STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE. THE WISCONSIN BOURBON ==================================================================== USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Tina S. Vickery ==================================================================== STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE by Reuben Gold Thwaites New York Cincinnati Chicago American Book Company Copyright, 1900, by Reuben Gold Thwaites. Sto. Badger Sta. W. P. 7 page(s) 196-201 THE WISCONSIN BOURBON Two years after Louis the XVI., Bourbon king of France, and his beautiful queen, Marie Antoinette, were beheaded by the revolutionists in Paris, in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, their imbecile child of eight years, called the "dauphin," was officially reported to have died in prison. But the story was started at the time, and popularly believed, that the real dauphin, Louis the XV11., had been stolen by the royalists, and another child cunningly substituted to die there in his place. The story went that the dauphin had been sent to America, and that all traces of him were lost; thus was given to any adventurer of the requisite age, and sufficiently obscure birth, an opportunity to seek such honor as might be gained in claiming identity with the escaped prisoner. Great was the excitement in the United States, when, in 1853, it was confidently announced by a New York magazine writer that the long lost prince had at last been discovered, in the person of the middle-aged Eleazer Williams, an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians at Little Kaukauna, in the lower valley of the Fox. The Bonaparte family, represented by Louis Napoleon, were just then in control of France; but the Bourbon family, of which Louis the XVII., were alive, would naturally be the head, considered themselves rightful hereditary masters of that country. Of, course, there was at the time no opportunity for any Bourbon actually to occupy the French throne; but the people of that country aye highly emotional, revolutions have been numerous among them, and displaced royalists are always hoping for some turn in affairs which may enable them once more to gain the government. It was this possible chance of the Bourbons getting into power once more, that added interest to the story. Let us see what sort of person this Eleazer Williams of Wisconsin was, and how it came about that he made the assertion that he was the head of the Bourbons, and an uncrowned king. It had heretofore been supposed by every one who knew him that he was the son of Mohawk Indian parents, both of whom had white blood in their veins, living just over the New York border, in Canada. Certain Congregationalists had induced this couple to allow two of their sons, Thomas and Eleazer to be educated in New England as missionaries to the Indians; and for several years they attended academies there, becoming fairly proficient in English, although their aboriginal manners were not much improved. At last returning to his Canadian home, Eleazer neglected his Congregational benefactors, and soon became interested in the Episcopal Church. He would have become one of its missionaries at once, but just at that time the War of 1812-15 broke out; and instead he became a spy in the pay of the United States, conveying to his employers important information concerning the movements of British troops in Canada.. When the war was over, having, as an American spy, incurred the dislike of the Canadian Mohawks, he was sent as an Episcopal missionary to the Oneida Indians, then living in Oneida county, New York. Williams appears to have differed from the ordinary Indian type, although,, he was thickset, dark haired, and swarthy of skin. Some took him to be a Spaniard; others there were who thought him French; and comments which he had heard, concerning his slight resemblance to the pictures of the Bourbons, doubtless caused Eleazer in later years to pretend to be the lost dauphin. He was a fair orator, and in his earlier years succeeded well in persuading the simple red men about him. His plausible manner, and this ease of persuasion, finally led him astray. The Oneida Indians in New York and their neighbors (formerly from New England), the Munsees, Stockbridges, and Brothertowns, were just then being crowded out of that State. A great company had acquired the right from the federal government to purchase the lands held by these Indians, whenever they cared to dispose of them. In order to hurry matters, the company began to sow among the poor natives the seeds of discontent. Certain of their leaders, among them Williams, advocated emigration to the West. It appears that Williams, who was a born intriguer, conceived the ambitious idea of taking advantage of this movement to establish an Indian empire in the country west of Lake Michigan, with himself as dictator. Moved by the clamor of the red men, the federal government sent a delegation to Wisconsin, in 1820, to See whether the tribes west of the lake would consent to accept the New York Indians as neighbors. This delegation was headed by Dr. Jedediah Morse, a celebrated geographer and missionary. Morse visited Mackinac and Green Bay, and returned with the report that the valley of the lower Fox was the most suitable place in which to make a settlement. That very summer, Williams himself, with several other headmen, bad on their own account journeyed as far as Detroit on a similar errand, but returned without discovering a location. The owners of the land selected by Morse were the Menominees and Winnebagoes, with whom Williams and his followers held a council at Green Bay, the following year. A treaty was signed, by which the New York Indians were granted a large strip of land, four miles wide, at Little Chute. The ensuing year (1822), at a new council held at Green Bay, the New Yorkers asked for still more land. The Winnebagoes, much incensed, withdrew from the treaty, but the Menominees were won over by Williams's eloquence, and granted an extraordinary cession, making the New York Indians joint owners with themselves of all Menominee territory, which then embraced very nearly a half of all the present State of Wisconsin. Ten years of quarreling followed, for there was at once a reaction from this remarkable spirit of generosity. In 1832 there was concluded a final treaty, apparently satisfactory to most of those concerned, and soon thereafter a large number of New York Indians removed hither. The Oneidas and Munsees established themselves upon Duck Creek, near the month of the Fox, and the Stockbridges and Brothertowns east of Lake Winnebago. As for Williams, the jealousies and bickerings among his people soon caused him to lose control over them, thus giving the deathblow to his wild dreams of empire. During the next twenty years, in which he continued to serve as a missionary to the Wisconsin Oneidas, Williams was a well-known and picturesque character. His home was on the west bank of the river, about a mile below Little Kaukauna. Although a man of much vigor and strength of mind, he soon came to be recognized as an unscrupulous fellow by the majority of both whites and reds in the lower Fox, and his clerical brethren, East as well as West, appear to have regarded him with more or less contempt. Baffled in several fields of notoriety which he had worked, Williams suddenly posed before the American public, in 1853, as the hereditary sovereign of France He was too young by eight years to be the lost dauphin ; that he was clearly of Indian origin was proved by a close examination of his color, form, and feature; his dusky parents protested under oath that the wayward Eleazer was their son ; every allegation of his in regard to the matter has often been exposed as false; and all his neighbors who knew him treated his claims as fraudulent. Nevertheless, he succeeded in deceiving a number of 'good people, including several leading clergymen of his church; one of the latter attempted in an elaborate ,book, 11 The Lost Prince," to prove conclusively that Williams was indeed the son of the executed monarch. The pretensions of Eleazer Williams, who dearly 'loved the notoriety which this discussion awakened, :extended through several years. They even won some little attention in France, but far less than here, for several other men had claimed to be the lost dauphin, so that the pretension was not a new one over there. Louis Philippe, the head of the Bourbon-Orleans family in France, sent him a present of some finely bound books, believing him the innocent victim of a delusion; but, further than that, and a chance meeting at Green Bay, between Eleazer Williams and another French royalist, the Prince de Joinville, then on his travels through America, the family in France paid no attention to the adventurous half-breed American Indian who claimed to be one of them. The reputation of Williams as a missionary had at last fallen so low, and the neglect of his duties was so persistent, that his salary was withdrawn by the Episcopal Church, and his closing years were spent in poverty. He died in 1858, maintaining his absurd claims to the last.