the British authorities had the superintendency of the Indians of the Green Bay Department. After the close of the Revolutionary war the same superintendency appears to have continued indefinitely. He also had command of the militia composed of the simple hearted people of the settlement, by whom he was most affectionately reverenced and honored. He spent the remainder of his days at Green Bay, receiving an annuity from the British government of eight hundred dollars, as half pay for his services during the American Revolution, and died in January, 1800, at the age of seventyfive years, and was buried beside his father in the cemetery at Green Bay.

PIERRE GRIGNON, Sen., by his marriage with DOMITELLE DE LANGLADE, had seven sons and two daughters. One of the sons was AUGUSTIN GRIGNON, born June 27, 1780, from whose "Recollections," noted down from his lips in 1857 by Mr. DRAPER, secretary of the State Historical Society, most of the foregoing statements in relation to the LANGLADE family, have been literally transcribed.

CHAPTER IV.

JONATHAN CARVER'S EXPLORATIONS

A new era in the history of the West commenced with the year 1763. By the treaty of Paris made in that year, all the claims of the French to the country watered by the Ohio and the Mississippi, and all the French possessions, were ceded to Great Britain. By a secret treaty however, made on the same day the definitive articles of the treaty of Paris had been signed (November 3, 1762), France ceded to Spain all Louisiana west of the Mississippi and the island of Orleans. So that Great Britain, when the treaty was concluded, February 10, 1763, acquired the country east of the Mississippi, which river was to remain equally free to the subjects of Great Britain and France.

Soon after the vast acquisition of territory gained by Great Britain from the French, Capt. JONATHAN CARVER resolved to explore the interior parts of North America and

to penetrate to the Pacific ocean, over that broad part of the continent which lies between the 43d and 46th degrees of north latitude, and he hoped to discover a northwest passage from Hudson's Bay to the Pacific. A journal of this exploration was published in 1778. CARVER was born in the town of Canterbury, Connecticut, in the year 1732. He served in the Canadian campaign of 1755, was subsequently with General WOLFE at the taking of Quebec, and the capture of Montreal and conquest of Canada under General AMHERST. He was at the massacre of Fort William Henry in 1757. A battalion of light infantry was raised in Massachusetts in 1758, for the invasion of Canada, in one of the companies of which he served as lieutenant, and in 1760, he was advanced to the captaincy of a company in Col. JOHN WHITCOMB's regiment of foot. In 1762, he commanded a company of foot in Col. SALTONSTALL'S regiment, and the year after the peace of Versailles, he retired from the service. In June, 1766, he set out from Boston to carry out his resolution to explore the Northwest, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara to Mackinaw, where he arrived the 1st of September. He there made arrangements with Gov. ROGERS for a suitable supply of goods for presents to the Indians on his route, and having received a part, with a promise that the remainder should be sent forward to meet him at the falls of St. Anthony, he proceeded on the 3d of September, and pursuing the usual route to Green Bay, arrived there on the 18th.

Capt. CARVER left Green Bay on the 20th of September, in company with several traders, and ascended Fox river, arriving on the 25th at an island, on which was the great town of the Winnebagoes, now known as Doty's Island. The principal chief of this tribe was a woman, who had married a Frenchman named DE KAURY, who had been mortally wounded at Quebec and died at Montreal; so that the Queen was a widow at this time. Her descendants, the DE KAURY'S, have long figured as distinguished chiefs of the Winnebagoes. The town contained fifty houses, which were strongly built with palisades.

Having remained four days, during which he was treated with great civility, and entertained in a distinguished manner, having made some presents to the chiefess, he left on the 29th, and on the 7th of October arrived at the portage of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers.

On the 9th, the party arrived at the great town of the Saukies, now known as Prairie du Sac, which our explorer describes as the largest and best built Indian town he ever saw. It contained, he says, about ninety houses, each large enough for several families, built of hewn plank, neatly jointed and covered so completely with bark, as to keep out the most penetrating rains. Before the doors were placed comfortable sheds in which the inhabitants sat, when the weather would permit, and smoked their pipes. The streets were both regular and spacious, appearing more like a civilized town than the abode of savages. This large and well-built Indian town, the traveler's description of which, it must be confessed, appears somewhat exaggerated, had but a brief existence, for in less than thirty years only a few remains of fire-places and posts were to be seen.

The Sacs had about three hundred warriors who extended their excursions into the territories of the Illinois and Pawnee nations. Capt. CARVER says:

"Whilst I stayed here, I took a view of some mountains, that lie about fifteen miles to the southward, and abound in lead ore (probably the Blue Mounds). I ascended on one of the highest of these, and had an extensive view of the country. For many miles nothing was to be seen but lesser mountains, which appeared at a distance like hay-cocks, they being free from trees. So plentiful is lead here that I saw large quantities of it lying about the streets, in the town belonging to the Saukies, and it seemed to be as good as the produce of other countries.

