As most NFL fans know, the nickname of the NFC North is the “black and blue division” in reference to its rough and tumble rivalries. It really isn’t any “tougher” than other divisions in football, but as a Packer Backer I say: that’s the name and we’ll take it. Based on my interests over the last two years, digging into the fascinating details and the largely untold stories of the upper Midwest, I think a very apt alternative name for the NFC North might be the “fur traders division” since all four cities in some sense started as fur trading outposts, and all four were long time homes of important federal forts and Indian agencies: Fort Howard (Green Bay), Fort Dearborn (Chicago), Fort Snelling (Twin Cities) and Fort Detroit. The fur trade was pretty rough and tumble as well.
The following is one of those fascinating stories, from the reminiscences of Henry Merrell, in the Wisconsin Historical CollectionsVolume VII , p. 370. It concerns a trip taken by Daniel Whitney from Fort Snelling to Detroit, via Green Bay and Chicago:
December sixth 1821, he started in a canoe with two men, the ice running thick in the river. His acquaintances tried hard to persuade him to defer starting until the river closed but no — business called him and he must go. They soon found themselves in a bad fix, for the ice blocked up under the canoe so as to raise it six feet above the water. After great exertion they got to shore, as he said, more pleased than he ever was in his life at getting on land again. They then started on foot, and got only nine miles the first day, and encamped. The next day started down the River bank, packing their food and blankets on their backs, each carrying a gun, the weather extremely cold, and the snow six inches deep. They were five days in getting to Lake Pepin. In crossing the Lake Mr. Whitney broke through; the lock of his gun catching on the ice was the only thing that saved him. The weather was so cold some of the time, that they had to stop and build fires to warm themselves to keep from freezing. Thirty miles above Prairie du Chien, they got out of provisions, but seeing a smoke they made for it, and found Augustin Grignon encamped, an acquaintance from Green Bay. He was on a trading voyage among the Indians; he supplied the travelers with provisions. In this way they passed through Prairie du Chien, on to Fort Winnebago, and from thence to Green Bay, where they arrived in twenty-one days from Fort Snelling. After remaining a few days, he took a guide and started on foot for Chicago, where he arrived in ten days, and from there to Detroit in ten days more; making his tramp in forty-one days from Fort Snelling, and said he could then make his forty miles a day, and found it easier than to ride on horseback.
I find this to be a very remarkable story. Even with modern equipment and supplies — modern cross country skis, backpacking food, good maps and compasses — it is hard to imagine making this trip in 41 days in the dead cold and shortest days of winter.
At the time of this story, Whitney was the sutler at Fort Snelling. Sutlers were private entrepreneurs authorized by the federal government to sell goods to soldiers, and in general were the principal suppliers of almost everything the soldiers needed. They also were allowed to sell goods to the public at large, such as they were — mostly families of the soldiers and Indian agents, but sometimes missionaries and a smattering of pioneer farmers. Sutlers are frequently portrayed in Civil War reenactments, but the manner in which Civil War sutlers operated was quite different than sutlers who operated near permanent forts. Sutlers such as Whitney were general merchants, and often used their federal contracts to springboard into general enterprise.
Whitney was described frequently (and based on the accounts I have read, I would agree) as the most successful merchant in the old Northwest. He had a large store at Green Bay, and had stores all long the Fox-Wisconsin waterway as well as one in Galena, Illinois. He built a lead shot tower in Helena, and built the first sawmill on the Wisconsin River near modern Nekoosa. He was a fur trader, and the merchant supplier to the Stockbridge Indians. (The Stockbridge were immigrants from New York and Massachusetts, and practiced modern agriculture in the lower Fox valley.) He was involved in real estate, although compared to some of the large land speculators in territorial Wisconsin this was a small side business for him since he was mainly a merchant and a pioneer industrialist.
He never held public office, which is probably why he is not well known in Wisconsin history, there seeming to be a strong bias towards politicians as the center of stories of the state’s development. I know he is not well-known because when I tried to find out more about him on Wikipedia, there was not an article, and when I took it upon myself to write one I still had to search around for enough information to give a complete account of his life — in other words, in all the standard sources for Wisconsin history there does not exist a comprehensive biography. He was not important enough to be worthy of a whole book, but he certainly seems to be worthy of a multi-page article somewhere. He was, despite not holding public office, a leading citizen of early Green Bay and a peer of several influential and more well-known figures such as James Doty.
Whitney’s most important legacy is that he platted the village of Navarino. Navarino combined with Astoria in 1838 to form the borough of Green Bay, the direct predecessor to the incorporated municipality that survives in the modern era. Astoria was a company town of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. There were many “Astorias” since there were many AFC company towns. One survives in Oregon. Since Astor never lived in Green Bay, and his minions were itinerant easterners for the most part, it is no exaggeration to say that Whitney is the “father of modern Green Bay” — the streets he platted form the core of the modern downtown of that city.
There is much more to the history of the state and territory of Wisconsin than its business owners, but in my own view, without necessarily holding them up as heroes, business leaders trump political leaders in importance — and in most cases in the 19th century they were the same people anyway, just not in Whitney’s case. All of the patterns of development in the state, and all of the influx of capital and investment which preceded the waves of immigrant settlers, were due to the stage management (conscious or unconscious) of these doers. Whitney was not a passive investor, he got his start by actively trekking goods across the frozen tundra of Wisconsin territory. As the Fort Snelling Vikings take on the Fort Howard Packers tonight on Sunday Night Football, the work and life of Whitney is worth pondering, if only for a moment.
Go Packers!