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hum FORT AT PRAIRIE DO CHIEN, 
 
 AND 
 
 Tay-cbo-pe rah-The Fonr Lake Gountrj. 
 
 / 
 
 By Prof. J. D. Butler, LL.D. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM VOL. X, WISCOxNSIN HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. 
 
 *- -.- *- 
 
iiilMlWiiTi''' ■ ' — 
 
 
 
 FRENCH FORTIFICATIONS NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE WIS- 
 CONSIN. "HOLD THE FORT!" 
 
 BY PROF. JAMES D. BUTLER, LL. D. 
 
 A prominent historian of Wisconsin thus writes: " There 
 was never within the boundaries of Crawford county a 
 French military post of any kind, while France held domin- 
 ion over this region. No traveler mentions any fortification 
 there No official French document has ever been discov- 
 ered giving any account of any fort there. Yet as early >xa 
 18-^0, a map was published by the United States on which is 
 delineaxed a famous fortification - huge walls with their 
 salient projections, all shown as if some mighty military 
 1 ^-jius had , lanned its construction.'" 
 
 Such is the language of a recent historian, who further 
 declares belief in any French fort near Prairie du Ch^n to 
 be "one of the mock pearls in Wisconsin history." Belief 
 in such a post is dear to me as adding something to the 
 length of our annals, and yet I would not hold to a delusion. 
 The real existence, however, of at least one French military 
 post, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, still seems to me 
 pretty well proved. 
 
 The point was one where a stronghold would naturally be 
 built It was the northern limit of the Illinois tribes, and a 
 starting point for raids against the Iroquois, who had estab- 
 lishments near Chicago.^ It was the starting point for all 
 expeditions,- either up. down or beyond the Mississippi. On 
 
 ~Hi8toryTcrawford county, Wisconsin, p. 329. edited by C W Butter- 
 fipld andapaper read beforethe Madison Literary Clubby Mr. Butterfleld. 
 S J. Clarke, the publisher of the History of Crawford county, di-claitns 
 any share or responsibility fo • the statements made by Mr. Butterfleld. 
 
 L. C. D. 
 
 « La Potherie, ii, p. 138 
 
IMMiiPliililiMMpPliiiM^^ 
 
 French Fortification8. " Hold thk Fort." 
 
 55 
 
 THE WIS- 
 
 38: "There 
 i county a 
 leld domin- 
 ortification 
 een discov- 
 
 as early us 
 on which is 
 
 with their 
 ty military 
 
 rho further 
 du Chien to 
 ,ry." Belief 
 bhing to the 
 o a delusion, 
 ich military 
 eems to me 
 
 naturally be 
 tribes, and a 
 o had estab- 
 point for all 
 isissippi. On 
 
 ly C. W. Butter- 
 Mr. Butterfleld. 
 »unty, di-claitns 
 Butterfleld. 
 L. C. D. 
 
 1 
 
 JeflFreys' map of 1770, a line is drawn from Prairie du Chien 
 to Omaha, and inscribed " French route to the Western In- 
 dians." 
 
 In 1721, in a report to the British King from the Governor 
 of Pennsylvania, it was mentioned as one of the three great 
 routes from Canada to the Mississippi,' and in subsequent 
 reports, it was remarked, that "since the peace of Aixla- 
 Chapelle, 1748, the French had greatly increased the number 
 of forts on the rivers which run into the Mississippi." ' 
 
 Concerning Prairie du Chien, Captain Carver, who was 
 there in 17(50, thus writes: 
 
 "This town is a groat mart, where tribes from the most 
 remote branches of the Mississippi annually assemble, bring- 
 ing with them their furs to dispose of to traders." 
 
 This traffic was even then no novelty. It had been going 
 on thei'e four score years before. As early as 1G80, La Salle 
 had purposed to send traders to that point.' 
 
 If, then, French forts were early built anywhere, one 
 might well be looked for at such an emporium as early rose 
 at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi. But in 
 our primitive period forts abounded. They were common 
 among Indians, even before the coming of the white men.* 
 
 La Salle on a march usually at night set a rude stockade 
 about his camp.' In 1679, having to wait a few days on the 
 St. Joseph for a party of his men, h;3 built a fort at the 
 mouth of the river." In 168-4, he built another fort near 
 Memphis, on a bluff, where he halted only six days, and 
 where he expected to make a still shorter sojourn.' Nor does 
 his custom of rearing a stronghold wherever he stopped, 
 appear to have been unusual among French pioneers. 
 
 Every trading-house was fortified so far as possible. 
 Cadot's, at the Sault, is called a fort, by Carver. The estab- 
 
 ' Colonial Records of New York, V, p. 621. 
 
 'Colonial History of New York, II, p. 608. 
 
 •Parkman, p. 262. 
 
 *LaPotherie, II. p. 96; Parkman's La Salle, p. 266; Bradbury, Travels. 114. 
 
 ' Parkman, 398. 
 
 •Idem, p. 149. 
 
 1 1dem, p. 277. 
 
 dJP 
 
^ 
 
 
 5(5 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 lishment of Solomon Juneau, at Milwaukee, bore the same 
 name. Witness a pioneer poem, which runs thus: 
 
 "Juneau's palace of logs waa a tttore and a fort, 
 Though aurroun led by neither a ditch nor a moat, 
 For often this lonely and primitive place, 
 Was 8ore!y beset by that blood-thirsty race 
 With whom •, uneau had mercantile dealings." 
 
 Still better may th . name fort have befitted the structure 
 which must have arisen for such an entrepot as Prairie du 
 Chien. 
 
 Marquette was a man of peace, but his mission-house was 
 palisaded.' The Jesuits, though non-combatant black 
 gowns, in jceneral fortified their missions. They also taught 
 the Indian how to improve his strongholds, by changing 
 circles to squares, aud adding flanking towers at the cor- 
 ners.' Thus improved aboriginal stockades were not a whit 
 inferior to the Fort, at Prairie du Chien, as shown on the 
 United States map of 1820. 
 
 The representation of the fort on that map, which has 
 been derided by our anti-fort investigator, is a square with 
 four smaller squares at its corners. This was the conren- 
 1 ional sign or printer's mark for every military work with- 
 
 ' out any reference t > its magnitude. 
 
 That there was r ally a French fort near the junction of 
 the Wisconsin with the Grand River, appears the more likely 
 when we consider the nature of such posts. What was it? 
 
 * Lewis and Clark, on Sept. 22, 1804, came to what they call a 
 French fort, almost due west of Prairie du Chien, and near 
 Council Bluffs. In their notice of it they say : "The estab- 
 lishment is sixty or seventy feet square, picketed in with 
 red cedar, with sentry-boxes at two of the angles. The 
 pickets are thirteen and one-half feet above the ground.* 
 Soon afterwards, Pike, going up the Mississippi from Prairie 
 du Chien, records that the fort at Sandy Lake was one hun- 
 dred feet square, with two bastions pierced for small arms 
 
 'Pavkman's LaSalie, p. 49. 
 
 'Ibid., pp. 63. 99, 238; Parkman's Jesuits, page 398. 
 ' Le « is & Clark's Travels, i, p. tOO; Gass' Journal, p. 42. 
 
French Fortifications. " Hold the Fort." 
 
 I the same 
 
 It, 
 
 e structure 
 Prairie du 
 
 i-house was 
 bant black 
 also taught 
 ' changing 
 at the cor- 
 I not a whit 
 wn on the 
 
 which has 
 square with 
 ihe conren- 
 
 work with- 
 
 j unction of 
 more Ukely 
 ^hat was it? 
 ; they call a 
 )n, and near 
 " The estab- 
 Bted in with 
 ingles. The 
 ;he ground.' 
 :rom Prairie 
 ras one hun- 
 small arms 
 
 — the pickets about one foot in diameter, and squared on 
 the outside.' 
 
 It was no long labor to build such a defence. In 1727, the 
 missionary, Father Ouignas, voyaging up tlie Mississippi, 
 passed Prairie du C.ien, and made an establishment on the 
 north shore of Lake Pepin. He wrote in his diary: "The 
 day after landing we put our axes t(f the wood. On the 
 fourth day following, the fort was entiv-ly finished." ' 
 
 On the thirteenth of March, 1G82, La Salle's men, near 
 the mouth of the Arkansas, " threw up a rude fort of felled 
 trees in less thar: an hour." ' 
 
 Lest it should be thought that Prairie du Chien is too far 
 west for us to expect to discover a Frendh fortification there, 
 let it be noted that before 1724, Fort Orleans had been built 
 Hundreds of miles up the Missouri, near the mouth of Grand 
 River.' 
 
 On the whole, every one familiar with the habits of French 
 pioneers in the wide West, will admib that many forts must 
 have been thrown up by them in emergencies, and then 
 have perished without their names ever being put on record. 
 " They had no poet, and they died." 
 
 Even in the absence of all evidence then, it would appear 
 a bold assertion that there was never any French military 
 post near the mouth of the Wisconsin, Unless " some official 
 French document can be discovered giving an account of 
 such work, or some traveler mentions it." 
 
 But is all evidence of a French fort at Prairie du Chien 
 lacking? By no means. 
 
 In the American State Papers regarding Public Lands ' 
 we read that on February 25th, 1818, Hon. George Robert- 
 son, from the Committee on Public Lands, reported to the 
 House of Representatives, that "in the year 1755 the Gov- 
 
 ' Pike's Travels, App. p, 38. 
 
 'Shea's Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, p. 172. 
 ' Parkman's La Salle, 278. 
 
 * Davis & Durrie's Hist. Missouri, pp. 11-12; Dr. John Mitchell's Contest 
 in America, p. 196. 
 ' Vol. iii, p. 841. 
 5— H. C. 
 
i: 
 
 r>H 
 
 Wisconsin Statk Histouhal Society. 
 
 eniment of Krance established a military post near the 
 uiouth of the W isoonsiu." 
 
 The report to Congress was based on information given 
 by a Govornmont agent who had visited I'rairic du Chien, 
 and gathered up testimony on the spot. Aeeortling to the 
 oldest inhabitants, some of whom liad residetl there well 
 nigh from the close of the Revolutionary war, it was oidy 
 during that contest that the French fort was burned. 
 
 It is argued by our sceptical nnnalist that this fort was an 
 ordinary log house. It seems to me more pro[)erly named a 
 fort. It was so named by almost everybody known to have 
 been acquainted with those who had seen it. Among its 
 stores were no less than three hundred and sixty bales of 
 fur, and as a rule every fur factory was fortified. It was 
 defended by a body of armed men, as forts are wont to be. 
 
 But, says our skeptic, it was built on the site of a pre-his- 
 toric fort, and the works of mountl-builders passed for those 
 of the French. Such a site was fitly preferred, and such 
 works became French when ust 1 as foundations by the 
 French, and incorporated into works of their own. Baptize 
 an old Jupiter, and he becomes Jew Peter straight-way. 
 
 Early tradition at Prairie du Chien reported a French fort 
 burned there. Skeptics concerning the existence of such a 
 fort hold that this tradition grew out of the burning of a 
 certain log house there. But there is no evidence that the 
 house ir. question was burned at all. Their only witness in 
 the matter simply says that certain bales of fur which had 
 been stored there were burned. The store-house was occu- 
 pied by friends of those who are supposed to have- set it on 
 fire. Such an incendiary supposition is unreasonable. Or 
 the log-house may have beea fortified, and so styled a fort. 
 
