cc  >> Okay, good afternoon and  welcome to another edition of  History Sandwiched In at the  Wisconsin Historical Museum.  Today, I'm especially happy to  be here for this one.  What I usually do here at the  museum is I take tours of fourth  graders and others through the  museum.  And one thing I do, which really  impresses the daylights out of  them, is to tell them about the  origin of their town's name.  They think I know everything.  But I look it up.  (laughter)  So I owe a special debt of  gratitude to today's speaker,  who is Mark Tully.  And he has actually helped me  out so much by writing a book on  the origin of the town and  village of Baraboo.  In fact, he did so much work on  this, it ended up as a book,  "A Man Called Baraboo,"  which you can get, by the way,  at our bookstore.  I'm sure Mr. Tully would be  happy to sign your copy. 

 But also, I'm happy that he came  because my favorite part of  history is the fur trade.  So he's here to talk about  the fur trade, and  "A Man Called Baraboo."  Please welcome to the Wisconsin  Historical Museum, Mark Tully.  (applause)  >> Bonjour!  (light laughter)  My my name  is François Barbeau.  My father's name  is Jean Barbeau.  And he came to Quebec  from France in 1686.  Now at this time, New France,  which central around Quebec,  there was a lot of threats from  the English and New England, and  from the Dutch in New Amsterdam.  And so the French government was  sending a lot of company--  "French Marines," to garrison  the various posts in New France.  And my father came over as one  of these soldiers.  There were more militia.  They were called the Companies  of Marine because the Navy paid  their salary. 

 And as part of his pay at the  end of his term of service, he  was given some land and he took  up farming.  And I was born in a little town  called Levis, just across from  Quebec City, here.  I was born in 1698.  I grew up raising pigs and  chickens.  I had a total of 16 siblings.  It seemed like my mother was  always pregnant.  Most of them didn't survive  infancy.  We had about four that survived  to adulthood out of the 16,  which was very common back then.  Of course, as we took our  produce back and forth to the  great city of Quebec, I saw the  voyageurs and their colorful  outfits telling their tall tales  of being back on the frontier.  But at that time, I was still  young, and my life of adventure  would have to wait a bit. 

 So I took up farming when I  reached my 20s, like my father  had before me.  And probably in Levis.  I met a nice girl, Therese.  We married and had two wonderful  children, Pierre and Therese.  Now, my dear wife died shortly  after the birth of our daughter,  Therese.  And it was a very sad day  indeed.  The complications of childbirth.  In those days, it could be very  serious.  But you don't want to hear about  that.  You want to hear about my  adventures. 

 My whole life, there were wars.  All I can remember, we were  always at war.  In France.  In Europe.  A constant string of wars.  And in 1747, we were in the  middle of a war called the  War of Austrian Succession.  The English call it  King George's War.  And I found myself at a little  place called Michlimackinac,  right here, 700 miles from my  home in Quebec.  It was the end of the earth.  It was a fairly substantial  post. 

 It was surrounded by a log fort.  And with lots of row houses,  lots of traders, lots of  military people there to protect  the straits.  The straits were only a few  miles wide, and it was a major  point for fur trades to come and  go, and for Indian allies, and  if anyone wanted to launch a  military expedition into the  interior, that would be a good  place to try to defend, because  it was so narrow, right there.  As I said, there were quite a  few row houses, several hundred  inhabitants, including  Mr. Charles de Langlade, that  you may be familiar with.  He lived there at the same time  that I was present.  And at the end of my term of  service, after King George's War  in 1748, as part of my pay, the  French government was offering  trade licenses to men who had  served in the military.  And I was fortunate enough to  get one of those.  I had to send to Montreal for  it.  It cost me 600 livres, which  translates more or less into  $6,000.  That got me a canoe from  Montreal, a canoe du nord. 

 That's a 20-foot canoe.  It could hold two tons of trade  goods.  It was fully equipped with  everything I needed to engage in  the trade.  And I had six men that agreed to  sign on and go with me on my  adventure into the upper Fox  River.  Their names were Dominique  Bordeaux, Louis Joseph DuSault,  Antoine Leonard, Pierre  Mineronne, Jean Lavalet, who had  the bow position, and Louis  Lalande had the stern.  The senior man takes the stern.  That was Louis.  And the second senior man, which  was Jean, takes the front of the  boat.  They're in charge of making sure  that we're on the right course  and maintaining the boat.  We set out in September of 1749. 

