The following story is from the book "Sawdust City" by Lois Barland. This is the very beginning of the book and at first I was going to skip over it. But this lays the groundwork for what is to come later, plus it's interesting! So here we go with "The Beginnings of Eau Claire County." The Chippewa Valley in the sixteenth century belonged to England but was occupied by the Indians and the French fur traders. There was a French village at Green Bay and one at Prairie du Chien. The French bought furs from the Indians, trading guns for beaver skins. The price of a gun was a pile of beaver skins, well pressed down, as high as the gun was long; and guns made for the Indian trade were never made short. The first white person to visit the area and leave any written account was Captain Jonathan Carver. In 1767 he visited St. Anthony Falls, Minnesota (Minneapolis), came down the Mississippi tot he mouth of the Chippewa River, then up the Chippewa through what is now Eau Claire on to Chippewa Falls and on up to Superior. Ten years later he wrote a book, an account of his travels which ran several editions. The Eau Claire library has a rare copy of the second edition, published in London in 1779 which contains a map. The Minnesota State Historical Society gave Mr. W. W. Bartlett photographic copies of an earlier map. Both show our smaller river as River Rufus. The Sacs and the Fox were to the south, the Winnebagoes and the Menomonies east in the region of Green Bay. Along the Mississippi the Sioux or Dakota Indians had their villages. Between us and the Mississippi was a great country for game, buffalo, elk, and deer in great numbers. Carver says that on the Chippewa River the buffalo were larger and more plentiful than in any other place in his travels. Two half breed traders, LaDuc and Penasha built a cabin about 1784 on the west side of the river across from Mt. Simon. A few years later there was a trading post at the head of the rapids about a mile above where the Eau Claire paper mill now stands. LaDuc and Penasha were not white men, but they were white enough to be crafty traders for they got into trouble with a party of Chippewas and were besieged in their cabin for several days. They killed two Chippewas and the rest went up the river for help. As soon as the Indians were out of sight, the traders packed up and moved down river to do their trading with the Sioux Indians who had a large village on the Mississippi near the mouth of the Chippewa River. The period between 1830 and 1850 saw the depletion of wild game to a large extent. The buffalo had been killed off or driven to the west, the elk were becoming scarce, for unlike his smaller cousin, the crafty deer, the elk is large and stupid and cannot conceal himself; so he is easily approached and killed off by hunters. The French voyagers in extending their traffic in furs, came from Prairie du Chien, up the Chippewa River in their long log canoes called pirogues, and named some of our smaller streams. At the mouth of what is now called the Eau Galle River they found a heavy gravel bar, called galet (pronounced glaay) in their language, and so they called the stream La Riviere au Galet, the River of the Gravel Bank. When they reached the present site of Eau Claire, t hey observed that the river coming in from the east, was quite clear as compared with the water of the Chippewa which was of a dark coffee color, being stained by needles of the tamarac trees which grow in the large swamps. So they named the river La Riviere del' Eau Claire, the River of Clear Water. Sioux is the abbreviation of Naudousessioux, signifying enemy. They called themselves Dakotas. When Father Hennepin first came in contact with this tribe, in 1760, they were located in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, but laid claim to indefinitely defined territory extending west to the Rocky Mountains. The name Chippewa is a corruption by English speaking people of the Indian name Ojibway. They were a high type of Indian. The entire upper Chippewa Valley had for several centuries been their home. The Ojibways originated on the Atlantic coast, migrated west to LaPointe on Lake Superior (Madeline Island) about 500 years ago and roughly 400 years since they were discovered by white men. ++++++++++++++ Tomorrow, we'll read about the 1825 Sioux-Chippewa Treaty. Cya! -- Nance mailto:nsampson@spacestar.net