Transcriber Note: Text emphasis denoted as _Italics_.




                     CHICAGO AND THE OLD NORTHWEST




                    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
                           CHICAGO, ILLINOIS


                                Agents

                    THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
                         LONDON AND EDINBURGH

                     THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
                          TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO

                          KARL W. HIERSEMANN
                                LEIPZIG

                      THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
                               NEW YORK


[Illustration: MARQUETTE AT THE CHICAGO PORTAGE

From the bas relief by H. A. MacNeil

(Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)]




                            CHICAGO AND THE
                             OLD NORTHWEST

                               1673-1835

                    A STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE
                    NORTHWESTERN FRONTIER, TOGETHER
                    WITH A HISTORY OF FORT DEARBORN


                                  By

                       MILO MILTON QUAIFE, PH.D.

             _Professor of History in the Lewis Institute
                            of Technology_


                            [Illustration]

                    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
                           CHICAGO, ILLINOIS


                           Copyright 1913 By
                       The University of Chicago

                          All Rights Reserved

                        Published October 1913



                        Composed and Printed By
                    The University of Chicago Press
                       Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.




PREFACE


There are many histories of Chicago in existence, yet none of them
supplies the want which has induced the preparation of the present
work. It has been written under the conviction that there is ample
justification for a comprehensive and scholarly treatment of the
beginnings of Chicago and its place in the evolution of the old
Northwest. I have endeavored to produce a readable narrative without
in any way trenching upon the principles of sound scholarship. To what
extent, if any, I have succeeded must be for the reader to judge. I
may, however, claim the negative virtue of entire freedom from the
motives of commercial gain and family partisanship, which enter so
largely into our local historical literature.

In preparing the work I have made as diligent a study of the sources
as practicable, at the same time availing myself freely of the studies
of others in the same field. With one exception acknowledgment of my
obligations to the latter is made in the footnotes. The manuscript of
a lecture by the late Professor Charles W. Mann on the Fort Dearborn
massacre was put at my disposal. I have used it as far as it served my
purpose without attempting to cite it in the footnotes.

In many places I have broken new ground and I can scarcely expect
my work to be entirely free from error. I am particularly conscious
of this in connection with chap, xiii on the Indian Trade, a subject
to which a volume might well be devoted. In controversial matters I
have written without fear or favor from any source. If in many cases
my conclusions seem to differ from those of other writers, I can only
say that the words of a recent historian with reference to history
writing in the Middle Ages, "Recorded events were accepted without
challenge, and the sanction of tradition guaranteed the reality of the
occurrence," apply with almost equal force to much of the literature
pertaining to early Chicago.

I desire to express my obligation for courtesies rendered, or
facilities extended, to the Chicago Historical Society, the Wisconsin
State Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, the Division of
Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
and the War Department. I am indebted also for many favors to Miss
Caroline McIlvaine, librarian, and Mr. Marius Dahl, record clerk, of
the Chicago Historical Society; to Mr. C. M. Burton, of Detroit; to
the descendants of Nathan Heald, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas McCluer and Mrs.
Arthur McCluer, of O'Fallon, Mo., Mrs. Lillian Heald Richmond and Dr.
and Mrs. Ottofy of St. Louis, and Mr. and Mrs. Wright Johnson, of
Rutherford, N.J.; and to my wife and to my father-in-law, Rev. G. W.
Goslin, for unwearied assistance in the preparation and revision of the
manuscript. Finally I wish to record my deep obligation to Dr. Otto L.
Schmidt, president of the Illinois State Historical Society, for much
sympathetic advice and encouragement.

                                                           M. M. Quaife

     Chicago
  September, 1913




TABLE OF CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE

     I. The Chicago Portage                                          1

    II. Chicago in the Seventeenth Century                          21

   III. The Fox Wars: A Half-Century of Conflict                    51

    IV. Chicago in the Revolution                                   79

     V. The Fight for the Northwest                                105

    VI. The Founding of Fort Dearborn                              127

   VII. Nine Years of Garrison Life                                153

  VIII. The Indian Utopia                                          178

    IX. The Outbreak of War                                        195

     X. The Battle and Defeat                                      211

    XI. The Fate of the Survivors                                  232

   XII. The New Fort Dearborn                                      262

  XIII. The Indian Trade                                           285

   XIV. War and the Plague                                         310

    XV. The Vanishing of the Red Man                               340

  Appendix I: Journal of Lieutenant James Strode Swearingen        373

  Appendix II: Sources of Information for the Fort Dearborn
    Massacre                                                       378

  Appendix III: Nathan Heald's Journal                             402

  Appendix IV: Captain Heald's Official Report of the Evacuation
    of Fort Dearborn                                               406

  Appendix V: Darius Heald's Narrative of the Chicago Massacre,
    as Told to Lyman C. Draper in 1868                             409

  Appendix VI: Lieutenant Helm's Account of the Massacre           415

  Appendix VII: Letter of Judge Augustus B. Woodward to Colonel
    Proctor concerning the Survivors of the Chicago Massacre       422

  Appendix VIII: Muster-Roll of Captain Nathan Heald's Company
    of Infantry at Fort Dearborn                                   425

  Appendix IX: The Fated Company: A Discussion of the Names
    and Fate of the Whites Involved in the Fort Dearborn Massacre  428

  Bibliography                                                     439

  Index                                                            459




CHAPTER I

THE CHICAGO PORTAGE


The story of Chicago properly begins with an account of the city's
natural surroundings. For while her citizens have striven worthily,
during the three-quarters of a century that has passed since the birth
of the modern city, to achieve greatness for her, it is none the less
true that Nature has dealt kindly with Chicago, and is entitled to
share with them the credit for the creation of the great metropolis
of the present day. If in recent years the enterprise of man rather
than the generosity of Nature has seemed chiefly responsible for the
growth of Chicago, in the long period which preceded the birth of the
modern city such was not the case; for whatever importance Chicago then
possessed was due primarily to the natural advantages of her position.

Since this volume is to tell the story of early Chicago, concluding
at the point where the life of the modern city begins, it is not my
purpose to dwell upon the natural advantages which today contribute to
the city's prosperity. Her central location with respect to population,
surrounded by hundreds of thousands of square miles of country as
fair, and supporting a population as progressive, as any on the face
of the globe; her contiguity to the wheat fields of the great West;
her situation in the heart of the corn belt of the United States; the
wealth of coal fields and iron mines and forests poured out, as it
were, at her feet; her unrivaled systems of transportation by lake and
by rail; how all these factors, reinforced by the daring energy of
her citizens, have combined to render Chicago the industrial heart of
the nation is a matter of common knowledge. That in the days before
the coming of the railroad or the settler, when for hundreds of miles
in every direction the wilderness, monotonous and unbroken, stretched
away, inhabited only by the wild beast and the wild Indian; when only
at infrequent intervals were its forest paths or waterways traversed by
the fur trader or the priest, the representatives of commerce and the
Cross, the two mightiest forces of the civilization before the advance
of which the wilderness was to give way; that even in this far-away
period Nature made of Chicago a place of importance and of concourse,
the rendezvous of parties bent on peaceful and on warlike projects, is
not so commonly understood.

The importance of Chicago in this early period was primarily due to
the fact of her strategic location, whether for the prosecution of
war or of commerce, at the head of the Great Lakes on one of the
principal highways of travel between the two greatest interior waterway
systems of the continent, those of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence
and the Mississippi River. The two most important factors in the
exploration and settlement of a country are the waterways and mountain
systems--the one an assistance, the other an obstacle, to travel.[1]
The early English colonists in America, settling first in Virginia and
Massachusetts and gradually spreading out over the Atlantic coastal
plain, were shut from the interior of the continent by the great wall
presented by the Allegheny Mountains. The French, securing a foothold
about the same time at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, found
themselves in possession of a highway which offered ready access into
the interior. The importance of the rivers and streams as highways of
travel in this early period is difficult to realize today. The dense
forests which spread over the eastern half of the continent were
penetrated only by the narrow Indian trail or the winding river. The
former was passable only on foot, and even by pack animals but with
difficulty.[2] The latter, however, afforded a ready highway into the
interior, and the light canoe of the Indian a conveyance admirably
adapted to the exigencies of river travel. By carrying it over the
portages separating the headwaters of the great river systems the early
voyageurs could penetrate into the heart of the continent.

[Footnote 1: Farrand, _Basis of American History_, 23.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]

Proceeding up the St. Lawrence, the French colonists early gained the
Great Lakes. Their advance rested here for a time, but in the last
quarter of the seventeenth century, by a great outburst of exploring
activity, the upper waters of the Mississippi were gained and eagerly
followed to their outlet in the Gulf of Mexico. Thus New France found a
second outlet to the sea, and thus, even before the English had crossed
the Alleghenies, the French had fairly encircled them, and planted
themselves in the heart of the continent. From the basin of the Great
Lakes to that of the Mississippi they early made use of five principal
highways.[3] On each, of course, occurred a portage at the point where
the transfer from the head of the one system of navigation to the other
occurred. One of these five highways led from the foot of Lake Michigan
by way of the Chicago River and Portage to and down the Illinois. The
Chicago Portage thus constituted one of the "keys of the continent,"
as Hulbert, the historian of the portage paths, has so aptly termed
them.[4]

[Footnote 3: Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History of America_, IV,
224.]

[Footnote 4: Hulbert, _Portage Paths: The Keys of the Continent_.]

The comparatively undeveloped state of the field of American
historical research is well illustrated by the fact that despite the
historical importance of the Chicago Portage, no careful study of it
has ever been made. The student will seek in vain for even an adequate
description of the physical characteristics of the portage. Winsor's
description, a paragraph in length, is perhaps the best and most
authoritative one available.[5] Yet, aside from its brevity, neither of
the two sources to which he makes specific reference can be regarded as
reliable authorities upon the Chicago Portage. Moll, the cartographer,
notable for his credulous temperament,[6] relied for his knowledge of
the Great Lakes region upon the discredited maps of Lahontan.[7] James
Logan, whose description of the portage is quoted,[8] was a reputable
official of Pennsylvania, but, in common with the seaboard English
colonists generally, his knowledge of the geography of the interior was
extremely hazy. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that he located
La Salle's Fort Miami, which had stood during the brief period of its
existence at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, on the Chicago.

[Footnote 5: "What Herman Moll, the English cartographer, called
the 'land carriage of Chekakou' is described by James Logan, in a
communication which he made in 1718 to the English Board of Trade,
as running from the lake three leagues up the river, then a half a
league of carriage, then a mile of water, next a small carry, then two
miles to the Illinois, and then one hundred and thirty leagues to the
Mississippi. But descriptions varied with the seasons. It was usually
called a carriage of from four to nine miles, according to the stage
of the water. In dry seasons it was even farther while in wet times
it might not be more than a mile; and, indeed, when the intervening
lands were 'drowned,' it was quite possible to pass in a canoe amid the
sedges from Lake Michigan to the Des Plaines, and so to the Illinois
and the Mississippi."--Winsor, _Mississippi Basin_, 24. For similar
descriptions see Hulbert, _Portage Paths_, 181; _Jesuit Relations_,
LIX, 313-14, note 41.]

[Footnote 6: Winsor, _Mississippi Basin_, 80, 104, 111, 163.]

[Footnote 7: Moll's map in his _Atlas Minor_ is simply an English copy
of Lahontan's map of 1703. For the latter see Lahontan, _New Voyages to
North America_ (Thwaites ed.), I, 156.]

[Footnote 8: For the substance of Logan's report see the British
Board of Trade report of September 8, 1721, printed in O'Callaghan,
_Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York_,
V, 621. This will be cited henceforth as _New York Colonial Documents_.]

That there should be confusion and misconception in the secondary
descriptions of the Chicago Portage is not surprising, in view, on the
one hand, of the unusual seasonal variations in its character, and, on
the other, of the dispute which very early arose concerning it. None
of the other portages between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi--if
indeed any in America--were subject to such changes as this one. The
dispute over its character goes back to the beginning of the French
exploration of this region. When Joliet returned to Canada from his
famous expedition down the Mississippi in 1673, filled with enthusiasm
over his discoveries, he gave out a glowing account of the country he
had visited. In particular he seems to have dwelt upon the ease of
communication between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico by way of
the Chicago and Illinois rivers to the Mississippi. Joliet's records
were lost, but both Frontenac, the governor of New France, and Father
Dablon have left accounts of his verbal report.[9] Frontenac stated
that a bark could go from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, with
only a portage of half a league at Niagara. Dablon, who seems to have
appreciated the situation more intelligently than Frontenac, said that
a bark could go from Lake Erie to the Gulf if a canal of half a league
were cut at the Chicago Portage.

[Footnote 9: Winsor, _Cartier to Frontenac_, 246-47; _Jesuit
Relations_, LVIII, 105.]

Probably Dablon's report represents more nearly than that of Frontenac
what Joliet actually said, for it seems unlikely that he would ignore
utterly the existence of the portage at Chicago. Even so, however,
his description of the ease of water communication between the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi River was unduly optimistic. Its accuracy
was sharply challenged by La Salle upon his visit to Chicago several
years later. Joliet passed through Illinois but once, rather hurriedly,
knowing nothing of the country aside from what he learned of it on
this trip. He was ill-qualified, therefore, to describe accurately the
Illinois-Chicago highway and portage; at the most he could describe
only the conditions prevailing at the time of his hasty passage. La
Salle, on the other hand, was operating in the Illinois country from
1679 to 1683, seeking to establish a colony with its capital at the
modern Starved Rock, one hundred miles from Chicago. He was greatly
interested in developing the trade of this region, and, while he
looked forward ultimately to securing a southern outlet for it, for
the present he must find such outlet by way of Canada. In the course
of his Illinois career he passed between his colony and Canada several
times, and from both necessity and self-interest became thoroughly
familiar with the routes of communication which could be followed. He
himself ordinarily came by the Great Lakes to the foot of Lake Michigan
and thence by the St. Joseph River and portage or the Chicago to the
Illinois, but he became convinced that it would not be practicable to
carry on commerce between his Illinois colony and Canada through the
upper lakes, and that a route by way of the Ohio River and thence to
the lower lakes and Canada was more feasible.

In discussing this subject La Salle was led to take issue with Joliet
as to the feasibility of navigation between Lake Michigan and the
Illinois, and so to state explicitly what the hindrances were.[10]
The goods brought to Chicago in barges must be transshipped here in
canoes, for, despite Joliet's assertions, only canoes could navigate
the Des Plaines for a distance of forty leagues. At a later time La
Salle reverted to this subject, and in this connection gave the first
detailed description we have of the Chicago Portage.[11] From the lake
one passes by a channel formed by the junction of several small streams
or gullies, and navigable about two leagues to the edge of the prairie.
Beyond this at a distance of a quarter of a league to the westward is a
little lake a league and a half in length, divided into two parts by a
beaver dam. From this lake issues a little stream which, after twining
in and out for half a league across the rushes, falls into the Chicago
River, which in turn empties into the Illinois.

[Footnote 10: Margry, _Découvertes et établissements des Français dans
l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique septentrionale_, II, 81-82. This
collection will be cited henceforth as Margry.]

[Footnote 11: Margry, pp. 166 ff.]

The "channel" was the main portion and south branch of the modern
Chicago River. The lake has long since disappeared by reason of the
artificial changes brought about by engineers; in the early period
of white settlement at Chicago it was known as Mud Lake. La Salle's
"Chicago River," into which Mud Lake ordinarily drained, was, of
course, the modern Des Plaines.

Continuing his description of the water route by way of the Chicago
and Des Plaines, La Salle pointed out that when the little lake in the
prairie was full, either from great rains in summer or from the vernal
floods, it discharged also into the "channel" leading to Lake Michigan,
whose surface was seven feet lower than the prairie where Mud Lake
lay. The Des Plaines, too, in time of spring flood, discharged a part
of its waters by way of Mud Lake and the channel into Lake Michigan.
La Salle granted that at this time Joliet's proposed canal of half a
league across the portage would permit the passage of boats from Lake
Michigan to the sea. But he denied that this would be possible in the
summer, for there was then no water in the river as far down as his
post of St. Louis, the modern Starved Rock, where at this season the
navigation of the river began. Still other obstacles to the feasibility
of Joliet's proposed canal were pointed out. The action of the waters
of Lake Michigan had created a sand bank at the mouth of the Chicago
River which the force of the current of the Des Plaines, when made to
discharge into the lake, would be unable to clear away. Again, the
possibility of a boat's stemming the spring floods of the Des Plaines,
"much stronger than those of the Rhone," was doubtful. But if all other
obstacles were surmounted, the canal would still have no practical
value because the navigation of the Des Plaines would be possible for
but fifteen or twenty days at most, in time of spring flood; while the
navigation of the Great Lakes was rendered impossible by the ice until
mid-April, or even later, by which time the flood on the Des Plaines
had subsided and that stream had become unnavigable, even for canoes,
except after some storm.

Thus there was initiated by La Salle a dispute over the character of
the water communication from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi by way
of the Chicago Portage which has been revived in our own day, and in
the decision of which property interests to the value of hundreds of
thousands of dollars are involved.[12] Of the essential correctness of
La Salle's description there can be no question. Considering its early
date and the many cares with which the mind of the busy explorer was
burdened, it constitutes a significant testimonial to his ability and
powers of observation. It may well be doubted whether any later writer
has improved upon--if, indeed, any has equaled--La Salle's description
of the Chicago-Des Plaines route. From its perusal may be gathered
the clue to the fundamental defect in the descriptions of the Chicago
Portage which modern historians have given us. Overlooking the fact
that the Des Plaines River was subject to fluctuation to an unusual
degree, they err in assuming that the portage ceased when the Des
Plaines was reached. The portage was the carriage which must be made
between the two water systems. Hulbert is quite right in saying, as he
does, that none of the western portages varied more in length than did
this one.[13] In fact his words possess far more significance than the
writer himself attaches to them; for the length of the carriage that
must be made at Chicago varied from nothing at all to fifty miles or,
at times, to even twice this distance. At times there was an actual
union of the waters flowing into Lake Michigan with those entering the
Illinois River, permitting the uninterrupted passage of boats from
the one system to the other. At other times the portage which must be
made extended from the south branch of the Chicago to the mouth of the
Vermilion River, some fifty miles below the mouth of the Des Plaines.

[Footnote 12: _The United States of America vs. The Economy Light and
Power Company._ The evidence taken in this case constitutes by far
the most exhaustive study of the character and historical use of the
Chicago Portage that has ever been made.]

[Footnote 13: Hulbert, _Portage Paths_, 181.]

It is doubtless true that "truth, crushed to earth, will rise again,"
but the converse proposition of the poet that error dies amid its
worshipers requires qualification. Certainly in the matter under
discussion La Salle as early as 1683 dealt the errors of Joliet with
respect to the Chicago Portage a crushing blow. Yet these self-same
errors were destined to "rise again," and in the early nineteenth
century it was again commonly reported that a practicable waterway from
Lake Michigan to the Mississippi could be attained by the construction
of a canal a few miles in length across what for convenience may be
termed the short Chicago Portage, from the south branch of the Chicago
River through Mud Lake to the Des Plaines. Even capable engineers threw
the weight of their opinion in support of this fallacy.[14] But the
young state of Illinois learned to her cost, in the hard school of
experience, the truth of La Salle's observations. The canal of half a
league extended in the making to a hundred miles and required for its
construction years of time and the expenditure of millions of dollars.

[Footnote 14: _E.g._, Major Stephen H. Long. For his report see the
_National Register_, III, 103-98.]

We may now consider the dispute between Joliet and La Salle over
the character of the Chicago Portage in the light of the information
afforded by the statements of later writers. It will follow from
what has already been said that the secondary statements, whether
of travelers or of gazetteers and other compendiums of information,
made in the early part of the nineteenth century, must be subjected
to critical examination. The only way in which this may be done
is by a resort to the sources; and our conclusions concerning the
Chicago-Illinois Portage and route must be based upon the testimony of
those who actually used it, or were familiar with the use made of it by
others. A study of these sources makes it clear that the Des Plaines
River was subject to great fluctuation at different seasons, or even as
between periods of drought and periods of copious rainfall, and that
the length and character of the portage at any given time depended
entirely upon the stage of water in the Des Plaines. During the brief
period of the spring flood boats capable of carrying several tons might
pass between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines and along the latter
stream without meeting with obstacles other than those incident to the
high stage of the water. The extreme range of the fluctuation was many
feet.[15] Its effect upon the character of the Des Plaines was to cause
it to pass through all the gradations from a raging torrent to a stream
with no discharge, dry except for the pools which marked its course.
There were times, then, in connection with these fluctuations, when the
stream might be navigable for canoes, although it would not permit the
passage of boats of greater draft.

[Footnote 15: Schoolcraft estimated its depth in the seasons of
periodical floods at eight to ten feet (_Summary Narrative of an
Exploratory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River, in
1820_, 398). See also Marquette's description of the spring flood of
1675, in _Jesuit Relations_, LIX, 181.]

The duration of the spring flood was put by La Salle at fifteen or
twenty days. At this time the flood was heavier than that of the Rhone,
and a portion of it found its way through Mud Lake and the south
branch of the Chicago River into Lake Michigan. The effect of this on
the portage, obvious in itself, is described in many of the sources.
Marquette, who was flooded out of his winter camp on the South Branch
in the latter part of March, 1675, found no difficulty, aside from
the obstacles presented by the floating ice, in passing from that
point down the Des Plaines.[16] He reports the water as being twelve
feet higher than when he passed through here in the late summer of
1673. In 1821, in a time of high water, Ebenezer Childs passed up
the Illinois and Des Plaines rivers to Chicago in a small canoe.[17]
No month or date is given for this trip, but Childs expressly states
that there had been heavy rains for several days before his arrival
at the Des Plaines. He was unable to find any signs of a portage
between the Des Plaines and the Chicago. When he had ascended the
former to a point where he supposed the portage should begin he left
it and taking a northeasterly course perceived, after traveling a
few miles, the current of the Chicago. The whole intervening country
was inundated, and not less than two feet of water existed all the
way across the portage. Two years later Keating, the historian of
Major Long's expedition to the source of the St. Peter's River, which
passed through Chicago in early June, 1823, was informed by Lieutenant
Hopson, an officer at Fort Dearborn, that he had crossed the portage
with ease in a boat loaded with lead and flour.[18] Of similar purport
to the testimony of Childs and Hopson is the account given by Gurdon
S. Hubbard of his first ascent of the Des Plaines with the Illinois
"brigade" of the American Fur Company in the spring of 1819.[19] The
passage from Starved Rock up the river to Cache Island against the
heavy current was difficult and exhausting. From this point, with a
strong wind blowing from the southwest, sails were hoisted and the
loaded boats passed rapidly up the Des Plaines and across the portage
to the Chicago, "regardless of the course of the channel."

[Footnote 16: Marquette's Journal, _Jesuit Relations_, LIX, 181.]

[Footnote 17: _Wisconsin Hist. Colls._, IV, 162-63.]

[Footnote 18: Keating, _Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River,
... in the Year 1823_, 1, 166.]

[Footnote 19: _Hubbard, Gurdon Saltonstall, Incidents and Events in the
Life of_, 60. MS in the Chicago Historical Society library. This work
will be cited henceforth as _Life_.]

With the subsidence of the spring flood the Des Plaines fell to so low
a stage as to become unnavigable, even by the small boats ordinarily
employed by the fur traders and travelers, except at such times as the
river was raised by rains. According to La Salle, it was "not even
navigable for canoes" except after the spring flood, and it would be
easier to transport goods from Lake Michigan to Fort St. Louis by land
with horses, than by the use of boats on the river.[20]

[Footnote 20: Margry, II, 168.]

This statement of La Salle is corroborated by many other observers.
St. Cosme's party of Seminary priests which passed from Chicago down
the Illinois in the early part of November, 1698,[21] was compelled to
portage eight leagues or more[22] along the Des Plaines, in addition to
the three leagues across from the Chicago to that stream, and almost
two weeks were consumed in passing from Chicago to the mouth of the Des
Plaines, a distance of about fifty miles.[23] In describing the journey
St. Cosme states that from Isle la Cache to Monjolly, a space of seven
leagues, "you must always make a portage, there being no water in the
river."

[Footnote 21: Shea, _Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi_, 45 ff.]

[Footnote 22: The distances given in St. Cosme's detailed account total
this amount. La Source's general statement is that the party portaged
fifteen leagues (_ibid._, 83), but this, apparently, included the
distance between the Chicago River and the Des Plaines.]

[Footnote 23: The party left Chicago October 29, and reached the mouth
of the Des Plaines November 11.]

In September, 1721, Father Charlevoix, touring America for the purpose
of reporting to his king the condition of New France, came to the post
of St. Joseph. His ultimate destination was lower Louisiana; from
St. Joseph to the Illinois River proper two alternative routes were
presented for his consideration, the one by way of the St. Joseph
Portage and down the Kankakee River, the other around the southern end
of Lake Michigan to Chicago and thence down the Des Plaines. His first
intention was to follow the latter, but this was abandoned in favor of
the route by the Kankakee, partly because of a storm on Lake Michigan,
but also for the additional reason that since the upper Illinois, the
modern Des Plaines, was a mere brook, he was told it did not have, at
this season, water enough to float a canoe.[24] In his passage down
the Kankakee the traveler observed at the mouth of the Des Plaines a
buffalo crossing the stream. Although sixty leagues from its source,
Charlevoix noted that the Des Plaines was still so shallow that the
water did not rise above the middle of the animal's legs.[25]

[Footnote 24: Charlevoix, _Histoire et description génerale de la
Nouvelle France, avec le journal historique d'un voyage fait par ordre
du roi dans l'Amérique septentrionale_, VI, 104.]

[Footnote 25: _op. cit._, 118.]

A hundred years after Charlevoix's passage down the Illinois, in
midsummer, 1821, Governor Cass and Henry R. Schoolcraft came up that
stream in a large canoe en route for Chicago. The observant Schoolcraft
has left a careful and detailed narrative of their experiences, and a
description of the Illinois River as continued in the Des Plaines.[26]
The party was compelled to abandon the canoe at Starved Rock, and
the remainder of the journey to Chicago was made on horseback. The
route taken was in general along the banks of the river, although the
actual channel was observed only occasionally. The result of this
observation was the conclusion that the "long and formidable rapids"
seen by the travelers completely intercepted navigation at this sultry
season. This conclusion was further confirmed by meeting several
traders on the plains who were transporting their goods and boats in
carts from the Chicago River. They thought it practicable to enter the
Des Plaines at Mount Joliet, thus necessitating a portage of about
thirty miles, but Schoolcraft in recording this opinion points out
that his own party had experienced difficulties far below this point.
Although himself an enthusiast on the subject of the future commercial
importance of Chicago, and of the utility of a canal connecting the
Chicago and Illinois rivers, Schoolcraft's experience on this journey
led him to call attention to the error of those who supposed a canal
of only eight or ten miles in length would be sufficient to provide a
navigable highway between Lake Michigan and the Illinois. This opinion
was approved by Thomas Tousey of Virginia, another enthusiast on the
subject of the canal, who explored the route of the Des Plaines on
horseback in the autumn of 1822.[27] Although the water was uncommonly
high for the season, Tousey's investigation, while imbuing him with
a "more exalted" opinion of the country and the proposed canal
communication, convinced him that it would be attended with greater
expense to open than he had formerly supposed.

[Footnote 26: Schoolcraft, _Travels in the Central Portions of the
Mississippi Valley_, 313 ff.]

[Footnote 27: Schoolcraft, _Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty
Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers_, 179-80.]

The conditions encountered by John Tanner in a journey from Chicago
down the Illinois River in the year 1820[28] were similar to those
described by Schoolcraft the following year. Tanner was traveling from
Mackinac to St. Louis in a birch-bark canoe. Some Indians who were
accompanying him turned back before reaching Chicago, on receiving
from others whom they met discouraging accounts of the stage of the
water in the Illinois. Tanner, however, persevered in his enterprise.
After a period of illness at Chicago he engaged a Frenchman, who had
just returned from hauling some boats across the portage, to take him
across also. The Frenchman agreed to transport Tanner sixty miles, and
if his horses, which were much worn from the previous long journey,
could hold out, one hundred and twenty miles, the length of the portage
at the present stage of water. With his canoe in the Frenchman's cart
and Tanner himself riding a horse belonging to the latter, the overland
journey began. Before the first sixty-mile stage had been completed the
Frenchman became ill. He turned back, therefore, and Tanner and his one
companion attempted to put their canoe in the water and continue their
journey. The water was so low that the members of the party themselves
were compelled to walk, the men propelling the canoe by walking, one
at the bow and the other at the stern. After three miles had been
laboriously traversed in this fashion a Pottawatomie Indian was engaged
to take the baggage and Tanner's children on horseback as far as the
mouth of the Yellow Ochre River,[29] while Tanner and his companion
continued to propel the now lightened canoe as before. On reaching
the Yellow Ochre a sufficient depth of water was found to permit the
further descent of the Illinois in the loaded canoe.

[Footnote 28: _Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
Tanner_, 256-59. This work will be cited henceforth as _Tanner's
Narrative_.]

[Footnote 29: The similarity of names and distance from Chicago render
it probable that Tanner here refers to the Vermilion River.]

Perhaps the most interesting account of the passage of the portage in
the dry season, and in some respects the most detailed, is the one
contained in the autobiography of Gurdon S. Hubbard.[30] Beginning with
1818, for several years, with a single exception, Hubbard accompanied
the Illinois "brigade" of the American Fur Company on its annual
autumnal trip from Mackinac by way of Lake Michigan and the Chicago
Portage to the lower Illinois River. Only the first crossing of the
portage, in October, 1818, is described in detail. Leaving Chicago the
party, comprising about a dozen boat crews, camped a day on the South
Branch near the present commencement of the Illinois and Michigan
Canal, preparing to pass the boats through Mud Lake to the Des Plaines.
Mud Lake drained both ways, into the Des Plaines, and through a narrow,
crooked channel into the South Branch, and only in very wet seasons,
Hubbard states, did it contain water enough to float an empty boat. The
mud was very deep and the lake was surrounded by an almost impenetrable
growth of wild rice and grass.

[Footnote 30: Hubbard, _Life_, 39-41.]

From the South Branch the empty boats were pulled up the channel
leading from Mud Lake. In many places where there was a hard bottom
and absence of water they were placed on short rollers, and in this
way were propelled along until the lake was reached. Here mud, thick
and deep, was encountered, but only at rare intervals was there any
water. Four men stayed in the boat while six or eight more waded in the
mud alongside. The former were equipped with boat-poles to the ends
of which forked branches of trees had been fastened. By pushing with
these against the hummocks, while the men in the mud lifted and shoved,
the boat was jerked along. The men in the mud frequently sank to their
waists, and at times were forced to cling to the boat to prevent going
over their heads. Their limbs were covered with bloodsuckers which
caused intense agony for several days, and sleep at night was rendered
hopeless by the swarms of mosquitoes which assailed them. Yet three
consecutive days of toil from dawn until dark under such conditions
were required to pass all the boats through Mud Lake and reach the Des
Plaines River.

The passage down the Des Plaines and the Illinois as far as the mouth
of Fox River consumed almost three weeks more. Until Cache Island was
reached the journey was comparatively easy, although even in this
portion of the Des Plaines progress was frequently interrupted by the
necessity of making portages or passing the boats along on rollers.[31]
From Cache Island to the Illinois River the goods were carried on the
men's backs most of the way, while the lightened boats were pulled over
the shallow places, often being placed on poles and thus dragged over
the rocks and shoals. In the autumn of 1823 Hubbard was sent to a post
on the Iroquois River. To shorten his journey and "avoid the delays
and hardships of the old route by way of Mud Lake and the Des Plaines"
he resolved to travel to his destination by way of the St. Joseph
Portage and the Kankakee River. A year later he was placed in charge
of the Illinois River posts of the American Fur Company. He thereupon
proceeded to execute a plan he had long urged upon his predecessor.
The boats were unloaded on their return from Mackinac to Chicago, and
scuttled in the swamp to insure their safety until they should be
needed for the return voyage to Mackinac laden with furs the following
spring. The goods and furs were transported between Chicago and the
Indian hunting-grounds on pack horses. Thus "the long, tedious, and
difficult passage" through Mud Lake into and down the Des Plaines was
avoided.

[Footnote 31: _Ibid._]

It is evident, then, that the chief factor in determining the
character and length of the Chicago Portage was the Des Plaines River,
and that during a large part of the year the portage that must be made
extended much farther than simply from the Chicago to the Des Plaines.
Schoolcraft and Cass in 1821 were compelled to abandon their canoe
at Starved Rock, almost one hundred miles from Chicago. The traders
whom they met in the course of their horseback journey were apparently
planning to put their boats into the Des Plaines at Mount Joliet,
after a portage of thirty miles. Whether, in view of Schoolcraft's own
experience, they succeeded in entering the river at this point may
well be doubted. The transcript of names from the account books kept
by John Kinzie at Chicago[32] contains several entries of charges for
assisting traders over the portage; some of these show that the portage
was made from Mount Joliet, while one, in June, 1806, shows that it
extended to the "forks" of the Illinois. Tanner's experience presents
the extreme example, if his statement of distances can be relied on,
of a portage of one hundred and twenty miles.[33] The varying length
of the portage necessary at different seasons is well described in an
official report made in 1819 by Graham and Phillips.[34] At one season
there is an uninterrupted water communication between Lake Michigan and
the Mississippi; at another season a portage of two miles; at another a
portage of seven miles, from the Chicago River to the Des Plaines; and
at still another, a portage of fifty miles, extending to the mouth of
the Des Plaines.

[Footnote 32: Barry, Rev. Wm., _Transcript of Names in John Kinzie's
Account Books_, MS in the Chicago Historical Society library. This will
be cited henceforth as the _Barry Transcript_.]

[Footnote 33: If, as suggested above, the Yellow Ochre was the same
stream as the Vermilion River, the distance from Chicago to its mouth
was about one hundred miles.]

[Footnote 34: _State Papers, Doc. No. 17, 16th Congress, 1st Sess._
Senator Benton claimed in 1847 that he had written this report from
data supplied him by Graham and Phillips (_Niles' Register_, LXXII,
309).]

These fluctuations in the state of the Des Plaines and in the length
of the portage influenced materially the plans of the traders and
travelers who had occasion to traverse this route. For obvious reasons
in times when the Des Plaines was known to be low and the portage
correspondingly long the Chicago route would be avoided if practicable.
Thus Charlevoix preferred the Kankakee to it in 1721. A hundred years
later, the Indians who had set out with Tanner upon learning of the
low stage of the water in the Illinois, abandoned the journey and
returned to their homes. St. Cosme's party in 1698 sought to reach the
Illinois from Lake Michigan by the Root and Fox rivers, desisting from
the effort only under the belief that this would necessitate a portage
of forty leagues. Compelled to follow the Chicago route, the prospect
of the long and difficult passage down the Des Plaines to navigable
water on the Illinois induced them to leave all of their goods but one
boat-load at Chicago in charge of a member of the party. This made
necessary a return from the lower Mississippi for them the following
spring, but even this was preferred to the arduous undertaking of
transporting them over the long portage at Chicago in the dry season.

More significant, perhaps, is the fact that those who had occasion to
cross the Chicago Portage, and were informed concerning the seasonal
fluctuations of the Des Plaines, planned their business so as to take
advantage, as far as possible, of the seasons of high water. Colonel
Kingsbury, who in 1805 conducted a company of soldiers from Mackinac to
the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River to establish Fort Belle
Fontaine, was ordered to proceed to Chicago with them on the first
vessel in the spring.[35] The Illinois River traders in the employ of
the American Fur Company in the period from 1818 to 1824 so planned
their business as to bring their boats laden with furs up the Des
Plaines in the season of the spring flood.

[Footnote 35: Cushing to Lieutenant-colonel Kingsbury, February 20,
1805. This letter belongs to the collection of letter books, letters,
and other papers of Jacob Kingsbury in the Chicago Historical Society
library. Kingsbury was in command of Detroit, Mackinac, and other
northwestern posts from 1804 on, and for a time was the superior
authority in charge of a group of posts including Fort Wayne, Fort
Dearborn, Mackinac, and Detroit. His letters and papers constitute a
source of prime importance for this period of northwestern history.
They will be cited henceforth as the _Kingsbury Papers_.]

La Salle had early contended that it was more feasible to transport
goods between Chicago and Starved Rock with horses than by boats
on the river. There arose very early a demand for another means of
transportation between the two places at such times as the use of the
Des Plaines in boats was impracticable, whether from excess or from
deficiency of water. Lahontan represents, in his famous narrative of
his Long River expedition,[36] that he returned by way of the Illinois
River and Chicago Portage. To lessen the drudgery of "a great land
carriage of twelve great leagues," he engaged four hundred Indians
to transport his baggage from the Illinois village to Lake Michigan,
"which they did in the space of four days." Historians have long agreed
in denouncing the pretended Long River discovery as fraudulent, but
there is nothing improbable about the statement of the necessity of a
land carriage of twelve great leagues at the Chicago Portage.

[Footnote 36: Lahontan, _Voyages_, I, 167 ff.]

Whether Lahontan ever in fact employed four hundred Indians to
transport his baggage over the Chicago Portage may well be doubted; but
that other travelers employed Indians in a similar capacity is certain.
The companions of Cavelier, La Salle's brother, who passed from Fort
St. Louis to Lake Michigan in September, 1687, employed a dozen Shawnee
Indians to carry their goods to the lake, because there was no water in
the river at this season of the year.[37] Unable to make their way from
Chicago to Mackinac they returned to the fort to pass the winter. In
this same autumn of 1687, some Frenchmen en route from Montreal to Fort
St. Louis with three canoes loaded with merchandise and ammunition were
halted at Chicago on account of lack of water in the Des Plaines.[38]
Upon information of this being brought to Tonty he engaged the services
of forty Shawnee Indians, women and men, by whom the goods were
transported to the fort.

[Footnote 37: Joutel's Journal, in Margry, III, 482, 484.]

[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, 497.]

When horses were first employed on the Chicago Portage cannot,
of course, be stated. We have seen that La Salle advocated their
employment, but he himself was never in a position to use them. That
such use began very early, however, is indicated by a tradition
preserved by Gurdon S. Hubbard of an adventure of a trader named Cerré
on the Des Plaines.[39] The Indians sought to force him to pay toll
to them, but he defied them; the controversy ended happily, however,
and the Indians transported Cerré's goods on their pack horses from
Cache Island to the mouth of the Des Plaines. The date of this incident
is not recorded, but Cerré first came into the Illinois country in
1756. If the Indians were accustomed thus early to use pack horses to
transport the goods of travelers it is not improbable that the practice
may have originated long before.

[Footnote 39: Hubbard, _Life_, 41-43.]

The demand for transportation facilities at the portage was thus coeval
with the advent of the French in this region. In the early nineteenth
century the satisfaction of this demand afforded employment and a
livelihood to some of the inhabitants of Chicago. The transporting
of travelers and their baggage across the portage formed part of the
business of John Kinzie. That it was Ouilmette's principal occupation,
at least for a considerable period, seems probable.[40] Major Stoddard
stated in 1812 concerning the Chicago Portage that in the dry season
boats and their cargoes were transported across it by teams kept at
Chicago for this purpose.[41] Several years later Graham and Phillips
reported that there was a well-beaten road from the mouth of the Des
Plaines to the lake, over which boats and their loads were hauled by
oxen and vehicles kept for this purpose by the French settlers at
Chicago.[42] Schoolcraft and Cass procured horses to convey them to
Chicago from the point near Starved Rock where they abandoned their
canoe. John Tanner's narrative shows that the Frenchman who carried him
a distance of sixty miles from Chicago to the Illinois River in the
preceding year was commonly engaged in this business. Probably this
man was Ouilmette, although Tanner does not give his name. If it was
someone other than Ouilmette, it is evident that at least two Chicago
residents were engaged in this business.

[Footnote 40: See _Post_, pp. 143-44; _Tanner's Narrative_, 257; _Barry
Transcript_.]

[Footnote 41: Stoddard, _Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of
Louisiana_, 368 ff.]

[Footnote 42: _State Papers, Doc. No. 17, 16th Congress, 1st Sess._]

The project of Joliet of a canal to connect Lake Michigan with
the Illinois River was revived early in the nineteenth century.
After numerous investigations and reports had been made, the work of
construction was at last begun, amid great enthusiasm, in the year
1836. Twelve years later the Illinois and Michigan Canal was completed,
and therewith the Chicago Portage ceased to be. Even without the
construction of the canal its old importance and use were about to
terminate. The advance of white settlement sounded the death knell of
the fur trade. With the advent of the railroad, trade and commerce
sought other channels and another means of transportation. The
waterways lost their old importance and the Chicago Portage passed into
history. Ere this time, however, the New Chicago had been born and her
future, with its marvelous possibilities, was secure.




CHAPTER II

CHICAGO IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY


It seems quite probable that Chicago was an important meeting-place
for Indian travelers long before the first white men came to the foot
of Lake Michigan. The portage of the Indian preceded the canoe of the
white man, and the Indian trail was the forerunner of the white man's
road. Who the first white visitor to Chicago was cannot be stated with
certainty. The chief incentive to the exploration of the Northwest was
the prosecution of the fur trade, and it is probable that wandering
coureurs de bois had visited this region in advance of any of the
explorers who have left us records of their travels. Coming to the
domain of recorded history we encounter, on the threshold as it were,
the master dreamer and empire builder, La Salle.

Already interested in the subject of western exploration, in the
summer of 1669 he set out from his estate of Lachine in search of a
river which flowed to the western sea.[43] His course to the western
end of Lake Ontario is known to us, but from this point his movements
for the next two years are involved in mist and obscurity. It is
believed by some that he descended the Ohio to the Mississippi in 1670,
and that the following year he traversed Lake Michigan from north to
south, crossed the Chicago Portage, and descended the Illinois River
till he again reached the Mississippi. But the claim that he reached
the Mississippi during these years is rejected by most historians.
Probably the exact facts as to his movements at this time will never
be known. We are here interested, however, primarily in the question
whether he came to the site of Chicago. Even this cannot be stated with
certainty, but the preponderance of opinion among those best qualified
to judge is that he probably did.[44]

[Footnote 43: For this expedition and the subsequent movements of La
Salle see Winsor, _Cartier to Frontenac_; Parkman, _La Salle and the
Discovery of the Great West_; Winsor, _Narrative and Critical History_,
IV, 201 ff.]

[Footnote 44: Margry was convinced of this and Parkman thought it
entirely probable. Winsor thought that La Salle came to the head of
Lake Michigan, but was in doubt whether he entered the Chicago River or
the St. Joseph. Shea, who constantly belittles La Salle's achievements,
believed he "reached the Illinois or some other affluent of the
Mississippi." See the references given in note 43.]

The pages of history might be scanned in vain for a more fitting
character with which to begin the annals of the great city of today.
La Salle is noted, even as it is noted, for boundless energy, lofty
aspiration, and daring enterprise. He combined the capacity to dream
with the resolution to make his visions real. "He was the real
discoverer of the Great West, for he planned its occupation and began
its settlement; and he alone of the men of his time appreciated its
boundless possibilities, and with prophetic eye saw in the future its
wide area peopled by his own race."[45]

[Footnote 45: Edward G. Mason, "Early Visitors to Chicago," in _New
England Magazine_, New Ser., VI, 189.]

In strong contrast with the masterful La Salle succeeds, in the early
annals of Chicago, the gentle, saintly Marquette. For a number of
years vague and indefinite reports had been carried to Canada of the
existence, to the west of the Great Lakes, of a "great river" flowing
westwardly to the Vermilion Sea, as the Gulf of California was then
known. These reports roused in the French the hope of finding an easy
way to the South Sea, and thence to the golden commerce of the Indies.

Spurred on by the home government Talon, the intendant of Canada, took
up the project of solving the problem of the great western river.[46]
It chanced that for several years Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, had
been stationed on the shore of Lake Superior. Here he heard from his
dusky charges stories of the great river and of the pleasant country to
the westward. In consequence he became imbued with the double ambition
of solving the geographical question of the ultimate direction of the
river's flow, and of seeking in this new region a more fruitful field
of labor.[47] In the summer of 1672 Talon appointed Louis Joliet, a
young Canadian who had already achieved something of a reputation as
an explorer, to carry out the new task, and the projected exploration
of the great river was launched. Joliet proceeded that autumn to
Mackinac--the Michilimackinac of the French period--where he spent the
winter preparing for the enterprise. Hither Marquette had come two
years before, and here he had established the mission of St. Ignace.
Proximity and a common interest in the projected enterprise combined
to draw the two together; so that when the expedition set out from
Mackinac in May, 1673, the party was composed of Joliet, Marquette, and
five companions. Though Joliet was the official head of the expedition,
it has come about, through the circumstance that his records were lost
almost at the end of his toilsome journey, that we are chiefly indebted
to the journal of Marquette for our knowledge of it, and have come
insensibly to ascribe the credit for it to him.

[Footnote 46: Winsor, _Cartier to Frontenac_, 231.]

[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, 199-201.]

From Mackinac the party passed, in two canoes, to the head of Green
Bay, and thence by way of the Fox-Wisconsin River route to the
Mississippi, which was reached a month after the departure from the
mission of St. Ignace.[48] Down its broad current the voyagers paddled
and floated for another month. Arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas,
they were told by the natives that the sea was distant but ten days'
journey, and that the intervening region was inhabited by warlike
tribes, equipped with firearms, and hostile to their entertainers. This
information led the explorers to take counsel concerning their further
course. Deeming it established beyond doubt that the river emptied
into "the Florida or Mexican Gulf," and fearful of losing the fruits
of their discovery by falling into the hands of the Spaniards, they
decided to turn about and begin the homeward journey.

[Footnote 48: Marquette's Journal of the expedition is printed in
_Jesuit Relations_, Vol. LIX. For standard secondary accounts see the
works of Parkman and Winsor.]

On reaching the mouth of the Illinois they learned that they could
shorten their return to Mackinac by passing up that river. A pleasing
picture is drawn by Marquette of the country through which this new
route led them. They had seen nothing comparable to it for fertility
of soil, for prairies, woods, "cattle," and other game. The Indians
received them kindly, and obliged Marquette to promise that he would
return to instruct them. Under the guidance of an Indian escort the
voyagers passed, probably by way of the Chicago Portage and River,[49]
to Lake Michigan, whence they made their way to Green Bay by the end of
September.

[Footnote 49: It was the contention of Albert D. Hagar, a former
secretary of the Chicago Historical Society, that on both this
expedition and that of 1675 Marquette passed from the Des Plaines River
to Lake Michigan by way of the Calumet Portage and River. (Andreas,
_History of Chicago_, I, 46.) The evidence, however, seems to me to
point to the route by way of the Chicago Portage and River. Hagar's
argument is refuted by Hurlbut in _Chicago Antiquities_, 384-88.]

The following year Joliet continued on his way to Quebec to report to
Count Frontenac the results of his expedition. Marquette remained at
Green Bay, worn down by the illness that was shortly to terminate his
career. In the autumn of 1674, the disease having temporarily abated,
he undertook the fulfilment of his promise to the Illinois Indians to
return and establish a mission among them. Late in October he began the
journey,[50] accompanied by two voyageurs, Pierre Porteret and Jacques,
one of whom had been a member of the earlier expedition. The little
party was soon increased by the addition of a number of Indians, and
all together made their way down Green Bay and the western shore of
Lake Michigan, to the mouth of the "river of the portage"--the Chicago.
Over a month had been consumed in the journey, owing to frequent
delays caused by the stormy lake. The river was frozen to the depth of
half a foot and snow was plentiful. Ten days were passed here, when,
Marquette's malady having returned, a camp was made two leagues up the
river, close to the portage, and it was decided to spend the winter
there. Thus began in December, 1674, the first extended sojourn, so
far as we have record, of white men on the site of the future Chicago.
There has been much loose writing concerning the character of their
habitation. Even Parkman states that they constructed a "log hut," and
other writers have made similar assertions. There is no warrant for
this in the original documents, and all the circumstances of the case
combine to render it improbable.[51] Marquette was too sick to travel,
and he had but two companions to assist him. They made two camps, one
at the entrance of the river, and the other, a few days later, at the
portage. It was already the dead of winter, and they could not have
been equipped with heavy tools. It seems entirely probable that in
place of a "log hut" they constructed the customary Indian shelter or
wigwam.[52]

[Footnote 50: For Marquette's Journal of this expedition see _Jesuit
Relations_, Vol. LIX. Parkman and Winsor have written standard
secondary accounts.]

Marquette found that two Frenchmen had preceded him in establishing
themselves in the Illinois country. He designates them as "La Taupine
and the surgeon," and says that they were stationed eighteen leagues
below Chicago, "in a fine place for hunting cattle, deer, and
turkeys."[53] They were supplied with corn and other provisions, and
were engaged in the fur trade. Apparently their location was selected
either because it was "a fine place for hunting," or else because
of its advantages as a trading station, for it is evident from the
narrative that they were in close proximity to the Indians.

[Footnote 51: The French word used by Marquette, _cabannez_, was
commonly employed, whether as a verb or a noun, to designate the
ordinary temporary encampment of travelers and the wigwam of the
Indian. In Marquette's Journal of his first expedition (_Jesuit
Relations_, LIX, 146), the word is used to designate the cover of
sailcloth erected over the voyagers' canoes to protect them from the
mosquitoes and the sun while floating down the Mississippi. Later, on
the second expedition, when Marquette, hastening along the eastern
shore of Lake Michigan toward Mackinac, found himself at the point of
death, his companions hastily landed and constructed a "wretched cabin
of bark" to lay him in (_ibid._, 194). Numerous other instances of the
habitual use of the word to indicate a temporary camp might easily be
cited.]