 With fair weather, we could make  about 25 miles a day.  If the weather was rough, we  could maybe make four miles a  day.  The first stretch we went across  was the Straits of Mackinac,  which is a very treacherous  stretch of water.  The two lakes come together.  Weather patterns change very  quickly.  In the canoe, you do not want to  be caught out in open water  during a storm.  They are paper thin, and very,  very fragile.  The support of the water is what  really keeps them floating.  They couldn't possibly hold even  a man's weight if they were up  on dry land.  That would be Louis Lalande at  the back. 

 He's in charge.  He's the one that,  even though I'm the bourgeois,  I am the boss,  he's in charge of the boat.  He's in charge of saying when we  start and when we stop.  Whenever we stop, if we have to  go on shore, we can never drag  that canoe up on shore, it's too  fragile.  So we have to jump in the water,  take everything out of the  canoe, and then lift it up and  carry it on shore.  So we don't stop very often.  Many times, we will just be  paddling along and we'll take a  tobacco break.  We call that a pipe.  We have a pipe about every hour  or two.  And usually, Louis will just  have us double our strokes for a  while, actually, have the men  double their strokes. 

 I don't do any of the paddling.  I'm the bourgeois.  And then we will just coast for  a little while, while the men  quickly get a few puffs on their  pipes before we continue on.  If we need to go ashore without  unloading the canoe, Louis and  Jean will jump out, go on shore  and fell a few small trees.  Then they will lay them out over  the water so that the branches  of the tree hold the canoe in  position offshore, so it doesn't  wash ashore and get broken on  the rocks.  If the weather agrees, we have  sails on the canoe, which is a  great relief to the men.  The paddles are only about five  inches wide.  That's to spare the men of  fatigue.  We'd rather make slow steady  progress than not make any  progress at all because  everyone's muscles are too sore.  So when the wind is in an  appropriate direction, we can  put up the sails. 

 If the weather is bad, we have  what we call a degrade.  That's where we unload the  canoe, bring it up on shore and  pitch a camp.  We don't want to be on the water  if there's anything more than  about two-foot-high waves.  Because just the wave action as  that 20-foot-long canoe breaks  through the waves, can cause it  to break its spine.  We'd also pull ashore at night  and set a fire.  We would hold the canoe up  against the fire and look for  light coming through the hull,  so we could fix any holes, tears  or cracks in the caulking.  By mid-October, we'd made it to  the top of Le Bay,  to a place called  Fort St. François, right here.  And there was a small post with  some French traders living there  at the time.  So we probably stayed a few days  to rest and to catch up on any  news, and do a little bit of  trading with some of the Indians  that might have been living in  the area.  That was about half-way to where  we were going. 

 As the crow flies, it looks like  it's two-thirds, substantially  more than half-way.  But the last stretch of our  journey would be up the Fox  River, which is a very  serpentine route.  It keeps having switchbacks, and  it takes forever.  It's very easy to lose our way.  The first major obstacle we came  to on our whole journey were  these rapids.  They're not very deep rapids.  They're not very treacherous.  So we could just lighten the  load on the canoe by taking a  few things out and the men could  go over the side and pull it up  through the rapids, as these men  are doing here.  But that was the first major  obstacle that we encountered  along our way.  After almost a month of  paddling, this was my view, for  almost a month. 

 I'm sitting in the middle.  That's Jean's back.  I've got every inch memorized.  So after about a month of  paddling, we're running low on  supplies.  We've been subsisting mostly on  pemmikan, which is dried meat  suspended in fat, and this  lovely biscuit.  I'd throw one of these out so  you could look at it, but I'd be  afraid of killing someone.  They are hard as rocks.  And so, this is what we've been  living on, besides what we can  trade with the Indians.  We also may do a little hunting  along the way, if we see  waterfowl, in particular.  But we're not going to do  excursions back into the woods  chasing after deer and moose. 

 If there happens to be some  geese or ducks in a marshy area  up ahead, we may try to sneak up  and hunt some of them.  But most of our food, we're  going to trade with the Indians.  After a full month, we finally  make it to the portage.  There, we rest for a few days.  We'd haul everything across.  It's one of the shortest  portages in the fur trade  system.  You can see the dotted lines  here of all the various fur  trade routes.  There's also a portage down here  by what you call Chicago.  And there's another one that's  not listed here.  But there's actually a portage  up into here that would get you  into the Mississippi River. 

