 18 years between the two events had marked the period of French dis covery and occupation of Wisconsin. Traders entered the region in increased numbers, and to protect them from the Indians and to control the trade properly a military force was necessary.

In 1712 the slaughter of a band of Foxes near Detroit was the signal for hostilities which lasted almost continuously until 1740, and in which every tribe in the Wisconsin country was sooner or later involved either in alliance with the Foxes or with the French. This war seriously interfered with the French plan of trade and development. The difficulty of maintaining a chain of settlements which might have connected Canada and Louisiana was a contributing cause to the overthrow of French dominion. Wisconsin was little disturbed by the Seven Years' War. How ever, the French and Indians of Wisconsin contributed a force under the half-breed, Charles Michel de Langlade, which made the long journey to lower Canada to share in the war. With the fall of Montreal (1760), French rule in Wisconsin was over.

British Occupation.

The first period of British occupation was brief for on the outbreak of Pontiac's conspiracy in 1763, the evacuation of the Green bay fort was forced. When the con spiracy was crushed in 1765, Wisconsin was reopened to traders, and not only French and English, but American traders from the colonies entered the region. British prestige among the Indians and the French habitants was hurt by a policy of confining the Indian trade to the forts instead of permitting the traders to go into the Indian villages. Little as they cared for their British rulers the French and Indians in the region remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War. De Langlade again led his French and Indian forces against the American frontier communities west of the Alleghanies.

The close of the war, although it conveyed the region to the sovereignty of the United States, was not followed by American occupation. The newly formed North-west company, a British fur-trading organization, kept control of the posts, built new ones, extended their trade and dominated the region. The control of these posts was one of the issues in the War of for American traders were becoming powerful enough to demand that the British traders should be made to withdraw. The end of the war meant the termination of British influence in Wisconsin, and actual military occupation of the country by the United States came in 1816 with the establishment of garrisons at Green bay (Ft. Howard) and Prairie du Chien (Ft. Crawford).

Incorporation with Michigan.

Wisconsin in 1800 had nominally been attached to Indiana Territory; and in 1809, on the admission of Indiana as a State, it was attached to Illinois. In 1818 Illinois was admitted to the Union and Wisconsin was in corporated in Michigan Territory. It was only at the latter date that American civil government in Wisconsin was established on an orderly and permanent basis. Until 1830 the fur-trade, con trolled largely by the American Fur company, continued to be the predominating interest in the Wisconsin region, but then the growing lead-mining industry in the south-western part of the State began to overshadow the fur-trade. The lead-mining ac tivity which began in 1824 was the first incentive to genuine settlement in the State since the fur-trade discouraged settlement except around the few trading posts. In 1830 there were about 2,500 miners in the region. Friction between these settlers and the Indians could not be avoided and in 1832 occurred the famous Black Hawk War, which broke the Indian power within the State. In addition the war made Wisconsin better known, and with the Indian menace removed there was an appreciable impetus to settlement. A series of Indian treaties in 1829, 1831, 1832 and 1833 extinguished the Indian titles and opened up vast areas to settlement.