HISTORY OF WOOD COUNTY



   Many of the prominent traders of Wisconsin were Scotchmen, and in the
War
of 1812 they commanded retinues of voyageurs and Indians, who successively
captured Mackinac and Prairie du Chien and drove every American from the
vicinity. These traders fondly hoped and loudly boasted that new boundaries
would be drawn and the territory, now Wisconsin, would become a fur trading
preserve. Disappointed in that hope, they planned to adjust the exigencies
of
the forest trade to the demands of the American system. The Mackinac Company
was dissolved and in its stead was organized the American Fur Company, many
of
whose operators were the Scotch-Canadians who had been partners in the British
concern. For 20 years after the American occupation the new company conducted
a flourishing trade along the old lines. From 1816 to 1824 the Unit~ed States
sought
to better the Indian's condition by the so-called factory system, government
posts
operated not for profit, but for benevolence toward its Indian wards. The
fac-
tory system failed because of the powerful opposition of the American Fur
Com-
pany, and because the factors were unacquainted with the conditions of Indian
trade.
   Gradually the fur trade, which for two hundred years had ruled Wisconsin,
declined. The local traders, deeply in debt to Astor's monoply, the American
Fur
Company, mortgaged their lands and lost them. Of recent years a new commerce
in furs has sprung up and grows increasingly valuable. But the fur trade
as a
regime passed from Wisconsin with the coming of the Americans and the develop-
ment of modern industries.



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