Epilogue

Summary

While Creoles in the nineteenth century drew their livings from the rivers and the land (and sometimes from both), by the turn of the twentieth century, other options had arisen. Caroline Powers (the daughter of Euphrosine Antaya and Strange Powers) with her husband Louis Barrette had farmed in the Prairie du Chien region until the 1880s and then followed the fur-trade migrations along the river north to Minnesota, as did many other Creoles. Some of their children went with them. But after Caroline died in 1817, Louis made his way back to Prairie du Chien to live on the farm owned by their son Samuel Barrette and daughter-in-law, Adeline Hertzog. It was here that Louis gave the newspaper interview mentioned in the introduction to this volume.

Although the Barrettes moved away for three decades, many other Prairie du Chien Creoles remained to farm in the late nineteenth century and beyond. An 1878 map of land ownership in Crawford County shows Cherrier, Brisbois, Ducharme, Corriere, LaBonne, and other French names sprinkled across the landscape among names such as Kaiser, Rice, Brunson, O’Donnell, and Eggerton. Members of the Barrette family continued on their farm until the 1970s. Descendants of the Pion and Brisbois families farmed into the twentieth century as well.