When the British flag was run up on the stockade, the name was changed to Fort McKay, in honor of the British leader. During the long autumn and succeeding winter, the British experienced their old difficulties with the Indian allies. The warriors sacked the houses of the French settlers, all over the prairie, and destroyed crops and supplies. Council after council was held at Fort McKay, and large bands of lazy, quarrelsome savages, encamped about the fort, were fed and were loaded with presents; altogether, the occupation of Wisconsin proved an expensive luxury. It was no doubt with some relief that the British garrison at last learned, late in May 1815, of the treaty of peace signed on the previous 24th of December, and made arrangements to withdraw up the Wisconsin and down the Fox, and across the great lake to Mackinac. In point of fact, the withdrawal of Captain Bulger, at that time in charge of Fort McKay, was in reality a hasty and undignified retreat from his own allies. The Indians had learned with amazement that the British palefaces were going to surrender to the American palefaces, without showing fight, and simply because somewhere, far away in another part of the world, some other palefaces, whom these Englishmen had never even seen, had held a peace council and buried the hatchet. This sort of thing could not be understood by the savages encamped outside the walls of Fort McKay, save as an evidence of rank cowardice. They called the redcoats a lot of "old women," became insolent, and even threatened them. Captain Bulger saw that it would not do to await the arrival of the American troops from St. Louis, so he sent an Indian messenger with a letter to the American commander, telling him to help himself to everything in Fort McKay. Then, only forty-eight hours after the arrival of the peace news, he pulled down his flag and hurried home as fast as he could, fearful all the way that an Indian war party might be at his heels. Thus ignominiously ended the last British occupation of Wisconsin. THE STORY OF THE WISCONSIN LEAD MINES It was the fur trade that first brought white men to Wisconsin. The daring Nicolet pushed his way through the wilderness, a thousand miles west of the little French settlement at Quebec, solely to introduce the traffic in furs to our savages, and others were not long in following him. Soon it was learned that there were lead mines in what is now southwest Wisconsin. It is not probable that the aborigines, before the coming of white men, made any other use of lead than from it to fashion a few rude ornaments. But the French at once recognized the great value of this mineral, in connection with the fur trade. They taught the Indians how to mine it in a crude fashion, and to make it into bullets for the guns which they introduced among them.