EVOLUTION Er ASTAJE I

-- EVOLUTION er ASTAJE I / " ( By virtue of the discoveries of Ponce de Leon in 1512, the » territory Included in the present county of Racine and state of Wisconsin, with all of that from the Great Lakes to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, came under the dominion of Ferdinand, King of \0 Spain, and was called Florida. France made good her claim to the territory in I627, and held jurisdiction over it until 1763, when it was ceded to England in the treaty of Paris. Thirteen years later the colonies declared their independence, and in the Issue of the i 0 \ • F 1 war following, the land on which we live came under the dominion of the United States of America. w By Congressional enactment of the Ordinance of 1787, the Northwest Territory was organized; it included all lands north of the Ohio River, and west of Pennsylvania, as far asy and some dis tance beyond, the Mississippi. Within this territory the domain of Wisconsin continued until 1800, when it became part of the terri tory of Indiana, organized that year, and so remained for nine years. In 1809 it became part of the territory of Illinois, and in 1818 of the territory of Michigan, which included also the states of Iowa and Minnesota and part of the Dakotas. On July 3, 1836, Wisconsin territory was organized^and on May 29, 1848, Wis- consin.was admitted into the Union of States,- the thirtieth star in the galaxy on the banner of the Republic. Kl) For further data concerning Wisconsin's territorial and state history, see Appendix. (2) Foot-note; The Ordinance of I?S7 was drawn by Nathan Lane, of Beverly, Mass., for which he was warmly eu logized by Daniel Webster, of the same state, in his famous "Reply to Hayne", in the U.S.3enate, in I831. T7/?$T WH/T£ MA* IN STATE The first white man to set foot on Wisconsin soil was Jean Nlcolet, (I) Interpreter on the staff of Samuel de Ohamplain, Governor of New France, who in 1634 sent him on a voyage of dis I A covery to investigate rumors of a country of lakes west of Huron. From the Straits of Mackinac, Nlcolet went in a canoe with a crew of eight men, across the head of Lake Michigan, up Green Bay, through Fox River and Lake Winnefcago to the upper Fox, which he ascended for some distance, establishing friendly relations with the Indians on the way, upon whom he endeavored to impress iMttmt greatness, power and glory of France, and the importance of re maining at peace with her. Concerning this journey of Nlcolet, it has been said by one authorized to speak;-((2) "The only definite, practical result of Nlcolet's long and dangerous journey to Wisconsin, or of the long French regime in the northwest which followed Nlcolet»s voyage of discovery, was an accession to the fur trade enjoyed by the French settlements on the lower St.Lawrence. That also was the main object of his voy age, though it was not unmixed with a dream that inci dentally he might come upon the long sought route to India; a dream that was the inspiration of a long line of ex plorers, beginning with Columbus himself." (I) Foot-note;- Jear Nlcolet was born at Cherbourg, France, In 1598; joined Ohamplain on the St.Lawrence in I6IS; lived many years with the Indians, acquiring their language and learning their wood-craft, and be came very useful to his chief in facilitating inter course and maintaining friendly relations with the na tive tribes.He died in 1642, by accidental drowning. £See~- ?he • Prench - Regime In-Wlsconsln ••ani^ftewtiefMNfr- wtfst, b;, itou-i-se - P«- Keliogg. ) (2) Foot-note;- Reuben G. Thwaites, in "Wisconsin in Three Centuries". — T^CESJ#w^ With the coming of Nlcolet to Wisconsin in 1634, one hundred years after Cartier, the history of the state began, though it was a quarter century beforg another white man ventured west of Lake Michigan. During that interval the character of the Indian popu lation of Wisconsin became totally changed. Almost wholly Siouxan at the time of Nlcolet, it then became a refuge for hordes of Red men,- sacs, Foxes, Hurons,- 'Ma scout ens and others, from Midl and fammfrq igan,A Canada, and s£***s further east, in flight from the blood thirsty, relentless and irresistible Iroquois, and the "center of the Indian population of the west shifted to Wisconsin, which then (I) became the goal of discovery, exploration and exploitation •• T#E/YCtf &£rri£R<5. In 1665, however, the entire French population in the valley of the 3t.Lawrence, including the Great Lakes region, numbered "scarcely more than three thousand souls, thirteen hundred of whom were officers and soldiers"; and none of these were in Wis consin. The