This paper will ask and answer three questions: How did Indians (the Sac and the Fox
most specifically) in the Upper Mississippi River Valley interact with their environment? How
did those interactions inform the later, more intensive and noticeable endeavors? Can Indian
subsistence patterns be considered a conscious effort to conserve the environment? The answer
to the final question will be the unique contribution of this paper.
This paper is a study of the relationship between Indians and the riparian environment of
the Upper Mississippi River Valley between 1673 and 1806. The Upper Mississippi River
Valley is defined as the uplands, lowlands, and riparian environments along the Mississippi
River, on the western shores of the present day state of Iowa, and the eastern shores of the
present day state of Illinois. The time frame for this paper concludes with the expedition of
United States Army Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, who traveled up the Mississippi
River in 1805-06.1 Pike’s detailed journal of the trip serves as the central source for this paper,
however, ancillary primary sources have been incorporated as well.
In order to establish a baseline from which to measure environmental change and
continuity, data from French Jesuit Jacque Marquette’s 1673 river expedition will be introduced
first, followed by the Jesuit priest Charlevoix in 1720, then English soldier John Carver in 1767,
and finally American soldier Zebulon Pike in 1805. The four individuals traveled through
roughly the same wet prairie territory (the Wisconsin, Mississippi, and Illinois Rivers) for a
portion of their larger journeys, and that geographic area was lastly occupied by the Sac and Fox
Indians.
1
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, Exploratory Travels Through the Western Territories of North America: Comprising a
Voyage from St. Louis, on the Mississippi, to the Source of that River, and a Journey Through the Interior of
Louisiana, and the North-Eastern Provinces of New Spain. Performed in the Years 1805, 1806, 1807, by Order of
the Government of the United States, London: Printed for Longman, et al, 1811.
1
Admittedly, these exploration journals have been thoroughly handled by historians for a
variety of reasons, but the intent of this paper is to view them through a wholly new lens; that of
an environmental historian. What does an environmental perspective contribute to the existing
historical scholarship? Traditional Native American histories tend to obscure the relationship
between Indians and the environment by focusing their attention on people and culture: kinship
ties, exchange networks, the historical inevitability of land dispossession, removal, and
adaptation to an incredibly unfortunate set of circumstances. In doing so, Native American
historians have developed a rich discourse on humans, culture, trade, and Native American
identity, (a discourse that informed and inspired the creation of this paper) but it also lacks any
sort of historical analysis of how Indians interacted with their environment. This is not a
problem of content, but rather of perspective.
Native American Environmental History is a field of inquiry in its infancy, and viewed
by some as controversial. In 1999, an anthropologist from Brown University named Shepard
Krech III published a book called The Ecological Indian: Myth and History.2 The book argued
that in the second half of the twentieth century, popular and historical renderings of Native
Americans typecast them as “more in tune with ecology and in harmony with nature.”3 This was
no accident, as it coincided with postwar political reforms and the rise of a more environmentally
conscious Western world. Exemplified nicely by the famous 1971 “Crying Indian” commercial,
Krech argues that the portrayal of the Indian as a benevolent antithesis to Western civilization’s
wholesale consumption of natural resources and environmental degradation was a cultural
construct shaped by 20th century politics and culture. Historically linked to the “Noble Savage”
stereotype of the 18th and 19th centuries, the development of the environmentally conscious
2
3
Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.
Krech, The Ecological Indian, 20.
2
Native American can be traced much further back than a few decades, but for the sake of brevity
this paper will omit that story. In essence, that image did more to explain the political climate of
the 1960s than it did to portray a historically accurate image of Native Americans.
Only very recently has Krech’s discourse received any meaningful scholarly attention. A
central criticism of The Ecological Indian was that it overgeneralized Native Americans into one
amorphous group of people that lacked any cultural distinction. Krech later defended this
criticism by saying he meant for the book to foster debate “on the fit between an essentialized
and durable image of American Indians and American Indian behavior.”4 He wanted other
scholars to weigh and measure his argument, and accept or reject it as a new paradigm for
studying the history of distinct Native American groups. It took eight years, but in 2007 a book
of essays was published that did just that. Titled Native Americans and the Environment:
Perspectives on the Ecological Indian, the book added much needed definition and boundaries to
Krech’s work.
First produced for a 2002 symposium at the University of Wyoming, Native Americans
and the Environment is a collection of twelve essays. Annually sponsored by the American
Heritage Center, the symposium’s theme for 2002 was “Refiguring the Ecological Indian,” a
direct reference to Krech and his work. Conference organizers received a firestorm of criticism
for their offensive choice of theme, including media coverage and calls by Native Americans to
boycott. Symposium organizer Brian Hosmer summed up the media backlash:
Amidst (or because of) the swirling controversy, the symposium presented
opportunity to reflect upon power and representation, science versus myth (and
Shepard Krech III, “Beyond the Ecological Indian,” essay from Michael E. Harkin & David Rich Lewis, editors,
Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian, Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2007, 4.