 The portage with the Wisconsin  River was the shortest one.  That's the one we decided to  take.  And I didn't have a destination  really in mind.  I might have heard some rumors  while we were at Fort St.  François about a wonderful  little stream just below the  portage.  Or I may have gotten word from  Charles de Langlad at  Michlimackinac.  But at any rate,  after we crossed the portage,  we paddled downstream.  And the first stream we came to  on the west bank, we decided to  stop.  It was the perfect place.  It had a south facing exposure. 

 It was a wetland.  There was a bit of a marsh, so  there was a lot of low lumber  and trees that we could harvest  to build our post.  And most importantly, because of  the series of wars that have  been going on, the Indians  hadn't had any trade goods in  almost a decade.  So they're desperate to trade  with us.  So it was a perfect place for  setting up the trade.  Our post was very simple.  There are no nails used in its  construction.  It is all lashed together.  We sink posts in the four  corners, two parallel posts in  each corner, and then just  stacked up the logs in between  them and lashed it all together.  On the ends, we stood posts up  vertically in a shallow trench  and backfilled that. 

 And over the top, we lashed  rafters covered with cedar or  elm bark.  And that's all held down by  poles lashed into place.  Even our fireplace is made out  of sticks, lined with mud to  help keep it from catching fire.  The palisade, we just finished  a war that involved the Indians.  There may still be hostile  nations in the area.  We'd dig a shallow trench all  the way around the post, stand  upright posts, and then you'll  note all the cord wood to get us  through the winter is stacked  against the base of the walls.  This serves two purposes.  First of all, it helps reinforce  the bottom of the wall so that  it can't be forced over.  And also, in the event of an  attack, it forms a firing step,  so we can climb up on the wood  and be able to shoot at our  antagonists.  It's a modest post. 

 No real door to it.  But it kept the elements off,  and it served its purpose.  Why did we go all this way?  This creature here.  The beaver.  The beaver is not the most  valuable fur, but it was the  most abundant.  There were several other animals  that were much more valuable.  But the beaver was used for  making hats.  Hats were all the rage in  Europe.  It's not the long soft hairs.  Those all get shaved off, these  beautiful soft hairs. 

 They all get pulled off.  It's the downy underfur that  makes a very thick, dense,  waterproof fur.  Very fashionable.  So we are primarily after the  beaver.  Bear skins, deer skins, racoon,  elk skins were all more valuable  than the beaver skins.  But the beaver lived in large  colonies, so it was much easier  to harvest large quantities of  them.  And they're very much in demand.  We'd have no problem finding a  buyer for our furs.  You can see on this that beavers  are about in the middle of the  list as far as value.  Three livres in modern money  is about $30 a piece. 

 And that's about what a raw  beaver fur goes for today, too.  Of course, we didn't do any of  the hunting ourselves.  We stayed in our little trading  post.  The hunting was left to the  Native Americans.  They wanted our trade goods, so  they would go out.  In the winter, they would split  up into small family groups.  There was a large Sauki village  just downstream from where we  were.  They would split up and go off  into what would become known as  the Barbeau Hills.  And they would hunt the beaver  and bring them down to the post.  Word spread of our presences  very quickly, because they  hadn't had trade goods in quite  some time. 

 So they would've been anxious to  trade.  And they would've been bringing  in furs almost immediately,  probably before we had the post  done.  We stayed all winter.  We'd come out in the winter for  a few reasons.  You saw in the previous image  that the Native Americans could  walk right out on the ice to  harvest the beaver.  They were in their little huts  in the impounds.  Also, that's when the furs are  the thickest, so that's when  it's the best time to collect  the furs.  In the spring, we had to wait  till all the ice was out.  We couldn't take any chances,  even though at our post, the ice  might be gone, we have to go  north, and there might still be  ice.  So we'd usually wait till May. 

 Because ice like this would just  shred our canoe.  And if we got into an area where  it was along the shoreline, we  wouldn't be able to pull ashore.  So we had to wait until the ice  was completely out.  We went back to Michlimackinac  with our furs.  Hopefully we had parceled out  all of our trade goods.  And then we would get reimbursed  for our furs.  The agents in Montreal would  then buy our furs.  The people we were trading with  were mostly the Sauki and the  Renards, the Sauk and the Fox  Indians.  And you can see even here, this  image is from about 100 years  after they were trading with me.  They're wearing woolen blankets,  where they used to be wearing  fur coats. 

