Page 198 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

194 WISCOFSIN IIISTOKI:CAL COLLECTIONS.

the boundary passes, between Wisconsin aud Michigan, is a
poor barren region. On some part of the line, there is no
doubt of their being extensive tleposites of iron and copper
ore. When we returned to Green Bay, I nearly killed
myself eating potatoes.
In 1845, I left Green 13ay and started across the couiitry for
Lake Superior in company with Col. CHARLES TULLEH. We
left the Bay in hlarch, when there mas no snow on the ground,
and when we reached the dividing ridge we found snow four
feet deep, which made it very bad traveling; and we mere
twenty-two days making the trip frorn Green Bay to Copper
Harbor. I remained nearly three years in the Lake Superior
country, part of the time at Copper Harbor, and a part at
Ke-way-we-naw Bay, at which latter place I built, in 1846,
the first saw-mill ever erected on Lake Superior. The soil in
that region is generally very poor, all round the Lake; there is
but very little timber, and that mostly pine and oak; but it is
a rich mineral country. Potatoes, oats and pees grow very
well at some points. The Indians do not dig many of their
potatoes until spring. Before the ground is much frozen in
the autumn, the snow falls to a great depth, which takes out
what little frost there is in the ground. The snow remains on
the ground until May, when it disappears, and the people dig
their potatoes.
When I left the Lake Superior country, I went to Mil-
waukee, where I remained two years. In 1848, I was ap-
pointed by the President as Exploring Agent for the Menom-
onee Indians, to examine a new country in which for them to
locate. I went some three hundred miles above St. Paul, to
the Red River of the North; I never in all my life saw a finer
country. I was four months in making the trip. It did not,
however, eventuate in the removal of the Menomonees.
I came to La Crosse in 1852. The population of the place,
at that time, all told, was just one hundred and sixteen; now
it amounts to six or seven thousand-nearly as large as that of