4
3
mythmaking), attention given (by scholars) to Native perspectives, and the
construction, and reification, of measurable categories.5
The negative response over Krech’s book illuminates a crucial truth about studying Native
American history. Characterizing Native self-image is not only an academic pursuit, but a
current reality with political ramifications. Redefining the historical reality of (all or some)
Native Americans must be done with knowledge that their cultural distinctiveness makes up part
of their collective identities, and any attempt to alter that identity will be viewed through the lens
of twenty-first century Americans cultural constructions, both native or otherwise.6
The Ecological Indian also found his way into historical scholarship, and that is what
Krech sought to illuminate in his book. Less identifiable than media stereotypes, Native
American historians, whether inadvertently or not, promoted the Ecological Indian through
exclusive use of scientific data to explain changes to, or degradation of, Native American
environments. The problem with this approach is that it disenfranchises Indians of historical
agency to unsustainably consume their own environment; a basic human characteristic
generously attributed to other groups of people by all historians. In doing so, Native American
historical scholarship erroneously perpetuates the image of Indians as environmentally passive
(or at least neutral), subjected to uncontrollable changes in circumstance. On this point Krech is
most critical:
The Noble/Ecological Indian distorts culture. It masks cultural diversity. It
occludes its actual connection to the behavior it purports to explain. Moreover,
because it has entered into the realm of common sense and as received wisdom is
5
Brian Hosmer, Preface from Michael E. Harkin & David Rich Lewis, editors, Native Americans and the
Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007, xii.
6
Ibid.
4
perceived as fundamental truth, it serves to deflect any desire to fathom or
confront the evidence for relationships between Indians and the environment.7
Studying Indians and the environment requires a partially materialistic approach. In other words,
it strays from well-established methodological approaches to studying Native Americans that
emphasize people and cultures. This is not to say that kinship, religion, and gift exchange are
less relevant, but rather that environmental histories of Native American groups can greatly
complement the existing scholarship in new and exciting ways.
The philosophical approach to this paper aligns with the very recent historiographical
trend away from accepting as a given that Indians naturally acted in an environmentally
sustainable manner. Advancing the discourse in this direction is controversial because, as Krech
puts it, such perceptions have “entered into the realm of common sense,” for 21st century
Americans, both Native and otherwise. It is a historical fact that all humans must consume the
environment to survive. The scope of that consumption is determined by available natural
resources, population density, access to technology, and cultural perceptions. Although not on a
scale comparable to a growing and industrializing United States, Native Americans did consume
and alter their environments in noteworthy ways. Understanding the Native American side of
American Environmental History allows for an extended and better understood narrative of how
certain regions came to look as they do today. Specifically, this paper will expand the narrative
of environmental change associated with the American Midwest beyond occupation by white
people, to include Native Americans, with the intended goal of blending the two histories
together into one story.
7
Ibid., 27.
5
The best example of similar work on this topic is a 2010 book written by M.J. Morgan.
Titled Land of Big Rivers: French & Indian Illinois, 1699-1778, the book is an environmental
history of “The American Bottom,” or the geographic region near the confluence of the Missouri,
Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers (near the ancient city of Cahokia and present day St. Louis,
Missouri).8 Morgan astutely identifies the historiographical trend in Native American history to
use the environment as a mere backdrop to an exclusively human story. Morgan’s goal is to
debunk the long-held myth that Indians in that area made no historically significant changes to
the land, and that only after it was “opened” by whites did environmental changes occur.9 Her
book-length treatment of the subject is much more substantial than the analysis provided in this
paper, however, the two histories are linked by a common goal of including Indians beyond the
traditionally myopic story of white human occupation.10
Although other tribes occupied the Upper Mississippi River Valley between 1673 and
1806, the Sac and Fox Indians were the latest and most documented. As a result, this paper is
loosely based on, but not limited to, tracing the activities of that tribe. Historiography on the Sac
and Fox Indians commonly begins with William T. Hagan’s 1958 book, The Sac and Fox
Indians. Hagan’s book served as the standard for several decades, being reprinted several times,
most recently in 1989. Hagan’s account is one of a lost cause for the Sac and Fox, who faced
inevitable cultural destruction at the hands of a malicious United States government. Although
Hagan does not necessarily make de facto villains and heroes out of specific whites and Indians,
he blames an abstracted group of “authorities in Washington” for making concerted efforts to
8
M.J. Morgan, Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois, 1699-1778, Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois
University Press, 2010.
9
Morgan, 1.
10
Ibid., 4.