[Footnote 52: For a further development of this subject see H. H.
Hurlbut's pamphlet, _Father Marquette at Mackinac and Chicago_, 13-14.]

[Footnote 53: _Jesuit Relations_, LIX, 174-76.]

Who were these French pioneers of the upper Illinois Valley? We know
concerning La Taupine--the mole--that he was a noted fur trader whose
real name was Pierre Moreau;[54] that he was an adherent of Count
Frontenac, the governor of New France; and that he was accused by the
intendant with being one of the Governor's agents in the prosecution
of an illicit trade with the Indians. He had been with St. Lusson
at the Sault Ste. Marie in 1671, and doubtless was possessed of
all the information current among the French concerning the region
beyond the Great Lakes. In what year he pushed out into this region
and established the first habitation and business of a white man in
northern Illinois will probably forever remain unknown.

[Footnote 54: _Ibid._, 314; Mason, "Early Visitors to Chicago," cited
in note 45.]

The little that Marquette tells us of the companion of La Taupine
serves only to whet our curiosity. Though these first residents
were lawbreakers, they were not without redeeming qualities. In
anticipation, apparently, of Marquette's arrival at their station they
had made preparations to receive him, and had told the savages "that
their cabin belonged to the black robe."[55] As soon as they learned
of the priest's illness at Chicago the surgeon came, in spite of snow
and bitter cold,[56] a distance of fifty miles to bring him some corn
and blueberries. Marquette sent Jacques back with the surgeon to bear
a message to the Indians who lived in his vicinity, and the traders
loaded him, on his return, with corn and "other delicacies" for the
sick priest. Furthermore, the surgeon was a devout man, for he spent
some time with Marquette in order to perform his devotions. Clearly
here is a character who improves with closer acquaintance. But such
acquaintance is denied us. As a ship passing in the night the surgeon
flashes across Chicago's early horizon; whence he came, whither he
went, even his name will doubtless remain forever a mystery.

[Footnote 55: _Jesuit Relations_, LIX, 176.]

[Footnote 56: The Journal records that the Indians were suffering from
hunger because the cold and snow prevented them from hunting.]

Meanwhile, how fared the winter with the three Frenchmen in their
primitive camp near the portage? The picture of their life as painted
in the pages of Marquette's Journal is not, on the whole, unattractive.
The fraternal spirit manifested for them by the traders has already
been noted. The Indians were equally friendly. When those living in a
village six leagues away learned of Marquette's plight, they were so
solicitous for his welfare, and so fearful that he would suffer from
hunger, that, notwithstanding the cold, Jacques had much difficulty in
preventing the young men from coming to the portage to carry away to
their village all Marquette's belongings.

The Indians' fears, however, proved groundless. Deer and buffalo
abounded, partridges, much like those of France, were killed, and
turkeys swarmed around the camp. The traders sent corn and blueberries,
and the Indians brought corn, dried meat, and pumpkins. The severe
winter produced its effect upon the game, some of the deer that were
killed being so lean as to be worthless. But "the Blessed Virgin
Immaculate," Marquette's celestial queen, took such care of them that
there was no lack of provisions, and when the camp was broken up in the
spring there was still on hand a large sack of corn and a supply of
meat.

An intense spirit of religious devotion animated Marquette throughout
the winter. It was his zeal in the service of his Heavenly Master
that had led him, in his illness, to brave the rigors of a winter
in the wilderness. Despite his bodily affliction, the observance of
religious exercises was maintained. Mass was said every day throughout
the winter, but they were able to observe Lent only on Fridays and
Saturdays. On December 15 the mass of the Conception was celebrated.
Early in February a novena, or nine days' devotion to the Virgin,
was begun, to ask God for the restoration of Marquette's health.
Shortly afterward his condition improved, in consequence, as he
believed, of these devotions. An opportunity to give his religion a
practical application was afforded him in the latter part of January.
A deputation of Illinois Indians came bringing presents, in return for
which they requested, among other things, a supply of powder. Marquette
refused this, saying he had come to instruct them and to restore peace,
and did not wish them to begin a war with their neighbors, the Miamis.

Toward the end of March the ice began to thaw, but on breaking up it
formed a gorge, causing a rapid rise in the river. The camping-place
was suddenly flooded, the occupants having barely time enough to secure
their goods upon the trees. They themselves spent the night on a
hillock, with the water steadily gaining upon them. The following day
the gorge dissolved, the ice drifted away, and the travelers prepared
to resume their journey to the village of the Illinois.

Eleven days were consumed in this journey, during which Marquette
suffered much from illness and exposure.[57] According to Father Dablon
he was received by the Indians "as an angel from Heaven." He preached
to them and established his mission, and then, feeling the hand of
death upon him, began his return journey to the distant mission of St.
Ignace.

[Footnote 57: Marquette's Journal ends abruptly at this point, his
last entry being made on April 6 while the little party was waiting
at the Des Plaines River for the subsidence of the ice and the cold
winds to permit them to descend. For the remainder of the story we are
indebted to the narrative of Father Dablon, Marquette's superior, whose
information was derived from the two companions of Marquette. Dablon's
narrative is printed in _Jesuit Relations_, Vol. LIX.]

And now we come to what may be regarded as the next scene in the
annals of Chicago. A crowd of the Illinois accompanied Marquette, as a
mark of honor, for more than thirty leagues, vying with each other in
taking charge of his slender baggage. Then, "filled with great esteem
for the gospel," they took leave of him, and continuing his journey
he shortly afterward reached Lake Michigan.[58] The route followed
from this point was by way of the eastern side of the lake. But the
missionary's life was to terminate sooner than the voyage. On May 19 he
died, on the lonely shore of the lake, and was buried near the mouth of
a small river in the state of Michigan which was long to bear his name.

[Footnote 58: The route followed by Marquette and his escort from the
Illinois village to Lake Michigan is not certainly known. From the
fact that after reaching the lake Marquette sought to reach Mackinac
by following around its eastern shore, it has been argued that he
ascended the Kankakee to reach Lake Michigan. The evidence seems to me,
however, to favor the route by the Des Plaines and Chicago. Marquette
had gone this way on the return from his first expedition, and had
returned to the Illinois the same way. If he now followed this route,
the thirty leagues which the Indians accompanied him would have brought
them to the vicinity of the portage between the Des Plaines and the
Chicago. In the period when travel was chiefly by water portages were
natural meeting (and parting) places. The one argument in support of
the Kankakee route is the fact that the further route of the party was
along the eastern shore of the lake. But this fact does not obviate the
possibility of a return to the lake by the Des Plaines and Chicago.
Furthermore, by the Kankakee route from the point where the Indians
turned back Marquette would still have to travel upward of one hundred
and fifty miles to reach the lake. Yet the narrative states that he
reached it "shortly after" they left him--a statement which harmonizes
with the supposition that the leave-taking occurred at or near the
Chicago Portage. For these reasons I have chosen to consider this an
event in early Chicago history.]

A successor to Marquette at the mission of the Illinois was found in
the person of Father Claude Allouez, who was then stationed at the
mission of St. Francis Xavier at Green Bay. In October, 1676, with two
companions he set out in a canoe for his new field of work.[59] The
winter closed down early, however, and before they had proceeded far
they were compelled to lie over until February with some Pottawatomie
Indians. Then they proceeded once more, in a way "very extraordinary";
for instead of putting the canoe into the water, they placed it upon
the ice, over which a sail and a favoring wind "made it go as on the
water." When the wind failed they drew it along by means of ropes. New
obstacles to their progress arose, however, so that not until April did
they enter "the river which leads to the Illinois." At its entrance
they were met by a band of eighty Illinois Indians who had come from
their village to welcome Allouez. The ceremony of reception which
ensued may well be set forth in the words of the missionary himself, in
whose honor it was staged.

[Footnote 59: The narrative of Allouez is printed in _Jesuit
Relations_, Vol. LX. The quotations from it which follow are from the
Thwaites translation there given.]

"The captain came about 30 steps to meet me, carrying in one hand a
firebrand and in the other a Calumet adorned with feathers. Approaching
me, he placed it in my mouth and himself lighted the tobacco, which
obliged me to make a pretense of smoking it. Then he made me come into
his Cabin, and having given me the place of honor, he spoke to me as
follows:

'My Father, have pity on me; suffer me to return with thee, to
bear thee company and take thee into my village. The meeting I have
had today with thee will prove fatal to me if I do not use it to my
advantage. Thou bearest to us the gospel and the prayer. If I lose the
opportunity of listening to thee, I shall be punished by the loss of my
nephews, whom thou seest in so great number; without doubt, they will
be defeated by our enemies. Let us embark, then, in company, that I may
profit by thy coming into our land.'"

It is not to be supposed that the exact words of the "Captain" have
been preserved, though it may well be that the general tenor of his
remarks is here set forth. The speech concluded, they set out together,
and "shortly after" arrived at the Chief's abode. We have no clue,
further than this, to the location of the Indian camp. Probably it
was in the vicinity of the portage; for aside from the fact that this
furnished a logical stopping-place Marquette tells us that during his
sojourn here, two years before, Indians were encamped in his vicinity
during a portion of the winter.

After a brief stay among the Indians on the Illinois, where his labors
met with great success, Allouez left them, returning again the next
year. We have no details of these journeys, however, and our next
account of the presence of white men in this region involves us in the
schemes and deeds of the masterful La Salle.

La Salle conceived the ambitious design of leading France and
civilization together into the valley of the Mississippi.[60] But vast
obstacles interposed to hinder him in its execution. Canada must be
his base of operations, and Canada abounded in hostile traders and
priests who jealously sought to checkmate him at every opportunity.
The initiation of his design involved the establishment of a colony
in the Illinois country. In 1678 he sent out in advance a party of
men to engage in trade for him and ultimately to go to the Illinois
country and prepare for his coming. Meanwhile he himself was busied
with further preparations for the execution of his project; a sailing
vessel was constructed close above Niagara Falls, and in August, 1678,
its sails were spread upon Lake Erie for the voyage around the upper
lakes. Arrived at Green Bay, the vessel was loaded with furs and
started on its return, while La Salle and fourteen followers, in four
canoes, continued their way down the western shore of Lake Michigan.
The party laboriously made its way past the site of the modern cities
of Milwaukee and Chicago and around the southern end of the lake to the
mouth of the St. Joseph River. This had been agreed upon as the place
of rendezvous with Tonty, La Salle's faithful lieutenant, who with
twenty men was toiling, meanwhile, down the eastern side of the lake
from Mackinac. Tonty had been delayed, and La Salle employed the period
of waiting for him in building Fort Miami on an eminence near the mouth
of the river. This became, therefore, the oldest fort in this region,
and constituted an important base of operations for the prosecution of
his designs.

[Footnote 60: For the original documents pertaining to La Salle's work
see Margry's collection. For standard secondary accounts see the works
of Parkman and Winsor. I have drawn freely upon these in preparing this
portion of my own narrative.]

At last Tonty arrived, bringing news which rendered probable the loss
of La Salle's sailing vessel, the "Griffin," with her cargo of furs.
Early in December the combined party ascended the St. Joseph River to
the portage leading to the Kankakee, near the site of the modern city
of South Bend. Down the latter river they passed and into the Illinois,
until they came to the great Indian village, in the vicinity of Starved
Rock, where Marquette and Allouez had labored as missionaries during
the past five years. The place was deserted, however, the inhabitants
having departed for their annual winter hunt. The journey was resumed,
therefore, as far as Lake Peoria, near which place a village of the
Illinois was found.

A parley was held with the Indians, in the course of which La Salle
unfolded his design of building a fort in their midst, and a "great
wooden Canoe" on the Mississippi, which would go down to the sea,
and return thence with the goods they so much desired. La Salle was
successful in overcoming alike the suspicions of the natives, the
intrigues of his enemies, and the disloyalty of his own men. A site
suitable for a fort was selected, and here in the dead of winter was
constructed the first civilized habitation of a permanent character in
the modern state of Illinois; the Indians gave to the fort the name of
Checagou, but by La Salle it was christened Fort Crevecoeur.

La Salle had thus established himself in the heart of the Mississippi
Valley, and had initiated the work of carving out what was to become
the imperial domain of French Louisiana. But the major portion of that
work lay yet before him, and difficulties were to succeed one another
in its prosecution until the leader's death at the hands of a hidden
assassin was to terminate his life in seeming failure. It is not our
purpose here to attempt a history of La Salle's career; rather our
aim is to sketch such of its salient features as may be pertinent to
the unfolding of the story of the genesis of Chicago. The loss of the
"Griffin" imposed upon La Salle the necessity of returning to Fort
Frontenac for supplies. Having urged forward the construction of his
fort and arranged for the departure of Hennepin and his associates on
what eventuated in their famous exploration of the upper waters of the
Mississippi, La Salle left Tonty in command at Fort Crevecoeur, and
himself, in March, 1680, set forth on his long and terrible journey.
In its course he again paused near Starved Rock, noted the ease with
which it might be defended, and passing on to Fort Miami, dispatched
orders to Tonty to occupy and fortify it. He then crossed on foot the
trackless waste of southern Michigan in the season of spring floods,
and came at last to his destination. He spent some months in setting
his affairs in order, and in August, 1680, set out on the return to
Illinois, passing by way of Mackinac and thence down the eastern side
of Lake Michigan to Fort Miami.

Meanwhile, what of Tonty and affairs at Fort Crevecoeur? Faithful
to his orders, Tonty, on receipt of the dispatch which La Salle had
sent forward from Fort Miami, set forth to occupy Starved Rock. In
his absence the men left at Fort Crevecoeur, spurred on by the tales
of financial disaster to La Salle related by the new arrivals, rose
in mutiny. They destroyed the fort, stole its provisions, and writing
on the side of the unfinished vessel the legend _Nous sommes tons
sauvages_--"We are all savages"--departed. Upon the heels of this
disaster succeeded a still greater menace to La Salle's designs. It
was essential to their success that the Illinois Indians should retain
peaceable possession of their territory. But now came against them
a war party of the terrible Iroquois. They assailed and destroyed
the village at the Rock and pursued the fleeing Illinois until the
scattered survivors found refuge across the Mississippi.

The indomitable Tonty, almost alone in this sea of savagery, had done
what he could to save the Illinois from destruction. His efforts proved
vain, and with his few followers he fled from impending destruction.
Their goal was distant Mackinac, and their route was up the Illinois
and the Des Plaines to Lake Michigan and thence northward along its
western shore. Doubtless the forlorn little party passed by Chicago,
though we have no direct details as to this portion of their journey.
Hardships and dangers in abundance were endured before the survivors
found refuge with a band of friendly Pottawatomies at some point to the
southward of Green Bay.

Shortly after the destruction of the Illinois La Salle, in ignorance
of what had happened, came from Fort Miami to the relief of Tonty. In
the ghastly remains of the village at Starved Rock he read the story of
this new disaster to his plans. Failing to find the bodies of Tonty and
his companions among them, he followed in the track of the pursued and
pursuing savages until he reached the Mississippi. Concluding at last
that Tonty had not come this way he retraced his steps to the junction
of the Kankakee with the Des Plaines, and turning up the latter stream
soon found traces of Tonty's party. It was now the dead of winter.
Convinced of Tonty's escape, La Salle abandoned the canoes, which he
had dragged with him on sledges thus far and made his way overland
through extreme cold and deep snow to Fort Miami, where he arrived at
the end of January.

The design was now conceived by La Salle of welding the western
tribes into a confederation, which, under the guidance of himself and
his French followers, should oppose the marauding incursions of the
Iroquois into the West. The year 1681 was devoted to the furthering of
this project and to the gathering of La Salle's scattered resources for
a renewal of his attempt at establishing himself in the Mississippi
Valley. Late in the year he was again at Fort Miami with a considerable
party of French and Indians, ready for the exploit which has given him
his greatest fame--the descent of the Mississippi to its mouth.

From Fort Miami the route followed led around the foot of Lake Michigan
to Chicago; thence across the portage and down the Des Plaines, the
Illinois, and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The expedition
set forth in two divisions, Tonty with the first crossing over to
the Chicago River in the closing days of December, 1681, where he
prepared sledges for transporting the canoes and equipment on the
ice, and awaited the arrival of his chief. La Salle with the second
division arrived early in January, and after a detention of a few days,
occasioned by unfavorable weather, the united party set out, dragging
their sledges on the surface of the frozen rivers until open water was
reached below Lake Peoria. There they embarked, and three months later,
on April 9, 1682, at the mouth of the Great River he had descended La
Salle took formal possession, under the name of Louisiana, of all the
vast country drained by it and by its tributaries, stretching "from the
Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains; from the Rio Grande and the Gulf to
the farthest springs of the Missouri."[60]

[Footnote 60: Parkman, _La Salle_, chap. xxi.]

La Salle's discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi caused him to
broaden his projects. He would establish a colony at the mouth of the
Great River to serve as an outlet for his colony on the Illinois where
he hoped to gather the furs on which he relied to render his whole vast
enterprise commercially successful. The prosecution of his designs,
therefore, depended ultimately on his ability to make the Illinois
colony profitable. On his return to Mackinac from the descent of the
Mississippi, in the autumn of 1682, he learned that the Iroquois were
about to renew their attacks upon the West. The best efforts of himself
and Tonty were now directed, therefore, to the fortification of Starved
Rock, which he planned to serve as the center of his colony and its
rock of defense against the invader.

Here, on a cliff which rises sheer from the water's edge to a height
of one hundred and twenty-five feet, with its crest about an acre in
extent, and accessible only by a narrow pathway in the rear, during
the winter of 1682 and 1683 the fort was constructed. At the same time
the work of alliance with the Indians went vigorously forward until
from the lofty ramparts of St. Louis, the name given by La Salle to his
fortress, the leader could look down upon the lodges of four thousand
warriors, gathered from half a score of tribes, and a total population
of upward of twenty thousand souls. The stability of the colony thus
gathered depended on La Salle's ability to protect his allies against
the Iroquois, and to furnish them with goods and a market for their
furs.

La Salle's career shows that over natural obstacles and the wiles
of the red man he could rise triumphant, but that he was no match
for the intriguing enemies of his own race. By these his plans were
shipwrecked once more, and for the last time, so far as his Illinois
career was concerned. Count Frontenac, his staunch supporter hitherto,
was recalled, and the new governor, De la Barre, pursued a policy of
unscrupulous hostility toward him. His ammunition and supplies to
sustain himself against the Iroquois were detained, lying reports about
him were sent to the home government, and finally a force was sent to
supersede him in command of Fort St. Louis.

La Salle's only remedy against such an enemy was to appeal in person
to his monarch. Leaving Tonty in command of the colony he went, by way
of Canada, to France, whence he embarked upon the enterprise which was
to end so disastrously in the wilds of Texas. Under the guidance of
others Louisiana became, in the following century, the fairest province
of New France. Wrested from French control by the Anglo-Saxon, it has
come in time to constitute the heart and center of our magnificent
national domain. The geographical monuments to the memory of La Salle
are few; a county in Texas, a city and a county in Illinois are all,
aside from a few insignificant post towns, that bear his name. Yet
in the eyes of history he will always be regarded as the father of
Louisiana, a province as favored by Nature, as imperial in character,
as any the sun ever shone upon.

Since 1678 La Salle's chief lieutenant in the prosecution of his
enterprises had been the capable and valorous Tonty.[62] La Salle's
mission to the French Court in 1684 had resulted in the restoration
of Tonty to command at Fort St. Louis. On the death of La Salle he
sought to step into his former leader's place, and to complete the
establishment of the French power in the Mississippi Valley. For
a dozen years longer he held his lofty post of St. Louis, seeking
meanwhile to interest the French Court in the uncompleted design of
his former chief. But other and more powerful interests held the ear
of the distant monarch, and his efforts were in vain. Finally, in 1700
an expedition was sent out under the command of Iberville to take
possession of the mouth of the Mississippi. A settlement was made at
Biloxi Bay, and hither Tonty came, abandoning his fort at the Rock, and
joining his efforts in support of the more powerful enterprise. After
four years more of service in the cause in which he had first enlisted
under La Salle's banner, he died at Biloxi of yellow fever. There in
September, 1704, "was dug the grave of the most unselfish and loyal, as
he was one of the most courageous and intrepid, of the many knightly
men who blazed the path whence entered civilization into what later
became known as the old Northwest."[63]

[Footnote 62: The story of Tonty is told by Parkman in connection with
his account of La Salle. "Henry de Tonty," a sketch and appreciation
of Tonty's career by Henry E. Legler, is printed in _Parkman Club
Publications_, No. 3. For an English translation of Tonty's own modest
narrative of his career to 1693 see French, _Historical Collections of
Louisiana_, I, 52 ff.]

[Footnote 63: Legler, _op. cit._, 37.]

[Illustration: STARVED ROCK, THE SITE OF FORT ST. LOUIS

(By courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)]

During Tonty's occupancy of Fort St. Louis in the period following the
death of La Salle a number of travelers passed between Lake Michigan
and the Mississippi by the Chicago-Illinois route the records of whose
experiences are still preserved. One of the most interesting of these
narratives is that of Joutel, the companion of Cavelier.[64] Their
party comprised the sole survivors of La Salle's ill-fated Texan
expedition who returned to France and civilization. They came, a
band of five forlorn fugitives, up the Mississippi and the Illinois,
arriving at Fort St. Louis in September, 1687. Carefully concealing
the fact of La Salle's death, they obtained means to continue their
journey, and soon set out for Lake Michigan accompanied by a dozen
savages who carried their goods and baggage, because of the lack of
water in the Des Plaines. On the twenty-fifth they arrived at Chicago
and there found a canoe left by some Frenchmen who had recently passed
down to Fort St. Louis. Their lack of experience as canoemen, together
with contrary winds and bad weather, caused a delay of eight days at
this place. Meanwhile the season was advancing and their scanty supply
of provisions was being consumed. The state of mind to which they were
reduced is naively shown by the record of Joutel that one of the party,
having shot at some chickens and cracked his gun, "was so provoked that
it gave him a fever."

[Footnote 64: For the story of Cavelier's party see Joutel's Journal
printed in Margry, III, 89-535. An abridged and distorted English
translation of the Journal was published in 1714, and this was
reprinted at Albany in 1906 under the editorial direction of Henry Reed
Stiles.]

Finally they embarked on the lake and advanced some eight or ten
leagues along the shore to the northward, striving to come to the
villages of the Pottawatomies, where they hoped to procure a fresh
supply of food. The effort was a pitiful failure. Starvation lay
before them; the loss of a year of time with the consequently lessened
prospect of affording succor in season to the survivors of La Salle's
colony in Texas, and the danger of the discovery of their guilty secret
concerning their leader's fate, awaited their return to Fort St. Louis.

They decided, however, to turn back. It was a dejected party we may
well believe, which came early in October to the entrance of the
Chicago River. Here they made a cache in which they concealed their
goods, put their canoe upon a scaffold, and retraced their steps to
Fort St. Louis. In this place they passed the winter, and from them we
get our fullest description of the fort, and of the manner of life that
prevailed there. Some three weeks after their arrival at the fort Tonty
returned from his participation in Denonville's famous campaign against
the Iroquois. From Fort St. Louis he had led sixteen Frenchmen and two
hundred Indians to share in this distant enterprise. With a baseness
which is difficult to excuse the fugitives deceived him concerning the
death of La Salle, and after accepting his hospitality through the
winter secured from him, on the assumption that La Salle was still
alive, a considerable quantity of furs and other supplies.

Taking advantage of the spring floods they set out once more for
Chicago, March 21, 1688. They arrived on March 29, after a toilsome
journey. Because of the swiftness of the river they were compelled to
wade in the water, pulling their canoes, much of the way. Joutel avers
that he suffered more on this short trip than he had done before since
his departure from the Gulf of Mexico. Again bad weather compelled them
to delay at Chicago, this time for ten days. There was little game and
they had only corn meal to eat. But Providence furnished them "a kind
of manna" to eat with their meal, which appears from the description to
have consisted of maple sap. They also procured in the woods garlic and
other edible plants, and Joutel records that Chicago takes its name,
as they were informed, from the profusion of garlic growing in the
surrounding woods.[65]

[Footnote 65: Margry, III, 485.]

The members of Joutel's party passed on to Canada, and here we may
leave them to pursue their way, burdened with their terrible secret,
as best they may. Our interest meanwhile shifts to the story of Father
Pinet and his mission of the Guardian Angel. We have seen that commerce
and the Cross entered the upper Mississippi Valley together in 1673, in
the persons of Joliet and Marquette. During the succeeding years the
efforts of the servants of the Cross to gain control of this region
were scarcely less zealous than were those of the devotees of trade.
The missionary accompanied, sometimes even preceded, the explorer in
his journeys, seeking everywhere to introduce the doctrine of the true
faith and win the natives to the Church. The representatives of the
Jesuit order were the most active agents of the Church in this work of
proselyting. Under its auspices Marquette had established the Illinois
Mission. Its vicissitudes of fortune were as various as those of La
Salle himself, but, on the whole, it was as successful as any in all
the annals of Catholic missions to the red man.[66]

[Footnote 66: For the history of the Illinois Mission see Shea,
_Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States_,
chaps, xxii, xxiii.]

We are more particularly concerned with that portion of the work
of the Jesuits among the Illinois which pertains to the mission of
the Guardian Angel at Chicago.[67] This was established in 1696 by
Father Pierre Pinet, who had been stationed at Mackinac for a couple
of years. According to the Jesuit records, however, Pinet was soon
driven from Chicago and his mission broken up by no less a person than
Count Frontenac, governor of New France.[68] An appeal to Bishop Laval
resulted in a cessation of Frontenac's opposition, which, in the eyes
of Pinet's associates, amounted to persecution. The mission of the
Guardian Angel was accordingly resumed in 1698, but two years later it
was permanently abandoned.

[Footnote 67: For a brief biographical sketch of Pinet see _Jesuit
Relations_, LXIV, 278. Various references to Pinet scattered throughout
the _Jesuit Relations_ have been collected by Frank R. Grover in his
lecture on Pinet and his mission of the Guardian Angel of Chicago,
published by the Chicago Historical Society in 1907.]

[Footnote 68: Letter of Gravier to Laval, September 17, 1697, _Jesuit
Relations_, LXV, 52.]

Pinet was a man of deeds rather than words, and has himself left no
account of his mission. The statements of his associates show that
he was successful in his work here; the adult Indians, "hardened in
debauchery," paid little heed to his teachings, but the young were
baptized, and even the medicine men, who were the most inveterate
opponents of Christianity, manifested a desire to have their children
instructed.[69] It was Pinet's practice to spend only the summer season
at Chicago. The winters he spent with the missionaries lower down on
the Illinois, or in following his charges on their annual hunt.[70]

[Footnote 69: _Ibid._, 70; Shea, _Early Voyages Up and Down the
Mississippi_, 53-54.]

[Footnote 70: _Jesuit Relations_, LXV, 70; Shea, _op. cit._, 53, 59.]

The site of the mission of the Guardian Angel has long been a subject
of misapprehension. Aside from the general allusions to the mission
as being at Chicago, the document of chief importance in determining
its location is the letter of St. Cosme of January 2, 1699.[71] He had
passed during the preceding autumn and early winter, in company with a
party of associates, from Mackinac to the Mississippi by way of Green
Bay, the Chicago Portage, and the Illinois River route, and the letter
is, in fact, a report concerning this trip. The party spent some time
at Pinet's mission, detained by storms and other obstacles. From a
study of this letter, as printed by Shea, Grover concludes that the
mission was situated above the modern Chicago on the North Shore, near
the present village of Gross Point.[72]

[Footnote 71: Printed in Shea, _op. cit._, 45 ff.]

[Footnote 72: Grover, _Pinet_, 167 ff.]

Shea's translation of St. Cosme's letter, however, frequently departs
from the original manuscript.[73] Because of this fact, reference
to the latter deprives Grover's argument of whatever force it might
otherwise possess.[74] It shows that St. Cosme's party left the site
of the modern city of Racine on October 17, and having been detained
by wind, cabined three days later "five leagues from Chikagwa." This
they should have reached early on the twenty-first, but a wind suddenly
springing up from the lake obliged them to land "half a league from
Etpikagwa." Here the priests left their baggage with the canoemen, and
went "by land" to the house of Father Pinet, which they say was built
on the bank of the little river, having on one side the lake and on
the other a fine large prairie. On the twenty-fourth, the wind having
fallen, they had their canoes brought with all their baggage, and, the
waters being extremely low, placed everything not absolutely necessary
for their further journey in a cache, to be sent for the following
spring. Finally on the twenty-ninth they started from Chicago and
encamped for the night at the portage, two leagues up the river.

[Footnote 73: This is preserved in the archives of Laval University at
Quebec. I have used an attested copy made "with the greatest possible
fidelity" by Father Gosselin, archivist of Laval University, in the
Chicago Historical Society library.]

[Footnote 74: Aside from the inaccuracy of Shea's translation of St.
Cosme's letter, on which Grover bases his argument, he has made it the
basis of a number of unwarranted and erroneous conclusions.]

It is clear from this account that "Etpikagwa" was a point on the lake
not more than fifteen miles north of Chicago; that here the party
landed early on October 21, and the priests, leaving the boatmen
behind, went by land to Pinet's house. Grover says that this shows the
mission was not on the lake shore, and that they went inland to reach
it; and he further assumes that they proceeded but a short distance. In
fact, it shows neither of these things, and since three days elapsed
before the canoes were sent for, there is nothing in the account
inconsistent with the supposition that the priests proceeded a distance
of fifteen miles down the lake shore in coming to the mission.

On the contrary, the account directly supports this supposition. If
the mission was inland near the Skokie marsh, as Grover supposes, they
could hardly have had the canoes brought to it on the twenty-fourth.
The supposition that it was located at the modern Chicago is
strengthened by St. Cosme's account of the departure from Chicago.
Having sent for the canoes on the twenty-fourth, the party started from
Chicago on the twenty-ninth and camped for the night two leagues up
the river at the beginning of the portage. They had been staying with
Father Pinet, and Father Pinet was at "Chikagwa." Now they depart from
"Chikagwa," and two leagues away, "where the little river loses itself
in the prairies," and at the commencement of the portage they camp.
Pinet's mission was, then, apparently, near the mouth of the Chicago
River. Reverting to the description already given of it as "on the bank
of the little river, having on one side the lake, and on the other a
fine large prairie," we find nothing to conflict with this conclusion.

Finally, St. Cosme records that having made half of the portage
they were delayed by the discovery that a little boy, who had joined
the party, had wandered off. St. Cosme with four of the men turned
back next day to look for him. Their quest was unsuccessful, and the
next day being All Saints', St. Cosme was obliged to go and pass the
night at Chicago. Mass having been said early, the following day was
devoted to the search. Evidently the Chicago here referred to was not,
as Grover supposes, located on the North Shore fifteen miles above
the mouth of the river. On the contrary, it must have been within a
reasonable distance of the portage where the boy was lost. From every
point of view the study of St. Cosme's letter leads to the conclusion
that the mission of the Guardian Angel was on the Chicago River at some
point between the forks and the mouth.

The members of St. Cosme's party proceeded on their way, having left a
man at Chicago in charge of some of their supplies, and without having
found the lost boy. After spending the winter among the tribes along
the lower Mississippi, the party retraced its steps northward.[75] St.
Cosme remained among the Tamaroas at Cahokia, while his companions
continued on their way to Chicago, where they arrived on "maundy
Thursday." One of them records that the boy who had been lost made
his way to Chicago after thirteen days, utterly exhausted and "out of
his head." In the spring of 1700 Father Pinet abandoned his mission
at Chicago and joined St. Cosme at Cahokia, where he died a few years
later.[76] Therewith Chicago ceased to be a place of residence for
white men for almost a century. Owing to causes which will be set forth
in the following chapter, the frequent visits made by the French in the
seventeenth century ceased, and the story of Chicago during the first
half of the eighteenth century concerns itself almost wholly with the
terrible Indian wars which desolated the Northwest during this period.

[Footnote 75: On the travels and experiences of the missionaries see
their letters in Shea, Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi.]

[Footnote 76: Citations from the _Jesuit Relations_ in Grover, _Pinet_,
162-64. The date of Pinet's death is variously given as 1702 and 1704.]

Much has been said and written on the subject of a fort at Chicago
in the French period. In the Treaty of Greenville of 1795 one of the
cessions which General Wayne extorted from the tribes was a tract of
land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River "where a fort
formerly stood."[77] Since the English never had a fort at Chicago, the
allusion is obviously to one belonging to the French. Thomas Hutchins,
the first and only civil "geographer of the United States,"[78] who
himself had traveled extensively in the Northwest, placed an "Indian
Village and Fort" at the entrance of the Chicago River on the map
which accompanied his famous _Topographical Description_ of 1778.
Many earlier maps might be cited to show the existence of a fort at
Chicago in the French period.[79] Coming to secondary accounts, most
of the local histories which treat of early Chicago with any degree of
fullness credit the French fort tradition.[80] Mr. Edward G. Mason, a
zealous worker in the field of Illinois history, even thought there was
a fort at Chicago from 1685 until the end of French control in this
region.[81]

[Footnote 77: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 562.]

[Footnote 78: Hutchins, _Topographical Description of Virginia,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina_, 7.]

[Footnote 79: _E.g._, Hennepin, _Nouvelle découverte d'un tres grand
pays situé dans l'Amérique, Utrecht, 1697_, I, (facing) I. This map
was frequently copied by others in the years following its first
appearance. Jean Baptiste Homann's map of North and South America (copy
in Chicago Historical Society library), of unknown date, but probably
about the year 1700; Bellin, _Carte de l'Amérique septentrionale_,
1755; Jean Roque's map of North America, 1754-61.]

[Footnote 80: See among others Mason, _Chapters from Illinois
History_, 163-64; Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 164, 171, 360-61,
592; Blanchard, _Discovery and Conquests of the Northwest with the
History of Chicago_, I, 68 (this work will be cited henceforth as _The
Northwest and Chicago_); Davidson and Stuvé, _History of Illinois_,
260. Many other works and historical articles speak more or less
briefly of the supposed French fort at Chicago; see for example
Andreas, _History of Chicago_, I, 79; Shea, "Chicago from 1673 to
1825," in _Historical Magazine_, V, 103.]

[Footnote 81: Mason, "Early Visitors to Chicago," 201-2.]

Despite these numerous assertions, however, it is extremely doubtful
whether the French ever had a regular fort at Chicago, and it can
be shown conclusively that if so it existed for but a short period
only. La Salle and Tonty passed by Chicago at various times and their
movements are known during the entire period of La Salle's activities
in Illinois. But for two exceptions, to be noted shortly, they nowhere
speak of a fort at Chicago at this time, and the evidence that there
was none, though negative, may be regarded as conclusive. There was no
establishment at Chicago in 1687 when Cavalier La Salle's party was
here vainly seeking to push on to Mackinac; nor in 1688 when the same
party, having wintered at Fort St. Louis, again tarried at Chicago
while on its way to Canada. There is no evidence that such a fort was
established in the succeeding decade; and there is negative evidence
to the contrary, both in the fact that St. Cosme makes no mention of a
fort at Chicago at the time of his visit and that the French government
gave only a grudging permission to Tonty to continue at Fort St. Louis,
limiting his yearly operations to two canoes of merchandise, and
finally, by royal decree, directing the abandonment of the fort.[82]

We have thus arrived at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Did the French have a fort at Chicago between the years 1700 and
1763? James Logan's report to Governor Keith in 1718, upon the French
establishment in the interior, which was used by Keith in his memorial
to the Board of Trade, so asserts. By the latter the statements
of Logan were incorporated in a report to the king,[83] and this,
apparently, was the source of Popple's representation of a "Fort
Miamis" at Chicago on his great _Map of the British Empire in America_
of 1732.[84] In spite of this contemporary evidence, which has gained
the approval of many historians, it may confidently be asserted that
no such fort existed at Chicago in the eighteenth century. That there
was no fort here in 1715 is shown by two independent sources. In
November of this year, Claude de Ramezay, acting governor, and Begon,
intendant of New France, in a report to the French minister dealing
in part with the military situation in the region between the upper
lakes and the Mississippi, recommended the establishment of several
new posts.[85] Among the number a post at "Chicagou" was urged, "to
facilitate access to the Illinois and the miamis, and to keep those
nations in our interests." If a fort already existed at Chicago the
two highest officials in New France would have been aware of the fact,
and there would have been no reason for this recommendation. In this
same year, 1715, as part of an elaborately planned campaign against
the Fox Indians of Wisconsin, the French arranged for the rendezvous
at Chicago of forces from Detroit, from the Wabash, and from the lower
Illinois River settlements.[86] A series of mishaps caused a complete
miscarriage of plans for the campaign; but these very mishaps show
there was at all events no garrison at Chicago. The three parties
which were to effect a junction here arrived at different times, and,
ignorant of the movements of the others, each in turn abandoned the
expedition and retired. Obviously if there had been a garrison at
Chicago it would have constituted an important factor in planning the
campaign; and the various bands which were to effect a junction here
would have been informed, on their arrival, of the movements of the
others.

[Footnote 82: Legler, "Henry de Tonty"; Winsor, _Cartier to Frontenac_,
340.]

[Footnote 83: Printed in O'Callaghan, _New York Colonial Documents_, V,
620-21.]

[Footnote 84: Popple states that his map was undertaken with the
approbation of the Lords of Trade; and that it is based upon maps,
charts, and especially the records transmitted to them by the governors
of the British colonies and others.]

[Footnote 85: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 327 ff.]

[Footnote 86: _Ibid._, 313 ff.]

That there was no French establishment at Chicago in 1721 is evident
from the journal of Father Charlevoix. In this year he was touring the
interior of America on a royal commission to examine and report to his
king the condition of New France. His letters and history constitute
the most authoritative eighteenth century source for the history of
New France. In the very month of September, 1721, when the British
Board of Trade report was made, Charlevoix passed from Fort St. Joseph,
where the city of Niles, Michigan, now stands, down the Kankakee and
the Illinois to Peoria, and beyond.[87] He had first intended to pass
through Chicago, but a storm on the lake, together with information
of the impossibility of navigating the Des Plaines in a canoe at this
season, led him to follow the route by the St. Joseph Portage and the
Kankakee. His journal is detailed and explicit; he carefully describes
the various posts and routes of communication. He had planned to
pass by Chicago, and had informed himself concerning the portage and
the Des Plaines River. Yet he gives no hint of a fort here, a thing
incomprehensible if such a fort had in fact existed.

[Footnote 87: Charlevoix, _Histoire et description générale de la
Nouvelle France, avec le journal historique d'un voyage fait par ordre
du roi dans l'Amérique septentrionale_, letters of September 14 and 17,
1721.]

There is abundant evidence in the sources pertaining to the operations
of the French in the Northwest that they had no fort at Chicago after
1721. In connection with the Fox wars numerous campaigns were waged
in which the Chicago garrison, if there had been such, would have
participated. Yet no such force is ever mentioned, and some of the
sources make it positively evident that there was neither garrison nor
fort here. In 1727 the holding of a great conference with the Foxes
the following year at Starved Rock or Chicago was proposed.[88] If
this were done it was deemed necessary for the French to be first on
the spot appointed for the rendezvous "to erect a fort" and otherwise
prepare for the council. The project never materialized, however,
and so the fort was not built. In 1730, when the French succeeded in
trapping and destroying a large band of the Foxes in the vicinity of
Starved Rock,[89] parties came to the scene of conflict from many
directions--from Ouiatanon, St. Joseph, Fort Chartres, and elsewhere;
but none came from Chicago, although it was nearer the scene than
any of the places from which the French forces did come--obviously
because there was no garrison at Chicago. In the early winter of
1731-32 a Huron-Iroquois war party passed from Detroit to St. Joseph
and thence around the southern end of Lake Michigan and on into
Wisconsin to attack the Foxes.[90] The party paused at Chicago long
enough to build a fort in which to leave their sick. This "fort" was
evidently a temporary Indian shelter, but it is also evident that if
an ungarrisoned French fort had been standing here, the construction
of such a shelter would have been unnecessary. An official list of
the commanders of the various western posts a dozen years later is
preserved in the French colonial archives.[91] The posts at Detroit,
Mackinac, Green Bay, St. Joseph, Ouiatanon, and elsewhere are
mentioned, but the name of Chicago is not included in the list. Finally
an exhaustive memoir upon the posts and trade of the interior of the
continent by Bougainville in 1757 includes no mention of a post at
Chicago, although the neighboring posts which are known to have existed
at this time receive careful attention.[92]

[Footnote 88: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 3-6.]

[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, 109-20.]

[Footnote 90: _Ibid._, 148-50.]

[Footnote 91: _Ibid._, 432-33.]

[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, XVIII, 167 ff.]

It is evident, then, that the French had no fort at Chicago during
the eighteenth century. Did they have one here at any time during the
seventeenth? Two exceptions to the proposition that La Salle and Tonty
make no mention of such a fort have been noted. In a letter written
from the Chicago Portage, June 4, 1683, La Salle[93] speaks of a "fort"
here, built by two of his men the preceding winter. This structure
Mason describes as a "little stockade with a log house within its
enclosure,"[94] and declares it to have been the first known structure
of anything like a permanent character at Chicago. But a log hut
constructed by two men and never garrisoned by any regular force hardly
merits the designation of a fort in the ordinary acceptation of this
term, even though it was surrounded by a stockade. Those who speak of a
French fort at Chicago in this period refer not to this structure but
to the "Fort of Chicagou" commanded by M. de la Durantaye in the winter
of 1685-86.

[Footnote 93: Margry, II, 317.]

[Footnote 94: Mason, _Chapters from Illinois History_, 144.]

Our information concerning this fort is very scanty, being confined
to a simple mention of it with the name of its commander, in Tonty's
memoir of 1693.[95] At the end of October, 1685, Tonty started from
Mackinac in a canoe on Lake Michigan to go to Fort St. Louis on the
Illinois River. Because of the lateness of the season his progress was
rendered impossible by the formation of ice in the lake. This compelled
him to return to Mackinac, whence he again set forth, this time by
land, for Fort St. Louis. An earlier account of this trip than that
of 1693, but of equal brevity, was written by Tonty in the summer of
1686.[96] It does not even mention Durantaye's "Fort of Chicagou," but
it adds certain details concerning Tonty's trip which are of importance
in determining the location of that establishment.

[Footnote 95: French, _Historical Collections of Louisiana_, I, 67.]

[Footnote 96: Letter of Tonty to M. Cabart de Villermont, August 24,
1686, in Margry, III, 560.]

Tonty was, of course, familiar by 1686 with both sides of Lake
Michigan. In view of this fact it is extremely improbable that, having
to go by land from Mackinac to Fort St. Louis in the winter time, he
would make the long détour around the head of Lake Michigan and Green
Bay and down the western side of the lake, rather than follow the
shorter route down the eastern side and around its southern end. This
reasoning finds support in the statements of Tonty of the distances he
traversed. The entire distance from Mackinac to Fort St. Louis he gives
as two hundred leagues, and states that after traveling one hundred and
twenty leagues he came to Durantaye's fort. It was, therefore, eighty
leagues from Fort St. Louis. The usual estimate of French travelers of
this time of the distance between Chicago and Fort St. Louis was thirty
leagues;[97] while the distance overland from St. Joseph to Fort St.
Louis was approximately eighty leagues. It is incredible that Tonty
would estimate the distance from Mackinac to Chicago by land at one
hundred and twenty leagues, and that from Chicago to Fort St. Louis at
eighty leagues, a distance two-thirds as great. The supposition that
Durantaye's fort was on the St. Joseph River rather than the modern
Chicago harmonizes well both with the probabilities of the case and the
distances given us by Tonty.

[Footnote 97: See for example St. Cosme's statement in Shea, _Early
Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi_, 59.]

The foregoing reasoning is not, of course, absolutely conclusive of
the location of Durantaye's "Fort of Chicagou," It is strengthened,
however, by one other consideration. If such a fort was in fact here
in January, 1686, what had happened to it in the interval between this
time and Cavalier La Salle's visit in the autumn of 1687? Joutel's
narrative of the adventures of his party is given with a wealth of
detail. Both in the autumn of 1687 and again in the spring of 1688
the traveler stayed at Chicago for several days. Not only does the
narrative show that there was no garrison or fort here, but it contains
no mention of such an establishment at any previous time.

The French had no fort at Chicago in the eighteenth century, then, and
if they had one in the seventeenth century it could only have been a
temporary, structure which quickly disappeared. It remains to suggest
an explanation of the origin of the widespread belief that there was
a French fort at Chicago. It seems evident that it was due largely to
the cartographers, who, residing for the most part in Europe, found
themselves at a loss to interpret correctly the narratives of the
explorers, which were themselves oftentimes confused and inaccurate,
or lacking in detail. That the cartographers often labored in the
dark, and that their work was frequently erroneous, will be apparent
from a comparison of their maps with those of an authoritative modern
atlas. The representations of the map-makers can no more be relied upon
implicitly than can the narratives of the time; and there is as much
reason in the one case as in the other for subjecting them to critical
scrutiny.

In the present instance the erroneous belief in the existence of a
French fort at Chicago in the eighteenth century probably originated
with Father Hennepin, the garrulous companion of La Salle. He had been
at La Salle's Fort Miami on the St. Joseph, and had passed thence with
his leader down the Kankakee and the Illinois. Yet his _New Discovery_,
first published in 1697, contains a map[98] showing "Fort des Miamis"
at the mouth of a stream emptying into the southwestern corner of Lake
Michigan. It is obvious from a comparison of this map with the one in
Hennepin's earlier work, the _Description of Louisiana_, published
in 1683,[99] that this representation is intended for the St. Joseph
River and La Salle's Fort Miami, which, by a stupid blunder, have been
transferred from the southeastern to the southwestern side of the
lake. The _New Discovery_ enjoyed widespread popularity, and numerous
editions were issued during the following years, not only in French but
also in foreign languages. Hennepin's maps, too, were widely copied
in other works, and so the blunder with respect to the location of
Fort Miami was perpetuated. Evidently this was the source of the error
of Logan and of the many who in later times repeated his statements.
Ignorant alike of the fact that Fort Miami had stood at the mouth
of the St. Joseph and that it had been destroyed nearly forty years
before, Logan located it at Chicago in 1718, adding the interesting
information that it "was not regularly garrisoned."

[Footnote 98: For a reproduction of this map see Winsor, Narrative and
Critical History, IV, 251; Hennepin, New Discovery (Thwaites ed.), I,
(facing) 22.]

[Footnote 99: For a reproduction of this map see Winsor, _op. cit._,
IV, 249; Hennepin, _op. cit._, I, frontispiece.]




CHAPTER III

THE FOX WARS: A HALF-CENTURY OF CONFLICT


With the dawn of the eighteenth century the character of the annals
of Chicago undergoes a radical change. The period which had just
closed had been marked by great activity on the part of the French
in the adjoining region. For a quarter of a century the Illinois
River had constituted their chief highway from the Great Lakes to the
Mississippi. Upon its placid bosom trader, priest, and warrior alike
had plied their bark canoes. For the time being the Illinois realized
La Salle's design for it of furnishing the connecting link between the
two great river systems of New France. The Chicago River and Portage
thus became an important feature in the geography of New France,
although it shared with the Kankakee the sum total of travel by the
Illinois River route.

But already forces were at work which were to effect a complete
readjustment of the Indian map of Illinois and Wisconsin, to shift the
center of French influence in this region from northern Illinois to
its lower Mississippi border, and to furnish one of the interesting
although much-neglected chapters in the history of the long struggle
between France and England for the supremacy of the continent. An
adequate understanding of the character and operation of these
influences necessitates a brief review of the circumstances of their
origin.

In the year after the founding of Quebec, Champlain, the "Father of
New France," engaged in an enterprise which proved to be fraught with
far-reaching consequences for his countrymen. To gain the favor of the
dusky neighbors of the infant colony he accompanied an Algonquin war
party on a foray against their ancient foes, the Iroquois.[100] The
latter had never seen a firearm, and their warriors fled in terror
before the death-dealing device of the white man. The Algonquins gained
a temporary triumph, and Champlain gave his name to the beautiful lake
which still bears it. But of greater moment was it that New France,
almost at its birth, gained the undying enmity of the Iroquois.

[Footnote 100: For this expedition and its results see Winsor,
_Narrative and Critical History_, IV, 117-21; 167-68.]

Before the death of Champlain, and largely due to his zeal, the French
had extended their explorations and trading-houses to the Great
Lakes. In 1634 Nicolet passed through the Straits of Mackinac to Lake
Michigan, traversed Green Bay, and revealed to his countrymen the
region now known as Wisconsin. But now ensued a lull in the exploring
activities of the French, and soon they were led to abandon their
trading-posts on the lakes. The Iroquois had succeeded in establishing
friendly relations with the Dutch along the Hudson, and by them were
provided with guns and ammunition.[101] Thus armed they turned upon
their enemies. The French had at first refrained from supplying
their red allies with guns, and these now fell an easy prey to the
combination of Iroquois courage and Dutch guns. In the ensuing years
the Hurons were ruined, the Fries were exterminated, the region to the
west, between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, was turned into a desert,
and life was made a burden to the French of Canada.

[Footnote 101: Winsor, _op. cit._, chap, v; Turner, "Character and
Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin," 14.]

The expansion of New France was shortly resumed, but the hostility
of the Iroquois operated powerfully to determine its course. By their
victories the Iroquois secured possession of the upper St. Lawrence
and of Lakes Erie and Ontario. The French were thus prevented from
expanding southward. Their natural entrance to the Great Lakes by way
of the upper St. Lawrence was closed, and they were forced to seek the
upper lakes by the Ottawa River route to Georgian Bay. The alliance
with the Algonquins, begun by Champlain, became general, and the
French control over these tribes in the Great Lakes region was firmly
established. The fur trade of the great interior thus became the chief
financial support of Canada. On the other hand the English succeeded to
the Dutch trade and friendship with the Iroquois, and, working through
them as middlemen, competed actively with the French for the trade of
the Northwest.

