PIONEERING IN THE WISCONSIN LEAD REGION.

BY THEODORE RODOLF.1

On the first day of April, 1834, I took passage at St. Louis on a neat little steamer, the name of which I cannot recollect, but which was a regular upper Mississippi packet whose destination was Galena, the commercial metropolis of the northwestern lead mines, which were rapidly growing in extent and importance. My object in undertaking this voyage was to explore the yet comparatively new country in quest of a suitable home for my mother and her family. We had ascended the Mississippi from New Orleans to avoid the yellow fever; and passed the winter of 1833-34 at St. Louis, where we had formed pleasant acquaintances and friendships among the French settlers who at that time constituted the majority of the population. Among those, we were particularly well received by the family of John Pierre Bugnion Gratiot, to whom we brought strong letters of recommendation, and by Messrs. Pierre Chouteau, John P. Cabanne, Chenier, and others.

Gratiot's father, Charles, was born at Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The family, French Huguenots, were 'Theodore Rodolf was born in the Canton of Aargau, Switzerland, October 17, 1815; he died at La Crosse, Wis., February 12, 1892. Mr. Rodolf was a graduate of the college of Aàràn, and was for a time a student at the University of Zurich. As stated in his narrative, he came to America when seventeen years of age, and settled in La Fayette County, Wis. In 1853 he was appointed receiver of the land office in La Crosse. He was a presidential elector in 1864; a member of the state assembly in 1868 and 1870, and during the same period was mayor of La Crosse. Mr. Rodolf's reminiscences were written in 1889 at the instance of the present Editor, who consented to their first publication as a serial, in the La Crosse Chronicle in May and June of that year.-Ed.

obliged to emigrate at the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV., and settled in Switzerland, where many other French exiles found a refuge and security from religious persecution. When quite a young man, however, J. P. B. Gratiot found his way to St. Louis, then a small French settlement, entered the service of the Northwestern Fur Company, married Miss Chouteau, and made St. Louis his permanent home, becoming wealthy.'

Gratiot had a considerable interest in the lead mines. He possessed mines as well as smelting furnaces, and intended to move his family to Galena so soon as spring had fairly opened, and he persuaded us to go up with him and his family to the lead mines, saying that the climate of St. Louis was exceedingly unhealthy in summer and that the Northwest Territory, in addition to health, would give us an opportunity to select a home more congenial to our ideas and habits than a residence in a slaveholding state. My father was opposed to going into the wilderness; but to us boys, visions of a life a la "Robinson Crusoe" danced before our imagination and we were delighted with the idea. My father had some business matters to settle in New Orleans, after which he promised to join us in our new home. He descended to New Orleans, but never came back. That summer he fell a victim to yellow fever, and was buried there.

My father's brother and only living near relative on his side, then quite a young man, having graduated at the University of Heidelberg, had concluded to join us in our emigration, and he and I were selected to make the voyage of exploration.

The boat on which we embarked was a clean and com. fortable craft, a high-pressure steamer, whose puffing could be heard miles ahead. The cabin was plainly but substantially furnished, and kept very clean. There were no state rooms; but two tiers of bunks, containing the beds,

1 See E. B. Washburne's biographical sketch of Henry Gratiot, and incidentally of Charles, the founder of the house, and the other members of the family, in Wis. Hist. Colls., x, pp. 235-260.- Ed.

ran along the sides of the boat and were separated at night from the saloon by curtains. The fare was substantial, plentiful, and good, and the officers were pleasant and gentlemanly; all the arrangements were more perfect than I had anticipated.

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I had devoted most of my time during the winter to the study of the English language, so that I was able to carry on a conversation with our fellow passengers. Besides, there were several gentlemen from Galena on board chants and business men returning home after having passed the winter at St. Louis-Swiss and Germans with whom I could converse in French or German, and from whom I gathered valuable and interesting information about the celebrated lead mines of Illinois and Wisconsin. Our progress was rather slow. There being no opposition lines or competition, the boats did not care to overtax their capacity of speed; besides, they stopped at every landing place on the river, loading or unloading, or taking on wood, so that a journey of eight days from St. Louis to Galena was considered a very fair trip.