 They've become completely  dependant on the trade goods.  Even as early as 1650, some of  the tribal elders were  complaining that the younger  generation had lost contact with  the old ways.  They could no longer make bows  and arrows.  They were dependant on the  European guns.  They were dependant on the  European knives.  They worked very well for us as  traders.  A few examples I can show you.  This is a flint knife.  It's a skinning knife that was  found in Coon Valley, Wisconsin.  Now, you can imagine trying to  butcher. 

 All of you have done butchering,  I'm sure.  So you can imagine what it'd be  like to butcher with a little  piece of flint that you hold in  your hand.  That fits perfectly right in  here, and you scrape with it.  And you can imagine what a  Native American would think when  we traded him one of these.  It's just a cheap, inexpensive  sheet metal knife that had one  edge sharpened.  A wooden handle.  A few rivets holding it  together.    But it was so much sharper and  so much easier to use that what  he was used to, that he would  give us several beaver skins for  one of these.  An axe.  This is a stone axe. 

 A few hundred years ago, it's  what the Indian people were  using.  This one was probably of  Potawatomi origins.  You can imagine trying to cut  down a tree with something like  that.  You didn't really cut down the  tree.  You pounded it into submission.  (laughter)  You could imagine the value that  something like this might have.  It's just a short little steel  trade axe.  This is made of iron, which is  much less expensive, and the  steel is set into the bit, so  that we can keep the cost down.  But you can imagine how much  value the Native Americans might  place on something like this.  I mentioned guns. 

 This is very typical of the type  of gun we were trading with the  Indians.  It's a smooth bore.  It's about a 20-gauge  or a .62 caliber,  a flint lock firing mechanism.  You put powder in the pan,  close it down,  load all the parts you need  down the barrel.  The advantage of a smooth bore,  you can put shot,  you can put round ball,  you could put broken glass,  you could put gravel.  Anything that goes down,  can be made into a projectile.  Then it's all packed down.  And you're ready to fire.  The beautiful thing about this  is the Indians are not only  dependant on us for the gun, but  they're also dependant on us for  the powder.  It's ready to fire. 

 You simply cock it back all the  way.  You pull the trigger, you get a  shower of sparks that ignites  the power in the pan.  There's a small hole in the  barrel, like a cannon.  It lights the main charge and  the charge comes out.  The better quality guns fire  almost instantaneously, no  different from one of your  modern firearms.  But the trade guns were often  inferior.  There's many, many instances of  these guns blowing up in the  user's face, or parts just  falling off.  And of course, if you're missing  the cock or the pan, then what  you have is a very expensive  club.  (laughter)  Starting fires.  A hundred years ago, in the  1650s, when an Indian wanted to  start a fire, he took two sticks  and he'd rub one between his  hand and drill it into a piece  of cedar or some other dry wood  to try to get plant fibers,  sawdust, or other wood shavings  to ignite. 

 You can imagine when we  introduced the flint and steel,  how much more convenient it was  to start fires.  Just strike a spark immediately.  The rest of the process is  almost identical.  We take a piece of plant fiber--  And in this case, I have what we  call charcloth.  It's a little piece of cloth  that has been put into  a container and burned,  a sealed container.  And because fire needs fuel,  heat and air, we take away the  air and end up with little  sheets of charcoal.  Now, the Indians would probably  use the cupped fungus from the  side of a tree.  Yes sir?  >> In the 21st century, we have  things that protect us from the  smoke and the fire.  (laughter)  >> Is there one nearby?  (laughter)  >> Let's find out!  >> I have done this.  >> Very well, we will use care,  thank you, sir. 

 Just a few strikes.  Oops.  That was my good flint, too.  A few strikes  and you make a mess.  A few strikes, and in theory,  you would...  (laughter)  It's actually catching here.  Normally, you would catch  a spark on the charcloth  and then blow on it and use this  to light the fire.  But it's being obstinate.  But you can see how with one of  these drills, it can take 20 or  30 minutes to start a fire.  The fastest I've ever seen  anyone start a foot-high flame  that burned through a piece of  string, two sticks in the ground  and a piece of string one foot  off the ground, starting with a  flint and steel, getting the  flame high enough to burn  through that string. 

