Wisconsin (state)

B

Exploration

The first European known to have set foot on Wisconsin soil was Jean Nicolet, a French explorer. In 1634, while searching for a water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, he reached Green Bay. In 1659 and 1660 the French fur trader Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and his brother-in-law, Pierre Esprit Radisson, explored the Lake Superior area. During the next 15 years the Jesuits, a Roman Catholic religious order, established the first missions in the territory, near present-day Ashland and at De Pere. In 1673 the French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette crossed Wisconsin by way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi River.

C

The Fur Trade

The explorers had found the Wisconsin region rich in fur-bearing animals, particularly beaver, whose pelts were in great demand in Europe. Soon trappers and traders from Québec and Montréal entered the Wisconsin wilderness. The first trading post was established at La Baye (now Green Bay) in 1684, and soon after others were built—Fort Saint Nicolas, near Prairie du Chien, and Fort Saint Antoine, on Lake Pepin. In 1689 Nicolas Perrot, French commandant of the Green Bay region, claimed the Upper Mississippi Valley, including what is now Wisconsin, for France. The profitable fur trade of the region soon attracted English trappers, and competition between France and England for the trade with the Native Americans was intense.

The French soon came into conflict with the Fox people, who controlled a strategic trade route along the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. From about 1700 to 1740 the French and the Fox fought a series of battles, until the Fox were nearly wiped out. The surviving Fox were taken in by the Sac. The long struggle weakened French defenses in the region and turned many of France’s former Native American allies against it, at the same time France was fighting Britain for domination of the continent. Under the Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian War (1754-1763), France ceded all its territories east of the Mississippi River, including Wisconsin, to Britain. Under British rule the fur trade continued as the basis of Wisconsin’s economy.

British possession of Wisconsin officially ended in 1783, when Britain signed the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution (1775-1783). Under the treaty, Britain ceded to the United States all its territory east of the Mississippi River. The region was included in the Northwest Territory that the U.S. government organized with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, but the government exercised no effective control over the Wisconsin area. It remained under the unofficial control of the British, who continued to monopolize the fur trade. There was no great influx of American settlers after the war, and the area’s few white inhabitants remained predominantly French-speaking. In 1800 there were only about 200 settlers in the region.

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D

End of British Domination

In 1800 the Wisconsin area became part of the Indiana Territory, which included all the Northwest Territory except the present state of Ohio. In 1809 Wisconsin was included in the new Illinois Territory, which was separated from the Indiana Territory.

The British still exercised control, however, and encouraged Native Americans to oppose American expansion. Some Wisconsin tribes, particularly the Winnebago, joined the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who tried to form an alliance to drive the Americans out of the Midwest. Tecumseh urged native peoples to return to their traditions and to reject the white concept that individual tribes could sell land shared by all. Tecumseh’s forces were defeated in 1811 at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana, but many native peoples in Wisconsin remained hostile to the Americans.

In 1812 war again broke out between the United States and Britain, caused by disputes over the rights of neutral American shipping. During the War of 1812 (1812-1815), most of Wisconsin’s Native Americans sided with the British. Only after the war ended did American settlement begin, and the Wisconsin fur trade also came under American control. The U.S. Army governed the vast territory from Fort Howard, at Green Bay, and Fort Crawford, at Prairie du Chien. A future president of the United States, General Zachary Taylor, was in command of the post at Prairie du Chien. While the fur trade continued to be the chief economic activity in the region, small settlements around the forts grew steadily.

In 1818 the Wisconsin region became part of the Michigan Territory, which also included all of what is now Minnesota. The first great rush of American settlers into Wisconsin occurred in the 1820s, as a result of a mining boom around the Fever River (now the Galena River), in northwestern Illinois. By 1823 mining had spread north into southwestern Wisconsin, where more extensive lead deposits were found. The population of Wisconsin’s lead-mining region increased from a few hundred to several thousand in a few years, with most of the early miners coming from Tennessee, Kentucky, and other states in the South. In about 1840 the Wisconsin lead region produced almost one-half the total U.S. output of lead ore. The region established close trade relations with the South, since most of the ore was transported down the Mississippi by flatboat or steamboat to markets at St. Louis or New Orleans.

E

Black Hawk War

The movement of white settlers into the Midwest caused severe friction as the federal government and settlers attempted to displace the Native Americans from their lands. Federal policy under President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) included uprooting entire tribes and forcing them to resettle west of the Mississippi. In 1832 about 1,000 Sac people, who had been forced to move to a reservation in Iowa, tried to return to their lands east of the Mississippi in northwestern Illinois. But Illinois settlers shot a peace emissary sent by their leader, Black Hawk, setting off the Black Hawk War. As Black Hawk and his followers retreated through Wisconsin, trying to return to Iowa, they were pursued by U.S. troops and local militiamen and fought a series of battles. The Native Americans reached the Mississippi near a stream called the Bad Axe River, but before they could flee back to Iowa, almost all of them were killed by the army on August 3 in the Bad Axe Massacre. Only 150 of Black Hawk’s people survived. Over the next few years other Wisconsin tribes, realizing that resistance would bring a similar fate, gave up title to their lands east of the Mississippi. Some, however, negotiated for reservation lands in central and northern Wisconsin as well as other rights.

With Native American resistance eliminated, a second great wave of settlers came to Wisconsin. These new arrivals came mainly from New England and the Middle Atlantic states, particularly New York. Most of them traveled through the newly built Erie Canal, completed in 1825, and the Great Lakes and settled along the shores of Lake Michigan. Milwaukee served as the chief port of entry for settlers and became the center of commerce for southeastern Wisconsin. These settlers were interested in farming, trading, and building cities.

F

Wisconsin Territory

The population grew rapidly in this period, from around 3,000 in 1830 to 11,683 in 1836. Residents of Wisconsin, which was still part of the Michigan Territory, began to call for their own territory. In 1836 the Wisconsin Territory was organized, including the Wisconsin area, all of the present states of Iowa and Minnesota, and parts of North and South Dakota. Two years later the Wisconsin Territory was reduced when the region west of the Mississippi River was reorganized as the Iowa Territory.

The capital of the Wisconsin Territory was first located at Belmont in the heart of the lead district, where almost half the settlers lived. In succeeding years the southeastern counties along the shore of Lake Michigan grew more rapidly than the lead region, and by 1838 the legislature had moved to the new capital of Madison, which lay between the two areas. The first governor of the territory was Henry Dodge, one of the region’s most prosperous miners. Until the 1850s settlement in the territory was confined to the area south of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers.

A third wave of settlers, including a large number of European immigrants, came to Wisconsin during the territorial period. The first important group included highly skilled miners from Cornwall, England, who arrived in Wisconsin’s lead district after 1835. In the next 15 years they were followed by large numbers of Germans, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Swiss, and Norwegians. By 1850 Wisconsin’s population was 305,391, and more than one-third of the residents were foreign-born.

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