Chapter 5
I Dig Deeper
This was my third fall season in Green Bay. Fall can actually be pleasurable here. The trees are colorful, the temperatures are moderate, the mosquitoes go on vacation, things can feel pretty good. But of course you know winter is coming. Maybe you enjoy fall more knowing it won’t last, maybe you enjoy fall less, knowing it will never be fair payment for the weather to follow. This fall I didn’t enjoy at all. Most other people were unhappy since the country was in the midst of a crisis. My unhappiness was more personal. Elise was gone a lot and when she was home she was distracted. I know it is selfish to want her attention at such a time, but when you are engaged to the most beautiful woman in Canada, you want some attention. My classes were going OK and I should have been excited about the new job, but it was, after all, just a temporary gig teaching a subject that most students found just passingly interesting.
Maybe the real problem was my bouts of “foreignness.” Sure I had a house and a job in Green Bay, and I was soon to have a wife there, but then I would feel this overwhelming sense of distance. It hit one day when I was driving around in my stupid Citroen, and it suddenly struck me that this wasn’t a crazy car that I drove for amusement, it was my car. What in the world was I doing in such a piece of junk? Or I would open the paper to the lacrosse scores and it would hit me – lacrosse? Really?
Maybe part of the foreign feeling was the sense that I would never really know the place. I had no objection to Elise not giving me insights into the workings of her government, after all even if I had been born there, she probably could not have shared policy deliberations. What bothered me is that I didn’t have a clear sense of what the average Canadian might be thinking about all this. There was so much that was assumed and expected, yet unknown to me. Would I ever understand it? Would I ever be as quick to laugh at a joke as the other men at the party? Would I ever understand why some people had been invited to the party and some had not? Two years ago I didn’t give a damn. Now I did.
I filled my days grading papers, preparing lectures, advising students. My nights I escorted Elise to the fall round of social events as they built to the crescendo of Christmas parties, or I stained woodwork, moved walls, upgraded doors, and got the house ready for our life together. Days became weeks and tensions rose while the temperature dropped. For everyone else, the question centered on January travels, safety, normalcy, a Canada that was still one country. My question was different. Would I go west? For Elise and me, it was the one question that was never asked. For me, it was the one question I never escaped. There was a huge void in my understanding of this country, and that void was due west.
Whether I would actually travel to the Wall or not, I wanted to learn more about what had happened out there. As a National University professor I had access to the National Archives. It’s actually located on the edge of the university campus, so I could put on a coat, pull up my collar, and walk over there after class. The earliest sources are fragile and kept under glass - Marquette’s journal, Jolliet’s map of the Mississippi, several diaries kept by members of LaSalle’s party, including a description of his assassination and the celebration that followed. The earliest histories were all there. There was even an original plat map of Green Bay drawn by Jolliet himself. 1670s, 1680s, 1690s, there were important documents well preserved.
Starting around 1700 things got a bit foggy. There was less available, and what was there tended to be more indirect. Rather than diaries of explorers, there were diaries of people who had seen the explorers or talked with them, but not accompanied them. Folks went west, and often were never seen again.
Weeks went by and I had trouble getting more than very general descriptions. I knew about Verendrye and the Mallets and others, but they were just names and places on a map where they had died. They were traders. Sure. So was everyone. Take trade goods out and hope to come home with something better. In the process they went farther and farther west. Until they stopped going west. Something happened. But what? In the meantime, I had names and dates and places on a map. That much I knew, but it was so superficial it was not much more advanced than naming the states and their capitals – lots of words and no real understanding.
Verendrye and the Mallets headed west in the 1730s. Sixty years had passed since Jolliet had found and mapped the Mississippi. Trading posts existed all over the region. Travel was still by canoe, but the canoes kept getting better, and the routes were better known. “Lob trees” marked the best portages or best river tributary to paddle. Tribes were better understood, languages were learned to some degree. Sixty years had made Green Bay a city and created other population centers at Chicago and Kaskaskia. The launch sites for western explorers were more settled, the initial routes better known, success rates should have been higher. Jolliet had discovered half a continent with just six men. These new guys should have done better.
It was the Indian tribes that created the center of gravity for the developing settlements. Kaskaskia was a good example. Located on the eastern banks of the Mississippi, below the entrance of the Missouri and above the entrance of the Ohio, the Illinois had been there for as long as history recorded. A couple French missionaries arrived and French traders settled in and gradually the Illinois settlement became the home for the French as well. As always, the frequency with which Illinois men were killed in battle or in the hunt left plenty of women for the newly arrived French, so there was intermarriage, children, and a mixed community. The Illinois were already successful farmers on some of the planet’s best soil, so the French farmers joined and soon there was wheat and corn for export down the river to New Orleans.