 J. Long, traveling in 17?S, north of Lake Superior, says: 
 " The house of Shaw, a trader on Lake Manontoye, might 
 very properly be styled a fort, being secured by high pick- 
 ets." ' 
 
 But evidence is at hand of French forts near Prairie du 
 Chien before 1755. 
 
t netir the 
 
 itidii given 
 du C'hien, 
 Un^ to the 
 thero well 
 it was only 
 rned. 
 
 fort was an 
 ly named a 
 wn to have 
 Among its 
 cty bales of 
 ed. It was 
 wont to be. 
 i a pre-his- 
 ed for those 
 1, and such 
 ons by the 
 n. Baptize 
 ;ht-way. 
 French fort 
 e of such a 
 irning of a 
 ice that the 
 f witness in 
 
 ■ which had 
 3 was occu- 
 .ve- set it on 
 on able. Or 
 yled a fort, 
 perior, says: 
 itoye, might 
 
 ■ high pick- 
 
 : Prairie du 
 
 FKKNCH FoRTIKlrATlONS. " IIoi,!) THK FoUT." 
 
 6U 
 
 Karly in the eighteenth century, the Indians ot tlic Nortli- 
 West, as the Canadian Colonial {.'onipany were inf<iriried, 
 were endeavoring to open eomnierco with the Pinglish on 
 the lower Mississippi. Tiuia tiie directors of this Company 
 were led in 1701 to dispatch agents to Callicres, the (Cana- 
 dian (lovernor, in Montreal, with a plan to thwart this trade. 
 This plan consisted in establishing posts attlie moiitii of the 
 ( )hio. on the Wisconsin, and further up the Mississippi 
 among tl e Siou.v. It was argued, that if the Indians found 
 in these places something to satisfy their needs, and the 
 French whom they loved, they would abandon tlu^ thought 
 of going among strangers. The necessity and usefulness of 
 such establishments were clear to the Governor, and though 
 h(? felt forbidden by a royal order to licen. o their organiza- 
 tion, yet he declared some such measure to be urgently de- 
 manded, and the authorities in Franco were so informed.' 
 
 They may have followed his advice. But there is reason 
 to think that even before the opening of the eighteenth 
 century, forts had been erec^ted by the French, near Prairie, 
 du Chien. 
 
 Regarding an earlier post there, one of my authorities is 
 La Potherie, who, before tlie year 1 ,"02, had completed a 
 work in four volumes concerning New France. The portion 
 concerning Canada he wrote first, and that from personal ' 
 knowledge, and desired to penetrate six hundred leagues . 
 into the interior. " Lacking health and leisure for such an 
 enterprise, he made the most careful inquiries," as the mis- 
 sionary Bobe, his contemporary, testifies " from the Indian 
 chiefs who came from all quarters to Montreal to dispose of 
 their furs, and was informed about whatever he relates with 
 the utmost accuracy and thoroughness, by Nicholas Perrot,,. 
 who, for more than forty years before, had been the princi- 
 pal actor in all that had taken place among the aboriginea 
 of the Far West'. 
 
 The narrative of La Potherie is that [in 1085? ] the Mi- 
 
 ' Margry, V„ pp. 175, 368. 
 ' La Potherie, i v., p. 268. 
 ^Tailhan, p. 303. 
 
90 
 
 WiscoMsiN State Histokical Society, 
 
 ^mis, whose villages lay a few leagues below the mouth Qf 
 the Wisconsiu, came, forty strong, to Green Bay where 
 Nicholas Perrot bfvi arrived as Governor of the North-West. 
 *" They begged him to set up his establishment on the Mis- 
 
 • slssippi, and nettr the "Wisconsin, in order that they could 
 sell ilieir furs there'. 
 For gaining his consent they brought him presents, a 
 
 > beautiful specimen of lead from their region, — and each of 
 
 -the forty gave him four beaver skins'. 
 
 The Miamis had undertaken this embassy because they 
 had previously been forced to sell peltry cheap, and pay 
 dear for French goods to the Pottawatomies, who had 
 hitherto been their middle men. The result was that Perrot 
 •agreed to establish himself — within twenty days — .iust 
 where they dessired him — a little below the Wisconsin.' 
 In accordance with this promise, "the establishment of Per- 
 rot was made below the Wisconsin, ir situation very 
 strong against the assaults of neighbori*.„ tribes."" 
 
 The Tact that the establishment of Perrot was "fixed in a 
 -situation that was very strong against the assaults of neigh- 
 tboring tribes," indicates that it stood in a dangei'ous place, 
 and that, therefore, it must have been fortified. When we 
 expect a burglar, we bar the door. 
 
 Ai this post, six sub-tribes of the Miamis gathered when 
 the ice in the rivers would bear them, and made a treaty 
 "with Perrot. That officer was soon called north near the 
 Chippewa River, and played the part of grand pacificator 
 between the Sioux and more southern tribes. He returned 
 to his southern establishment, gave orders to other tribes 
 who were waiting for him there, and he also discovered and 
 tested the lead mine, twenty leagues below which for ages 
 ^fter was called by his name." 
 
 » Vol. 11, p. 251. 
 
 •'LaPotherie. ii, 260. 
 
 'Oa leur promit de s'etablir dans vingt jourj au dessous de la rivie.^ 
 ^I'Ouiskoache. 
 
 *L'etabli8i3ement de Perrot 8v3 fit au dessous d'Ouiskonche, dans une situ- 
 ation fort avanteuss contre les insults des nations voisines.— La Potherie 
 ii, p. 200. 
 
 »La Pctherie, ii, p. 270. * 
 
 utiAaiMMaiMiMMjiMii 
 
 EiiM 
 
JCIETY, 
 
 >w the mouth pf 
 reen Bay where 
 : the North-West. 
 lent on the Mis- 
 that they could 
 
 him presents, a 
 m, — and each of 
 
 jsy because they 
 cheap, and pay 
 toraies, who had 
 It was that Perrot 
 enty days — just 
 the Wisconsin.' 
 bUshraent of Per- 
 situation very 
 , tribes.'" 
 3t was "fixed in a 
 assaults of neigh- 
 dangerous place, 
 ■tified. When we 
 
 is gathered when 
 ,nd made a treaty 
 3d north near the 
 grand pacificator 
 bes. He returned 
 rs to other tribes 
 Iso discovered and 
 V7 which for ages 
 
 a dessous de la rivier > 
 
 ikonche, dans une situ- 
 voisines. — La Potherie 
 
 French Fortifications. " Hold the Fort." 
 
 or 
 
 Again, the mouth of the Wisconsin was the point where 
 he agreed to meet different tribes in the month when a 
 truce he had^made between them would expire. This place 
 was his strategic base of operations, launching thfe northern 
 tribes against the southern Iroquois. 
 
 It woi''d not be strange if no further notice should occur in 
 Perrot's career of his post at the mouth of the Wisconsin ; 
 for that officer, soon after the council, was transferred to a 
 post on the Marameg, on the east of Lake Michigan,' be- 
 tween the Black and Grand Ei'.'ers. 
 
 It so happens that Perrot's post on the Wisconsin, in the> 
 narrative of La Potherie, is called " establishment," and not 
 fort. Yet it was no doubt fortified, not only as all trading 
 factories were wont to be, but more strongly than some- 
 others, being ot special military as well as commercial import- 
 ance. Moreover, the word *• establishment" as used by La 
 Potherie to describe Perrot's Wisconsin post, is explained by 
 Perrot's French editor, Tailhan, to mean fort. Concerning 
 Perrot's return from the land of the Sioux to the mouth of the 
 Wisconsin, Tailhan says, that returning "from his old fort he- 
 regained the fort which he had recently erected." " The old 
 fort of Perrot, and even the post on Starved Rock --the 
 Illinois Gibraltar— are each also called by La Potherie an 
 "establishment." The phrases already quoted from La 
 Potherie, that the establishment of Perrot " was in a very 
 advantageous situation as against the attacks of neighbor- 
 ing tribes," is also a pr6of that it was a fortified post. 
 
 The early existence of 9, fort near the mouth of the Wis- 
 consin, is further attested by early maps. At that point we 
 read the words Fort St. Nicholas inscribed on the map pre- 
 pared in 1G88 by J. B. Franquelin for pVcentation to the 
 French King. This work, made in Quebec by the King's 
 hydrographer, was certified by the contemporary Canadian 
 Governor as " very correct," and is pronounced by Parkman 
 the most remarkable of all the early maps of the interior of 
 
 ' Perrot, 276; Tailhan, 328. 
 
 ■' De Son ancien fort Perrot regagna le fort, qu' il avalt recemment t'levc'. 
 See Perrot, p. 328. 
 
 n 
 
-62 
 
 ■Wisconsin State Histokical Souety, 
 
 North America. ' "Why should we reject its testimony,— es- 
 
 'The title of the map ia: Carte de VAmerujue Sej)tentrionale dreaaeepar 
 J. B, Franqndin dans 1088j)ottr Hre presentee a Louis XIV. 
 
 pecially after observing it to be in keeping with the history 
 of La Potherie, which was indubitably based on conversa- 
 tions with Perrot himself ? What name would Perrot have 
 been more likely to bestow on his fort than that of his pat- 
 ron saint, which wafi Nicholas? 
 
 No map-meker was ever more eminent than the French- 
 man D'Anville (1697-1782.) He is credited by the Encyclo- 
 pcedia Sr/^anwica "with a complete geographical reform — 
 banishing the custom of copying blindly from preceding 
 maps, and never fixing a single position without a careful 
 examination of all authorities. By this process he detected 
 many serious errors in the works of his most celebrated 
 predecessors, while his own accuracy was soon attested by 
 travelers and mariners who had taken his works as their 
 guide. His principles also led him to another innovation, 
 which was that of omitting every name for which there 
 existed no suificient authority. Vast spaces which had 
 before been covered with cities, were thus suddenly reduced 
 to a perfect blank, — but it was speedily perceived that this 
 was the only accurate course." • 
 
 Reading these words, and a still higher eulogy of D'An^ 
 ■ville in Gibbon, I was eager to inspect his large map of our 
 Northwest, published in November, 1755. On looking at 
 the mouth of tL'^ Wisconsin, as there delineated, I read 
 words which I cannot but translate Old French Fort of St. 
 Nicholas — " Ancien Fort Francais de S. Nicholas."* 
 
 In 1755, M. Bellin published at Paris *' Remarks on a map 
 of North America, between the 2Sth and the 72nd degrees of 
 latitude, and a Geographical Description of those liegions."' 
 One of his remarks is in these words: "Nicholas Perrot 
 built a fort named St. Nicholas at the mouth of the Wiscon- 
 
 ^ Jieviarques sill a carte del Amerique Septentrionale comprise entre 
 le 28€ et le 72e de >'■ de Latitude, avec une Description Oeographique de 
 ces parties. 4to . aria, 1755, pp. 131. Didot. This map is in the Library of 
 Harvard University. 
 