"On the 10th of October (he says) we proceeded down the river, and the next day reached the first town of the Ottiganmies (Fox Indians). This town contained about fifty houses, but we found most of them deserted, on account of an epidemical disorder that had lately raged among them, and carried off more than one-half of the inhabitants. The greater part of those who survived had retired into the woods to avoid the contagion."

This town is supposed to have been where Muscoda is. When within about five miles of the mouth of the Wisconsin he discovered the ruins of another village, and learned that it had been deserted about thirty years before, and that the inhabitants soon after built a town on the Mississippi river near the mouth of the Wisconsin, at a place called by the French La Prairie des Chiens. It was a large town, and contained about three hundred families. It was the great mart where furs and peltries were annually brought about the last of May from the remote branches of the Mississippi, and where it was determined by a general council of the chiefs whether to dispose of them to traders there, or to transport them either to Mackinaw or to Louisiana.

The traders with CARVER took up their residence for the

winter at the mouth of Yellow River, about ten miles above Prairie du Chien, on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, while he with one voyageur and a Mohawk Indian, pushed on in his canoe towards the Falls of St. Anthony.

He passed Mount Tremealeau, which he described, and on the first of November arrived at Lake Pepin, where he says he observed the ruins of a French factory, where Capt. ST. PIERRE resided and carried on a very great trade with the Naudowissies, before the reduction of Canada. It was here the first trading houses north of the Illinois River were erected. (As early as 1687, NICHOLAS PERROT was trading in the neighborhood of the Sioux, and according to CHARLEVOIX, he built a fort near the mouth of the lake.)

The pre-historic tumuli, which are found in so many places near the banks of the Mississippi, did not escape the observation of CARVER, and he was the first to call the attention of the civilized world to their existence.

He first made the acquaintance of the Dakota Indians near the mouth of the St. Croix River, probably near Prescott, and had the good fortune to make a treaty of peace between that nation and the Chippewas, at a time when an engagement was imminent, in return for which kindly act the Indians bestowed upon him every possible attention.

In his further progress he came to a remarkable cave on the bank of the Mississippi, about thirty miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, of which he says:

"The entrance is about ten feet wide, with a height of five feet, and a breadth of thirty feet. About twenty feet from the entrance begins a lake which extends to an unsearchable distance."

The walls he describes as being a soft stone, upon which were cut many ancient hieroglyphics, and the cave was believed by the Indians to be the dwelling of the "Great Spirit." It has been materially altered by the action of the elements, the roof has fallen in, and the entrance has been choked up by rock and earth; so that in 1820, SCHOOLCRAFT was led into the error of supposing that the cave near St. Paul, now known as the "Fountain Cave," was the one described by CARVER. The track of a railroad runs along the bank of the river directly in front of the cave, in the construction of which the cave is virtually destroyed, and the stream which flowed through it now supplies a watertank, while the subterranean lake has disappeared.

On reaching the mouth of the St. Peters river, ten miles

below the falls of St. Anthony, called by the natives Wadda-paw-men-e-so-tor, the ice became so troublesome that he left his canoe, and walked to the Falls of St. Anthony where he arrived November 17th. He gives a very particular description of them, accompanied by a copper-plate engraving, from which it would seem that a constant recession of the rock has been going on, which has gradually reduced the height of the fall, and that in ages long past, this sublime cataract of the Mississippi, thundering in its solitude, was not far from the mural cliffs, upon which were erected the barracks of the garrison at Fort Snelling.

This persevering explorer continued on foot, until he reached the river St. Francis or Elk river, about sixty miles above the falls, but as the season was far advanced, he returned, and on the 25th of November commenced with his canoe the ascent of the St. Peters river, now called the Minnesota, which he found free from ice, and proceeded some two hundred miles to the country of the Naudowissies, or Sioux of the plains, which was the western limit of his travels. With these Indians he spent five months, and was well treated. He learned their language, and acquired all the geographical information they could impart.

Capt. CARVER left his hibernal abode the latter end of April and descended to the Mississippi, escorted by nearly three hundred Indians, among whom were many chiefs. It was the habit of these bands to go annually at this season to the great cave, to hold a grand council with all the other bands. CARVER, on this occasion, was admitted to the grand council, and made a speech which is published in his travels. This was on the 1st of May, 1767.

At this time, as claimed by his heirs and their assignees, two of the chiefs of the Naudowissies gave to Capt. CARVER a deed of a large tract of land lying in Wisconsin and Minnesota, bounded as follows:

"From the Falls of St. Anthony, running on the east bank of the Mississippi nearly southeast as far as the south end of Lake Pepin, where the Chippewa river joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward, five days' travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence north six days' travel at twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the Falls of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line."

These boundaries extend east to the range line between ranges 3 and 4 east, north to the south line of Douglas county and south to the south line of Clark county, and brace the whole of the counties of Pepin, Pierce, St.