 The fastest I've seen it done  is 20 seconds.  The longest I've seen it done  is 20 minutes.  (laughter)  But you can see how quick it  was, even if it's damp, the  flint will still spark, whereas  if your wood gets damp  you go cold and hungry.  Ah, when the Indians wanted to  boil water, they would use a  bark vessel, tied up at the  corners with wattup.  Full of water.  They'd put stones in the fire,  and when they'd get good and  hot, you'd pull them out with a  stick or a piece of bark, lift  them quickly and drop them into  the water.  And if you do that enough times,  it comes to a boil.  Now, men in particular,  imagine what your little woman  would think if you came home  with one of these and said,  "Here, honey."  (laughter)  So you could see how very  quickly the French trade goods,  and the English.  The English actually offered  better trade goods out of the  Hudson Bay.  But you can see how very quickly  the old ways would be cast aside  and the new technology could  very quickly and easily take  over. 

 That is all I have for you at  the moment.  And I'd be happy to answer any  questions that you may have.  Yes?  >> I heard that voyageurs...  (inaudible)  >> Yeah, I don't know that  that's true.  I think it's kind of a folklore  sort of thing.  You've got to remember that  people didn't have recreation  time back then, and didn't learn  how to swim.  I mean, it's just--  You didn't--  There's issues with hygiene  also, it's like, oh, they didn't  bathe.  Well, you couldn't bathe.  Bathing didn't become a regular  thing until central heating was  invented.  Because you take off all your  clothes and go in the river. 

 It's not heated.  And you're going to get out, and  the wind blows, and you're going  to be cold.  >> What if the canoe tips over?  >> You're pretty much done  anyway, so.  It's going to be cold.  You're wearing all your clothes.  You know, I've heard those sorts  of things.  I haven't been able to verify  any of that.  But I think it's kind of a  folklore.  They also said they all had  skinny little waists and really  big shoulders in order to fit  into these canoes.  Well, if you're doing nothing  but this all day, for eight  hours a day, yeah, you're going  to be walking around like this,  too. 

 It wasn't that they were  genetically built that way, they  just did a lot of paddling.  Any more questions?  Yes, ma'am.  >> Can you say something about  the French trading versus the  British trading in this area.  This was all French trading that  came into Wisconsin?  >> Well, Hudson Bay was a huge  influence on the fur trade.  The British goods were much  higher quality.  The French were producing junk  and they were cheating on it, as  well, like the fire steel that  wasn't working for me.  They would sometimes--  I've got one in the case over  there.  These would sometimes have two  pieces to them.  And the French would cut them in  half and sell them as two, and  things like that.  The British trade goods out of  Hudson Bay were fabulous, much  higher quality. 

 The blankets in particular were  highly sought after.  And the Fox Indians in  particular, and some of the  Midwestern tribes, would  actually travel all the way to  Hudson Bay to trade rather than  trade locally.  And the first two Fox wars,  there were two wars between the  French and the Fox Indians in  the 1730s, somewhere right in  there.  And those were pretty much  fought with the French because  the French were mad because they  were trading with the British,  and they were trying to prevent  them from doing that.  So the Hudson Bay was a major  concern for the French.  >> The French in Wisconsin,  were they related to those  up on La Pointe and in Bayfield?  There was a trading area there.  Were the companies that traded  in this area all part of a  consortium of some kind?  >> The French system was a  little different from the  British system.  It was all individual licenses.  And you basically got a license  and fended for yourself, do your  own thing.  The English system--  The Indians, some authorities  suggest that the Indians  actually preferred the English  system, because they would come  in, establish a company, set up  a fort, and stay there. 

 So they knew exactly where the  English were.  They knew where to get their  stuff.  And the French tended to kind of  move around and set up these  little posts, mingle with the  women and that sort of stuff.  So according to some  authorities, the English system  was actually preferred by the  Native Americans, because they  did things a little differently.  The English government also put  little stricter controls on it  than the French government.  The French, you had these  "couriers du bois," runners of  the woods, that were kind of  pirates.  And they were doing fur trading  and things like that without a  proper license.  And then of course, there was  the Mettis culture, which was  the cross between French and the  Indians.  They were living in the Indian  villages and things like that.  So the French kind of infused  themselves more into the Indian  culture than the British did. 