 *li>Tiiiii- 'itir 
 
rv. 
 
 timony, — es- 
 
 >ialc dreaaee jmr 
 
 7. 
 
 h the history 
 on conversa- 
 i Perrot have 
 a,t of his pat- 
 
 i the French- 
 I/he Encyclo- 
 cal reform — 
 in preceding 
 out a careful 
 s he detected 
 3t celebrated 
 attested by 
 'orks as their 
 • innovation, 
 which there 
 3 which had 
 [only reduced 
 ved that this 
 
 gy of D'An- 
 3 map of our 
 n looking at 
 leated, I read 
 h Fort of St. 
 )las."- 
 
 ^ks on a map 
 id degrees of 
 7se Regions."* 
 jholas Perrot 
 f the Wiscon- 
 
 ! comprise entre 
 Oeographique de 
 in the Library of 
 
 French Fortifications. " Hold the Fort." 
 
 03 
 
 sin," Two years later at that point the Amsterdam Atlas 
 of Covens and Mortier shows the words Ancien Fort.' 
 
 In addition to what has been adduced from La Potherie and 
 Franquelin, the testimony of a noted English map-maker 
 should be considered. In 17G2, a map entitled "Canada and 
 the northern part of Louisiana, by Thomas Jeffreys, geo- 
 grapher to his Majesty" [George III.] was published. On 
 this map, at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Missis- 
 sippi, we read these words: "Fort St. Nicholas destroyed." 
 Again, in the Geography published by Bankes in London 
 about a century ago, a folio of 993 pages, in a map opposite 
 page 464, 1 find at the mouth of the Wisconsin the words 
 " Fort St. Nicolas." There is i.ever much smoke without 
 fire, and it is hard to hold the witness of so many a map 
 to be all lies made out of whole cloth. 
 
 The considerations which have now been presented may 
 be strongly re enforced by local traditions and ruins, but they 
 seem to need no confirmation. If they do not enable us to 
 hold fast our faith in any French fort whatever near Prairie 
 du Chien, we must, if consistent, become as skeptical regard- 
 ing most of our early history as agnostics are regarding re- 
 ligion. Isay, then — "Hold the fort! Why not hold the 
 fort?"^ • 
 
 'Ms. letter of Judge C. C. Baldwin, of the Western Res.rve Historical 
 Society. 
 
 ' Thus good historical authorities point out the establishment uf Perrot's 
 Fort St. Nicholas, in 1685, just above the mouth of the Wisconsin, accord- 
 ing to Franquelin and D'Arville, or just below, according to La Potherie. 
 It had, very liltely, but a brief existence. Another fort was established 
 in 1755, at what is called the Lower Town of Prairie .du Chien, the par- 
 ticular locality of which is designated in volume ninth of the Wis. Hist. 
 Colls., pp. 286-91. It may be added, that Dr. Neill, one of the very ablest 
 historical investigators in the North- West, locates Perrot's establishment of 
 1((85, "at Prairie du Chien"— Hist. Mimiesota, fourth revised edition, 1882, 
 p. 799. L. C. D. 
 
 MHHi 
 
TAY-CIIO-PE-RAH-TIIE FOUR LAKE COUNTRV-FIRST WHITE 
 FOOT-PRINTS THERE. 
 
 By Prop. James D. BUTLER, L. L. D. 
 
 The first mection of the name Tay-cho-pe-rah in print 
 which I have been able to discover, dates from 1837. In 
 May of that year, the English traveler, Featherstonhaugh, 
 was shown in Mineral Point, a plan of seven paper cities 
 situated, in his own words, " near Ty-cho-be-rah " [he omits 
 the letter a before y.] " or the Four Lakes." The conjunc- 
 tion or is ambiguous. It may imply either that Four Lakes 
 is a translation of the word Tay-cho-pe-rah, or that is an- 
 other name of a different signification. It happens to be in 
 my power to remove this ambiguity. 
 
 I was informed both that Tay-cho-pe-rah was the collec- 
 tive Indian name for the Four Lakes, and that the name 
 itself also signifies Four Lakes, by Gov. Doty in person, and 
 he was on their shores earlier than any other pioneer of our 
 race save one or two. 
 
 But was not Gov. Doty mistaken? Several of our oldest 
 settlers and explorers, notably Messrs. Moses M. Strong, 
 Darwin Clark, and G. P. Delaplaine, as well as Jefferson 
 Davis, never heard the name Tay-cho-pe-rah; and when a 
 witness testified that he saw an Irishman steal a pig", Paddy 
 thought it a good defence to produce two witnesses ready to 
 testify that they did not see him steal the pig. 
 
 The statement of Governor Doty, however, tallies with 
 the independent testimony of William Deviese, and of Mor- 
 gan L. Martin in a recent letter, in which it is also added 
 that the name Tay-cho-pe-rah is a Winnebago word. It is 
 also in keeping with the memory of Simeon Mills, that at 
 the time of his arrival in Madison the region was called by 
 natives Tay-shope. No further witness was needed, and 
 yet I was eager for more — at least, for ascertaining what 
 
 i iiiBirt Ii t i i ii iW r iUi i fn mrt ii 
 
i -'i 
 
 ~n 
 
 ST WHITE 
 
 h in print 
 
 1837. In 
 
 tonhaugh, 
 
 iper cities 
 
 [he omits 
 
 conjunc- 
 
 Dur Lakes 
 
 lat 'is an- 
 
 is to be in 
 
 he collec- 
 
 the name 
 
 erson, and 
 
 leer of our 
 
 our oldest 
 M. Strong, 
 Jefferson 
 id when a 
 )ig-, Paddy 
 !3 ready to 
 
 lilies with 
 id of Mor- 
 ,lso added 
 ord. It is 
 lis, that at 
 called by 
 eded, and 
 tiing what 
 
 
 Tay-Co-Pe-Rah — The Four Lake Country. 
 
 65 
 
 pari of the word Tay-cho-pe-rah signifies lake, and what part 
 four. With this view I wrote half a dozen letters, and looked 
 through more volumes m vain ; but have at last found what 
 I sought in Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes. In 
 that work, the Winnebago stands number thirty-three iu a 
 synoptical table of leading words in some three score abori- 
 ginal tongues; and the Winnebago name for lake is tah- 
 hah,' and the name for four is tshopiwi. These elements 
 readily combine in Tay-cho-pe-rah. 
 
 Gallatin's book was written half a century ago, and his 
 authority was a Winnebago vocabulary in the Washington 
 War Office, which had been sent thither by an Indian agent 
 named Nicholas Boilvin.' We must secure a complete copy 
 of that vocabulary, if extant, which has never been pub- 
 lished. Printed in our Historical Collections, it will 
 prove a monument more lasting than brass or marble, of the 
 race who here preceded us. It will also be more significant. 
 Language, a bond lighter than air, is yet stronger than iron 
 to draw the earliest ages into acquaintance and communion 
 with the latest. 
 
 Next to indifference to aboriginal language, I now regret 
 my neglect of their legends, but have saved one of them. 
 It is an odd Winnebago myth, told by one of the tribe in 
 1885, which had its local habitation on Fourth Lake. Many 
 centuries ago two Winnebagoes, near the ford of the Catfish, 
 noticed the track of a coon which they followed. It led 
 them to the cliff, for many years called McBride's Point, 
 and now known as Maple Bluff. It led them to a hollow 
 tree on that promontory. In the tree they discovered a cat- 
 fish which they had caught. One of the Indians, moved by 
 some superstitious scruple, refused to e&,t the fish; but the 
 
 » p. 834. 
 
 ^ Boilvin became Indian agent at Prairie du Chien before 1814, and contin- 
 ued 80 until his death in 1834. Hist. Coll. II., 133; III., 273; IX., 386. We 
 owe his list of Winnebago words to Humboldt, who urged the importance 
 of such collections in a letter to Gallatin. Oallatin induced the Secretary 
 of War to order Indian agents to send such vocabularies to Washington. 
 Inquiries at Washington thus far fail to discover this precious vocabularjr 
 of Boilvin. 
 
 I 
 
 'If 
 
 m 
 
 mmmmm 
 
 mmtm 
 
 mm 
 
 mmmtmmmr- 
 
«6 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 other, being very hungry, made a hearty meal on his cap- 
 ture,— indeed, devoured it altogether. But his appetite was 
 no sooner satisfied than he became fearfully thirsty. He 
 betook himself to the springs; but the more he drank the 
 more thirsty he grew. His agony became so intense that 
 in desperation he waded into Fourth Lake. Then behold a 
 new wonder! As soon as the water rose above his middle 
 his thirst ceased, but returned the moment he ventured 
 where the lake was more shallow. The truth was he had 
 become a fishified man,— . nd was never known to draw 
 near the shore again. Strange noises, however, heard on 
 the bluif , were for ages regarded by the Red Men as made 
 by their fishified brother — at mid-night beating his war 
 drum in the deep water off Maple Bluff. The last of these 
 nocturnal manifestations was coincident with the first settle- 
 ment of whites in the Maple Grove. 
 
 How early the aboriginal name had been translated into 
 Four Lakes by our pioneers, I can not ascertain. In 1817, 
 the name " Four Lakes" was already in use. In that year, 
 Maj. S. H. Long, in the midst of a voyage up the Mississippi, 
 in a six-oared skiff, to the Falls of St. Anthony, writes, in a 
 volume first published in 1800: " Rock river in high water 
 is navigable about three hundred miles to what are called 
 the Four Lakes." The name must then be older than 1817, 
 albeit it is not set down on Melish's large map, five feet by 
 three, of the year before. It is not unlikely that the word 
 Four Lakes will turn out to be a translation of the old 
 French name. Rock River certainly is, appearing on our 
 old maps (1750) as Riviere de la Roche. Rock river was 
 called by the Algonquins Sin-sepe, and by the Winnebagoes 
 We-ro-sha-na-gra. Both these Indian terms have the same 
 meaning with the English name. As the whites adopted 
 an aboriginal name for the river, it is not unlikely that they 
 obtained from the same source their collective name for the 
 group of lakes on its head waters. 
 
 Althouj^h the name Four Lakes was mentioned by Long 
 in 1817, it may not have been much used. In the minute 
 account of his march in 18.J3, in a direct line from Chicago 
 to Prairie du Chien, striking Rock River at the mouth of 
 
 ■rmtt* 
 
his cap- 
 fctite was 
 rsty. He 
 Irank the 
 ense that 
 
 behold a 
 is middle 
 
 ventured 
 ,s he had 
 
 to draw 
 heard on 
 
 as made 
 
 his war 
 t of these 
 irst settle- 
 
 lated into 
 In 1817, 
 that year, 
 [ississippi, 
 rites, in a 
 igh water 
 are called 
 than 1817, 
 ^e feet by 
 the word 
 of the old 
 ng on our 
 river was 
 nnebagoes 
 3 the same 
 ;s adopted 
 f that they 
 mo for the 
 
 I by Long 
 he minute 
 m Chicago 
 e mouth of 
 
 
 Tay-Cho-Fe-Rah — The Four Lake Country. . C7 
 
 the Cottonwood or Kishwaukee, Long says nothing about 
 the Four Lakes.' Nor is the name mentioned by Morse, 
 father of the telegraphic inventor, who in 18^0 was at Prai- 
 rie du Chien, and there heard from Law, an Indian trader, 
 that the Rock River country abounded in small lakes, one 
 of them called Koshkonong. 
 
