July, 1758, to drive the French, in which attempt they met with the most disastrous failure, when, "after losing," according to BANCROFT, "in killed and wounded, nineteen hundred and sixty-seven, chiefly regulars, they fled pro-. miscuously."

After the hard service at Ticonderoga he repaired with his trusty band to Fort Du Quesne, which was then threatened by the enemy, and participated in the defeat of Major GRANT, near the fort, who was attacked on the 14th of September by a large body of French and Indians, under the superior command of the gallant AUBRY.

About two months later the youthful WASHINGTON with a brigade of provincials drew near Du Quesne; when the disheartened garrison, about five hundred in number, set the fort on fire and by the light of the conflagration descended the Ohio. On the 25th of November, 1758, the banners of England floated over the Ohio, and the place was with one voice named Pittsburgh. DE LANGLADE then probably returned to Green Bay, and remained for the winter.

No officer of the French king was more ready to do battle for his sovereign than DE LANGLADE, who participated in all the most important and the final engagements of the campaign of 1759. He aided in the defense of Fort Niagara, and was present at its capitulation on the 25th of July.

In the great and decisive battle before Quebec on the plains of Abraham, on the 13th of September, when MONTCALM and WOLFE each gave his life for the countries they respectively loved and served so well, our hero, in whose veins coursed the mingled blood of the French and the Ottawa, sustained by large numbers of both, devoted his powerful efforts to sustain the expiring dominion of France in his native Canada. He passed through this severe conflict without a wound, while many of his followers were either killed or wounded. Among the killed were his two younger brothers, whose loss he deeply mourned. He was among the number who thought there was no real necessity for the surrender and believing it was effected through bribery, retired from the place with his surviving followers in disgust.

On the 3d of September, 1760, while DE LANGLADE was at Montreal, having received a commission as lieutenant from the king, he received specific instructions from Gov. VAUDREUIL to take charge of and conduct the troops under

his command to Mackinaw and the Indians to their villages. Six days later a dispatch was sent to him by VAUDREUIL, notifying him of the surrender of all Canada to the British, under Gen. AMHERST.

The contest between France and Great Britain for domin. ion in America was now ended. At this day it is difficult to realize the hardships attendant upon such a partisan service as that in which DE LANGLADE was engaged, with such long and constant marches of thousands of miles through a wilderness country, relying mainly upon wild game for a sustenance. Had the French been successful, his name and fame would doubtless have been more conspicuous in history.

DE LANGLADE had but two children by his marriage. The eldest, LALLOTTE, born in 1760 or 1761, was married to Mr. BARCELLOW, but died the next year childless. The other, DOMITELLE, born in 1763, was married to PIERRE GRIGNON, Sen., in 1776.

Upon the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, CHARLES DE LANGLADE, then fifty-two years old, was persuaded by Capt. DE PEYSTER, commanding at Mackinaw, to take an active part in the war should his services be needed, which, DE PEYSTER remarks in his Miscellanies, was equivalent to securing all the Western Indians in our interests." He raised a large body of Indians from several different tribes, and marched for Montreal. He went to Canada with his Indian force several times during the war, and at one time served under Gen. CAMPBELL. In 1779 DE LANGLADE and his followers, with the Indians from Milwaukee, whom he had induced to join him, attended a grand council which DE PEYSTER had called at l'Arbre Croche, near Mackinaw, for the purpose of making a diversion towards Vincennes and Fort Chartres in favor of Gov. HAMILTON at Detroit. After the council, DE LANGLADE with his Indian force embarked upon Lake Michigan, and upon arriving at St. Josephs, they learned of HAMILTON'S Surrender, and returned much dissatisfied.

It does not appear that DE LANGLADE was engaged in many, if any battles during the Revolutionary war. Indeed, there was no active service for him to perform in the Northwest, as there were no expeditions by the Americans in that quarter.

From the close of the French war to the end of the Revolutionary war, CHARLES DE LANGLADE by appointment of

JONATHAN CARVER'S EXPLORATIONS.

47

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