Traders, first settlers tread unknown paths
Halfbreed
and white trappers were the first, other than Indians, to establish any type of
residence in the Chippewa Valley.
The first
ones did have some problems with Indians as the story of LeDuc and Penasha, two
traders, reveals.
One account has it that in
1784 they built a trading post on the west side of the river at the lower rapids
across from Mt. Simon.
The story says one day
Chippewa Indians were bringing in furs and to obtain a gun for furs, had to have
a pile as high as the gun.
Kept raising gun
As the
Indians piled up fur, the traders not only packed them down but had the butt of
the rifle on the foot of one of them and kept raising the gun.
Whether it is true or just a story, it is
recorded that LeDuc and Penasha fell into disagreement with the Chippewa and
were holed up in their cabin while under Indian attack.
After
two of the Chippewa were slain, the Indians went for more help and LeDuc and
Penasha hustled downstream where they established trade with the Sioux near the
mouth of the Chippewa River.
Indian settlements at the time were said to
be on land now opposite the paper mill in Eau Claire and at the dells opposite
Mt. Simon.
Michel Cadotte, son of a French
Canadian fur trading family, lived near the area of Chippewa City as early as
1791. Other trading posts were located in the Prairie Rice Lake area near
Chetek, farther north at Rice Lake and at Lac Courte Orielles near the
headwaters of the Chippewa River.
An early
white man living on the Chippewa was Lyman Warren of La Point, formally of
Newburg, N.Y., who was appointed to head the Indian agency at what is known as
Chippewa City according to terms of the 1825 treaty signed at Prairie du Chien.
It was his task to distribute annuities and establish a farm and blacksmith on
the Chippewa, not too far from the falls.
He
was later joined by the Gothy family and the location became an important point
for collection of furs under the control of the American Fur Company.
Louis
Demarie and his family built a cabin on the west side of the Chippewa River
across from the Eau Claire River in 1832 and spent one winter there.
He is credited with being the first person to
have lived in what is now Eau Claire over the winter months.
Returned in 1838
He
went the following year to Prairie du Chien but returned in 1838-39 to Chippewa
Falls and lived there many years with his family.
Hiram S. Allen, who was among the leading
lumbermen at the Falls, married one of the Demarie girls, Mary. Another
daughter, Rosalie, married Arthur McCann, who was shot and killed at Dunnville
in what is said to be the first white murder of a white man by another white in
the Chippewa Valley.
Stephen S. McCann and Jeremiah Thomas, in
1845, came to Eau Claire, started a sawmill and were the first persons to make a
permanent home here.
--
Extracted from the Eau
Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa
Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.
