Hoefer, J. the Generic Use of the Term Coulee in Western Wisconsin

Home , Coulee, Western Upland

The Generic Use of the Term Coulee in Western Wisconsin1 I , by John Hoefer University of Wisconsin - La Crosse The place names on maps have a popular fascination for the imagina tive and also function as a tool for the geographer. Romancing over the lands beyond the horizon as a map or chart is read is well known. For the serious pursuit of understanding the distribution of a particular name or term it may also be admitted there is still a bit of adventure upon peeking at a map. Names and terms may be assigned to one of two categories, proper or generic. Thus one finds place names as St. Croix, Trempealeau, and Prairie du Chien for specific rivers, landforms, and cities; and bayou, marais, and fond for types of landforms and waterbodies. 2 The influence of over one hundred years of French exp1oration, fur trade and frontier settlement may be seen throughout Wisconsin. 3 The term coulee, usually written in English without the accent, is perhaps one of the most common French generic landform terms in use in Wisconsin and is by far the most often encountered when it is incorporated as part of the proper name. The study region included the Upper Mississippi River Valley bordered by Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, most of which is often referred to as "Coulee Country" . 4 Coulee is from the French verb couler meaning "to flow", as a pot of molten metal is tapped. Thus one use is for lava flows. A second use is a steep sided water channel, especially former glacial spillways.5 The geographer is most likely to encounter the term in the Pacific Northwest as well as the northern tier of states and prairie provinces of Canada. When generally applied to a form of valley it appears to carry the conno tation of having intermittent stream flow and often steep sides. 6 The 1:62500 U.S.G.S. topographic maps adjacent to the Mississippi River from the Wisconsin-Illinois border northward were scrutinized for the use of coulee. Some 137 occurrences of the term were found and are

35 36

FI GUR E ONE GENER\C USE OF COULEE \N WES1ERN W\SCONS\N

••••. ...e. AND EASTERN MINNESOTA ------1 o i PIERCE j i r.0------. •• .1 • PEPIN L! ~~.....=-O 0' 0 r--·..!.------·T---·-·----r-·-·- ·--, ~ -. , . t . - - - ) lTREMPEALEAU I· '--- -, GOODHUE ) . I i ~ ! 0 ! . - f ' BUFFALO I. ••••.0 -,. L.__.__. ,---J I • ' 00· j 0 i oj .. i 0 i • OJ' JACKS ON i WABASHA . • • ) . ~ - ---._.__1 ______._. r ---- - 0:, ! i : : • ~.--- - -.-- . - L._._ __ .; .'•+ . . I _ I /-'-/~!cR o s~E' l . \ .. , . . I _._" : . ~ •• ~ •• I ! WIN ON A .0 .. ~.... 0 0 i MONROE ! .. '- • • I L._·_------_·_·_-_·- · 0. \1

TI .0 • .1 i HOU STON :.. : -I--··- :-;·~·- · - ·- - ---·- - - o REPRESENTS ONE COULEE i ~ • i i VERNON i r ' -' ..... i I '0." i j i -- -_ ._ ._._._---_.j STUDY AREA lj ALLAMAKEE I CR AWFORD I i i L._. ___._.___._

"'Lit o 10 00 I , I • t••A W'IC. ICA,,' ". " . " • Ii ....'l. ••• ••Y', ' 914 37

shown on Figure One. 7 It is immediately apparent that the distribution is quite distinctive. There are no uses of coulee i n the Iowa portion of the region and only seven in Minnesota, with those clustered in Wabasha County. As for Wisconsin none are south of the Wisconsin River and only five in Crawford County where Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin's second oldest city, was settled by the French for nearly one hundred years. However, fifty-two, or 40%, are in La Crosse County. (It may be noted that the first permanent settlement in La Crosse County was not until 1842, when Nathan Myrick established a trading post at what is now the City of La Crosse.) Reading over the list of coulees is equally interesting. 8 Proper family names as Abraham, Campbell, Hagenbarth, Johnson, Proksch, and Tollefson do not indi cate a French ethnic origin, which really is not surprising when one con siders over one hundred years of sequence occupance. Strong identification with early agricultural land owners predominate. In fact the occurrence of German (3), Norwegian, Russian, Scotch, and Sweden Coulees are probably the result of ethnic clustering in the era of agricultural occupance since the 1830's. There are few descriptive terms incorporated in the proper name, examples as Big, Chipmunk, Dry, Sand Lake, State Road, Wet and Wild Cat Coulees are the exception rather than the rule, and none appear to be related to the early French. The clustering pattern found in La Crosse County and perhaps to lesser extent that of eastern Trempealeau County, suggests a strong sub regional identification with the term coulee and possibly of relatively late occurrence. The popularization of "Coulee Country" for regional identification is centered on the largest city of t he region. That this might represent a future line of inquiry is evidenced by some thirty La Crosse telephone book entries for firms and organizations from Coulee Area Trucking through Coulee Golf Bowl to Coulee Youth Centers. Th is research was first directed toward early usage particularly in searching for early maps which might show original French language forms. Accounts by the French are either lost or not r eadily available. Accordingly effort was focused on the narrat i ves of Carver, Keating, Pike, and Schoolcraft. Though these make for fascinating reading there was little to shed light on early usage of coulee. The most definitive explorative account was by I. N. Nicollet . a French geologist, commissioned