The effect of this combination on the execution of La Salle's designs
has already been seen. The desire of the English to share in the fur
trade of the Northwest furnished the principal motive for fomenting
the wars between the French and the Iroquois.[102] Protection of
his Indian allies against the Iroquois war parties was one of the
conditions essential to the maintenance of La Salle's Illinois colony.
The active competition of the English for the fur trade of the interior
shortly produced another result. Before the advent of the white man in
America the Indian had been economically self-sustaining.[103] Contact
with civilization speedily developed in him new wants and tastes
without developing the corresponding ability to satisfy them. In the
fur-bearing animals of his country, however, he possessed a source of
wealth greatly prized by the European peoples. Hence the basis of the
barter which constituted the Indian trade. In this barter the red man
should have occupied a position of equality with the white, since each
possessed articles valuable in the eyes of the other. But, as always in
bargaining, where the parties are unequally matched, the Indian, less
intelligent and less shrewd than the white man, and dependent on the
supplies of the latter for his very existence, got the worst of it. As
long as the French monopolized the trade of the Northwest, so long was
their control over the Indians absolute. The entrance of the English
into competition for this trade, by giving the Indian another market
for his furs and another source of supply of the goods needed, tended
to free him from this control.

[Footnote 102: Turner, "Character and Influence of the Fur Trade in
Wisconsin," in _Wisconsin State Historical Society Proceedings_ for
1889, 69.]

[Footnote 103: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 181, 261;
Turner, _Indian Trade in Wisconsin_, 32, 68.]

About the time of La Salle's death the Fox Indians of Wisconsin became
disgruntled over the system of trade carried on by the French, and
in particular over the attempt of the latter to establish commercial
relations with the Sioux, their ancient enemy to the westward.[104] By
means of their strategic position, both geographically with reference
to the Fox-Wisconsin waterway which they controlled, and with respect
to their relations with the various tribes to east and west, they found
it possible to deal with the French on somewhat even terms. In 1687
they threatened to pillage the post at Green Bay, and before the end
of the century they had effectually closed the Fox-Wisconsin highway
to the Mississippi to French travel. St. Cosme's party which visited
Chicago in 1698 desired to follow this route, which would have been
both easier and shorter. They were forced to take the "Chicago road,"
however, because the Foxes would permit no one to pass the northern
route for fear they would go to their enemies.[105]

[Footnote 104: Turner, _op. cit._ There were two reasons for their
opposition to this trade. By supplying the Sioux with firearms and
goods the French enabled them to carry on their contest with the Foxes
on even terms. Furthermore the Foxes desired to play the role of
middlemen in the trade between the French and the Indians farther west.
As early as 1675, according to Marquette (_Jesuit Relations_, LIX,
174), the Illinois Indians were trading in this way between the French
and their own people, and already were acting "like the traders" and
giving them hardly more for their furs than did the French themselves.]

[Footnote 105: Shea, _Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi_, 49.]

The story of the wars thus opened presents a dreary succession of
cruel deeds and bloody scenes, broken by intervals of inactivity,
lasting for half a century.[106] The Foxes guarded with grim tenacity
the Fox-Wisconsin highway; they seemed determined to block every avenue
by which the French might reach the Sioux, and for many years no one
might pass between Canada and Louisiana except at imminent risk of
his life. In part owing to ancient relationship, in part because of
the logic of the situation, the Foxes entered into friendly relations
with the Iroquois and were in turn encouraged by them in their contest
with the French. For a like reason they made war upon the Illinois,
the faithful allies of the French, raiding their territory again and
again, sometimes even to the walls of Fort Chartres, the great French
stronghold of the upper Mississippi Valley. The Foxes were fewer but
no less courageous than the terrible Iroquois, and the role they now
played in the West was curiously similar to that so long enacted on
a larger scale by the Iroquois toward the French. Their opposition
became so intolerable to the French that repeated attempts were made to
exterminate them. The Foxes were terribly punished, and for a long time
their power seemed fairly broken, the survivors being driven to abandon
their homes in Wisconsin and seek refuge beyond the Mississippi. But
they were not exterminated, and the French were at last compelled to
give up the attempt. The dominion of France in the Northwest was itself
drawing to a close; and to its downfall the long struggle with the
Foxes, with its consequent drain upon the treasury of Canada and the
disaffection for the French engendered by it among the northwestern
tribes, materially contributed.

[Footnote 106: For a brief summary of the Fox wars and their results
see Turner, _Indian Trade in Wisconsin_, 34-39. Fuller and more
important accounts are given by Parkman, _A Half Century of Conflict_,
and Hebberd, _Wisconsin under the Dominion of France_. The latter
takes issue with Parkman in certain important respects. A large number
of the original documents pertaining to the subject are printed in
O'Callaghan, _New York Colonial Documents_, Vols. IX, X, and in
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, Vols. XVI, XVII.]

The first great event in the fifty-year contest occurred at Detroit
in 1712. Before this post there appeared in the early summer of that
year a band of a thousand Outagamies or Foxes, three hundred of them
warriors, the remainder women and children. Of the siege, and the
destruction of the Foxes at the hands of the French and their red
allies, which ensued, two accounts differing widely from each other
have come down to us.[107] The official report of Dubuisson, the French
commandant at Detroit, represents that the Foxes came with hostile
intent, which was manifested in their conduct from the moment of their
arrival. This report has been accepted by Parkman, whose account of the
siege is in effect a paraphrase of it.[108] Yet in many respects its
reliability is open to question. The very fact that the Fox warriors
came incumbered with seven hundred women and children suffices to
show that they were not engaged in a hostile expedition. The other
contemporary account of the affair, by DeLery, asserts it was due to a
plot on the part of the French, designed to lure the obnoxious tribe
to its destruction.[109] This account differs from Dubuisson's report
in other respects as well; among other things DeLery represents that
the Foxes evacuated their fort on the eighth day of the siege, while
Dubuisson states that this occurred on the nineteenth day. It seems
impossible at this day, in view of our limited information, to decide
between the two conflicting versions. Concerning the main facts of
the destruction of the Foxes, however, the two accounts agree fairly
well; since Dubuisson's is that of an eye-witness who was at the same
time the commander of the French, and moreover since it is much more
detailed than DeLery's account, the following narrative of the siege is
based upon it.

[Footnote 107: For the documents see _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XVI, 267 ff.]

[Footnote 108: Parkman, _Half Century of Conflict_, chap. xii.]

[Footnote 109: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 293-95.]

The Foxes constructed a fort within fifty paces of the French post and
began to conduct themselves with great insolence. Since Dubuisson's
allies were absent upon their hunting expedition, he felt compelled
to submit to their indignities, until a party sought to kill two of
the French within the fort itself. Then the commandant interfered and
cleared the fort, but he was still compelled to temporize until the
arrival of the Ottawa and other bands for whom he had hastily sent.

Six hundred of the allied warriors shortly arrived, burning with zeal
for the destruction of the hated Foxes, whose warfare had been directed
in turn against all the northwestern tribes except the Sacs, Kickapoos,
and Mascoutens, their allies.[110] The French distributed arms and
ammunition to the warriors and the contest was promptly joined. Their
war cries "made the earth tremble," but evidently the Foxes were not
similarly affected, for they replied in kind less than a pistol shot
away, and the firing began. The Foxes were badly outnumbered and in
sore straits for food and water, but their ancient reputation for
bravery was not belied. The French erected towers from which they fired
down into the hostile camp, driving the Foxes to seek refuge in holes
in the ground. In this fashion the siege was pressed for nineteen days,
with alternations of hope and despair on the part of the contestants.

[Footnote 110: The story of an affair which occurred in the vicinity
of Chicago affords a concrete illustration of the misdeeds by which
these tribes incurred the enmity of their neighbors. Three Miami squaws
who had been captured by the Iroquois had effected their escape in
consequence of the defeat administered to the Senecas by Denonville's
expedition in 1687. Returning to their homes, the squaws encountered
at the River "Chikagou" some Mascoutens, who shortly before had
assassinated two Frenchmen. The fear that the women would reveal this
affair led the assassins to "break their heads." To add insult to
injury they carried away the scalps of the women and gave them to the
Miamis to eat, saying that they were scalps of the Iroquois. For thus
causing the Miamis to eat their own flesh the Great Spirit afflicted
the Mascoutens with a malady which caused them and their children to
die. Not satisfied with this divine vengeance, however, a party of
Miamis came to Perrot in 1690 to tell him their story and obtain his
assistance in a war against the Mascoutens. The French were still
engrossed in their struggle with the Iroquois, however, and the Miamis
were compelled to nurse their vengeance until a more opportune time
(_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 145-46).]

At one time the Foxes, perishing from thirst, adopted a ruse which
smacks of the Homeric age. Covering their ramparts with scarlet
blankets and erecting twelve red standards to attract attention, they
addressed their opponents with taunting speeches. The great war chief
of the Pottawatomies mounted one of the towers and began an eloquent
reply, in which the character of the English, who were regarded as the
sponsors of the Foxes, was severely handled. Meanwhile under cover of
this oratorical contest the Foxes had crept out to secure a supply of
water; seeing which, Dubuisson cut short the speech with an order to
recommence firing and the chieftain's further opinion of the English
was forever lost to the world.

The Foxes soon made overtures to surrender, but the red foe was
implacable for their destruction and the French commander, reflecting
that they had been set on by the English to destroy him, and that "war
and pity do not well agree together," abandoned them to their fate.
Taking advantage of a stormy night the survivors made their escape and
fled. Dubuisson spurred on the pursuit, however, and they were brought
to bay a few miles away. A second siege ensued, terminating four days
later in an abject surrender. No quarter was granted to the vanquished
warriors; all but a hundred were killed, and these were tied, being
reserved, evidently, for future torture. This pleasure was denied
the victors, however, for all succeeded in making their escape. The
conquerors returned to the fort with the enslaved women and children,
where "their amusement was" to shoot four or five each day. The Hurons
spared not a single one of their captives. "In this manner," concludes
Dubuisson, "came to an end, Sir, these two wicked nations, who so badly
afflicted and troubled all the country. Our Rev. Father chaunted a
grand mass to render thanks to God for having preserved us from the
enemy."

But this pious thanksgiving proved premature. The Foxes had suffered
a great disaster, but only a portion of the tribe had been involved
in it, and of this portion one-third of the warriors had escaped. The
immediate result was that they turned on their foes with redoubled
fury. Father Marest, writing only a week after Dubuisson's report was
made, points out that, with their allies, the Foxes still number five
hundred warriors. The French in this region will always have cause to
fear an attack and travelers will always be in danger; "for the Foxes,
Kickapoos, and Mascoutens are found everywhere, and they are a people
without pity and without reason."[111]

The good Father's fears were amply justified. DeLery tells us that as
soon as the Mascoutens and Kickapoos of the larger villages heard of
the destruction of their allies, they sent out war parties to Green
Bay, Detroit, and to all the routes of travel. Their Indian foes fled
in terror before them, and this went on until Louvigny brought about
peace four years later.[112] These are the statements of an enemy of
Dubuisson, but they are amply corroborated by official sources.[113]
So great was the fear of the Foxes on the part of the other tribes
that they preferred death from starvation in their cabins to the risk
of meeting them on their hunting expeditions. It was this interference
with the prosecution of the fur trade that chiefly excited the anger
of the French. Ramezay, the acting governor of Canada, observes in a
letter of September, 1714, that the merchants will this year have a
gloomy confirmation of these conditions, seeing how little peltry has
come down to Mackinac.

[Footnote 111: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 289.]

[Footnote 112: _Ibid._, 293-95.]

[Footnote 113: See letters of Ramezay and Veudreuil, _ibid._, 300-307.]

In this same year the Foxes fell upon the Illinois and killed or
carried off seventy-seven of them.[114] Veudreuil, the governor, had
decided the preceding year that the Foxes must be destroyed and had
intrusted the task to Louvigny, the former commander at Mackinac.[115]
It was planned to establish peace between the Miamis and the Illinois,
who were enemies in common of the Foxes, and then to lead all the
northwestern tribes friendly to the French against the Foxes and their
allies.[116] This project failed of execution, however, owing to the
illness of Louvigny.[117] De Lignery was therefore substituted as
the leader, and a more elaborate campaign was devised. The Miamis,
Ouiatanons, Illinois, and Detroit Indians were to rendezvous at Chicago
under French leadership in the summer of 1715, while the coureurs de
bois, the Ottawas, and the other northern tribes were to be gathered
at Mackinac under De Lignery. The departure of the forces from these
places was to be so timed that both would arrive at the Fox fort at the
end of August. The detachment which arrived first was to invest the
fort and then await the arrival of the second corps before attempting
its reduction. To complete the plan, agents had been sent to the Sioux
to urge them not only to refuse the Foxes an asylum, but to join the
French in making war upon them.

[Footnote 114: Parkman, _Half Century of Conflict_, chap. xiv.]

[Footnote 115: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 298.]

[Footnote 116: _Ibid._, 303-7; 319-20.]

[Footnote 117: _Ibid._, 312-14.]

The campaign thus elaborately projected utterly miscarried, but
its story deserves a place in the history of early Chicago, none
the less. The choice of Chicago as the place of rendezvous of the
southern tribes was due, aside from the obvious convenience of its
location, to the game of all sorts which abounded here, on which the
savages could easily subsist while awaiting the arrival of the Detroit
contingent.[118] An epidemic of measles assailed the Ouiatanons, and
the fickle savages promptly charged the deaths which resulted to the
French, who had come to lead them to the place of rendezvous.[119] They
were cajoled into promising, however, that such as were able would go
to Chicago, and a half-dozen Frenchmen were left among them to insure
their arrival by the tenth of August. The remainder of the French went
on to rouse the Illinois and lead them to the meeting-place.

[Footnote 118: _Ibid._, 319.]

[Footnote 119: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 322-25.]

Meanwhile the measles continued to afflict the Ouiatanons, the death
rate mounting to fifteen or twenty a day. Instead of the two hundred
warriors that had been promised, the little band of Frenchmen were
forced to depart on the overland march to Chicago with only one-tenth
as many.[120] Their food supply was scanty, and the savages were
restrained from hunting along the way by their fear of the Foxes,
whose war trails leading toward Detroit were encountered. When they
reached Chicago they found the Illinois and Detroit savages had not
yet arrived; nor were there any signs of the canoes which were to have
come from Mackinac to inform them regarding the march against the Foxes
from that point. To add to their troubles two of their party were
attacked by the measles, whereupon the whole band of Indians deserted
the Frenchmen and returned to their homes. The latter, after waiting
four or five days beyond the time set for the arrival of their comrades
with the Illinois contingent, set out to meet them. In this they failed
because of their ignorance of the route, and the little party found
rest for the time being with the Indians at Starved Rock.

[Footnote 120: _Ibid._]

Meanwhile, what had happened to the Illinois Indians ? The Frenchmen
who had gone from the Ouiatanons to rouse the Illinois received a royal
welcome from the Indians of the Rock, and, collecting their warriors,
led a band of four hundred and fifty to Chicago, which was reached
on the seventeenth of August. The leader was much mortified to find
no one there and to get no news from Mackinac. To divert the savages
and if possible to obtain news, scouts were sent out to a distance of
thirty leagues. Their efforts were fruitless, however. On their return
ten days later without any tidings, the Indians could be restrained
no longer. They dispersed and the Frenchmen returned to Starved
Rock, where they found their countrymen whom they had left among the
Ouiatanons.

One further act remains to complete this series of misfortunes. The
coureurs de bois assembled at Mackinac, but the failure of the supplies
which were expected from Montreal to arrive led to the abandonment of
the northern end of the expedition.[121] This explains the non-arrival
of the canoes at Chicago, which had so disappointed the Ouiatanon and
Illinois detachments. In ignorance of these various miscarriages the
Detroit contingent arrived. From Chicago they proceeded to the Illinois
village at the Rock, expecting to find there the French leaders of the
enterprise.[122] They, however, were now at Kaskaskia, overcome with
illness. They could only send a messenger to urge the Illinois to join
the Hurons and others who composed the expedition in a foray against
the Mascoutens and Kickapoos, allies of the Foxes, who were hunting
"along a certain river." This was done, and in November the combined
bands, accompanied by only two Frenchmen, fell upon the Mascoutens.
The report of what followed must be taken with the usual allowance for
statements which have an Indian origin.[123] According to their story
they attacked the Mascoutens, who were stationed on a rock, and after
a sharp battle forced their position, killing one hundred warriors and
taking forty-seven prisoners, without counting the women and children.
To conceal the route of their retreat the party went down the river in
canoes a distance of twenty-five leagues. In spite of this precaution
they were overtaken on the eleventh day by four hundred men, "the elite
of the Reynards." Though they numbered but eighty, and were incumbered
by the prisoners and wounded, they asserted that in a battle lasting
from dawn till three o'clock in the afternoon they defeated the Foxes
with great loss and pursued them for several hours.

[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, 339.]

[Footnote 122: _Ibid._, 341. That they came to Chicago is not directly
stated, but I consider this a fair inference from this and the
preceding documents.]

[Footnote 123: It is true there were two Frenchmen with the party,
as already stated. But these had a direct interest in permitting the
Indian reports to go uncorrected; one of them was, in fact, promoted
for his participation in this expedition, and the other was an outlawed
bushranger among the Illinois, whose "reprobate life" had been the
subject of an indignant letter from the governor to the French ministry
only the year before (_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 302-3).
Now, apparently, a virtue was made of necessity, and he was urged to
use his influence over the Illinois to induce them to join the Hurons
in the proposed expedition.]

In the following year, 1716, the delayed project against the Foxes was
executed. Louvigny was again intrusted with the command.[124] He left
Montreal the first of May with two hundred and twenty-five Frenchmen,
and two hundred more were to join him at Mackinac.[125] While en route
they were joined by about four hundred Indian allies, and the whole
party proceeded by way of Mackinac and Green Bay to the country of the
Foxes. The latter had gathered to the number of five hundred warriors
and three thousand women and children in a fort protected by three rows
of oaken palisades and a ditch, located on the Fox River some distance
from Green Bay. This Louvigny besieged in regular European fashion,
with trenches and mining operations. The Foxes fought with spirit,
although, according to Charlevoix, both besiegers and besieged believed
them to be on the brink of destruction. At the end of three days,
however, a surrender was arranged, terms were granted the besieged, and
the invading army marched away.

[Footnote 124: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 328-30.]

[Footnote 125: _Ibid._, 342. For secondary accounts of this expedition
see Hebberd, _Wisconsin under the Dominion of France_, 94 ff.;
Charlevoix, _History of New France_ (Shea transl.), V, 305 ff.]

The reason for this surprising outcome of the great expedition remains
a matter of doubt to the present day. Louvigny asserted that the terms
he imposed were so harsh that no one believed the Foxes would accede
to them; and further, that his allies approved of the arrangement
made.[126] The first of these statements is not worthy of serious
attention, and the last the French Indians themselves indignantly
denied.[127] The Fox chieftain, Ouashala, later asserted that they
could easily have escaped by means of a sortie by night, and that
this had already been resolved upon. Possibly the real truth is that
Louvigny was hampered by his instructions and that he feared to press
the Foxes to the last extremity. It may be also that the reported
approach of three hundred allies of the Foxes influenced his decision.
Whatever the reason, the results from the expedition were meager. The
Foxes did not fulfil the terms of their agreement with Louvigny, and
although they refrained from making war on the French Indians for a
time, the situation in the Northwest continued to be as intolerable to
the French as ever.

[Footnote 126: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 343.]

[Footnote 127: Charlevoix, _History of New France_, V, 306.]

The lull which followed Louvigny's expedition was soon broken, and the
restless feuds between the Illinois and the Foxes and their allies
were renewed. In 1719 the Foxes were again at war with the Illinois,
who seem this time to have been the aggressors.[128] When Charlevoix
passed down the Kankakee and Illinois rivers in 1721, he devoted a
considerable portion of his journal to a description of the dangers
encountered along the way.[129] At Starved Rock he was filled with
horror at the spectacle of the remains of two prisoners who had been
burned recently. At Lake Peoria he was informed by some Canadians
that his party was in the midst of four Fox war parties. A band of
Illinois had recently encountered one of them, and each party had
taken a prisoner. Here as at Starved Rock the priest was horrified by
the spectacle of the wretch whom the Illinois had tortured to death.
Notwithstanding Charlevoix's sturdy escort, commanded by the gallant
St. Ange,[130] it was considered dangerous for the party to proceed. It
was strengthened somewhat and the resolution was formed to press on,
but the horrors he had seen and heard so affected the good Father that
for a week he was unable to sleep soundly.

[Footnote 128: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 381, 429,
445, 447.]

[Footnote 129: Charlevoix, _Histoire ... de la Nouvelle France_, VI,
letters of September 17 and October 5, 1721.]

[Footnote 130: For an account of St. Ange's career in Illinois see
Mason, "Illinois in the Eighteenth Century," in _Chapters from Illinois
History_.]

The Illinois now captured and burned the nephew of Ouashala, the
principal war chief of the Foxes. The latter avenged this by laying
siege the next year to the Illinois stronghold of Starved Rock. They
starved the defenders into a surrender, and then, to placate the
French, spared their lives.[131] Returning to their own territory the
leaders hastened to Green Bay to justify to the French commandant
their action in going to war. Montigny blustered and assured them that
whenever Onontio[132] wished it they should "indeed die and perish
without resource." To the French minister, however, Veudreuil admitted,
in a report of the following year, that the Illinois directly, and
indirectly the French, through their neglect to secure justice to the
Foxes, were responsible for the hostilities.[133] It is evident from
the reports of the French themselves that the Foxes were frequently
treated unjustly by the French and their Indian allies, and that in
spite of this and their natural ferocity, they at times displayed
admirable patience in enduring the impositions heaped upon them.

[Footnote 131: For the original documents pertaining to this affair see
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 418-22, 428-31.]

[Footnote 132: The Indian designation for the French Governor. It was
later applied also to the French King.]

[Footnote 133: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 429-30. An
inaccurate description of the affray at Starved Rock is given by
Charlevoix (_History of New France_, VI, 71). He states that the
Illinois beat off the Foxes with a loss of one hundred and twenty
men, having themselves lost only twenty. He adds that the attack
determined the Illinois to abandon the Rock and Lake Peoria, and join
their kinsmen who had already sought refuge at Fort Chartres. No check
whatever now existed to the raids of the Foxes along the Illinois
River, and communication between Canada and Louisiana by this route
became more impracticable than ever. It is plain, however, in spite of
Charlevoix's statements, that there were Illinois at the Rock during
the following years. For references to them between 1730 and 1736 see
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, no, 183, 251. At the latter
date the Illinois village numbered fifty warriors.]

For several years following 1725 divided counsels prevailed among
the French with respect to the policy to be pursued toward the
Foxes.[134] Some argued that they should be destroyed. Others agreed
as to the desirability of this, but, dubious as to its practicability,
counseled a policy of conciliation. The French king first ordered
their destruction, and then that they be let alone. A fitful peace was
patched up for a time, but the receipt of information that the Foxes
had promised English emissaries to kill all the French decided the
latter to make war in earnest.[135]

[Footnote 134: See Parkman, _Half Century of Conflict_, chap. xiv. For
the original documents see Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVI.]

[Footnote 135: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVI, 476-77.]

The Foxes resisted desperately the attempt to exterminate them.[136]
De Lignery led an expedition from Montreal in 1728, which on its
arrival in Wisconsin numbered five hundred Frenchmen and over a
thousand Indians. To this invasion of her future sister state Illinois
contributed a force of twenty Frenchmen and five hundred Indians, who
came by way of the Chicago Portage. The results of this great effort,
however, were but slight. The Foxes abandoned their villages and
retired before the French, who succeeded in capturing two squaws and an
old man. The former were enslaved and the latter was roasted at a slow
fire, to the scandal of Father Crespel, who expressed his surprise to
the tormentors at the pleasure they derived from the performance.

[Footnote 136: For the facts about the ensuing period see _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, Vol. XVII, editorial introduction and
accompanying documents. Father Crespel's report of De Lignery's
expedition is printed in Smith, _History of Wisconsin_, I, 339 ff.]

Having burned the villages and ravaged the cornfields De Lignery
retired, confessing his failure and placing the responsibility for
it on the Illinois contingent, who should have come by way of the
Wisconsin Portage instead of by Chicago, and thus have taken the Foxes
in the rear. The forts upon Lake Pepin and Green Bay were evacuated,
and Wisconsin was temporarily abandoned to the red man. The only
recourse now before the French was to rouse against the Foxes the
neighboring tribes, who by constantly harassing them might gradually
wear them down.[137] This policy proved effective, and in 1729 the
Foxes sued for peace. It was not granted, however, and meanwhile a
chain of circumstances arising from De Lignery's humiliation of 1728
was weaving for them a disaster more terrible than that which had
befallen them at Detroit in 1712.

[Footnote 137: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, xiii.]

When the French evacuated Fort Beauharnois[138] on Lake Pepin in
1728, they attempted to escape down the Mississippi to Fort Chartres,
but were taken captive by the Kickapoos and Mascoutens, hitherto the
allies of the Foxes, who had settled in eastern Iowa.[139] During
the long captivity that ensued Father Guignas, one of the prisoners,
succeeded in inducing their captors to desert the Foxes and sue for
peace with the French.[140] Weakened by this defection the Foxes
sought, by passing around the southern end of Lake Michigan and through
the country of the Ouiatanons, who were well disposed toward them, to
escape to the Iroquois.[141] The Kickapoos and Mascoutens reported this
design to the nearest French posts, but, doubting the fidelity of their
new allies, the settlers around Fort Chartres for a time declined to
take the field.

[Footnote 138: Named for Charles Beauharnois, governor of New France
from 1726 to 1747. He was reputed to be the natural son of Louis XIV,
and it has sometimes been said, though apparently incorrectly, that the
Empress Josephine was descended from him.]

[Footnote 139: Narrative of De Boucherville, _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XVII, 36 ff.]

[Footnote 140: _Ibid._, 36 ff., 110.]

[Footnote 141: For the documents pertaining to this affair see
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, V, 106-7; and XVII, 100-101,
109-30.]

Confirmation shortly arrived in the shape of information that the
Foxes had captured some of the Illinois near Starved Rock and had
burned the son of the great chief of the Cahokias. On this St. Ange,
the commandant of Fort Chartres, conducted an expedition against them.
Parties of French and of savages gathered from all directions. From
Fort St. Joseph came De Villiers and his son, the latter a mere youth,
destined, a quarter of a century later at Fort Necessity, to defeat and
capture the youthful George Washington.

In all some twelve or thirteen hundred French and Indians surrounded
the doomed Foxes. The latter had intrenched themselves in a grove on
the bank of a small river, some distance to the southeast of Starved
Rock.[142] Under the direction of the elder De Villiers the siege was
pressed with vigor. Both forces suffered from lack of food, but the
necessity of the Foxes was naturally the greater. On the twenty-third
day of the siege, under cover of a cold and stormy night they attempted
to make their escape. Their design was revealed by the crying of the
children and the besiegers promptly pursued them. As soon as daylight
made it possible to distinguish friend from foe an indiscriminate
slaughter began. The Fox warriors, weakened by hunger and long exertion
and surrounded by overwhelming numbers, maintained their courage to
the end. The women and children and old men walked in front, and the
warriors stationed themselves in the rear between them and the enemy.
But their line was speedily broken. Two hundred of the warriors were
killed, besides an equal number of women and children. Some four or
five hundred of the latter were taken prisoners and scattered as slaves
among the various tribes. A few of the warriors, by throwing away their
arms and ammunition, succeeded in escaping, but in such a plight that
their fate was little preferable to that of the slain.

[Footnote 142: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, in, 115, 129.
J. F. Steward (_Lost Maramech and Earliest Chicago_) locates this fort
on the Fox River, in Kendall County, Illinois. This does not harmonize,
however, with Hocquart's letter to the French minister, January 15,
1731, describing the place and the destruction of the Foxes.]

The triumph of the French over the foe that had defied them for a
generation was, apparently, complete. Even their Indian allies had
been moved to pity by the plight of the Foxes, but no humane sentiment
animated the subjects of the Most Christian King.[143] The extirpation
of the hated race was decreed, and the savage allies were spurred on to
the work of destruction. By drawing in the slaves from the nations to
which they had been distributed,[144] the surviving Foxes managed to
assemble a village of forty-five cabins the year after their overthrow
at the hands of De Villiers. The Hurons of Detroit, ancient enemies of
the Foxes, assumed the task of destroying this remnant of the tribe,
and sent an invitation to the band of Christian Iroquois at the Lake
of the Two Mountains to join them in the work. They accepted, and in
the autumn of 1731 a band of forty-seven appeared at Detroit where they
were joined by seventy-four Hurons and four Ottawas and the whole set
out for Wisconsin.[145]

[Footnote 143: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, xiv, 167-69.]

[Footnote 144: The Illinois furnished an exception; their captives had
all been put to death (_ibid._, 163).]

They followed the Indian trail to the mouth of the St. Joseph River
and thence around the southern end of Lake Michigan to the Chicago
Portage, where they built a fort and left in it some sick men with a
guard to protect them. Some chiefs of the St. Joseph Pottawatomies came
to them while here and promised if they would defer their expedition
until spring they would join them. They declined to assent to this,
and pushed on westward to the village of the Mascoutens and Kickapoos
located on Rock River. According to the boastful report of the Indians,
made on their return from the expedition, these were asked to join them
but refused in terror. They were persuaded, however, to furnish guides
to conduct the party to their former allies, but these prudently turned
back before the village of the Foxes was reached.

[Footnote 145: Parkman (_Half Century of Conflict_, chap, xiv) tells
the story of the expedition. For the original documents pertaining to
it see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 148-69.]

Winter had now arrived and the party was suffering from hunger and
the fatigue caused by the deep snow. A council was held and the old
men favored turning back. The young men declined to accede to this,
however, and so the party divided. The old men returned to Chicago,
while the others to the number of forty Hurons and thirty Iroquois
pushed on toward the Wisconsin, where they expected to find their
quarry. After several days they came upon the Foxes, who promptly took
to flight. For the story of what followed we have only the report of
the victors, which is manifestly unreliable. It is repeated, therefore,
rather as furnishing a typical illustration of an Indian report of
such an encounter than because of faith in the trustworthiness of its
details.

[Illustration: THE OLD NORTHWEST

Showing the principal waterways and places of historical interest in
the early period]

The warriors, in hot pursuit of the fleeing quarry, were astonished on
reaching the top of the hill at seeing in the valley before them, on
the bank of the Wisconsin, the main village of the Foxes comprising
forty-six cabins. From these the men streamed forth, arms in hand, to
the number of ninety, to meet them. The chiefs of the attacking party
exhorted their young men, volleys were exchanged, and the assailants
threw aside their guns and with tomahawk and dagger drove the Foxes
back into the village with great slaughter. One hundred and fifty were
killed and an equal number made captive, while but ten escaped; and
these, quite naked, died of cold.

This overwhelming victory is partly accounted for by the explanation
that both parties to the contest fought on snow-shoes, and the Foxes,
being less expert in the use of these than were the Hurons and the
Iroquois, were placed at a great disadvantage. Before the conflict the
heathen Hurons, in spite of the remonstrance of the Christian Iroquois,
"made medicine" to protect them from the hostile bullets and arrows.
At the first volley the chief medicine man and four or five others of
the Hurons were killed, while the Iroquois, who had prayed assiduously
during the whole expedition and had placed all their reliance in the
Master of Life, escaped unscathed.

After the battle the victors released a wounded Fox warrior and
sent him with six of the women to carry the pleasant message to the
remaining villages that their chief village had just been eaten up by
the Hurons and the Iroquois, who would remain there for two days; the
Foxes were welcome to follow them, but as soon as they should see them
they would "break the heads" of their women and children and make a
rampart of their dead bodies, and would endeavor to complete the work
by piling the remainder of the nation on top of them. Strangely enough
it does not appear that this invitation was accepted.

As usual the Fox version of this action was never told. We may well
believe that another serious defeat was dealt them, for the war
party returned to Detroit with one hundred captives and reported
having killed some fifty on the way. Further than this we cannot
safely go. The tribe was not exterminated, however much its power
was broken. After the decisive overthrow of the Foxes in 1730 the
French re-established the post of Green Bay, and hither, in 1733,
came De Villiers, the leader in that conflict. In this same year
Beauharnois, the governor, had again resolved that the Foxes must be
exterminated.[146] De Villiers rashly attempted to seize some who had
taken refuge with the Sacs and in the melee that ensued the commandant,
together with his son and a number of the French, was slain.[147] The
Sacs, retreating, were followed by the French and a drawn battle ensued.

[Footnote 146: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 182.]

[Footnote 147: On this affair see _ibid._, pp. xv, 188-91, 200-204.]

The consequences of this embroilment were far-reaching. The Sacs were
kinsmen of the Foxes, but hitherto they had held aloof from them
and had submitted to French control. Together with the Foxes many
now withdrew from Wisconsin and established themselves west of the
Mississippi within the boundaries of the modern state of Iowa. From
this time, therefore, dates the confederation of the two tribes. This
migration did not end the struggle, however. The French felt that
the affair at Green Bay must be avenged if they would retain their
influence over the tribes of the Northwest. It was recognized that De
Villiers' foolhardiness, rather than misconduct on the part of the
Sacs, had occasioned his death, and it was therefore determined to
pardon them on condition that they abandon the Foxes and return to
their French allegiance. If they refused this reparation they were to
be destroyed.

In August, 1734, sixty Frenchmen under the command of the Sieur De
Noyelles set out from Montreal for a winter expedition against the
distant tribes.[148] The party was to go to Detroit, and from thence
either by way of Mackinac or "in a strait line overland," according
to circumstances. In addition to his sixty Frenchmen De Noyelles was
accompanied by bands of Iroquois from the Lake of the Two Mountains
and Hurons from Detroit, and in case he decided to follow the overland
route from Detroit he was to arrange a rendezvous with Celeron who was
to lead a mixed force of French and Indians from Mackinac.

[Footnote 148: For the documents pertaining to this expedition see
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 206 ff.]

The ultimate failure of the expedition was decreed even before
it started. The chief reliance for the punishment of the Sacs and
Foxes was placed in the friendly Indians, who largely outnumbered
the French. To provide even the small number of the latter which had
been decided upon necessitated stripping Canada of one-tenth of her
armed defenders.[149] The policy which had been determined upon with
respect to the Sacs has already been indicated. In accordance with it
De Noyelles was ordered to grant peace to them on condition that they
give up the Foxes; otherwise he was to destroy both nations and to let
his red allies "eat them up."[150] The expectation of enjoying this
pleasure was the sole inducement for the Huron and Iroquois contingents
to engage in the enterprise; yet they were deceived by De Noyelles
as to the nature of his orders. When the Hurons, in council, stated
that they would not march unless he had orders to destroy the Sacs
as well as the Foxes, he replied, without further explanation, that
he had orders "to Eat up both nations."[151] When this deception was
discovered, the Hurons and Iroquois declined to assist De Noyelles
further, and this, as will be seen, caused not only the failure of the
expedition, but came near resulting in the complete destruction of the
Frenchmen engaged in it.

[Footnote 149: _Ibid._, 208, footnote.]

[Footnote 150: _Ibid._, 209-10.]

[Footnote 151: _Ibid._, 256-57.]

When De Noyelles reached Detroit it was decided to continue overland.
This involved passing around the southern end of Lake Michigan and
through the tribe of the Ouiatanons, located on the upper Wabash.[152]
Here it was learned that six cabins of the Sacs had established
themselves on the St. Joseph River, having taken refuge here, in a
region where the French influence was strongest, in token of their
desire for peace. De Noyelles' Huron and Iroquois allies, however,
having come out in search of Sac and Fox scalps, immediately declared
their intention of going to "eat up" these six cabins. De Noyelles
protested against this, explaining to them, apparently for the first
time, his instructions to spare the Sacs who made their submission to
the French. In spite of all he could do the Hurons persisted in their
design, and departed in a body to execute it. The Iroquois stayed with
De Noyelles, but their disaffection, which in the end was to bring the
expedition to naught, dates from this incident.

[Footnote 152: The French established a fort near the site of the
modern city of Lafayette, Indiana, about the year 1720. For its
location and history see Oscar J. Craig, "Ouiatanon," in _Indiana
Historical Society Publications_, Vol. II, No. 8.]

The documents left us do not permit a detailed statement concerning the
route followed from the country of the Ouiatanons to the Mississippi.
De Noyelles had planned to go by way of the Illinois, but this was
given up because of the long détour it would necessitate. From the
Ouiatanons he proceeded to the Kickapoo tribe, on leaving which five
Sacs en route to the St. Joseph River were captured. Under threat of
torture these were forced to guide the party to the Fox village. It
is clear that the expedition rounded Lake Michigan and traveled in a
general northwesterly direction. It is possible and even probable that
it passed by the site of Chicago, as did the Huron-Iroquois party of
1731; but since the party was traveling overland on snow-shoes, and
was thus not bound to follow the river courses, the route taken by it
cannot be definitely known.

From the prisoners it was learned that the Foxes had left their posts
on the Pomme de Cigne River--the modern Wapsipinicon--where they had
established themselves on retiring from Wisconsin after the death
of the two De Villiers, in 1733, and had withdrawn to the river Des
Moines. On crossing the Mississippi, the supply of provisions having
become low, the party was forced to content itself with one "very
inferior" meal each day. On March 12 the Fox fort was reached; it was
deserted, but the intense cold compelled a halt of two days, during
which the party was entirely without food. Meanwhile reconnoitering
parties had been sent out, and these now returned to report that they
had seen smoke. The little army moved forward by night, crossing
several rivers with the water up to the men's waists. A halt was made
behind a hill and the men, wrapped in their robes, tired, wet through,
and hungry, awaited the dawn. They then advanced again; the Indians,
believing the goal was at hand, and that the hostile village numbered
only four cabins, eager to have the honor of arriving first, proceeded
at a run for four or five leagues, the Frenchmen following as best they
could. The race ended on the bank of a wide and rapid river, full of
floating ice. On the opposite bank stood the village they had come so
far to seek; but in place of four or five cabins it numbered fifty-five.

The river was the Des Moines, the largest western tributary of the
Mississippi above the Missouri; and the point where the village stood
was sixty leagues from its mouth, in the vicinity, probably, of the
modern capital of Iowa. Nontagarouche, the Iroquois war chief, proposed
to De Noyelles that the whole party should swim across. This the latter
declared to be impossible, on account of the cold. He further pointed
out that they had only sixty men at hand, the others having scattered
in search of the village, the tracks of whose occupants they had been
following; and that, even if it were possible, the enemy would kill
them as fast as they landed. He proposed, therefore, to reassemble
the party and, as they were still undiscovered, to go higher up the
river and construct rafts on which to cross over. They would then be
in a position to attack the enemy with arms in their hands, and with
some prospect of success. Nontagarouche replied that De Noyelles "was
no man." At this the brave Frenchman's anger blazed forth. "Dog," he
cried, "if thou art so brave, swim over and let us see what Thou wilt
do."

The chief did not immediately avail himself of this invitation, but
his insubordination destroyed the last hope of a successful issue of
the campaign. The details of the action that followed are not entirely
clear, though its main features may be followed with assurance. The
Iroquois, with some of the French, left the commander, who proceeded
along the river about a league. Meanwhile others of the army, probably
some of those who had spread out in search of the hostile village, had
crossed the river on a jam of driftwood and logs, and joined battle
with the enemy. The advance party, consisting of seven Frenchmen and
twenty-three Indians, thus found itself confronted by two hundred and
fifty Sacs and Foxes. Onorakinguiah, an Iroquois chief from the Sault
St. Louis, cried out: "My French and Indian brothers, we are dead
men, but we must sell our lives very dearly and not let ourselves be
captured." They fought so fiercely that the foe was at first driven
back. On perceiving the small number of their opponents, however, they
pressed forward with the design of surrounding them, seeing which the
French and Iroquois in turn retreated, fighting as best they might. One
of them ran to report the situation to De Noyelles, who had crossed the
river and returned to the village which he found had been deserted.
On receiving the report of the plight of the advance guard he sent
forward all of the men who were with him, with word that he would Join
them with the main body as soon as it should arrive. A half-hour later
he moved forward with such as had joined him in the meantime, and the
combat was continued for several hours.

Toward nightfall the Foxes attempted to scalp the wounded on the other
side. This led De Noyelles to order his force to fall back in search
of a suitable spot to fortify. A detachment of fifty men was made
to continue the fighting and cover the work of the remainder while
constructing the fort. Meanwhile the contingent of Kickapoos observed
the contest from a near-by eminence, debating, as De Noyelles feared,
whether they should join forces with the enemy.

The next day through the instrumentality of the disaffected Iroquois a
council was held with the Sacs. They informed De Noyelles that but for
the fact that the French had attacked them, and for the small number
of Frenchmen, they would have surrendered; but that as the French were
inferior in number to the Iroquois they feared the latter, when they
were at a distance from the Foxes, would "put them in the Kettle."
According to his own story, De Noyelles adopted in reply the tone of a
conqueror. The Sacs were told they might come forth in perfect safety,
and were promised protection from the Iroquois. In truth, De Noyelles
had so little control over his allies that he could not protect his own
soldiers from being beaten by them before his face. This fear removed,
however, the Sacs discovered other obstacles. The weather was too cold
for their women and children to travel; if the Sacs really had any
desire to join the French the project was effectually prevented by the
Foxes. They informed their allies that in case they deserted to the
French they would immediately "eat" their women and children.

For four days longer the French faced their foe. During this time they
were sorely beset by hunger, their menu consisting of twelve dogs and a
horse; this supply being exhausted, they were reduced to eating their
moccasins. The Iroquois now proposed to abandon them, and De Noyelles
was forced to give up the enterprise. He covered his failure as well as
possible by sending a "collar"[153] to the Sacs offering to grant them
their lives on condition that they desert the Foxes and return to their
old homes at Green Bay. This the Sacs promised to do. The French then
retired and made their way to Fort Chartres.[154]

[Footnote 153: A belt to accompany a formal communication of a public
character.]

[Footnote 154: For the narrative of this expedition I have drawn
chiefly upon the report of De Noyelles, printed in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XVII, 221-30. It differs from the report of
Hocquart, the intendant, in some respects, but aside from the fact that
De Noyelles was the leader of the expedition while Hocquart remained
in Canada, the latter had an interest in misrepresenting the facts, in
order to minimize as much as possible the failure which had occurred.]

The expedition had extended over seven months of time during which the
party had traversed hundreds of miles of wilderness in the dead of
winter, exposed to the inclemency of the elements, and much of the time
in immediate peril of starvation. At the end, confronted by two hundred
and fifty Sacs and Foxes, and with disaffection rife among his Indian
allies, De Noyelles had been compelled to give up and retreat. The only
immediate result was the infliction of a slight loss upon the enemy in
the battle, and the promise of the Sacs to abandon the Foxes and return
to Green Bay. Both the governor and the intendant joined in approval
of the conduct of De Noyelles, the intendant expressing his surprise
that Frenchmen should be able to endure the hardships which his party
had surmounted.[155] The governor declared that the savages admitted
the courage of the French to be equal to every obstacle, and that they
would seek the enemy "at the end of the world."[156]

[Footnote 155: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 232.]

[Footnote 156: _Ibid._, 219.]

With the failure of De Noyelles' expedition the French felt constrained
to resort to a policy of conciliation. Grave fears were entertained
for a time lest the failure should have a disastrous effect upon their
authority throughout the Northwest generally. If the dispatches of the
governor and the intendant of Canada are to be credited, however, no
such result manifested itself. But scattered here and there throughout
the dispatches of this period are intimations that all was not going
well with the French, and the truth seems to be that the long contest
with the Foxes, with its attendant consequences, had greatly weakened
their hold upon the northwestern tribes. It is plain from their own
dispatches that the French did not dare to attempt the extermination of
the Sacs; nor, even after all the disasters which they had suffered,
to prosecute further the policy of exterminating the Foxes. The latter
sued for peace, but at the same time succeeded in entering into a
new alliance with the Sioux who promised them an asylum in case of
need.[157] Beauharnois, the governor, sagely concluding that "there Was
danger in driving the Reynards to despair," offered to pardon them on
condition that they disperse among the other tribes and that no mention
ever be made of the name of the Reynards, "who had so often Disturbed
the earth."[158]

[Footnote 157: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 258-59.]

[Footnote 158: _Ibid._, 258, 275-76.]

The French found it impossible, however, to carry out even the new
policy of mildness toward the obnoxious tribe. Their efforts to compel
the Sacs to return to their old home near Green Bay were unsuccessful.
Various excuses were given: the land had lost its fertility on account
of its being stained with the blood of the French and of themselves.
Probably the real reason, however, was the one given by some spokesmen
of the Sacs and Foxes who had settled on Rock River, at a conference
held in the spring of 1739. They stated that they had determined to
return to "LaBaye" as Onontio had desired them, but they had been told
by many French and savages that the French desired their return only in
order that they might the more easily slaughter them, and that an army
of French and their allies was already prepared for this purpose.[159]

[Footnote 159: _Ibid._, 320.]

Whatever truth there may have been in this at the time, the Foxes
could hardly be blamed, in view of what had gone before, for their
suspicions. Their alliance with the Sioux was continued and the tribes
in common made war upon the Chippewas and the Illinois, both allies of
the French.[160] The Foxes took the further precaution of entering into
an understanding with the Iroquois, similar to that already entered
into with the Sioux, which secured them an asylum in time of need.[161]
They were thus prepared, in case of a new French attack, to retreat in
either direction to safety.

[Footnote 160: Hebberd, _Wisconsin Under the Dominion of France_, 147.]

[Footnote 161: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 339.]

That these precautions, and the suspicions of French treachery
toward them, were not without reason, is shown by the dispatches of
Beauharnois. In a speech to the representatives of the Sacs and Foxes
at Montreal in July, 1743, the Governor assured them he had no hostile
disposition toward them, and urged them not to listen to the "evil
words" that came to them from the St. Joseph River.[162] He further
directed that the bands located at Chicago, Milwaukee, and on Rock
River should join those who had returned to their old home near Green
Bay.[163] Yet he had secretly planned an expedition for the year 1742
to destroy them, and the project had been approved by his advisers on
the ground that for several years the French Court had had "nothing so
much at heart" as the destruction of the Foxes.[164]

[Footnote 162: This refers to the French who came from the St. Joseph
to carry on a trade, apparently illicit, with the Foxes at Chicago and
Milwaukee.]

[Footnote 163: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 404-5.]

[Footnote 164: _Ibid._, 338-39.]

That the French did not dare to execute this program is sufficiently
evident. Their power in the Northwest was tottering, and in 1743
Beauharnois confessed that he was powerless to hinder the union of the
Sioux with the Foxes.[165] The tribe whose destruction had so often
been decreed and so many times attempted could at last defy the French
with impunity. A few years later the disaffection among the Indians for
the French culminated in a widespread revolt.[166] Even the Illinois,
with whom allegiance to the French had become proverbial, for a time
inclined to join it. The danger was surmounted for the time being
but the struggle of the French to maintain themselves was shortly
transferred to a far wider field. In the upper Ohio Valley they joined
in deadly combat with the English. The immediate stake was the control
of the Indian trade of the Mississippi Valley, and so, appropriately
enough, the contest was inaugurated by a descent on Pickawillany, the
center of influence of the English traders in the Northwest, by a band
of French Indians led by the young Wisconsin half-breed fur trader,
Charles de Langlade.[167] The larger stake was the commercial and
political supremacy of three continents and all the seas. The struggle
was accordingly waged on a world-wide scale. When it ended the dominion
of France in North America had passed forever. We shall have occasion
still to deal with the French, whose influence long persisted in the
Northwest, but henceforth the shaping of the destiny of Chicago and the
tributary region rested with the Anglo-Saxon.

[Footnote 165: _Ibid._, 435-38.]

[Footnote 166: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 456-69,
478-93.]

[Footnote 167: Turner, _Indian Trade in Wisconsin_, 40-41.]




CHAPTER IV

CHICAGO IN THE REVOLUTION


The years from 1754 to 1760 witnessed the overthrow of the power
of France in the new world. For the fourth time in two generations
England and France had joined in deadly combat. Twice the issue ended
in a drawn contest; twice France was overwhelmed, and the English
gained a decisive victory. Each of these great wars had its American
counterpart, and the outcome of each was reflected in the disposition
made in the treaty of peace of the territories of the warring nations
in America. At the close of the two drawn contests there were no
territorial changes. By the Treaty of Utrecht, which closed the
Spanish Succession War, however, England made substantial territorial
gains in North America at the expense of her defeated rival. Finally,
by the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which registered the results of the
Seven Years' War, France lost all of her vast American possessions on
the mainland. Canada passed into the hands of the English, while the
imperial domain of Louisiana, in the establishment of which La Salle
and Tonty and many another intrepid Frenchman had toiled and died, was
divided; all that lay west of the Mississippi was given to Spain, while
the portion drained by the eastern tributaries of that stream fell to
the English.

