Page 244 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961
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230 WISCONSIN IIISTORICAL COLLECTIONS.
:leave them but forty-six years after their ccalmost annihilation,"
.to recruit, before the Sauks appeared at the Bay, in their for-
'lorn condition, when the alliance was formed.
The confederate tribe, being driven from Green Bay up
Fox river, and from thence to the Wisconsin and Mississippi,
CARVER found them, the Sauks at Sauk Prairie, and the
Foxes at Prairie du Chien in 1766, five or six years after the
af~xmation of the alliance.
.'Of building the Fox village at Prairie du Chien, which was
probably the first Indian or any other village built upon this
lovely plain, CARVER says, in descending the Wisconsin river,
"about five miles from the junction of the Wisconsin and Mis-
sissippi, " [which must have been where Major WRIGHT now
lives, known on the Rail Road as WRIGHT'S FERRY," that
being the only point on that river answering to the description
given.] " I observed the ruins of a large Indian town, in a
very pleasing situation." [Twenty two years ago, the tradi-
tion of such a town on that site was still extant at Prairie du
Chien.]
"On inquiring of the neighboring Indians, why it was de-
serted, I was informed that about thirty years ago, the Great
Spirit appeared on the top of a pyramid of rocks8 which lay a
little divtance to the west," (this must have been the rocky
point where the widow Bowen now lives,) and warned them to
quit their habitations; for the land on which they were built
belonged to him, and he had occasion for it. As a proof that
he who gave them their orders, was really the Great Spirit, he
told them that the grass should immediately spring up on those
very rocks, from whence he addressed them, which they knew
to be bare and barren. The Indians obeyed, and soon after
discovered that this miraculous alteration had taken place.
"They showed me the spot," says CARVER, " but the growth
of grass appeared no way supernatural." "I apprehend," he
continues, " this to have been a stratagem of the French or
Spaniards, to answer some selfish view." CARVER further
