The Father of Wisconsin will Roast You Alive and Eat You…If He Doesn’t Cut Your Heart Out First.

The Shooting of General Braddock at Fort Duquesne by Edwin Willard Demming. During the Seven Years War, Charles de Langlade and his French allied Ojibwe riflemen and Great Lakes Metis engineered the defeat of Braddock’s British army and Royal Colonials led by Col George Washington. The battle is a key component of James Fennimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. In the painting, Col. Washington reaches out to his friend Braddock who has just been shot. Demming’s painting hangs in the halls of the Wisconsin State Historical Society

“After the battle Langlade and his men ritually boiled and ate the Miami chief La Demoiselle.”

1729. Charles Michel de Langlade was the son of an Ottowa mother and a Canadien Voyageur. He was Metis - a French/ First Nations mixed race who thrived in the Great Lakes until the arrival of the Americans. He was raised in both cultures, taught by both native leaders and black robed Jesuits whose missions dominated life and politics in the Great Lakes colony of New France. From an early age there was an aura of greatness about him. At age 10 he became a warrior and joined in French Ottowa raids against British allied tribes. In 1740, his father moved the base of his fur trading operations to La Baye Verte (Green Bay) - a prosperous seasonal trading outpost located at the outlet of the north flowing Fox River - the main highway of the highly lucrative north american fur trade. By 1745, young Charles was a partner in the business. Tensions ran high in the region as the two world superpowers, Britain and France continued to jockey for control of the interior waterways and lucrative fur trade of the Great Lakes region. By mid-century, the British began encroaching on French trade in the Ohio River Valley. In June1752, Langlade and his guerillas - 240 Métis, Canadien, Ojibwa, Potowatomi and Ottowa guerillas, all battle hardened veterans - attacked Pickawillany, a Miami outpost on the Great Miami River where Miami Chief La Demoiselle, a staunch British ally and his tribe resided with a small mixed company of British traders and a few red coated soldiers. For the ambitious 23 year old Charles de Langlade, it was an easy victory. After the battle, prisoners were rounded up. One of Langlade’s men (described in one account as a Chippewa) approached a wounded English captive, ripped the heart from the Englishman’s body… and ate it. It was an act of revenge for an earlier atrocity committed by the Miami against the French “Canada Indians”. (I am reminded of a detail in the Ed Gein case. The first item found by authorities in the kitchen of Ed’s “House of Horrors” was a human heart set in a pot atop a stove.) In a frenzy that followed, Langlade and his men boiled alive and then ate Chief La Demoiselle in front of the remaining prisoners, including the Chief’s wife and son. The raid paused British fur-trade in the Ohio River valley and helped lead to the Seven Years War - the world’s first global conflict. Langlade and his men next descended upon British forces in numerous skirmishes and battles including Crown Point and the siege of Fort William Henry - another set piece from James Fennimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. At Fort William Henry, some British prisoners - including the wounded, women and children, were massacred as they marched out of the fort. Langlade fought furiously and without mercy during the next few years. As a guerilla fighter and leader of a small specialized force, he had no equal and he never lost, but a lack of numbers in the overall French ranks was unable to stop the much larger British Army and their considerable Native and Royal American allies from taking Quebec, Montreal, and in 1761, Mackinac. Canada was now a British colony. Langlade faced the inevitable and became a loyal British subject. He would soon don a red jacket and join them against the American rebels during the Revolutionary War. He believed that harmony between Britain, the First Nations and the Métis was needed if his people were to maintain their indigenous lifestyle. In the late 1700’s, Langlade retired to his long running trade business and home in Green Bay. He peacefully passed away in 1800. His sons fought for the British during the War of 1812 and took part in the Battle of Prairie du Chien, a victory for British Wisconsin. The subsequent Treaty of Ghent, driven by the urgent need of Britain to deal with Napolean, nullified any gains from that victory and handed the Wisconsin/Michigan region over to American interests. The arrival of American military in 1816 began the erosion of Metis control of the fur trade in Wisconsin and with it, their way of life. Sometime later, probably at the very end of the 19th century, Charles Michel de Langlade came to be known as “The Father of Wisconsin”.