You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM 975 FM.
I'm Melissa Kaye, bringing you news in our community.
Today I have the pleasure of talking with John Berg, who was born in Wisconsin Rapids and raised in the village of Port Edwards, a local historian.
John, thank you for joining me today.
Thank you, Melissa.
It's a joy to be here and I enjoy doing these types of conversations.
So today you're going to talk to us about how the fur trade went to timber in this area in the 1800s.
I'm going to just let you dive right.
in because this topic is fascinating.
Well thank you and if you have any questions as we go just dive right in
and we'll
make this as conversational as we can.
The fur trade actually we have to go back before that and take a look at the earlier aspects of this because the history of Wisconsin's forest is complex and multifaceted.
We have a lot of human activity.
There was climate nature activity and cycles that have impacted our forests since the first Europeans arrived on the shores here in the 17th century.
If we think about the changes that have been brought since 1854 in what Amabla, Grigno's widow Marie Barossa called the Holt du Wisconsin, and I call the Middle Wisconsin River Valley,
That is, the lands acquired from its owners, the Menominee Nation and the Ho-Chunk Nation by the Treaty of Cedars in 1836.
It sounds like a long time ago, especially in our 24-7 world where a year past can seem like an eternity.
Ancient history to many.
And why 1854?
Well, the human history of Wisconsin's forests must begin with the narrative of the indigenous people who the Europeans, quote, discovered.
And we must consider that a mere 100
72 years have transpired since the final treaty was signed between the Menominee Nation and the United States government that turned these lands over to the Europeans.
That was the Treaty of Cedars in 1836.
So we've got a lot going on here in that period like say from 1820 roughly through 18...
1860 now when we're talking about this I want us to think about geography a little bit and I want us to think about Going down south in the Cus almost to the wood County border Mm-hmm, and I want us to look turn around and look north up the river and Then picture going all the way up to Wasaw and as we look up the river on either side of the river There's a three mile strip on the west side and on the east side and that was granted to
Actually, it was called the Amabla-Grenio lands and it was granted to the United States as part of the Treaty of the Seeders in 1836, which was signed over in the Fox Valley.
And by doing that, the monomony seeded their control over that land, which allowed entrepreneurs to come in and start harvesting both timber and taking up farmsteads.
But picture this, that the Wisconsin River was basically
Covered on both sides of the river and back quite a bit by huge Virgin white pine the Pinus strobus and
pine was the preferred lumber because it was strong yet light and you could float it
best pine That you could get would be the huge like three four foot in diameter on the stump and it would float like a cork so they call it cork pine
Oh.
And you could cut it down.
You used horses or oxen initially to haul it to the riverside where it was piled.
And during the winter, like this time of the year now, they'd be sledding that or skidding that out.
And then that would sit on the riverbanks until the spring thaw.
and then they would start the log dries down the river through the dams and everything.
But that's kind of the later phase, the early phase of all this is really dealing with the indigenous nations like the Menominee, the Ho-Chunk, and the Potawatomi.
And then also the Ojibwe would come down and hunt in here.
And the Menominee controlled a good section of this land with the Ho-Chunk.
And they had an agreement worked out that would allow them to
Hunt or agree to where different groups would be hunting both kinship family groups or larger tribal groups and we got to keep in mind that although these These nations controlled these areas.
They were very mobile.
I mean they had their main villages
Kashina being one, the Ho-Chunk over by Black River Falls, but they were also dispersed throughout this whole area.
The Ojibwe from Lack the Flamble would come down to Wisconsin and they would hunt their way down and hunt their way back and in the Chippewa River the same thing.
So these indigenous nations were very...
mobile.
And they would gather at certain points or places for religious and ceremonial, you know, practices, but then disperse out.
So what was
the relationship like at that point between the European fur traders and the tribes that were living here
and
controlling these lands?
Well, the French, of course, were the ones who controlled this area up and through
1763 or actually 1760 when they when they lost on the plains of Abraham a single battle determined the control of of a large huge section of North America and The French fur traders oftentimes would come in and they would actually If they were allowed in by the nations Because they were the gatekeepers of
going to get in and get out once they secured
the trust of the nations to come in and trade, then they would oftentimes marry into the Indian tribes.
And this was done for political, and it wasn't, it was, the impetus was both on the indigenous nations and...
on the Kuwait war who came in and married in because it was a manner of cementing some allegiances creating alliances family and Again, we overlooked the role of the women in in all this that they were the ones the kinship who built the kinship ties amongst these different Families within a tribal group and and that was the strength of the nation and so they would marry into that and become part of those tribes and so the offspring of those
were a mixed blood, mixed race, and oftentimes referred to as Metis, meaning mixed blood.
so the Amabla Grigno, who I refer to, he was the result of a marriage between a Metis woman and his father, who was French-Canadian.
very common and also not uncommon to have two families in the custom of the country You may have a family within it with a woman of one of the indigenous nations here And yet you may also have a wife back in Montreal or Quebec and sometimes the wife's well women have very good intuition and they know when things like this are going on but it was not always accepted but commonly accepted that's a kind of a
Actually more on there, but it occurred it occurred regularly and so it wasn't you know
So were the tribes involved in the transition from from fur to lumber?