6
“strip them of their native culture.”11 Hagan’s account, then, is a one-sided tale of decline, where
the Sac and Fox Indians could not alter their fate.
Hagan’s account of Pike’s journey is roughshod, and his description of Pike himself is
romantically skewed. He leads the reader to believe that “the slender, blue-eyed Lieutenant” was
diplomatic in his dealings and benevolent towards his crew.12 On the contrary, Pike put his
mission before the well-being of his crew, and very little for cultivating mutual relations with the
Indians he contacted.13
An example of Hagan’s mishandling of Pike’s journal is necessary here. He incorrectly
infers that two of Pike’s men were accidentally left ashore during a stop, when in reality they had
been left behind deliberately. After two of Pike’s favorite dogs ran away during a scouting
expedition, two men volunteered to go looking for them only to get lost themselves. Pike left the
men behind and faulted them for incompetence, saying that they “knew my boat never waited for
any person on shore.”14 From the Fox village on the Rock River, Pike impatiently waited until
4pm to depart upriver, “the wind fair all the time,” while he idled away precious travel time.15
Eight days later, the two men rejoined the party at the Dubuque lead mines. Having subsisted
only on mussels in the interim, the men stuck close to the river and eventually made contact with
the Fox chief of the Rock River village, as well as a Scottish trader named James Aird who Pike
had met while passing over the Rock River Rapids. By this time Pike had admittedly “given up
11
William Hagan, The Sac and Fox Indians, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958, 204.
Hagan, 27.
13
In an entry dated September 3rd, 1805, Pike wrote of the Sac and Fox (Reynard) Indians in terms of paternalistic
contempt, and that their fear of Americans was a good thing: “It appears to me evident, that the [French and English]
traders have taken great pains to impress the minds of the savages with the idea of our being a very vindictive,
ferocious, and warlike people. This impression was made perhaps with no good intention; but when they find that
our conduct towards them is guided by magnanimity and justice, instead of operating to our prejudice, it will have
the effect of causing them to respect, at the same time that they fear us." Pike, 15-16.
14
Ibid., 10.
15
Ibid., 12.
12
7
all hopes” of finding the lost men.16 Proper reading of the source material reveals a much more
complicated characterization of Pike than Hagan is willing to give. By calling the ordeal an
accident, Hagan glosses over Pike’s nuanced character and misleads the reader.
Hagan again errs is his description of Pike’s visit to the Sac village on the Des Moines
River. He falsely states that a “young Indian” from the village, tasked with smoothing
diplomatic relations between Pike and other Sac and Fox villages upriver, accompanied Pike
henceforth. However, Pike’s journal indicates he declined this offer because it required that he
stay another day in the village, presumably so the chiefs could council and appoint someone to
the task. So, “wishing not to lose any time,” Pike left the Sac village without a “young Indian”
and camped six miles upriver.17 Upon reaching the Fox village on the Rock River, Pike
communicated with the chief “by signs” only.18 Indeed Pike states his first use of an interpreter,
which happened farther upriver at the French settlement of Prairies des Chiens. Although only a
minor mistake, it does suggest that Hagan either misinterpreted or overlooked this detail in
Pike’s journal.
Following in Hagan’s footsteps, historians David Edmunds and Joseph Peyser advanced
the scholarly discourse of the Sac and Fox Indians. The 1993 book The Fox Wars: The
Mesquakie Challenge to New France, portrays the Sac and Fox Indians as stubborn,
unconquerable agitators who resisted cultural and territorial encroachment from other nations.19
The Fox Wars is without question a valuable contribution, as it assigns them historical agency,
16
Ibid., 14.
Hagan, 8.
18
Pike, 12.
19
David Edmunds and Joseph Peyser, The Fox Wars: The Mesquakie Challenge to New France, Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
17
8
but it neglects any serious evaluation of environmental factors, opting instead for an exclusively
human story. A passage reveals the book’s homocentric and sympathetic tone:
Like the oaks and hickories that grace the river valleys of their homeland, the
Mesquakies possessed a tough resilience, a heartwood of inner strength that
enabled them to cling to their sense of identity. In the face of insurmountable
odds, they persisted.20
Edmunds writes of the Sac and Fox Indians as defiant agitators against French encroachment,
who had no choice but to fight in order to retain their interests. The anthropomorphism of
heartwood invoked to characterize the Sac and Fox people indicates an exclusively human story,
with the environment serving as a passive stage. An important story to be sure, but not the only
story to tell. Humans and the environment changed in concert with one another, and telling that
story is the starting point of this paper.
To best understand environmental change over time, the earliest descriptions of an area
need to be examined. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Upper Mississippi
River Valley and region surrounding the Great Lakes was adequately traversed and documented
by the French and English. Foreshadowing the region’s new viable professions, a Jesuit priest,
Jacques Marquette, and a trapper/explorer, Louis Joliet, are credited as the first Europeans to
document the Upper Mississippi River Valley’s riparian environment.