 No one of the names by which we now designate the 
 Four Lakes can be traced back any further than 184!). In 
 that year Frank Hudson, a surveyor, suggested the names 
 Mendota and Monona, the former being said to signify 
 great, and the latter beautiful. Ihese names appeared so 
 proper that they soon came into common use. About six 
 years later, Waubesa meaning stran, and Kegonsa meaning 
 ./js/t, were proposed by Lyman C. Draper. In 1855, on Feb- 
 ruary nth, a bill passed the Legislature, legalizing all these 
 Four Lake names. 
 
 It is pleasant to know that the meanings assigned to the 
 present names of the Four Lakes, rest, in part at least, on 
 good authority. Mendota really signifies Great Lake in Da- 
 kota, a tongue of the same family with Winnebago. In the 
 excellent Dakota dictionary by the Missionary Riggs, mde is 
 the word for lake, and ota tor great. The primitive mean- 
 ing of mde is probably water, for the two elements when 
 combined often mean a confluence. Thus the meeting of 
 the St. Peter's river with the Mississippi, was called Men ■ 
 dota by the Dakotas. 
 
 The word Monona I have sought in a good many Indian 
 vocabularies without success, yet I still trust Mr. Hudson 
 had reason to say that its import is beautiful. No word 
 whatever for beautiful was set down in the list of words 
 which the Government agent among the Winnebagoes drew 
 up by order of the War Department.' 
 
 In Chippewa, Wabeseor Waubesie is the name of a swan, 
 and Kigonsee, for fish in general Dr. Draper's authority is 
 
 ' Long's Travels, i, p. 184. 
 
 '' The best Winnebago pcholar known to me, says that Monona in that 
 tongue means lost, and then as things are so often lost through stealing, its 
 chief meaning was stolen. 
 
 
 "j ' j» '" j|i ' aBWm;w i 
 
68 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 the Miscellanies of Col. De Peyster,' who was the British 
 officer in command at Mackinaw in 1774 and five years after. 
 This work was published anonymously, but the author wrote 
 his name in a copy which he presented to Lady Dungannon, 
 and which has been for more than thirty years treasured by 
 Dr. Draper. One other copy of this work is known to be ex- 
 tant in America, and one abroad. 
 
 The United States survey of the Four Lakes was not exe- 
 cuted till 1830. The officer who performed this work, Cap- 
 tain Cram, of the Engineers, speaks of them as then well 
 known by the numbers of one, two, three and four. The 
 official figures respecting Fourth Lake, are: Length, six 
 miles, breadth four, area fifteen and sixty-five one-hun- 
 dredths miles, circumference nineteen miles and one-fourth. 
 
 Five years before this date, the Government land survey 
 took place, and the surveyor marked the lakes on his plot, 
 " First, Second, Third and Fourth," as if their names were 
 then, in 1834, as well established as that of Rock river itself. 
 On Chandler's map, however, which was made in Galena, 
 only five years earlier, in 1829, th? lakes have no numbers, 
 although there are seveial inscriptions about them, as " Fine 
 farming land around these lakes," " Canoe portage two hun- 
 dred yards " " Winnebago village," etc. 
 
 No record has met my eye as to why the numeration of 
 the Four Lakes began from the south rather than from- the 
 north. Seeking for the reason may be thought as vain a 
 search as that for the difference between tweedledum and 
 tweedledee. Yet that reason seems to me clear. Explora- 
 tion has usually been made by ascending rivers froYn their 
 mouths and their peculiarities, if recurring in a series, are 
 naturally classed in the order of discovery. Thus, on the 
 Nile, the cataracts, as you go up that river, are numbered 
 before you reach Khartoum from first to sixth. Accord- 
 ingly, I am inclined to think the first English-speaking pio- 
 neers who came upon the Four Lakes, were acquainted with 
 the custom of numbering up stream, and followed it, no 
 matter from what quarter they had, in fact, approached 
 
 ■ 
 
 • Vol. 1, p. 274. 
 
mmmmmmm' 
 
 Tay-Cho-Pe-Rah — The Four Lake Colntky, 
 
 GO 
 
 e British 
 ars after, 
 lor wrote 
 ngannon, 
 iRured by 
 . to be ex- 
 
 1 not exe- 
 ork, Cap- 
 ;hen well 
 )ur. The 
 ngth, six 
 
 one-hun- 
 le-fourth. 
 id survey 
 I his plot, 
 nies were 
 ver itself, 
 n Galena, 
 numbers, 
 , as " Fine 
 
 two hun- 
 
 3ration of 
 
 from- the 
 
 as vain a 
 
 edum and 
 
 Explora- 
 
 roYn their 
 
 series, are 
 
 18, on the 
 
 numbered 
 
 Accord- 
 
 aking pio- 
 
 inted with 
 
 ved it, no 
 
 pproached 
 
 ' 
 
 those waters. In 1828, a treaty was concluded with tlie Win- 
 nebagoes, in which the water now known as Fourth Lake is 
 mentioned. It is called, however, " the most northern of the 
 four lakes," as if it was not yet known by its number. 
 
 It is a pity that our pioneers designated the Four Lakes 
 by numbers. If they had not, we should now know their 
 original Indian names, and the meaning of those names. 
 Dead Lake was not numbered, and so J. A. Noonan, a land- 
 hunter here in isai, heard its name as Wiufe a, and ascer- 
 tained that Wingra means duck.' We may fairly conclude 
 that but for usurping numbers Mr. Noonan would have 
 heard the aboriginal appellations of all the Four Lakes, and 
 would have transmitted them, as he did Wingra, to the art 
 preservative of all arts. 
 
 The birth-year of Madison is commonly considered to have 
 been 1837; but fully five years earlier, there was at least one 
 house built here, and that by a French builder. In 1832, on 
 the 15th of October, two deserters from Fort Winnebago 
 were arrested near what we call Johnson street, at the trad- 
 ing-house of a Frenchman, Oliver Armel. 
 
 Armel's christian name is printed "Louis" in the books; 
 but I write it Oliver on the authority of Simeon Mills. His 
 testimony is more credible than any book, for he was the 
 justice to whom Armel afterwards came for marriage, and 
 he heard him called Oliver for years.' 
 
 Armel was in the Four Lake country at least as early as 
 1829. In August of that year, in passing Third Lake, he 
 
 'TTis. Hist. Colls., vii, p. 410. 
 
 " In Dr. Chapman's sketch, Wis. Hist. Colls., iv. 347, the name Louis 
 Armel is given, followed by Durrie's, and Park's, Histories of Madison. 
 In the treaty at Prairie du Chien, in 1829, thirty yearc before Dr. Chapman 
 wrote, we find the orthography "Oliver Armell," whose two children, 
 Catharine and Oliver, each received a section of land from the Winneba- 
 jtoes — evidently because their mother was of that tribe. At the treaty 
 with the Pottawotamies at Chicago, in Sept 1883, a claim of $300 was 
 allowed to" Oliver Emmell." De La Ronde, Wis. Hist. Co««., VIII, 360, 
 writes "Oliver Arimell;"aBd Noonan, in same volume, 410, has it "Ar- 
 mell." The Illustrated History of Dane County, gives the name as " Oli- 
 ver Emell," pp. 867, 869, 40?. 
 
70 
 
 Wisconsin State Histoimcal Socikty. 
 
 saw a horse that had l>eon stolon hy Indians two weeks ho- 
 fore, from Major Deviese at his Diggings in Exeter. On his 
 way to tlie place where he then lived, which was near Beloit, 
 lie gave the Major such information as enahled him lo re- 
 cover his horse. He had come from Fort Winnebago to in- 
 form the Indians of a council to he held at that Fort on the 
 twelfth of August. 
 
 In 18;}() Armel was still a resident on the site of IVIadison, 
 and joined John I)e La Ronde who had come from Portage 
 to buy deer skins, and seven other Frenchmen in celebrating 
 the Fourth of July.' Independence Day, then, was here first 
 commemorated by eight foreigners. The next year Armel 
 was living on the east shore of First Lake. 
 
 The written story of Armel as established within the lim- 
 its of Madison, we owe to Dr. Chapman." He seems to have 
 derived it from James Halpin, one of the soldiers who ar- 
 rested the deserters, and who was years afterwards an 
 employe in the Capitol. 
 
 The soldiers had ran away from the Fort in order to buy 
 rum, and, as their post was forty miles distant, could hardly 
 have known about Armel's saloon, had it not been an estab- 
 lishment of some permanence. Another fact points the 
 same way. Five hundred Indians had resorted to the same 
 point with the thirsty soldiers, and that for the same pur- 
 pose. 
 
 In some cities che first thing built has been a temple, or 
 altar, or palace, or hospital, or fort; but our first building 
 was a grog-shop — a humiliating confession — albeit a thou- 
 sand places must make the same. One is reminded of Dar- 
 winians tracing man up, or down, to the monkey. 
 
 An American cent of 1798, and several Spanish silver 
 coins, picked up in 1880 in Sorenson's garden, may have been 
 lost by tha intoxicated soldiers, and possibly mark the very 
 spot where Armel had fixed his market with the abori- 
 gines.' 
 
 ^Wis. Hist Colls., VII., 860, 
 
 »Ibid, iv., p. 347. 
 
 ' Madison State Journal, April 36, 1880. 
 
Tay-Cho-Pk-Ram — TifR Foi'U Lake Country. 
 
 71 
 
 veeks bo- 
 p. On his 
 ear Boloit, 
 im to re- 
 ago to in- 
 rt on tho 
 
 IVIadison, 
 1 Portage 
 ilebrating 
 
 hero first 
 jar Armel 
 
 n the lim- 
 ns to have 
 1 who ar- 
 •wards an 
 
 ier to buy 
 aid hardly 
 I an estab- 
 »oints the 
 > the same 
 jame pur- 
 temple, or 
 b building 
 eit a thou- 
 ed of Dar- 
 nell silver 
 have been 
 c the very 
 the abori- 
 
 
 It is noteworthy that our earliest knowUulgo of tlie Madi- 
 sonian locality is connected with a military estnblishmmit. 
 Capt. Low nud the privates who tliere seized the run-aways, 
 came from a United States post. 
 
 Tho relation of the army to the progress of settlement has 
 not been appreciated. In ISS.'l, when the Northern Pacific 
 was opened, army officers in the wide West bitterly com- 
 plained to me that everybody was extolled to the skies ex- 
 cept the military. 
 
 " Yet," said Gen. Morrow, chief marshal at Portland, "tho 
 army downward from Capts. Lewis and Clark, in 1804, ex- 
 plored and conquered the whole country from the Alleghan- 
 ies to the Pacific. The army has surveyed routes, constructed 
 military roads, protected railroad engineers and workmen, 
 given them medicines, surgeons, refuge in forts; in every 
 way it has been an entering wedge, — sword and shield to 
 civilians. Its emblem is St. George slaying the dragon." 
 
 A similar boast might be made by military men regarding 
 the founding of Wisconsin. Government forts heralded its 
 birth, and cradled its infancy. In 1810, forts were establish- 
 ed at Chicago and Prairie du Chien, the next year at Green 
 Bay, in 1819 at Rock Island, in 1832 ner.r St. Paul, and, in 
 1828, at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. 
 Thus strong-holds and soldiers, north, south, east and west, 
 were pillars of cloud by day and of fire by night, to guide, 
 cheer, arid save pioneers into the terra incognita of Wis- 
 consin. 
 
 The frontier services of the army have been undervalued; 
 but the fault may lie with frontier officers. Had half those 
 gentlemen been as careful to write out their experiences as 
 Lewis and Clark were, even when drenched with rain, or 
 when ink was freezing, the world would have known by 
 heart the merits of the military. The pen is mightier than 
 the sword. 
 
