“Indian Extraction”

On the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, Louis Barrette (Figure I.1) gave an interview to a reporter from the Crawford County, Wisconsin, Press, laying out his personal and family history, and that of his community. It was 1919, and the unnamed reporter was impressed with the old man’s longevity and spunk, commenting, “Louis Barrette is a wonderfully preserved old gentleman and although he is about to begin his 96th year of life he is quite spry; has fairly good sight and a good appetite; he delights to help about with the chores on his son’s farm” Barrette was forthright about his origins, explaining that he “was born in what is now the city of Prairie du Chien,” in 1824. He added, “His mother before him was born here, too, as was also his grandmother, the latter of Indian extraction, and he and his children, grand-children and great-grand-children are proud of it.”

Barrette was born into one of the town’s many fur trade families. “There were very few whites in ‘Prairie des Chens’ [sic] in those earlier days,” he explained, “but there were Indians a plenty from the various tribes of the northwest who came here to barter with the tradesmen.” Louis’s wife, Caroline Powers (Figure I.2), was also a local woman, the daughter and granddaughter of Meskwaki women and Canadian fur trade workers. Louis and Caroline had lived through an era of amazing transitions in this pivotal village. From an eighteenth-century Native marketplace and French Canadian trade center, the community had gone through intense political, economic, and demographic changes to become a bigger, busier, and more diversified “American” commercial center and farm town.