Traveling in two birch canoes, Marquette’s party entered the Mississippi River on June
17th, 1673. The river they saw was of varying width, full of islands, and contained several
20
Edmunds and Peyser, 221.
9
“monstrous fish,” including sturgeon, which the Frenchmen caught and ate.21 The shores
contained buffalo (wild cattle), turkeys, deer, and waterfowl. They traveled eight days before
observing evidence of human habitation. Then, on the 25th of June, they came upon “some
tracks of men, and a narrow and somewhat beaten path leading to a fine prairie.”22 The trail led
them to a collection of three villages, situated on the banks of a river. The Indians there (Illinois)
were unafraid of the white men, and Marquette notes that his standard issue Jesuit “black gown”
was a recognized by some of the inhabitants. The Indians in the village were aware of French
activity in the area and possessed a few exchange items like guns and cooking ware.
The Indians of this village gleaned a great deal from their environment. They possessed
tobacco, calument pipes, large wooden platters, spoons, and “belts, garters…made of the hair of
bears and cattle, dyed red, yellow, and gray.”23 They grew corn, beans, and melons, caught fish,
raised dogs for meat, and dried melons for winter storage. Large bird feathers and skulls adorned
a chief’s calumet pipe. Woven mats of rushes covered the roof and floor of the large lodges,
which Marquette called cabins.
The buffalo featured prominently in this scene. Lodge doors were covered with buffalo
skins, during a ceremonial meal Marquette was served a dish of boiled corn and buffalo fat, and
animal hair was woven together to make clothing items. Ladles were fashioned from buffalo
skulls. The Indians were clearly well trained in the hunting, killing, and processing of buffalo.
They also fished, processed timber, and cultivated corn. Red, yellow, and gray coloration on the
buffalo hair belts suggests that the Indians accessed nearby clay and lead deposits on a regular
basis. The picture that emerges is one of people engaged in diverse kinds of consumption that
21
Jacques Marquette, Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, Vol. 59, ed. By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Cleveland:
Burrows Bros. Co., 1896-1901, 115.
22
Marquette, 114-115.
23
Ibid., 123.
10
provided enough nutrients for several hundred people, as well as a surplus to be used in
ceremonial events and for exchange with others.
Navigation of the Mississippi proved easy for Marquette’s party. With very few supplies,
they traveled in lightly burdened canoes, so sand shoals, rapids, and snags would not have posed
much of a problem for them. However, summer rains that year kept water levels high, which
obscured many of the traditional navigational dangers. Marquette made no mention of sand
shoals or the need to portage around them. Further evidence of high water came when they
passed the mouth of a swollen, turbid, and obstructed Missouri River.24 The high water could
account for them not seeing any signs of human habitation for eight days after entering the
Mississippi, as traditional landings and low island campsites would have been submerged.
Impure variations of lead found abundantly in the area most likely contributed to the red
colors used to dye belts and garters, and to paint the skin. In the late seventeenth century
Frenchman businessman Julien Dubuque established a lead mining operation on the western
banks of the Mississippi River, in what is presently Dubuque, Iowa. The Sac and Fox Indians
living there in the early 1800s worked in the mines for Dubuque.25 Their predecessors, like the
Indians observed by Marquette, likely accessed that site, or similar sites like it, long before the
Frenchman negotiated with the Sac and Fox for the land.
In 1838, booster and land surveyor John Plumbe commented on the link between Indians,
whites, and lead mining at Dubuque:26
24
Ibid., 141.
John Plumbe, Jr., Sketches of Iowa and Wisconsin, Embodying the Experience of a Residence of Three Years in
those Territories, St. Louis: Chambers, Harrism & Knapp, 1839; Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa,
1948, 74.
26
Booster accounts like Plumbe’s Sketches of Iowa do not report accurate images of the state. Authors of booster
accounts promoted the sale of land to potential settlers for their own profit and their writings are shrouded with self25
11
With no other tools than the horn of a buck, or the antler of an elk, did these
primitive artisans first excavate the mineral: and afterwards, by means of furnaces
of their own invention and construction, did they reduce it to its metallic state:
and, it is said by some, that their process was as effective in extracting all the
lead, as is that of their white successors of the present day- though ours, of course,
is upon a much larger scale, and consequently more expeditious.27
Plumbe’s account indicates that the Sac and Fox Indians had been accessing the lead at Dubuque
for a long time, and that their innovations in mining and smelting allowed for more efficient
production of the metal. Lead deposits like this one would have also been accessed, albeit on a
much smaller scale, by the Illinois Indians mentioned by Marquette. The Indians in the Upper
Mississippi River Valley started in motion a series of environmental changes that white settlers
later continued on a much larger and more noticeable scale. In other words, Indians in this
region participated in a process of environmental change that directly links with later changes
made by whites.