 Armel was a fur- trader. What but furs could the Indians 
 bring him which he could send to the whisky market, and 
 obtain the supplies he most needed for sale? But the furs 
 which Armel sought must always have abounded in Madi- 
 son ian regions; and one Frenchman, John Nicolet, had pene- 
 
72 
 
 Wisconsin Statk Hihtokical Socfrtv. 
 
 trated to Wisconsin in quost of furs as early as l(i:U. There 
 is then nothing incredible — perhaps nothing improb- 
 able—in the assertion, that some Frenchmen must have 
 reached Madison and built fur-factories there a century ago, 
 or a century befon» Armel arrived there. That point must 
 have been the more attractive, thanks to fish from the 
 lakes, sugar-trees on their shores, and a short portage by 
 way of Pheasant Creek or Branch to the Wisconsin river. 
 Canoes often needed no portage between those waters, as 
 Gov. Dodge was informed. 
 
 Regarding the attractiveness of the Four Lake country to 
 Frenchmen long ago, I have met with an unexpected fact 
 which countenances my theory, that Frenchmen made their 
 way to this nook of paradise at a very early date. Since 
 commencing this paper, I have fallen in with the name of 
 one Frenchman who was no doubt on the Four Lakes before 
 Armel was born, and possibly made his home here. This 
 man's name was Le Sellier, the French for Saddler, an old 
 French enaage, who was enlisted by Maj. Long as a guide 
 in IH-i'i from Chicago to Prairie du Chien, "because he had 
 lived over thirty years with the Indians, had taken a Win- 
 nebago wife, and settled on the head- waters of Rock river.'" 
 Le Sellier's dwelling is as likely to have been on Mendota as 
 on Koshkonong '— and that one hundred years ago. It is 
 more than sixty years since he served as Long's guide, and 
 he had already been in this country more than thirty years. 
 In the lowest deep I hope for a lower deep. 
 
 But, however it may havo been with French adventurers, 
 no man with Anglo-Saxon blood has been discovered to 
 have planted himself in the Four Lake country so early 
 as the Frenchman Armel, and few are known to have trav- 
 eled it before his era. 
 
 The first of those few, so far as I know, was Ebenezer 
 Brigham, the earliest known Yankee inhabitant of Dane 
 county. The lead mine which he opened in 1828, was near 
 its western boundary. In that same year he made, with two 
 companions, an expedition to Portage. The object of this 
 
;U. There 
 f improb- 
 muRt have 
 mtury ago, 
 ,)oint muHt 
 I from the 
 portage by 
 insiu river. 
 waterH, as 
 
 country to 
 pocted fact 
 made their 
 ate. Since 
 le name of 
 akes before 
 here. This 
 iler, an old 
 as a guide 
 use he had 
 ien a Win- 
 lock river." 
 Mendota as 
 ago. It is 
 guide^ and 
 hirty years. 
 
 dventurers, 
 
 scovered to 
 
 ry so early 
 
 have trav- 
 
 8 Ebenezer 
 nt of Dane 
 i, was near 
 ie, with two 
 iject of this 
 
 «P" 
 
 
 T.\v-Cn<)-PE-RAH — TiiK ForR Lake CorsTRv. 78 
 
 journey was to ascertain whether he could not export lead, 
 as well ns procure the flour and other things ho ne«uk>d, to 
 better advantage in Portage than in Galena. His route 
 thither, that is to Fort Winnebago, ran to the nortli-west of 
 Fourth Lake, and he obtained from the army sutler a modi- 
 cum of bread, pork and powder. His return course was 
 more southerly, so as to strike the Indian trail which ran 
 between Third and Fourth lakes, crossing both the Capitol 
 and the University hills. Mr. Hrigham's visit to Portage 
 must have been late in \H'iS, for the fort there was not estab- 
 lished till the 7th of October in that year. Possibly, how- 
 ever, his discovery of the Madisonian site did not occur till 
 the year following, 182!>. His account-books show that his 
 mining begun on June 2;}rd, 1828. 
 
 He made the following statement as early as 1815, to H. 
 A. Tenney, who has furnished it to me in writing: "Pie 
 reached the hill on which Madison is mainly located, on the 
 afternoon of the day he loft the Fort, and set up his tent of 
 blankets within the limits of the present Capitol park, near, 
 as he pointed out to me, the eastern gate- way, as nearly as 
 he could recall the spot. The site was at the time an open 
 prairie, on which grew a few dwarf oaks, while thickets 
 covered the lower grounds. Struck with the strange beauty 
 of the place, he predicted that a village or a city would in 
 time grow up there, and it might be the capital of a State. 
 This, he informed me, was in May, eight years before Wis- 
 consin became a Territory in 18;3G." 
 
 It is easy to see why the Four Lake country was not 
 earlier visited by whites, although the Wisconsin river 
 downward from the voyage of Marquette had been a thor- 
 oughfare. The truth is, that, at first, canoes w^re the only 
 conveyances known. It was some generations after Mar- 
 quette's mission, before the Indians of the North- West ob- 
 tained ponies of the Spaniards. Wisconsin way-farers, who 
 had no canoes, afterward walked near the old water-route; 
 and there, too, the first military road from the Fort at Port- 
 age to Prairie du Chien was laid out. 
 
 Mr. Brigham died in Madison, and lies buried in its Forest 
 6-H. s. 
 
K^m 
 
 r" 
 
 74 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 Hill cemetery. I love to think of him as closing his eyes 
 on earth amid the lovely lakes he had been perhaps the 
 first of his race to discover, thirty-three years before, and as 
 buried on a hill which overlooks the church for building 
 which he gave the first tliousand dollars, and the city that, 
 as a member of the Territorial Council, he did so 
 much to found. As he was a Puritan Pilgrim, his monu- 
 ment is w . th special fitness a massive and monolithic obe- 
 lisk of granite from his native Massachusetts. A gun 
 carried by one of his ancestors in King Philip's war, is 
 among the relics in the Wisconsin Historical Society. 
 
 After Brigham's turning aside to the Four Lakes in 1828, 
 I know of no other white visitors till May in the foiiuwing 
 year. At that time Judge Doty, who had in each of the 
 four previous years passed from Green Bay to Prairie du 
 Chien by water, made the same journey on horse back. 
 His companion was Morgan L. Martin. They had with 
 them a Menomonee India n guide with a pack-horse, and a 
 young half-blood Menomonee. They were conducted on 
 their return between Second and Third Lakes, and then 
 between Wingra and Third, and so west and north to Portage.' 
 They had heard of the Lake country, and desired to in- 
 spect it.' 
 
 Here Doty by locating the capitol of a future State, was 
 to perpetuate his memory. In Saint Paul's at London, amid 
 
 ' The itinerary of the Doty explorers will alfvaj s grow in interest It 
 was as follows: On the east side of Fox River and Lake Winnebago to 
 an Indian village on the present site of Fond du Lac; thence to another 
 such village on Rock River near Waupun; to another on Green Lake 
 prairie; to another on the east side of Third Lake, and so to McCrary'a 
 furnace south-west of Blue Mounds, Returning they came from Blue 
 Mounds to Fourth Lake, thence by way of Fort Winnebago to Butte des 
 Morts. Fenied over the Fox River there, and swimming their horses, they 
 followe<l on the west side of Lake Winnebago the trail to Green Bay. 
 So states a Ms. letter of Morgan L. Martin, in 1885. 
 
 •' Mr, Durrie, in his History of Madison, p., 17, supposed that Henry S. 
 Baird came to the site of Madison with Doty and Martin. He must, how- 
 ever, have been misinformed, as I have a statement from Martin himself 
 that Baird was not with him on his first visit to the Four Lake', 
 
[ETY. 
 
 osing his eyes 
 
 n perhaps the 
 
 s before, and as 
 
 h for building 
 
 i the city that, 
 
 il, he did so 
 
 'im, his raonu- 
 
 nonolithic obe- 
 
 isetts. A gun 
 
 'hilip's war, is 
 
 Society. 
 
 Lakes in 1828, 
 
 the foiiuvving 
 
 in each of the 
 
 Y to Prairie du 
 )n horse back, 
 rhey had with 
 ;k-horse, and a 
 
 conducted on 
 ikes, and then 
 jrth to Portage.' 
 I desired to in- 
 
 ture State, was 
 it London, amid 
 
 3w in interest It 
 lake Winnebago to 
 thence to another 
 er on Green Lake 
 d so to McCrary's 
 
 Y came from Blue 
 lebago to Butte des 
 3g their horses, they 
 trail to Green Bay. 
 
 )sed that Henry S. 
 in. He must, how- 
 ora Martin himself 
 )ur Lake'. 
 
 J.ilMJ i ll J . ! ^ 
 
 miiftgmmimmm; 
 
 
 Tay-Cho-Pe-Rah~ The Four Lake Country. 75 
 
 statuary and bass-reliefs without number, I look at nothing 
 so long as at the narrow tablet over the north side-door 
 inscribed with the name of the architect of the pile, and 
 the words which have become world-famous, namely — 
 *' Lector, si momimentum requiris, circumspice /" ' — Reader,, 
 if you seek his monument, look around. However carefully 
 Saint Paul's may be guarded from Irish dynamiters, it must 
 at least crumble and tumble, its very stones gray and death- 
 like old; but long after that catastrophe, when strangers 
 here ask for Doty's monument, it will be ansAver enough to 
 say — Look around ! 
 
 North of Fourth Lake, and south of Third, the Doty band- 
 saw Winnebago villages; but none between those waters. 
 Not one white face was met between Green Bay and Blue 
 Mounds. 
 
 The next visitor at the site of Madison appears to have 
 been Jefferson Davis. Mr. Davis writes me as follows: 
 
 " While on detached service in the summer of 182!) I think: 
 I encamped one night about [on] the site of Madison. The 
 nearest Indian village was on the opposite side of the lake. 
 Nothing, as I think, was known to the garrison of Fort 
 Winnebago about the Four Lakes before I saw them. In- 
 deed, sir, it may astonish you to learn, in view of the [now]; 
 densely populated condition of that country, that I and the 
 file of soldiers who accompanied me were the first white 
 men who ever passed over the country between the Portage 
 of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers, and the then village of 
 Chicago, Fish and water-fowl were abundant; deer and 
 pheasants less plentiful. The Indians subsisted largely om 
 Indian corn and wild rice. When sent out on various expe- 
 ditions, I crossed Rock river at different points; but saw no 
 sign of settlement above Dixon's Ferry." * That point had 
 been occupied by a white man only one year. 
 
 In August, 1820, William Deviese, already mining at 
 Exeter, near the south line of Dane county, in quest of the 
 
 ' It is odd that the last of the Latin words means something in English,. 
 It naturally forms four English words, namely — " Sir-come-npysee .'" 
 -MS. letter, Beauvoir, Miss., 33d Feb., 1885. 
 