by Congress and published as a Report Intended .!QIllustrate ~ Map.Q!.the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River, February 16, 1811. On page 51 he states, ".. . we had to cross hills sep arated by large and deep coulees, (more commo nly call ed by Voyageurs "ba iss;er es") at t his time perfectly dry but t hr ough which it is very probable the surp lus waters of the lake, during or after a rai ny season, discharges . . . ".9 Another line of i nqu iry fo llowed was a l ook at Hamlin Garland 's works. Garland (1860-1940) was a Pulitzer Pri ze aut ho r of regi on al bio graphical novels. One, Rose of Du t cher's Cooll y, il l ustr at es how spel li ng changes affect study. He states, "I decided to put it int o a form whi ch could not be mispronounced. I wr ote it 'coolly' ."10 As Ga r l and 's home, West Salem, is just twelve mi les east of La Crosse , his book s certainly contributed to the popularization of t he t erm co ulee. As usual sometimes amusing anomal i es fi nd their way i nto a study. There is a Cooley Valley in Crawford Coun t y. A few years ago i t seems the Town of Freeman had new road si gns and num be rs made . App ar ently someon e "corrected" the spelling "error" and the si gns came ba ck "Coulee Road ". Well, it seems the area was named after Aaron Coo ley who settled t here in 1852, and whose heirs protested the change . Thus , Cou lee Va ll ey, a fal se generic use, was narrowly averted !11 It may be seen that t he study area i s wi thin t he Wes tern Upland Province. The greatest occurrence of cou lees is withi n t he driftl ess area with greater stream dissected topog raphy. It is t his rel ati onsh i p with t he entr enched Missi ssippi t hat the original us e of coulee was probably connected. The Western Upland made overland travel diff icul t , except primarily along certai n water routes. 12 From Keating (1824) "T he route from Pr ai rie du Chien to Fort St. An thony wa s att en ded with greater difficulties than had been antici pated. It was ext remely rough and hilly; there be i ng no beaten t r ack , the part y f r equ ently led t o the edge of a precipice, and compelled to retrace t hei r steps and seek a more gradual descent . Th ese diffi culties arose from t heir travell ing, for the most part , at a distance from the r i ver , with a vi ew to sho rten the road; the highlands, wh ich they had attempted to keep, wer e frequently cut by transverse va l leys, opened by st reams, t ributary t o t he Mi ss i ssippi. In crossing of these stream s , mu ch difficulty was expe rienced from the swampy natur e of the ground, in which the ho rses wer e frequ entl y mired .,, 13 The Voyagers had go ne by canoe. Af t er moving south al on g the Wisconsin Ri ver how grand the trip north from Pra i r ie du Chi en must have 39

been, paddling between bluffs towering over 500 feet or more above the river. The grandeur of this voyage has been compared to the Palisades ·s of the Hudson and the castellated graben of the Rhine. In places the

bluffs ri se ri ght from the ri ver, as "~Montagne qui treme ~ l' eau" (hill which soaks in water) or Trempealeau. Elsewhere major tributaries enter the Mississippi at right angles, such as the Rush, Bad Ax, Coon, and Mormon Creeks. Their trench-like breaks in the bluffs are imposing. In an era where the Western Upland was forested there would not have been as much runoff as from today's farmland. It is likely they were dry or nearly so at times in summer. The hypothesis is suggested that these were the "original" coulees. Just how the term was expanded to the "hidden valleys" can probably only be surmi sed. Perhaps Wilbur Zelinsky said it best, liThe paramount problem, however, and one that may never be fully answered, is the nature of the inter-relationships among toponymy, other cultural phenomena, and the physical environment."14 However, for many in western Wisconsi n, despite the exhortations of the lexicographer, coulee will probably mean in the words of Hamlin Garland, "... a little valley, scooped out by running water. At the bottom of every coulee is a little trout stream.,,15