Forty-seven years after the Marquette and Joliet Mississippi River expedition, a Jesuit
priest named Father Charlevoix traveled by river through much of the wet-prairie regions of
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.28 Destined for the mouth of the Mississippi River at
New Orleans, while traveling he sent several highly descriptive letters back to France that give
interest. They skewed descriptions of the area by omitting negative features of the land, however, their observations
came during a time when information was very limited. Motivations aside, booster accounts publicized landscape
features in a way not previously done. If a booster’s intent is placed in a proper historical context, then information
found in booster accounts can be very valuable to the historian and reader.
27
Plumbe, 74.
28
Charlevoix, Letters to the Dutchess of LesDiguieres; Giving an Account of a Voyage to Canada, and Travels
through the vast Country, and Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico (London: R. Goadby, 1763).
12
detailed accounts of his route, contact with Native Americans, distances between encampments,
and the wet prairie landscape.
Charlevoix provided the following generalization of how the native peoples of the prairie
interacted with their environment:
They dwell commonly in Meadows, under Tents made of Skins, and well
wrought: They live on wild Oats, which grow in Abundance in their Marshes and
Rivers, and by hunting, especially of the Buffaloes that are covered with Wool,
and which are in Herds of Thousands in their Meadows: they have no fixed
Abode, but travel in great Companies like the Tartars, and never stay in one Place
any longer than the Chance detains them.29
Based on his description, the wild oat was a major food staple that grew in the abundant
wetlands. Products of the swamps gave the native people sustenance, but only for the warm
months of the year.
From a French settlement near the mouth of the St. Joseph River in present day
Michigan, Charlevoix traveled south to the Illinois River, a traditional path long used by the
natives. This route took them southward along the eastern shores of Lake Michigan to the River
Chicagou, and easy access to the Illinois River. But it was early autumn and low summer
rainfall rendered that route impassable, so instead they traveled up the St. Joseph River and from
29
Ibid., 110.
13
present day South Bend, Indiana portaged their pettiaugres (dugout canoe) overland into the
Theakiki River, a tributary of the Illinois.30
Charlevoix’s journey from the source of the Kankakee to the mouth of the Illinois River
carried him through the wet prairies of central Illinois. Along the way he noted numerous
buffalo, and “river banks covered with Wild-Fowl, fattened with Wild Oats, which were then
ripe.” Timber bordered the banks on both sides of the upstream portions, and farther
downstream the river became shallower as it widened, indicating that eroded soil actively silted
in the riverbed. At this point the river was less than a few feet deep and in some places nonnavigable to even the smallest vessels.31
Downstream from the narrow, timber-lined Kankakee, grassy meadows covered the
banks of the Illinois. Here Charlevoix observed sparse timber and a dense jungle of prairie
grass:
In this route we see only fine meadows, with little clusters of trees here and there,
which seem to have been planted by hand; the grass grows so high in them, that
one might lose one’s self amongst it; but every where we meet with paths that are
as beaten as they can be in the most populous countries; yet nothing passes
through them but buffaloes, and from time to time some herds of deer, and some
roe-bucks.32
30
The Theakiki River is known today as the Kankakee River, which begins in northwestern Indiana and flows in a
southwesterly direction into the Illinois River; Charlevoix, Letters to the Dutchess of LesDiguieres, 272, 282.
31
Charlevoix, Letters to the Dutchess of LesDiguieres, 279-280.
32
Ibid., 280.
14
Abundant rainfall in the wet prairies produced grass that grew exceptionally tall and thick. The
densest grass was inhospitable to humans, but provided an ideal habitat for prairie herbivores
like buffalo and deer.
Charlevoix’s mention of trees “planted by hand” suggests two things. First, that the
Indians along the river consumed large quantities of timber and actively cultivated trees akin to
the way they grew agricultural crops. Second, that they strategically grew trees as boundary
markers, windbreaks, or more general landmarks of an undetermined purpose. If the Indians did
indeed plant trees by hand, that strongly suggests they needed more lumber, which in turn
implies some sort of conservation ethic.
After passing through a lowland meadow along the Illinois, Charlevoix noted very low
riverbanks. This suggests evidence of soil erosion and siltation, which causes a river channel to
widen its banks instead of deepen its channel. He credited the lushness and height of the grass to
seasonal flooding.33 Flooding deposits silt in the bottomlands, which in-turn invigorates the soil
and allows for the exceptional growth of plant life. The extensive grass growth made the area
attractive to buffalo and deer.