76 
 
 WiscoNslK State Historical Society. 
 
 liorse stolen from him by Indians, as already mentioned, 
 was near the site of Madison. What he sought he found, 
 on the west side of Third or the " upper " lake as he terms 
 it— surviving to tell the story in 1885. 
 Witliin two years after the Green Bay men came hither 
 ^^prospecting, though not as miners, Abel Rasdall, a Kentuck- 
 ian, coming from Galena in 1831, commenced his trading 
 adventures around the Four Lakes. His cabin was on First 
 ^Lakc, on the eastern shore, about half a mile north ' of its 
 outlet. His wife was a squaw, \v'ho, some years afterward, 
 when her tribe went west, decided to go with them. So she 
 and her husband concluded an amicable separation in less 
 time than is needed even when tne proclamation is, " Twenty 
 /minutes for dinner and Chicago divorces." Rasdall and his 
 (partner cut a blanket in two, and each kept half of it. Thus 
 •were they put asunder. This blanket-cutting recalls the 
 English custom at betrothals and hand-fasts, of breaking in 
 two a bit of money, each party retaining a portion. So in 
 Scott's Bride of Lammermoor, the troth-plight of the Master 
 •of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton " ended in the emblematic 
 ^ceremony of their breaking betwixt them a thin broad piece 
 -of gold." 
 
 Another Indian trader, Wallace Rowan, was established 
 at the head of Fourth Lake, at the out-break of the Black 
 Hawk war in 1832. It is not impossible that he was trading 
 there before the coming of either Rasdall, or even Armel. 
 His wife was a white woman, and the first one known to 
 have pilgrimed into this new country. In 1835, Rowan 
 entered fifty-two acres of land on the eastern shore of Mo- 
 nona — a fractional farm which included Squaw, or Straw- 
 'berry Point. 
 
 As early as 1833, Rowan's trading-post, about three-fourths 
 of a mile north of the village of Pheasant Branch, had 
 passed into the hands of Michel St. Cyr, a Canadian half- 
 breed. This frontiersman, as will be seen in the sequel^ 
 proved a link that could not well have been spared in the 
 -chain of events which drew Madison in its train. 
 
 ' I write north, though Durrie, p. 24, says south. My informaat was 
 Simeon Mills, who had often visited the dwelling of Rasdall . 
 
 mmmmmm 
 
"^■fjMflPI 
 
 mentioned, 
 ; he found, 
 8 he terms 
 
 ame hither 
 a Kentuck- 
 his trading 
 ^as on First 
 arth ' of its 
 
 afterward, 
 jm. So she 
 ition in less 
 8, "Twenty 
 lall and his 
 of it. Thus 
 
 recalls the 
 breaking in 
 tion. So in 
 ; the Master 
 emblematic 
 broad piece 
 
 established 
 f the Black 
 was trading 
 even Armel. 
 e known to 
 835, Rowan 
 ihoje of Mo- 
 w, or Straw- 
 
 hree-fourths 
 Branch, had 
 nadian half- 
 I the sequel, 
 pared in the 
 n. 
 
 in forma at was 
 II. 
 
 Tay-ChoPeRah — The Four Lake Country. T7 
 
 Near the abode of Rowan and St. Cyr, Col. Dodge, and' 
 Henry Gratiot, Indian agent, backed up by fifty armed 
 horsemen from the Mines, on the 25th of May, 1832, held a 
 council with the Winnebagoes, and induced that tribe to- 
 pledge themselves to remain neutral in the impending con- 
 test. That site is also memorable for other events to be 
 mentioned hereafter, and Capt. Brown's Illinois Rangers lay 
 encamped there some days in the summer of 183.). 
 
 The last spot where Black Hawk's force halted was on the 
 site of Madison, and they are said to have thrown up a. 
 brush or log brieast-work on University Hill. But they re- 
 treated towards the Wisconsin River as soon as they ascer- 
 tained that the Americans were advancing from Kosh- 
 konong. The main camp of the whites on the night of July 
 20th, 1832, was ten miles east of Madison. Their advance- 
 guard pushed ahead seven miles further, and passed the 
 night " about a quarter of a mile north of the north-east end of 
 Third Lake."^ The next morning, starting early, they crossed 
 the Catfish near where the William^oa street bridge now 
 stands, before eight o'clock. Pushing on they discovered a 
 solitary savage seated near the shore of Third Lake, a little 
 east of the foot of King street. Suspecting him to be con- 
 nected with some ambush, they shot him at once. This pre- 
 cipitation they afterwards regretted, and the more since 
 they observed that he was lying on an Indian grave. The 
 main American army was but two miles behind, and tra- 
 versing Madison from east to west, "almost precisely over 
 the ground that the capitol now stands upon," overtook no 
 enemies in force till they approached the Wisconsin River. 
 
 A man who was passing two monthfi afterward to that 
 river from Fourth Lake, says the trails of the Indians were 
 still distinct, sometimes they would all converge into a 
 broad and plain path, and then radiate in different direc- 
 tions dwindling to a mere trace.' This method of travel 
 was adopted in'order to deceive pursuers in regard to their 
 true route, and also to help them escape in case of attack. 
 
 ' Ms. letter of Peter Parkinson, one of th"? advance. 
 ^Hesperian, ii, p. 269. 
 
78 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 i 
 
 In 183?, Thoiras W. Sutherland, a young Philadelphia 
 lawyer, floated down the Mississippi from the Falls of St. 
 Anthony, in a skiff, to the mouth of Rock River, and paddled 
 up that stream and the Catfish, to the spot where Madison 
 is now built. His father, through the United States sur- 
 veyor, had secured lands in the vicinity. Young Suther- 
 land spent some time in an Indian camp at Winnequah, on 
 the east side of Lake Monona— opposite the capitol. He 
 became an early settler in Madison, and was elected the 
 first President of the village council, and the first Secretary 
 of the Wisconsin Historical Society. 
 
 Of the first comers to the Four Lakes, Armel, St. Cyr, and 
 ■other half-breeds or French of their type, would have 
 roamed or reveled there all the same had the old French re- 
 gime that ended in 17G3 still continued. 
 
 It was otherwise with Anglo-Saxon pioneers like Rasdall, 
 and especially Brigham, — men who removed hither in or- 
 der to develop the country by persistent toil, in farming, 
 mining or other occupations of civilized life. Movements 
 or events, favoring the entrance of such settlers into the 
 North-West, may be traced back a long way, and they are 
 worth tracing. 
 
 Downward from 1783, the region was by treaty a part 
 of the United States; but the forts — which were its keys — 
 were not delivered up by the British till near the close of 
 the eighteenth century, in 1796. Then treaties with Indians 
 were needed. Six of them were made within three decades, 
 in the years 1801, 181G, 1825, 1827, 1828, and 1829. It was 
 necessary to enfc- -e those compacts by war with Red Bird, 
 and especially afterward with Black Hawk, before a settler 
 could open a farm, and yet not lose his scalp. 
 
 The earliest Anglo-Saxon adventurers to Wisconsin, how- 
 ever, were not farmers but miners. Lead mines, near the 
 corner where Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa meet together, 
 were known to the early French. They were worked after 
 a fashion by the Indians. They remain to this day the seat 
 of all' lead mining in the United States, except Leadville 
 
 ' United States Cenms Covuicndium, p. 1,238. 
 
 ^[iiiiwiif 'T" ^.1 iri'ii "!"• '' ■'n^*i-'*r-i'''f— '"■"^"'•-""'"*^*'^"'^**^^*^ 
 
 ^ MWi- JT WWl i mMip KJm, 
 
Tay-Cho-Pe-Rah — The Four Lake Country. 
 
 70 
 
 hiladelphia 
 Falls of St. 
 md paddled 
 re Madison 
 States Bur- 
 ling Suther- 
 inequah, on 
 ;apitol. He 
 elected the 
 st Secretary 
 
 St. Cyr, and 
 vould have 
 i French re- 
 tike Rasdall, 
 lither in or- 
 in farming, 
 Movements 
 ers into the 
 ind they are 
 
 eaty a part 
 •e its keys — 
 r the close of 
 ivith Indians 
 iree decades, 
 829. It was 
 th Red Bird, 
 fore a settler 
 
 iconsin, how- 
 les, near the 
 eet together, 
 worked after 
 day the seat 
 3pt Leadville 
 
 and places like it, where lead is a subordinate element in the 
 ore. Mines of a metal so important, and those so nearly 
 unique, were naturally a strong attraction. 
 
 This industry took a swift expansion as soon as steamers 
 had free course on the Upper Mississippi. It was in 1824, 
 that the first steam-paddles reached Prairie du Chien; and 
 in the fifth year thereafter, 1829, the lead harvest at Galena, 
 where seven years before only one hou^e was standing, 
 amounted to twelve million pounds. The Diggings of Mc- 
 Nutt, afterwards called Kemp and Collins, and those of 
 Brigham,— both in or near Dane county — had been started 
 in 1828, the very next year after the capture of Red Bird 
 had made prospectors safe there. 
 
 Miners need food and shelter. Those from Southern Illi- 
 nois went home to winter; those from the east could not, 
 but dodged the cold in such dug-outs as they could hurry up. 
 The eastern men were hence nicknamed Badgers, as if bur- 
 rowing in similar holes with those animals. This jocose ap- 
 pellation became the badge of all the Wisconsin tribe; and it 
 will remain indelible forever. ' Farmers and 1 umbermen soon 
 sprang up. Natives became jealous and hostile.' An irre- 
 pressible conflict ensued. The result was the survival of 
 the fittest. Lead, lurking in the mine, killed the Indians as 
 inevitably as it ever did when moulded into rifle bullets. 
 
 'Regarding the sobriquet, Badger, there is a ludicrous etymological 
 blunder in Meyer's German Hand-Book, though it is in the main a most 
 trust-worthy Gazetteer. Bleyer, aware that the badger hoards grain, and 
 mentioning that that animal's Latin name is Frumentariua, that is, the 
 corn commissary, says that Wisconsin, being fertile in corn, ia called the 
 Badger State, because farmers there lay up corn after the manner of the 
 badgers. Had Meyer moved among Wisconsin pioneers, he would have 
 heard them styled Badgers before they had begun to raise corn . There is 
 a similar anachronism in saying, as many do, that Dane county was so 
 named because the Scandinavian element is there so large. The truth is, 
 . that county was called Dane before one single Dane had made his home 
 upon its acres. ' 
 
 ° William Deviese, while prospecting or mining near tho south line of 
 Dane county, in 1829 and onward, had six or seven horses stolen from him 
 by Indians, and also many mining tools. Yet he did not think that tha 
 natives had any more dislike to him than to others of his class. 
 
80 
 
 Wisconsin Stafr Historical Society. 
 
 The long and short of the Black Hawk war was chasing 
 that chief and his four hundred braves, who had crossed 
 the Mississippi from Iowa, near the mouth of Rock river, 
 up that water to Koshkonong. and thence by way of 
 the Four Lakes and the Wisconsin river, back to Iowa. 
 In this chase, the whites — mainly farmers' boys — each 
 picked out for himself a good farm." 
 
 As soon as soldiering was over, many a youth made haste 
 to break up his land, bringing with him, or soon after, the 
 girl he had left behind him when he marched to the fron- 
 tier. Such, in a nutshell, is the Genesis and Exodus, — the 
 rise and progress — the whole history of Wisconsin. 
 
 Eastern men pre said to come west w^ith a view to grow 
 up with the country. Some of them thus migrated in the 
 hope of carving out States in quite another form than that 
 now existing. About 1825, enterprising settlers had planted 
 themselves in Green Bay, sanguine that a vast State, called 
 Superior, was about to be born, with Green Bay as its 
 natural capital. Such anticipations were a " haiohing of 
 vain empires." But they would have been reasonable, had 
 not Congress, robbing Peter to pay Paul, transferred the 
 grand Northern Peninsula to Michigan, and thus kept her 
 from fighting with Ohio for the swamps around Toledo. 
 
