The Supreme Court of Wisconsin. THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN. BY EDWIN E. BRYANT. I. EARLY JUDICIAL HISTORY. THE State of Wisconsin is one of the younger sisters of the Union. She has not yet celebrated her semi-centennial of statehood, and a goodly part of her area is yet virgin wilderness. But the region of Wisconsin has a history that reaches well back to the beginning of colonial things on this continent. In 1634, when Boston was a mere hamlet, Jean Nicollet, a French voya geur, penetrated the wilds of Wisconsin, sat in council with the Indians, and feasted with them in a banquet of which six-score beavers were part of the bill of fare. In the period of exploration in the latter part of the seven teenth century, the French missionaries, Allouez, Marquette and their associates were here establishing missions. Other French men founded trading-posts, and others, like De la Hut, Radisson and Grosilliers, for mere love of adventure roamed the wilds and ex plored the streams. As has been pithily said, the incentives that prompted the ex ploration of these western wilds were " faith, fun and fur." In 1716, the year that Governor Shute came over to Massachusetts, when Ben. Franklin was but a boy of ten, Wisconsin was the scene of a battle and military siege. De Louvigny, the king's lieutenant at Que bec, came on with an army to punish the Foxes, or Outagamies, who were unruly, selfish and treacherous, constantly interfering with the traders and levying an extortionate tribute. He surrounded them in a palisaded village, on the Fox River, approached by trenches, poured in artillery fire, and used mortars, mined and sapped, and forced them to surrender or be blown into the air. In 1730, the year after old South Church was built in Boston, before Washington was born, the warlike Marin, a resolute French
trader, fought the Foxes at Little Chute on the Fox River, a bloodier battle to the tribe than any of the 'Indian battles ever fought in New England. All this, to keep open the water-way from Green Bay to the Mis sissippi. It was here at Green Bay in Wis consin, that the adventurous Langlade, Ma rin, Gauthier and other partisan captains, assembled their scalping parties of naked Menominees, Pottawatamies, Foxes, Sacs, Winncbagoes, Ottawas, Chippevvas and Sioux to join in those bloody forays upon the western borders so celebrated in the history of Pennsylvania. Langlade, with his painted and feathered savages ofWisconsin, led the onslaught on General Braddock, on July 9, 1755, where Washington won his early fame; and Wisconsin Indians under the same leader skulked about Lake George and around the army of Wolf on the plains of Abraham. These things happened in the days of the French dominion. By the treaty of Paris, in 1763, the region now Wisconsin was ceded to the English, and for some years there was British occupation. Then came American independence, the treaty of 1783, and the ordinance of 1787 to provide a government for the territory northwest of the Ohio, of which Wisconsin was the northwestern part. In that we find the beginnings of a judiciary; and officers and judges were provided for in the subsequent legislation to carry it into effect. Wisconsin, being far to the north and remote, remained, till I 796, in British posses sion. By the Act of Congress of May 7, 1800, the Wisconsin country was included in the territory of Indiana. When the terri tory of Illinois was erected by the Act of February 3. 1809, it included what is now