Aside from riparian features, Charlevoix carefully identified locations of natural
resources, including the presence of coal, copper, salt, sandstone, lead, and even an unlikely
account of silver. His description of the Des Moines River, or la Riviere Moingona as he called
it, included “a great cape, which makes the river wind; the water of which…is red and stinking.
It is assured that many mineral stones have been gathered on this cape, and that antimony has
33
Ibid., 309.
15
been brought hither to hence.”34 Charlevoix’s reference to natural resources indicates that
natives and French alike were aware of the site’s material value.35
Published 1726, the Dictionnaire Universel De La France included another early
description La Riviere Moingona:
A rather large river in Louisiana [Territory]. Its source is in the south of the land
of Tintons, and, after a path of over a hundred leagues, it arrives at the Western
strip of the Mississippi [River], forty leagues above the confluence of the
Missouri [River], after having watered beautiful countryside and large prairies
that are heavily frequented by wild oxen and cows.36
The picture that emerges is a grassy expanse, dotted with patches of timber, inhabited by
indigenous people, and having a high concentration of wild-oxen, or buffalo. It is possible the
description included the word belles, or beautiful, because the author likened the landscape to a
French pastoral scene. Imagery from the time period depicts the wet prairies as a vibrant place
with lots of wildlife. Looking beyond this pastoral image of Edenic proportions, however,
reveals an environment well-traveled and actively consumed by the Indians who lived there. The
idyllic description above, and the multitude of others like it, contributed to the notion of
inexhaustible resources that later came to characterize the region in the next century.
In 1766 an English veteran of the French and Indian War named John Carver traveled up
the Mississippi River into uncharted regions of present-day Minnesota. He entered the
Mississippi from the Wisconsin River, just as Marquette and Joliet had done almost a century
34
Ibid., 295.
Ibid., 310-311.
36
C. Saugrain, Dictionnaire Universel De La France Ancienne Et Moderne, Et De La Nouvelle France, Paris: 1726,
1289-1920.
35
16
earlier. The early portion of his trek passed through the wet prairies of south-central Wisconsin
along the Fox River, which linked Lake Michigan’s Green Bay with the Wisconsin River.
Carver noted the riparian environments around the Fox River:
The country around it is very fertile and proper in the highest degree for
cultivation, excepting in some places near the river, where it is too low. It is in no
part very woody, and yet can supply sufficient to answer the demands of any
number of inhabitants. This river is the greatest resort for wild fowl of every kind
that I met with in the whole course of my travels; frequently the sun would be
obscured by them for some minutes together.37
Carver’s observations of low meadows, sparse timber, and abundant waterfowl corroborate the
claims of Charlevoix. Carver more aptly evaluated the landscape’s potential for agriculture than
Charlevoix, even differentiating the uplands and the lowlands.
Traveling in October, Carver came across a Sac village along the Wisconsin River, about
which he said it was “the largest and best built Indian town I ever saw.”38 Large enough to hold
several families each, the dwellings were weather resistant and made of tightly constructed,
hand-hewn timbers. Some even had a similarly fashioned smoking shed in the front. Houses
such as these required large quantities of timber to build, and skill with an axe to construct. The
considerable quantity of wood chips created by the hewing process would have been saved for
used as fire kindling, which made foraging for sticks and small branches less important. Timber
usage in this particular village was extensive.
37
Jonathan Carver, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768, Dublin:
Price, et al, 1779, 35.
38
Carver, 42.
17
Located between the Fox and the Mississippi River, this Sac village served as an
agricultural production and trading center. When traders and Indians from farther north came
down after the winter to exchange goods, they could trade furs for corn, beans, and melons, all of
which the Sac grew in surplus. Carver optimistically estimated that this village served a network
in expanse of eight hundred miles. This prediction is probably overstated, but the village
certainly resembled a small regional food production and storage station. Corroborating the
observations of Marquette and Charlevoix, Carver also mentioned lead metal stored in the Sac
village, and abundant places to find it nearby.39 Such an abundance of lead, and the practices by
which the Indians gathered and processed it without question informed the establishment of later
mining operations.
Exploration of Louisiana Territory by Americans remained incomplete at the end of the
eighteenth century. After acquiring it from the French in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson
made arrangements to further document the region. That year he sent William Clark and
Meriwether Lewis on their famous Corps of Discovery expedition up the Missouri River, and in
1805 he dispatched Lieutenant Zebulon Pike of the United States Army up the Mississippi River
on an unsuccessful search for its headwaters. Pike’s official accounts of the journey reveal what
the wet prairies looked like in the early nineteenth century.
In late summer 1805, Pike’s crew departed St. Louis in a keelboat seventy feet long.
