Wisconsin Fur Trade
“Ouisconsin” (1640s-1763)
French and French-Canadian voyageurs, like John Louis
DuBay, were the first Europeans to venture into the wild
woods of Wisconsin. Elementary school children in
Wisconsin learn that the first European explorer to “discover
Wisconsin," was Jean Nicolet (1598-1642), who met the HoChunk (Winnebago) near Green Bay. Nicolet was followed
by a string of French missionaries, who sought to convert the
Indians to Catholicism, and traders looking for beaver pelts. Until the beginning of the
twentieth century, the pelts were highly prized because they made waterproof, insulated,
and expensive hats for the world’s elite.
French fur traders generally did not trap beaver themselves. They ¬supplied Indians with
metal knives, guns, cloth, alcohol, and other European manufactured goods in the fall and
received furs in exchange during the spring. This system kept the Indians indebted,
ensuring a continuous supply of beaver pelts to Europe.
The profitability and massive land area encompassed by the
French fur trade angered the British, who viewed the North
American continent and everything in it as their exclusive
property. The rivalry between these two superpowers built
up to the French and Indian War (1755-63). This subsidiary
of the Pan-European “Seven Years’ War” was fought to
determine control of colonial North America. The outcome in
North America was decided in 1760, when the British
captured the French capital of Montreal. The Treaty of Paris (1763) expunged France from
Canada, giving the British control of all lands east of the Mississippi River, except for
Louisiana. The French and Indian War weakened the three colonial superpowers, France,
Britain, and Spain, fostering later revolutions in America, France, and French and Spanish
colonies.
The American Fur Trade Company (1808-1842)
From 1796 to 1816, British and American powers vied for
dominance of the North American continent. While wars
were fought for political boundaries, the fur trade weathered
changing alliances.
Much like the French before them, the American Fur Trading Company continued to employ
the trapping services of Indians. Established in 1808 by John Jacob Astor I, the first
American multi-millionaire, the company controlled nearly the entire American fur trade for
over three decades. After America defeated Britain once and for all in the War of 1812, the
American government officially banned foreign companies from operating within the borders
of the United States, granting the American Fur Trading Company a near monopoly of the
global fur trade. Under the direction of Ramsay Crooks, the company operated forts and
trading posts in the Midwest, Great Lakes regions, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains into
the 1850s. The three main loci of the fur trade in Wisconsin were Prairie du Chien, Green
Bay, and Fort Winnebago.
Fort Winnebago
The mile and a half portage between the Fox (Great Lakes) and Wisconsin (Mississippi)
Rivers, near Fort Winnebago served as a communication and transportation network
between Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, Mackinac, and St. Louis – hubs of the American Fur
Trading Company. John DuBay operated the trading post of the fort from approximately
1840 until he left the area in 1857.
Eventually, the dwindling supply of beaver spelled doom for the American Fur Trading
Company. The marked decline in the number of furs available in the area and surrounding
territories in the 1830s shifted the focus of the world fur trade to the Canadian Hudson Bay
Company. In response to the rising price of furs, cheaper silk hats grew in popularity and
the demand for furs slowly faded. In 1842 the American Fur Trading Company officially
went out of business. Wisconsin became America’s farmland, and immigrants began to
flood the territory.
Permanent Settlement
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the population of Wisconsin
primarily consisted of French and British fur traders, Indians from many nations, and their
Métis (mixed) children. There was no widespread immigration, and Wisconsin continued to
be heavily forested. The British triumph in the French and Indian War garnered them the
land east of the Mississippi River. After the American Revolutionary War (1776), that land
was acquired by the United States from Britain in the Treaty of Paris (1783). In 1787 the
land that encompassed present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin was
established as the Northwest Territory. Settlers began to flow into the frontier.
Around the time Wisconsin was incorporated as a state in 1848, the fur trade had virtually
collapsed due to overhunting, deforestation, and exponential European population growth in
some areas. The virtual massacre of Black Hawk’s “British Band” (a coalition of about 1500
Sauk, Meskwaki, Kickapoo, Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi and Ottawa men, women and children)
following their resistance in the Black Hawk War (1832) prompted Ho-Chunk, Sauk, Fox,
Potawatomi and Ottawa to cede their lands to the Wisconsin territorial government. The
Menominee, Oneida, Munsee, Brothertown and Stockbridge nations surrendered their lands
soon after. In 1854 the last holdouts, the Lake Superior Ojibwa bands, relinquished northern
Wisconsin to the government in exchange for hunting and fishing rights.
The forced removal of Indians released huge tracts of land for European settlement.
Settlers first came to Wisconsin in the 1830s from Germany, Poland, England, Ireland,
Scandinavia, and the eastern United States. Data from the Wisconsin Historical Society
reveals staggering population growth: from 11,683 in 1836 to 155,277 in 1846. After 1855,
the highly profitable logging industry also cleared land for farming. Following Wisconsin
achieving statehood in 1848, land prices soared and permanent farming settlements
eclipsed the fur trade. Unlike fur trading or logging, farming allowed for permanent and
prosperous settlement in the Midwest. Farming implements, horse bridles, plows, and
bones of domestic animals such as pigs, cows, and horses were found at the DuBay site,
dating after 1860, clearly reflecting DuBay’s own shift from fur trader to small farmer.
Source: https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/anthropology/online-collections-research/dubaysite/wisconsin-fur-trade