History of Wisconsin under the dominion of France

The author does not appear to have intended this to be a comprehensive or ‘stand-alone’ history of the French regime in Wisconsin. He instead assumes the reader already is familiar with conventional narratives of the period, and he proposes some revised interpretations. In the author’s Preface he states, “…in these pages I hope to show that the French struggle for supremacy over the continent was, to a large extent, decided by events that took place in Wisconsin. Here was the entering wedge of disaster and ruin. Here happened the real although obscure crisis in a great drama of which the Fall of Quebec was merely the closing scene. “

He also wrote in the Preface, “I have been compelled, in many different parts of this volume, to very decidedly dissent from the conclusions reached by that eloquent and indefatigable historian, [Francis] Parkman, both in his book upon La Salle and that upon the Conspiracy of Pontiac.” Parkman, at the time this book was published, was one of America’s favorite historians, and his book on the Conspiracy of Pontiac was the standard work on the subject then.