Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
these two were followed by Nicholas Perrot, who extended Nicolet's explorations and con-
sequently opened the French fur trade with natives in Wisconsin.
The seasoned Father Claude Allouez simultaneously founded the first mission at La
Pointe in the Apostle Islands and founded St. Francois Xavier, Wisconsin's first permanent
European settlement, at De Pere, south of Green Bay.
The most famous Jesuit explorer was Father Jacques Marquette, who, along with Louis
Jolliet, was sent by La Salle in 1673 to discern whether the Mississippi emptied into the
Gulf of Mexico. The first Europeans to cross Wisconsin, they made it to the Mississippi on
June 17, 1673, and went as far south as Arkansas, where they saw Indians with European
goods,confirmingbotharoutetotheGulfandthepresenceoftheSpanish.TheFrenchhes-
itated in buttressing their western frontier—and it wound up costing them dearly.
Conlict with the British and British Rule
The fate of New France and, thus, Wisconsin was determined not in the New World but on
the European continent, as Louis XIV, who had reigned during a zenith of French power,
frittered away French influence bit by bit in frivolous, distracting battles.
The French never fully used the western edges of the Great Lakes, and James II's
rise to the throne in England marked the end of France's never-exactly-halcyon days in
the region. James forced Louis into wild strategies to protect French interests in the New
World—strategies that did lead to further exploration of the hinterlands but also drove
France to overextend itself and, eventually, collapse.
At the behest of the Jesuits, who hoped to corral some recalcitrant Indian tribes, Louis
closed trade completely in the Great Lakes interiors, thus cutting off possible ties to the
English or Spanish. Louis correctly reckoned that whoever the Indians sided with would
endupcontrollingthenewlands.Thisnaturallydrainedroyalcoffers,sohedecidedinstead
tokeeptheIndians,theEnglish, andtheSpanishincheck byexploring asfarinland aspos-
sible and trying to establish a line of garrisons from Montreal all the way to New Orleans.
LouissucceededinthissecondplanbutintheprocessalienatedtheuneasyIndians,who
had
sworn loyalty to France and, worse, aroused the ire of France's bitterest enemies—the
Iroquois and the Fox Indians. Wars with the Fox, which raged 1701-1738, sapped the de-
termination of the French temporarily, but they had enough pluck—and military might—to
stringfortsalongtheMississippitolookforinroadsintoterritoriesalreadyheldbytheBrit-
ish in the Ohio River Valley. By 1750, British colonists in the western Great Lakes out-
numbered the French 20 to 1, and many Indians, discovering that the English made higher-
quality goods more cheaply, switched to the British side.
