St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 1:
Valley of Plenty, River of Conflict (continued)

English Fur Traders on the St. Croix

The first English fur trader to penetrate the Lake Superior country was Alexander Henry. Henry's access to the remote frontier was made possible by his astute alliance with Jean Baptiste Cadotte. The latter was a key figure in bridging the end of the French regime and the era of British domination. Cadotte's family had long been involved in the western fur trade. He grew up in the Lake Superior country and married the daughter of a notable Chippewa chief. Cadotte had served as the last French governor of the fort at Sault Ste. Marie and earned the trust of the English conquerors by being one of the first French traders to embrace the new regime. When Jean Baptiste Cadotte retired from the trade, his son of the same name took his place. The latter played a lead role in reopening the fur trade of the Upper Mississippi valley. A second son, Michel Cadotte was active on the St. Croix and Chippewa rivers. In 1784 he operated a post on the Namekagon River, near the head of the portage to Lac Court Oreilles. Latter he established trading posts at Yellow Lake, Snake River, and Pokegama Lake. The key to the success of the Cadottes was their family relationship with notable Chippewa leaders. They consciously identified themselves with the expansion of the Chippewa into the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi valleys, advancing hand in hand with bands of hunters to exploit the bounty of Dakota hunting grounds. [33]

Archeologists have long puzzled over the identification of Michel Cadotte's 1784 trading post on the Namekagon River. In the early 1960s local historian Tony Wise conducted an archeological study of a site he thought was the trading post. Among the items found that supported that conclusion were the sideplate of a trade gun and a number of gunflints. Further study by National Park Service archeologists, however, revealed that the overwhelming majority of artifacts at the site date from the mid to late nineteenth century. It is possible that trappers or loggers reoccupied the Cadotte post site in the 1870s. The structural depressions at the site are mostly the remains of that latter occupancy and not remains that date to the British era of the fur trade frontier. [34]

While Alexander Henry did not venture far south of Lake Superior, Jonathon Carver, another young Englishman on the make, explored the Upper Mississippi frontier. Ostensibly Carver was a mapmaker sent with explorer James Tute, a Captain in the famed Roger's Rangers, to discover an inland route to the fabled Northwest Passage. Carver journeyed from Mackinac across Wisconsin and wintered among the Dakota villages of the Minnesota River valley. He was fascinated with the Dakota whom he described as "a very merry sociable people, full of mirth and good humor." He explored the Upper St. Croix valley by portaging from Lac Courte Oreilles to the Namekagon River near present day Hayward, Wisconsin. Carver descended the Namekagon, which he named "Tutes branch" to its junction with the main stream. James Goddard, the official secretary of the expedition, described the Namekagon as "a very pleasant country, and plenty of deer in it." Above the junction of the Namekagon and St. Croix Carver tried his hand at sturgeon fishing. "The manner of taking them is by watching them as they lie under the banks in a clear stream, and darting at them with a fish-spear; for they will not take a bait." Carver dubbed the St. Croix from the Namekagon to its source the "Coppermine Branch," due to the "abundance of copper" found along its banks. The region of the headwaters he laconically noted was known to the Chippewa as "the Moschettoe [mosquito] country, and I thought it most justly named; for, it being then their season, I never saw or felt so many of those insects in my life." More significantly for the future of the fur trade he noted that along the Upper St. Croix "rice grows in great plenty." Carver then followed the portage trail from Upper Lake St. Croix to the Bois Brule River and Lake Superior. [35]

Although his time in the St. Croix valley was brief Carver's legacy lingered longer in the form of a narrative Travels Through North America in the Years 1766, 1767 and 1768. This widely read and frequently translated account of the Upper Mississippi region provided generations of readers with their first exposure to the region. Like so many would be explorers before and after, Carver mixed genuine observations with heavy doses of romantic fancy and self-promotion. Captain James Tute who actually directed the expedition goes all but unmentioned in the published narrative, creating the impression that Carver was the man in charge. His enthusiasm for the region was effusive. The Upper Mississippi region was "abounding with all the necessaries of life, that grow spontaneously; and with a little cultivation it might be made to produce even the luxuries of life." He did not simply note stands of maple trees but went on to predict that the "delightful groves" were present in "such amazing quantities" that they "would produce sugar sufficient for any number of inhabitants." If the principle purpose of Captain James Tute had been to evaluate the fur trade prospects of the region, the purpose of Carver's book, which he did not publish until 1778, was to promote Carver by giving the impression that he had single handedly opened up a utopia for future settlers. He went so far as to produce a map in which he divided the Upper Midwest into a series of "plantations or subordinate colonies" so that "future adventurers may readily, by referring to the map, chose a commodious and advantageous situation." With this map Carver also established symbolic mastery over the region, inviting his numerous readers in the decades that followed to project their dreams on to this open and free land. [36]

