EDUCATION. The public schools are under the control of a State Superintendent of Public In struction. The school and university lands and the revenues accruing from them are, however, under the supervision of a hoard consisting of the Secretary of State, the Treasurer, and the Attor ney-General. Each town and city is required to raise annually by tax a sum of not less than one half the amount received by them from the income of the school fund. In the census year 1900 there was a school population of 730,685, and an actual attendance of 427.624, or 58.5 per cent. The per cent, of illiterates in the population of ten years of age and upward was 4.7. Wisconsin is one of the leading States as regards the facilities it offers for higher education. Among the principal institutions are the University of Wisconsin (q.v.), at Madison; Northwestern University, at Watertown; Beloit College (q.v.). at Be loit; Lawrence University (q.v.), at Appleton; Ripon College (q.v.), at Ripon; and Marquette College and Concordia College, at Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Medical College and the Wiscon sin College of Physicians and Surgeons are promi: nent among the professional schools. Normal schools are located at Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Platteville, River Falls. Stevens Point, West Su perior, and Whitewater.
CumtuABL' AND PENAL INSTITUTIONS. The State charitable and penal institutions are under the control of a State Board of Control, which is appointed by the Governor. This board appoints superintendents. wardens, stewards, and general matrons. and a number of minor officials upon the nomination of superintendents or wardens. Staple supplies used by the institutions are purchased by the board. The State has originated a new system for caring for its chronic insane, namely, in county asylnms which are supported by both State and comity. In 1900 there were 27 of these institutions with inmates aggregating 3394. The building of two more county asylums has been au thorized. The State insane asylums at Mendota and Winnebago and the Home for Feeble Minded at Chippewa Falls contained in the aggregate 1404 inmates (1900). In October, 1900, the School for the Deaf at Delavau had 190 pupils, the School for the Blind at Janesville 105 pupils, the Industrial School for Boys at Waukesha 32S, and the State Public School (children's home) at Sparta 147. On the same date there were 1103 males and 430 females in the poorhouses of the State. Three Milwaukee institutions, an insane asylum, house of correction. and industrial school for girls. are semi-State institutions, as is also the Veterans' Home at Waupaca. There is a State reformatory near Green Bay, with 115 convicts, and a State prison at Waupun, with 490 inmates.
At the time the region now included within the State was first made known to Euro peans it was the border land between the hunting grounds of the Algonquian tribes. which were gradually pushing westward. and the Dakotas or Sioux, the great body of whom already lay be yond the Mississippi. In 1634 Champlain, Gov ernor of New France, dispatched Jean Nicolet, a coiffeur des Lois, westward along the Great Lakes to make treaties with the remote tribes of In dians, and to encourage them to trade with the French. Nit.°let first set foot upon what is now
the State of Wisconsin late in 1634 or early in 1035. He landed first at Green Bay, where he found a large Indian settlement, thence ascended the Fox River to a point beyond its passage thromdi Lake Winiwbago, and then turned south ward. Ile probably proceeded as far south as the site of ( 'hicapo, and returned east by way of Lake Michigan. The next white explorers in the Wis consin region of whoa we have any record were Radisson and Groseilliers, two fur traders, who reached the country in 1058-59. They followed in the track of :ch.°let, hut probably crossed the Fox-Wisconsin port :1p... and descended the latter river almost, if not quite, to its mouth. Recent make it seem more than probable that they were actually the first discoverers of the Upper Mississippi. In the winter of 1061 they built a stockade on the south shore of Che quaniegon Bay, Near the present site of Ashland. Gn the Sallie spot Father Alloucz in 1005 estab lished the La Pointe Mission—the first in Wis consin. Subsequently (1009) lie built the Mis sion of Saint Francis Navies nt the Rapides des Peres on tin Fox River, on the site of the city of De Pere. Ilere Was built the first chureh in Wisem sin and about this mission grew up the first 10111c settlement of any permanence. In 1073 Joliet and Pere Marquette, setting out from tbt Francis Mission, sailed up the Fox and descended the Wisconsin to the Missis sippi. In 1674 Marquette made a canoe trip from Green Bay to the site of what is now Chi cago along the shores of Lake Michigan. In the years that followed the region became one of the principal fields of activity of the coiffeurs des Lois, prominent among whom were Nicolas Perrot and Daniel Greysolon du Lhut, from whom the city of Duluth takes its name. La Salle (q.v.) thoroughly explored the Wisconsin region before he attempted his remarkable trip clown the Mississippi. Although the region be came clotted with trading-posts and missions, there was no permanent settlement in Wisconsin until toward the middle of the eighteenth cen tury. when the De Langlade family established themselves at Green Bay, the first permanent set tlement. In the French and Indian War Charles de Langlade led a body of coiffeurs des Luis and Wisconsin Indians to the aid of the French, and commanded them in the battle which resulted in Braddock's defeat. After the Revolution, in which De Langlade and the Wisconsin Indians remained true to the British, although by the terms of the treaty Wisconsin became part of the United States, the British continued to ex ercise authority in the region. Nor did Jay's treaty of 1794. in spite of its provisions for the surrender of the outposts, result in a change of authority. During the War of 1812 the French and Indians took the field against the Americans, and an expedition starting from the British fort at Green Bay assaulted and captured an American garrison at Prairie du Chien.