Shaped like a large canoe, the boat’s low draft and long, slender design allowed it to move in
very shallow water. Although they had a boat suited for shallow water, often times the men were
In his journal he stated: “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.” And upon entering
the Mississippi River a few days later he stated: “The land near the river also seemed to be, in general excellent; but
that a distance is very full of mountains, which it is said there are many lead mines.” Carver, 43-45.
39
18
forced to unload their gear and manually push the keelboat over sand shoals that protruded out of
the water.40
Pike’s observations of the terrain corroborated earlier descriptions. For example, while
stopped near the vicinity of the Skunk River’s mouth, Pike noted high grass and a vast expanse
of prairie. After passing the mouth of the Iowa River he noted “generally beautiful prairies on
the west, and in some places very rich land, with black walnut and hickory timber.”41 After an
unsuccessful hunting trip he hiked through “a thick bottom” and “several morasses” before
finding his way back to the river.42
In some ways accounts from Pike’s expedition align with previous descriptions of the
environment, but there are two major differences. First, Pike makes no mention of buffalo.
Although it is possible he chose not to record that information, the glaring absence of any buffalo
sighting strongly conflicts with the observations of Marquette and Charlevoix, who saw them in
abundance. On the return trip downriver, Pike recorded several villages where corn cultivation
supported the population, and even mentioned one instance where crops were produced in
surplus and sold. He wrote the following about the condition of the Renard, or Sac/Fox, nation:
They hunt on both sides of the Mississippi from the river Iowa, below Prairie des
Chiens, to a river of that name above the said village. They raise a great quantity
of corn, beans, and melons; the former of those articles in such abundance as to
sell many hundred bushels per annum.43
40
Pike, 1-3.
Ibid., 11.
42
Ibid., 28.
43
Ibid., 123.
41
19
Carver noted a similar agricultural situation among the Sac and Fox Indians that occupied a
village on the Wisconsin River. The fact that growing large quantities of grain, indeed enough to
support villages of several hundred people, was not lost on any of the explorers cited in this
paper. The Upper Mississippi River Valley was under cultivation by 1673 (and most certainly
before), and Indians living there improved their farming techniques to continually grow more
crops and support more people.
By 1805, white men had entered into the extraction of lead. In 1788, the Sac and Fox
granted Julien Dubuque title to an extensive, hilly tract of land on the western shore of the
Mississippi River. When Pike visited this place he interviewed Dubuque and learned of the
area’s mining output. Pike recorded that the mines produced “from 20 to 40,000 lbs.” of lead
annually, which were melted down into more transportable units (called pigs), then floated
downriver to St. Louis, or sold locally in smaller quantities.44
Pike mentioned less occurrence of wild game after passing north of Dubuque. Between
the mouth of the Des Moines River and Dubuque the party observed lots of wildlife, but after
that saw “only a few turkies [sic] and deer.”45 An explanation for a noticeable lack of game (and
nonexistent buffalo) is Pike’s increasing proximity to the village of Prairie des Chiens, a French
settlement and trading center situated just north of the mouth of the Wisconsin River, on the east
side of the Mississippi, in what is now the state of Wisconsin. By that time Prairie des Chiens
had become the fulcrum of material exchange among Indians and whites in the Upper
Mississippi River Valley. The meat and fur of game animals served the needs of a wide variety
of people living in the villages of Prairie des Chiens, Dubuque, the large Sac and Fox villages,
44
45
Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 14.
20
the Sioux villages to the immediate north, as well as the numerous pockets of single-family
dwellings now dotted throughout the valley. As a result, animals of all kinds were hunted with
more frequency.
Commenting on Prairie des Chiens Pike, identified the quality of the dwellings, both
inside and out. The permanent dwellings there were framed houses, constructed of “small logs
set in mortises, made in the uprights, joined close, daubed on the outside with clay, and
handsomely white-washed within.”46 Pike, who appreciated “civilized” styles of living,
approved of what he saw at the village. He speculated that environmental improvements such as
draining the nearby marshes could add splendor to locale, and even render the place inhabitable
for many more people.47
Pike had a similarly sunny view of the white people who occupied the dwellings of
Prairie des Chiens. He said they possessed “the spirit of generosity and hospitality in an eminent
degree.”48 However, this view also came with a serious moral judgment regarding their practices
of establishing sexual and familial relations with the Indians:
There are a few gentleman who reside at Prairie des Chiens, and many other
persons who claim that appellation; but the rivalship of the Indian trade
occasioned them to commit acts at their wintering quarters which they would
blush to be thought guilty of in the civilized world…Their mode of living had
obliged them to have temporary connection with the Indian women; and what was
at first policy, is now confirmed by habit and inclination, that is has become (with
46
Ibid, 20.
Pike stated, “If the marsh were drained, (which might easily be done,) I am of opinion, the situation of the prairie
would be rendered healthy.” Ibid., 21.