What the dividing line between Canada and Louisiana had been in the
French period is not easy to determine. Nor is it necessary to our
purpose to do so, for whether it had belonged to Canada or Louisiana,
the region tributary to Chicago, since known as the old Northwest, was
now the property of England. Her civilized rival crushed, however,
another foe arose to resist the assumption by England of possession
of her new-won territory. The idea of passing under the control of
the English was extremely distasteful to a large proportion of the
northwestern Indians. Under the leadership of Pontiac a conspiracy
was formed in the spring of 1763 to wipe out in a day all the English
posts from Pennsylvania to Lake Superior.[168] The execution of this
terrible project stopped short of complete success. Fort Pitt and
Detroit withstood the attacks of the savages. But Green Bay and Sault
Ste. Marie were abandoned; the forts at Mackinac, Sandusky, Miami, St.
Joseph, Ouiatanon, Presque Isle, and Venango were taken; and over two
thousand frontier settlers were slain.

[Footnote 168: The classic account of these events is Parkman's
Conspiracy of Pontiac. For a brief narrative see Winsor, _Mississippi
Basin_, chaps, xxii, xxiii.]

The storm had not broken entirely without warning, and the effort to
relieve the posts that still held out and to subdue the obstreperous
savages was promptly begun. In August Colonel Bouquet threw a relieving
force into Fort Pitt, having beaten off the savages at Bushy Run in a
bloody battle of two days' duration. The following season two armies
were sent into the Indian country between the Great Lakes and the Ohio.
A force under Bradstreet passed by way of Niagara and the southern
shore of Lake Erie to Detroit, from which place detachments were sent
out to take possession of Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, and Green Bay. In
the fall of 1764 Bouquet with the second army crossed the Ohio River
and advanced into the valley of the Muskingum where, in November, the
tribes of the surrounding region were forced to subscribe to the terms
of peace which the invader imposed upon them.

Not until another year had passed did the English gain possession of
the country bordering on the Illinois and the Wabash.[169] A force
of four hundred men with which Major Loftus attempted to ascend the
Mississippi to Fort Chartres in the spring of 1764 was defeated and
driven back, when only two hundred and forty miles above New Orleans.
A year later Lieutenant Fraser was sent down the Ohio from Fort
Pitt to warn the tribes and the French of the prospective approach
of a force of troops which was to follow after him. He succeeded in
reaching the Illinois villages, but was glad to flee in disguise down
the Mississippi. He owed his life to the protection of Pontiac, but
before granting it that terrible chieftain had "kept him all one night
in dread of being boiled alive."[170] A second herald now set out, in
the person of the redoubtable George Croghan, to descend the Ohio from
Fort Pitt to Fort Chartres. Near the mouth of the Wabash, however, he
was seized by a band of Indians and carried prisoner to Vincennes. He
was subsequently released at Ouiatanon, and made a treaty with the
neighboring tribes; proceeding to Detroit he repeated his success
with the savages there, and then returned to Niagara. On the receipt
of Croghan's report of his success in treating with the Indians, a
force of one hundred and twenty Highlanders of the famous Black Watch
Regiment proceeded down the Ohio from Fort Pitt, and on October 10,
1765, at Fort Chartres of the Illinois, in the heart of the Mississippi
Valley, the last banner of France east of the Mississippi was hauled
down. "The lilies of France gave place to the red cross of St. George,
and the long struggle was ended."[171] The control of the British
over this region which was thus at last established was to continue
unchallenged by a civilized power less than a decade and a half.

[Footnote 169: For the facts given here I have relied on Winsor,
_Mississippi Basin_. Edward G. Mason has written charmingly of these
events in his _Chapters from Illinois History_.]

[Footnote 170: Mason, _op. cit._, 234.]

[Footnote 171: _Ibid._, 235.]

The old Northwest, to which Chicago belonged, did not participate
actively in the Revolutionary struggle during its earlier stages. At
the beginning of the war the British were, of course, in possession
of all the Northwest. The vantage points from which they directed
the affairs of this region were, in general, the old French posts,
now occupied by British garrisons. Among these may be named Detroit,
Mackinac, Fort Gage, and Cahokia. The first named of these was easily
the most important center of British influence in the Northwest, being
looked upon as the headquarters of the posts and the key to the fur
trade and to the control of the Indian tribes of this region.[172]
The fort was defended by a palisade of pickets and contained at the
beginning of the year 1776 a garrison of one hundred and twenty men.
In the town and country adjoining were three hundred and fifty men,
mostly French, capable of bearing arms; and to complete the tale of
Detroit's military resources, there floated in the river opposite the
fort several tiny public vessels with crews aggregating thirty "seamen
and servants."

[Footnote 172: James, "Indian Diplomacy and Opening of the Revolution
in the West," in _Wisconsin State Historical Society, Proceedings_,
1909, 125.]

The only other considerable centers of white population in the
Northwest were the old French posts on the Wabash, Ouiatanon and
Vincennes, and, most populous of all, the settlements along the eastern
shore of the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth
of the Ohio, on what later came to be known as the "American Bottom."
At Ouiatanon, at the beginning of the Revolution there were about a
dozen French families.[173] Vincennes had, in 1776, according to the
report of Lieutenant Fraser, about sixty farmers.[174] This would
imply a total population of between two and three hundred, and this
estimate is borne out by a "census" of Indiana of 1769. This lists
the names of sixty-six "Inhabitants" and states that in addition
there are fifty women and one hundred and fifty children "belonging
to the Inhabitants."[175] There were, at this time, fifty men capable
of bearing arms, and during the next half-dozen years the population
increased somewhat.

[Footnote 173: _Indiana Historical Society, Publications_, II, 338.]

[Footnote 174: _Ibid._, 410.]

[Footnote 175: _Ibid._, 439. Hamilton, who captured the place in 1778,
states, however, that he found 621 inhabitants of whom 217 were able
to bear arms (Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society Collections,
IX, 495). This work will be cited henceforth as _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_.]

In the Illinois settlements of the American Bottom in 1778 there was
a population of about one thousand whites, and as many Indians and
negroes.[176] The more populous settlements were Cahokia, with three
hundred white inhabitants, and Kaskaskia, with five hundred whites and
almost as many negroes.

[Footnote 176: For an account of these settlements see the
introduction to the Cahokia Records, _Illinois Historical Collections_,
II, pp. xiii ff.]

For the rest, the vast region which now teems with a population as
prosperous and as highly civilized as any on the face of the globe was
a wilderness. The Indian tribes could muster, according to the usual
estimates, about eight thousand warriors, which would imply a total
population several times as large.[177] The Chippewas alone numbered
over half of this total. Our interest, however, is concerned rather
with certain of the smaller tribes. Around the southern end of Lake
Michigan, with a village at Chicago but with their principal seat on
the St. Joseph River, were the Pottawatomies, numbering some four
hundred warriors. To the south and southeast of these, in the modern
states of Indiana and Ohio, were the Miamis, Shawnees, and other
tribes, who were to contest the possession of the Northwest with the
Americans even more fiercely than did Great Britain herself. To the
north, at Milwaukee, was located a "horrid set of refractory Indians,"
according to the picturesque language of Colonel De Peyster, which
seems to have been composed of the off-scourings of various tribes and
bands. To the west and northwest, in northern Illinois and the state of
Wisconsin, were the descendants of the Sacs and Foxes, the Winnebagoes,
and other tribes.

[Footnote 177: James, _op. cit._, 137; Walker, _The Northwest during
the Revolution_, 12.]

The advancing wave of English settlement pouring into the upper Ohio
Valley had precipitated the French and Indian War. As yet this tidal
wave of civilization had not crossed the Ohio, although it had spread
out along its eastern valley as far south as Tennessee. The most
important point along this extensive frontier was still, as in the days
of the old war. Fort Pitt at the Forks of the Ohio.[178] It was the
center, therefore, from which radiated the American efforts to control
the northwestern tribes, just as, at a later date, it afforded the
principal gateway through which the flood of civilization poured into
this region.[179]

[Footnote 178: James, _op. cit._, 126.]

[Footnote 179: On the rival efforts to control the northwestern tribes
in the early period of the Revolution see _ibid._, 125 ff.]

The Americans at first strove to secure the neutrality of the Indians
in the impending contest. But the disposition of the red man did not
permit him to stand idly by while a war was going on, and the British
more wisely directed their efforts to securing his active support. This
policy was shortly copied by the Americans, and soon the perplexed red
men were being plied with rival solicitations for alliance, accompanied
by corresponding threats of punishment and prophecies of disaster which
were to follow their failure to comply. The British urged them on to
assail the outlying settlements of the American frontiers, counseling
humanity to the vanquished, but effectually nullifying this counsel
by offering rewards for all scalps brought in. Lieutenant-governor
Hamilton at Detroit was particularly zealous in hounding the Indians on
to the work of devastation.[180] The Americans, to their honor, offered
rewards for prisoners but none for scalps. Two courses of action were
open to the Americans in view of this situation. They might endeavor to
punish the hostile Indians by launching retaliatory expeditions against
them; or they might by capturing Detroit, from whence issued alike
the supplies for the marauders and payment for the scalps they took,
destroy the opposition at its fountain-head.[181] The latter course was
urged by Colonel Morgan, the Indian agent for the Middle Department, a
man of much experience among the Indians of the Northwest. The reasons
which he advanced in support of this policy and against the alternative
one were telling,[182] but his advice went unheeded. Seeing this,
and believing a general Indian war was about to be precipitated, he
resigned his office; the control of the Western Department passed into
incompetent hands, and it seemed probable that the western frontier
was about to be overrun by the British and Indians when an important
diversion occurred. The advent of the Virginia "Hannibal," George
Rogers Clark, in the Illinois country, compelled the British at Detroit
to turn their attention to the defense of the Northwest, and shortly of
Detroit itself, against the invader.

[Footnote 180: James, _op. cit._; Thwaites, How George Rogers Clark Won
the Northwest, 8-10. Hamilton himself vigorously denied the charges of
inhumanity which the Americans preferred against him. _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, IX, 490.]

[Footnote 181: James, _op. cit._, 141-42.]

[Footnote 182: For a statement of them, see _ibid._]

In 1776 Clark had cast in his lot with the young settlements of
Kentucky.[183] These were nominally a part of Virginia, but in fact
they were too remote to receive much protection from the mother colony.
It was congenial, too, to the spirit of the American frontiersman to
depend upon himself, and Clark, who had come to the conclusion that
the only means of obtaining safety was to carry the war into the
enemy's country, was one of those who favored action independently of
authorization from the government of Virginia.

[Footnote 183: Many of the original documents pertaining to Clark's
career in the Northwest have been printed in the _Illinois Historical
Collections_, Vol. I; the _Michigan Pioneer Collections_; and the
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_. Among the secondary accounts may
be mentioned Dunn, _Indiana_; Winsor, _Westward Movement_, chap, viii;
Thwaites, _How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest_.]

Other counsels prevailed, however. The protection of the parent
colony was sought, and as a result the Virginia Assembly declared the
extension of its authority over the region and in December, 1776,
created the county of Kentucky.[184] The next summer Clark learned
from spies whom he had sent into the Illinois settlements that the
French settlers were lukewarm in their allegiance to Great Britain and
that only a few of them were participating in the raids against the
Americans, which, fomented from Detroit, made these settlements their
starting-point and base of operations. Fired by these reports with the
purpose to conquer the Illinois settlements, he proceeded the same
summer to Virginia. Here he laid his project before Governor Henry and
received his authorization to raise and equip a force of troops for
the work, and with this and a scanty supply of money he returned to
Kentucky and launched the enterprise.

[Footnote 184: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 116.]

In the spring of 1778 Clark collected a little army of about one
hundred and fifty men at Redstone, now Brownsville, Pennsylvania,
and dropped down the Monongahela and Ohio, taking on supplies and
reinforcements at Pittsburgh and other places along the way. At the
Falls of the Ohio, where the metropolis of Kentucky now stands, he
paused long enough to build a blockhouse on Corn Island. On June 24,
while the sun was obscured by a great eclipse, the journey was renewed,
the objective being Kaskaskia, the principal settlement of the Illinois
country. At Fort Massac the little party landed and began the overland
march of one hundred and twenty miles to Kaskaskia. On the way the
hunter who had been engaged to guide them lost his bearings. This
created some excitement, and caused Clark, who suspected treachery, to
threaten him with death unless he found the way that evening. In this
he succeeded, and accordingly the afternoon of July 4 found the party
within three miles of the goal.

Clark halted his little army until nightfall, when he advanced to
a farmhouse a mile from the town, and seizing the family secured
information of the conditions that prevailed there. Thus armed, the
party moved forward in two divisions and surrounded the place. We may
safely dismiss to the limbo of myth the romantic story of Clark's
appearance, alone, at the ball where garrison and villagers were
disporting themselves, and his dramatic announcement to the merrymakers
that the dance might go on, but it must be under the banner of
Virginia.[185] The story betrays too conspicuously the handiwork of
the romancer. It is clear, however, that garrison and townsmen were
completely surprised, and surrendered without a blow being struck or a
gun fired. By a judicious mixture of bluster and leniency Clark soon
succeeded in gaining the hearty support of the villagers. One of his
most effective allies was the priest. Father Gibault, who assured Clark
that although, by reason of his calling, he had "nothing to do with
temporal business, that he would give them such hints in the Spiritual
way, that would be very conducive to the business."[186]

[Footnote 185: On this see Thwaites, _op. cit._ , 28-31. I have drawn
freely on this reference and on Winsor, _Westward Movement_, for the
facts concerning Clark's expedition.]

[Footnote 186: Thwaites, _op. cit._, 33. That he kept his promise is
sufficiently attested by Hamilton, who describes him as a "wretch,"
"who absolved the French inhabitants from their allegiance to the
King of Great Britain," and "an active agent for the rebels & whose
vicious & immoral conduct was sufficient to do infinite mischief in a
country where ignorance & bigotry give full scope to the depravity of a
licentious ecclesiastic."--_Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XIX, 487.]

The Cahokians readily followed the lead of the Kaskaskians in
submitting to Clark's rule; so, too, did the inhabitants of Vincennes,
to whom Father Gibault went as an emissary of Clark. Thus far Clark's
success had been unchecked; as far as the French settlers were
concerned, the British power had crumbled. But the Indians were still
to be reckoned with, and the British at Detroit to be heard from, and
Clark's resources were pitifully inadequate for the task in hand. Even
a large part of his Virginia troops abandoned him on the expiration of
their term of enlistment. With such as consented to remain, augmented
by enlistments on the part of the French whom he had come to conquer,
Clark maintained his position throughout the winter. None knew better
than he how to combine in the right proportions terrible energy,
braggadocio, tact, and cajolery. Friendly relations were established
with De Leyba, the Spanish commander at St. Louis. The Indians were
handled so adroitly that an "Amazeing number" flocked in from five
hundred miles around to treat for peace and learn the will of the Big
Knife Chief.

Meanwhile on August 6, 1778, the news had come to Hamilton at Detroit
of the capture of Kaskaskia, and he promptly began preparations for
the recovery of the posts that had been lost.[187] On October 7 he
set out from Detroit by boat with nearly two hundred whites, chiefly
volunteers, and three hundred Indians. The destination was Vincennes,
and the route followed led up the Maumee and down the Wabash River.
Although expedition was all-important, the progress made was tedious
and slow. Not until December 17 was Vincennes reached. On the news
of Hamilton's approach the French militia of Captain Helm, Clark's
representative, deserted him. Again, as in the case of the capture
of Kaskaskia by Clark, a melodramatic tale is told of the capture
of the fort. Helm, with his garrison dwindled to a single man, is
represented as standing, lighted match in hand, by a well-charged
cannon which he has placed in the fort gate, halting the British force,
and surrendering with the honors of war. The story is without adequate
historical foundation and may properly be dismissed as a pleasing bit
of fiction.

[Footnote 187: For Hamilton's own narrative of his course see _Michigan
Pioneer Collections_, IX, 489 ff. His correspondence is printed in
_Illinois Historical Collections_, I, 330 ff.]

Although Vincennes surrendered without resistance, the delays which
had been encountered proved fatal to Hamilton's project. If he had
pushed on to Kaskaskia at once it seems certain that Clark must have
succumbed. But winter having now arrived, Hamilton decided to remain
at Vincennes until spring, when he would not only retake the Illinois
settlements but turn the tables on the invaders by sweeping the
Americans from Kentucky.

Pending the arrival of spring, the greater part of Hamilton's force was
dispersed. Not until the last of January did full news of the situation
at Vincennes and the projected vernal attack upon Kaskaskia come to
Clark. As soon as he had quelled the panic which the tidings caused
among the Kaskaskians, he projected a counter-assault upon Vincennes.
An armed galley was sent around by water, down the Mississippi and
up the Ohio and the Wabash to a point ten leagues below Vincennes,
where it was to await the arrival of Clark, who, meanwhile, would
lead a force overland across Illinois. The story of the difficulties
encountered and vanquished on the march of this little force across the
Illinois swamps and prairies surpasses many a flight of fiction. It was
February and a thaw that had set in had flooded the lowlands and driven
away the game. To the fatigues and discomforts of wading swollen rivers
and marching through boggy and oftentimes "drowned" land in midwinter
were added the pangs of hunger. The last stage necessitated the
crossing of miles of bottom land overflowed to the depth of three feet
and upward by the swollen waters of the rivers. Here the sufferings
of the party were such that Clark avers that the bare recital of them
would be "too incredible for any Person to believe except those that
are well acquainted with me."

It had been Clark's purpose to take the garrison by surprise but on
learning from some villagers whom he captured that the force of British
and French largely outnumbered his own, and that the villagers were not
ill-disposed toward the Americans, he changed his plan. Fearing that
in the fight that would doubtless ensue some of the French and Indians
would be slain and that this would embitter the rest, he determined to
bluff the garrison and the town into a surrender. Halting his little
army in sight of the town, but concealed from the view of the garrison,
he sent a menacing letter ahead, designed to awe the townsmen into
submission. At nightfall, with the garrison still ignorant of his
approach, Clark's men moved into the village. The Creoles greeted them
with enthusiasm, and the fickle Indians, who made up the larger portion
of Hamilton's force, either offered to join Clark or drew aside to
await the issue of the contest between the palefaces.

The British had been attracted by the commotion and the discharge of
guns, but not until a sergeant received a bullet in the breast did they
know whether to attribute the cause to some jollification or to the
arrival of the "Virginians." Throughout the night and early morning
Clark's riflemen harassed the garrison. About eight o'clock, while
his men stopped for breakfast, a summons to surrender was dispatched
to Hamilton. It was received by the garrison with mingled feelings of
defiance and despair. According to Hamilton, the British assured him
they would stick to him "as the shirt to my back," while the French
"hung their heads." The firing was resumed, but later in the day
Hamilton agreed to surrender. The next morning, February 25, 1779, the
fort changed hands and name as well, for the Americans now christened
it Fort Patrick Henry, in honor of the governor of Virginia.

Clark's ultimate goal was the capture of Detroit, but with his small
force and scanty supplies he could not at once move forward. While
waiting for reinforcements he applied himself vigorously to the work of
governing his newly won territory, establishing satisfactory relations
with the Indians, and preparing the way for the greater exploit which
he was destined never to perform. To this work the ensuing spring and
summer were devoted.

Meanwhile certain events were taking place in the region west of Lake
Michigan and the vicinity of Chicago which now demand our attention.
When Hamilton began preparations for his expedition in the autumn
of 1778, he sent word to De Peyster, who commanded at Mackinac, to
raise the Indians tributary to that post and co-operate with him by
an expedition down the Illinois River.[188] Many of the Indians who
frequented Mackinac had dispersed, however, and the lateness of the
season rendered those who could be reached indisposed to engage in such
an enterprise. Nevertheless De Peyster, whom Winsor describes as "a
somewhat rattle-brained person, given to writing illiterate letters,
but in some ways an enterprising and prudent commander,"[189] did what
he could. He sent Langlade, the man who had destroyed Pickawillany in
1752, to the Ottawas and Chippewas in Michigan, and Gautier to the
Pottawatomies of St. Joseph, to lead them to Hamilton's assistance.
At the same time he suggested to Haldimand the project of sending an
Indian party from Green Bay by way of the Fox-Wisconsin route and the
Mississippi, directly against the Illinois posts. The Grand River
Indians declined to start until spring, and Gautier did not reach St.
Joseph until December. What few Pottawatomies could then be raised were
taken on by Louis Chevalier, a trader who resided among them; Langlade
returned to Green Bay and Gautier to his station on the Mississippi,
carrying speeches and belts to exhort the Indians to be ready for an
expedition in the spring.[190]

[Footnote 188: _Illinois Historical Collections_, I, 364.]

[Footnote 189: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 130.]

[Footnote 190: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 122-23.]

During the winter Hamilton sent orders to Langlade at Green Bay
requiring him and Gautier to join him early in the spring in an attack
upon Kaskaskia.[191] Langlade was to proceed from Green Bay down Lake
Michigan, and thence by way of the Illinois River, while Gautier was to
gather the Indians from the upper Mississippi and descend that stream.
Thus a grand converging attack from three directions would be made on
the Illinois settlements. How Hamilton took and then lost Vincennes
has already been seen. In ignorance of the latter occurrence, Langlade
set out from Green Bay with a band of Indians, and proceeded as far as
Milwaukee.[192] Here they learned the news of Hamilton's capture, which
so disheartened the Indians that they refused to go farther. Clark's
emissaries were in the neighborhood, purchasing horses and threatening
to be at "Labaye" soon with three hundred men, but Langlade's Indians
were so disaffected that he was unable to capture them.[193]

[Footnote 191: _Illinois Historical Collections_, I, 436-38.]

[Footnote 192: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 193: _Ibid._]

Gautier's experience was even more discouraging. With a party of two
hundred Indians, made up of Foxes, Ottawas, and others, he crossed by
the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, and proceeded down
that stream as far as the mouth of the Rock.[194] Here a party of Sacs
whom he stopped to harangue not only mocked his arguments and threats
but had the "insollance" to force him to release one hundred and twenty
of his followers. Other bands whom he addressed replied by threatening
to carry news of his measures to the "Bostonnais," as the Americans
were called. Like Langlade, therefore, he was forced to return to Green
Bay.

[Footnote 194: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 126.]

The news of Hamilton's surrender filled the British at Detroit
and Mackinac with forebodings of an immediate attack. Appeals were
sent to Haldimand for reinforcements, while the defenses at the
two posts were put in readiness to withstand an assault.[195] The
Indians reported to De Peyster that the "Virginians" were building
boats near Milwaukee, and also that they were near Chicago, but it
shortly developed that these statements were the inventions of some
"evil minded" Indians.[196] De Peyster professed not to care how soon
"Mr. Clark" might appear, provided he "come by Lake Michigan & the
Indians prove staunch & above all that the Canadians do not follow
the example of their brethren at the Illinois who have joined the
Rebels to a man."[197] Since there was little likelihood that these
conditions would be realized, it is evident his confidence was not very
deep-seated.

[Footnote 195: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 387 _et passim_;
James, "Some Problems of the Northwest in 1779," in _Essays in American
History_, 62.]

[Footnote 196: _Illinois Historical Collections_, I, 436.]

[Footnote 197: _Illinois Historical Collections_, I, 437.]

Meanwhile Clark, as a part of his preparations for the projected attack
upon Detroit, dispatched Captain Linctot, a trader who had recently
joined the Americans, and who was influential with the Indians, up the
Illinois River with a company of forty men to secure the neutrality of
the Indians, and to cover the design of his main expedition.[198] On
learning this, and that Linctot had reached Lake Peoria, De Peyster
sent Gautier with a party of Indians with orders to burn the fort,
hoping thus to intimidate the Americans from attempting an expedition
by this route.[199] A few days after receiving this information a
report came to De Peyster from St. Joseph to the effect that the
Americans were about to send seven hundred men against Detroit by
way of the Wabash River, and four hundred cavalry under Linctot were
to come up the Illinois and thence by St. Joseph to co-operate with
them.[200] In consequence of this intelligence he detached Lieutenant
Bennett with twenty men from his little force to go, with sixty traders
and canoemen and two hundred Indians, to intercept Linctot, or to
harass the "Rebels" in any way possible.[201] At the same time Langlade
was ordered, July I, 1779, to raise the savages of l'Arbre Croche,[202]
Milwaukee, and other places along the shore of Lake Michigan and join
Bennett at Chicago, or if he should have passed that point, to hasten
to join him before he should reach Peoria.[203]

[Footnote 198: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 389; James, "Some
Problems of the Northwest in 1779," _op. cit._, 378.]

[Footnote 199: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 389.]

[Footnote 200: _Ibid._, 390.]

[Footnote 201: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 202: A mission village on Little Traverse Bay, at this time
occupied by a band of Ottawas. See _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
XVIII, 253, 375.]

[Footnote 203: _Ibid._, 375-76.]

Bennett carried a war belt a yard and a half long, containing twelve
thousand wampum beads, and early reports received from him were to
the effect that the savages were joining it "fast."[204] De Peyster
himself accompanied Langlade as far as l'Arbre Croche, where, on
July 4, he harangued the assembled Indians. At a later date he gave
vent to his poetical propensities by turning this speech into rhymed
verses which constitute one of the literary curiosities of the English
language.[205] Its chief interest for the history of Chicago consists
in the allusion to Baptiste Point Du Sable, who is said to have already
established himself here.

[Footnote 204: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 391; _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XVIII, 390.]

[Footnote 205: Printed in De Peyster's _Miscellanies_; it may also be
found, with editorial notes, in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
XVIII, 377-90.]

From Peoria Linctot and his party crossed the country to Ouiatanon,
there to join Clark in his advance. He reached there in August,
accompanied by a large concourse of Indians.[206] By this time Clark
had abandoned the idea of an immediate advance on Detroit. Linctot,
therefore, conceived the idea of attacking St. Joseph, to which place
Bennett's party had meanwhile come.[207] He sent a message to Vincennes
for reinforcements, but the French refused to respond, and the
projected attack was abandoned.[208]

[Footnote 206: Said to have numbered 6,000, but this is obviously a
gross exaggeration. (_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 376.)]

[Footnote 207: _Ibid._, 286, 398.]

[Footnote 208: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 376;
_Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XIX, 467.]

Bennett was sufficiently involved in difficulties, however, without
interference from Linctot. On reaching St. Joseph, July 23, he threw
up a slight intrenchment and sent out bands of Indians toward Peoria,
Ouiatanon, and the Miamis, to learn of his opponents' movements and
harass them if practicable.[209] These parties shortly returned in a
disaffected state without having seen the enemy. On July 26 Bennett
sent a message to Detroit informing Captain Lernault of his movements
and offering to co-operate with him in any practicable operation. While
awaiting an answer the greater portion of his Indians, having consumed
his supplies and rum, deserted. Langlade, meanwhile, arrived with sixty
Chippewas, who conducted themselves with even greater insolence than
the others. Finding himself helpless to accomplish anything Bennett
abandoned St. Joseph about the middle of August and returned to
Mackinac.[210]

[Footnote 209: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 398.]

[Footnote 210: I have drawn this narrative from Bennett's Journal,
in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 398-401, and the other
sources cited above.]

Active military operations in the Northwest for the year 1779 were now
at an end. Late in the year De Peyster was sent to Detroit to take
the place of Hamilton, who had been sent by his captors to languish
in a Virginia prison. Lieutenant-governor Patrick Sinclair was sent
by Haldimand to succeed De Peyster at Mackinac.[211] On the American
side Clark had retired to the Falls of the Ohio, his first base of
operations in the Northwest. Upon the declaration of war against Great
Britain by Spain in 1779, the British proceeded to plan a comprehensive
campaign which would sweep the whole western American frontier from
Canada to Florida and result in destroying the power of both Spain and
the colonists in the Mississippi Valley.[212] From Pensacola in the
South and Detroit in the Northwest as centers of operation, the British
forces were to converge upon lower Louisiana, having taken St. Louis en
route. Meanwhile, to cover these operations, De Peyster from Detroit
was to advance on Clark at the Falls of the Ohio by way of the Maumee
and Wabash rivers. The execution of this comprehensive program was
rendered impossible, even before its initiation, by the enterprise of
Galvez, the Spanish governor at New Orleans. In a series of operations
extending over two years of time, he cleared the British out of the
lower Mississippi Valley, concluding the process by the capture of
Pensacola in May, 1781.[213]

[Footnote 211: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 142.]

[Footnote 212: For a statement of this project see James, "Significance
of the Attack on St. Louis," in _Mississippi Valley Historical
Association Proceedings_, II, 199 ff.]

[Footnote 213: _Ibid._, 203-4.]

Meanwhile, ignorant of the successes of Galvez in the South, the
British forces stationed in the Northwest began, early in the year
1780, the execution of their part of the general plan of operations.
The campaign was initiated by Sinclair, who early in February sent a
body of Indians to engage the noted Sioux chief, Wabasha, to descend
the Mississippi to Natchez with his two hundred warriors.[214] About
the middle of the same month Sinclair ordered Emanuel Hesse, a trader
who had formerly served in the British army, to assemble the Sacs,
Foxes, and other Wisconsin Indians at the Fox-Wisconsin Portage and
proceed with them to the mouth of the Wisconsin, where the Indians
from the upper Mississippi would join them in a descent upon St.
Louis.[215] The services of Matchekewis, who had massacred the garrison
at Mackinac in 1763, but who now was zealously serving the British,
were also enlisted,[216] and it was planned that Langlade with a chosen
band of Canadians and Indians should join a party gathered at Chicago
and lead them down the Illinois River. Another party was to "watch
the Plains" between the Wabash and the Mississippi,[217] while still
another and larger expedition from Detroit under the command of Captain
Henry Bird was to descend the Wabash to "amuse" Clark at the Falls of
the Ohio.[218] Sinclair believed St. Louis could easily be surprised
and taken, and that the traders who would profit by the English thus
gaining control of the rich "furr Trade" of the Missouri River would
give their assistance to the enterprise.[219]

[Footnote 214: For a secondary account of this campaign see _ibid._
For the original documents pertaining to it see _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, III, XI, XVIII; _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX;
_Missouri Historical Collections_, II, No. 6.]

[Footnote 215: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 147-48.]

[Footnote 216: _Ibid._, 151.]

[Footnote 217: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 218: Winsor. _Westward Movement_, 171; _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, X, 372, 377, 395.]

[Footnote 219: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 148.]

On May 2, 1780, the force gathered at the mouth of the Wisconsin,
consisting of about a thousand men, Indians, traders, and servants,
began the descent of the Mississippi.[220] The news of its approach
was carried to St. Louis by a trader, and the Spaniards made hasty
preparations for defense.[221] De Leyba, the governor, ordered
a wooden tower to be erected at one end of the town in which he
placed five cannons, and intrenchments were constructed at the other
exposed places. To man these defenses he had a force of twenty-nine
regular soldiers and two hundred and eighty-one countrymen. On May
26 the hostile forces appeared and a vigorous firing began, to which
the besieged replied with their cannon. "Then were to be heard the
confusion and the lamentable cries of the women and children who had
been shut up in the house of the commandant, ... the dolorous echoes
of which seemed to inspire in the besieged an extraordinary valor
and spirit."[222] Finally the besiegers abandoned the assault on the
town itself, and devoted their attention to ravaging the surrounding
country, where they killed or captured a number of farmers and their
slaves. The Spaniards reported a loss of twenty-nine dead and wounded
and twenty-four prisoners at St. Louis itself, in addition to forty-six
taken captive in minor forays which attended the invasion.[223]
Sinclair, on the other hand, reported that sixty-eight of the enemy
were killed at St. Louis and eighteen taken prisoners.[224]

[Footnote 220: James, "Significance of the Attack on St. Louis," in
_Essays in American History_, 205.]

[Footnote 221: _Missouri Historical Collections_, II, No. 6, 45;
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 407.]

[Footnote 222: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 408.]

[Footnote 223: _Ibid._, 409. The British while proceeding down the
Mississippi had captured an armed boat with thirteen men near the mouth
of the modern Turkey River, and in a side expedition to the lead mines
seventeen more were taken (_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI,
151).]

[Footnote 224: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 156.]

The attack having failed, the British began their retreat. According
to Sinclair the defeat was caused by the treachery of the traders
and part of the Indians. The attempt to surprise the Spaniards was a
failure, and in the actual assault the Sacs and Foxes, led by certain
of the traders, proved treacherous.[225] Another, and possibly the
chief, reason for the retreat of the British was the arrival of George
Rogers Clark at Cahokia with a small body of men shortly before the
attack on St. Louis began.[226] Although he took no part in the fight
at St. Louis, his presence at Cahokia across the river was probably an
important factor in determining the British to give up the enterprise,
and he promptly organized an expedition to pursue and punish the
retreating forces.

[Footnote 225: _Ibid._, 155-56.]

[Footnote 226: James, _op. cit._, 210-13.]

The British forces retreated in two divisions, one up the Mississippi,
the other overland to Lake Michigan and Mackinac.[227] Clark now
learned of the advance of the force from Detroit upon Kentucky and
made haste to return to its defense, having ordered Colonel Montgomery
to follow and harass the forces retreating from St. Louis while
the Indians were still demoralized from their recent defeat.[228]
Montgomery with three hundred and fifty men advanced up the Illinois
River as far as Lake Peoria,[229] and then crossed to Rock River,
destroying the crops and villages of the Indians on his way. At this
point he was compelled to stop through lack of provisions, and his
retreat to the French settlements was attended with great hardship and
suffering.

[Footnote 227: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 558.]

[Footnote 228: _Virginia State Papers_, III, 443.]

[Footnote 229: Montgomery says he went "to the Lake open on the
Illinois River" (_Virginia State Papers_, III, 443). Peoria was
variously designated at this time as the Pee, Pey, Opie, etc. This
designation is said to have originated as a corruption of the French
words _au pied_, used with reference to the foot of the lake.
Montgomery's "Lake open" was, apparently, but another variant of the
original French form.]

The fortunes of the party led by Langlade by way of Chicago remain to
be told. While proceeding down the Illinois it learned of the advance
of Montgomery's force and thereupon beat a hasty retreat.[230] At
Chicago the party was rescued from threatened destruction at the hands
of a band of Indians in the "Rebel" interest by a relieving party which
Sinclair had sent down Lake Michigan in two small vessels. Sinclair
reported to Haldimand that five days after the vessels left Chicago two
hundred Illinois cavalry arrived there,[231] but this was evidently a
mistaken rumor caused by the advance of Montgomery's expedition, which,
as has been seen, came no farther than Lake Peoria.

[Footnote 230: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 411; Michigan
Pioneer Collections, XI, 558.]

[Footnote 231: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XI, 558.]

The fugitives from the St. Louis expedition had no sooner gained
shelter at Mackinac than Sinclair began to plan for a new attack on the
Illinois settlements[232] the following year. The services of Wabasha
were engaged anew, and Sinclair assured Haldimand that one thousand
Sioux would be in the field under his leadership by April, 1781.[233]
To insure that secrecy the absence of which had proved so disastrous
to the expedition of 1780, Wabasha came in person to Mackinac to make
the necessary arrangements for the enterprise. But the attempt at
secrecy proved futile for in December, Cruzat, the new governor at St.
Louis,[234] was reporting to his superiors the news that Wabasha was
returning to his tribe from "Michely Makinak" with a great quantity
of merchandise to arouse his own and the neighboring tribes.[235] At
the same time Cruzat announced that he had decided upon measures for
checkmating the British design, but refrained from telling what they
were until after they should be executed.

[Footnote 232: The settlements on both sides of the Mississippi were
referred to as the settlements of the Illinois. In Navarro's official
report concerning the attack on St. Louis in 1780 that place is
designated "San Luis de Ylinoises" (_Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
XVIII, 407).]

[Footnote 233: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, IX, 559.]

[Footnote 234: De Leyba had died shortly after the British attack
of 1780 and before the arrival of the news that his government had
promoted him for his conduct on that occasion (_Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XVIII, 410).]

[Footnote 235: _Ibid._, 414.]

Whether Cruzat alluded to the mysterious project of De la Balme against
Detroit, which had even then come to an unfortunate end, or to the
forthcoming Spanish expedition against St. Joseph must remain a matter
of conjecture. De la Balme was a French officer who appeared in the
Illinois villages in the summer of 1780, and rousing the villagers
with the story that their former king was coming to their assistance,
announced his own purpose to lead them in an assault on Detroit and
thence on Canada itself.[236] With a little band of French and Indians,
about eighty in number, flying the banner of France at its head, he
moved upon the British post of Miami near the modern Fort Wayne, and
captured and plundered it. The Indians, however, shortly attacked De
la Balme's party in turn and defeated it, the commander being numbered
among the slain.[237] This occurred at the beginning of November, 1780.

[Footnote 236: On De la Balme's mission see Burton, "Augustin Mottin de
la Balme," in _Illinois State Historical Society Transactions_, 1909,
104 ff.; _Illinois Historical Collections_, II, lxviii-xciv; _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XVIII, 416; _Missouri Historical Review_, II,
202-3.]

[Footnote 237: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XIX, 581-82.]

Thus ended De la Balme's projected invasion of Canada. But the episode
of his advent in the Northwest was attended by further interesting
consequences. Before his departure for Detroit he had sent a detachment
from Cahokia under command of Jean Baptiste Hamelin against the post
of St. Joseph.[238] There had been no regular garrison here since the
massacre of the British soldiers at the time of Pontiac's war; but the
post was advantageously located for trading purposes. It possessed
a further importance as the gathering-place of the Pottawatomie war
parties sent out to harass the Americans, while the fact that a large
stock of goods had been stored here by the British traders[239] served
to increase the zeal of Hamelin's men for the assault. According to a
census that has been preserved, St. Joseph contained in June, 1780,
a population of forty-eight French and half-breeds.[240] During the
summer some of the inhabitants had been carried off to Mackinac by
Sinclair's orders, so that at the time Hamelin fell upon it the post
contained a smaller population than it had in June.

[Footnote 238: _Missouri Historical Review_, II, 204.]

[Footnote 239: According to a memoir by the traders to Haldimand for
indemnity these amounted to 62,000 livres in value (_Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, X, 367).]

[Footnote 240: _Ibid._, 406-7.]

Hamelin's foray was so timed as to reach St. Joseph early in December,
1780, when the Indians were absent on their first hunt.[241] The
party numbered only seventeen men; but they overpowered the traders,
loaded their goods on packhorses, and with twenty-two prisoners beat
a hasty retreat around the lake toward Chicago.[242] Their triumph,
however, was short lived. In the spring of the year De Peyster, who
now commanded at Detroit, had stationed Lieutenant De Quindre at St.
Joseph to look after the interests of the British in that region. He
was temporarily absent at the time of Hamelin's attack, but, returning
shortly afterward, he assembled a party of Pottawatomies and set out
to punish the audacious intruders. Hamelin was overtaken on December
5 at a place called Petite Fort, a day's journey beyond the River
Chemin,[243] and in the fight that ensued all but three of his party
were killed or taken prisoners.

[Footnote 241: _Ibid._, XIX, 591.]

[Footnote 242: _Ibid._; Virginia State Papers, I, 465.]

[Footnote 243: The stream at the mouth of which Michigan City, Indiana,
now stands. Petite Fort has been said to have been near the Calumet
River. I have not succeeded in locating it more definitely than is
indicated above.]

This comparatively insignificant affair, which terminated at Chicago's
back door, as it were, was quickly followed by a second attack upon
St. Joseph, the echoes of which were heard in distant Europe. The
preparations which the English were making for a new descent upon St.
Louis in the spring of 1781 excited the genuine alarm of Cruzat, the
new Spanish governor.[244] Profiting, possibly, by the example set by
George Rogers Clark, in his attack upon Vincennes, Cruzat determined to
anticipate the blow. On January 2, 1781, less than a month after the
disaster to the Americans at the Petite Fort, a Spanish expedition set
out from St. Louis for St. Joseph.[245] It consisted in the beginning
of thirty Spaniards from St. Louis and twenty residents of Cahokia. On
the way across Illinois these were joined by a dozen Spanish soldiers
who had been sent up the Illinois River in the preceding November
to serve as an outpost against the British in that direction.[246]
In addition to this, and of greater importance doubtless, the party
was joined by two hundred Indians. Included in the latter were the
"runagates" from Milwaukee under the leadership of Siggenauk and
Nakewoin, whose tendency to side with the Americans had long disturbed
the British commanders in the Northwest.[247] In 1779 De Peyster, then
at Mackinac, had bribed a chief, Chambolee, to capture Siggenauk by
fair means or foul and turn him over to the English, promising that in
the event of success he would be "weall rewarded."[248] This attempt to
secure the obnoxious chieftain proved vain, however. At another time,
whether before or after this does not appear, De Peyster tried the plan
of buying off the "Runagade chiefs," but this too proved futile.[249]
Some time after the St. Joseph expedition, however, Siggenauk turned
against the Americans.

[Footnote 244: _Missouri Historical Review_, V, 223.]

[Footnote 245: Three detailed studies of this expedition have been
made. The conclusions of the first, by Edward G. Mason, were generally
accepted by scholars as valid until Professor Clarence W. Alvord's
study appeared. His conclusions differ materially from those reached
by Mason. More recently Frederick J. Teggart has challenged Alvord's
conclusions. For his study, with references to the earlier studies and
the sources, see "The Capture of St. Joseph, Michigan, by the Spaniards
in 1781," in _Missouri Historical Review_, V, 214 9.]

[Footnote 246: Teggart, _op. cit._, 216.]

[Footnote 247: De Peyster's characterization of them as "a horrid
set of refractory Indians" has already been mentioned (_Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XVIII, 384). Probably it was this band which
had threatened to destroy the British force at Chicago retreating from
St. Louis in the preceding summer. For a sketch of Siggenauk's career
see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 384.]

[Footnote 248: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 210.]

[Footnote 249: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, X, 454-55.]

[Illustration: THE FIRST FORT DEARBORN 1803-1812

From the model owned by the Chicago Historical Society, after Captain
Whistler's drawing of January 25, 1808]

The expedition proceeded up the Illinois River as far as Lake
Peoria.[250] Here, the river having frozen, it was found necessary
to leave the boats behind and continue the journey on foot. It was
midwinter, and before the Spaniards lay three hundred miles of
wilderness infested with savages, who might at any moment fall upon
them. At the end of their march lay the prospect of a hostile force
surrounded by savages friendly to it and hostile to them, with their
base of supplies, and their refuge in case of defeat, four hundred
miles away. Naturally our only knowledge of the experiences of the
party on the march comes from the Spaniards themselves. We may well
believe, however, that they suffered "the greatest inconveniences from
cold and hunger,"[251] not to mention the labor of carrying through the
trackless wilderness provisions for themselves and a supply of goods to
be used in placating the Indians.

[Footnote 250: _Missouri Historical Review_, V, 216.]

[Footnote 251: _Madrid Gazette_, March 12, 1782, quoted in _Missouri
Historical Review_, II, 195. For further details of the march see
Teggart, _op. cit._]

Three weeks were consumed in the march from Lake Peoria to St. Joseph.
On February 11 at nightfall the party was within two leagues of its
destination. It had had the good fortune to secure the assistance of
Louis Chevalier, who was intimately acquainted with the St. Joseph
Indians, his father having been the principal trader and resident of
St. Joseph for many years, until his arrest and removal by Sinclair's
order in the summer of 1781.[252] While the party halted an emissary
was sent on to the Indians at the post, and by promises of sharing
the booty with them a pledge of neutrality on their part was secured.
Early the next morning, February 12, the Spaniards crossed the river
on the ice and made themselves masters of the post without a blow
being struck. De Quindre was absent at the time, and all circumstances
conspired to render the traders an easy prey to the invaders. The goods
were divided between the St. Joseph Indians and those accompanying
the expedition, and a supply of corn, gathered in expectation of the
coming attack upon St. Louis, was destroyed. The party remained at St.
Joseph only twenty-four hours, but during this time the Spanish flag
was kept flying and formal possession was taken of the country in the
name of the king of Spain. A hasty retreat was then begun, and the
party arrived at St. Louis early in March without the loss of a man.
On the day after its departure from St. Joseph De Quindre returned
to that place. He sought to rouse the Indians, as he had done on the
former occasion, to pursue the invaders, but this time without success.
Their zeal for such exploits had evaporated, and they insisted on being
led in the opposite direction to Detroit, to make their excuses to De
Peyster for having allowed their traders to be carried off.

[Footnote 252: For the elder Chevalier see _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XVIII, 372.]

The importance which later came to be attached to this expedition was
due to its bearing upon the political rather than upon the military
situation. It has generally been supposed by historians that the
expedition was inspired by the Spanish Court to furnish the basis
for laying claim in the peace negotiations to the British Northwest.
The latest student of the subject rejects this supposition,[253] as
also the further one that when the news of the successful termination
of the exploit became known in Spain the Court proceeded to turn it
to political advantage by founding extravagant claims upon it. That
Vergennes, the French minister, and Aranda, the representative of Spain
in the negotiations for the treaty, made such use of it is admitted.
In 1780, the year before the expedition against St. Joseph occurred,
the French minister, Luzerne, announced to Congress the view of the
Spanish king that the territory east of the Mississippi and north of
the Ohio belonged to Great Britain and was a proper object of Spanish
conquest. Two years later, in the summer of 1782, in discussing with
Jay the boundary between the possessions of Spain and the United
States, the Spanish representative argued that the western country had
belonged to Great Britain until by conquest during the Revolution it
came into the possession of Spain. The contention was not established,
but the evident design of France and Spain to advance the interests
of the latter in America at the expense of the United States induced
the American negotiators to conclude a separate treaty with England,
in violation not only of their instructions but also of the treaty of
alliance between the United States and France in 1778.

[Footnote 253: Teggart, in _Missouri Historical Review_, V, 220-23.]

The remainder of the story of the Revolution in the Northwest can
quickly be told. Clark still dreamed of an expedition against Detroit,
and both Jefferson, governor of Virginia, and General Washington
looked with favor upon the project and held out promises of the
necessary assistance.[254] For the year 1781 a force of two thousand
men was promised Clark, and Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt was ordered
by Washington to assist him with troops and supplies. But Clark was
doomed again to disappointment. Jefferson resigned the gubernatorial
office, and Washington was engrossed in his contest with Clinton and
Cornwallis which was to end in the capture of the latter at York
town. The British on their part manifested great activity during
1781 in raiding the settlements along the Ohio River. The harassed
settlers, less far-sighted than Clark, were little disposed to engage
in a distant expedition; a force of over one hundred men descending
the Ohio to join Clark was cut to pieces in August by a combined
British and Indian force sent out from Detroit by De Peyster, every
man being killed or captured. The victors even considered the project
of attacking Clark, who was now in his stockade fort at the Falls of
the Ohio, impatiently awaiting the assembling of the forces for his
projected expedition. By order of the Virginia Assembly this was again
postponed. Clark's disappointment was keen, for as far as any positive
action was concerned, his projects for the year had completely failed.
From another point of view, however, the prospect was less dismal.
If he had failed to take Detroit, the failure of the British plans
for ousting the Americans from the Northwest had been no less signal.
And the sequel proved that Clark's stubborn retention of the grip on
this region, which he had gained in 1779, was the principal factor in
securing it to the United States in the negotiations which resulted in
the treaty of 1783.

[Footnote 254: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, chap, xi; James, "George
Rogers Clark and Detroit, 1780-1781," in _Mississippi Valley Historical
Association_, _Proceedings_, III, 291 ff.]




CHAPTER V

THE FIGHT FOR THE NORTHWEST


Long before the issue of the military struggle a contest of another
sort for the possession of the Northwest had begun. France and Spain
had entered into the conflict between Great Britain and her American
colonies from no love of the latter, but rather from a desire on the
one hand to humble Great Britain, on the other to advance their own
interests. With the opening of the peace negotiations, therefore, an
effort was made by these countries to limit the boundary of the new
nation on the west to the Allegheny Mountains, and to give the dominant
influence over the vast territory stretching thence to the Mississippi,
together with the exclusive navigation of that stream, to Spain. That
the project failed, and the Mississippi was made the western boundary
of the new nation, was due in part to the shrewdness and persistence of
the American diplomats, in part to the complaisance of Great Britain
herself. Her representatives did not hesitate to reject the temptation
offered of an alliance with the two continental monarchies for the
purpose of advancing their own projects at the expense of her former
colonies, in favor of such a settlement with the latter as would, by
making possible their future development, secure their friendship
and good will. By the terms of the treaty, therefore, the Northwest
was secured to the United States, its boundaries being a middle line
through the Great Lakes, and on the west the Mississippi River.

The prospect thus opened for an early reconciliation between the
mother country and her revolted colonies did not, unfortunately,
materialize. The war had left Great Britain burdened with a vast
debt, her dominion curtailed by more than a million square miles of
her finest territory, her prestige no less seriously damaged, and
her ancient foe across the Channel glorying in the humiliation which
had overtaken her. It was, perhaps, too much to expect, in view of
all these things, that the mother country should at once receive the
disobedient daughter to her bosom, without attempting in any way to
manifest her resentment for the humiliation she had suffered.

Furthermore, conditions in America at the close of the war were such
as to breed irritation and hostility between the two countries. The
Revolution had been in a very real sense a civil war. Upward of
one-third of the American colonists had sided with the British, and
in their ranks were to be found the major portion of the colonists
who were endowed with wealth, good birth, and education. Between
these loyalists, or "Tories," and the "patriots," whose cause had now
triumphed, the most intense feeling of bitterness existed. Even as
wise and conservative a man as Franklin shared the general feeling
of resentment toward the loyalists and was ready to justify the
confiscation of their estates. Yet they had risked their all for the
sake of the mother country, and Great Britain's honor was involved in
securing them against being punished for their loyalty and devotion to
her interests. A futile attempt was made during the peace negotiations
to insure their protection, and its total failure, while natural enough
in view of the circumstances, furnished one of the elements making for
discord later on between the two countries.

