ourses of the Northwest permitted
a complete exploration of the country, and that in these courses
Wisconsin held a commanding situation,[65] But these rivers not only
permitted exploration; they also furnished a motive to exploration by
the fact that their valleys teemed with fur-bearing animals. This is the
main fact in connection with Northwestern exploration. The hope of a
route to China was always influential, as was also the search for mines,
but the practical inducements were the profitable trade with the Indians
for beaver and buffaloes and the wild life that accompanied it. So
powerful was the combined influence of these far-stretching rivers, and
the "hardy, adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade," that the
scanty population of Canada was irresistibly drawn from agricultural
settlements into the interminable recesses of the continent; and herein
is a leading explanation of the lack of permanent French influence in
America.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 61: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., VIII., 10-11.]

[Footnote 62: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 224, n. 1; Margry, V.
See also Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, I., map and pp. 38-9, 128.]

[Footnote 63: Mackinaw.]

[Footnote 64: See Doty's enumeration, Wis. Hist. Colls., VII., 202.]

[Footnote 65: Jes. Rels., 1672, p. 37; La Hontan, I., 105 (1703).]

WISCONSIN INDIANS.[66]

"All that relates to the Indian tribes of Wisconsin," says Dr. Shea,
"their antiquities, their ethnology, their history, is deeply
interesting from the fact that it is the area of the first meeting of
the Algic and Dakota tribes. Here clans of both these wide-spread
families met and mingled at a very early period; here they first met in
battle and mutually checked each other's advance." The Winnebagoes
attracted the attention of the French even before they were visited.
They were located about Green bay. Their later location at the entrance
of Lake Winnebago was unoccupied, at least in the time of Allouez,
because of the hostility of the Sioux. Early authorities represented
them as numbering about one hundred warriors.[67] The Pottawattomies we
find in 1641 at Sault Ste. Marie,[68] whither they had just fled from
their enemies. Their proper home was probably about the southeastern
shore and islands of Green bay, where as early as 1670 they were again
located. Of their numbers in Wisconsin at this time we can say but
little. Allouez, at Chequamegon bay, was visited by 300 of their