One morning we stopped at a place called Louisiana in Missouri, to take on wood. I do not know whether it was at the exact place where the present city of Louisiana now is, but it cannot be far from it. About half a dozen log cabins, surrounded by rail fences, composed the place. An incident took place here, which has left a lasting impression on my mind, it being so entirely novel to me, and the first characteristic trait of frontier life that had yet come to my personal knowledge. There came on board a gaunt, tall man who addressed the gentlemen in the cabin, saying that he and his family had come out here with the intention of making a permanent home; that they were, however, all taken sick with fever and ague; that they were anxious to return to their Eastern home, being convinced that they could not live here. They had, however, no means to go back, but that he owned a lot with a cabin on it, with some improvements, and that he wished to sell the same to raise money enough to enable him to go East.

He proposed to raffle his property at $5 a ticket. He would place in a hat twenty-five tickets, numbered from 1 to 25, one of the tickets marked "prize;" and to whoever drew the prize he would deed the place. The deed, already executed in blank, he had with him. Every passenger that felt himself able took a ticket, and the settler thus placed about twenty of them. Five were not taken, but the passengers allowed these five tickets to remain in the hat as belonging to the settler. I, as the youngest passenger on board, was selected to draw the tickets out of the hat. I drew as many tickets as were sold, but the prize was not drawn, it being among the five unsold tickets voted to the settler. So he got his pay for the tickets sold, and won his place back again. I believe everybody was well pleased with the result. Nobody desired the man's home; all that we desired was to help the poor man to raise the means to return to his Eastern home. Whether after this he got better and decided to stay in Louisiana, or whether he actually left the country, I never knew, but it showed the kind heart and the generosity of the Western people which fifty years ago were more common traits than at the present time.

After passing Keokuk, then a very small settlement, and nearing Rock Island, we found the shores lined with large numbers of Indians. These were the remnants of the Sacs and Foxes who, under the lead of Black Hawk, had lately waged war against the settlers, and, having been defeated at the battle of Bad Axe, had returned to their homes, previous to their removal west of the Mississippi. They were peaceable, and caused no more trouble afterwards. They were the first Indians I had yet seen living in their own settlement. During our stay in St. Louis very few had visited the city, but the effect of their intercourse with the pale faces was already visible in their behavior, by adopting some of the lowest vices of their new acquaintances and losing that loftiness of character with which Fenimore Cooper has endowed his savage heroes. These followers of Black Hawk showed, as yet, no effect of contami

nation; they impressed me as being, physically, a superior race, and their stoicism and imperturbability were astonishing. We visited Fort Armstrong, on the island, and then continued our trip up stream.

It is useless for me to describe the magnificent scenery that presented itself to our view all along the river. It was more picturesque and charming than at the present day, because it was still in its natural glory. The villages and embryo cities were small, often simple landing places, giving, however, indications of the future growth and improvements which have made the states of Illinois and Iowa the great and prosperous commonwealths we find them to-day.

On the morning of the 8th of April, 1834, we entered Fever River, a small stream which empties into the Mississippi from the east, steamed up that river about six miles, and landed safely at Galena, which was at that time the most important city of the northwest. The day was clear and bright, and Galena, built as it was upon the side of a hill, the streets forming terraces one above the other, presented a most picturesque view, far superior to anything I had expected to find in a country which but a few years before was almost unknown to civilization and had but recently emerged from the horrors of a cruel Indian war. It was a most pleasant surprise. The country around Galena for a distance of forty or fifty miles east and north was dotted with crude log furnaces for smelting the mineral, the products of all of which had to be hauled by teams to this port for shipment down to St. Louis, from which place it found its way all over the country. This industry gave employment to a large number of people. The principal shippers at the time of my arrival were William Hempstead, Messrs. Henry and Nathan Corwith, Campbell & Smith, Moorehouse, and many others. There were several stores in the town, with well assorted stocks of goods, suitable to supply the wants and necessities of the settlers and miners throughout the country, and the volume of business transactions was surprising.