There were other causes of discord and, in fact, neither the United
States nor Great Britain honestly tried to fulfil all the obligations
they had entered into. One of the leading sources of trouble pertained
to the situation in the Northwest. Great Britain had agreed to
withdraw her armies from all places in the United States "with all
convenient speed." This obligation was kept elsewhere, but it was
calmly and deliberately broken as far as the northwestern posts
were concerned.[255] The demands of the American government for
evacuation were met by evasion and, later, by open refusal, and even an
explanation of the reasons for this course was long withheld. Finally
the pretense was urged that the posts were being held as a guaranty of
the fulfilment by the Americans of their own treaty obligations. That
we were justly chargeable with failure in this respect is clear; but
it is equally clear that the British determination to retain the posts
antedated our infractions of the treaty, and that the claim that they
were being held because of American violations of the treaty was a
mere afterthought, put forward by way of excuse for a policy in itself
indefensible.

[Footnote 255: The standard study of this subject is McLaughlin's
"Western Posts and the British Debts," in _American Historical
Association, Annual Report_, 1894, 413 ff. See also Roosevelt, _Winning
of the West_, Vol. IV.]

The real reasons for the British policy with reference to the Northwest
were the desire to retain control of the fur trade and of the Indian
tribes of that region. In one sense these two reasons coalesce, but
to some extent they may be distinguished. The fur trade constituted
Canada's chief commercial asset, and the Canadians had looked upon the
concessions contained in the treaty of 1783 as needlessly generous to
the Americans and fatal to their own prosperity. To retain this trade
the Americans must be shut out of the Northwest, and to this end the
posts must be retained. Further than this, it was an obvious fact that
in time of war the Indian would side with the party with whom he traded
in time of peace. By her control of the Indian trade and the exclusion
of the Americans from the Northwest Great Britain assured herself that
in case of a future war with America or Spain the tomahawk and scalping
knife might once more be called into requisition against her enemy.[256]

[Footnote 256: McLaughlin, _op. cit._, 430.]

To these considerations was joined another, which proved potent to
fill the Northwest with strife and bloodshed for a dozen years after
the close of the Revolution. It shortly became the aim of Great
Britain to secure to the powerful tribes in western New York and in
the territory west and north of the Ohio River the retention of their
lands. They would thus serve the purpose of a buffer state between
the United States and Canada, and would, by proper management of the
Indians, render permanent the grip which the Canadian merchants had
on the fur trade. To secure these ends the British sought to keep
the Indians united and to influence them not to yield too readily to
the blandishments or threats of the Americans. The attempt was made
to establish a sort of guardianship over the Indian tribes and to
require that interviews between them and the Americans be held in the
presence of Canadian officials or in places where the British influence
might be made manifest. In all this the home government refrained
from instigating the Indians to war upon the Americans, and steadily
instructed its representatives to encourage them to keep the peace. But
it is none the less true that its attitude toward them was productive
of a state of affairs and an attitude of mind on the part of the
Indians which made war with the Americans inevitable.[257] At last the
British officials lost their earlier solicitude for the preservation
of peace, and in the period immediately preceding Wayne's victory of
1794 they openly encouraged the Indians to make war on the Americans,
and supplied them with the guns, ammunition, and other provisions which
made their long resistance possible.[258]

[Footnote 257: McLaughlin, _op. cit._, 435.]

[Footnote 258: _Ibid._, 436; Roosevelt, _Winning of the West_, Vol. IV,
_passim_.]

We may now turn to a consideration of the relations between the
Americans and the Indians on the northwestern frontier in the period
which falls between the close of the Revolution and the Treaty of
Greenville of 1795. By the close of the Revolution two important steps
had been taken in the direction of opening the Northwest to settlement.
The claims of the various states to a portion or all of this region
had been ceded to the national government, and by the Treaty of Paris
the sovereignty of the United States as against foreign nations had
been recognized. It remained to quiet the Indian title to the lands
in question, and, in this connection, to overcome their opposition to
their settlement by the whites.

Encouraged by the British officials, the Indians at first strenuously
resisted the American claim to sovereignty north and west of the
Ohio River. In the course of a few years, however, various treaties
were entered into between the United States and the different tribes
providing for the cession to the former of lands beyond the Ohio.[259]
Such treaties were made at Fort Mcintosh, January 21, 1785, and at
Fort Finney, January 31, 1786. But only a portion of the tribes
concerned participated in these treaties; those who opposed the
cessions saw in them only an incitement to hostilities. In the summer
of 1786 the disaffected ones gathered in council at Niagara, and an
ineffectual effort was made to unite them in a war upon the Americans.
Meanwhile raiding went on along the border, and Congress was impotent
to protect it by waging war upon the hostile tribes.[260] Thereupon
the Kentuckians to the number of twelve hundred gathered under the
leadership of George Rogers Clark to chastise the tribes on their
own account. But the force was poorly organized. Clark had lost the
qualities of dauntless leadership for which he had been distinguished
a few years before, and the expedition accomplished little or
nothing.[261]

[Footnote 259: For an account of these treaties see Winsor, _Westward
Movement_, 267 ff. The treaties themselves are printed in _American
State Papers, Indian Affairs_, Vol. I, and in the various collections
of treaties between the United States and the Indian tribes.]

[Footnote 260: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 274.]

[Footnote 261: _Ibid._, 275.]

Meanwhile the rush of settlers into the lands west of the Alleghenies
went on apace. Owing to the Indian menace north of the Ohio, for the
first few years following the close of the Revolution this settlement
was practically confined to the region south of that river. It was only
a question of time, however, when the Indian barrier would be broken
down. The famous ordinance of 1787 made provision for civil government
and for the ultimate formation of states in the Northwest. In the same
year Congress sold to the Ohio Company five million acres of land,
and provision was made for a territorial government, of which General
St. Clair was to become the first chief executive. In 1788 the Ohio
Company formally inaugurated its enterprise by founding Marietta at the
mouth of the Muskingum, and the tide of immigration into the Northwest
may be said to have fairly begun.[262] The opposition of the Indians
was, naturally, not conciliated by these developments. In 1789 St.
Clair negotiated a treaty with certain of the tribes at Fort Harmar,
which, in effect, confirmed the grants to the United States north of
the Ohio which had been made by the treaties of Fort Mcintosh and Fort
Finney.[263] But a large portion of the tribes affected held aloof and
took no part in the treaty.

[Footnote 262: For a description of this movement see _ibid._, chap.
xiv.]

[Footnote 263: Winsor, _op. cit._, 308-10.]

It is clear today, as it was to those actually on the frontier at the
time, that with both parties determined to possess the Northwest war
in earnest between the red men and the white was inevitable. When once
the issue was fairly joined the ultimate outcome could hardly remain a
matter of doubt, yet the government entered upon the war with extreme
reluctance, and only after a flood of appeals from the frontier for
protection had been poured upon it.[264] Several causes operated to
produce this hesitation. The new government, feeble and lacking in
resources, dreaded the expense. The hostile tribes were more numerous
and formidable than any combination the red race had ever yet brought
into the field against the white. They gathered in bodies so large as
fairly to deserve the name of armies, and fought pitched battles with
American armies as large as those commanded by Washington at Trenton or
by Greene at Eutaw Springs.[265] Finally the government was actuated by
an honest desire to promote the welfare of the Indians and to discharge
scrupulously all of its treaty obligations toward them.[266]

[Footnote 264: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 9, 18, 27 _et passim_.]

[Footnote 265: _Ibid._, IV, 17-18.]

[Footnote 266: _Ibid._, 9, 17; see, also, documents pertaining to the
establishment by the government of Indian trading houses, in _American
State Papers, Indian Affairs_, Vols. I and II, _passim_.]

In 1790 the hovering war cloud burst. The Indians forced the issue
by intercepting and plundering the boats conveying settlers down the
Ohio, the main avenue of travel into the western country. In July St.
Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, called upon the state
of Kentucky for troops, authorized the raising of the militia of the
western counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and set his own forces
in motion. The main expedition was sent from Fort Washington against
the Miamis, under command of General Harmar.[267] In October he set
out with fourteen hundred men for the hostile villages. Rumor going in
advance multiplied the numbers of his little army, so that the Indians
made no attempt at resistance. The towns at the junction of the St.
Mary's and St. Joseph rivers were found deserted and were destroyed.
At this point Harmar divided his force, sending out detachments in
various directions. These were severely handled, though they inflicted
perhaps an equal loss upon the Indians. The whole body shortly made a
disorderly retreat, and the campaign was ended. No great disaster had
been suffered, but the army had lost two hundred men and the net result
had been a "mortifying failure."

[Footnote 267: For Harmar's expedition see Winsor, _op. cit._, 417-20;
Roosevelt, _op. cit._, 111, 304-10.]

That the Indians were not cowed by Harmar was shown by the prompt
renewal of their marauding expeditions. Early in the year 1791 they
raided the New England settlements near Marietta, killing a dozen
persons and carrying half as many more into captivity.[268] This is
but typical of further raids which continued throughout the winter.
Meanwhile the Americans were preparing another expedition. Washington
asked and received permission from Congress to raise three thousand
troops to be placed under St. Clair's command. To protect the frontier
while this army was being made ready, bodies of rangers composed of the
more capable and daring bordermen were employed.[269] Moving in small
parties and fighting the Indian in his own fashion, they performed
much effective service. In addition to this measure the Kentuckians
were authorized to conduct two raids upon the enemy. Each expedition
consisted of several hundred mounted volunteers under experienced
leaders. Each succeeded in harrying a number of villages, with almost
no loss to the raiders themselves.

[Footnote 268: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 19-20.]

[Footnote 269: _Ibid._, 28-30.]

The gathering-place for St. Clair's expedition was, as in the case
of Harmar, Fort Washington. According to the plan adopted he was to
have here three thousand effective troops by July 10, 1791. But not
until July 15 did the first regiment of three hundred men arrive, and
it was October before he could count two thousand effective men.[270]
From beginning to end, this first great military enterprise of the
new government was woefully mismanaged. The supplies provided were
poor, the commissary department was both inefficient and corrupt,
the commander was sick and incapable, and the troops themselves were
"wretched stuff."[271] Aside from two small regiments of infantry, the
army was composed of six months' levies, and of militia enrolled for
this particular campaign. In its desire to economize Congress had fixed
the net pay of the soldiers at two dollars and ten cents a month. The
judgment passed by one who observed the force that "men who are to be
purchased from prisons, wheelbarrows, and brothels at two dollars a
month will never answer for fighting Indians" was amply justified by
the sequel.[272]

[Footnote 270: Winsor, _op. cit._, 428.]

[Footnote 271: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 30.]

[Footnote 272: Winsor, _op. cit._, 426.]

Early in October the advance began.[273] St. Clair's instructions
required him to establish a permanent fort at the Miami village and
to maintain such a garrison in it as would enable him to detach five
or six hundred men for special service as occasion should require.
He advanced at a snail's pace, the army marching but five or six
miles a day. In this way, stopping now and then to build a fort or
delayed by lack of food, the commander sick, the troops disorderly
and demoralized, with almost no effort to prevent surprise, the army
stumbled northward through the wilderness. At the end of October, with
the enemy in striking distance, some sixty of the militia deserted in a
body, and the unfortunate commander made the fatal blunder of sending
back one of his two regiments of regulars after them.

[Footnote 273: Roosevelt (_Winning of the West_, IV, 30-52) gives a
detailed and graphic account of St. Clair's campaign, with references
to much of the important source material. For St. Clair's official
reports see _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 136-38.]

Perhaps it was just as well, for a larger force would have resulted
only in a greater slaughter. On November 3 the army encamped on a
branch of the Wabash near the middle point of the western boundary
of Ohio. The main body of the army huddled together on the eastern
bank of the stream, while the militia camped on the opposite side.
Shortly after sunrise the next morning the Indians fell in fury upon
this exposed detachment, and a battle ensued similar in character and
in magnitude of horror and disaster to the defeat of the ill-fated
Braddock. Concealed behind logs and trees the savages poured a steady
fire upon the doomed army. The troops drawn up in close array, unable
even to see their foe, fired vain volleys into the forest. A heavy pall
of smoke soon overhung the army, under cover of which the agile savages
darted again and again into the lines of the troops, tomahawking their
chosen victims and slipping deftly away before the enraged but slower
soldiers could retaliate. The officers displayed conspicuous bravery,
encouraging their men and leading them again and again in bayonet
charges against their tormenters. But the savages only retired before
their advance to fall upon them the moment they turned; and at times
the charging parties, isolated from the main body, fought their way
back with difficulty.

A more terrible scene can scarcely be pictured. The bravery and
exertions of the troops were all in vain against such a foe. For two
hours the slaughter went on, while the wounded were gathered to the
center and the officers strove to keep the lines intact. At last the
men became demoralized. In ever larger numbers they deserted their
posts to huddle terror stricken among the wounded. Seeing that all was
lost and that the army could be saved from complete destruction only by
an immediate retreat, St. Clair gathered such fragments of battalions
as he could and ordered a charge to regain the road by which the army
had advanced.

A vigorous charge drove the Indians back beyond the road, and through
the opening the demoralized troops pressed, to use the expressive
phrase of an eye-witness, "like a drove of bullocks."[274] The pursuit
was delayed for a short time, apparently because the Indians failed
at once to grasp the significance of the new movement; they soon
fell upon the rear, however, and slaughtered without hindrance the
terror-stricken fugitives, whose only thought was to get away. In
the mad rout the soldiers, crazed by fear, threw away their weapons
as they ran; the stronger and swifter rode down the weak; while the
slower and the wounded fell to the rear, and by furnishing occupation
for the tomahawk and the scalping knife purchased temporary respite
for their more fortunate comrades. The savages drew off after they had
followed the fleeing mob in this way for about four miles, possibly
because for once they were satiated with slaughter, more probably
because lured by the plunder of the camp. The soldiers continued their
flight for twenty-five miles pursued only by the terrors evoked by
their superheated imagination. At nightfall they streamed into Fort
Jefferson; here some of the wounded who had escaped were left, and the
army continued to flee till Fort Washington, the starting-point of the
campaign, was reached.

[Footnote 274: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 44.]

Thus terminated the most disastrous campaign ever waged by an American
army against the Indians. St. Clair had lost in killed and wounded
over nine hundred men. There were no prisoners, practically, for the
savages slew all but a few of those who fell into their hands. Only
about one-third of St. Clair's men actually engaged in the battle of
the fatal fourth of November escaped uninjured. Yet during the battle
the Americans had scarcely seen the foe. St. Clair, judging from the
destructive rifle fire poured in upon his ranks, reported that he had
been overwhelmed by numbers, but this may well be doubted. Neither the
number nor the loss of the red men is known with any certainty; that
the latter was slight is, however, apparent, and Roosevelt's estimate
that it may not have amounted to one-twentieth that of the whites seems
not at all improbable.[275]

[Footnote 275: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 47.]

Fighting with the victors were two men whom we shall meet again in the
annals of early Chicago. The one was Little Turtle, the famous Miami
chieftain, who is generally supposed to have been the leader of the
Indians this day; the other, his son-in-law, Captain William Wells,
member of a prominent Kentucky family, who had been taken prisoner by
the Indians in boyhood and adopted into the tribe. In this battle he
is said to have slain several of the Americans with his own hand.[276]
Soon after this he abandoned the Indians, and henceforth fought
valiantly in behalf of his native race until he fell gloriously, over
twenty years later, in the Fort Dearborn massacre.

[Footnote 276: _Ibid._, 79.]

The overthrow of St. Clair's army made necessary another campaign
against the triumphant tribesmen unless the United States was to
surrender her pretensions to that sovereignty over the Northwest which
had been recognized in the treaty of 1783. Yet three years now elapsed
before the final blow was struck against the Indian power in this
region. Their easy triumph over St. Clair resulted in a great accession
both to the number and spirit of the warring bands. Encouraged by the
British, whose attitude toward the Americans during this period, as
manifested by such officials as Simcoe and Lord Dorchester, became
increasingly hostile, they maintained the attitude that they had not
by any valid treaty surrendered any portion of the territory north of
the Ohio, and continued to send their war parties in ever-increasing
numbers against the "deluded settlers" of the northwestern frontier.
The United States again tried vainly to secure peace by negotiation.
The sanctity which hedges an ambassador about, familiar even to
savages, was violated in the murder of Colonel Hardin and Major
Trueman, who were sent as envoys to the hostile tribes in the spring
of 1792. Despite this, the effort to bring about a peace was vainly
continued throughout the year 1792 and the spring of 1793.[277] At
last, there being no other alternative, the government made definite
plans for a new campaign.

[Footnote 277: _Ibid._, 52 ff.]

The preparations had already been begun and Anthony Wayne had been
chosen by Washington, though with great reluctance, to succeed St.
Clair as commander.[278] In Washington's opinion he was vain, open to
flattery, easily imposed upon, and "liable to be drawn into scrapes."
In spite of this he was considered the best man available, and his
conduct following his appointment brilliantly refuted the prevalent
opinion of his lack of judgment. If there ever had been ground for
Washington's low opinion of Wayne's prudence, certain it is that he
afforded none by his measures in this crisis in the history of the
Northwest. His bravery was questioned by no one, and he had long been
recognized as the most active and enterprising officer in the army.

[Footnote 278: On the selection of Wayne to succeed St. Clair see
Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 439-40.]

In the autumn of 1792 Wayne established a camp on the Ohio about seven
miles below Pittsburgh, and began the difficult task of organizing
the remnant of St. Clair's army and the new recruits that were being
enlisted into an efficient "legion," which should be able to face the
red foe with some prospect of success.[279] During the winter his
troops, which by springtime numbered twenty-five hundred men, were
drilled incessantly. In May, 1793, he moved down the Ohio to Fort
Washington, near which place he established a camp and called on the
Kentucky volunteers to come to his assistance. The government was still
carrying on futile negotiations with the hostile tribes, and not until
October was Wayne given permission to launch the campaign. He then
advanced about eighty miles north of Cincinnati to a place six miles
beyond Fort Jefferson, where a second winter camp was established to
which he gave the name of Greenville. From this place a detachment was
sent forward to occupy the site of St. Clair's defeat and there build a
post, to which the significant name of Fort Recovery was given.

[Footnote 279: For standard secondary accounts of Wayne's campaign see
Winsor, _op. cit._, chap. xx; Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, chap. ii.
Original documents pertaining to the campaign, including Wayne's report
of the attack on Fort Recovery and the battle of Fallen Timbers, are
printed in _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 487-95. Wayne's
Orderly Book, covering the period from 1792 to 1797, is printed in the
_Michigan Pioneer Collections_, xxxiv, 341-734.]

The winter was spent in further drill, and in perfecting the
preparations for a decisive conflict in the spring. The Indians
harassed the posts, attacking convoys, and killing the commander of
Fort Jefferson within three hundred yards of the fort. Ere spring
the regular troops had developed into a finely drilled army, with
confidence in their leader and in themselves. The natural contempt
of the frontiersman for a regular force, heightened as it was by the
disasters of the army in the last few years, gave way to genuine
admiration for Wayne's troops. The cavalry had been trained to maneuver
over any ground, and the infantry to load while on the run. By constant
practice the soldiers had become as good marksmen as were the frontier
hunters themselves, and Wayne, who had become famous in the Revolution
for his reliance on the bayonet, had imbued his men with his own zeal
for coming to close quarters with the enemy.

Prominent among the causes which had contributed to St. Clair's
overthrow was the absence of an efficient corps of scouts to bring him
information of the enemy's movements and protect his own army against
surprise. The preparation of Wayne in this respect, and the skilful
use which he made of his force of scouts, was in marked contrast to
the course of his unfortunate predecessor. One of the leaders of this
force was William Wells, the son-in-law of Little Turtle, who three
years before had assisted his dusky relative to overthrow St. Clair.
Since then he had rejoined the whites, to whom by reason of his long
life on the frontier, and his intimate acquaintance with the very
Indians against whom Wayne was marching, his services were invaluable.
His scouts covered Wayne's front so effectively that the Indians were
unable to obtain any correct information concerning his numbers or
movements.

On June 30 an assault was made on Fort Recovery by two thousand
Indians, but they were beaten off with considerable loss, which caused
some of them to leave for their homes in despair.[280] On the other
hand, Wayne's forces were augmented by the arrival of General Scott at
the head of sixteen hundred Kentucky mounted volunteers. Having further
deceived the enemy as to his intentions by making demonstrations to
right and left, Wayne marched by a devious route to the Indian villages
at the junction of the Glaize and the Maumee rivers, in the heart of
the hostile country.[281] Here he had hoped to strike a telling blow,
but the timely information of a deserter enabled the Indians to flee
before his arrival. But their villages, stretching for several miles
up and down the river, with cornfields more extensive than Wayne had
ever seen before, "from Canada to Florida," fell into his hands without
striking a blow. He spent some time in building here a strong stockade
fort, which he grimly named Defiance, and in sending a last futile
overture to the Indians for peace. It was now the middle of August, and
on learning of the failure of his embassy, Wayne set forth on the final
stage of his campaign.

[Footnote 280: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 444-45.]

[Footnote 281: Wayne to the Secretary of War, August 14, 1794;
_American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 490.]

The defiance to which his fortress gave expression was not directed
against the Indians alone, for the British officials in the Northwest
were now co-operating almost openly with the natives. In February,
1794, in the course of a speech to an Indian delegation. Lord
Dorchester asserted that he would not be surprised if war between his
country and the United States should begin during the year. This speech
caused an immediate furore at Montreal, where it was construed to
indicate that Dorchester had private intelligence which rendered him
confident that such a war would shortly begin.[282] During the ensuing
weeks it was actively circulated among the western tribes,[283] who
were incited to collect their forces and assured that in the event
of war they would have an opportunity to make a new boundary line.
At the same time Simcoe, acting under Dorchester's orders, proceeded
from Detroit to the Rapids of the Maumee, a few miles above the
modern city of Toledo, with three companies of British regulars, and
constructed a fort to serve as an outpost for the defense of Detroit
against Wayne's advance. There is nothing improbable in the assertion
that the Indians were given to understand that its gates would be open
to shelter them, in case of need, from Wayne's army, and it is clear
that both the Indians and the Americans believed that the British
were to all intents and purposes co-operating with the former. Wayne
had learned of Simcoe's advance early in June, and since then he had
received information from his scouts that the British had participated
in the attack on Fort Recovery. It was therefore with the expectation
of having a double foe to deal with that he planted and named Fort
Defiance, preparatory to beginning the descent of the Maumee to the
Rapids, where the British fort was located and near which the Indians
had taken their stand.

[Footnote 282: Michigan Pioneer Collections, XX, 331. For an account
of Dorchester's speech and its results see Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV,
57-60, 62.]

[Footnote 283: See, for example, Lieutenant-colonel Butler's speech to
the chiefs of the Six Nations at Buffalo Creek, in April, 1794, printed
in Michigan Pioneer Collections, XX, 342-43.]

The advance from Fort Defiance was begun on August 15, and three days
later Wayne's army was within striking distance of the enemy. Here a
halt was made and a temporary fortification thrown up. The savages had
elected to defend a place known as Fallen Timbers, where the ground
was thickly strewn with tree trunks as the result of a former tornado.
This furnished an ideal covert for their mode of warfare, and at the
same time, as they believed, rendered it impossible for Wayne's dreaded
cavalry to act. Behind this shelter about two thousand warriors lay on
the morning of August 20 awaiting Wayne's approach. The Indians were
far from confident of repeating their success of three years before
against St. Clair. Little Turtle, the leader on that occasion, had
urged the acceptance of the peace overtures of "the chief who never
sleeps," but in this he was overruled. Already some of the northern
tribes had slunk away, disheartened by their discomfiture at Fort
Recovery. The southern Indians had sent encouraging messages, but
had failed to back them up with their warriors, and the sole hope of
assistance rested with the British, who in similar crises in times gone
by had failed them.[284]

[Footnote 284: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 457.]

In the ranks of the two armies, about to join combat, were a number
of men who are famous in the history of the Northwest. General Wayne
had acquired fame in the Revolution as a daring leader of men, but
this campaign furnishes the climax of his military career and his
surest claim upon the grateful remembrance of posterity. From the most
unpromising of raw material he had fashioned an army fit to cope with
the red man in his lair, and had imbued it with his own dauntless
confidence and enthusiasm. He had transformed such men as St. Clair had
with difficulty held together in the absence of the enemy, and who had
proved so helpless in his presence, into the peers of the frontiersmen
themselves in marksmanship and dexterity in the saddle; and had made
them submissive to an iron discipline which rendered them immeasurably
superior to the latter for the conduct of a campaign or battle.

On the other side were a score or more of chieftains of varying degrees
of importance and influence. If Little Turtle had favored a fight his
rank and reputation would probably have given him the position of
chief importance. Blue Jacket's advice had prevailed in the council
before the battle, however, and as the result he occupied the position
of commander. Two young men, one in either army, possess a peculiar
interest for us by reason of their later careers. The one, a lieutenant
in Wayne's army and aide-de-camp to the General, William Henry
Harrison; the other, the warrior Tecumseh. Each distinguished himself
according to the fashion of his race for bravery in the battle; each
rose shortly to the position of leader of his race in the Northwest,
and this leadership involved them in a deadly rivalry. In the long
contest between them the red man went down to defeat; his projects for
the resuscitation of his people were forever blasted at Tippecanoe, and
two years later the battle of the Thames marked another victory for
Harrison and Tecumseh's final defeat. For the one the reward was the
Presidency, for the other a ruined people and a nameless grave. Yet who
shall say that, measured by the standards of his race, Tecumseh was not
the equal in greatness and ability of his victorious rival?

At eight o'clock on the morning of August 20 Wayne's legion advanced
in columns in open order, its front, flanks, and rear protected by
detachments of the Kentucky mounted volunteers and of Indians. After
traveling a distance of five miles the mounted battalion in advance
encountered the Indians, disposed in three lines stretching a distance
of two miles at right angles to the river. The Kentuckians were
driven back and the firing became general, but they had accomplished
their purpose of giving the army timely notice of the position of the
savages. Wayne's dispositions were quickly made. The infantry was
drawn up in two lines. The whole force of mounted volunteers was sent
by a circuitous path to turn the right flank of the savages, and the
legionary cavalry under Captain Campbell was ordered to fall upon their
left. At the same time the infantry moved forward with trailed arms
to a bayonet charge, with orders to deliver their fire at close range
after the Indians had been roused from their coverts, and then continue
the charge, so as to give them no opportunity to reload.

The value of the months of careful drilling was now quickly manifested.
Campbell's dragoons plunged forward over the difficult ground and fell
upon the astonished savages, who delivered a single volley and fled.
Campbell was slain and a dozen of his men killed or wounded, but the
cavalry swept on, Lieutenant Covington, who succeeded to the command,
cutting down two of the red men with his own hand. The infantry moved
forward with equal impetuosity, driving the dismayed savages before
them through the thick woods a distance of two miles in less than an
hour. So quickly was the combat over that the second line of infantry
and the Kentucky volunteers, despite their "anxiety" for action, were
unable to reach their positions in time to share in the fight. The
surviving savages and their Canadian allies scattered in flight, the
Americans pursuing them as far as the walls of the British fort. Wayne
reported a loss of one hundred and thirty-three in killed and wounded
and estimated the loss of the enemy at more than double his own. The
woods were strewn for some distance with the dead bodies of the Indians
and their white auxiliaries, the latter armed with British muskets and
bayonets.

The battle over, three days were spent in ravaging the surrounding
fields and villages. The houses and stores of the British traders and
agents shared the fate of the Indian villages, while the garrison
looked on in impotent rage. Fortunately a conflict between the two
armies, the danger of which was very real, was averted, the commanders
contenting themselves with an exchange of verbal hostilities. A week
after the battle the victorious army moved leisurely back to Fort
Defiance, laying waste the villages and cornfields of the savages for a
distance of fifty miles on either side of the Maumee. After two weeks
spent in strengthening the fort, while waiting for supplies from Fort
Recovery, the army moved up the river to the Miami villages at the
mouth of the St. Mary's where Harmar's force had been rebuffed four
years before. Here some weeks were spent in destroying the surrounding
villages and fields and in building a fort which was named for the
commander, Fort Wayne. At the end of October the army retired to
Greenville where it went into winter quarters. Since the opening of the
campaign it had performed "one of the most weighty and important feats
in the winning of the West."[285]

[Footnote 285: Roosevelt, _Winning of the West_, IV, 91.]

The Indians were discouraged by their defeat and their abandonment
by the British. The agents of the latter strove to reanimate them and
prolong hostilities,[286] and for some time the issue was doubtful.
Some of the savages were in favor of continuing the war, but the
majority finally inclined to peace, and in February, 1795, Wayne
entered into a preliminary agreement with a number of the tribes for
the negotiation of a permanent peace on the basis of the terms of the
treaty of Fort Harmar of January, 1789. The tawny diplomats straggled
slowly in to the place appointed for the council. The council fire was
kindled on June 16,[287] but owing to the tardiness of the various
delegations a month elapsed before the formal negotiations were begun.
Three weeks later, on August 10, the treaty was concluded. In all
eleven hundred and thirty warriors had assembled. To the torrent of
savage oratory which their spokesmen poured forth during the weeks of
discussion Wayne replied in kind, showing himself as much at home in
the council chamber as when on the field of battle.

[Footnote 286: Winsor, _op. cit._, 460-61; _American State Papers,
Indian Affairs_, I, 547-58, 568].

[Footnote 287: For Wayne's report of the proceedings attending the
negotiation of the treaty see _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_,
I, 562-83.]

On July 3 Wayne called the chiefs together to explain to them the
significance of the impending celebration of Independence Day, so that
they might not be alarmed when the roar of the big guns should "ascend
into the heavens." Twelve days later the council was formally opened.
Wayne displayed his credentials to the assembled chiefs, explained the
occasion of the meeting, and closed by suggesting an adjournment of two
or three days "to have a little drink" and consider the situation. The
chief issue of the conference was immediately raised by Little Turtle,
who professed ignorance of the treaty of Fort Harmar and denied that
the Miamis had had any part in it. As the negotiations proceeded this
chief strenuously opposed the cessions demanded by Wayne. In a speech
delivered July 22 he expressed his regret over the division of opinion
manifested by the assembled Indians, and claimed for his tribe all of
the territory bounded on the east by a line from Detroit to and down
the Scioto River to its mouth, on the south by the Ohio from this point
to the mouth of the Wabash, and on the west by a line from the mouth of
the Wabash to Chicago. He questioned the good faith of the Americans,
saying they claimed the land in dispute now by cession by the British
in 1783, now by that of the tribes who took part in the treaty of Fort
Harmar. When, five days later, Wayne read the list of reservations
which he proposed to embody in the treaty, including a tract six miles
square "at the Mouth of Chikago River ... where a Fort formerly
stood," Little Turtle answered that his people had never heard of it.
On this particular point the facts of history favored the red man, for
there is no satisfactory evidence that the French had ever had a fort
here. But force and the logic of events favored the white leader, and
in the final draft of the treaty was included the cession of "One piece
of Land Six Miles square at the Mouth of Chickago River emptying into
the Southwest end of Lake Michigan where a fort formerly stood."

Among those most disposed to accept the terms offered by Wayne were the
Wyandots, to whom was intrusted one of the two copies of the treaty
that were engrossed on parchment. Their leader, Tarke, responded to
Little Turtle's reflections upon the cession made at Fort Harmar
and upon those who disagreed with him, with a burst of eloquence
characteristic of Indian oratory and of the figurative language which
it habitually employed. Addressing his "Elder Brother," General Wayne,
he said:

"Now listen to us: The Great Spirit above has appointed this day for us
to meet together. I shall now deliver my sentiments to you, the Fifteen
Fires. I view you lying in a gore of blood; it is me, an Indian, who
has caused it. Our tomahawk yet remains in your head; the English gave
it to me to place there.

"Elder Brother: I now take the tomahawk out of your head; but with so
much care, that you shall not feel pain or injury. I will now tear a
big tree up by the roots, and throw the hatchet into the cavity which
they occupied, where the waters will wash it away where it can never be
found. Now I have buried the hatchet and I expect that none of my color
will ever again find it out....

"Brothers: Listen! I now wipe your body clean from all blood with this
white soft linen [white wampum], and I do it with as much tenderness as
I am capable of. You have appointed this house for the chiefs of the
different tribes to sit in with you, and none but good words ought to
be spoken in it. I swept it clean; nothing impure remains in it....

"Brother: I clear away yon hovering clouds, that we may enjoy a clear,
bright day, and easily see the sun, which the Great Spirit has bestowed
on us, rise and set continually"

The negotiations were at length satisfactorily concluded, and all
professed themselves satisfied with Wayne's demands. The treaty
recognized the American title to the lands north of the Ohio bounded
by a line drawn from the mouth of the Kentucky River to Fort Recovery,
thence in a general easterly direction to the Muskingum, and along this
river and the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie; in addition various reservations,
aside from the one at Chicago, were made, most of them for the
establishment of forts, and the free passage of the rivers and portages
connecting the proposed chain of forts was guaranteed. In Illinois the
grant included reservations at Chicago, at Lake Peoria, and at the
mouth of the Illinois, and the free use of the Chicago Harbor, River,
and Portage, and the Illinois River. On the other hand the Indian title
to the soil was recognized, some twenty thousand dollars worth of
presents were distributed, and the payment to the Indians of annuities
aggregating nine thousand five hundred dollars was promised.

The treaty brought to an end forty years of warfare in the valley of
the Ohio, during which it is estimated five thousand whites were killed
or captured.[288] For three years past the war had cost the government
of the United States over a million dollars a year. The peace which
Wayne brought to the frontier endured for fifteen years, being broken
only by Tecumseh's war, which shortly merged into the greater struggle
between Great Britain and the United States in 1812. By that time the
in-rush of settlers and the passing away of the older generation had
wrought a material change in the condition of the Northwest; so that
the Treaty of Greenville may fairly be said to have endured until the
conditions which called it forth had passed away.

[Footnote 288: Winsor, _op. cit._, 494.]

While Wayne was pushing his campaign against the northwestern Indians,
which the British officials feared would end in their overthrow at
Detroit, Washington dispatched John Jay on a diplomatic mission
to England which was to result in the peaceable surrender of the
northwestern posts. The differences between the two countries which had
arisen from the unfulfilled treaty of 1783 had now become so serious
that there was grave danger of a warlike termination. In the hope of
preventing this calamity, therefore, Washington appointed Jay, in the
spring of 1794, as a special envoy to England to treat of the matters
in dispute.

During the summer the negotiations with the British government went
slowly forward and in November a treaty was concluded. By the Americans
its terms were received with bitter disgust, and there is even yet a
difference of opinion among students over the question of the wisdom
of Jay's conduct of the negotiations. The western Americans were
especially loud in their denunciation of Jay and the treaty.[289]
Yet they obtained by it the surrender of the British posts in the
Northwest, a measure which constituted the logical completion of
Wayne's work and was absolutely essential to the permanence of the
peace so recently established on the frontier. It was stipulated
that the posts should be evacuated on June 1, 1796, and Washington
appropriately appointed Wayne to superintend the taking possession
of them by the United States. As the appointed time drew near the
British were more ready to make the surrender than were the Americans
to receive it. At our own request, therefore, possession was retained
until the arrival of the relieving forces at the various posts. During
the summer and fall the transfers were made, the last post which was
taken over by the Americans being Mackinac in October. Our boundaries
in the Northwest, nominally established by the Treaty of Paris of 1783,
were at last achieved in reality. The Indians had been conquered and
Great Britain had retired; the Northwest was won for the United States.

[Footnote 289: Roosevelt, _op. cit._, IV, 194-97.]




CHAPTER VI

THE FOUNDING OF FORT DEARBORN


The strategic value of Chicago as a center of control for the region
between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi had been recognized long
before our government took the step of establishing a fort there. On
more than one occasion during the French régime recommendations were
made to the French government in favor of a fort at Chicago. As early
as 1697 two Frenchmen, Louvigny and Mantet, conceived the project of
making a combined trading and exploring expedition from Canada toward
Mexico by way of the Mississippi River, and to this end petitioned the
French minister of war for a post at Chicago to serve as an entrepôt
for their enterprise.[290] The importance of Chicago in the struggle
between the British and the Americans during the Revolution has already
been shown. After Wayne's triumph at Fallen Timbers in August, 1794,
the British officer, Simcoe, proposed to the Lords of Trade a plan for
shutting American traders out of the Mississippi Valley by establishing
British dèpôts along the portages leading to it, particularly at the
Chicago Portage.[291] The British control of the Northwest which Simcoe
was striving to perpetuate was, however, about to cease, and nothing
came of his project. Wayne's appreciation of the importance of Chicago
was shown by his demand in the Treaty of Greenville that the Indians
cede to the United States a tract of land six miles square at the mouth
of the Chicago River, to serve as the site for a future fort.

[Footnote 290: Margry, IV, 9 ff.]

[Footnote 291: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 461.]

Two facts, both of them of great importance in American history,
account for the establishment of Fort Dearborn, eight years after
Wayne thus acquired from the Indians the title to its site. One was
Wayne's victory over the northwestern tribes, the results of which
were registered in this same Treaty of Greenville; the other, the
acquisition of Louisiana by the United States in 1803. Probably the
first of these would alone have been sufficient to determine the
establishment ere long of a fort at Chicago, but the influence of the
two combined rendered delay impossible.

The victory of Wayne, by removing the menace of Indian hostilities,
made possible the rapid settlement of the region northwest of the
Ohio. During the next few years a veritable flood of immigration
poured into this Northwest Territory, the portion nearest at hand
being, as was natural, first occupied. Within five years of the
Treaty of Greenville this portion of the territory was ready for
statehood. In 1800, therefore. Congress provided for the separation
of the Northwest Territory into two parts, and two years later the
eastern section was admitted into the Union as the state of Ohio. The
remaining portion became the territory of Indiana with William Henry
Harrison, then a young man of twenty-seven, as governor. During the
following years the line of white settlement advanced steadily, though
more slowly, into the North and West. The two military posts farthest
advanced in this direction were Detroit and Mackinac. Neither of these
was advantageously situated for the administration of the country
stretching from the upper lakes to the Mississippi.

With every passing year the necessity of exercising a firmer control
over this region became greater. The settlers must be protected from
Indian depredations, and the lawlessness of the traders and other
frontiersmen must be curbed. One fact of great importance pertained to
the British control of the Indian trade of the Northwest. The surrender
of the posts in 1796 had not broken the grip of the traders on this
region. Until the close of the War of 1812--and in the remoter portion
of the Northwest, for some years after this--the influence of the
Canadian traders over the Indians was paramount. It was impossible,
therefore, for the United States to exercise an effective control over
them, and a garrison to the west of Lake Michigan was needed to assist
in wresting this commercial supremacy from the British traders.

The acquisition of Louisiana advanced our western boundary from the
Mississippi to the crest of the Rocky Mountains. If before it had
been difficult to control our westernmost frontier from Detroit and
Mackinac, with this advance it became utterly impossible. New outposts
must be established in order to keep pace with both the advancing
boundary and the swelling wave of settlement. Chicago, still far in
advance of the latter, was the logical place for the new establishment.
A garrison here in the heart of the Indian country would serve to
protect the settlements of Indiana and lower Illinois, would perfect
the communication between the latter and the posts of Detroit and
Mackinac, and constitute a convenient center of control for the region
between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.[292]

[Footnote 292: See on this point the letter from Mackinac, September
6, 1803, printed in _Relf's Philadelphia Gazette and Commercial
Advertiser_, November 19, 1803.]

Rumors of a purpose to establish a post at Chicago preceded by some
years its actual consummation. In the winter of 1797-98 William
Burnett, a French trader on the St. Joseph River, informed the Montreal
house from which he obtained his supplies for the Indian trade of
the expectation that a garrison would be established at Chicago the
following summer.[293] What the basis for this expectation was does not
appear, but evidently Burnett considered it probable, for in August,
1798, he wrote that he now had reason to expect the garrison would
arrive in the fall. The shrewd trader's interest in the matter was due
to the fact that, having already a house at Chicago, and "a promise of
assistance from headquarters," he would have occasion for "a good deal
of liquors," and some other articles, for that post. Thus rum attended
the birth, and, as we shall see, was prominent at the downfall, of old
Fort Dearborn.

[Footnote 293: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 66.]

The "promise of assistance from headquarters" furnishes a possible
clue to the source of Burnett's information. Though five years were
yet to elapse before the project materialized, the letter is of some
importance as showing that among those most interested it had long
been regarded as a probability of the near future. Early in 1803 the
matter was at last determined. A letter from the Secretary of War,[294]
dated March 9, to Colonel Hamtramck of the First Infantry, who was then
stationed at Detroit, directed that an officer and six men be sent to
make a preliminary investigation of the situation at Chicago and the
route thither from Detroit. The party was to go by land from Detroit to
the mouth of the St. Joseph River, marking a trail and noting suitable
camping-places for the company which was to follow. Inquiry was to be
made concerning the supplies of provisions which Burnett and the other
traders could furnish, and a suitable "scite" was to be selected at St.
Joseph for a temporary encampment of the company until preparations
could be made at "Chikago" for its reception. In case the overland
route should be found to be practicable for a company with packhorses
for carrying provisions and light baggage, Colonel Hamtramck should
order it to go, under command of a "discreet, judicious captain," and
should send around the lakes the necessary tools and other equipment
for the erection and maintenance of a strong stockade post at Chicago,
together with two light fieldpieces and the necessary supply of
ammunition.

[Footnote 294: Copy, by Daniel O. Drennan, of letter of
Inspector-general Gushing to Hamtramck, March 14, 1803, in Chicago
Historical Society library. Mr. Drennan, as agent of the society, made
exact copies of a large number of documents in the files of the War
Department at Washington pertaining to Hull's campaign and to Fort
Dearborn and early Chicago. These will be cited henceforth as the
_Drennan Papers_.]

Six weeks later the appointment of Captain John Whistler as commander
of the new post had been made and, soon after, he departed with six
men to examine the route and report to Major Pike.[295] At the same
time the firm of Robert and James Abbott of Detroit was considering
the advantages of the post as a possible trading center. They report
that Whistler desired them to establish a store there, and it is
possible that the sentiment the culmination of which is recorded in the
quaint announcement of Whistler to Kingsbury in November, 1804, of the
marriage of his eldest daughter to a "gentleman of my old acquaintance
(James Abbott)"[296] was already blossoming. If, as seems likely,
Hamtramck was responsible for Whistler's appointment to the new command
it must have been almost his last official act, for he died on April
11, less than a month after the issuance by the Inspector-general
at Cumberland, Maryland, of the order for the establishment of the
fort.[297]

[Footnote 295: Letter of Robert and James Abbott of Detroit to Abbott
and Maxwell of Mackinac, April 30, 1803, copied in _Chicago from 1803
to 1812_, by James Grant Wilson, MS in the Chicago Historical Society
library.]

[Footnote 296: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3,
1804.]

[Footnote 297: Hamtramck was a veteran soldier, having joined
Montgomery's army before Quebec in 1776. He served throughout the
remainder of the Revolution, and at its close continued in the army,
rising by successive promotions to the rank of colonel. He was
stationed on the northwestern frontier for many years prior to his
death. At the battle of Fallen Timbers he commanded the left wing of
the legion, and received special mention in Wayne's official report of
the battle.]

At half-past five o'clock on the morning of July 14, 1803, the
troops set out from Detroit under command of Lieutenant James Strode
Swearingen of the artillery, then a youth of twenty-one.[298]
Swearingen had volunteered to lead the troops to Chicago for Captain
Whistler, on account of the infirm state of the latter's health.
Whistler and his family, together with his son Lieutenant William
Whistler and his young wife, embarked on the schooner "Tracy,"
commanded by Lieutenant Dorr, which had been ordered to proceed around
the lakes with provisions and military stores for the new post. We have
the journal which Swearingen kept on the trip, containing observations
on the country, timber, camping-places, and water courses.[299] The
daily march varied greatly in length. Sometimes the start was made
before five in the morning and the march ended by two in the afternoon;
at other times bad weather or other obstacles necessitated a late start
and a march of only a few miles. The route followed was that of the old
Chicago Trail, later known as the "Chicago Road." It led the troops
across the Rouge and Huron rivers, past the site of the modern city of
Ypsilanti to the upper waters of Grand River, which flows into Lake
Michigan. Thence the route lay across country to the St. Joseph and
down this river to its mouth.

[Footnote 298: For an account of Swearingen's career see report of an
interview with him in 1863, together with his own sketch of his life,
preserved in the MS volume of _Proceedings_ of the Chicago Historical
Society, 1856-64, 348.]

[Footnote 299: Printed as Appendix I.]

On July 25 we find Swearingen at "Kinzie's improvement" on the St.
Joseph. The site today is occupied by the sleepy hamlet of Bertrand, a
short distance south of Niles, and the highway that crosses the river
here is still called the Chicago Road. Here the party was detained
for a day while boats were being procured. On July 27 the expedition
proceeded down the river, the baggage and seventeen of the men in the
boats, the remainder of the men marching by land. From July 28 to
August 12 the troops were encamped at the mouth of the St. Joseph,
awaiting the arrival of the "Tracy" with needed provisions. Swearingen
estimated the distance from Detroit to the mouth of the St. Joseph
at two hundred and seventy-two miles. The distance by rail today is
considerably less, but the expedition had followed the tortuous Indian
trail and then the course of the meandering St. Joseph. The remainder
of the march around the lake to Chicago was accomplished in three days,
the troops marching along the lake shore. The distance according to
Swearingen's estimate was ninety miles, and in this he was not far
astray. Probably the rapidity of the march, averaging thirty miles each
day, may be explained by the supposition that the baggage continued to
be transported by boat, for the journal records that the start from St.
Joseph was delayed two days by the roughness of the lake. Unless the
boats continued on to Chicago this would, apparently, have been of no
concern to the expedition.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN JAMES STRODE SWEARINGEN

As a youthful lieutenant of twenty-one he led the troops to Chicago in
1803

(By courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)]

While the land detachment was thus marching across the wilderness of
southern Michigan and northern Indiana, the "Tracy" was conveying the
artillery, provisions, and heavy baggage around the lakes. A short stop
was made at the mouth of the St. Joseph where the troops were supplied
with provisions. Here the Whistlers, father and son, disembarked, and
continued their journey to Chicago in a row-boat.[300] We have several
accounts, each of them more or less fragmentary, of what happened upon
the arrival of the troops at Chicago. Some of them are of contemporary
origin, while two which will demand consideration were written over
half a century later by two surviving participants in the founding of
the first Fort Dearborn.[301] Of these Swearingen's Journal is easily
the most authoritative, but unfortunately it confines itself largely to
describing the physical situation. The other reports help out the story
by the addition of various details. The troops reached the Chicago
River at two o'clock on the afternoon of August 17, after a march of
twenty-four miles from their last camping-place on the Little Calumet.
They found the Chicago a sluggish stream thirty yards in width at the
bend where the fort was to be constructed. The river was eighteen feet
or more in depth, but a sand bar at its mouth rendered the water dead
and unfit for use. The existence of the bar made it possible for the
troops to cross the river "dry shod" and encamp on the other side a
short distance above its mouth. The river bank was eight feet high at
the point where the fort was to be built, a half-mile above the mouth
of the stream. The opposite bank was somewhat lower, while farther up
the stream both banks were very low.

[Footnote 300: This circumstance was related over seventy years
later by the wife of Lieutenant William Whistler (Hurlbut, _Chicago
Antiquities_, 25). The reason for such a proceeding is not apparent.]

[Footnote 301: Swearingen's Journal, Appendix I; his statements made
in 1863 preserved in the _Chicago Historical Society, Proceedings_,
1856-64, 348; letter from Mackinac, September 6, 1803, printed in
_Relf's Philadelphia Gazette_, November 19, 1803; letter of Dr. William
Smith from Fort Dearborn, December 9, 1803, to James May of Detroit, MS
in Detroit Public Library; story of the wife of Lieutenant Whistler in
1875, Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 23-28.]

Swearingen's Journal says nothing of the Indians, but in the sketch
of his life written sixty years later he records that the troops were
greeted on their arrival by many Indians, all of whom were friendly.
The wife of Lieutenant Whistler, who came a matron of sixteen summers
to the site of the future metropolis, relates that while the schooner
was here some two thousand natives gathered to see the "big canoe with
wings." Doubtless their souls were stirred at the sight by emotions
even stronger than those which today animate their more sophisticated
successors at sight of the schooners of the air. Three weeks later a
Mackinac letter-writer reported to the eastern press that the natives
opposed the commander's design of building a fort and threatened to
collect their warriors and prevent it.[302] The writer's source of
information was evidently someone on board the "Tracy," which touched
at Mackinac on its return voyage to Detroit.[303] Since a hostile
attitude on the part of the Indians is not mentioned by Mrs. Whistler,
and is expressly denied by Swearingen, we may safely ascribe the
statement to the desire of someone to tell an interesting story.

[Footnote 302: _Relf's Philadelphia Gazette_, November 19, 1803.]

[Footnote 303: Swearingen's statements in 1863, in _Chicago Historical
Society_, Proceedings, 1856-64, 348.]

The construction of the stockade and a shelter for the troops was the
commander's first care. Mrs. Whistler relates that there were no horses
or oxen at hand, so that the soldiers were compelled to perform the
work of dragging the timbers to their required positions. It seems
likely, however, that there were some animals, though their number
was probably inadequate. The original order for the establishment
of a fort contemplated the use of packhorses by the troops on their
overland march, and Whistler, writing to Kingsbury in July, 1804,
complains of the scarcity of corn.[304] The public oxen had had none
all summer, and when he first came here he could obtain but eighteen
bushels. Evidently, then, the commander had oxen before many months
elapsed, if not from the beginning. There was, however, another source
of annoyance. If the natives did not threaten to prevent the building
of the fort, we may be sure they made life a burden to the troops by
their begging and petty thievery. The Illinois Indians had an ancient
reputation, dating back to the early French period, for being expert
thieves. When the second Fort Dearborn was built a dozen years later,
begging and stealing by the Indians became such an intolerable nuisance
that if we are to credit the assertion of Moses Morgan, who aided in
its construction, it required more men to mount guard by day to keep
the squaws and papooses away than at night.[305]

[Footnote 304: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, July 27,
1804.]

