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French Régime in Wisconsin and the Northwest

Louisa Phelps Kellogg

Few Americans today realize that Michigan and Wisconsin were once part of French Canada. French influence in the region continued through the eighteenth century, decades after France ceded Canada to Great Britain at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. In this volume, Wisconsin’s French past is recounted by historian Louise Phelps Kellogg. Born in Milwaukee, Kellogg earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1901, where she studied under the noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner. She spent much of her career at the Wisconsin Historical Society, conducting research and publishing books and articles on the history of the American Northwest. Kellogg begins with the European discovery and early settlement of New France, then gradually shifts attention during the seventeenth century to the western frontier in northern Michigan and Wisconsin. This rugged region became one of the centers of New France’s principal industry; the fur trade with Native American tribes. Through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, she traces the French dependence on Native alliances, the shifting relationships among tribal groups, and the rivalry between French traders and the Dutch and English merchants of upper New York for trade and influence. The events in this book help to show why French settlement developed so slowly in Wisconsin and the wider Northwest, and partly explain why New France failed to grow as rapidly as the English colonies to the south. Kellogg presents a clear and detailed account of a formative period in the history of the Great Lakes region and early North America. - Summary by Ted Lienhart