So here at the midpoint of the Mississippi was a stable community with regular communications up and down the river and close access to the Missouri and Ohio. Seems like a pretty good jumping off place, right? Well, folks jumped off, but they just didn’t get very far. One example was Etienne de Veniard. Here was a colorful character (if by “colorful” you mean military deserter and bigamist). He must have had some skill with women for he seemed to have wedded or bedded half the female gender of North America, and then went back to France for more. In his search for yet more women, he was the first Frenchman to venture very far up the Missouri. By 1714 He had gone as far west as the Platte. In 1723 he created a fort along the Missouri, and in 1724 he traveled farther out onto the plains and traded with the Apaches. Those are the big events in his resume. What his resume doesn’t say is that after he supposedly signed a trade agreement with the Apaches, they moved south and away from the French, while his fort was abandoned. Arriving in France, Louis XV gave him money and award for his discoveries, meanwhile back along the Missouri, Veniard’s works were almost immediately erased in the sands of time. Half a century had passed since Marquette had described the Missouri, and Veniard was the best the French could produce.
To the north, the French had the Verendrye clan, a family with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of sons. Operating west out of Lake Superior, they discovered the major lakes west of Superior, built forts, traded for furs, and made it all the way to the Rockies – but no farther. The family head was a pretty interesting guy. Pierre Gaultier was an army cadet at 14 and fought in Canadian wars at 19, then went over to France and fought in continental wars. Back in New France, he gets married, has four sons, farms for a bit and was probably bored out of his mind until his brother got the commission to head the three French forts on the north shore of Lake Superior. Pierre goes to help run the forts and establish a fur trade, and takes over when his brother leaves to fight the Fox and Mascoutin.
At this point my research took a wild turn. I remember sitting in the reading room of the archives, an old biography set in front of me, and it was like a cloud passed over the windows high above the room. This ancient book was about the Verendryes, but it had this short paragraph of reference to the Fox Wars. The Fox Wars? How could there be such a thing? The F
ox and Mascoutin are the good guys, right? They helped Jolliet up the Fox River to the Wisconsin. The discovery of the Mississippi depended upon them. How is it the French end up fighting them, and where are the Jolliets in all this?
I put down the Verendrye biography and dug around a number of sources in the archives. It didn’t take long for me to find descriptions of running fights, a few battles, and an all-round bad ending. The motivation included some mention of conflicts over trade, with the Fox and Mascoutin wanting to be middlemen while the French wanted to trade directly with the Sioux, all of which seemed like a reason for disagreement but not really a reason for war. Then I found a jaw dropper. Louis XV signed an edict instructing his soldiers in New France to eliminate all members of the Fox tribe. Not all warriors, not all men, not all opponents, but all members of the tribe, women and children included. What the hell? Where does that order come from? Worse yet, it is carried out. The French and their allies track down and kill thousands of Fox, forcing them to flee southwest to Iowa where they find some shelter with the Sauk, but the French keep coming. In the end, only a few hundred survive.
I am always nervous about historical sidetracks. I saw too many of my friends from graduate school never complete their dissertation because they started down one path, found an interesting incident, pursued that, only to find another interesting incident, and suddenly they had reached their seven year limit without a dissertation. But this sidetrack seemed worth pursuing. Something didn’t seem right. I thought Elise’ heritage was Mascoutin. Was that tribe spared while the Fox were hunted nearly to extinction? How could that be? And – where were the Jolliets during this massacre?
How could I have missed an event this significant? Granted, this was not the sort of history that gets made into a postage stamp or celebrated as a national holiday. But still, it was pretty hard to hide. Yet somehow I had missed it. Now what?
History is full of events where you shake your head and wonder what kind of people we are. People give you poetry and songs – and massacres. You wonder if we are fundamentally flawed. But this flaw seemed pretty close to home. Where did Elise fit in this? Did two centuries of time heal the wound? Two centuries was a very long time, but this was a huge injustice. Was no injury left?
I was probably a danger to the public as I drove home that evening - a bad car on a bad road driven by a man whose mind is two centuries in the past. I got home without injuring anyone, but I had no idea what to do next. I had started weeks earlier trying to learn about French explorers, and now I was dealing with a totally different subject. Now what?
My first question was whether I should ask Elise about this. My response was immediate – no. I wouldn’t even know how to phrase the question. Hey, Elise, the French tried to exterminate a tribe your ancestors were allied with. Any reactions? Is this a conversation we are having over red wine or white? No. This is a subject I need to know more about. As an American, even as an American historian, I have no real understanding of the relations between the French and the various tribes. We even call Washington’s war the French and Indian War while the rest of the world calls it the Seven Year War. To Americans it was the French and all Indians against us (and it probably seemed that way to Washington as he saw his men being killed at Fort Necessity). That the French had various relations with different tribes may seem obvious, but it is not obvious to us, hence my shock at their treatment of the Fox.