[Footnote 305: Moses Morgan's narrative, preserved by William R. Head,
MS in Chicago Historical Society library. Head was, until his death in
1910, a worker in the local historical field. Most of his papers have
been destroyed, but a few of them are in the Chicago Historical Society
library, and a considerably larger number are owned by his widow. They
will be cited henceforth as the _Head Papers_.]

We have no such detailed account of the building of the first fort,
but at least one characteristic incident has been preserved for us by
Thomas G. Anderson. Anderson, who later fought on the British side in
the War of 1812, was at this time a fur trader at Milwaukee. In his old
age he prepared a long narrative of his life in the West.[306] It is
vainglorious and unreliable in many respects, but with proper care one
may glean much of interest and something of value from it. He relates
that on learning of the coming of the troops to Chicago, he mounted
his horse and went to pay a neighborly call.[307]' He found Captain
Whistler's family ensconsed temporarily in one of the wretched log huts
which belonged to the traders, while his officers and men were living
under canvas. Anderson accepted an invitation to dine with Whistler.
The table was spread and the guests were seated, when through the door
strode a band of painted warriors. The women shrieked and fled, leaving
the men to play the role of hosts alone. The leader of the savages,
unperturbed by this reception, proceeded to help himself to the bread
on the table and distribute it among his warriors. Anderson berated him
for his conduct and succeeded in inducing the band to leave; whereupon
the doughty trader assumed to himself the credit of having averted a
massacre of the garrison. It may seem hazardous to attempt to extract
the kernel of truth in this tale from the chaff which surrounds it;
however, the opinion may be ventured that some such scene may have
occurred, but that the element of danger, and therewith the credit
which Anderson assumes for his action, was wholly lacking.

[Footnote 306: For Anderson's narrative, together with a biographical
sketch of the author, see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, IX, 137
ff. The narrative is unreliable in many ways, and its statements should
be used with caution.]

[Footnote 307: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, IX, 154-55.]

The work of construction progressed but slowly. Soon after their
arrival the troops suffered much from bilious fevers.[308] These abated
with the coming of cold weather, but in December the garrison was still
sheltered in small, temporary huts, and the fort was described as "not
much advanced." Fortunately the autumn persisted long. On December 9
the surgeon wrote to a friend in Detroit that there was neither snow
nor ice, there had been but little rain or frost, and the season had
been "remarkably fine."[309]

[Footnote 308: Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9,
1803.]

[Footnote 309: Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9,
1803.]

Before leaving the subject of the building of Fort Dearborn, it may be
well to refer to another tale in connection therewith which has often
been repeated.[310] It is to the effect that the government, having
decided to establish a fort on Lake Michigan, sent commissioners to
St. Joseph with a view of locating it there; they selected a site and
began preparations for erecting a fort, when the Indians objected, and
so the commissioners passed on to Chicago, where Fort Dearborn was
constructed. No evidence has been offered in support of this story,
notwithstanding its improbability. In the light of documents discovered
in recent years it is possible to suggest an explanation of its origin.
We have seen that Colonel Hamtramck was directed to send a detail to
explore the route and select a site at the mouth of the St. Joseph
for a temporary camp; and that Swearingen's company halted here for
two weeks on its way to Chicago. It is possible that the natives, not
knowing that the camp was but a temporary, one, protested against it
and believed their protest responsible for the removal of the troops to
Chicago.

[Footnote 310: The earliest publication of the story which I have found
occurs in the _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, I, 122.]

We may now turn our attention to the civilian population of Chicago at
the time of the establishment of Fort Dearborn, and in this connection
to what is known of the first white man who settled at this point.
Here as elsewhere, in connection with the history of early Chicago,
the truth has been obscured by a mass of tradition, fostered in large
part by family pride. The effort to fix upon any certain person the
distinction of being the first resident of Chicago is idle. Traders and
other travelers passed through the place more or less frequently from
the time of Marquette on, and at various times individuals, ordinarily
traders, established themselves here for a shorter or longer period.
The story of Father Pinet's mission of the Guardian Angel at Chicago
near the close of the seventeenth century has already been noted.[311]
After this there are several more or less shadowy traditions of
dwellers on the banks of the Chicago River during the second half of
the eighteenth century. The earliest of these deals with a remarkable
woman, whose career as painted for us by Reynolds would be difficult to
parallel elsewhere in history.[312] Born of French parents of the name
of La Flamme at St. Joseph on Lake Michigan in 1734, she first migrated
to Mackinac. From thence with her husband, Pilette de Sainte Ange, she
removed to Chicago about the year 1765. After some years' residence
here her husband died and she removed to the French settlement of
Cahokia, where she married a Canadian named La Compt and reared a large
family of children. Widowed again, she became in due time the wife
of Tom Brady. No issue resulted from this union, and Mrs. Brady was
destined to still another widowhood, dying at Cahokia in 1843 at the
age of one hundred and nine years.

[Footnote 311: _Supra_, pp. 38-42.]

[Footnote 312: Reynolds, _Pioneer History of Illinois_, 168-69. The
story is told, also, with certain variations and additional details, by
Wm. R. Head (_Head Papers_, owned by his widow).]

Governor Reynolds knew Mrs. La Compt, as she was commonly known after
Brady's death, for thirty years, and describes her as a woman of strong
mind and an extraordinary constitution, and endowed with the courage
and energies of a heroine. The Indians were her neighbors from her
infancy until extreme old age; she became familiar with their language
and their character, and over the Pottawatomies and other tribes she
developed a remarkable influence. This she frequently exerted during
the stormy days of the Revolution to protect the French settlers
from attack by the hostile warriors, and later, in the early days of
American domination in Illinois, she continued to shield the white
settlers. Reynolds avers that on numerous occasions she was awakened
in the dead of night by her Indian friends to give her warning of an
impending attack in order that she might leave Cahokia. Instead of
seeking her own safety, however, she would set out alone to meet the
hostile war party, and never failed to avert the storm and prevent
bloodshed. She sometimes remained with the warriors for days, appeasing
their anger and urging wise counsels upon them. In due time the anxious
villagers, who had been watching meanwhile with arms in their hands for
the expected attack, would see Mrs. La Compt approach at the head of
a band of warriors, their angry passions stilled and their war paint
changed to somber black to manifest their sorrow for having entertained
hostile designs against their friends. A feast would usually follow,
cementing the reconciliation which Mrs. La Compt had been instrumental
in effecting, and the warriors would disperse.

That tradition has exaggerated the influence and services of Mrs.
La Compt is quite probable. But making due allowance for this, the
impression remains that she was a woman of unusual vigor and strength
of character, and it seems appropriate that her name should head
the ever-lengthening list of white women who have been residents of
Chicago. The next tangible tradition of white occupation of Chicago
is contained in a story told to Gurdon S. Hubbard by the trader,
Antoine De Champs.[313] He pointed out to the youthful Hubbard the
traces of corn hills on the west side of the North Branch, and related
that as early as 1778 a trader by the name of Guarie had lived here,
from whom the river had taken its name. Hubbard gives further details
concerning Guarie's trading house, taking pains to point out, however,
that the statements are based on oral tradition. But this tradition is
corroborated in one respect at least, for as late as 1823 the North
Branch was called the "Gary" river by the historian of Major Long's
expedition.[314]

[Footnote 313: For it see Blanchard, _Discovery and Conquests of the
Northwest_, 757-58.]

[Footnote 314: Keating, _Narrative of an Expedition to the Sources of
the St. Peter's River ... in 1823_, I, 172.]

Our only knowledge of Guarie's residence at Chicago is contained
in the story recorded by Hubbard, but with the mixed-breed negro,
Baptiste Point Du Sable, we reach more solid ground. The traditional
account of his Chicago career, first recorded by Mrs. Kinzie[315] and
afterward repeated and enlarged upon by others,[316] must be regarded
as largely fictitious and wholly unauthenticated. But by assembling
the information contained in a number of documents widely scattered
as to date and origin it is possible to learn much about him.[317]
The usual accounts, following Mrs. Kinzie, represent Du Sable to have
been a native of San Domingo. Matson, on the other hand, states that
he was a runaway slave from the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, and
describes his coming to Chicago and his supposed doings here with much
circumstantial detail.[318] Much of this is obviously imaginary, and
the two accounts are probably equally unworthy of credence. In general,
Du Sable's occupation seems to have been that of a trader, though
according to his own testimony he had improved a thirty-acre farm at
Peoria as early as 1780.[319]

[Footnote 315: Mrs. John H. Kinzie, _Wau Bun, the "Early Day" in the
Northwest_, Caxton Club edition. This work has been reprinted several
times since its first appearance in 1856. Page references to it in this
work are to the Caxton Club edition of 1901.]

[Footnote 316: See, for example, Mason, "Early Visitors to Chicago," in
_New England Magazine_, VI, 205-6.]

[Footnote 317: The following sources, on a study of which the
accompanying account of Du Sable is based, contain practically all the
information I have been able to collect concerning him: Kinzie, _Wau
Bun_, 146; De Peyster's allusion, in speech to the Indians at l'Arbre
Croche July 4, 1779, in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 384;
McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 91-92; "Recollections
of Augustin Grignon," in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, III,
292; Lieutenant Bennett's report of arrest of Du Sable, August, 1779,
in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVII, 399; inventory of goods
taken from Du Sable by Bennett, in _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, X,
366; Journal of Hugh Heward (MS original owned by Clarence M. Burton
of Detroit; I have used the copy in the Chicago Historical Society
library'); Schoolcraft, _Personal Memoirs_, 478; Draper Collection, S,
Vols. XXI and XXII, _passim_; McCulloch, "Old Peoria," in _Illinois
State Historical Society_, Transactions, 1901, 46.]

[Footnote 318: Matson, N., _French and Indians of Illinois River_,
187-91. Matson's information purports to have been obtained from a
grandson of Du Sable.]

[Footnote 319: McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 91.]

As a trader he moved from place to place and the date of his
settlement at Chicago and the regularity of his stay here are alike
uncertain. De Peyster says that he was here in 1779, and also darkly
hints at some punishment meted out to him by Langlade, the reputed
"father of Wisconsin."[320] In the summer of that year, however, we
find him established with a house on the River Chemin, later known
as Trail Creek, probably on the site of Michigan City, Indiana.
Here he was arrested by Lieutenant Bennett, who had been sent by
De Peyster toward Vincennes to forestall an anticipated attack on
Mackinac by George Rogers Clark.[321] Du Sable's offense seems to have
consisted only in his attachment to the American cause, and even his
captor speaks highly of him. Curiously enough, he was in the employ
of a British trader, Durand, at Mackinac, who this same summer had
undertaken to guide a British war party to the Illinois country to
co-operate with Bennett. The goods which Bennett seized from Du Sable
belonged to Durand, Who proceeded to file a claim with his government
for their value. Because of this circumstance there is preserved an
itemized inventory of Du Sable's stock in trade.[322] Perhaps the most
interesting entry, aside from the quaint designation of Du Sable as a
"naigre Libre," is the rum, ten barrels of twenty gallons each, with a
value nearly twice as great as all of the remainder of the stock.

[Footnote 320: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 384; see also
in this connection _ibid._, 399, note 98.]

[Footnote 321: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, 399.]

[Footnote 322: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, X, 366.]

Whatever his nativity may have been, Du Sable proved, at least to
the satisfaction of a government commission, that he was a citizen of
the United States. In pursuance of a series of congressional acts and
resolutions providing for grants in the Illinois country to citizens
of the United States who had made improvements or who were heads of
families, Du Sable made proof that both before and after 1783 he had
resided at Peoria, that he was the head of a family, and that he had
improved a farm of thirty acres at Peoria as early as 1780.[323] The
commission therefore reported that he was entitled to eight hundred
acres of land. How long after 1783 he continued to reside at Peoria
does not appear, but in 1790 we find him established at Chicago near
the mouth of the river. Whether, as Mrs. Kinzie suggests, he went
into politics and sought election as a chief of the Pottawatomies is
dubious,[324] but when Heward passed through Chicago in the spring
of 1790, he was entertained by Du Sable. The traveler exchanged some
cotton cloth with him for a supply of food, and also borrowed his boat.
Four years later he was still here, if Grignon's recollections are to
be trusted. Alexander Robinson in his old age related that Du Sable,
who had long lived at Chicago and was prominent among the Indians, came
to Mackinac about the year 1796, accompanied by quite a band of Indians
in several birch-bark canoes. The British greeted him on his arrival by
the discharge of cannon.[325]

[Footnote 323: McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 91.]

[Footnote 324: Mrs. Kinzie's brief statement on this point is greatly
enlarged and improved upon by Matson, _French and Indians of Illinois
River_, 188-91.]

[Footnote 325: Interview with Lyman C. Draper, Draper Collection, S,
XXI, 276.]

The accounts we have of the personality and character of Du Sable are
for the most part highly creditable to him. Robinson describes him as
tall and of commanding appearance. Another observer, Stephen Hempstead,
who was acquainted with him in his old age, describes him as quite gray
and venerable, about six feet in height, with a well-formed figure
and a very pleasant countenance.[326] De Peyster, himself a rhymster
and a friend of Robert Burns, calls him "handsome" and well educated.
Doubtless in this case allowance should be made for poetic license and
for the fact that the poet probably never actually saw the subject
of his verse. Grignon recalled that Du Sable "drank pretty freely,"
and Robinson stated that he danced and caroused with the Indians and
"drank badly." By way of palliation of this charge it may be noted that
drinking was a habit common alike to Du Sable's age and his profession.
There is a much larger mass of testimony in Du Sable's favor to offset
this venial habit. Hempstead, who has already been quoted, says that
he was not degraded, and that he appeared to be respected by those who
knew him. Long years after his death the observant Schoolcraft recorded
the information received from Mrs. La Framboise, an aged métif lady
at Mackinac, that he was "a respectable man."[327] But the strongest
praise comes from Lieutenant Bennett, Du Sable's captor in 1779. He
reported to De Peyster that since his imprisonment Du Sable had behaved
in every respect as became a man in his situation, and that he had many
friends who gave him a good character.

[Footnote 326: Interview of Lyman C. Draper with Hempstead, Draper
Collection, S, XXII, 177.]

[Footnote 327: Schoolcraft, _Personal Memoirs_, 478.]

According to the tradition preserved by Mrs. Kinzie, Du Sable withdrew
from. Chicago to the home of a friend in Peoria, where he terminated
his career. Alexander Robinson stated that he went off to the region
of St. Louis and died there, probably before the beginning of the War
of 1812.[328] A more specific and, apparently, reliable account of his
last years is furnished by Hempstead.[329] He states that Du Sable had
no goods in these last years, but spent his time hunting and fishing
and lived by himself. He had a hut near the mouth of the Osage River,
and here he died, probably about the year 1811.

[Footnote 328: Interview with Lyman C. Draper, Draper Collection, S,
XXI, 276.]

[Footnote 329: _Ibid._, XXII, 177.]

When the troops came to Chicago in 1803 they found four huts or cabins
here, belonging to some French-Canadian traders.[330] One of these was
occupied by Le Mai, who had bought out Du Sable, one by Ouilmette, and
a third by Fettle. The fourth, apparently, belonged to Kinzie and was
at this time vacant. Doctor Smith, the first surgeon at Fort Dearborn,
and John La Lime shortly secured possession of it for the winter and
fitted it up in a comfortable manner for their joint occupancy.[331]

[Footnote 330: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 25.]

[Footnote 331: Letter of Dr. Smith to James May, December 9, 1803.]

Our information concerning Fettle is meager. According to Mrs. Whistler
he was a French-Canadian living here with an Indian wife when the
garrison came in 1803.[332] The entries in John Kinzie's account books
show that his first name was Louis, and that he either dealt in furs or
himself hunted them.[333] His name occurs at intervals down to 1812,
showing that he was a resident of Chicago during the entire period.
With the last entry of his name in Kinzie's account book he disappears
from history. Possibly it may have been his fate to fight and die
with the Chicago militia at the baggage wagons on the fatal day of
evacuation in the summer of 1812.

[Footnote 332: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 25.]

[Footnote 333: _Barry Transcript_.]

Ouilmette claimed to have come to Chicago in 1790.[334] He was
illiterate, and the statement, uncorroborated as it is, must be
accepted with caution. We know, however, that when the soldiers came
to establish the fort he was living with his Indian wife in one of
the four huts which they found here.[335] When Doctor Cooper came to
Fort Dearborn as post surgeon five years later, there were still but
four houses on the north side of the river, of which Ouilmette's was
one.[336] Ouilmette's chief dependence for a livelihood, apparently,
was on the transportation of travelers and their baggage across the
portage. It has already been shown that the French settlers at Chicago
carried on this business in the first quarter of the nineteenth
century.[337] That Ouilmette was engaged in this work was stated by Mr.
Bain to Rev. William Barry, founder and first secretary of the Chicago
Historical Society.[338] An entry in Kinzie's account book charges him
for the use of a wagon and oxen to transport goods over the portage to
the "Fork" of the Illinois River.[339]

[Footnote 334: Ouilmette to John (H.) Kinzie, June 1, 1839, in
Blanchard, _The Northwest and Chicago_, I, 574.]

[Footnote 335: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 25.]

[Footnote 336: _Barry Transcript._]

[Footnote 337: Wilson, _Chicago from, 1803 to 1812_.]

[Footnote 338: _Ibid._, entry for June 14, 1806.]

[Footnote 339: _Supra_, p. 19.]

In the summer of 1820 John Tanner, who had been for thirty years a
captive among the Indians, passed through Chicago with his family,
going by canoe from Mackinac to St. Louis.[340] His progress was halted
here for a time by the low stage of water in the Illinois River.
During this time he suffered greatly from illness and destitution;
he was rescued from his plight by a Frenchman who had been to carry
some boats across the portage. His wife, who was an Indian, usually
accompanied him on such expeditions. Although his horses were much worn
from their long journey, he agreed for a moderate price to transport
Tanner and his canoe sixty miles, and, if his horses should hold out,
twice this distance, the length of the portage at this stage of the
river. In addition he lent Tanner, who was weak from illness, a young
horse to ride. Before the sixty miles had been traversed the Frenchman
was himself taken sick, and as there was now some water in the river
Tanner dismissed him and attempted to descend the river in his canoe.
That this Frenchman was Ouilmette seems probable. If so, the narrative
throws an interesting light upon both his business and his character.
It shows that the transporting of travelers over the portage was a
common occupation of Ouilmette, and further that he was not inclined to
take an unfair advantage of a weak and destitute traveler.

[Footnote 340: _Tanner's Narrative_, 257-58.]

Mrs. Kinzie represents that in 1812 Ouilmette was "a part of the
establishment" of John Kinzie, and relates a remarkable story of the
rescue by his family of Mrs. Helm and Sergeant Griffith from impending
slaughter at the hands of the Wabash Indians.[341] That Ouilmette may
have been employed more or less by Kinzie is not unlikely; but the
details of the rescue story, however creditable to his family, are so
improbable as to challenge belief. It has been said that Ouilmette
remained in Chicago after the massacre, being the only white inhabitant
during the next few years.[342] However this may be, the new garrison
which came in 1816 found him living here in serene possession.[343]
With him, too, was the half-breed chief, Alexander Robinson, and the
two were engaged by the soldiers to harrow the ground for a vegetable
garden for the garrison. That Ouilmette continued to reside here after
this time is shown by the occasional mention of his name by travelers
and others as one of the inhabitants of the place.[344] In 1825 he was
credited with taxable property to the amount of four hundred dollars,
according to the earliest known Chicago assessment roll, and his name
is found the following year on the first Chicago poll list.[345]

[Footnote 341: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 182-86.]

[Footnote 342: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 452; Andreas, _History
of Chicago_, I, 184. I have found no indication of the authority on
which these statements rest.]

[Footnote 343: _Head Papers_, Narrative of Moses Morgan.]

[Footnote 344: See, for example, Hubbard, _Life_, 37; John H. Fonda,
"Recollections," in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, V, 216.]

[Footnote 345: Blanchard, _The Northwest and Chicago_, I, 516-17.]

But little can be said of the character of Ouilmette. His dealings
with Tanner, which have already been recounted, argue well for his
fairness and humanity. That he was possessed of more thrift than was
the typical frontier French habitant of this period would seem to be
attested by the facts already noted. Moses Morgan, who was employed in
the construction of the second Fort Dearborn, had a poor opinion of
Ouilmette and described his appearance as that of a "medium sized half
starved Indian." He was a Roman Catholic and signed the petition for
the establishment of the first Catholic church in Chicago.[346]

[Footnote 346: Andreas, _History of Chicago_, I, 289. For additional
data about the Ouilmette family see Grover, _Some Indian Landmarks of
the North Shore_, 277 ff.]

We are now ready to consider the reputed "father of Chicago," John
Kinzie. According to Mrs. Kinzie, the family historian, he was born
at Quebec in 1763. Shortly afterward his parents moved to Detroit,
where the father died while John was still in infancy. His mother
later married William Forsyth, who removed to New York City, where the
boy's early childhood was passed. At the age of ten or eleven he ran
away from home, and, making his way to Quebec, fell into the hands of
a silversmith from whom he learned enough of the trade to enable him
to make the ornaments which so delighted the simple red man. Meanwhile
his mother's family returned to Detroit where, later, it was rejoined
by the runaway son. In time he engaged in the Indian trade, carrying
on operations in various places. The same authority states that his
earlier establishments were at Sandusky and Maumee,[347] and this is
confirmed by two independent sources. About the time of St. Clair's
defeat Joseph Brant, the famous Iroquois chieftain, purchased a horse
and other supplies from "Mr. Kinzie, Silver Smith at the Miami."[348]
Henry Hay, who passed the winter of 1789-90 at the Miami settlement,
makes frequent mention of Kinzie in the journal which he kept of his
travels.[349] According to the journal Kinzie had both a house and a
shop and "apprentices." Hay draws an interesting picture of the life
of the little settlement. Neither social nor religious consolation was
lacking, and Hay played his flute and Kinzie his fiddle indifferently
for drinking bout and mass. At times the two classes of entertainment
followed each other so closely that the musicians went reeling from
one to the other. "Got infernally drunk last night with Mr. Abbot and
Mr. Kinzie," wrote the journalist on one occasion. "Mr. A. gave me
his daughter Betsy over the bottle. Damnation sick this morning in
consequence of last night's debashe--eat no breakfast, Kinzie & myself
went to mass and played as usual. Mrs. Ranjard gave us a Cup of Coffee
before mass to settle our heads."

[Footnote 347: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 149.]

[Footnote 348: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XX, 336.]

[Footnote 349: _Journal from Detroit to the Miami River_, MS in the
Detroit Public Library. The journal is anonymous, but Mr. Clarence M.
Burton, who has a typewritten copy of it, ascribes it to Henry Hay.]

During these years Kinzie was, of course, in league with the enemies
of the United States. Hay makes frequent mention of the bringing in
of American prisoners by the Indians, and of the presence of Little
Turtle, Blue Jacket, and other chiefs hostile to the Americans, at
the village. In the autumn of 1793 Kinzie was still at the Maumee
Rapids, where he incurred the suspicion of the Indians by his
communications with Wells, one of Wayne's chief scouts.[350] Probably
his establishment was destroyed, along with those of the other British
traders, by the American army following the battle of Fallen Timbers.
The family historian states that he removed to the St. Joseph River
about the year 1800,[351] but he must have located there at an earlier
date, for William Burnett in 1798 speaks of him as "Mr. McKenzie of
this place."[352] Apparently, however, while carrying on trade with the
Indians at these places Kinzie retained some connection with Detroit.
Hurlbut found evidence in the Wayne County records that he was doing
business there in 1795 and again in 1797.[353] In 1798 he married Mrs.
Eleanor McKillip,[354] the widow of a Detroit militia officer in the
British Indian service who had been slain on the Maumee during Wayne's
campaign against the northwestern tribes. Mrs. McKillip had a daughter,
Margaret, whom we shall meet later as the wife of Lieutenant Helm of
the Fort Dearborn garrison.

[Footnote 350: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XX, 342, 347.]

[Footnote 351: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 349.]

[Footnote 352: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 67. Kinzie is a
corruption of the Scotch name Mackenzie, which was the name of Kinzie's
father.]

[Footnote 353: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 469.]

[Footnote 354: Kinzie had formed an earlier connection with a woman
of the same family name as his own, Margaret McKenzie. The story that
has been handed down to us of her career, while doubtless idealized
through dint of repetition, well illustrates the possibilities for
adventure of life on the American border a century and a quarter ago.
In the course of Lord Dunmore's war, Margaret and Elizabeth McKenzie
were carried away from their Virginia home into captivity among the
Indians. The children were adopted by a Shawnee chief who lived near
the Indian town of Chillicothe in western Ohio. Years later, when they
had grown to womanhood, Margaret, the elder, accompanied her foster
parent on a hunting expedition to the vicinity of the modern Fort
Wayne, Indiana. Here a young brave sought to force her to marry him.
Spurning his attentions, she mounted a horse by night and fled through
the forest a distance of seventy-five miles to her Indian home. The
horse is said to have died from the effects of the wild ride, but the
maiden was made of sterner stuff. At length Margaret McKenzie became
the wife of John Kinzie, and her sister, Elizabeth, the wife of a
Scotchman named Clark. Whether the two white men rescued the women from
captivity and were rewarded for this service by their respective hands,
or the old chief voluntarily brought them to Detroit on a visit, where
the marriages were brought about in the usual way, depends upon which
faction of Kinzie's descendants tells the story. So, too, it is still
a matter of dispute whether or not the union was cemented by a formal
marriage ceremony. Whatever the truth in these respects may be, the
unions endured for a number of years, two children being born to the
Clarks and three to the Kinzies. With the restoration of peace to the
northwestern frontier in 1795 Isaac McKenzie, the father, learned of
the whereabouts of his long-lost children. He journeyed to Detroit to
see them, and when he returned to his home in Virginia his daughters
with their children accompanied him, leaving their woodland husbands
behind.

Conflicting explanations, colored in each case by partisan pride,
have been given of the reasons for this untimely breaking-up of the
two families. Since the only evidence in the premises is family
tradition, it seems vain to seek to determine where the truth lies.
Margaret Kinzie later married Benjamin Hall, while her sister became
the wife of Jonas Clybourne. Two of the former's children by Kinzie,
James and Elizabeth, in later years came to Chicago; so, too, did the
Halls and the Clybournes; and these various family groups comprised
a considerable proportion of the population of Chicago in the later
twenties. On the subject of this footnote see Blanchard, _The Northwest
and Chicago_; Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_; Andreas, _Chicago_;
Gordon, _John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago."_ For obvious reasons
the Kinzie family historian makes no mention in _Wau Bun_ of this
feature of her father-in-law's career. Mr. Clarence M. Burton has a
genealogy (MS) of the Kinzie family to which descendants respectively
of John Kinzie's first and second families have contributed their views
concerning the legitimacy of the former.]

In the spring of 1804 Kinzie became a resident of Chicago. The last
entry in his account book at St. Joseph bears date of April 30, 1804,
while the first at Chicago occurs on May 12. The hut which Du Sable and
Le Mai had in turn occupied now became the habitation of Kinzie. His
business prospered and he conducted trading "adventures" at Peoria, on
the Kankakee, and elsewhere, in addition to the main establishment at
Chicago.[355] By the massacre and the train of events brought on by the
War of 1812, however, Kinzie's property was largely destroyed and his
business was ruined. After his return to Chicago in 1816 the formidable
competition of the American Fur Company combined with other causes to
prevent him from achieving the degree of success which he had attained
during the years from 1803 to 1812.

[Footnote 355: _Barry Transcript_; Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 150.]

The propriety of designating Kinzie the "father of Chicago" is dubious.
No one individual can properly claim exclusive right to this title. The
event which, more adequately than any other, signalizes the beginning
of modern white settlement here was the founding of Fort Dearborn;
and the man who with more propriety than any other may be regarded as
the "father" of the modern city is Captain John Whistler, who built
the first fort and for seven years dominated the life within and
around its walls. He came in obedience to an order, of course, as an
officer in the army. Kinzie, on the other hand, came nearly a year
later to conduct the usual Indian trading-house. There is no reason
to suppose that he would have come to Chicago at all, but for the
prior establishment of the garrison. Yet several other traders had
established themselves here, not only before Kinzie, but also before
the garrison came.

It has been stated that for nearly twenty years Kinzie was the only
white inhabitant of northern Illinois outside the military.[356] So
far is this from being true that there was never a moment of time
during his residence at Chicago when he was the only civilian here.
Particularly during the latter years of his life, a number of civilians
were living in Chicago and in the immediate vicinity. The undue
prominence in this period of Chicago history which Kinzie has come to
hold in the popular mind is due to the fact that he gained, after his
death, a daughter-in-law who possessed the literary skill to weave a
romantic narrative celebrating the family name and deeds.

[Footnote 356: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 146-47.]

The name of Kinzie is unpleasantly associated with two other
characters of these early years, John La Lime and Jeffrey Nash. La
Lime was at St. Joseph in 1787, apparently in the employ of William
Burnett.[357] Whether he located at Chicago before the garrison came
is not apparent; if not, he came the same year. Shortly after the
arrival of the garrison he and Doctor Smith, the surgeon, began living
together; they secured Kinzie's house for the first winter and fitted
it up "in a very comfortable manner."[358] The fourth name entered
in Kinzie's account book after his removal to Chicago in May, 1804,
is that of La Lime.[359] In the same month he signed as witness the
articles of indenture of Jeffrey Nash to Kinzie and Forsyth, "Merchants
of Chicago."[360] When Cooper came to Fort Dearborn as surgeon in 1808,
La Lime was living in one of the four houses on the north side of the
river and acting as government Indian interpreter.[361] He continued to
serve in this capacity until his death shortly before the massacre in
the summer of 1812.

[Footnote 357: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 55.]

[Footnote 358: Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9,
1803.]

[Footnote 359: _Barry Transcript._]

[Footnote 360: This document is preserved in the Draper Collection,
_Forsyth Papers_, I, Doc. No. I.]

[Footnote 361: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

But for a single exception, all the reports concerning La Lime's
character which have come to light are highly creditable to him. His
few remaining letters show him to have been a man of some education.
The esteem in which Jouett held him is shown by his naming a son after
him.[362] Doctor Smith, who was living with him in the winter of
1803-4, described him as "a very decent man and a good companion."[363]

[Footnote 362: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 108.]

[Footnote 363: Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9,
1803.]

In the summer of 1812, a few weeks before the massacre. La Lime was
stabbed to death by Kinzie in a personal encounter just outside the
entrance to Fort Dearborn. Unless new sources of information shall
come to light, the responsibility for this affray will never be
determined. La Lime's side of the story has not been preserved, except
in the form of unreliable verbal tradition, which pictures Kinzie in
the light of aggressor and murderer.[364] The Kinzie family tradition
represents that La Lime, insanely jealous over Kinzie's success as a
trader, treacherously attacked him, armed with a pistol and dirk, and
was stabbed to death by Kinzie in self-defense.[365] Practically all
writers on Chicago history hitherto have accepted this version,[366]
but it is as little worthy of credence as the contrary one. The
interest in the killing of La Lime must, in the nature of things, have
soon given place to the general anxiety over the situation produced
by the hovering war cloud which was now about to burst. Within four
months came the massacre,[367] as the result of which over half of
the inmates of the frontier settlement were slain and the remainder
scattered far and wide. But few of them ever returned to Chicago, and
these, like Rip Van Winkle, drifted back after the passage of years, as
to a new world. That the fate of La Lime should be obliterated by the
horrors and confusion of a three years' war was only natural. When in
a later generation interest in his fate was revived only the version
of it originating with the relatives and friends of the slayer gained
the public ear, and this, for obvious reasons, put the onus of the
affray on the slain. The fact of La Lime's death at the hands of Kinzie
is clear; the responsibility for it cannot, in the light of existing
information, be determined.

[Footnote 364: Head Papers. Head was acquainted with various pioneer
Chicagoans, and his statements purport to be drawn from such sources.
His methods of work were such, however, that but little confidence can
be had in his statements.]

[Footnote 365: The details of the affair vary, naturally, in the
different accounts. For the Kinzie family tradition see Eleanor
Kinzie Gordon, _John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago,"_ 8-9; letter
of Gurdon S. Hubbard, in Wentworth, Early Chicago, Fergus Historical
Series, No. 16, 83; Mrs. Porthier's narrative in Andreas, _History of
Chicago_, I, 105. Hubbard procured his information from the members of
Kinzie's family. Mrs. Porthier, who in old age claimed to have been
an eye-witness of the killing of La Lime, was an inmate of the Kinzie
household for several years following 1816.]

[Footnote 366: See for example Wentworth, _Early Chicago_; Kirkland,
_The Chicago Massacre_; Andreas, _History of Chicago_.]

[Footnote 367: I have not been able to determine the exact date of
the death of La Lime. It could not have been earlier than April 13,
however, since on this date he wrote to Captain Wells of Fort Wayne an
account of the murders at the Lee farm on April 6 (_Louisiana Gazette_,
May 30, 1812, copied by Lyman C. Draper, Draper Collection, S, Vol.
XXVI).]

On May 22, 1804, articles of indenture were entered into which
bound Jeffrey Nash, a "Negro man," to serve John Kinzie and Thomas
Forsyth, "Merchants of Chicago," for the term of seven years.[368]
The instrument describes Nash as an inhabitant of Wayne County,
although it was executed, apparently, at Chicago.[369] The Chicago
of 1804 was located in Wayne County, Indiana Territory, whose county
seat was Detroit, over three hundred miles away. In return for meat,
drink, apparel, washing, and lodging "fitting for a Servant," Nash
bound himself to the maintenance of an utterly impossible standard
of conduct.[370] Doubtless the quaint language of the indenture
simply followed the customary form of such documents; it can scarcely
have been expected that the bound man would live up to its numerous
stipulations.

[Footnote 368: Draper Collection, _Forsyth Papers_, I, Doc. No. 1.]

[Footnote 369: That the indenture was entered into at Chicago I infer
from the facts that Kinzie opened his account books here on May 12, and
numerous entries in them were made during the ensuing ten days, and
that the name of John La Lime, one of the witnesses of the indenture,
occurs among the entries for May 12.]

[Footnote 370: Among the other things it was agreed that for the space
of seven years "the said servant his said Masters shall faithfully
serve their Secrets keep their lawfully Command everywhere gladly
Obey. He shall do no damage to his said Masters. He shall not wast his
Masters goods nor lend them unlawfully to others. He shall not commit
Fornication nor contract Matrimony within said Term. At dice Cards or
any unlawful game he shall not play where by his said Masters may be
damaged with his own goods or the goods of others during the said Term
without licence of his said Masters he shall neither buy nor sell he
shall not absent day nor night from his said Masters Service without
their leave nor haunt Taverns or any place or places without permission
from said Masters but in all things behave as a faithful Servant ought
to do during the said Term."]

Nash signed the instrument by making his mark. It might reasonably be
concluded, even in the absence of other information concerning him,
that this indenture practically reduced him to slavery. That Kinzie and
Forsyth chose to so regard Nash's status is shown by their treatment
of him. He was taken to Peoria, Forsyth's place of residence from 1802
until 1812, and for many years held by the latter as a slave.[371] At
length he ran away from his bondage and made his way to St. Louis, and
eventually to New Orleans, where he was said to have had a wife and
children. Forsyth and Kinzie sought to recover possession of him and
to this end a suit was instituted in the parish court; the case went
ultimately to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, where an interesting
decision was rendered.[372]

[Footnote 371: Draper Collection, _Forsyth Papers_, Vol. I, copy of
decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, June 5, 1816, in the case
of _Kensy and Forsyth, plaintiffs_, versus _Jeffrey Nash, defendant_.]

[Footnote 372: The summary given here is based on the manuscript
copy of the decision in the _Forsyth Papers_. The case is reported in
Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, II, 180.]

The plaintiffs submitted two lines of evidence in support of their
contention that Nash was their lawful slave. A number of witnesses
testified that for a term of years he had lived at Peoria as Forsyth's
slave, being "known and reputed" as such by the villagers. Furthermore
the plaintiffs produced a bill of sale of Nash to them, dated at
Detroit, September 5, 1803, and there recorded and duly authenticated.
In view of the fact that the articles of indenture whereby Nash bound
himself "voluntarily as a servant" to Kinzie and Forsyth for a term of
seven years were executed in May, 1804, there seems to be no escape
from the conclusion that the bill of sale was a forgery, fabricated
for the use to which it was now put. Although it deceived the court,
the fraud brought no profit to the plaintiffs. The judges declared
that since the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest
Territory unless under two exceptions, the plaintiffs' "alleged
possession" of Nash could only have been lawful at the time the bill
of sale was produced on two grounds. There could be complete ownership
and slavery only in case the person claimed had been convicted of a
crime by which his freedom was forfeited. Or, if the defendant were
a fugitive from involuntary servitude in another state, he might be
seized and returned to servitude there.

The plaintiffs did not claim Nash on this latter ground, however.
Their contention was for the absolute right to hold Nash during his
natural life and dispose of him as they pleased. Their conduct toward
him showed that they unlawfully attempted to, and did successfully,
exercise for years the right of absolute control over him, until he
at last sought safety in flight. Since no evidence had been produced
to show that Nash had forfeited his freedom because of conviction for
crime, the decision was given for him with costs. Thus did the Supreme
Court of the slave state of Louisiana uphold the free character of the
soil of Illinois, and rescue a free man from bondage, at a time when
slavery openly flourished here, and slaves were bought and sold and
held in bondage even by such prominent characters as the governor of
the territory.




CHAPTER VII

NINE YEARS OF GARRISON LIFE


The privations and loneliness of life at the new post on the Chicago
River in the years following 1803 can be imagined by most readers only
with difficulty. Only those who have experienced the deadly dullness
of military routine at an isolated station can appreciate it properly.
All witnesses agree in testifying to the overpowering loneliness of
life under such conditions as prevailed at Fort Dearborn from 1803
to 1812. "In compassion to a poor devil banished to another planet,"
wrote Governor St. Clair, from Cincinnati, to Alexander Hamilton, in
1795, "tell me what is doing in yours, if you can snatch a moment from
the weighty cares of your office."[373] One day in October, 1817, a
year after the establishment of the second Fort Dearborn, Samuel A.
Storrow, who was making a tour through the Northwest, appeared on the
north bank of the Chicago River, and shortly after entered the fort,
where he was received "as one arrived from the moon."[374] A British
officer, writing from Mackinac in 1796, laments as follows: "You talk
of your place being duller than ever, &c, believe me it cannot be put
in competition with ours for dullness, jealousy, and envy, with all the
etceteras mentioned in yours."[375] And Captain Heald, writing from
Fort Dearborn in June, 1810, within a few days of his taking command
there, announces that unless he can obtain a leave of absence to go to
New England the coming autumn he will resign the service, and leave the
command to another. It is a good place for a man with a family, who can
be content to "live so remote from the civilized part of the world."

[Footnote 373: Smith, _The St. Clair Papers_, II, 318.]

[Footnote 374: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, VI, 179.]

[Footnote 375: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XII, 211.]

The little establishment at Fort Dearborn constituted a miniature
world, with interests and ambitions quite detached from those of the
larger world outside. The principal means of contact with the latter
was afforded by the traders who passed through Chicago, proceeding with
their merchandise to the Indian country or returning therefrom with the
fruits of their barter. They brought the news of the outside world to
the inmates of the garrison and surrounding cabins. Each year a vessel
from Detroit or Mackinac brought a supply of merchandise to the traders
at Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Joseph, and took back the stock of furs
accumulated by them.[376] Aside from these visits there were official
communications from time to time between the commanding officers of the
little group of northwestern posts, to which Fort Dearborn belonged,
and advantage was taken of the opportunity thus presented to transmit
letters and items of private import. Occasionally, too, the brig,
"Adams," constituting the chief part of Commodore Brevoort's "navy of
the lakes," would pay a visit to Chicago. It must have been an occasion
of rare excitement in the lives of the inmates of Fort Dearborn when
Kingsbury passed through Chicago with a company of troops in the spring
of 1805, on his way to superintend the establishment of Fort Belle
Fontaine near the mouth of the Missouri River.[377]

[Footnote 376: Antoine le Claire's statement in _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XI, 239-40.]

[Footnote 377: For the facts concerning this expedition see the
_Kingsbury Papers_, letter book, _passim_.]

Only belated rumors of the events of the outside world ordinarily
penetrated the seclusion of Fort Dearborn. From November until May
it was as isolated as though on another planet. We have in epitome
the story of the failure of one attempt, made by Captain Whistler in
December, 1809, to break this isolation. He obtained a month's leave of
absence to journey to Cincinnati.[378] Today the round trip may be made
and a fair day's business transacted in twenty-four hours. Whistler
left Chicago the last of November and reached Fort Wayne December 10,
"much fatigued after 11 days wairy traveling through rain and snow."
The water was so high that his further progress was prevented. Finding
it impossible, should he proceed, to be back at his post by the end
of the month, he prepared to return to Fort Dearborn, grateful to his
superior for the opportunity accorded him as though he had succeeded in
making the journey.

[Footnote 378: _Ibid._, Whistler to Kingsbury, December 12, 1809.]

Kingsbury's letter books, whose contents relate to the several
northwestern posts in general, are the best source of information
upon the conditions that prevailed at Fort Dearborn in this period.
In October, 1804, Kingsbury writes from Mackinac to an eastern
correspondent urging him to reply immediately, in which case the answer
will reach Mackinac by the first vessel in the spring, which will
probably arrive in May or June.[379] The answer is to be directed to
Detroit, the postmaster there having agreed to forward his mail to him
at Mackinac. A year later, when Kingsbury is at Fort Belle Fontaine,
a St. Louis friend sends him a bundle of newspapers, but requests him
to preserve them in order that the writer may have a file of "Steady
Habits" to peruse in a "Hypochrondichal hour."[380] How the inmates of
Fort Dearborn sometimes received their mail is shown by a letter of
William Burnett, the St. Joseph trader, to his Detroit correspondent in
January, 1804, in which, among other things, he mentions the receipt of
the letters and newspapers for "the doctor at Chicagou" and promises to
forward them at the first opportunity.[381]

[Footnote 379: _Ibid._, Kingsbury to Benjamin Ellis, October 16, 1804.]

[Footnote 380: _Ibid._, E. Hempstead to Kingsbury, October 17, 1805.]

[Footnote 381: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, VIII, 547.]

The observations of the frontier officers upon the public news of the
outside world constitute an interesting part of their correspondence.
In August, 1805, Kingsbury is informed by a Mackinac correspondent
that the French and English fleets have not met, "which we consider
an Unfortunate Circumstance," as no doubt is felt of the triumph of
the British in the event of a combat.[382] The French have captured a
rich American ship near Charleston, and the public prints are full of
complaints against the President for suffering such depredations upon
American commerce. Bonaparte has gone to Italy "to extort much money
from the Italians." Another correspondent of Kingsbury sends news late
in February, 1805, of the election of Jefferson to the presidency.[383]
An item which has a familiar ring relates that "Congress have done
nothing since in Session worth mentioning that have come to our
knowledge."[384]

[Footnote 382: _Kingsbury Papers_, David Mitchell to Kingsbury, August
24, 1805.]

[Footnote 383: _Kingsbury Papers_, Clemson to Kingsbury, February 24.
1805.]

[Footnote 384: _Ibid._]

Thus the public news items run. Bonaparte has been proclaimed "Emperor
of the Gauls";[385] the death of Hamilton is announced, with regret.
Burr has fled from New York, fearing assassination. The probabilities
of a war with Spain and of a revolt in Louisiana are gravely discussed.
The traders, too, had their disputes. Shortly before Kinzie removed to
Chicago, he became involved in a business dispute with an associate
named Pattinson. The latter addressed an acrid letter to him "dictated
in such terms of impertinency that he pointly brings in question
Kenzie's character, relative to their concerns. In a word he calls
him everything but a gentleman."[386] Burnett of St. Joseph who,
though not directly implicated in the Pattinson-Kinzie quarrel, seems
to have sympathized with the latter, also became involved in the
dispute. Pattinson claimed that Burnett had insulted him by speaking
disrespectfully to his brother of his government, and by calling his
house a "hog-sty." Burnett replied that it was not his intention to
have "hurted their tender feelings," but that in the course of an
argument over the relative greatness of Great Britain and America, in
which Pattinson had made extravagant claims for the former, he took
it upon himself to contradict "this high flier." It is refreshing to
discover that at a time when our government was humiliating itself
before those of Great Britain and France, the honor of America was thus
valiantly upheld in an obscure corner of the northwestern frontier.

[Footnote 385: _Ibid._, Kingsbury to Whistler, September 10, 1804.]

[Footnote 386: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, VIII, 546-47.]

The garrison at Chicago made what progress it might to complete the
fort and prepare for the coming winter. The work of construction was
seriously impeded, however, by the lack of necessary tools, and even
the supplies of provisions and clothing for the men were inadequate. In
July, 1804, a year after the arrival of the troops, Kingsbury learned
from Major Pike and Doctor Smith that Whistler's men were almost
destitute of clothing.[387] That the destitution extended to other
things as well is shown by his letter to Whistler informing the latter
that he has ordered a supply of clothing, kettles, stationery, hospital
stores, a whip-saw, and other things to be sent to Chicago by the brig,
"Adams." At the same time Kingsbury congratulates Whistler upon having
accomplished so much with his meager resources, with "no clothing for
the men," and without the necessary tools with which to work.

[Footnote 387: _Kingsbury Papers_, Kingsbury to Whistler, July 12,
1804.]

That the construction of the fort was not yet completed would seem to
be indicated by numerous entries in Kinzie's account book during the
summer of 1804 of the names of men who are designated as sawyers.[388]
Two weeks after Kingsbury's letter informing Whistler of the shipment
of supplies, the latter writes that they have been received.[389] But
the whip-saw can be of little use without files, for oak is the only
saw timber available at Chicago. There is clothing for the sergeants,
but no invoice of it has been sent, and until this arrives the clothing
cannot be used. Fifty-six suits of clothing have been received, but he
has sixty-six men to supply. He has two fifers but the only fife has
been lost. Watch coats are needed very badly. There has been no corn
for the public oxen all summer and none can be procured here. All of
these things may be sent by Kinzie, who is coming from Detroit in about
a month.

[Footnote 388: _Barry Transcript._]

[Footnote 389: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, July 26 and
27, 1804.]

Along with these homely details of toil and privation are others of
more private interest, ranging in character from grave to gay. On the
first of November, 1804, occurred the first recorded wedding of white
people at Chicago. It was, too, a society affair, for the contracting
parties were Sarah, the eldest daughter of Captain Whistler, and James
Abbott, the Detroit merchant. The proud father-in-law in announcing
the event, states that he has long known and "had a great opinion of"
the bridegroom.[390] The family genealogist records that the marriage
ceremony was performed by John Kinzie, and that the bridal couple
indulged in an overland wedding journey to Detroit, traveling on
horseback and tenting at night.[391]

[Footnote 390: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3,
1804.]

[Footnote 391: Whistler family genealogy, MS in the Chicago Historical
Society library.]

The next day after Chicago's first wedding the family of Kingsbury
at Mackinac was gladdened by the appearance of a new daughter.[392]
In announcing the event to Colonel Hunt at Detroit, the happy father
hopes to hear of the latter being in a similar situation, unless he
happens to prefer that Mrs. Hunt should present him with a son. Shortly
afterward Kingsbury ordered from Detroit, by the first vessel in the
spring, some walnut and cherry boards and a cow and calf.[393] He
had already requested Whistler to send him some walnut planks from
Chicago.[394] Whistler responded by sending him two, but explained that
these were all he could procure and that he had not yet made a single
table for himself.[395]

[Footnote 392: _Kingsbury Papers_, Kingsbury to Hunt, November 11,
1804.]

[Footnote 393: _Ibid._, Kingsbury to Clemson, November 21, 1804.]

[Footnote 394: _Ibid._, Kingsbury to Whistler, October 16, 1804.]

[Footnote 395: _Ibid._, Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3, 1804.]

Less pleasing than the marriages and births are the reports of fever
and other ills which beset the occupants of the garrisons in the new
country. Fort Dearborn was only a year old when Whistler reported that
more than half of his men had been ill. Whipple at Fort Wayne, writing
in September, 1804, praises his new surgeon; since his arrival the sick
list which had numbered twenty-five has been materially reduced.[396]
"We have all been sick since you left this," wrote Clemson from Detroit
in October of the same year.[397] The writer had not yet recovered from
the severe attack of the fever, but expected with the assistance of
the frosty nights to regain his strength. At the same time Lieutenant
Rhea's little garrison on the Maumee was in a desperate condition. On
July 31 he reported that in addition to himself ten men out of his
force of twenty-one were ill.[398] A month later the number of sick men
remained about the same; the wife of a corporal was at the point of
death, and Rhea had sent to the River Raisin for a physician, expecting
to pay the expense himself.[399] He appeals urgently for help and for
removal. The "musketoes" are so thick that a well person cannot sleep
at night; the place was never intended "for any Christian to be posted
at."

[Footnote 396: _Ibid._, Whipple to Kingsbury, September 1, 1804.]

[Footnote 397: _Ibid._, Clemson to Kingsbury, October 27, 1804.]

[Footnote 398: _Ibid._, Rhea to Kingsbury, July 31, 1804.]

