Wisconsin Magazine of History

r I Wisconsin Magazine of History Father Marquette Goes to Washington: The Marquette Statue Controversy E. DAVID CRONON Chief Buffalo and Other Wisconsin-related Art in the l^ational Captol JOHN O. HOLZHUETER The Prophet and the Mummyjums: Isaac Bullard and the Vermont Pilgrims of 1817 F. GERALD HAM French Colonial Attitudes and the Exploration ofjolliet and Marquette CORNELIUS J. JAENEN Harry Elmer Barnes JUSTUS D. DOENECKE Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. 56, No. 4 / Summer, 1973 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN JAMES MORTON SMITH, Director Officers E. DAVID CRONON, President GEORGE BANTA, JR., Honorary Vice-President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President E. E. HOMSTAD, Treasurer HOWARD W. MEAD, Second Vice-President JAMES MORTON SMITH, Secretary Board of Curators Ex Officio PATRICK J. LUCEY, Governor of the State CHARLES P. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State JOHN C. WEAVER, President of the University MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, President of the Women's Auxiliary Term Expires, 1972 E. DAVID CRONON ROBERT A. GEIIRKE BEN GUTHRIE FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA, S.J. Madison Ripon Lac du Flambeau Milwaukee SCOTT M. CUTLIP JOHN C. GEILFUSS MRS. R. L. HARTZELL J. WARD RECTOR Madison Milwaukee Grantsburg Milwaukee MRS. ROBERT E. FRIEND MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE ROBERT H. IRRMANN CLIFFORD D. SWANSON Hartland Milwaukee Beloit Stevens Point Term Expires, 1973 THOMAS H. BARLAND MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK I. OLSON DONALD C. SLICHTER Eau Claire Madison Wauwatosa Milwaukee E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES R. MCCALLUM F. HARWOOD ORBISON DR. LOUIS C. SMITH Black River Falls Hubertus Appleton Lancaster MRS. EDWARD C. JONES HOWARD W. MEAD NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN ROBERT S. ZICMAN Fort Atkinson Madison Madison Milwaukee Term Expires, 1974 ROGER E. AXTELL REED COLEMAN ROBERT B. L. MURPHY MiLO K. SWANTON Janesville Madison Madison Madison HORACE M. BENSTEAD PAUL E. HASSETT MRS. WM. H. L. SMYTHE CEDRIC A. VIC Racine Madison Milwaukee Rhinelander THOMAS M. CHEEKS WILLIAM HUFFMAN WILLIAM F. STARK CLARK WILKINSON Milwaukee Wisconsin Rapids Nashotah Baraboo Honorary Honorary Life Members EDWARD D. CARPENTER, Cassville MRS. ESTHER NELSON, Madison RUTH H. DAVIS, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. MARGARET HAFSTAD, Rockdale MONICA STAEDTLER, Madison PRESTON E. MCNALL, Clearwater, Florida BENTON H. WILCOX, Madison WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, New London, Connecticut PAUL VANDERBILT, Madison Fellows VERNON CARSTENSEN MERLE CURTI ALICE E. SMITH The Women's Auxiliary Officers MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, Racine, President MRS. DAVID S. FRANK, Madison, Vice-President MRS. JAMES S. VAUGHN, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. HUGH HIGHSMITH, Fort Atkinson, Treasurer MRS. GEORGE SWART, Fort Atkinson, Ex Officio VOLUME 56, NUMBER 4 / SUMMER, 1973 Wisconsin Magazine of History WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD, Editor WILLIAM C. MARTEN, Associate Editor JOHN O. HOLZHUETER, Editorial Assistant Father Marquette Goes to Washington: The Marquette Statue Controversy 267 E. DAVID CRONON Chief Buffalo and Other Wisconsin-related Art in the National Capitol 284 JOHN O. HOLZHUETER The Prophet and the Mummyjums: Isaac Bullard and the Vermont Pilgrims of 1817 290 F. GERALD HAM French Colonial Attitudes and the Exploration of Jolliet and Marquette 300 CORNELIUS J. JAENEN Harry Elmer Barnes 311 JUSTUS D. DOENECKE Communications 324 Book Reviews 325 Book Review Index 349 Accessions 350 Contributors 352 Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published Microfilms. 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan; quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, reprinted volumes available from Kraus Reprint Company, 81(1 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Distributed 16 East 46th Street, New York, New York. Communica to members as part of their dues (Annual membership, tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does $7.50, or $5 for those 65 or over or members of affiliated not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu societies; Family membership, $10.00, or $7 for those 65 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison and Stevens or over or members of affiliated societies; Contributing, $25; Point, Wis. Copyright © 1973 by the State Historical Business and Professional, $50; Sustaining, $100 or more Society of Wisconsin. Paid for in part by the Maria L. annually: Patron, S500 or more annuallyl. Single numbers, and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. $1.75. Microfilmed copies available through University Burrows Fund. Society's Iconographic Collections Once the object of abuse and controversy, Gaetano Trentanove's statue of Father Jacques Marquette now stands in timeless dignity in the Capitol in Washington. 