Well the the tribes the Menominee the Ho-Chunk the Pottawatomie the Ojibwe the Odawa up by Micheli Mackinaw and the north south of the thumb of Michigan These tribes all controlled what was going on when you came into this country
prior to, say, 1800 or 1820, you better know at least five different languages, and you better have a pretty good understanding of what these different cultural practices were amongst the different nations.
So the Odawa, the Padawatami, and the Ojibwe were called the Three Fires, so they had similar religious
and cultural practices.
The monomony had their own.
They were a distinct nation from that.
The whole chunk were distinct.
And then you had some smaller tribal groups too.
So you better know coming in here who's got control of what and how you're going to deal with that.
And oftentimes as a fur trader, you relied on your Indian wife.
You relied heavily on your Indian wife, not only for all the domestic chores which she took care of, but also for all the political
the nuance, understanding the
culture, maybe translation.
Right.
And so we want to understand that these nations controlled the Great Lakes.
They were the ones, you might say, well, the British claim this or the French claim that, yeah, they claimed it, but they didn't do anything without the approval of these nations.
And so that was that whole issue there.
So as we look at that transition from fur trade to lumber, the
influence of the indigenous nations declined as the power of the European, primarily the Americans, gained.
And that really occurred after the war of 1812, after the British were finally forced to...
surrender their control of the fur trade posts in the Great Lakes and retreat back into Canada.
Okay, well let's take just a pause here.
I'm talking with John Berg.
I'm Melissa Kaye.
You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Melissa Kay.
You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 97-5 FM, 1320 a.m.
I'm talking with local historian John Berg and we're discussing how the fur trade in this area transitioned into timber industry.
And John, we're now through the first couple waves here.
Now what's happening?
Well, to review, Melissa...
I've defined this as four waves.
We have the first wave, of course, of the indigenous nations who were here since time immemorial.
This was their birthplace.
And then they encountered the Europeans, which was the 17th and 18th century.
And that resulted in the trading for furs, the economic and social integration there.
That gave way to, as the War of 1812, as we said before, removed the power of the British from the Great Lakes.
Then the Americans started asserting their...
their control and their power and their culture and their government over this region.
Now it was slow, it wasn't fast, but by roughly about 1840 as the fur trade is dying out we come into the third wave which is really defined by the Treaty of the Cedars and that was in the 1836 at Cedar Point which is over in the
Fox Valley area up on the Fox River.
And by that treaty, they seceded this, the menominee primarily were the ones who were treating out on that, and they seceded this three-mile strip either side of the Wisconsin River from South Inakusa up to Wausau.
And that's where we see the development of this area start coming in.
Now, there's a guy named Daniel Whitney, who was a Yankee entrepreneur, and he came to Green Bay in 1816, and he started getting his fingers in all sorts of stuff, you know.
marketing, fur trading, running barges and boats and all sorts of stuff, up and down the Fox River Valley.
And then he finally expands down to Portage.
Now the three main settlements in Wisconsin were Green Bay, which was the earliest.
Then you had the Portage at the Fox Wisconsin River Portage, which is the city of Portage now.
And then you had Prairie de Sheen down on the Mississippi.
So those were primary military fur trading posts.
And then they grew into these economic.
connections too so Whitney goes down there he gets the bright idea that he wants to come up here and he wants to cut pine or cedar excuse me wants to cut cedar wood for shingles for the fort at Portage you can make money doing that so he comes up in 1829 and starts doing that up here on the Yellow River down by Nasita and of course that's illegally doesn't have permission
And it was the Ho-Chunk, I think, who actually brought here, or called them out on that.
So the military commander Twig at Portage came up to shut him down, take him back.
So then in a couple of years, he starts playing nice.
He gets a treaty signed with the Menominee to, you know, this treaty, the Cedars is part of that.
And so he starts coming up here in 1831.
He builds the first sawmill.
at the island in Nakusa.
As you
the bridge and you look on the north side of the river, there's that spit of island on the east side, east shore, right in there is where he built his first sawmill with some boomerangs.
Now it was just a basic water power driven sawmill.
He had probably, we don't know this, but I'm assuming that he had a blacksmith and that he had a millwright who could, you know,
Worked the machinery in that because there was some iron work and some mostly made out of wood paddles and everything to To run that through and be able to saw And it was just rough saw and lumber and then from there he would ship that down He would put that on a raft and he would slide her down to Portage to the fort because that was your main and some of it could go down to Prairie to Sheen to down the Wisconsin to Mississippi So he starts doing that and that really is the start of the industry.