 The British kind of came and  said, "We're the British," boom.  This is our boundary,  as the British do.  And they pretty much stayed put  in their forts.  Peter?  >> Was Prairie du Chien at about  the same time, or was it before?  There were posts there.  >> There were some store houses  there.  There were posts there.  I'm thinking that the fort  really got established, it was a  little bit later, 1770s.  François Barbeau was here in  1749.  One of the advantages of all  these little wars that were  going on, is that this area had  already been hunted out by about  1720.  I mean, the beaver were gone. 

 And those couple of Fox wars,  and those bled right into King  George's War, nobody was coming  this way.  There was no trading going on.  It allowed the beaver population  to rebound.  So for that chunk of the early  first quarter of the 18th  century, more or less, there  wasn't a whole lot of trading  going on.  You had some fellows in the  1600s, all up the Mississippi,  and Prairie du Chien.  Then, there's nothing for a  while.  Even François Barbeau, when he  went to Fort St. François and  Le Bay, that was all rundown.  That post had just been  abandoned and left for 20 or 30  years.  And they just recently  reoccupied it.  So the fur trade in Wisconsin,  for that about 20-year period  before 1749 was almost  non-existent. 

 Paul?  >> Can you tell us something  about what you're wearing?  >> I would love to.  Can you fill us in on the French  names?  My French pronunciation is  horrible.  (speaking French)  This is the voyageur sash.  It's his pockets.  Normally, period clothing  doesn't.  They'll have pocket flaps, but  they don't actually have  pockets.  And part of the reason why is  that when you're moving around  and you're bending and stuff,  things start poking you and  getting in the way.  So the sash is where he keeps  his knife.  He would have his cup in there.  They probably wear it a little  higher. 

 We're used to wearing things  kind of low, because that's  where we wear our jeans and  stuff.  But if you keep it high, it  keeps everything out of the way.  You have full freedom of  movement without things moving  around and whacking together.  (speaking French)  These are Indian boots.  They're essentially moccasins  with a built-in elk hide gator  wrapped up.  These are lined with sheep's  wool, which is extremely warm.  Thanks for asking.  And they would've lined them  with leaves, or animal fur, or  whatever.  I've done winter trekking in  these, and they're better than  any modern boots you can get  your mitts on.  They're very flexible. 

 You've got free movement.  The only trick is that they are  extremely hazardous on grass and  stuff.  When they get a little bit damp,  they tend to slip really bad.  I'm wearing breeches, which are  what, culottes in French.  They probably would've gone with  the more traditional Indian  breech cloth, just a cloth up  between your legs, and gone  bare-legged, especially when  they're paddling the canoe,  because they're in and out  of the water all the time.  I don't know how these guys did  it, because you're talking fall  and spring, and literally, every  20 minutes.  Just when you're getting dried  off, it's like, back over the  side.  So they probably would've gone  bare-legged when they were  paddling.  I've got a vest underneath here.  Oh, sorry, I hit the microphone. 

 And then they probably would've  worn a woolen, what they call a  chemise.  It's a light flannel jacket.  It's a wool flannel, not the  nice soft cotton flannel.  It's kind of a coarse woven  wool.  And then, (speaking French),  or a jacket over that.  And I didn't bring my blanket  coat, because I'm wearing enough  layers.  But they would've had a big  heavy coat over the top of this  made out of a blanket.  And I've done winter trekking.  In fact, there's a picture of me  on the back of the book that I  don't have a copy of handy in  all my garb in northern  Wisconsin.  And we found, as long as you're  keeping active on those snow  shoes, you're burning up. 

 But as soon as you stop, you  start to get a chill.  So the trick is opening and  closing layers all the time,  much as it is now.  A lot of the modern fabrics tend  to wick and allow your body to  breathe, so you don't have that  overheating and then extreme  cool-down.  The miracle fiber of the 18th  century was wool.  It's the only natural fiber that  will keep you warm when it's  wet.  And so they were wearing,  everything was in wool.  And we all go, ooh, itchy.  But they were tougher than we  are so they could do it.  >> Are there remnants of the  trading posts still today,  or all those all gone?  >> There are some traces  of a post, which was  late 17th century, down near  Trempeleau State Park.  Posts like this weren't meant to  last more than a winter or two. 

