Page 206 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961

because, when first founded, the place contained divers grog
shops and liquor stores, and but little else, and as the term
"shanty" is generally applied by "Uncle Sam's hard cases,"
to places kept for their especial accommodation, they naturally
gavc to the respectable young town this name, which it has
borne, through good and through evil report, from that time to
the present. Three or four stores were located at this point,
and together with the sutler store at Fort Howard, and two or
three at other places in the settlement, supplied the wants of
the community. In addition to the "regular merchants" mere
several fur traders, who carried on a regular traffic with the
Indians; but these had no permanent places of trade here. In
the autumn of each year, they received, either from Mackinaw
(then the great depot and head-quarters of the American Fur
Company) or from Canada, their "outfit" of goods and mer-
chandize, consisting of articles adapted to the wants of the
natives, and departed for their distant "wintering grounds"
situated in the wilderness. The principal trading posts, at
that period, in Northern Wisconsin, were the following: Mil-
maukee, Sheboygan, and Manitowoc, on Lake Michigan; Me-
nomonee River, Peshtigo and Oco~ito on Green Bay; Fond du
Lac, Calumet, and Oshkosh, on Winnebago Lake; Wolf River,
Lake Shawano, and the Portage of the Fox and Wisconsin.
At all of these points Indian villages were located, and it is a
remarkable feature in the settlement of Wisconsin, that all or
nearly all of the principal cities, towns and villages which now
in all directions meet our view; were originally sites of Indian
villages; showing that to the sagacity and foresight of the
Aborigines, rather than to the judgment and discrimination of
the whites, are we indebted for the beautiful and eligible loca-
tions of the towns throughout the Statc.
These traders conveyed the goods, which, however, were not
all dry goods, in boats called 6atteaux, being of light draught
of water, and constructed so as to meet with the least opposi-
tion from the current in rapids or swift streams, or in birch
bark canoes, which latter were constructed by the Indians.