Box 27, Folder 1: Geographical and Topographical Description of Wisconsin, 1844

39

Cass' Expedition

Governor Cass in 1819, one year after this country was annexed to the territory under his authority proposed to the Secretary at War, (John G. Calhoun) that an expedition be fitted out to explore it, which was accomplished the following year. The party consisted of Lewis Cass Governor of Michigan Territory; Dr. Alexander Wolfeott, Physician; Capt. D.B. Douglass, Civil and Military Engineer; Lieut A'neas Mackay, Commanding the soldiers; James D. Doty Esq. Secretary to the Expedition; Robert A Forsyth; Charles G. Trowbridge; Alexander R. Ghare; and Henry R. Schoolcraft, Mineralogist whose "narrative journal" published in 1821 is replete with valuable information relative to this country. From this work we learn that Wisconsin was even then but little more than the abode of a few Indian traders scattered here and there throughout the Territory, as at LaPointe, Fond-du-Lac- on the Bois Brule, The St. Croix-, Sandy Lake,- Leech Lake Milwaukee, and many other points. These ports were usually protected by a stockade enclosing perhaps

22

Wisconsin in 1820

a hundred feet square: that at Sandy Lake had [lastions?] at two of its angles pierced for musketry. "The pickets were of pitch pine thirteen feet above the ground, and a foot square and pinned together with sout plates of the same wood. These were three gates, which are shut whenever liquor was dealth out to the Indians. The stockade enclosed two rows of buildings containing the provision store, work shop, workhouse, rooms for the clerks, and accomodations for the men. On the west and north west angles of the fort were four acres of ground enclosed with pickets devoted to the culture of potatoes." This fort was first erected in 1794 by the N. West Teur Company.- The garrisons at Prairie du Chien and at the mouth of the St. Peters were first established and occupied in 1819-

At this time but little was known of the value of the Lead and Copper mines on the upper Mississippi- Only three places being known besides

41

Wisconsin in 1820

the Dubuque mines where lead could be obtained, and these were worked exclusively by the women of the Fox Indians, assisted perhaps by the Old men- the young men and warriors holding themselves above it. "They employ the hoe, shovel, pick axe, and crow bar in taking up the ore. These things are supplied by the traders, but no shafts are sunk, not even of the simplest kind, and the windlass and the bucket are unknown among them; They run drifts into the hill so far as they can conveniently go, without the use of gun powder, and if a trench caves in, it is abandoned. When a quantity of ore has been got out it is carried in buckets by the women to the Mississippi, where it is purchased by the traders at the rate of two dollars for a hundred and twenty pounds, payable in goods at Indian prices." The settlement at Green Bay is mentioned by Schoolcraft upon his approach down the Fox river as a country of exceeding beauty "checkered as it is with farm houses; fences, cultivated fields,

Wisconsin in 1820

the broad expanse of the river, the bannered masts of the vessels in the distant bay, and the warlike display of military barracks, camps, and parades. The scene burst suddenly into view and no combination of [circumstances] objects in the physiognomy of a country, could be more happily arranged, after so long a sojournment in the wilderness to recall at once to the imagination the most pleasing recollections of civilized life. The settlement now consists of sixty dwelling houses and give hundred inhabitants exclusive of the garrison. They are with few exceptions, French, who have intermarried with Indian women, and are said generally to be indolent, gay, intemperate, and illiterate. They are represented to have been subservient to the interests of the British, during the late war. This settlement is now the seat of Justice for Brown county in the Territory of Michigan, and the ordinary courts of law are established." Prairie du Chien, contained a similar population of about

113

Long's Expedit

five hundred, occupying about eighty buildings the principal part of which were of logs arranged in two streets, parallel with the river. On the 26th of August the party encamped at the mouth of the Milwaukee river where they found two American families and a village of Pottowatomies- it is the division line between the lands of the Menomonees and the Pottowatomies; the latter claim all south of it."

At the Portage between the Wisconsin and Fox rivers they found a good wagon road and a French man lives on the spot who keeps a number of horses and cattle for the transportation of baggage, for which twenty five cents per hundred weight is demanded."

In 1823 Major Long commanded a party on an expedition similar to that of Governor Cass that traversed the country from Chicago to Prairie du Chien where they found only about one hundred and fifty souls. From thence they went up the Mississippi