266 FATHER MARQUETTE GOES TO WASHINGTON: The Marquette Statue Controversy By E. DAVID CRONON "TiURING MAY AND JUNE of 1973 Wis- the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the ^-^ consin celebrated one of the significant Arkansas River before turning back out of events in its history. Exactly three hundred concern for hostile Indians and the danger of years earlier, a party of seven Frenchmen, ac capture by the Spanish, having ascertained companied for a time by two Indian guides, beyond doubt that the Mississippi flowed into became the first Europeans to cross what the Gulf of Mexico instead of the Pacific as would become the state of Wisconsin, in the they had hoped. To save time on the difficult process discovering and exploring the upper return trip upriver, the party crossed over to Mississippi River. The expedition was led by Lake Michigan by way of the Illinois River Louis Jolliet, a restless twenty-seven-year-old, and the Des Plaines-Chicago portage, and Quebec-born fur trader and explorer, and thence to Green Bay, where Father Marquette Father Jacques Marquette, a dedicated thirty- spent the following year at the St. Francis six-year-old French Jesuit missionary. Using Mission at the site of the present city of De two frail birchbark canoes, the Jolliet- Pere. Although the Wisconsin portion of their Marquette party ascended the Fox River from trip was relatively uneventful and took less Green Bay to its headwaters near the present than a month, the entire journey of some 2,700 city of Portage, where they transferred to the miles over four months was extremely Wisconsin River, reaching the Mississippi on hazardous and exhausting, and undoubtedly June 17, 1673, just below the present city of contributed to Marquette's early death two Prairie du Chien. They then proceeded down years later after ministering to the Illinois Indians. Although Jolliet was the real leader of the expedition, Marquette was to achieve the NOTE: This article is a slightly revised version of a greater fame, no doubt because of the ro paper presented at the annual meeting of the State mantic interest inspired by his sacrificial Historical Society at Stevens Point on June 16, 1973, the day before the three hundredth anniversary of the labors as a Christian missionary among the discovery of the Mississippi River by the Jolliet- Indians, and probably also because his map Marquette expedition on June 17, 1673. The research and journal were the best surviving records of for this paper was done in connection with the His tory of Wisconsin Project of the State Historical the trip after Jolliet's more detailed account Society, specifically for my forthcoming Wisconsin was lost when his canoe capsized as he was in the Progressive Era, 1893-1915, which will con returning to Quebec in 1674. Whatever the stitute volume IV of the multivolume History of Wisconsin. reasons for this enduring interest in Father 267 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1973 the legislature gave serious consideration to the matter of placing a Wisconsin statue in the national Capitol. In January of that year Senator George C. Ginty, a Republican news paper editor from Chippewa Falls, introduced a bill proposing that the state honor Father Marquette by placing his statue in Wash ington. Ginty's motives were not clear. He may simply have reasoned that the intrepid and saintly Marquette was Wisconsin's strong est contender for the honor, for as he told the senate, "if ever an unselfish man walked the earth, it was the missionary who planted the cross on the shores of Lake Superior in the latter half of the sixteenth [sic] century."^ Or, as some observers pointed out, he may have hoped that this gesture would both please his numerous constituents of French Canadian Society's Iconographic Collections descent and attract broader Catholic support State Senator George Clay Ginty of Chippewa Falls for his as yet unfulfilled gubernatorial ambi who nominated Father Marquette for Statuary Hall. tions.^ Whatever his reasons, Ginty's proposal met Marquette, it led to another, posthumous, with widespread approval. The well-known journey by the Jesuit priest some two cen Milwaukee humorist and Democratic editor, turies later, this time from Wisconsin to George W. Peck, declared that the suggestion Washington, D.C. This later trip is of in merited bipartisan support. "There is no poli terest because in many respects it was fully tics in this scheme," he pointed out, "as Father as adventurous, difficult, and, as it turned Marquette belonged to neither political party. out, far more time-consuming than the orig On the contrary, he was a Christian."* Most inal expedition across Wisconsin in 1673. newspaper comment agreed that a statue of Marquette would be an appropriate symbol of T N 1864 Congress decided to turn the old

Load more