 If they would've been attacked  by an organized force, they were  done for.  The palisade was really just to  act as a deterrent, you know,  like a barbed wire fence, or  whatever, and to keep wild  animals out, and keep them from  coming after their food and  things like that.  If there's any remnants of this  post out there, his post  would've been right at the mouth  of the Baraboo River.  There's a bit of a bluff.  It's a perfect spot.  The land breaks away.  It's much like it is now.  The Leopold Reserve is all right  there on the Interstate, below  Cascade Mountain.  That's basically was François  Barbeau's backyard, if you're  ever traveling up and down the  Interstate.  Right across from Cascade  Mountain, this big swamp has not  changed in 200 years. 

 >> A permanent settlement?  >> The largers posts?  Well, like the house down at  Prairie du Chien is a good  example, that big mansion that  he built.  Those were, really, the English  posts tended to be larger.  A good example would be  Fort William in Canada.  They've reconstructed that.  It's just huge.  I mean, it's absolutely huge.  And you know, they had  everything there.  They had blacksmiths.  They had all the crafts.  It was a self-contained village. 

 Michlimackinac, the one that I  pictured earlier, I'm not sure  how many acres that is, but we  look at it and think it's teeny.  To them, it was huge.  It was several hundred people  all living inside that thing.  And that would be a more  typical sized permanent post.  Fort St. François in Green Bay  was probably smaller than that.  And there were lots of these  little, literally, a cabin the  size of this stage with a  palisade around it, dotted all  over the upper Midwest.  And they'd use them for a season  and let them fall apart.  There was a question over here.  >> Is that the one  in Mackinac City?  >> Yes, not on the island.  It's right at the foot of the  bridge. 

 They're probably opening up  for their summer season  right about now.  I highly recommend it.  They've got excellent  interpreters.  It's amazing.  They've done all archaeological  investigations there.  We were talking to them.  The first digs they did in the  1950s, they literally just took  a backhoe, dug up a bunch of  dirt and dumped it through a  sieve and saw what they got.  That was archaeology back then.  And they were using local prison  labor, because it was cheap.  And so now, they have students  come up and do all the digs and  things. 

 And they're really taking their  time.  I was asking the guy, why.  And he says, well, you know,  think about it.  In 50 years, look how far  archaeology has come.  This is in another 50 years, we  probably won't even have to dig  the ground.  You'll be able to go along with  seismic whatever and get  three-dimensional models of  objects.  So they're going at it slowly.  It's still archaeologically  sensitive, and they're still  coming up with absolutely  wonderful things.  So if you get a chance, it's a  great family vacation.  It's only about an eight-hour  drive. 

 Beautifully scenic, you follow  Highway 1, I think, all the way  up over the U.P.  And it's great.  You see a lot of the scenery  has not changed.  You get these, the water coming  right up the bluffs, and things,  and the woods going right down  to the lake.  It's absolutely gorgeous  scenery.  I highly recommend that.  Yes?  >> That crate, is that an  accurate representation?  >> More or less.  About that size,  maybe a little smaller.  Each person in the canoe is  responsible for two of them.  And they supposedly weighed  about 90 pounds a piece. 

 So you'd take your bale, take it  the length of the portage, come  back and get your second one,  and take it back down.  Now, 90 pounds.  These guys were shorter than I  am, and of course, they were a  little bit stockier.  Well, I've got my stockiness in  a different area.  They were kind of muscular guys.  So they could heft that on their  back and run it across the  portage pretty quickly.  The biggest injuries of the  voyageurs were twisted ankles  and things from stepping on a  rock in the water wrong, or  tripping over roots and things  like that along the path, and  then ruptures from hefting those  bales all the time and running  up and down, taking them across  the portages.  But it's about the right size.  You get two of those abreast in  a canoe that's 20 feet long.  And well, you've got six guys. 

 That'd be 12 bales like that,  plus each man would have a  little bag of his own personal  gear.  Peter, you had another one?  >> One or two questions.  How much of the trade goods was  booze?  And what were some of the other  items?  What was the number one trade  good?  >> Yeah, I didn't get into that  because it's kind of a touchy  subject.  Well, apparently, and I'm not a  doctor, but my understanding is  that the Native American  metabolism works differently  with alcohol.  They become addicted to it  really quick.  And so, booze was extremely  popular as a trade good.  A lot of deals were made when  the Indians were good and drunk.  And that's well documented.  They would get into fights.  There would be a lot of trader's  lives were risked, as well as a  lot of stories about drunk  Indians laying around the trade  post and all of a sudden one of  them goes nuts and pulls out a  knife and starts slashing  people. 