48
Ibid.
47
21
a few exceptions,) the ruling practice of all the traders; and in fact almost one half
the inhabitants under twenty years of age, have the blood of the Aborigines, in
their veins.49
Pike criticized the white traders for cultivating intimate relationships with the Indians. He
agreed that at one time doing so was “good for business,” but disagreed with the practice for any
other purpose.
In terms of concluding this paper, the existence of several racially mixed families living
at Prairie des Chiens is perhaps the most significant observation made by Pike, for it serves as an
excellent metaphor for what was happening to both the people and the environment of the Upper
Mississippi River Valley. Zebulon Pike’s disapproving comment on the racially-mixed children
running around the streets of Prairie des Chiens in the late summer of 1805 offers a metaphor for
how human-environmental interaction changed over time in the Upper Mississippi River Valley.
Simply put: at first there were only Indians, then the whites came, and then the two cultures
became intertwined, which produced a controversially mixed, albeit shared, history. Histories
about people cannot be understood from only one side, and stories about the environment are no
different.
This brings the paper full-circle, and back to the three questions posed at the outset. How
did Indians in the Upper Mississippi River Valley interact with their environment? Like any
group of people, Indians interacted with their environment in ways that allowed them to survive
and expand their numbers. They harvested animals, cultivated crops, gathered minerals, fished,
and built permanent dwellings. They built canoes, planted trees, stored surpluses, and generally
49
Ibid., 21-22.
22
consumed all that they could. Human-environmental interaction was quite substantial, and
changed as more people entered into the region.
How did those interactions inform the later, more intensive and noticeable endeavors?
Indians established a baseline that elevated into more intensive forms of consumption. Lead and
other mineral mines eventually brought white workers and industry, but Indians had been using
that same lead since before recorded history. They developed local extraction techniques and
later worked in the mines. The knowledge they possessed about locations of lead, the trails to
get there, and extraction techniques informed later capitalist ventures.
Can Indian subsistence patterns be considered a conscious effort to conserve the
environment? This question is the most complex of the three. There is no question that the
introduction of technology from farther east allowed Indians to consume resources in more
efficient ways. Lead extraction that started with bone tools eventually evolved into small
furnaces and metallurgy. Timber cutting allowed for more weather resistant dwellings, and
canoes durable enough to navigate the dangerous snags and rapids of the Mississippi River.
Although only fragmentary, a reference to hand-planted tress suggests that Indians knew
their wood supplies were not limitless. Planting more of them required a preference of one tree
species over another, the knowledge of seed germination, transplantation, and the proper place to
carry out all the aforementioned activities. Such practices could be considered environmental
conservation, but without more supporting evidence it is merely a hypothetical, albeit defensible,
position.
Well-developed agriculture is evidenced all throughout the time period covered in this
paper. Corn, beans, squash, and melons were grown in surplus numbers and stored. Anyone
23
who tends a garden will agree that growing plants is an endeavor fraught with peril and the only
way to become skilled at the practice is through trial and error. If one cultivation technique fails,
another is attempted the following season, and eventually the outcomes improve enough to
produce reliable amounts of food. Surplus numbers of crops, then, indicate cultivation
techniques, informed by intimate knowledge about the environment of a very specific locale. In
terms of agriculture, the Indians in the Upper Mississippi River Valley knew enough about
gardening to subsist and more, which suggests a conscious attempt to wisely use those resources.
The absence of buffalo, and dwindling numbers of smaller animals like turkey and deer,
suggest that animals were hunted and consumed without regard to their finite numbers.
Marquette and Charlevoix noticed large numbers of buffalo, but Pike saw none. The Indians
observed by Marquette were highly skilled in hunting and processing the buffalo. They added
fatty meat to boiled corn, used bits of skull as ladles, wove the hair into the clothing, and covered
the doors of their cabins (as well as themselves) with skins. Such extensive usage implies that
buffalo were killed as often as necessary, and their absence by 1805 adds a further implication
that their numbers had dwindled long before the traditional account of wholesale and
indiscriminate buffalo killings at the hands of white men. Again, however, this argument is
merely defensible and in need of corroborating evidence to advance beyond a hypothetical.
The Sac and Fox Indians (and the Illinois before them) were skilled at consuming the
natural resources located in the environment of the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The
introduction of white people and white technology certainly affected the ways that they
consumed, but the evidence presented in this paper indicates that Indians, not surprisingly, acted
like humans and adapted and consumed more resources as their numbers grew. In some cases
they conserved resources (crops), in others they did not (buffalo), and in still others the evidence
24
is inconclusive (trees and lead). What is conclusive, however, is that all humans in the Upper
Mississippi River Valley consumed the resources around them, and the ways they consumed
changed over time.
25