fact Is that during the entire French regime in Wis consin, no section of th^Sta^a was really settled, in the sense that it came to be sevenTy\years\*wtaiT. What settlement there was, "was the result of the fur trade, and aside from the officers and garrisons that were sent for temporary occupation, ail of the set tlers were present or past traders. The unit of settlement was the military post, and around the forts were clustered ail the (2) permanent French dwellers In Wisconsin"; and at only tiBo points in the state was there at any time any considerable number of set- tiers,- Green Bay and Prairie du Chien. It was in I745, one hundred and £t£teen years after Nlcolet, that Augustin de Langlade, one of the first, if not the first white settler in the state, ar- 8niy rived at Green Bay and took up his residence there, eighteen years (I )"The French Regime In i^rioWand the Northwest", Kellogg -Raft /*& U) " a • „ ,( " 4 ~dH (3) footnote;-"Sieur Augustln Langlade, with his wife and son Charles, left Mackinac in 1745, and located at Green Bay, where they remained until their death at ad vanced years. They were the first white persona within the present boundaries of Wisconsin, whose occupancy acquired any degree of permanency". "History of Wisconsin Territory", page 42; by Moses M. Strong. SW/__-N f- rj/r \ tn/ 1 before the end of the French regime in America. Tfce real set tlement of the state did not begin until the arrival of Gil bert Knapp, In 1834, exactly three centuries after Cartier, and two.after Nlcolet,. and seventseventyy one years after the end of French sovereignty in America. C A striking Illustration of the ineptitude of the French of that period for colonization, in comparison with the English, is found in the fact that at the out-break of the French and Indian War, in 1754, the colonists of the English in America out-numbered the French twenty to one, which probably accounts for tne difference t» the general attitude of the Indians tow ard tne French and the English - which favored the former, who were not filling up the country with settlers. This may be said without disparagement of the extensive work of exploration by the French in Wisconsin and beyond, while the territory was un der the sovereignty of their king. If modern corroboration is wanted, th«* reader is referred to "Trader Horn", who, more than 150 years later, in the introduction to his biography, in the recently published book of that name, is quoted as follows;- "French, Ma'am; a language for the meagre—hearted. If God ever made a worse colonist than the French He hasn't let me knew about It. It take.; more than a little straw hat, and a cig arette, and a thimbleful of absinthe# an set out In a neat lit tle office , to open up Africa" (1) M-phe real glory of Wisconsin dates from 1834 or "35, when the settlement of the country by the hardy Anglo Sax on race commenced in good earnest; when civilization, re ligion, and education were planted permanently in the coun try. Such a period deserves to be commemorated on the his toric page, and the evidences of the hardihood, morality, virtue and intelligence of the pioneer representative men and women merit a place In the archives of a society or ganized, for this very purpose" Wis. Hist. Coll.,, vol. 4; Introduction, by L. C. Draper, Sec'y. Ms. Hurt. &XM^. (2) see Ridpath's Hist, of U.S., page 250. (Foot-note) "The fdir trade was the main reason for the (V presence of the French in the West. The zest for discovery and the desire to carry French sovereignty across the con tinent never died out during the period of French occupa tion of North America; the zeal for conversion of tne heath en in the western world was an active , if declining, mo tive during the eighteenth century;the hope of finding rich mineral wealth lured some Frenchmen to the scores of Lake Superior, and to the waters of the upper Mississippi, But without the fur trade all of thesg visits would have been occasional, and would not have resulted in the peopling of the West.M See "The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwests. , Kellogg. /Ja4*3bV 7 THtsr JSSUIT M/$stONAR\ZS< S It was twenty six years after Nlcolet,; that the first French Catholic Jesuit missionary came to Wisconsin. Past his prime £& when he came, in 1660, Rene Menard was physically unfitted for the rig ors of wilderness life among savages, and within a year he perished w in the trackless forest, alone, in an effort to reach a village of the Huron Indians, who had been reported to him as in special need of his ministrations.

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