[Footnote 399: _Ibid._, Rhea to Kingsbury, August 31 and September 8,
1804.]

A year later, in July, 1805, a pathetic letter from Whistler at Fort
Dearborn announces that Mrs. Whistler is at the point of death.[400]
She is in constant pain, and frequent bleeding is the only thing that
affords her any relief. The anxious husband bravely reflects that while
there is life there is hope, but laments his unhappy state, with so
large a family of children, should he lose "so good a companion."

[Footnote 400: _Ibid._, Whistler to Kingsbury, July 12. 1805.]

In Captain Heald's journal[401] occurs the entry, "On the 4th of May,
1812, we had a son born dead for the want of a skilful Midwife."
The picture of the sorrow and tragedy concealed behind these few
words may appropriately be left, as it has been by the parent, to
the imagination. Three months later the young Kentucky bride, still
grieving we may well believe over the loss of her first-born, conducted
herself with such spirit during the terrible scenes of the massacre as
to arouse the admiration of even the savage foe.

[Footnote 401: For it see Appendix III.]

The diversions of the garrison were, naturally, but few. Fishing
and hunting, and an occasional athletic contest with the Indians who
visited the fort were the chief outdoor amusements. From its first
discovery by the French until well into the nineteenth century the
region around Chicago was a perfect hunter's paradise. When Cooper
came to Fort Dearborn in 1808 the officers and most of the civilians
possessed horses, cows, and dogs.[402] Cooper himself had two good
saddle horses, two cows, and a hunting dog. There was an abundance of
game in the immediate vicinity. Within a week of Cooper's arrival, his
dog and several others chased three deer past the post into the river.
A young soldier who was in a canoe without any weapon sprang into the
water as the deer were swimming past, caught one by the neck, and held
its head under water until it was drowned. Cooper's dog seized the
second, but the third, a large stag, gained the north bank and escaped.

[Footnote 402: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

Not long after this Cooper and Captain Whistler, while riding out
together, came upon a large wolf within half a mile of the fort. Their
dogs took up the chase and soon brought him to bay. The officers had no
pistols, and the dogs manifested a wholesome respect for the formidable
looking teeth of the wolf, and so they were called off and the animal
allowed to go his way without further molestation. The howling of
wolves at night was a common occurrence during these years. Grouse and
other game birds were abundant, as were fish in the river and lake, so
that in the hunting season the officers spent much of their leisure
time with gun and rod.

We are indebted to Surgeon Cooper for the story of a notable athletic
contest at Chicago, the description of which stirs the blood, even
after the lapse of a hundred years.[403] Lieutenant William Whistler
was a splendid specimen of physical manhood, over six feet in height
and famous for his strength and powers of endurance. Among the visitors
at Fort Dearborn was a Pottawatomie chief of similar physique and
about the same age as Whistler. He was a great runner and enjoyed the
reputation of never having been defeated in a race. A five-mile foot
race between the two men was arranged, Whistler wagering his horse and
accouterments against the horse and trappings of the chief. Both the
red men and the soldiers of the garrison were confident of the prowess
of their respective champions. The Indians staked their ponies and
other available property on the chief and the soldiers accepted the
wagers as fast as offered. The contest, which was witnessed by several
hundred Indians and the entire garrison, was won by Whistler, after a
superb struggle, by a margin of a few yards.

[Footnote 403: _Ibid._]

The final sequel of the race, according to the same authority, came
some years later and was even more thrilling. During the War of 1812
the same chief, now serving with the British, sent a challenge to
individual combat to Lieutenant Whistler or any officer or soldier
in his command. It was promptly accepted by Whistler himself, and as
the result of the ensuing hand-to-hand combat with knife, sword, and
tomahawk, firearms not being allowed, the red man departed for the
happy hunting ground.

An account of the garrison life at Fort Dearborn in this period would
be incomplete without some reference to a drearier subject than any yet
mentioned. The personnel of the army at this time was far from high.
A considerable proportion of the men were foreigners,[404] and a far
larger number were illiterate.[405] The life at the frontier posts was
monotonous, drinking and desertions were common, and the punishment
for infractions of discipline was atrocious. We have no record of the
court martial proceedings at Fort Dearborn, but the records for some
of the other northwestern posts are painfully abundant, and a sketch
of their contents will answer as well for Fort Dearborn. The orderly
book of Anthony Wayne, who has been well described as a "furious
disciplinarian,"[406] presents a picture of corporal punishments meted
out to the soldiers at Detroit in 1797, worthy of the palmiest days of
the army of Frederick the Great.[407]

[Footnote 404: Of the fifty-nine men in Captain Whistler's company at
Fort Detroit in 1812 eighteen were foreigners. Of the fifty men in
Captain Rhea's company at Fort Wayne in 1810 fourteen were foreigners
(_Kingsbury Papers_, quarterly returns of the companies in question).]

[Footnote 405: Approximately 60 per cent of the members of Captain
Heald's company at Fort Dearborn at the close of the year 1811 were
unable to sign their names to the payroll receipts (payroll receipt of
Fort Dearborn garrison for last quarter of the year 1811, in _Heald
Papers_, Draper Collection, U, VIII, 92).]

[Footnote 406: _Detroit Tribune_, April 5, 1896.]

[Footnote 407: The orderly book is printed in Michigan Pioneer
Collections, XXXIV, 341-734. It covers the five-year period from 1792
to 1797. The cases which I have chosen for illustration all occurred at
Detroit in the last-mentioned year.]

The commonest offense charged was drunkenness, the usual penalty for
which was the public infliction of from twenty-five to one hundred
lashes, and in the case of petty officers reduction to the ranks.
Occasionally resort was had to other methods to punish and humiliate
the guilty one. One culprit, a corporal, charged with desertion,
was sentenced to walk the gauntlet six times between double ranks
of soldiery, both ranks striking at the same time.[408] Two camp
followers, a man and a woman, charged with selling liquor to a soldier
were sentenced to be drummed out of camp to the tune of the Rogues'
March, with a bottle suspended around the neck of each and the man's
left hand tied to the woman's right. In this plight they were to be
paraded past the citadel and through the barracks of the soldiery
and the principal streets of the town.[409] The man's sentence was
remitted, but that against the woman was carried into execution the
same afternoon. Still another culprit, guilty of enticing a soldier to
desert, was ordered to be given fifty lashes with "wired Catts," to
have the left side of his head and his right eyebrow close shaved, and
to be drummed with a rope around his neck through the citadel and fort
and the principal streets of the town.[410]

[Footnote 408: _Ibid._, 704.]

[Footnote 409: _Ibid._, 701-9.]

[Footnote 410: _Ibid._, 715.]

It may be supposed that the punishments inflicted under Wayne's
command were severer than those meted out at Fort Dearborn a few years
later. Yet they show what might be done by an army officer at that
time in the maintenance of discipline. The records of courts martial
at Fort Detroit under Kingsbury's régime, after Whistler's removal
thither from Fort Dearborn in 1810, probably reflect fairly the state
of affairs at Fort Dearborn.[411] In general the punishments are milder
than those formerly meted out under Wayne. The common crimes were still
drunkenness and desertion. For the former sentences of from twenty-five
to fifty lashes on the "bear back" were commonly decreed. It should be
noted that Whistler and Helm, both of whom served at Fort Dearborn,
were often members of the court by which these sentences were imposed.

[Footnote 411: _Kingsbury Papers_, records of court martial
proceedings, _passim_.]

Two specific instances will be cited, in both of which Captain Whistler
acted as president of the court martial. On May 23, 1811, Peter
Sendale, a private soldier, was tried for drunkenness. The accused
pleaded guilty, but advanced the ingenuous excuse by way of extenuation
that he had worked hard all day in the Colonel's garden, that he had
the latter's permission to go and get a drink, and that he "took a
little too much." Notwithstanding this plea he was sentenced to receive
twenty-five lashes on the "bear back." In the other case two men were
charged with desertion. They admitted the offense, but pleaded in
mitigation of it that they had repented of the act and were returning
to their post of duty when arrested. The testimony given satisfied the
court of the truth of this, yet the prisoners were sentenced to pay the
cost of their apprehension and to be confined at hard labor with ball
and chain for a period not to exceed one year. The court took occasion
to observe that the punishment was not proportioned to the heinousness
of the offense, and that its mildness was due solely to the testimony
concerning the prisoners' belated repentance.

We may now direct our attention to Fort Dearborn itself and to those
persons who composed its official family from 1803 to 1812. There
exist two contemporary pictures of the fort and its surroundings in
the year 1808, one the verbal account of Surgeon Cooper as recorded
by James Grant Wilson,[412] the other a diagram carefully drawn
to scale by Captain Whistler, and accompanied by a summary verbal
description.[413] The river at that time made a sharp turn about
an eighth of a mile from the lake, and after running in a general
southerly direction lost itself in the lake a mile south of its present
mouth. The fort was built on a slight elevation close to the bend of
the river, which enveloped it on its northern and eastern, and to some
extent on its western, sides. The barracks and other structures for
the accommodation of the garrison were built around the four sides of
a quadrangle, facing inward toward the center. Two blockhouses, one
containing two small cannon, the other containing one, stood at the
northwestern and southeastern corners of the quadrangle, and the whole
was inclosed within a double row of palisades, so arranged that the
blockhouses commanded not only the space without the four walls, but
also that inclosed between the two rows of palisades. Thus if an enemy
should scale the first row he would only find himself within a narrow
inclosure between that and the second which was swept at every point
by the fire from the blockhouses. From the northwest corner of the
stockade to the river was a distance of eighty feet, and from a point
midway of the eastern side it was sixty yards.

[Footnote 412: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

[Footnote 413: The original is in the files of the War Department at
Washington. Because of its historical value the verbal description
which accompanies the drawing is reproduced here:

  INDEX ANNEXED TO THE DRAUGHT OF FORT DEARBORN &C.

  No.
   1 Block Houses
   2 Port Holes for Cannon
   3 Loop Holes for small arms
   4 Magazine
   5 Inward Row of pickets
   6 Outward Row of pickets
   7 Main Gate
   8 Wicket Gate
   9 Guard House
  10 Comm'g Officers Barracks
  11 Officers Barracks
  12 Soldiers Barracks
  13 Contractors Store
  14 Hospital Store
  15 Asst. Military Agt. Store
  16 Small Houses in the garrison
  17 Agents House
  18 Factors House
  19 Interpreters House
  20 Armerers Shop
  21 Merchants Shop
  22 Bake House
  23 House in Factors Dept.
  24 Stables
  25 River Cheykago
  26 Banks of said River
  27 Wharf of said River
  28 Low ground between said bank & River.
  29 Beach between Sd. River and Lake.
  30 John Kinzie Esq. House on the opisite side River
  31 Oather Dwelling Houses on opisite side River
  32 Old Grist Mill Worked by Horses

  { N. 33 Covered Way to procure Water   } Omited in their places
  { N. 34 Gutters to carry off the Water }

  Note. the Barracks are two storeys high with shingled Roofs and
  Galliaries fronting the parade. The measurement of the Garrison
  including the Block Houses And Barrick are laid down at' twenty
  feet to the Inch the Cupolas are not yet built on the Block
  Houses as laid down. The Dwelling houses mentioned in the Indian
  Department are laid down at forty feet to the Inch, the oather
  houses without any Regular rule. The River is not regularly
  surveyed but still gives a strong Idea of Its Courses it is about
  six miles in length, except in high water, at which time there is
  no portage to the Illinois River.

  The distances from the defirant places to the Garrison as mentioned
  with Red Ink on & red lines, are accurately measured, but not laid
  down by a scale. The woodland on the reserve Lyes on the north, &
  west, sides of the Garrison except a small strip of woods about one
  mile in length and two hundred yards in breadth. Lying on the bank
  of the river south west of the Garrison. Along the Margin of Said
  Woods, is good medow and supplyes the Garrison with hay. On the
  North and west sides of the Garrison there has been a quantity of
  underwood and shruby Bushes such as prickly Ash &c. they are now
  cut down and cleared off, all within one Fourth of a Mile of the
  Garrison.

  On the south and southwest sides of the Garrison is a large
  parraria on which stands The aforesaid strip of woods as laid down
  in the Draught, and the distance from the Garrison three fourths of
  a Mile. On the East side is the Lake. There has been A picket fence
  on the Opisite side of the river, northwest of the Garrison as laid
  Down, this fence might serve as a Barrier against the Garrison as
  the pickets were five feet in length, sufficient in thickness to
  prevent a Musket Ball from doing execution to an Enemy lying behind
  them. I thought it proper for the safety of the Garrison to have
  them taken up and replaced with a common rail fence. At this time
  the Garrison (except the Houses on the Opisite side of the river
  being somewhat in the way) is perfectly secure from any ambuscade
  or Barrier.

  The Branch that emptys into the Cheykag is considerably the
  longest, and has the greatest current. The parraria on the south
  and southwest as already mentioned is of great extent.

  Fort Dearborn 20.th Feb.y 1808. J. Whistler Capt.
]

[Illustration: FORT DEARBORN AND VICINITY IN 1808

From the original draft by Captain Whistler in the archives of the
War Department at Washington]

Within the stockaded inclosure were the barracks for the officers and
men. They were two stories in height, with shingled roofs and covered
galleries, and occupied the middle of each side of the inclosure
facing toward the parade ground, in the center of which stood a lofty
flagstaff. The commanding officer's quarters stood on the east side,
and directly opposite were those for the subordinate officers. The main
gateway of the stockade was at the middle of the south side and was
flanked on either side by the main barracks for the common soldiers.
The building opposite was in part devoted to barracks for the soldiers
and in part to housing the contractor's store of supplies. Between
this building and the northwestern blockhouse stood the magazine,
a small structure made of brick. This alone defied the fire which
destroyed the fort at the time of the massacre. Two small houses,
one near the northeast corner of the inclosure and the other in the
corner diagonally opposite, completed the list of structures within the
stockade. The parade ground was surrounded by gutters for carrying off
the water. A small wicket gate in the stockade gave ingress and egress
near the northwestern blockhouse. From the northeast corner of the
stockade a covered way led to the river, securing thus to the garrison
access in safety to the water in time of attack.

To the south of the fort were the commanding officer's gardens in
which, in Cooper's time, melons and other small fruit and vegetables
were raised. Somewhat to the east, between the fort and the mouth
of the river, was a smaller garden and an Indian graveyard. A short
distance to the southwest were two log houses, one occupied by Matthew
Irwin, the United States factor, and the other by Charles Jouett,
the Indian agent. On the north side of the river, almost directly
opposite the fort, was the house of John Kinzie, with outbuildings
and a "Kitchen" garden. Whistler's diagram represents three houses to
the westward of Kinzie's establishment, but omits the names of their
owners. The omission is supplied by Cooper, however, who says that in
his time there were four houses on the north side, occupied by Kinzie,
Ouilmette, La Lime, and Le Mai. La Lime and Ouilmette were Frenchmen;
Le Mai was a half-breed, married to a Pottawatomie squaw.

In addition to these houses Whistler's drawing represents a
considerable number of houses and outbuildings ranged around the fort
devoted to various purposes. Among these are houses for the interpreter
and for the factor's department, an armorer's shop, a merchant's shop,
and a bake shop, besides several stables on the south side; and on the
north side, near Kinzie's place, a "Grist Mill Worked by Horses."

In the rear of the group of houses on the north side, the space between
the lake and the north branch of the river was covered with timber.
Along the east side of the South Branch, stretching southward from the
forks of the river, was another strip of timber, two hundred yards in
width and a mile long. Except for this strip of woodland, the area to
the south and southwest of the fort constituted what Whistler quaintly
designates as "a large Parraria." Along the inner margin of this
woodland lay a good meadow which supplied the garrison with hay. Close
to the forks on the south side of the main river a small field of eight
or nine acres had been reduced to cultivation and made to serve as the
company gardens and public cornfield.

It is evident from Whistler's description that he took careful
measures to prepare the fort against the possibility of a hostile
attack. The ground to the north and west was clear as far as the
woodland mentioned, which lay at a distance of three-fourths of a mile
from the fort. The east side was protected, of course, by the river
and the lake. To the west and the north the ground had originally been
covered with an undergrowth of prickly ash and other scrubby bushes,
but this had been cleared away to a distance of a quarter of a mile
from the stockade. On the north side there had been erected a heavy
picket fence, four feet in height and sufficiently strong to afford an
enemy protection against musketry fire from the fort. This Whistler
caused to be removed and replaced by a common rail fence. At the time
of making this diagram, in the winter of 1808, Whistler announced
with satisfaction that the garrison was now perfectly secure from an
ambuscade or barrier, except for the houses on the north side, which
were somewhat in the way.

It is evident that the number of civilians clustered around the fort
in the years prior to the massacre was considerably greater than has
ordinarily been supposed. Cooper says there was a house a mile to the
southeast of the fort, owned by a farmer who supplied the garrison
with butter and eggs, and one near the forks of the river occupied
by a man named Clark who was a cattle dealer. Whistler's drawing
represents two houses at the forks, one occupied by a discharged
soldier, and a house and inclosed field north of the river, belonging
to Mr. "Coursoll." There were two Courselles, one of them a well-known
trader, but the only other record of either of them being at Chicago
is the recurrence of their names in Kinzie's account books. The farmer
mentioned by Cooper was probably Lee, at whose farm on the South Branch
the preliminary massacre of April, 1812, occurred. But Cooper does
not mention the Burns family, which Mrs. Kinzie describes as living
on the North Side at the time of the massacre. In addition to these
were the houses which Whistler shows belonging to the Indian agent's
and the factor's departments. The conclusion drawn from these various
bits of evidence concerning the number of dwellers around Fort Dearborn
is confirmed by the fact that after the murders at the Lee farm,
Captain Heald enrolled fifteen militiamen from the civilian population
outside the fort. It should be noted, too, that three of the long-time
residents of Chicago, La Lime, Ouilmette, and Kinzie, were not included
in this number.

Of the officers stationed at Fort Dearborn before the massacre, the
régime of Captain John Whistler was the longest and in many respects
the most important. Whistler was descended from an old English family,
but he himself was born in Ireland, whither his immediate ancestors
removed, in 1758.[414] In a youthful freak he ran away from home and
joined the army, coming to America during the Revolution with the
troops under Burgoyne. He was thus one of the members of that general's
ill-fated army captured by the Americans at Saratoga. On his return
to England Whistler received his discharge from the army, and soon
after, forming an attachment for the daughter of one of his father's
friends, eloped with her, coming a second time to America and settling
at Hagerstown, Maryland. He entered the American army in 1791 and
served continuously on the northwestern frontier under St. Clair,
Wayne, and others, from that time until the breaking out of the War of
1812. He was commander at Fort Dearborn from 1803 to 1810, when he was
transferred to Fort Detroit, under circumstances which will shortly
demand our attention. He served under Hull in 1812 and, if family
tradition is to be credited, was so enraged over the capitulation that
he broke his sword rather than surrender it to the enemy.

[Footnote 414: Whistler family genealogy, MS in Chicago Historical
Society library.]

The founder of Fort Dearborn thus enjoyed the unique experience of
having been captured, along with the British army in which he served,
by the Americans, and thirty-five years later, as a member of Hull's
army, of being taken by the British. His connection with Chicago
history is not limited to building and commanding Fort Dearborn. His
eldest son served under him here as lieutenant for several years; his
eldest daughter, as we have seen, became Chicago's first bride; and
another daughter married Lieutenant Joseph Hamilton, who also served
under Whistler at Fort Dearborn.

William Whistler came with his father to Fort Dearborn as second
lieutenant in 1803, accompanied by his bride of a year. She was even
now but sixteen years of age, and was destined to be the last surviving
witness of the building of the first Fort Dearborn. After several years
of service here, Lieutenant Whistler was transferred to Fort Wayne.
His term of service in the army lasted sixty years, during which time
he had, according to Mrs. Whistler, but six short furloughs.[415] Like
his father he was captured along with Hull's army at Detroit. In 1845
he became colonel of the Fourth Infantry, the regiment to which General
Grant belonged during the Mexican War; and in after life the famous
general told many anecdotes concerning his former commander.[416]

[Footnote 415: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 27.]

[Footnote 416: Heitman, _Dictionary of the United States Army_, I, 470,
1026; Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

Two other descendants of Captain John Whistler demand attention at this
point. George Washington Whistler was a toddling child three years of
age when the commander brought his family to the new home in the summer
of 1803. Here, on the banks of the Chicago River, during the next few
years the child developed into sturdy boyhood. At the age of nineteen
he graduated from West Point and was assigned to the artillery branch
of the service. Until 1833, when he resigned his commission, he was
engaged largely in engineering and topographical enterprises. After
his resignation from the army he rose to eminence as an engineer,
and during the remainder of his life was engaged in many important
enterprises. In 1842 he went to Russia to enter the service of the Czar
in the construction of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. In
recognition of his services in this and other engineering enterprises
in Russia Emperor Nicholas in 1847 conferred upon him the decoration of
the Order of St. Anne.[417]

[Footnote 417: On George Washington Whistler see Vose, _Sketch of the
Life and Works of George W. Whistler, Civil Engineer_.]

A son of the famous engineer, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, achieved
in the realm of art an even greater reputation than had his father
in that of engineering. Whistler's artistic achievements are so well
known that there is no need to discuss them here. His connection with
Fort Dearborn is not so commonly understood, although the very names
he bore served constantly to advertise it. James Abbott was Chicago's
first bridegroom, who, as we have seen, married Sarah Whistler here in
the fall of 1804. The artist himself never saw Chicago, but with the
exception of West Point there was no other place in the United States
in which he was so much interested.[418] He regarded his grandfather
as the founder of Chicago, and more than once lamented his failure to
visit the place.

[Footnote 418: Statements of General James Grant Wilson, January 7,
1908, in letter to Chicago Historical Society library. Wilson was a
personal acquaintance of Whistler.]

The connection of James Strode Swearingen, the youthful second
lieutenant who conducted the troops from Detroit to Chicago in the
summer of 1803, with Fort Dearborn was but brief. Because of the
physical infirmity of Captain Whistler, Swearingen offered to lead the
troops from Detroit to Chicago for him, and this made it possible for
Whistler to proceed around the lakes on the sailboat, "Tracy."[419]
With the arrival of the troops at Chicago Swearingen's duty was
discharged. He accordingly returned to Detroit on the "Tracy" and there
rejoined his company. He retired from the army in 1815, owing to the
importunity of his wife, and settled at Chillicothe. Ohio, where he
lived in affluence until his death in 1864.[420]

[Footnote 419: Swearingen's account of the expedition from Detroit
to Chicago in 1803, MS in Chicago Historical Society library,
_Proceedings_, 1856-64, 348.]

[Footnote 420: Heitman, _Dictionary of the United States Army_, I, 939;
Wilson, Chicago from 1803 to 1812.]

Doctor William C. Smith, the first surgeon at Fort Dearborn, was
succeeded in 1808 by John Cooper, who was sent here immediately after
he entered the service. Cooper's grandfather fought under Wolfe at
Quebec, and was near his leader when he fell.[421] The grandson was
born at Fishkill, New York, in 1786. He came to Fort Dearborn by way
of Albany and Buffalo, where he boarded the brig, "Adams," commanded
by Commodore Brevoort. The voyage across Lake Erie consumed a week,
and another week, including stops, was spent in passing through the
River and Lake St. Clair and on to Mackinac. After several days' delay
at the latter place the brig proceeded by way of Green Bay to Chicago,
which was reached in three days. After three years' service at Fort
Dearborn, Cooper resigned from the army and returned to the East by way
of the overland route to Detroit, which had been followed by the troops
under Swearingen eight years before. The journey to Detroit required
fourteen days. From Detroit he went by way of Fort Wayne and Pittsburgh
to Poughkeepsie, New York, where he made his home and practiced his
profession for over half a century, dying in 1863.[422]

[Footnote 421: Wilson, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 422: _Ibid._]

The year 1810 saw the culmination at Fort Dearborn of a garrison
quarrel which resulted in the dispersion of the official family far
and wide and the appearance of a new set of officials at the post.
It might be supposed that the sense of isolation and the need of
mutual assistance would bind together the little group of inmates of a
frontier post, such as Fort Dearborn, as with bands of steel. But, alas
for erring human nature, all too often conditions quite the contrary
prevailed. "When society is thin," wrote the same British officer from
Mackinac whose complaint in 1796 of the dullness, envy, and jealousy in
existence there has already been noted, "I agree with you. They should
make the most of it, but I don't know how it is. I have always found it
the reverse...."[423] "The Amusements have not been general this Winter
in Detroit. Indeed there has been none worth mentioning. Society a good
deal divided," runs a letter to Kingsbury in the winter of 1805.[424]

[Footnote 423: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XII, 211.]

[Footnote 424: _Kingsbury Papers_, Clemson to Kingsbury, February 24,
1805.]

As early as the autumn of 1804 a quarrel developed among the garrison
officers of Fort Dearborn. The details left us are meager, but we know
that Lieutenant Campbell raised charges against Doctor Smith,[425]
who in turn preferred charges against Lieutenant Whistler,[426] and
that Captain Whistler placed Smith under arrest.[427] Thus, to quote
from a contemporary letter, "a flame" was "kindled at Chicago."[428]
Unfortunately for the historian. Captain Whistler found the affair "to
disagreeable" for him to report, further than the bare announcement of
the surgeon's arrest.[429] Possibly the difficulty was settled by the
elimination of Lieutenant Campbell, for he resigned from the army a
few months later,[430] while both Smith and the Whistlers continued to
serve at Fort Dearborn for several years.

[Footnote 425: _Ibid._, Smith to Kingsbury, November 3, 1804; Clemson
to Kingsbury, October 27, 1804.]

[Footnote 426: _Ibid._, Clemson to Kingsbury, October 27, 1804.]

[Footnote 427: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3,
1804.]

[Footnote 428: _Ibid._, Clemson to Kingsbury, October 27, 1804.]

[Footnote 429: _Ibid._, Whistler to Kingsbury, November 3, 1804.]

[Footnote 430: Heitman, _Dictionary of the United States Army_, I, 276.]

The feud which culminated in 1810 was far more serious. Our sources of
information are scanty as to the origin of the quarrel, but fuller and
more satisfactory for its course and conclusion. That there existed a
rivalry at Fort Dearborn over the garrison trade, and that this rivalry
was the cause of the feud, is clear. As early as the summer of 1807
Kinzie and John Whistler, Jr., a younger son of the commander, entered
into a partnership for the purpose of supplying this trade.[431] The
connection lasted until August 21, 1809, when for some reason not
now known it was dissolved.[432] That some discord had developed is,
however, reasonably apparent from what followed. Six weeks after the
dissolution, Doctor Cooper, who had become the firm friend of Captain
Whistler,[433] sought and obtained permission from the Secretary of War
to suttle for the garrison.[434]

[Footnote 431: _Barry Transcript_, entry for July 26, 1807; _Kingsbury
Papers_, Matthew Irwin to Kingsbury, April 29, 1810. That it was John
Whistler, Jr., who was Kinzie's partner is apparent from the county
records at Detroit cited by Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 469.]

[Footnote 432: _Barry Transcript_, entry for August 21, 1809.]

[Footnote 433: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_. On leaving Fort
Dearborn in 1810, Whistler presented Cooper a pistol and a copy of
Shenstone's poems. The latter was given by Cooper to General James
Grant Wilson, and he in turn presented it to the Chicago Historical
Society. Cooper wrote to Kingsbury at the time of the quarrel that
he was willing to sell his life to prove Whistler's innocence of the
charges against him (_Kingsbury Papers_). The date and salutation of
this letter have been cut off, but it was evidently written soon after
May 26, 1810.]

[Footnote 434: _Drennan Papers_, Nicoll to Whistler and Cooper,
November 1, 1809.]

To "suttle" meant to supply the soldiers with articles not furnished
them by the government. Shortly after Cooper's arrival at Fort Dearborn
Matthew Irwin had been appointed Government factor, to conduct the
Indian trading establishment at Chicago.[435] He seems also to have
held, as did Varnum, the former factor, the appointment of Government
contractor for supplying the garrison with such provisions as were
furnished the soldiers by the government.[436] The privilege which
Cooper had obtained of suttling for the garrison interfered not only
with Irwin's profits but also with those of Kinzie, who, until the
dissolution of the partnership with the younger Whistler, had enjoyed
this trade. Irwin and Kinzie soon drew together in opposition to
Captain Whistler, whom they seem rightly to have regarded as the real
power behind Cooper. For some reason Jouett, the Indian agent, and
Lieutenant Thompson joined the Irwin-Kinzie coalition; Lieutenant
Hamilton, who was Whistler's son-in-law, of course sided with the
latter, and the quarrel soon became furious.

[Footnote 435: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 326.]

[Footnote 436: That Irwin held this appointment is shown by his letters
to Kingsbury; _e.g._, see letter of April 29, 1810, in _Kingsbury
Papers_. My conclusion that Varnum had been contractor as well as
factor is based on certain entries in the _Barry Transcript_.]

Irwin claimed that Whistler and his adherents combined in a policy
of persecution calculated to force him to give up his position as
contractor in order that Whistler's son might regain it.[437] Whistler,
on the other hand, asserted that the "malignant wretches" opposed
to him, particularly Jouett, were guilty of defrauding the public;
as for Lieutenant Thompson, he was a mere tool in the hands of his
associates, who despised him even while they used him.[438] Jouett had
told of his running away to escape paying his landlord, and Whistler
stated he had acknowledged himself a "Liar" in the presence of all the
gentlemen of the fort and its vicinity. Cooper bore a challenge to a
duel from Lieutenant Hamilton to Kinzie, which the latter declined to
accept, contenting himself with roundly cursing both principal and
second.[439] Half a century later Cooper described the trader as a man
of ungovernable temper, who frequently engaged in bitter quarrels.

[Footnote 437: _Kingsbury Papers_, Irwin to Kingsbury, April 29, 1810.
The obnoxious conduct of Whistler, Hamilton, and Cooper is detailed at
considerable length in this letter.]

[Footnote 438: _Ibid._, Whistler to Kingsbury, May 27, 1810.]

[Footnote 439: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

The opposition to Whistler, determined to drive him from Chicago if
not from the army, preferred charges against him to Kingsbury and
demanded a court martial. Among other things, aside from the claim
that he had conspired with Hamilton and Cooper to force Irwin to
give up his office, it was claimed that he had beaten a soldier for
not trading with his son,[440] and had defrauded the government by
raising ten acres of corn,[441] apparently by the labor of soldiers.
On the other hand Cooper preferred charges against Thompson which he
believed would inevitably "brake" him.[442] It is not possible with the
information available to decide the question of right between the two
warring parties, but it is significant that Whistler and later Captain
Heald, both of whom incurred the enmity of Kinzie, repeatedly received
testimonials of confidence from their brother officers. Captain Heald,
who succeeded Whistler at Fort Dearborn, reported that he had found
everything in good condition and believed that Whistler had paid
"particular Attention to every Part of his duty" during the time he
had commanded there.[443] He also refuted the charge of Whistler's
enemies that he had been in the habit of raising large quantities of
corn. Kingsbury, Whistler's immediate superior, also testified to his
belief in his integrity, and in the falsity of the charges against him,
and Varnum, who had been factor at Fort Dearborn from 1805 to 1808,
expressed approval of Whistler's conduct during that time.[444] In
harmony with this favorable testimony are the observations of William
Johnston,[445] who journeyed from Fort Wayne to Chicago in the spring
of 1809. He recorded that Fort Dearborn was "the neatest and best
wooden garrison in the United States," a fact which did "great honor to
Capt. John Whistler who planned and built it." The observant visitor
also records that Whistler had under him, at the time of his visit, the
same men as when he built the fort. Although their term of enlistment
had expired they had all re-enlisted--a sure sign that Whistler was a
good officer.

[Footnote 440: _Drennan Papers_, Kingsbury to Nicoll, February 15,
1811.]

[Footnote 441: _Kingsbury Papers_, Heald to Kingsbury, May 31, 1810;
Kingsbury to Heald, June 11, 1810.]

[Footnote 442: _Kingsbury Papers_, letter of Cooper to Kingsbury cited
in note 433.]

[Footnote 443: _Ibid._, Heald to Kingsbury, May 31, 1810.]

[Footnote 444: _Drennan Papers_, Kingsbury to Nicoll, February 15,
1811.]

[Footnote 445: "Notes of a Tour from Fort Wayne to Chicago, 1809," MS
in Chicago Historical Society library.]

The outcome of the quarrel was, on the whole, a triumph for Whistler's
enemies. Rather than bring Whistler and Thompson to trial on the
charges preferred against them, the War Department decided on a general
scattering of the officers at Fort Dearborn. In April, 1810, Whistler
was sent to Detroit, and Hamilton to Fort Belle Fontaine. Captain Rhea,
whose company at Detroit was given to Whistler, was sent to Fort Wayne
to relieve Captain Nathan Heald, who, in turn, succeeded Whistler at
Fort Dearborn.[446] Thompson and Cooper remained at Fort Dearborn, but
the latter's privilege to suttle was withdrawn by special order of
the Secretary of War.[447] Jouett and Irwin, the Indian agent and the
factor, remained at Fort Dearborn. The atmosphere was now thoroughly
uncongenial to Cooper, who soon resigned from the army in disgust,
being unwilling to remain in a service where one could be so easily
injured in the opinion of the heads of the department.[448]

[Footnote 446: _Kingsbury Papers_, Kingsbury to Irwin, June 11, 1810;
_Drennan Papers_, Nicoll to Heald, April 11, 1810; Nicoll to Whistler,
April 11, 1810; Nicoll to Kingsbury, April 11, 1810; Nicoll to
Gansevoort, April 12, 1810.]

[Footnote 447: _Drennan Papers_, Nicoll to Whistler, March 30, 1810.]

[Footnote 448: _Kingsbury Papers_, letter of Cooper to Kingsbury cited
in note 433.]

Thus in gloom and defeat departed the man who, with more propriety
than any other, may be called the father of Chicago. That he felt
keenly the blow that had been dealt him is shown by his letters to
Kingsbury.[449] He was old and infirm, his wife was ill, and he had a
large family of young children to support, with little property, and
burdened with debt.

[Footnote 449: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, May 27, 1810;
_Drennan Papers_, Kingsbury to Nicoll, February 15, 1811.]

Nathan Heald, the new commander at Fort Dearborn, was born at Ipswich,
New Hampshire, in 1775.[450] He entered the army as an ensign in 1799,
serving continuously at various places on the frontier and in the
recruiting service until January, 1807, when he was promoted to the
rank of captain and given command at Fort Wayne. That he was chosen to
succeed Whistler at Fort Dearborn under the circumstances which have
been described may fairly be regarded as an indication of confidence
on the part of his superiors in his ability and good judgment. Rhea,
who succeeded him at Fort Wayne, reported that he found everything
had been going on "very correct" there, and that he intended to "take
the Track of Captain Heald" as nearly as possible.[451] Rhea was much
pleased with his new post and expressed the hope he might continue
there. Heald, on the contrary, was dissatisfied with Fort Dearborn, and
at once announced his intention of spending the coming winter in New
England.[452] If the necessary leave of absence were not granted him he
would resign the service rather than remain at Fort Dearborn.

[Footnote 450: Nathan Heald's Journal printed as Appendix III. The
original is among the Heald papers in the Draper Collection.]

[Footnote 451: _Kingsbury Papers_, Rhea to Kingsbury, May 17, 1810.]

[Footnote 452: _Ibid._, Heald to Kingsbury, June 8, 1810.]

Unfortunately for Heald the furlough was granted,[453] and thus he
returned to Chicago to participate in the massacre two years later.
After spending the winter in Massachusetts, Heald returned to the West
by way of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River, stopping at Louisville to
marry Rebekah Wells, the daughter of Colonel Samuel Wells and the niece
of Captain William Wells, with whom Heald had long been associated at
Fort Wayne.[454] The wedding occurred on May 23, 1811, and in June
the commander reached Chicago with his bride, after an absence of
seven months. The bridal journey was made from Louisville to Chicago
on horseback through the wilderness which lay between the two places.
Mrs. Heald's slave girl, Cicely, accompanied them on their journey, and
was an inmate of Fort Dearborn from this time until the massacre the
following year. The statement preserved in the Heald family chronicle
that the bridal party was received by the garrison with all the honors
of war may well be believed, for the addition of a woman like Mrs.
Heald to the garrison circle was an event of rare interest in the life
of the little community.

[Footnote 453: Heald's Journal; Kingsbury Papers, Heald to Kingsbury,
December 31, 1810, and May 1, 1811; Wentworth, Early Chicago, 88.]

[Footnote 454: Heald's Journal; Darius Heald's narrative of the Chicago
massacre, in _Magazine of American History_, XXVIII, 114.]

In March, 1811, George Ronan, a young cadet direct from West Point,
was given the rank of ensign and ordered to repair at once to Fort
Dearborn.[455] On the fourth of the same month Lieutenant Thompson
died. With him the last military officer involved in the quarrel of
the preceding year disappeared from Fort Dearborn. Three months later
his place was filled by the transfer of Lieutenant Linai T. Helm from
Detroit to Fort Dearborn. The transfer was made at Helm's own request,
the reasons for his desiring it being, apparently, his straitened
financial circumstances and the cheaper cost of living at Fort Dearborn
as compared with Detroit.[456] During the summer the place made vacant
by Doctor Cooper's resignation was filled by the appointment of
Isaac Van Voorhis, like Cooper a native of Fishkill, New York, born
a few years after his predecessor, but a member of the same class in
college.[457] The officers of Fort Dearborn were now the same as on the
fatal day of evacuation, August 15, 1812.

[Footnote 455: _Drennan Papers_, Nicoll to Ronan, March 27, 1811;
Nicoll to Heald, March 27, 1811; Heitman, _Dictionary of the United
States Army_, I, 844.]

[Footnote 456: _Drennan Papers_, Kingsbury to Nicoll, April 18,
1811; Nicoll to Kingsbury, May 24, 1811; _Kingsbury Papers_, Helm to
Kingsbury, March 16, 1811.]

[Footnote 457: Van Voorhis, _Notes on the Ancestry of Wm. Roe Van
Voorhis_, 143.]




CHAPTER VIII

THE INDIAN UTOPIA


Meanwhile time and the fates were weaving a fatal web about the almost
defenseless frontier. The western Indians, awed into submission for
a time by the masterful hand of Wayne, were again stirred by a great
unrest. There were, among others, three important causes for this
condition: the rapid occupation of their hunting-grounds and the
deterioration of the natives by contact with civilization; the steadily
increasing influence of the British, to secure advantages in trade or
help in case of war; and finally, a patriotic movement toward race
unity among the Indians themselves, which had for its object a revival
of the older and happier existence of their forefathers. This movement
was full of danger for the West and of hope for the British.

In the first place, the red and white races were totally different
in physical habits and in processes of thought by which perceptions
become opinions. The Indian had an incomplete and indefinite notion
of a treaty when he signed it, and was utterly unable to comprehend
its final effect; the white man exacted to the utmost all possible
advantages from these agreements. The ideas of the two races with
respect to the ownership and transmission of title to land differed
markedly. The white man appeased his omnipresent land hunger by
inducing representatives of the tribes to make a cession, usually for
a paltry consideration, of the land which was at the moment desired.
The usual method of procuring such cessions was to call the leaders of
the tribe affected together in solemn conclave, where they were plied
with whisky and cajolery, and by alternate threats and appeals to their
cupidity the bargain was extorted from them.[458] If the government did
not itself directly supply the liquor which befuddled the brain and
weakened the will of the red man, it was at least guilty of permitting
its subjects to do so.[459] How the transaction appeared to the Indian,
when he had had time to reflect upon it, is well shown by an appeal of
the Wyandot tribe in 1812 to be allowed to retain possession of the
lands they were then cultivating, which had been ceded to the United
States by a prior treaty. Their description of the process of obtaining
cessions from the tribes can scarcely be improved upon for clarity
and succinctness. "When the United States want a particular piece of
land, all our natives are assembled; a large sum of money is offered;
the land is occupied probably by one nation only; nine-tenths have no
actual interest in the land wanted; if the particular nation interested
refuses to sell, they are generally threatened by the others, who want
the money or goods offered to buy whisky. Fathers, this is the way in
which this small spot, which we so much value, has been so often torn
from us."[460]

[Footnote 458: For an excellent description of the scenes attending a
typical treaty see Latrobe, _Rambler in North America_, II, chap. xi.]

[Footnote 459: There is practically no limit to the number of sources
which might be cited in support of this statement. See for example
Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, chap. xi. At the second Treaty of Greenville,
July, 1814, the government agents seem to have deliberately adopted
the policy of intoxicating the Indians in order to bend them to their
wishes (Dillon, "The National Decline of the Miami Indians," in
_Indiana Historical Society_, Publications, I, 136-37).]

[Footnote 460: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 795-96.]

Thus the land hunger of the white man and the discord produced by the
operation of two totally divergent conceptions of land ownership and
alienation furnished the basis for a conflict between the two races
which was probably inevitable under any circumstances. To the shame of
the more enlightened race, however, it must be said that its relations
with its less civilized neighbor were marked by a policy of persistent
abuse and a disregard of justice and treaty obligations which operated
time and again to goad the red man into impotent warfare, and this,
in turn, became the excuse for further spoliation. No government
ever entertained more enlightened and benevolent intentions toward a
weaker people than did that of the United States toward the Indian,
but never in history, probably, has a more striking divergence between
intention and performance been witnessed. The failure was due partly
to ignorance, but also, in large part at least, to the inability or
unwillingness of the government to restrain its lawless subjects, who,
filled with an insatiable cupidity and animated by a wanton disregard
of justice, hesitated at no means to possess themselves of the land and
other property of the Indians.

The truth of these statements is so notorious as scarcely to require
demonstration, were it not for the fact that with the passing of the
relations that prevailed between the two races on the frontier a
century ago our knowledge of them threatens to disappear. Almost any
number of witnesses of unimpeachable authority might be cited to show
the unjust administration of the regulations governing the intercourse
between the two races. Said Hamtramck to St. Clair in 1790: "The
people of our frontiers will be the first to break any treaty. The
people of Kentucky will carry on private expeditions and will kill
Indians whenever they meet them, and I do not believe there is a jury
in all Kentucky who would punish a man for it."[461] This opinion was
substantially repeated by Washington, who affirmed that the "frontier
settlers entertain the opinion that there is not the same crime (or
indeed no crime at all) in killing an Indian as in killing a white
man."[462]

[Footnote 461: Winsor, _Westward Movement_, 421.]

[Footnote 462: _Ibid._]

No man understood better the conditions that prevailed on the
northwestern frontier than did General Harrison. His letters and
messages abound in accounts of acts of violence and other crimes
committed against the Indians, and of the impossibility of obtaining
justice for them. By the treaties the Indians guilty of murder were
to be surrendered to the whites, and whatever the form of trial were
practically certain of punishment, while, as Hamtramck observed,
western juries almost invariably acquitted white men guilty of the same
offense. "The Indian always suffers, and the white man never," said
Harrison to the Indiana legislature in 1806, in a message appealing
for a redress of this grievance.[463] A year later, in discussing the
subject of Indian unrest, the Governor returned to the same theme,
expressing the opinion that the utmost efforts of the British to
incite the Indians to make war upon the Americans would be unavailing
"if one only of the many persons who have committed murders on their
people, could be brought to punishment."[464] It had even come to pass
from the partiality shown the whites in the enforcement of the laws
that the Indians proudly compared their own observance of the treaty
stipulations with that of their boasted superiors.[465]

[Footnote 463: Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 424.]

[Footnote 464: Dawson, _Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military
Services of Major-General William H. Harrison_, 97.]

[Footnote 465: Governor Harrison to the Indiana legislature, printed
in Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 424. In a letter to Harrison from the
War Department (unsigned), July 17, 1806, relative to the murder of an
Indian occurs the following: "It is excessively mortifying that our
good faith should so frequently be called in question by the natives
who have it in their power to make such proud comparison in relation to
good faith."--Indian Office, Letter Book B, 240.]

An event reported by General Harrison in 1802 well illustrates the
workings of the prejudice which rendered persons guilty of acts of
violence against the Indians immune from punishment.[466] An Indian
was barbarously murdered by a white man. The offender was a man of
infamous character for whom no sympathy was felt, and the evidence of
guilt was incontestable. Yet the jury, in obedience to the sentiment
that no white man ought to suffer for the murder of an Indian, in a
few minutes brought in a verdict of acquittal. A case which attracted
a good deal of attention and served to embitter the minds of the
Indians occurred about the beginning of the century. An entire party
consisting of several persons, men, women, and children, was foully
murdered by three white villains for the sake of a paltry fifty
dollars' worth of peltry which they owned. The murder was revealed
through the boasting of the murderers themselves. Governor Harrison
made strenuous efforts to secure their punishment, but because of the
active sentiment against punishing white men for killing Indians these
were rendered of no avail.[467] In a similar manner in 1812 a trader
who had killed an Indian at Vincennes was acquitted by the jury almost
without deliberation.[468] Shortly after this the house of a white
man was robbed by a Delaware Indian. To the demand that the culprit
be given up for trial the chiefs of the tribe replied that they would
never surrender another man until some of the white murderers of
their own people had been punished; they would, however, punish him
themselves, and this promise they kept by putting him to death.[469]
Another illustration of the sense of injustice felt by the Indians over
the one-sided administration of justice as between the two races, is
afforded by the spirited speech of Main Poc, the Pottawatomie chief who
lived near the junction of the Des Plaines and the Kankakee rivers, to
the agent of Governor Edwards in 1811. To the latter's demand for the
surrender of certain red men accused of committing murders among the
whites Main Poc replied: "You astonish us with your talk. When you do
us harm nothing is done, but when we do anything you immediately tie us
by the neck."[470]


[Footnote 466: Dawson, _Harrison_, 45.]

[Footnote 467: _Ibid._, 7-8, 31-32.]

[Footnote 468: Drake, _Life of Tecumseh_, 134.]

[Footnote 469: Dawson, _Harrison_, 178.]

[Footnote 470: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 49.]

Thus to the native mind there were two kinds of justice, one red and
the other white, and moreover the red man was keen enough to observe
that most of the faults for which he was visited with punishment
had been learned from the palefaces. In particular the white man's
fire-water had for him a fatal fascination, leading him into depths
of degradation and crime which beggar description. There is no more
mournful picture in English literature than that of the steady
destruction of the Indian race by this poison dealt out to the red
man by the white trader for the sake of paltry gain. The efforts of
Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and of the governments of France,
Great Britain, and the United States to suppress the accursed traffic
were all alike in vain. The narratives of travelers and the letters and
reports of government officials abound in portrayals of shocking scenes
of debauchery indulged in by the Indians while under the influence of
liquor.[471] "I have witnessed the evils caused by that liquor among
the Indians," wrote Denonville, governor of New France, in an official
memoir in 1690.[472] "It is the horror of horrors. There is no crime
nor infamy they do not perpetrate in their excesses. A mother throws
her child into the fire; noses are bitten off; this is a frequent
occurrence. It is another Hell among them during these orgies, which
must be seen to be credited.... Those who allege that the Indians will
remove to the English, if Brandy be not furnished them do not tell the
truth; for it is a fact that they do not care about drinking as long
as they do not see brandy; and the most reasonable would wish there
had never been any such thing; for they set their entrails on fire and
beggar themselves by giving their peltries and clothes for drink."
"This passion for drink," said General Cass to the chief, Metea, at
the Chicago Treaty of 1821, "has injured your nation more than any
other thing--more than all the other causes put together. It is not a
long period since you were a powerful independent tribe--now, you are
reduced to a handful, and it is allowing to ardent spirits."[473] And
Governor Harrison, pleading for a law to protect the Indians against
the liquor traffic, thus addressed the Indiana legislature in 1805:
"You are witnesses to the abuses; you have seen our towns crowded with
furious and drunken savages, our streets flowing with their blood,
their arms and clothing bartered for the liquor that destroys them, and
their miserable women and children enduring all the extremities of cold
and hunger. So destructive has the progress of intemperance been among
them, that whole villages have been swept away. A miserable remnant
is all that remains to mark the names and situation of many numerous
and warlike tribes. In the energetic language of one of their orators,
it is a dreadful conflagration, which spreads misery and desolation
through their country, and threatens the annihilation of the whole
race."[474]

[Footnote 471: For examples see Volney, _View of the Soil and Climate
of the United States of America_, 354; Latrobe, _Rambler in North
America_, II, chap, xi; Keating, _Narrative of an Expedition to the
Sources of the St. Peter's River_, I, 124-27; Charlevoix, _Letters
to the Duchess of Lesdiguières_, 228-29; and citations collected by
Dillon, in _Indiana Historical Society, Publications_, I, 131-38.]

[Footnote 472: O'Callaghan, _New York Colonial Documents_, IX, 441.]

[Footnote 473: Schoolcraft, _Travels in the Central Portions the
Mississippi Valley_, 351.]

[Footnote 474: Dawson, _Harrison_, 73.]

At an earlier date than the foregoing, in an official communication to
the Secretary of War, Harrison described the general effect upon the
Indians of their intercourse with the whites in these words:

"Killing each other has become so customary amongst them that it is
no longer thought criminal. They murder those whom they have been
most accustomed to esteem and regard--their chiefs and their nearest
relatives fall under the stroke of their tomahawks and their knives....
All those horrors are produced to those unhappy people by their too
frequent intercourse with the white people. This is so certain that
I can at once tell, upon looking at an Indian whom I chance to meet,
whether he belongs to a neighboring, or to a more distant tribe. The
latter is generally well clothed, healthy, and vigorous; the former,
half-naked, filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication; and many of them
without arms, except a knife, which they carry for the most villanous
purposes."[475]

[Footnote 475: Dawson, _Harrison_, 10-11.]