So that's your your
your second and your third waves there with the Treaty of the Cedars.
Okay.
And opening that up.
Then we go on to the fourth wave, which is really where you start seeing a concentrated industrial development here.
And that starts with a guy named Henry Clinton.
Well, actually it starts with a mob Lagrinho again.
And he gets the permission to build a mill, right?
We think it is in the intersection of the highway near the Methodist Church in Port Edwards, on the island over there, on the island side of that.
And he gets permission to build a psalm there.
Now, it's said that he did build a psalm there by eyewitnesses.
We just don't have a lot of documentation as to what it looked like or what he did do.
But he gets involved with a guy named Henry Merrill.
And so, Greeno and Merrill in 1836.
right after this treaty signed.
He started building a sawmill there.
And Grigno had ties to Menominee?
Yes.
Well, his father had married a Menominee woman, so there was a Menominee family, and then his father had married the granddaughter of Charles de Langlois, who was a noted French-Canadian partisan, who had settled in Green Bay.
And his de Langlois was Metis, and so there's this tie to the Ottawa.
through Delonglad and the Menominee through Pierre Grigno Senior.
And Amavla was the youngest son of the seven kids in that family.
And he was a fur trader.
He settled at Nassida on the Yellow River in 1828.
He got washed out there.
He came up on the east side of Wisconsin to the 14 mile and put a...
fur trade post up the 14 mile and later relocated at the 10 mile here just south of point Bass, okay and Point Bass now becomes well always had been a gathering place of the indigenous nations because it was the low point of the Rapids and It was easy to get across with your horses and that in low water We got to remember that the river is not the level that it was in 1820 or 18 because now
there's dams.
Yeah, there's dams all along
There would be floods in the spring or in high, you know, when there was a lot of rain, but otherwise it was just kind of through the riverbed, the main riverbed, and so you could get across.
That became what we had, what we now know as the historic Point Bass site was actually a gathering place of the Menominee, the Ho-Chunk, the Potawatomi, the Ojibwa, Ottawa, who came down, Sioux, who came up, you know,
these different indigenous nations mixing there.
And so the Grigno brothers,
among other traders, recognized this, knew of this, and they started trading there too.
So we think that that was a temporary post that was set up with a tent and established, you know, and so it just kept on growing.
And then this fellow named Robert Wakeley, another entrepreneur, comes up and he decides, ah, this is a great place to establish a...
post of my own and also because you have more lumbermen coming up now and wanting to cut timber along this three-mile strip, then it becomes a place for a hotel, an eatery, you know, a stopping place.
And so if you can think of it being north-south up and down the Wisconsin River and also east-west from Green Bay over to
Point Bass, and then further westward as settlements grew, but basically you had east, west, north, south.
So in the early 1800s, up through 1860, you will see references to Point Bass quite frequently as a trading place, as a lumber place, and so on.
Kind of the
thoroughfare
for
all of the people working and transient.
Like labor so
to speak exactly exactly and and it was transient labor I mean it was here to get the logs out and then when they were done Homesteading was not a thing And to take up a residence here You still needed to have the good graces of all the indigenous nations because beyond that three-mile strip They still up until the late 1840s.
They still controlled that
that land and that territory.
And by 1854, that was relinquished and many of the indigenous nations were pushed aside.
There was a big move in the 1850s to remove all the indigenous people from Wisconsin, which didn't happen.
It tried to with the Ho-Chunk.
The Menominee and the Ojibwa fought that.
So
that sounds like another really good topic.
We should dive into
another time.
Well, and here when we start going into this now, we need to be talking to people like David Grigno, who is a direct descendant, who is Menominee up at Kishina.
We need to be talking to Trees Mitchell up at Lack the Flamble.
We
be talking to the elders and the tribal historians
Black River Falls and the Ho-Chunk and then the Potawatomi because these are the people who will be able to explain their perspective much more so than I ever could.
Yeah.
I can talk generally.
So let's, in our last few
minutes
here, let's round up what happened with the papermill industry forming from this timber industry.
Well, this is another segment that we can do later on and follow up with this.
But basically, after Grinio and Merrill, then you get Clinton, Henry Clinton, and you get John Edwards at Port Edwards.
they start taking over all this and at that site and establish a dam and a sawmill.
that really supersedes what Grinnell and Merrill did.
And then at the same time, you've got Bloomer and Strong up here at Wisconsin Rapids in 1838.
You got Fay and Draper up at Birren in 39.
And so the 1830s, 1840s is where this big industrial push comes and moves us into the sawmill logging era.
And eventually by the 1890s and 1900, you're into paper making.
And the rest, of course, is history.
Well, John, it has been such a pleasure to talk with you today.
Thank you for joining me.
Thank you, Melissa.
It's been my pleasure.
And I look forward to speaking with you again.
I do, too.
I'm Melissa Kay.
You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.