Carver included the bulk of the St. Croix valley in his "plantation No. 1," which included a great triangle of territory that reached as far northwest as Rainey Lake and to Sault Ste, Marie on the east. "The country within these lines," he observed, "from its situation is colder that any of the others; yet I am convinced that the air is much more temperate than those in provinces that lie in the same degree of latitude to the east of it." With this claim Carver anticipated the logic of virtually every land promoter to follow. Don't let the far northern position of the Saint Croix valley daunt settler's dreams of an agricultural future. Not only was the climate more temperate than what people knew in the east "the soil is excellent, and there is a great deal of land that is free from woods in the parts adjoining the Mississippi." Of course, if the settler preferred trees, Carver allowed that the "north-eastern borders" of the region were "well wooded." In addition to abundant rice and copper, settlers were also blessed with the presence of the "River Saint Croix, which runs through a great part of the southern side of it, enters the Mississippi just below the falls, and flows with so gentle a current, that it affords convenient navigation for boats." Carver was so impressed with the prospects for the region that he passed to his heirs a fraudulent document, which claimed the cession of a large tract of land. Allegedly the Dakota granted him twelve million acres of land, including a sizable portion of the St. Croix valley. Neither the British crown, the Eastern Sioux, nor latter the United States Congress saw fit to recognize the Carver Grant as valid. In 1817 two of the explorer's grandsons actually journeyed back to the Upper Mississippi wilderness to have Chippewa and Dakota elders substantiate the alleged grant. Not surprisingly they went home with no more land than when they set out. [37]

While the Tute-Carver expedition was supposed to be directed to discover the Northwest Passage a large part of its real orientation was to probe the commercial opportunities of the Upper Mississippi frontier. In the 1760s only a geographic idiot would have spent weeks ascending the Chippewa River and the Upper St. Croix in search of the fabled water route to China. The fur trade was on the mind of many of the British who went west after the French and Indian War. One of those who left a record of their efforts was a cantankerous Connecticut Yankee named Peter Pond. He did not leave a description of the fur trade on the St. Croix itself, although he was active with the Dakota in the Upper Mississippi valley. Pond did describe the process by which merchants of English origin began to dominate the trade of the region because of their superior ability to obtain credit and merchandise as well as their ability to act in concert with British military forces and thereby pose as power brokers between tribes. Both Carver and Peter Pond attempted to negotiate a peace treaty between the Dakota and the Chippewa. Each was more successful in arranging a parlay, than a lasting peace. In 1775 Pond escorted a group of Dakota and Chippewa chiefs to Mackinac where an agreement was struck by which the Dakota agreed "Not Cross the Missacipey to the East Side, to Hunt on thare Nighbers Ground." That the Dakota would agree to recognize the Chippewa as masters of the area east of the Mississippi would have been a major concession and was likely the result of Pond's failure to obtain a delegation of the eastern most Dakota tribe, the Mdewakanton Sioux. A British military inspection of the region in 1778 led by Charles Gautier de Verville reported a large Mdewakanton village on the Upper St. Croix River. The village included a number of lodges of Winnebagoes, a people who shared the Dakota's antipathy of the Chippewa. Clearly the Mdewakanton had not abandoned the east bank of the Mississippi to the Chippewa. [38]

The arrival of the British regime along the Saint Croix signaled a change in the way the fur trade would be administered. The French system of leasing the right to control the trade in a large geographic area, while never able to keep all illegal Coureurs de bois out of business, did tend to greatly restrict the number of traders operating in any one area. Under the British and even more so under American administrations there was much less regulation of the fur trade and an ever-growing number of participants made their way west. More participants meant more competition and less concern on the part of many traders for the long term good of both the fur trade itself and the Indian trappers in particular. One of the early innovations of the British regime was the establishment of companies that pooled the resources and special skills of a group of fur traders. The Northwest Company, founded in 1779 was an attempt by Peter Pond and other fur traders to establish greater control over competition in their business. The Northwest Company, based in Montreal, exerted a considerable influence over the fur trade of the St. Croix River during the years between its creation and 1816. United under its control were many of the traders who had expanded the trade since the fall of New France, including Alexander Henry and Jean Baptiste Cadotte and his brother Michel Cadotte.

Independent fur traders operating out of Green Bay also wintered on the St. Croix during the last years of the eighteenth century. Augustin Grignon, a member of the fur trading clan that dominated the "La Baye" fur trade, operated a post in the valley in 1792. A year latter his operations there were directed by Jacques Porlier, who was beginning a long career in the fur trade. A Mackinac trader, Laurent Barth, also operated a trading post on the river that winter, building close enough to Porlier to allow frequent visits between the two. A lack of specific locational information in the historical record has frustrated the identification of these posts as historic sites. The Green Bay traders entered the valley accompanied by Menominee hunters. The Menominee had long hunted along the headwaters of the Chippewa River, taking advantage of beaver country less heavily trapped than their own homelands along Lake Michigan, but it was rare for them to venture into the St. Croix valley. These hunting expeditions included family groups and were usually undertaken only with the permission of the Dakota. [39]

Figure 5. Jonathan Carver's Map of the Upper Midwest Region, published in 1778.
(click on image for an enlargement in a new window)