 Roads were demanded to facilitate settlement. A military 
 road from Prairie du Chien to Portage was laid out by Gov. 
 Doty, as United States Commissioner in 1830; and soldiers 
 in the garrisons at both places were set at work for construct- 
 ing that thorough-fare. Thus the road-raising army brought 
 more civilization into Wisconsin by plow-shares than by 
 swords. In the day of small things, its high-ways were as 
 invaluable as any rail- way has been since. The track of the 
 
 ^ The discovery of excellent prairies and oak openings througb all the 
 breadth of Wisconsin was a surprise to the volunteers. It had long been 
 reported by fur traders, whose interests were adverse to agriculture, that 
 Wisconsin was in tho main a g eat Dismal Swamp, and so the myth con- 
 cerning a great American Desert still found its local habitation on the east 
 side of thrt Mississippi. It was long the purpose at Washington to reserve 
 the region now Wisconsin for an Indim Territory. With this view various 
 tribes were removed thither from New York. 
 
 ' .^ i j ! ^'-" ' ,i^jg^- - ' 1 ' >'Ji:*i\i'.m&0iJM^Mi: S 
 
TayCho-Pe-Rah — The Four Lake Country. 
 
 81 
 
 s chasing 
 i crossed 
 5ck river, 
 ' way of 
 : to Iowa. 
 ^8 — each 
 
 ade haste 
 after, the 
 the fron- 
 lus, — the 
 1. 
 
 to grow 
 ed in the 
 than that 
 d planted 
 ite, called 
 ay as its 
 .lohing of 
 able, had 
 erred the 
 t kept her 
 ledo. 
 
 L military 
 t by Gov. 
 d soldiers 
 3onstruct- 
 y brought 
 I than by 
 ^8 were as 
 ick of the 
 
 tugh all the 
 d long been 
 ;ulture, that 
 e myth con- 
 L on the east 
 a to reserve 
 ?iew various 
 
 \ 
 
 Northwestern Rail- way west ward from Mount Horcj station, 
 for twenty miles or more, is now laid on the line of the Doty 
 military road. 
 
 Traversing: rough regions on military causeways, I have 
 often said, as the Irishman did concerning the officer who 
 made the Scotch highlands carriageable — 
 
 " If you had seen these roads before they w re made, 
 You would lift up both hands and bless General Wade," 
 
 The United States survey of the Four Lake country was 
 not accomplished till the last days of the year 1834. The field- 
 notes of the surveyors are still preserved in the vault of the 
 Land Office in the capitol. In a little volume. No. 82, about 
 six inches by four — a stoutly bound pocket-book — I have 
 examined the field -notes regarding the then unsuspected site 
 of State Government — a plot of ground described as T. 7, 
 R. 9 E., of 4 P. M.~that is, township seven north of south 
 State line, and range nine east, of the fourth principal merid- 
 ian. When Madison has an illustrated history, the survey- 
 or's plotting will be reproduced in fac simile. 
 
 Friday ought never to be counted a day of ill omen in 
 Madison, for on that day the work of surveying was begun 
 there. That Friday was the fourth of December, 1834. The 
 measurement of what is now the Capitol Square was, how- 
 o rer, made on Sunday. The surveyor was Orson Lyon. On 
 one of his pages. Third and Fourth Lakes are plotted. Be- 
 tween Third and Wingra, called a pond, a line is drawn and 
 inscribed ("Indian trail.") It runs northwest to Fourth 
 Lake, striking it in section eighteen. 
 
 North-west of Fourth Lake, the military road appears with 
 the legend " Mitchell's field, 14 chains; dvjrelling and trading- 
 house." The name " Mitchell " perplexed me not a little, till 
 Dr. Draper suggested that it was the surveyor's name for 
 St. Cyr, whose Christian name I found to be Michel, the 
 French form of Michael. 
 
 The surveyor notes that he set a post on the north side of 
 Third Lake, between sections twenty -three and twenty-four, 
 with bearing-trees, a hickory eighteen inches in diameter, 
 north thirty degrees, east fifty-two links, and a burr-oak of 
 
83 
 
 WiscoN'siN State Historical Society. 
 
 eleven inches, north fifty-three west, forty-six links. Two 
 years afterwards this section-post became historic. Still 
 more notable was the post where sections fourteen, fifteen, 
 twenty-four and twenty three corner, for it stood just be- 
 neath the main western threshold of the present Capitol of 
 Wisconsin. Its bearing-trees were a white oak of twenty- 
 two inches diameter, seventy-eight degrees southeast, sixty- 
 one links and a burr-oak seventeen inches diameter, forty 
 degrees south-west, sixty-nine links. Far nobler were these 
 monarchs of the forest than any that now survive there. 
 
 The surveyor's Madisonian remarks are: " Land rolling 
 and, except marsh, second rate, timbered with white, black 
 and burr-oak, under-growth the same. The lakes shallow, 
 the larger with one perpendicular bluflf about sixty feet 
 high, and about two hundred acres of su^.ar trees." 
 
 The surveyor's iix^pressions of the region were more fav- 
 orable than those of Wakefield, the Illinois soldier, who two 
 years before had passed through it in chase of Black Hawk, 
 and who wrote: 
 
 " If these Lakes were any where else except in the coun- 
 try they are, they would be considered among the wonders 
 of the world. But the country they are situated in is not fit 
 for any civilized nation of people to inhabit. It appears 
 that the Almighty intended it for the children of the 
 forest." 
 
 Our rectangular surveys, with measurements as certain 
 as the courses of the stars, stand in strange contrast with 
 the uncertainties of all past ages concerning metes and 
 bounds. Owing to such uncertainties, English parishes were 
 perambulated every Spring on the so-called gang-day. Mag- 
 istrates, priests and people, girls bearing gang-flowers, 
 walked in procession along boundary lines. Psalms were 
 chanted. Beneath gospel-trees, so styled. Holy Writ was 
 read. If disputes arose as to any boundary, the point was 
 decided by the dignitaries present, a land-mark was set, and 
 frequently a boy was flogged on the spot, to the end that his 
 memory of it might become more tenacious. Something 
 was, however, paid to such a mnemonic sufferer. Four shil- 
 
ssSM'^^f^wTJS'ISviwwgTaiWiflJjaas^ 
 
 ks. Two 
 •ic. Still 
 n, fifteen, 
 d just be- 
 Oapitol of 
 f twenty- 
 ast, sixty- 
 jter, forty 
 i^ere these 
 I there, 
 tid rolling 
 lite, black 
 } shallow, 
 ?ixty feet 
 
 more fav- 
 , who two 
 ,ck Hawk, 
 
 the couR- 
 e wonders 
 1 is not fit 
 [t appears 
 an of the 
 
 as certain 
 irast with 
 xietes and 
 ishes were 
 day. Mag- 
 ig-flowers, 
 alms were 
 Writ was 
 point was 
 as set, and 
 id that his 
 Something 
 Four shil- 
 
 Tay-CiioPe-Rah — The Four Lake Country. 
 
 H."] 
 
 lings of such smart-money, I see, to have been paid in one 
 parish, in the year 107'.). In 1051 Capt. Keen and seven 
 others were chosen to go " the bounds of Boston in peram- 
 bulation betwixt it and the towns around.'" 
 
 Judge Doty has already been described as prospecting 
 upon Second, Third and Fourth lakes in 184!*, as early as 
 May, — that is more than five years before the Government 
 survey of that land took place. The land office at Green 
 Bay was opened in 1835. In October of that year. Doty en- 
 tered one hundred acres in T. 7, R. 9, S. E. k of section 12. 
 He thus became owner of the water power on the Catfish, 
 the value of which he over-rated. The Government price of 
 land was then Sl.'^T) per acre. 
 
 In January following, he was trying to organize a com- 
 pany of twelve, each partner contributing a hundred dollars, 
 for purchasing land on the Four Lakes in order to take ad- 
 vantage of the water privileges. Early in the same year he 
 raised his aims higher, and in Gov. Mason, of Michigan, he 
 found an associate with money. Thus he was enabled, on 
 the sixth of April, 1830, to enter on the Madison site about a 
 thousand acres for Mason,' and two hundred and sixty-one 
 for himself. He was empowered by Mason and another 
 buyer in the same tract, to use and dispose of their land as 
 should seem to him best. He thus became the plenipoten- 
 tiary over a sort of blind pool covering more than two 
 square miles between Third and Fourth lakes. 
 
 He was not without rivals. In June or July of this same 
 year, 1836, the so-called "City of the Four Lakes" was 
 founded near Livesey's Spring, on the site of the trading post 
 
 ' Record Commission, Doc. 48, p. 106. 
 
 'Stevens ThompsoQ Mason, born ia Virginia in 1811— at the age of 
 twenty was appointed by President Jackson, Secretary of tiie Territory of 
 Michigan, which then included Wisconsin — and in August of the same 
 year, 1831, he became Acting Governor over that vast region, on the trans- 
 fer of Gov. Cass to the War Department in Washington. He continued 
 in this office until Michigan became a State in 1837, and was then unani- 
 mously elected its first Governor, and was re-elected. He is celebrated in 
 law boolcs as an "infant"' office-holder, and deserves fame on liie higher 
 ground of having an old head on his young shoulders. 
 
 nm^i»m' f'.tfi-^!™ 
 
 7?^9jfiaMs^- 
 
 ™.J 
 
84 
 
 Wisconsin Statk Himtokical Society. 
 
 (? 
 
 then occupietl by St. Cyr, and before him by Rowan. It was 
 laid out not only on paper, but on terra Jirina, by the sur- 
 veyors of M. L. Martin and Col. W. B. Slaughter. But, as 
 it turned out, all investors there were laid out too, p.nd 
 that so cold and stiff that they never rose airain. The 
 earth hath bubbles as the water hath, and Four Lake City 
 was of them — the baseless fabric of a vision. 
 
 In the Autumn of 18 JO, Doty proceeded to commence a city 
 on the land of which he had acquired control. For this 
 purpose he was on the ground early in October. He brought 
 little baggage, except a green shawl and a shot-gun. He 
 was, however, accompanied by a surveyor with chain and 
 compass. The twain — a modern Romulus and Remus — 
 were assisted in the day and lodged at night by the half 
 breed St. Cyr. In the co irse of three days they had com- 
 pleted all the meanders and measurements that were neces- 
 sary for drawing the plat of the embryo city — a site which 
 Doty began at once to talk of to his engineer as bound by 
 manifest destiny to become the Wisconsin capital. 
 
 As soon as meager field-notes had been finished at the 
 Four Lakes, Doty hurried sixty miles west to Belmont, where 
 the Territorial Legislature was already in session. His plan 
 of a capital — borrowed in some particulars from that of 
 Washington — and embodying all the characteristic features 
 of Madison to-day, was soon in readiness. Every hamlet in 
 Wisconsin was its own first choice for the metropolis, as 
 every Greek officer voted for himself as having done the 
 best service against Xerxes; and the claims of a dozen sites, 
 not yet settled at all, were urged by land speculatol-s, of 
 whom Doty was chief. He came off conqueror over all 
 competitors. His success was largely due to his " one man 
 power," or absolute control over all the acres he would have 
 the Legislators delight to honor. When he took them up 
 into the mount of temptation, showing them corner lots 
 with the glory of them, and saying, " All these thin8:s will I 
 give you!" it was well known that his were not the prom- 
 ises of the Father of Lies. His chain of title was perfect, 
 and his title deeds beyond suspicion, needing no warranty. 
 
