Proceedings [Of The] Annual Business Meeting (Volume 36-40) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE FUR TRADE IN WISCONSIN. BY FREDERICK J. TURNER. [Annual address before the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, January 3,1889.l Over two hundred and fifty years have passed since Jean Nicolet, agent of the great fur trader Samuel de Champ lain, paddled his birch canoe up Fox river, and thus led the way in the movement of white men into Wisconsin, whereby it s primitive inhabitants have been superseded, and the wilderness transformed into a civilized commonwealth. But it is only the last fifty years of this period that has peopled Wisconsin with an agricultural and manufacturing community. For two hundred years Wisconsin's all-important interest was the fur trade, and she was inhabited by the Indian and the Frenchman. This traffic stimulated exploration, by making it profitable; 'transfoimed Indian society politically and economically; brought the Indian into complete dependence on the trader; and paved the way for the peaceful agricultural settlement of the State. In Kentucky the entrance of agricultural settlers was facilitated by the fact that the pioneers found there no permanent Indian settlements' When Sevier and Robertson crossed the mountains into Tennessee, they held their ground by hard fighting against the Cherokees.' Wisconsin was the home of numerous and warlike tribes, and yet when her first agricultural settlers arrived they met with almost no resistance. for the Winnebago and the Black Hawk episodes cannot be called wars. What is the secret of this peaceful entrance of the farmer into the State? The explanation lies largely in the fact that the trader had here been given time to complete his work as the unconscious missionary of civilization. To these two centuries I ask your attention, therefore, from their interest as...