Stockbridge Harbor WI416
Around A.D. 1100, there was a large Native American village on the north side of Stockbridge Harbor. The pottery recovered from archaeological excavations at this site indicates that the villagers came from two formerly distinct cultural groups. Perhaps for protection from outsiders, people of the Effigy Mound tradition joined a group of Late Woodland agriculturalists. They surrounded their village with a palisade. By A.D. 1200, both Late Woodland societies were gone from the shores of Lake Winnebago, leaving this region under control of the Oneota people, considered the ancestors of the Ho-chunk (Winnebago). In 1833, the Stockbridge tribe from New York State was relocated to the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Euro-American settlement began shortly thereafter, and Stockbridge Harbor was developed for shipping. The harbor came to play an important role in the local economy, with merchant and passenger vessels carrying lumber, grain, goods and people across the lake.

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Rapides des Peres - Voyageur Park WI266
The rapids at De Pere were well known to all early travelers along the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, which provided the best access to the Mississippi. Despite Indian domination, the waterway served explorers, fur traders and voyageurs, missionaries, and soldiers -- principally from France and from Canada (New France). Beginning in the late 1600s, the French sent various emissaries to maintain good relations with the Indians and to Christianize them; to seek a water route to the Pacific; and to barter with the Indians for furs. In 1668 Nicolas Perrot and Toussaint Baudry came here to establish fur trading; in 1671 Father Claude Allouez built the St. Francis Xavier Mission (hence the name Rapides des Peres); and in 1673 Marquette and Jolliet left from here to search for the Mississippi. Trouble with the Indians along the Fox River resulted in military expeditions in 1716 and in 1728. Until the completion in 1837 of the military road connecting forts Howard, Winnebago, and Crawford, the waterway was the only channel of communication linking Green Bay with other developing areas in Wisconsin.

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Winnebago Indians WI203

Winnebago Indians call themselves "Hochunkgra." A Siouan people, they once occupied the southern half of Wisconsin and the northern counties of Illinois. The Black Hawk War of 1832 and a series of treaties forced the Winnebago out of their homeland, and they were removed to reservations in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and finally to a portion of the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska.

With each removal, small bands of Winnebago returned to Wisconsin, with the largest settlement in Jackson County. About seven miles east of Black River Falls is the historic Winnebago Indian Mission, founded by the German Reformed Church in 1878. The Mission includes about half of the Winnebago population of Jackson County, the pow-wow grounds, Indian Cemetery and Mitchell Red Cloud Memorial. Tribal traditions are preserved through the clan system, the Medicine Lodge, and War Bundle Feast.

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Red Cloud Park WI68
This park, on the site of a Winnebago village, commemorates an heroic descendant of those people, Corporal Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr. Fighting in Korea in 1950 as a member of the 34th Army division, Corporal Red Cloud bravely held off an enemy attack with machine gun fire until his death, thereby saving the lives of many of his comrades. Posthumously he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Part of this area once was owned by "Buffalo Bill" Cody, famous frontier scout, and his friend White Beaver (Dr. Frank Powell), who served four terms as mayor of La Crosse in the 1880's and 1890's. Dr. Powell received the name White Beaver from Sioux Chief Rocky Bear for saving the life of his daughter. He was made chief Medicine Man of the Winnebago Nation in 1876 after successfully treating Chief Wee-Noo-Sheik.

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Mitchell Red Cloud, Jr. (1925-1950) WI66
Corporal Mitchell Red Cloud was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his courageous action in battle between u.s. troops and Chinese Communists near Chonghyon, Korea, Nov. 5-1950. Red Cloud's Company was entrenched beside Hill 123. Early in the morning a large enemy force bore down upon them. Red Cloud shouted a warning and started shooting. In the exchange fire, he was critically wounded, but dragged himself up and, supporting himself by a tree, continued firing and gave his company time to reorganize before he was killed. Red Cloud was one of Carlson's Raiders in World War II. He was descended from a family of warriors, Chief Winneshiek, his grandfather, with others of his tribe, refused to be resettled in Nebraska and returned to this region. This marker is near Red Cloud's birthplace and adjoins the site of Winnebago powwow grounds. To the northwest 1 1/2 miles is the Indian Mission and Old Decorah Cemetery, where he is buried.

