post of Chequamegon.[116]

These official posts were supported by the profits of Indian
commerce,[117] and were designed to keep the northwestern tribes at
peace, and to prevent the English and Iroquois influence from getting
the fur trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: N.Y. Col. Docs., IX., 296, 308; IV., 735.]

[Footnote 112: Quoted in Sheldon, Early History of Michigan, 310.]

[Footnote 113: Tailhan's Perrot, 156.]

[Footnote 114: Wis. Hist. Colls., X., 54, 300-302, 307, 321.]

[Footnote 115: Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer., IV., 186.]

[Footnote 116: Margry, VI., 60. Near Ashland, Wis.]

[Footnote 117: Consult French MSS., 3d series, VI., Parl. Library,
Ottawa, cited in Minn. Hist. Colls., V., 422; Id., V., 425. In 1731 M.
La Ronde, having constructed at his own expense a bark of forty tons on
Lake Superior, received the post of La Pointe de Chagouamigon as a
gratuity to defray his expenses. See also the story of Verenderye's
posts, in Parkman's article in _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1887, and
Margry, VI. See also 2 Penna. Archives, VI., 18; La Hontan, I., 53; N.Y.
Col. Docs., IX., 159; Tailhan, Perrot, 302.]

THE FOX WARS.

In 1683 Perrot had collected Wisconsin Indians for an attack on the
Iroquois, and again in 1686 he led them against the same enemy. But the
efforts of the Iroquois and the English to enter the region with their
cheaper and better goods, and the natural tendency of savages to plunder
when assured of supplies from other sources, now overcame the control
which the French had exercised. The Sauks and Foxes, the Mascoutins,
Kickapoos and Miamis, as has been described, held the Fox and Wisconsin
route to the West, the natural and easy highway to the Mississippi, as
La Hontan calls it.[118] Green Bay commanded this route, as La Pointe de
Chagouamigon[119] commanded the Lake Superior route to the Bois Brule
and the St. Croix. One of Perrot's main objects was to supply the Sioux
on the other side of the Mississippi, and these were the routes to them.
To the Illinois region, also, the Fox route was the natural one. The
Indians of this waterway therefore held the key to the French position,
and might attempt to prevent the passage of French goods and support
English influence and trade, or they might try to monopolize the
intermediate trade themselves, or they might try to combine both
policies.

As early as 1687 the Foxes, Mascoutins and Kickapoos, animated
apparently by hostility to the tr