END NOTES 1. The author wishes to acknowledge that funding was granted by the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse Institutional Studies and Research Committee. Students Jeffrey Gabrilska, Ro nald Jenkins, and Stephen Steiner assisted. Dr. Randall Detro of Francis T. Nicholls State College, Thibodauz, Louisiana provided helpful information on French usage as well as occurrence of the term in Louisiana. 2. West, Robert C., "The Term 'Bayou' in the United States: A Study in the Geography of Place Names", Annals vol. XLIV Number 1, March 1954 , Association of American Geographers, p. 63 "Generic terms dealing with physical features in the United States, such as brook, run, butte, and hollow, are generally the more meaningful parts of geographic names, for they are durable language forms, originally associated with definite culture groups." 3. Brown, Ralph H., Historical Geography of the United States, Harcou.rt, Brace and Company, 1948, Chapter5ixteen. While this chapter is not primarily intended to portray the early French it shows the routes of exploration and the development of the mining and forestry extractive industries subsequent to the fur trade in the transition to permanent settlement providing a good overview. 40

4. Mather, Cotton, et. al. , Uppe r Coulee Count ry, Tri nbe l le Press, 19 75. Th is region al st udy di vides the coul ee r egi on, no r t h an d sou th , at Trempealea u. 5. Fairbridge, Rhodes W., The Encyc loped i a of Ge omorphology, volume III, Reinhold Book Corpor ation, 1968, pp. 205 - 206 . Stamp, L. Dudl ey, ~ Glossary of Geograph i c Terms, Jo hn Wi ley and Sons , 1961, p. 133. 6. McDermott, John Fran cis, A Glossary of Mis sissipp i Vall ey Fren ch, 1763 - 1850, Washington University StUdies - New Seri es Lan guage and Literature , No. 12, 1941, p. 59 where coulee is de fi ned as a gully or ravi ne . Fr om Reed, William A., Louis i ana -F rench, Lou isi ana State University St udies, No.5, 19 31 , p. 166 wh ere cou l ee is cited as usually being us ed for a small stream th at may become dry in summe r. 7. Subsequent to the ori gi nal research a comp uter search was made f or the t erm in the data f ile used by Pr of essor Je rry Cul ver in compil i ng The At l as of Wiscons i n and no other uses in t he rest of Wisco nsin wer e found. 8. A copy of the l ist may be obtained from the aut hor by sendi ng a stamp ed self-addressed envelope to the UW- L Departme nt of Geo graph y. 9. Mansion, J. E., Ed., Heath's Standard French and En glish Dicti ona ry . D. C. Heath and Company, 1968 . A baissiere is a dep ression or dip where r ain collects. No present se of t he term ha s been f ound in the study region. 10. Ga rl and, Hamlin, Rose of Dutcher ' s Cooley, Harper &Br ot hers, New Yor k, 1922 . The book was orTgi nal ly pub lished in 1899, however, Gar land added a forward in the 192 2 Bor der Edition to ex plain t he term "coo ley" . 11. See "He irs Coolon 'Coulee Road ' lI, La Crosse Tribune, Decembe r 1, 1974.

12. Martin, Lawr ence, The Physical Geo graphy o~ Wisconsin, The Uni vers i ty of Wisconsin Press, 1965. Ch apter s III throug h VII may be r e-read here with their numerous and we ll kn own insi ght s t o the r egion. 13. Ke ating, Wi lliam H., Narrative of an Expedition to the Sou rce of St. Peter's River, Lake Winnepeek,-rake of t he Woods-Performed-rn the Ye ar 1823 , H. C. Cas ey & I. Lea, 1 8~p-. 246. He also us es coUle-e for alTfateral trench in the pr airie" in Mi nnesota nort hwest of t he study area, p. 362. 14. Zel i ns ky, Wilbur, "Some Problems i n t he Di stribution of Generic Terms i n the Place-Names of the No r t heastern Un ited States", Annals, Association of American Geographers , Vo l. XLV( 195 5). pp. 31 9-349. 15. Garland, Ham lin, Boy Life on the Prairi e, Fr edrick Un gar Publi shin g Co., 1959, p. 323-author ' s-notes .