 .m-WJU^,,! 
 
.■in»fciwiMM-.v^fe->"< . j a 'M '-y Kft '■ " • 
 
 Tay-Cho-Pk-Haii -The Font Lake Country. 
 
 M 
 
 Some rivals may have had as liberal houIs as his was; but 
 none of them had as nuudi soil to give. 
 
 President llayca is charged with loving his enemies bet- 
 ter than his friends. Being sure of friends, he UH(!d patron- 
 age to make sure of enemies. This policy has an awkward 
 resemblance to tliat of a certain religious sect, the Yezidees. 
 who worship only Satan, and that to disarm his enmity. 
 Doty lived before the reign of Hayes, and probably knew 
 nothing about the devil- worshipers; but he instinctively 
 worked upon their system. He lavished everything not to 
 reward friends — he was sure of them — but to win over 
 foes, believing, with Walpole, that they had their price. His 
 advances were re-buffed by Gen. Dodge; but perhaps not by 
 the General's son. At all events they were in general gra- 
 ciously received. Accordingly the majority took the Doty 
 lots, and did his bidding. They were well paid, one of them 
 receiving the whole block on which the State Bank stands. 
 
 If disturbed by compunctious visitings from within or 
 from without, our Solons may have defended themselves 
 like Lord Bacon, who, when convicted of taking bribes, cried 
 out, "I have sold justice — not injustice." So our bribe- 
 bought Legislators might plead that they fixed our capital 
 in the best possible place, and that the wisdom of their 
 choice is demonstrated by a half century of experience. 
 The profit which they found while making the best choice 
 would have lain in their path whatever choice they had 
 made; and they ncay have compared that streak of luck to 
 the strange good fortune of the mother of Moses, when she 
 was paid wages for nursing her own child by Pharaoh's 
 daughter.' 
 
 It was on the 28th of November, 1836, that tha final vote 
 
 ' The facts regarding the location of the Wisconsin seat of government 
 at Madi«on, I have endeavored to state as I find them in histories, as Dur- 
 rie, p. 46, and the Western Historical Company's, p. 686, as well as in the 
 stories of some lookers-on in Belmont who still survive. I would like to 
 believe that Doty in his lobbying, while daring to do all that might become 
 a man and a statesman, dared do nothing more. Whether he did or did 
 not, is a question on which it would be idle to hope that partisans can ever 
 agree. 
 
8d 
 
 Wisconsin State Historic4i- SonicTY. 
 
 . 
 
 I* 
 
 waa passiMl which settled thoTorritorial.and henoethe State, 
 Capitol, on its present site; or, in the words of the act, which 
 was carried by a majority of fifteen to eleven, " the seat of 
 ^overnin((nt was located and esfcablished in the township of 
 Madison," on the corners of four specified sections. 
 
 It is in this Legislative act that tho name Madison, so far 
 as I know, appears for the first time. Thut. name was no 
 doubt picked out by Doty, and in8crd)ed on tho paper plan 
 of that city of tho future with which he had captivated and 
 captured tho ruling powers of the region,— a Territory which 
 at that time showed a population of 11, 083.' 
 
 Had two of the Legislative majority cast their ballots 
 otherwise, the vote would have stood thirteen to thirteen. 
 It would seem then, that Doty was economical after all, and 
 tampered with only one or two more voters than were need- 
 ful for carrying his point. It was remarked that scarcely 
 one of the bribed members ever made much money by sel- 
 ling either himself or the Doty lots, — a fact which may be 
 construed as a Providential rebuke of official corruption. 
 
 The fir^t visitor known to me at the spot which had thus 
 been constituted the local habitation of Territorial govern- 
 ment, was Hoses M. Strong. His first arrival at the site 
 where Madison was to stand, I do not discover on record in 
 any book, but I relate the story as it came to me from his 
 own lips: 
 
 Soon after New Year's in 1837, Mr. Strong was returning 
 from Milwaukee to Mineral Point. The direct route lay 
 south of the Four Lakes; but he with two friends turned 
 aside with a view to inspect the spot which had just been 
 fixed upon as the Wiscor ,^I i nead-center. Having lodged 
 and eaten muskrat and squfw^-bread at a French trader's on 
 First Lake, they pushed on north, crossed Third Lake on 
 the ice, tied their horses, and sought for a section post. As 
 they had brought with them, if not a copy of the surveyor's 
 field-notes, at least a sectional map, they were not long in 
 
 'It does not appear that Gov. Doty ever met President Madison; but he 
 knew his widow very well, and spoke of her. Madam Dolly, with so much 
 love and admiration that lie may be thought to have given Madison its 
 nams through a desire to do her honor. 
 
■ mmm-- 
 
 Tay-Cho-Pk-Raii — TiiK FuuK Lakk Cointry. 67 
 
 he Hlute, 
 ct, which 
 
 scat of 
 niship of 
 
 m, so far 
 ) was no 
 iper plan 
 ated and 
 iry which 
 
 r ballots 
 thirteen, 
 r all, and 
 ere need- 
 scarcely 
 y by sel- 
 
 1 may be 
 ption. 
 had thus 
 i govern- 
 
 the site 
 record in 
 from his 
 
 eturning 
 route lay 
 Is turned 
 just been 
 ig lodged 
 radar's on 
 Lake on 
 post. A« 
 urveyor's 
 t long in 
 
 ison; but he 
 ith so much 
 Madisoa its 
 
 finding the bearing-trees, the hickory and the burr-oak 
 already mtjntioned, and wliich guided thorn to the square 
 four inch post they wore seeking. 
 
 The compass, — the rati*' inccnmoi every pioneer,— enabled 
 the prospectors to follow the l)lazod trees on the surveyor's 
 course from the section post up tlie Capitol Hill along the line 
 of the future King street, till they arrived at the post mark- 
 ing the corners of sections thirteen, fourteen, twenty-three 
 and twenty-four, — a monument which a classical writer 
 would style the Milliariniu (iHreiun o( Wisconsin. A wisp 
 of hay twisted around the limb of a tree showed that some 
 human pilgrim had halted there already, and wished to leave 
 a trace of his presence. No man or mortal, beast or bird, 
 was, however, visible. The day was cold, the snow deep. 
 So, after a brief halt, the explorers went on across Fourth 
 Lake on the ice, purpooing to spend the night at the cabin 
 of St. Cyr. But it was very dark before they reached the 
 shore, and no sign could be detected of the haven of their 
 hope, or even of the military road. Coming at length where 
 an oak had been blown down, they kindled a fire of the dry 
 branches, between two huge limbs and rolled themselves 
 each in his blanket, beside its trunk. They passed the night, 
 one of the three being up all the time, and at work with the 
 hatchet to keep the fire agoing. They lay without shelter 
 or food, save a remnant of bread and pork, but no water or 
 even whisky. 
 
 Day-light revealed, after two hours' wandering, the way 
 to Blue Mounds, where they felt at home. Houseless wan- 
 derers find the earth a cold bed in Winter. One experiment, 
 sometimos tried by Strong, gave him what he needed. After 
 supper he would push his camp-fire a rqd away from where 
 it had been built. By this change of base he secured a dry 
 and warm, though fire blackened, mattress for spreading his 
 blankets. No warming pan could be better. 
 
 The next month, February, 1837, Mr. Strong and John 
 Catlin were employed to survey and stake out the lots around 
 the Capitol square. They came from the west in a sleigh 
 with a driver. Their base of operations was the log cabin 
 of St. Cyr. Deep snow and snow-storms sometimes drove 
 
88 
 
 Wisconsin State Historical Society. 
 
 them back there from their field of labor, for forage, pota- 
 toes, salt and shelter. For these supplies they paid their 
 entertainer thirteen dollars and a half. Yet their camping 
 grounil was usually amon^ the ridges between Wingra and 
 Third Lake. In about a week — that is on Feb. 2Gth, 1837, 
 the task of meandering and lot- staking was done, so far as 
 it was practicable on deep snow, and ground frozen still 
 deeper. 
 
 The last night of this survey, Mr. Strong's party lodged 
 near where the steam-boc t landing on Fourth Lake now is. 
 They had no tent, but lay in blankets; and thanks to a tre- 
 mendous snow-fall, were buried more than a foot deep. The 
 storm still continuing in the mornmg, they gave up further 
 work as fruitless, and drove off in their sleigh on the Lake. 
 The air was thick with snow— nothing could be seen in any 
 direction— the driver lost his head and his way. But at 
 starting, Mr. Strong had observed that the wind hb.d struck 
 his right cheek when the horses were headed as the com- 
 pass showed they ought to go. Hence, taking the reins, he 
 turned the horses till the wind struck his face as in the be- 
 ginning. Thus with no other guide than the way the wind 
 came, he at length brought his team and passengers to the 
 half-breed hut, then the only refuge within possible reach. 
 
 Thus, the Four Lake country gave place to Madison, and 
 here the task assigned me also finds its conclusion. You 
 all know what har followed here in the fifty years save two 
 which have since elapsed. 
 
 If I were to cross the Madisonian threshold, I should be 
 led on so far, that you would compare my paper to the end- 
 less rope which an Irishman pulled and pulled till he was 
 tired, and then bi^oke out with an oath, swearing the other 
 
 end of the pesky thing had been cut off. 
 
 ************ 
 
 It may be worth adding, that the foregoing sketch is based 
 upon conversations with Gov. Doty, Gen. Mills, Hon. Moses 
 M. Strong, Dr. L. C. Draper, and others; on the standard his- 
 tories of Madison or Dane county by Durrie, Park, Western 
 Historical Company, and Smith; on correspondence with D. 
 
 -wi^au 
 
ETY. 
 
 forage, pota- 
 ley paid their 
 ;heir camping 
 1 Wingra and 
 eb. 20th, 1837, 
 ane, so far as 
 id frozen still 
 
 party lodged 
 
 Lake now is. 
 anks to a tre- 
 'ootdeep. The 
 ive up further 
 , on the Lake, 
 ae seen in any 
 
 way. But at 
 ad lic*d struck 
 
 as the com- 
 f the reins, he 
 
 as in the be- 
 way the wind 
 engers to the 
 ossible reach. 
 
 Madison, and 
 iclusion. You 
 '^ears save two 
 
 , I should be 
 )er to the end- 
 }d till he was 
 ing the other 
 
 sketch is based 
 is, Hon. Moses 
 e standard his- 
 Park, Western 
 idence with D. 
 
 • ^^jpP^f^ 
 
 Tay-Cho-Pk-Rah — The Four Lake Country. 
 
 89 
 
 J. Pulling Moi-^au L. Martin, Jefferson Davis, Hollis 
 Crocker, H. A. Tenney, Peter Parkinson, G. W. Jones; and 
 on gleanings from various maps, books and newspapers in the 
 Library of the State Historical Society, and especially the 
 nine volumes of its Historical Collections, the works of 
 Featherstonh.augh, Wakefield, Keating, etc. 
 7— H. C. 
 
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