 It was pretty touchy.  And the traders used it to their  advantage.  And you know, would use alcohol  for treaties, and for trade, and  just for anything they could,  because it was real easy to  manipulate the Indians with it.  Yes ma'am?  >> Did they ever have problems  with the voyageurs drinking too  much?  >> Each voyageur had a certain  ration.  And they would sometimes gamble  for rations and things like  that, so yeah, they could get  good and drunk as well.  But Paul, you had something to  add?  >> It's in several places, at  least during the English period,  with the Bourgeois, the fact  that the man who ran the post  who kept their notes.  And I've seen it several  times, I'll cite -- who says,  "I'd rather deal with  ten drunk Indians  than one drunk Canadian."  (several people talking)  >> Sir?  >> Was this area of the fort  or where the little post was set  up, was it continuously  inhabited then, or when the fur  trade died out, it sort of died  out for a while, then when  farmers came in then it kind of  came back?  >> This post pretty much just  rotted away.  They used it two years.  He was there in 1749.  He was there in 1754. 

 He got another trade license  about five years later.  And as far as I could tell, used  the same spot.  Now, Judge Doty, who was a  prominent figure in Wisconsin  history in the 1830s, mentions  going between Green Bay and  Madison by canoe.  And he specifically says he went  past the remains of Baraboo's  post, in like 1832.  So there were probably a couple  of logs still sticking up.  But it was a shack.  Probably, my illustration  over-glorified it.  It was probably small.  The whole post was probably the  size of a two-car garage.  So there wasn't much there. 

 And I'm sure that when they were  getting ready to head back to  Michlimackinac, if they're  running low on fire wood, why go  cut more trees, we'll just take  some of the palisades, or  whatever.  They really weren't meant to  last.  They were meant to keep them  sheltered for the winter.  And that was pretty much it.  And you know, even if you did an  archaeological investigation of  the site, the chances of finding  anything, because there had been  such a small footprint.  They basically just scrape a  trench and stand the palisades  up and kind of backfill it and  kind of hope that they stay  standing.  It wasn't like they had an auger  and dug down four feet, or  anything.  So you might find some staining  that's more or less in a  symmetrical pattern, and that's  about it.  >> The name stayed, and people  kind of identified that spot  with the name.  But really, nobody was living  there for many, many years. 

 And when people started moving  in, they kind of held on to  that.  >> Right, and the name changed a  lot over time.  I mention that in the book.  The Baraboo River was called  "Ma-hahl-nook," for a while.  It was a Winnebago word.  It was called  the River Belle Chasse.  It was called Bonibau's Creek.  And there are a lot of stories,  when I was doing the research,  there were 30-some-odd different  stories of how it got its name.  It also supposedly was named  because the catfish liked to  breed at the mouth of the river,  and catfish were known as  "barbu," which means bearded.  François Barbeau's name  translates in English as Frank  Beard. 

 So you know, that's one story.  There were 30-some-odd different  stories I tracked down.  Now, most of the ones involving  voyageurs date from the 1830s.  And this was the earliest  mention I found to a voyageur  with that name being in that  area, and the earliest reference  I found to it being called  Barbeau's River was in 1766.  So, just change.  And it got corrupted.  There's six different spellings  for the name, Barbeau, as well.  And of course, now it's been  corrupted to Baraboo.  But in the period, the reason I  stuck with "Barbeau" is because  most of the genealogical records  had it that way.  So I thought if anyone wanted to  do any more research, or try to  chase the genealogy, it was  easier for them to know they had  the right guy if I stuck with  that spelling. 

 But it was even "Baribault,"  it was spelled.  And this was on official  documents.  So it was just all phonetic.  Nothing was standardized until  the mid-18th century.  Other questions?  >> Where did his children  settle?  >> There's actually several  Baraboo families in Canada.  And I was fortunate enough, when  I did a lecture for the Sauk  County Historical Society in  Baraboo, a couple came in who  are direct descendants of  François Barbeau's brother.  And I think his name  was is Jean Barbeau.  And I pulled out the family  tree, and they just traced it  right down and went, yep, there  we are.  So that was interesting.  It's not an uncommon name in  French Canada. 

 Yeah, there are still--  There's another Baraboo River,  or something like that over  in Michigan, as well,  spelled differently.  So, they were around.  Additional questions?  Wonderful.  Well, thank you very much.  (applause)  I do have some artifacts here.