This got me thinking about President Jolliet’s comment about the Sioux. What was it – we don’t need trouble with the Sioux? Hmm. What trouble did he mean? Clearly there were layers of meaning here I wasn’t seeing. OK, but how do I correct my vision? Once again, I felt like a dumb foreigner. I could see myself getting buried pretty deep in the National Archives. I also was beginning to wonder if the “open” archives contained all there was to know. Nations had a pretty common habit of hiding their embarrassments. Indian massacres might well fall into that category.
Just getting the information I had gathered so far had taken me weeks. Meanwhile the world kept moving. The days got colder and tensions got hotter. A New Orleans hotel that advertised “January Specials” had its website disfaced with insults about “Catholics need not apply.” A Biloxi resort announced that it now served “Whites only.” Several winter homes of rich northerners were vandalized. Clearly the welcome mat was not out.
Missouri businesses saw an opportunity, advertising prominently in papers and on the air, explaining how warm it was there in January, and how friendly the people were. Leave it to business people to spot an opportunity. I wondered if there were a few business leaders in Louisiana who might be having second thoughts about prejudice as they saw their rooms stand empty and restaurant tables go unused. Might they temper their crazier neighbors?
In mid-November the first snowfall hit Green Bay. The sun set earlier every day and refused to rise until most people were up and on their way to work. It was a typical Green Bay winter – dark, cold, and endless. The Christmas parties started so people had six weeks of busy evenings filled with heavy drinking and sexual adventures. But it seemed pro forma. Where before the parties had been a time to celebrate – and a time to say good bye as folks packed to head to more reasonable latitudes, this year too many parties included conversations about who had cancelled their travel plans and which rural Louisiana home had been vandalized. A few folks sold their second homes at a significant profit as northern Huguenots determined to find permanent residences in Louisiana. One man made the mistake of bragging about how he had sold his home outside Biloxi and would now be spending his winters in Mexico. He may have been expecting admiration for his business acumen. What he got was cold stares and fewer party invitations.
Elise and I attended even more parties than usual that season. For Elise it was a duty – her effort to reassure the public. We might do two or even three parties a night, and several times we even crossed the river and attended parties on the west side of town – over among the endless rows of “ranch” houses on quarter acre lots. The hostesses were pleased and proud and we were asked to be part of so many photos I thought I would be flash blinded.
But no matter how many parties Elise and her senior level colleagues attended, they could not provide what the attendees really wanted – reassurance. The question was asked in endless variations depending upon the sophistication or sobriety of the questioner, but it was always really the same question – can we go to Louisiana in January? I learned to temporize, and Elise was a master at it, but you can only temporize so long. Answers that were fine in October rang hollow in November, and by December were less often received with good humor. I actually saw one woman grab Elise by the arm and entreat, “Please Minister, I really need to know. Will our children be safe there?”
Damn good question. Who had a good answer?
Riding to and from parties, the car had never been quieter. I almost welcomed the tailpipe rattle. Elise had little to say. She tried – what did I think of the food, did I know how to get to the next party? But it was clear she was tired – and frustrated. She knew ten different approaches to data analysis, but neither she nor anyone in her government could analyze the minds down south. They made calls, they read papers, they monitored every political event, but they just didn’t know.
One faction in her ministry was for going down as usual – pretend things are normal in the hopes they really might be. Another faction was set against it. They pointed out how close Claude Jolliet had come to assassination and the consequences that would have resulted. One high-profile killing was all it would take to turn this feud into a war. They counseled avoidance – stay north for the winter, or just go as far as Missouri.
It was the first week in December before a strategy was agreed upon. No travel recommendations would be made. How do you declare a part of your country safe or unsafe? Instead, leading politicians (and leading families) would model what seemed like
a safe approach. Many agency heads scheduled official visits to public works projects in Missouri (any highway entrance ramp or new overpass was suddenly going to get a looksee by major political figures), with some carefully picked in Arkansas as well. Beyond that, the word was to be that officials would vacation in their Louisiana homes – “as their schedules permitted.” It was the kind of approach you would expect from a committee of bureaucrats, heavy on safety, light on daring, but at least the government finally had a strategy.
Elise was assigned a series of agricultural colleges to visit. At parties she was able to keep a straight face while she described how interested she was to see how crop yields were being improved. It was utter nonsense, of course, but she would go through the motions and spend six to eight weeks walking through green houses in Missouri and Arkansas. She was nothing if not a good sport. And the approach worked. Now that ordinary people knew what the leadership was doing, they set their schedules to follow. They would set their sights for Missouri or Arkansas, and stay ready for short trips into Louisiana as the times permitted.
As for me, I continued to temporize, now not just at parties but at home as well. My original thought had been to visit the mountains to see just how big a wall they might be, but now I wondered about visiting some tribes. The Sioux lands took up a huge area on the map. I wondered if a visit there would be helpful. Elise would be heading south right after the first of the year. I could go then. There was a limit to what I could find in the archives. It seemed time to visit the people and places where the history had occurred. The hardest part of the trip would be telling Elise I intended to take it.