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Spirit of the Northwest Monument

"Spirit of the Northwest" monument by Sidney Bedore, on the grounds of the Brown County Court House. Represented, left to right, a Menominee, Claude Allouez, and Nicolas Perrot, view from the side. View the original source document: WHI 31772

European exploration and settlement had a profound and devastating impact on Wisconsin's Indian communities. Work life, gender roles, religious practice, daily tasks, clothing and social structures changed dramatically when Europeans arrived.

Intertribal Warfare

European contact on the east coast prompted eastern tribes to emigrate to Wisconsin between 1640 and 1680. The Iroquois invaded neighboring nations in Michigan and Ontario. The invasion drove the Sauk, Meskwaki, Potawatomi and other tribes to the land between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi. The ensuing competition for food and furs prompted nearly a century of intertribal warfare among these nations and the Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Sioux and Ojibwe.

From 1700 to 1730, the Meskwaki and the Mascouten were in open rebellion against the French, who showed little mercy in suppressing their adversaries. In 1712, the French killed nearly 1,500 tribe members at the siege of Detroit. The French captured tribe leaders and sent them to work as slaves in French colonies in the Caribbean. By 1750, the remnants of the Meskwaki had taken refuge in a village near the mouth of the Rock River, a few miles from the Mississippi.

Disease Sweeps Through Indian Communities

Following Hernando de Soto's invasion of the lower Mississippi in 1539, disease wiped out 90 percent of Indian villages in the middle Mississippi Valley. Archaeologists think that epidemics of measles or smallpox may have swept through native communities in Wisconsin decades before Nicolet reached the state in 1634.

When the French arrived and began living in Indian villages, diseases broke out once again. "Maladies wrought among them more devastation than even war did," wrote contemporary French visitor Bacqueville de la Potherie, "and exhalations from the rotting corpses caused great mortality."

Dependence on European Goods and Technology

The need for European goods, especially guns and ammunition, made Wisconsin Indians dependent on French traders. Father Louis Hennepin noted in 1680 that Indians he visited in the upper Mississippi region used clay pots, stone tools and bows and arrows. Ten years later, trader Nicolas Perrot found the natives using brass kettles, iron axes and firearms instead.

Such rapid transformation was not universal. Indian communities maintained their traditional activities and beliefs. But they increasingly used imported technology in daily life. By the early eighteenth century, Wisconsin's Indians tended their cornfields with iron hoes instead of ones made of stone or bone. They dressed in cloth garments more often than deer skins. They lit fires with steel flints. Their jewelry was made of silver, bronze and copper shipped from France. They pursued game with firearms rather than bows and arrows.

Demands of the Fur Trade

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Fur Trader in Council Tepee, 1892

Engraving of a fur trader standing in the middle of a circle of seated Indians in their council tepee. View the original source document: WHI 3775

These necessities of life could only be obtained from the French. In return for goods, the traders demanded furs from the Indians. As game grew scarcer, the Indians were forced to travel farther and farther. At the command of French officials, many abandoned their villages and clustered around the fur-trading posts at Green Bay, Chequamegon (Madeline Island) and Michilimackinac. Concentrating in these large communities exposed them to European diseases. Many epidemics occurred among Indians in the 17th and 18th centuries 

British Control and Pontiac's Rebellion

In 1763, after nearly a decade of war with their French rivals, the English finally managed to seize control of New France and its fur trade. In the resulting chaos chief Pontiac of the Ottawa united tribes from Kentucky to Wisconsin in a campaign to drive all white governments back to the Atlantic. English troops, newly arrived in Green Bay, Detroit and Mackinaw were surrounded and captured or killed by thousands of Pontiac's warriors. Most of Wisconsin's tribes remained neutral, though the Ojibwe supported Pontiac and engineered a famous sneak attack on Fort Mackinaw.

Colonial Transformations

The consequences of a century of disease, warfare and colonialism were clear. By the 1760s, many tribes such as the Ho-Chunk, Mascouten and Meskwaki had been reduced to a fraction of their pre-contact size and power. Daily life had changed dramatically for the Indians. Tribes were transformed from settled agricultural communities who engaged in part-time seasonal hunting to full-time trappers and hunters who wandered far and wide to harvest furs wherever they could be found.

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Sources: Wyman, Mark. The Wisconsin Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1998); Kellogg, Louise Phelps. The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (Madison : State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1925); The History of Wisconsin: volume 1, From Exploration to Statehood by Alice E. Smith. (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973).