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Red Banks WI62
Many of the explorers who followed Columbus were more interested in finding an easy route to Asia than they were in exploring and settling this continent. In 1634 Jean Nicolet, emissary of Gov. Samuel de Champlain of New France, landed at Red Banks on the shore of Green Bay about a mile west of here. His mission was to arrange peace with the "people of the Sea" and to ally them with France. Nicolet half expected to meet Asiatics on his voyage and had with him an elaborate Oriental robe which he put on before landing. The Winnebago Indians who met him were more impressed with the "thunder" he carried in both hands as he stepped ashore firing his pistols. Nicolet reported to his superiors that he was well entertained with "sixscore beavers" being served at one banquet, but it was the pelts and not the flesh of the beaver that were to be highly prized by those who followed him.

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Old Military Road WI38
You are traveling the route of the Old Military Road, built in 1835-36 to connect Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien and Fort Howard at Green Bay, via Fort Winnebago at "the Portage" between the Fox-Wisconsin rivers. The section from Prairie du Chien to Fort Winnebago was built by soldiers from Fort Crawford, under the command of Colonel (later President) Zachary Taylor. The road was crudely constructed: two rods in width, with corduroy over the marshy places. Describing his travels over this road in March, 1855, Herbert Quick wrote, "here we went, oxen, cows, mules, horses; coaches, carriages, bluejeans, corduroys, rags, taters, silks, satin, caps, tall hats, poverty, riches; speculators, missionaries, land-hunters, merchants-a nation on wheels, an empire in the commotion and pangs of birth."

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Army Trail Road IL70
This road followed an Indian trail that began in Chicago and went through DuPage, Kane, DeKalb, Boone, and Winnebago Counties to a Winnebago village at Beloit, Wisconsin. In August, 1832, during the Black Hawk War, United States Army reinforcements from the eastern department followed the trail. Their General, Winfield Scott, left Chicago ahead of the troops and took a different route to the war area.Delayed by cholera, his men did not reach the front until after the Black Hawk's defeat. The tracks left by heavy army wagons formed a road for early settlers.

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Shabbona IL69
In the early 1800's Shabbona was a principal chief of the Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa group of tribes which banded together to form 'The Three Fires.' Shabbona camped briefly in a large grove one-half mile south of here. He fought with the British in the War of 1812 and later helped the settlers of northern Illinois by warning of Indian uprisings during the Winnebago outbreak. In the Black Hawk War, Shabbona alerted pioneers to impending Indian raids and offered to lead an attack against the Sauk and Fox Tribes.

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New London MO19
New London

New London, renowned for its handsome courthouse, was founded 1819, on the route of the historic Salt River Road by William Jamison. By1820, it became the seat of a newly organized county named for Daniel M. Ralls, local legislator. Settled mainly by Ky. and Va. pioneers, attracted by the area's salt licks and other resources, Ralls County was once part of the northeast frontier settlement in Spanish Upper Louisiana.

Near New London at the present Spalding Springs, Maturin Bouvet had a salt factory in 1792. Indians harassed and finally killed him at his depot on the Mississippi in 1800. Chas. Freemon Delauriere (called Freemore), worked two salt licks in the area, 1799. Sac and Fox tribes ceded the region in 1804. In the War of 1812, Rangers and Winnebagoes engaged in combat, July 4, 1813, near Fort Mason, a stockade at what is now Saverton.

The courthouse, Ralls County's third, was built, 1858, by Francis Kidwell with Chapel Carstarphen as superintendent, for $18,000. Wings were added, 1936. Missouri buildings at 1939 New York and San Francisco World's Fairs were copies of the courthouse facade.

New London serves a county devoted to limestone industry and diversified farming. The high school here was first in Missouri to give a course in Vocational Agriculture, 1917, and one of the State's biggest cement plants is at Ilasco. Salt River, called Auhaha by the Indians, flows through Ralls County. The river is associated with the expression of chagrin, "Up Salt River."

In the Civil War, skirmishes and raids put a stop to growth of town and county. Mark Twain's brief Civil War service was with pro-Southern troops of Ralls County. New London benefited when the St. Louis and Hannibal R.R. was completed to here, 1876.

Other county towns include Severton, laid out in 1819, on the Mississippi. Near there is Federal Lock and Dam No. 22, opened, 1938. Southwest at Perry, laid out in 1866, is the Mark Twain Research Foundation. Buildings of Van Rensselaer (Presbyterian) Academy, opened, 1851, are north of here. Educator Henry J. Waters (1865-1925) was born in Center. Over 400 Indian village campsites have been found in Ralls and two major Indian trails ran through the county.

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