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  • Officers, 1911
  • Preface
  • The Fur-Trade in Wisconsin 1812–1825
  • A Wisconsin Fur-Trader's Journal, 1803–04 By Michel Curot1
  • Index

    • Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Volume 20

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    This text is based on the following book(s):
    06-27689 r892. General Collections, Library of Congress. Copyright status not determined; refer to accompanying matter.

    This volume is a collection of several different kinds of important historical documents published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Although it opens with an 1812 assessment of the impact of the United States fur trade's "factory system" on Canada's ability to control Native American economic and diplomatic activities, most of the other materials date from 1818 to 1825. In 1825, a peace treaty at Prairie du Chien fixed territorial boundaries for the Eastern Sioux and made peace between them and the Lake Superior Ojibwe [Chippewa], the Sac and Fox [Mesquakie], Menominee, Iowa, Winnebago and parts of the Ottawa and Potawatomi [Pottawattomies]. It was during this period that the United States took control of the Northwest fur trade and protected its interests with a series of forts: Mackinac, Detroit, Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and the newly-built Fort Snelling (1819) at the headwaters of the Mississippi. Correspondence and reports reflect divergent opinions on whether the fur trade should be privatized, increasingly under the aegis of the American Fur Company, or supervised through the government's factory system. For those peoples who had been involved with Wisconsin's fur trade for centuries, this was a time of crisis and transition: their trade networks and system of alliances were being disrupted even as their trading practices were subjected to increased local competition and government regulation. Many of the traditional fur- traders of the Wisconsin area were of mixed French and Native American ancestry and were regarded as foreigners by the Americans. Letters to and from August Grignon, a trader on the upper Mississippi, reveal how he was driven from the region through the cutthroat strategies of a competitor. The last document in this volume is the journal kept by Michel Curot, a fur-trader on Yellow River during 1802-1803. In it, the author reveals much about the customs of those dependent on trapping, trading, and other forest activities while Canada was still in control of regional commerce. An index appears at the end of the volume.

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