The red men were not unconscious of the evils of intemperance, and
often made pathetic appeals to the whites to protect them from
temptation. "The Indian Chiefs complain heavily of the mischiefs
produced by the enormous quantities of whisky which the traders
introduce into their country," wrote Harrison to the Secretary of War
in 1801.[476] In 1810 the Fox nation requested General Clark, Indian
agent at St. Louis, to prevent whisky from coming among them as it made
them "verry poor."[477] In a speech to the President of the United
States in 1802 Little Turtle dwelt on the demoralization wrought
among his people by liquor, and urged that its sale be prohibited.
"Your children are not wanting in industry," he said, "but it is the
introduction of this fatal poison which keeps them poor. Your children
have not that command of themselves which you have, therefore, before
anything can be done to advantage, this evil must be remedied."[478]

[Footnote 476: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 477: _Edwards Papers_, MSS in Chicago Historical Society
library, L, 77; Maurice Blondeau to Clark, August 25, 1810.]

[Footnote 478: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 655.]

The conditions which were working the ruin of the tribes were borne
by the Indians with astonishing patience.[479] "They will never have
recourse to arms," said Harrison in 1806, "unless driven to it by a
series of injustice and oppression."[480] Yet often there were pathetic
protests. "I had not discovered," wrote Black Hawk of the spring of
1812, "one good trait in the character of the Americans that had come
to the country. They made fair promises, but never fulfilled them Why
did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island to drive us
from our homes, and introduce among us poisonous liquors, disease, and
death?"[481]

[Footnote 479: Statement of Harrison to the Secretary of War, July 15,
1801, Dawson, _Harrison_, 9.]

[Footnote 480: Dillon, _History of Indiana_, 423.]

[Footnote 481: Black Hawk, _Life_, 34-35.]

With the government demanding more lands and the advancing line of
white settlement pressing ever forward, the game upon which the Indians
subsisted became scarcer, and many of the tribes were reduced to
destitution. Then came the remarkable attempt of Tecumseh, the Indian
Moses, and his brother, the Prophet, to rescue their people from the
impending doom. The story of Tecumseh, the greatest man of the native
race, begins with the birth of three boys to the Cherokee squaw of a
Shawnee warrior about the year 1770, in an obscure village near the
present site of Springfield, Ohio.[482] In the nature of things not
much can be known with certainty of his earlier years. His brother, the
Prophet, has spun a fanciful tale of his descent from the union of a
Creek warrior with the daughter of one of the colonial governors, but
both this and the stories of his youthful precocity and prowess may
be regarded with equal suspicion. In the same light must we view the
story of the effect produced upon Tecumseh by the first spectacle, for
him, of the burning of a prisoner, and his persuading his associates to
abandon the custom,[483] though it is true his later career was marked
by a humanity toward the vanquished foe quite unusual in an Indian.

[Footnote 482: Drake, _Tecumseh_, chaps, i and ii.]

[Footnote 483: _Ibid._, 68-69.]

The young warrior doubtless participated in various warlike forays
during the stormy years prior to Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers
in 1794. He fought in that battle, but refrained from attending the
council which resulted in the Treaty of Greenville.[484] During
the next few years he assumed the dignity of a chief and gradually
attracted to himself a considerable following. Before long his fame
as an orator and a man of influence among his fellows had spread even
to the white settlers. In 1805 several scattered bands of the Shawnee
tribe, Tecumseh's among the number, united and settled at Greenville,
where Tecumseh's brother began the career which has caused him to be
known in history as the "Prophet."

[Footnote 484: Drake, _Tecumseh_, 81-83.]

Tecumseh was always an enemy of the Americans, but he based his enmity
upon the losses and ills suffered by his people. Evidently the Great
Spirit was angry with his red children, for they were being driven from
their hunting-grounds, were losing their health and vigor, and sinking
into the lowest depths of poverty and depravity. For all these evils
there were two remedies; the first to recover the lost hunting-grounds,
the second to reform the conduct of the warriors; and no European
statesman ever faced an impossible task with greater courage or used
his resources with greater skill than did Tecumseh.

The leading role was taken for some time by Tecumseh's brother the
Prophet, who now took upon himself the name Tenskwautawau, meaning
the "Open Door," signifying that he would point out to the Indians
the new mode of life they should pursue.[485] From the village of the
assembled bands near Greenville was sent out far and wide to the tribes
in the year 1806 this revelation by the Prophet of the will of the
Great Spirit: "I am the father of the English, of the French, of the
Spaniards, and of the Indians. I created the first man, who was the
common father of all these people, as well as yourselves; and it is
through him, whom I have awaked from his long sleep, that I now address
you. _But the Americans I did not make. They are not my children,
but the children of the evil spirit._ They grew from the scum of the
great water where it was troubled by the evil spirit, and the froth
was driven into the woods by a strong east wind. They are numerous,
but I hate them I am now on the earth, sent by the Great Spirit to
instruct you. Each village must send me two or more principal chiefs
to represent you, that you may be taught Those villages which do not
listen to this talk, and send me two deputies, will be cut off from the
face of the earth."[486]

[Footnote 485: _Ibid._, 86.]

[Footnote 486: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 798.]

A religious enthusiasm was thus enkindled which soon developed into a
frenzy. The Prophet's teachings in the main were sound, from the red
man's point of view, but they were attended by the excesses inevitable
to such a movement.[487] Witchcraft, drunkenness, and intermarriage
with the whites were declared against, and community of property,
respect for the aged and infirm, and adherence to the native dress
and customs were advocated. To all who would adopt these precepts the
recovery of the comforts and happiness enjoyed by their forefathers
before they were debased by their connection with the whites was
promised. Among the first manifestations of the influence of the
new teachings was the outbreak of a witchcraft delusion, similar in
all essential respects to that in Massachusetts in 1692.[488] Under
the influence of torture those accused confessed the possession of
supernatural powers, and to aerial journeyings by night; but where
staid and civilized Salem had been content to hang her victims, the
untutored red man burned his at the stake.

[Footnote 487: For a statement of the Prophet's teachings at this time
see Drake, _Tecumseh_, 87-88.]

[Footnote 488: _Ibid._, 88-89; Dawson, _Harrison_, 82-83.]

This delusion was soon ended, partly by the good sense of the Indians
reasserting itself, partly through the influence of Governor Harrison,
who sent a ringing protest against it.[489] But the influence of
the Prophet continued to wax, and by the summer of 1807 hundreds of
Indians from far and near had come to visit him and to listen to his
instruction.[490] The British, who feared an outbreak of war and an
invasion of Canada by the Americans following the Chesapeake affair
of 1807, sought to foster the excitement and to turn it to their
own ends by attaching the Indians to their cause in the impending
conflict. Messengers were sent to all the tribes to summon them to
Malden,[491] where for years presents of guns, ammunition, and other
supplies had been distributed to the Indians with a prodigal hand.[492]
Hull at Detroit did his best to counteract the effect of the meetings
at Maiden, but with indifferent success.[493] The British urged the
Indians to join actively in the expected war with the Americans. Hull,
on the other hand, tried to win them to a policy of neutrality, a
role entirely foreign to their savage nature. Many of them stopped at
Detroit on their return from Maiden, and showed great readiness in
inventing excuses for their conduct. "When you first sent for us,"
said one, "we immediately prepared to come to see you. Captain McKee
prevented us from coming then; he renewed his promise of presents to
us, and gave us a keg of spirits; that fatal keg stopped us. We were
stopped a second and a third time; at last, without his knowledge, we
crossed the river. We are now happy on your shore and safe under your
protection."[494]

[Footnote 489: Dawson, _Harrison_, 83-84.]

[Footnote 490: Captain Wells at Fort Wayne estimated that up to May 25,
1807, fifteen hundred Indians had passed that point going to visit the
Prophet (Dawson, _Harrison_, 91).]

[Footnote 491: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 44-45, 47-48;
_American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 797 ff.]

[Footnote 492: For a description by a British partisan of the
distribution of goods to the Indians at Maiden, see Weld, _Travels
through the States of North America_, II, Letter 34.]

[Footnote 493: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 745-46;
_Michigan Pioneer Collections_, VIII, 568-71.]

[Footnote 494: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 745.]

Meanwhile Tecumseh's plans steadily developed. In June, 1809, he
established himself with his brother, the Prophet, and a considerable
number of warriors gathered from various tribes on the "Great
Clearing," where Tippecanoe Creek empties into the Wabash.[495] For
three years this town was the center of Indian intrigue and turbulence
in the Northwest. One hundred miles to the northwest was Fort Dearborn;
about the same distance to the northeast Fort Wayne guarded the
approach to the Maumee; while one hundred and fifty miles to the south
Vincennes protected the Illinois frontier. The new Indian town occupied
the center of the triangle formed by these three posts. Here was to
be worked out, for weal or woe, the great experiment on the outcome
of which depended the future of the red race. That Tecumseh's was the
master mind which guided the enterprise cannot be doubted, although he
made clever use of the influence wielded by his brother, and at times
seemed to shrink into the background in comparison with the latter.
Here at Tippecanoe the Indians proceeded to exemplify the Prophet's
teachings, which shall be given in his own words.

[Footnote 495: Dawson, _Harrison_, 106-7.]

"The Great Spirit told me to tell the Indians that he had made them
and made the world--that he had placed them in it to do good, and
not evil. I told all the redskins that the way they were in was not
good, and that they ought to abandon it. That we ought to consider
ourselves as one man, but we ought to live agreeable to our several
customs, the red people after their mode, and the white people after
theirs; particularly, that they should not drink whisky, that it was
not made for them, but the white people, who alone know how to use
it; and that it is the cause of all the mischiefs which the Indians
suffer;.... Determine to listen to nothing that is bad. Do not take
up the tomahawk, should it be offered by the British, or by the Long
Knives. Do not meddle with any thing that does not belong to you, but
mind your own business and cultivate the ground, that your women and
your children may have enough to live on."[496]

[Footnote 496: Speech to Governor Harrison, August, 1808; Dawson,
_Harrison_, 108-9.]

The extent to which this advice was followed is astonishing, in
view of the fact that it necessitated a complete revolution in the
lives and habits of the natives. The influence of the Prophet's
religious teachings was felt from Florida to Saskatchewan. Most
marvelous of all, the love of liquor which had been the bane of the
Indians from the beginning of their intercourse with the whites was
for a time completely exorcised.[497] Seeking to test the strength
of the Prophet's influence over his followers, Harrison tempted them
with whisky in vain.[498] Even among the distant tribes to which
the Prophet's emissaries came, drunkenness and warfare fell into
disfavor.[499] The Ottawas of l'Arbre Croche were reported in 1807 to
be adhering strictly to the "Shawney Prophet's" advice. The whisky
and rum of the traders had become a drug on the market, not a gallon
a month being purchased. Even when the white men sought to tempt the
natives by urging liquor upon them as a present they refused it "with
disdain."[500]

[Footnote 497: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 322.]

[Footnote 498: Drake, _Tecumseh_, 107.]

[Footnote 499: For evidence on this point see Tanner's Narrative,
155-58; Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIX, 322-23.]

[Footnote 500: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 322-23.]

The settlers on the frontier were filled with apprehensions of danger
from Tecumseh's movement, and protests and appeals for protection
poured in upon Harrison. Yet the brothers protested that they had
no hostile designs against the Americans. In the summer of 1808 the
Prophet visited Harrison at Vincennes and succeeded in convincing
him, apparently, that he desired only peace and the upbuilding of his
race.[501] Meanwhile Tecumseh was conducting missions far and wide
among the Indians, urging upon them his design of a confederation of
all the tribes. In the famous Vincennes Council of 1810[502] he frankly
informed Harrison that his purpose was to form a combination of all
the Indian tribes of the surrounding region, to put a stop to the
encroachments of the whites, and to establish the principle that the
lands should be considered the common property of all the tribes, never
to be sold without the consent of all. There was nothing original in
this, for exactly the same design and contention had been advanced by
the northwestern tribes in their general council at the mouth of the
Detroit River in 1786.[503] The American government had, of course,
ignored their pretensions. Much dissatisfaction was expressed by the
tribes with the treaties of Fort Mcintosh and Fort Harmar, subsequent
to their enactment, many of them refusing to recognize the validity
of the cessions made by these treaties until compelled thereto by
Wayne, in 1795. At the Treaty of Greenville in that year most of the
northwestern tribes were represented; but many individuals belonging to
them held aloof, and among these Tecumseh himself was numbered.

[Footnote 501: Dawson, _Harrison_, 107-9.]

[Footnote 502: For an account of this council see _ibid._, 155-59.]

[Footnote 503: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XI, 467-69.]

With the rapid advance of white settlement following Wayne's victory,
new cessions of land were from time to time demanded. That the red man
must go down before this advancing tide of invasion was inevitable.
That he should struggle against his impending fate was but natural. The
plan advanced in 1786 offered the only prospect of even temporarily
holding back the whites, and this the more far-sighted among the
Indians were shrewd enough to perceive. Harrison reported in 1802 the
existence among them of an agreement that no proposition relating
to their lands could be acceded to without the consent of all the
tribes.[504] Nevertheless several treaties carrying large cessions of
land were made during the next few years. One of these, in particular,
made by the Piankeshaws and Delawares in August, 1804, excited the
anger of the other tribes.[505] Others negotiated by Harrison in 1808
and 1809 again aroused them. To an agent of Harrison Tecumseh stated,
in the summer of 1810, that the continuance of friendship with the
United States was impossible unless the encroachment should cease.[506]
"The Great Spirit," he said, "gave this great island to his red
children, he placed the whites on the other side of the big water; they
were not contented with their own, but came to take ours from us. They
have driven us from the sea to the lakes, we can go no farther." This
was repeated to Harrison himself a few weeks later at the Council of
Vincennes, and the determination was proclaimed to put to death all the
chiefs who had been parties to the late treaties, and to take away from
the village chiefs the management of their tribal affairs and place it
in the hands of the warriors.[507]

[Footnote 504: Dawson, _Harrison_, 19.]

[Footnote 505: _Ibid._, 61-63.]

[Footnote 506: _Ibid._, 153.]

[Footnote 507: _Ibid._, 155.]

The Council of Vincennes closed with an ultimatum on the part of
Tecumseh that the President must either agree to give up the lands
recently purchased and promise never to make another treaty without the
consent of all the tribes, or else prepare for war. Harrison agreed to
transmit Tecumseh's demands to the President, but assured him there
was no probability of their acceptance; to which the red leader's
grim rejoinder was that in that event "you and I will have to fight
it out." A year passed, however, and war was not yet begun. In 1811
another council was held between the leaders of the rival races.[508]
Some murders had been committed in Illinois for which Harrison demanded
satisfaction. Tecumseh professed himself unable to afford it. At the
same time he informed the Governor that he had succeeded in uniting the
northern tribes, and at the close of the council would set out for the
south to bring the southern tribes also into union.

[Footnote 508: For an account of this council see _ibid._, 182-85.]

Tecumseh departed on his mission, but returned to find his hopes
of realizing the red man's Utopia forever blasted. The settlers of
Indiana, frantic with fear of the threatened destruction, demanded that
the government take steps effectually to avert it.[509] Equipped at
last with an adequate military force, Harrison determined to forestall
the anticipated blow by striking first. The fight of Tippecanoe
followed in November, 1811, and the Prophet's shrill battle song on
that field was at once the death song to Indian unity and to peace on
the frontier. Henceforth, if the dream of Tecumseh was to be realized,
the Indians must, as he had threatened, throw in their lot with the
British, and improve the opportunity afforded by a war between the two
white nations.

[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, 187-90.]

Thus the agitation fostered by Tecumseh kept the northwestern frontier
in a turmoil for several years, and constitutes for that region the
prelude to the War of 1812. At Chicago there were no actual hostilities
during this time, but the Indians of this vicinity shared the unrest
which existed among their fellows on the Wabash. In June, 1805,
representatives from several of the northwestern tribes journeyed to
Maiden to solicit the assistance of their British Father against the
encroachments of the Americans. Among the speakers were two chiefs
from Chicago, one of them the notorious Black Bird to whom Captain
Heald seven years later surrendered the survivors of the Fort Dearborn
massacre. The burden of their complaint was that the Long Knives were
pressing on them so that they deemed it time to take up the hatchet.
Both the Chicago chiefs professed an attachment to peace hitherto,
but seeing "the White Devil with his mouth wide open" ready to take
possession of their lands by any means whatever, they had determined to
join with their fellows in opposition.[510]

[Footnote 510: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XXIII, 39-42.]

A year later, in June, 1806, a French trader informed Captain Wells
at Fort Wayne that a plot had been formed by the Chippewas, Ottawas,
and Pottawatomies to surprise Detroit, Mackinac, Fort Wayne, and
Chicago.[511] In 1808 Jouett, the agent at Chicago, reported that the
neighboring Indians were planning a visit to the Prophet.[512] He
feared that the meeting would be attended with serious consequences,
and advised that it be forestalled by the apprehension of the Prophet.
About this same time the followers of Main Poc made threatening
demonstrations at Fort Dearborn, stirred up, as Doctor Cooper was
told, by some act of alleged injustice on the part of the government
contractor.[513]

[Footnote 511: Dawson, _Harrison_, 85.]

[Footnote 512: _Ibid._, 105.]

[Footnote 513: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

From threatened hostilities to the commission of acts of violence
was a step easily taken. In 1810 the Indians of Illinois committed a
series of depredations and murders along the Mississippi border.[514]
In July four white men were killed near Portage des Sioux by a band
of marauding Indians engaged in a horse-stealing expedition. Two of
the murderers shortly took refuge with the Prophet.[515] Both Governor
Edwards and Governor Harrison endeavored to secure the surrender
of the offenders, but without success.[516] One of the culprits
was Nuscotnemeg, who later bore a prominent part in the Chicago
massacre.[517] Main Poc, who had made the demonstration against Fort
Dearborn in 1808, seems to have been the most active marauder during
the next few years. In May, 1811, La Lime, the interpreter at Fort
Dearborn, reported that two of Main Poc's brothers had been engaged
in stealing horses from the settlements of southern Illinois.[518] In
August Gomo informed Governor Edwards' representative that Main Poc
had gone to Detroit where he would remain until fall.[519] The nature
of his mission is revealed by a letter of Captain Wells the following
February.[520] He had been stationed near Maiden since August, visiting
the British headquarters there every few days. He had with him one
hundred and twenty warriors, disposed in bands of ten or fifteen each
to allay the suspicion of the Americans, ready to take the warpath the
moment hostilities between the British and Americans should begin.
Thus alarming reports poured in upon the government from every part
of the frontier.[521] British agents in Canada co-operated with those
in the West to secure the allegiance of the Indians, and early in
the year 1812 attacks were proposed upon the border settlements of
Louisiana and Illinois.[522] It was due mainly to Robert Dickson, one
of the most astute and influential British traders in the Northwest,
that these plans were not fully carried out, and that the hostile
bands were transferred to the territory about Detroit and the Canadian
frontier.[523] The Americans urged upon the Indians a policy of
neutrality in the impending war between the whites,[524] while the
British, with greater success, sought to enlist them actively in their
support. The opening of the year 1812 found the Indians only awaiting
the co-operation of the British to devastate the frontier with blood
and slaughter.

[Footnote 514: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 37.]

[Footnote 515: _Edwards Papers_, 56-57; Edwards, _Life of Ninian
Edwards_, 37.]

[Footnote 516: Dawson, _Harrison_, 182-84; Edwards, _Life of Ninian
Edwards_, chap. iii.]

[Footnote 517: _Edwards Papers_, 57; _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XI, 320.]

[Footnote 518: Kirkland, _Chicago Massacre_, 187; Edwards, _Life of
Ninian Edwards_, 286-87.]

[Footnote 519: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 39.]

[Footnote 520: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 805.]

[Footnote 521: For further examples see _ibid._, 797-811.]

[Footnote 522: _Edwards Papers_; Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_,
_passim_.]

[Footnote 523: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, Vol. XV, _passim_; Black
Hawk, _Life_, 30-35.]

[Footnote 524: Black Hawk, _Life_, 34 ff.; _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, XV, 196-98; Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 57.]




CHAPTER IX

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR


The indecisive outcome of the battle of Tippecanoe seemed to
necessitate the continuation of the war which Harrison's campaign
had precipitated. But Tecumseh's plans were not yet matured, and his
British advisers steadily warned him against the mistake of making a
premature beginning of the struggle with the Americans, which would
permit them to crush the Indians before the British should be ready to
come to their assistance. He chose, therefore, to make light of the
affair at Tippecanoe, and continued to protest that there would be no
war with the Americans unless they themselves forced it.[525] One thing
had, however, been rendered certain by the Tippecanoe campaign: sooner
or later the Americans must renew the attack upon the Indians; and a
war with the British would bring an Indian war also upon the Northwest.

[Footnote 525: In a speech delivered at a council of the tribes
at Massassinway on the Wabash, in May, 1812, Tecumseh disclaimed
responsibility for the fight of Tippecanoe, referring to it as "the
unfortunate transaction that took place between the white people and
a few of our young men at our village." He stated that the trouble
between his followers and Governor Harrison had been settled, and
further that had he been at home there would have been no bloodshed
(Dawson, Harrison, 266-67).]

Finally after long debate the country blundered hesitantly and
half-heartedly into the War of 1812. The people of New England were
so bitterly opposed to this step, and to the party in power, as to
give rise to suspicion of their loyalty to the Union. The middle and
southern states were, on the whole, favorably disposed toward the war.
But in no other section were the people as eager for war to begin as
in the West. Here, on the frontier, the traditional enmity toward
England was comparatively untouched by the commercial advantages which
committed New England to a policy of peace. Revival of commerce had
little effect upon the West with its desultory cultivation and crude
and inadequate means of transportation, but the spirit of expansion
was strong and the greed for land was unappeased. To this sentiment
was added the belief, firmly held by the westerner, that the British
were primarily responsible for the insecurity of the frontier. In part
this was justified by the facts of the situation, but not to the extent
which the American frontiersmen believed it was. Whether well founded
or not, the belief filled them with resentment toward the British and
rendered them keen for war. "I cannot but notice," wrote Surgeon Van
Voorhis from Fort Dearborn in October, 1811, in a letter to a friend,
"the villainy practiced in the Indian country by British agents and
traders; you hear of it at a distance, but we near the scene of action
are sensible of it. They labor by every unprincipled means to instigate
the Savages against the Americans, to inculcate the idea that we intend
to drive the Indians beyond the Mississippi, and that in every purchase
of land the Government defrauds them; and their united efforts aim too
at the destruction of every trading house and the prevention of the
extension of our frontier. Never till a prohibition of the entrance
of all foreigners, and especially British subjects, into the Indian
Country takes place, will we enjoy a lasting peace with the credulous,
deluded, and cannibal savages."[526]

[Footnote 526: Van Voorhis, _Ancestry of Major Wm. Roe Van Voorhis_,
144-45.]

The West looked forward to war, not only as a solution of the Indian
problem, but also as the means of securing Canada. Yet greater danger
threatened the Northwest, in the event of war, than any other portion
of the United States. Of the territories Michigan was the most
defenseless and exposed to attack. There were in all ten settlements
scattered over a wide extent of country, the distance between the
closest of them being thirty miles and that between the two extremes
over ten times as great.[527] The entire population, counting
British, French, Americans, negroes, and the troops of the garrison
at Detroit, was less than five thousand, four-fifths of them being of
French-Canadian descent. The chief source of danger arose, however,
from the exposed situation of the settlements, rather than from lack
of numbers. Ordinarily the frontier was the extreme line of white
occupation and was backed by settlements whose population became denser
in proportion to their distance from it. Michigan, however, presented
the phenomenon of a double frontier, open on one side to the British
and on the other to the savages; furthermore the settlements were so
scattered as to render effectual co-operation between them in case of
attack out of the question.

[Footnote 527: Memorial of the inhabitants of Michigan Territory to the
President and Congress, December 8 and 10, 1811, in _American State
Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 780-82; _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV,
61-63.]

Separated from even the southernmost of the Michigan settlements by
a wide extent of wilderness, which contained the stronghold of the
budding Indian confederacy, were the white settlements of Indiana.
They had a population of about thirty thousand, clustered principally
in two groups, the one around Vincennes, the other on the Ohio
opposite Louisville, with one hundred miles of wilderness between
them.[528] From the Wabash to the Illinois and Kankakee, stretching
far to the southward, was the great wedge of lands still held by the
Indian tribes. Beginning with the old French town of Vincennes, then
Harrison's headquarters, the line of the frontier followed the Wabash
River nearly fifty miles to Fort Harrison, opposite the present city
of Terre Haute. Extending north from Fort Harrison to the Michigan
settlements and westward to the Mississippi were the Indian villages
and hunting-grounds. The principal settlements of Illinois were still,
as in the old French days, clustered along its lower Mississippi
border. A line drawn from Vincennes to the mouth of Rock River on the
Mississippi would have had south of it practically all of them. The
total white population of the territory was probably less than half
that of Indiana.

[Footnote 528: Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, VI, 68.]

To protect this extensive northwestern frontier the United States had,
in the early part of 1812, some half-dozen feeble garrisons, with an
average strength of about seventy-five men. At Detroit, the largest
and most important military station in the Northwest, were ninety-four
men;[529] at Mackinac, three hundred miles away, were seventy-nine;
at the opposite end of Lake Michigan and about an equal distance
from both Mackinac and Detroit was Fort Dearborn with a garrison of
fifty-five men; at Fort Wayne and at Fort Harrison, the new stockade
on the Wabash, were about as many. All of these were one-company posts
except Detroit, which had two companies. The fortifications had not
been designed for, nor were they expected to be capable of, defense
against the forces of a civilized nation. They were supposed to possess
sufficient strength to withstand an attack by Indians alone, and,
providing the supply of provisions held out, this expectation would
ordinarily have been realized. Even so, however, they could do nothing
toward defending the scattered settlements against the attacks of
the Indians, and the sequel showed that the garrisons were not even
able to defend themselves. Mackinac surrendered without resistance to
a combined force of Indians and Canadian traders; Fort Dearborn was
abandoned, and the garrison was destroyed while seeking to escape; and
Fort Wayne was saved from impending capture only by the approach of a
large force of militia under General Harrison.

[Footnote 529: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 781.]

Against this frontier could be launched, in the event of an Indian
war alone, several thousand warriors.[530] If war were joined with
Great Britain at the same time, it was believed by both sides, and with
good reason, that several thousand men employed in the Indian trade
and in sympathy with the British would co-operate in the attack on the
American frontier.[531] Potentially the Americans possessed in the
population of Ohio and Kentucky resources vastly greater than those
their opponents could bring to bear on the Northwest; and in the end
the superiority of population made itself manifest in the triumph of
the American cause in this region. But this triumph came only after
more than a year of fighting, during the greater part of which the
Americans met with disaster after disaster. For the immediate present
the northwestern frontier was practically undefended while in the
traders and Indians the British possessed a force immediately available
for action which constituted to all intents and purposes a formidable
standing army.

[Footnote 530: In the memorial cited above (note 527) of the
inhabitants of Michigan Territory to the President and Congress,
December 8 and 10, 1811, the number of warriors that might be brought
against Detroit was estimated at five thousand.]

[Footnote 531: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 61-63, 70-72;
Drennan Papers, Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812. The Americans estimated
the number of traders who would assist the British at four thousand.]

That this force was not such as could safely be despised both the words
and actions of the frontiersmen gave testimony. In more recent years on
the western plains the forces of the regular army of the United States
have time and again manifested their superiority over the Indians in
open battle; and only rarely, when the advantage of numbers or position
was greatly in their favor, have the red men won a victory over them.
But in the old Northwest, where advantage could be taken of the heavy
timber which covered so much of the country, the Indian warriors
fighting on their own ground were superior, man for man, to any regular
force that could be sent against them. In fifty years of warfare with
the whites the northwestern Indians had never been defeated in open
battle where the strength on both sides was nearly equal,[532] while
time and again the forces of the whites had succumbed to inferior
numbers. The one decisive American victory over these tribes down to
the War of 1812 was that of Fallen Timbers in 1794. But this victory
was won by a largely superior force under the command of the ablest
general, with the possible exception of Clark, that the Americans
had ever sent into the Northwest, and after two years of arduous
preparation for the contest.

[Footnote 532: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 100; Dawson, _Harrison_, 216,
250.]

The battle of Tippecanoe afforded the most recent illustration of
the prowess of the native warriors. Harrison was probably better
fitted to command in a campaign against the Indians than any other
man in the Northwest, and in this campaign he had a force of one
thousand soldiers[533] of as high quality, on the whole, as America
could produce. In the actual battle his force outnumbered the Indians
in the proportion of two to one.[534] Yet it was only with extreme
difficulty and at the cost in killed and wounded of one-fourth of his
army that the Indian attack was beaten off. Even this success was due
in part to good fortune for the savages had purposely neglected far
more favorable opportunities for attacking Harrison than the one they
finally embraced. Furthermore, even Harrison's advocate grants that
they fought with inferior arms and under circumstances which sacrificed
the advantages which their style of fighting ordinarily afforded.[535]
But for the absence of Tecumseh and the reluctance of the Indians to
fight at all, it is not improbable that Harrison's army would have been
overwhelmed.[536]

[Footnote 533: The number of Harrison's troops cannot be stated with
entire precision. For a discussion of this point see Adams, _op. cit._,
W, 96, and note 534 below.]

[Footnote 534: Harrison himself stated his number in the battle as
"very little above seven hundred men," aside from sixty dragoons whom
he omitted from consideration because they were "unable to do us much
service." They were present in the battle, however, and it is obvious
that the mere fact of Harrison's failure to make effective use of them
does not justify their omission from a statement of the strength of his
army. The statement of Dawson, his biographer, therefore, that on the
day before the battle he had "something more than eight hundred men,"
may be regarded as approximately correct. The number of the Prophet's
followers can only be estimated. Harrison was "convinced that there
were at least six hundred," but he admits that he had no data from
which to form a correct statement. Henry Adams, allowing for "the law
of exaggeration," concludes that there were not more than four hundred
Indians in the battle. On the size of the two armies see _American
State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 778; Dawson, _Harrison_, 216; Adams,
_op. cit._, VI, 104-5.]

[Footnote 535: Dawson, _Harrison_, 211-12, 236-37.]

[Footnote 536: See in this connection the account of the campaign, and
particularly of the plight of the army after the battle, in Dawson,
_Harrison_, 233, 238-39; see also, Adams, _op. cit._, VI, chap. v.]

An indecisive blow had thus been struck, after which Harrison's
forces were disbanded or scattered, and the frontier again became as
defenseless as before the Tippecanoe campaign. With the series of
depredations and murders which marked the spring of 1812 the settlers
became panic-stricken. Large numbers abandoned their farms and either
took refuge in temporary stockade forts or fled to a safer retreat
in the older settlements.[537] The peril from which they fled was
graphically painted by the citizens of Detroit in their appeal to the
government for protection, in December, 1811. "The horrors of savage
belligerence, description cannot paint. No picture can resemble the
reality. No effort can bring the imagination up to the standard of
fact. Nor sex, nor age, have claims. The short remnant of life left
to the hoary head, trembling with age and infirmities, is snatched
away. The tenderest infant, yet imbibing nutrition from the mamilla
of maternal love, and the agonized mother herself, alike await the
stroke of the relentless tomahawk. No vestige is left of what fire
can consume. Nothing which breathes the breath of life is spared.
The animals reared by the care of civilized man are involved in his
destruction. No human foresight can divine the quarter which shall be
struck. It is in the dead of the night, in the darkness of the morn, in
the howling of the storm, that the demoniac deed is done."[538]

[Footnote 537: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 110; Dawson, _Harrison_, 236.]

[Footnote 538: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 781.]

The nation entered upon the war in June, 1812, with a large portion
of its best citizens and one entire section of the country bitterly
opposed to the measure. Apathy and opposition combined with the
incompetence of the administration at Washington to produce a state
of unpreparedness which, in view of the seriousness of the situation,
seems today incredible. Congress voted men for the army, but there was
little disposition on the part of the country to supply them. The money
that was no less essential to the conduct of a war not even Congress
was willing to vote, except to a ludicrously inadequate degree.[539]
Great Britain had stood undaunted for years between Napoleon and the
realization of his ambition of European if not of world supremacy.
Through generations of warfare her people had become habituated to
devoting their treasure to this end, and had developed a strong
military tradition. Both government and army had been brought to the
greatest possible state of efficiency for the conduct of war by the
experience gained in the two decades of practically constant warfare
which the French Revolutionary era had opened. That the greater part of
this schooling had been gained in combat with Napoleon, the greatest
military genius of modern times, did not detract from its value. On the
sea the power of England was superior to that of all the rest of the
world combined.

[Footnote 539: On this whole subject see Adams, _op. cit._, Vol. VI,
_passim_; Babcock, _Rise of American Nationality, chaps_, iv and v.]

The contrast presented by the United States in 1812 in all that
pertained to military affairs could hardly have been more striking.
That the Americans were brave and potentially capable of making
good soldiers does not, of course, admit of question. But this is
equally true of the members of the mob which flees in terror before a
detachment of regulars one-tenth as numerous as itself. The lack of
a well-trained army was less serious, however, than was the absence
of a disposition to submit to the labors and discipline necessary to
create one. Of capable military leaders we had none. Yet this, while
deplorable enough, was not so serious, probably, as was the contempt
which all Americans outside the army itself evinced for regular
military training and experience. Even after the bitter lessons taught
us on land by the War of 1812, a sixteen-year-old runaway boy could
convince as intelligent a man as Calhoun that he had a greater claim
to preferment in the army than had the graduate of West Point.[540]
And in the early stages of our next war with a civilized nation the
President of the United States deliberately determined to appoint all
of the officers of a newly created regiment from civil life, on the
double ground that since he could not promote all of the officers of
the existing army he would not promote any of them, and that it was
"generally expected that they should be selected from citizens."[541]

[Footnote 540: Andrews, Biographical Sketch of James Watson Webb, 5-7.]

[Footnote 541: Diary of James K. Polk, I, 412. The same contempt for
trained military leaders, and preference for political appointees, was
manifested during the early years of the Civil War.]

On the sea we opposed sixteen ships,[542] excellent enough for
their class, to the eight hundred odd of England. Their showing in
the ensuing war is worthy of all praise. Yet it was probably as
genuinely a matter of surprise to the Americans as it was to the
British themselves. The glamor which resulted from the success of the
Americans in a number of single-ship duels has blinded the eyes of
later generations to the facts that during the greater part of the war
the British vessels maintained a close blockade of the American coast,
insulting our sea ports with impunity, and that the navy committed
blunders almost as serious as those of the army on land.

[Footnote 542: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 362. This statement omits from
consideration the gunboats of Jefferson's mosquito fleet.]

The army, when war was declared, was partly in the field and partly
on paper.[543] The former portion consisted of ten old regiments with
ranks partly filled, scattered in numerous garrisons from New England
to New Orleans. The latter consisted of thirteen new regiments which
had been authorized by Congress in January, but although recruiting
began in March, only four thousand men had been secured by the middle
of June. Shortly after the declaration of war Congress fixed the
regular establishment at thirty-two regiments with a strength of
thirty-six thousand seven hundred men, yet at this time, including the
four thousand new recruits, there were but ten thousand men under arms.
In February the raising of fifty thousand volunteers for one year was
authorized, and in April the President was given power to call out one
hundred thousand state militia. But in June less than one-twelfth of
the volunteers had been enrolled, and whether the states would heed the
call upon them for militia, or whether the militia when raised would
serve beyond the frontier, no one yet knew.

[Footnote 543: On the state of the army at this time see McMaster,
_History of the People of the United States_, III, chap, xxiii; Adams,
_op. cit._, VI, chap, xiv; Babcock, _op. cit._, chap. v.]

The main reliance of the Americans must obviously be the militia.
Fighting within their own boundaries, under competent officers of their
own choosing, and in their own way, they were capable of excellent,
and at times even brilliant service; Bennington, King's Mountain, and
New Orleans are sufficient evidence of this. But for prolonged service
in a national and offensive war they were of very little account. In
subservience to impulse and impatience of discipline they rivaled
the Indian himself. Said Amos Kendall, after witnessing a temporary
muster in Kentucky in the summer of 1814: "The soldiers are under
no more restraint than a herd of swine. Reasoning, remonstrating,
threatening, and ridiculing their officers, they show their sense of
equality, and their total want of subordination."[544] Even so popular
and experienced a frontiersman as Harrison, leading the citizens
of his own territory in defense of their own homes, found great
difficulty in controlling the militia in the short Tippecanoe campaign.
His biographer repeats with evident pride that he relied upon his
persuasive eloquence, rather than his authority, to prevent a general
desertion.[545]

[Footnote 544: Quoted in Babcock, _op. cit._, 79-80.]

[Footnote 545: Dawson, _Harrison_, 230-31.]

Equally typical of the volunteer militia of this period was the action
of the Ohioans on receipt of the news, in the summer of 1812, that
Fort Wayne was in imminent danger from the Indians. Their ardor to
serve was such that "every road to the frontiers was crowded with
unsolicited volunteers."[546] Yet this zeal, praiseworthy as it was
in itself, only resulted in the consumption of the provisions which
by General Hull's orders had been accumulated at the outposts for his
use. When Harrison was finally ready to start upon the expedition for
the relief of Fort Wayne he paraded his troops, "read several articles
of war, prescribing the duty of soldiers, and explained the necessity
for such regulations," and gave those who were unwilling to submit to
them an opportunity to withdraw from the force. The enthusiasm of the
troops was such that only one man availed himself of this opportunity;
and he was conveyed astride a rail by his disgusted associates to the
banks of the Big Miami, "in the waters of which they absolved him from
the obligations of courage and patriotism." Yet not all of Harrison's
eloquence sufficed ten days later to prevent the Ohio militia from
abandoning his army in a body and returning to their homes with the
campaign but half completed.[547]

[Footnote 546: _Ibid._, 288.]

[Footnote 547: McAfee, _History of the Late War in the Western
Country_, 128.]

However excellent the quality of the rank and file may have been, it
still would have availed little in the absence of competent leaders.
The painful experience of the government in the early years of the
Civil War has burned this lesson deeply into the consciousness of the
American people. Though the War of 1812 was waged on a far smaller
scale, the lack of competent generals in the earlier years is even more
painfully apparent. The officers appointed by the President to command
the army in 1812 have been well described as "old, vain, respectable,
and incapable."[548] Of the two major generals and five brigadiers
the youngest was fifty-five years of age, and the average age was
fifty-nine. Most of them were veterans of the Revolutionary War, and
only one had ever commanded a regiment in the face of an enemy.

[Footnote 548: McMaster, _United States_, III, 546.]

The general plan proposed by Dearborn for the campaign provided for a
main expedition against Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, flanked by
invasions of Canada from Detroit, Niagara, and Sackett's Harbor. Such
a plan vigorously pushed with proper forces would have compelled the
British forces to stand strictly on the defensive, the Indians would
have had no encouragement to rise, and the northwestern frontier might
have been spared the horrors of the warfare that soon broke upon it.
But while a force was sent to Detroit under Hull to begin the campaign
in that quarter, elsewhere hostilities lagged. Hull's campaign,
therefore, on the issue of which hung the fate of the Northwest, may
receive our undivided attention.

Hull had neither sought nor desired the appointment to the command
of the army in the Northwest. As a soldier of the Revolution and in
various capacities since that war he had acquitted himself with credit,
when, in 1805, he was appointed by Jefferson governor of the newly
created Michigan Territory. In this office he remained when the War
of 1812 began, notwithstanding the fact that his career as governor
had been marked by discord and disappointment, due largely to Hull's
inability to adjust himself to the environment, new to him, of the
frontier.[549] He had urged upon the government the desirability of
rendering Michigan defensible from a military point of view, advocating
as essential to this end the control by armed vessels of Lake
Erie.[550] In the early part of 1812 he was in Washington urging the
same subject again upon the government. While thus engaged the military
appointment of commander of the forces in that quarter was tendered
to him by Madison and declined.[551] Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, who had
commanded at Detroit, Mackinac, and Belle Fontaine from 1804 to 1811,
and was now on leave of absence, was ordered to the West to resume his
old command. He was, however, incapacitated by illness, whereupon Hull,
urged a second time by the administration, accepted the appointment.

[Footnote 549: On Hull's career as governor see Cooley, _Michigan_,
chap. viii.]

[Footnote 550: Cooley, _Michigan_, 164; Hull, _Campaign of 1812_,
19-21; _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812.]

[Footnote 551: Cooley, _Michigan_, 167; Hull, _Campaign of 1812_,
14-18.]

From every point of view this was a calamity. Hull's opinion that the
control of the lakes was essential to the safety of Detroit and the
Northwest had been repeatedly expressed, the last time as recently as
March 6, 1812. Since that control had not been gained, it followed that
Hull believed himself at the mercy of the enemy in the event of war.
Holding such views it was impossible for him to enter upon the invasion
of Canada with any confidence or determination. Kingsbury had seen much
of the Northwest. Having had years of military service there, he was
familiar with Heald, Whistler, and the other post commanders, and was
possessed of energy and decision of character. Under him, even though
the invasion of Canada had not been carried out, it is not likely that
Detroit would have surrendered without a light, and Fort Dearborn have
been left to its fate.

The force put at Hull's disposal consisted of three regiments of Ohio
militia, the Fourth United States Infantry, which had constituted the
nucleus of Harrison's force at Tippecanoe, a troop of Ohio dragoons,
and some scattering companies of volunteers, amounting in all to about
two thousand men. With this force he must cut a road through the
wilderness of northern Ohio, establish blockhouses to protect his line
of communication for two hundred miles through the Indian country,
protect the settlements, and, according to the expectations of the
government, conquer Upper Canada. The mere statement of the task is
sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of executing it with the
means at his disposal.

On April 25 Hull reached Pittsburgh on his way to the West,[552] and
twelve days later was at Cincinnati, having come from Baltimore, a
distance of over eight hundred miles, in sixteen days.[553] Meanwhile
Governor Meigs with praiseworthy expedition was recruiting and
organizing the regiments of militia. On May 25 he turned them over
to Hull with a spirited speech worthy of Napoleon's best style and
containing withal much good advice.[554] The failure of the dragoons
and the regiment of regulars to arrive was causing Hull much anxiety,
but he announced his intention to proceed without them.[555] At last,
on June 10, the regulars joined him at Urbana.[556] The whole army
marched out a mile to meet and escort them ceremoniously into camp.
A triumphal arch had been erected near the camp, with the American
eagle displayed on the keystone, and inscribed in capitals on one
side the word "Tippecanoe," and on the other "Glory." In the place of
honor at the head of the army, preceded only by the troops of mounted
dragoons, the regulars made their way into camp. Arrived at the arch,
the cavalry opened out, allowing them to pass beneath it, while the
militia regiments passed by on the outside, "hoping soon to be entitled
to similar honors."

[Footnote 552: _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, April 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 553: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, May 8, 1812.]

[Footnote 554: _Ibid._, Meigs's address to the "First Army of Ohio,"
May 25, 1812; Hull to Eustis, May 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 555: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, May 17, 1812.]

[Footnote 556: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 11, 1812.]

This pleasing ceremony ended, and permission having been gained from
the Indian chiefs to open a road through their country and protect
it with blockhouses,[557] the advance was pressed with vigor. The
obstacles to be overcome were many: a new road fit for the passage of
an army must be cut, blockhouses were to be erected at intervals of
twenty miles through the Indian country, and the provisions needed for
the army must be brought forward from the settled portion of Ohio.
The equipment of the army was notably deficient in certain important
respects. On reaching Cincinnati, Hull had found the supply of powder
so inadequate as to necessitate sending at once to Lexington for
more.[558] The guns were in such poor condition that to render them
fit for use Hull was compelled to carry a traveling forge and create a
company of artificers to repair them as the army advanced. In this way
they were rendered serviceable at the rate of fifty a day.[559]

[Footnote 557: The agreement entered into is given in _Drennan Papers_,
Hull to Eustis, June 9, 1812.]

[Footnote 558: Drennan Papers, Hull to Eustis, May 8, 1812.]

[Footnote 559: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 11, 1812.]

Hull reported the spirit of the army as excellent, yet a serious
case of insubordination occurred at Urbana over a grievance, real or
fancied, on the part of the militia with respect to their pay.[560] The
officers had promised the men an advance for the year's clothing, which
was not forthcoming. Papers were accordingly posted on trees the night
before the departure from Urbana, warning Hull not to march until the
army had been paid. He announced his determination to proceed, and when
the assembly beat all but one company obeyed the order. A detachment
from the Fourth Regiment of regulars was immediately marched toward it,
which cowed the mutineers into submission. Three of the ringleaders
were tried by a court martial which sentenced them to have one-half
their heads shaved, their hands tied behind their backs, to be marched
around the lines with the label "Tory" between the shoulders, and be
drummed out of the army.

[Footnote 560: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 18, 1812.]

This exhibition of firmness on Hull's part seems to have had the
desired effect. The culprits felt the disgrace keenly, considering the
punishment worse than death, and at the solicitation of their officers
Hull consented to pardon them.[561] Heavy and incessant rains, combined
with the other obstacles, prevented the army from making the progress
the commander desired.[562] On June 26, when Hull received a message
warning him of the impending hostilities and urging him to press
forward with all possible speed, he had covered only about seventy-five
miles from Urbana and was still thirty-five miles from the Maumee
Rapids.[563] He reached this point four days later, and thereupon
committed his first blunder. To save transportation, his personal
baggage, papers, hospital stores, and other material were embarked on
a schooner for Detroit. Meanwhile war had been declared by Congress
on June 18; and the British forces at Malden, receiving prompt notice
of this, seized the schooner with all it contained. Thus they became
apprised of Hull's strength and of his instructions from his government.

[Footnote 561: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 562: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 24 and 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 563: Adams, _United States_, VI, 298-99; _Drennan Papers_,
Hull to Eustis, June 26, 1812.]

On July 5 Hull reached Detroit, and four days later received word from
Washington to begin the invasion of Canada.[564] His reply expressed
confidence in his ability to drive the British from the opposite bank
of the river, but he did not believe he could take Maiden. A week
later he crossed the river and occupied Sandwich, the British retiring
before him without a blow. From Sandwich a proclamation was issued to
the Canadians, designed to secure their acquiescence in the American
conquest.[565] To some extent this hope was realized, and numbers of
the Canadian militia deserted to the Americans. Instead, however, of
pressing the attack on Maiden at once, from this time Hull delayed
until, with the enemy growing stronger and his own position more
precarious, he lost all hope of success and retreated to Detroit. The
factors responsible for this decision were the news of the capture of
Mackinac with the prospect of the approach of a large number of traders
and Indians upon Detroit in his rear, and the attacks by Tecumseh's
Indians upon his line of communications with Ohio.

[Footnote 564: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 302.]

[Footnote 565: _Ibid._, VI, 303-4.]

While Hull had thus been conducting affairs at Detroit, Dearborn, who
had command of the army in New York, was dallying at Boston and Albany,
doing nothing to engage the British by pushing the attack upon Canada
from New York, a measure which was essential to Hull's success. On
August 9 he even entered into an armistice with the British which bound
him to act only on the defensive until the government at Washington
should decide upon the effect of the repeal of the obnoxious orders.
This inactivity in the East left Brock, the British commander in Upper
Canada, entirely free to direct his attention to Hull; and the attack
upon Niagara on which Hull on July 19 had declared all his own success
would depend was not made. Moving with a vigor and daring conspicuously
wanting in the American generals. Brock transferred all of his
available forces from the Niagara frontier to Maiden. On arriving there
he quickly determined to cross the river and assail Hull in Detroit.
Although Hull's force was the larger, the audacity of Brock, combined
with the senility displayed by Hull, rendered the movement a complete
success. Without awaiting the assault, Hull surrendered his entire
army, together with Detroit and Michigan Territory, to the British.




CHAPTER X

THE BATTLE AND DEFEAT


On the issue of Hull's campaign hung the fate of Fort Dearborn. With
the Indian, war was a passion, at once his greatest pleasure and his
chief business in life. He could not remain an idle spectator of such
a war as had now been joined between the white races, but must be a
participant on one side or the other. The exhortations of the Americans
that the red man hold aloof from the war, which did not concern him,
and let the whites fight out their own quarrel, would be heeded only on
one condition. The Americans must manifest such a decided superiority
over the British as to convince him that theirs was the successful
cause. Both disposition and self-interest urged the Indian to take his
stand on the winning side. As long as appearances led him to believe
that this was the American, he would hold aloof from the war, since the
United States did not desire his assistance. In the contrary event both
inclination and self-interest would lead him to side with the British.

There were exceptions, of course, to these generalizations. Tecumseh's
hostility to the Americans was independent of any such adventitious
circumstances. But with Hull triumphant at Maiden the tribes to the
west of Lake Michigan would have possessed neither the courage nor the
inclination to rise against the Americans; with the British flag waving
over Detroit the whole Northwest as far as the Maumee River and the
settlements of southern Indiana and Illinois would, as Hull pointed out
to the government before the war began, pass under British control.[566]

[Footnote 566: _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812.]

Alarming reports of Indian hostility and depredations came to Chicago
during the winter of 1812. Early in March Captain Heald received
news from a Frenchman at Milwaukee of hostilities committed by the
Winnebagoes on the Mississippi.[567] On April 6 a band of marauders
who were believed to belong to the same tribe made a descent upon
Chicago.[568] Shortly before sunset eleven Indians appeared at the
farm of Russell and Lee some three or four miles from the fort up
the South Branch. Lee is said to have settled at Chicago about the
year 1805, having received the contract to supply the garrison with
provisions.[569] He lived with his family a short distance southwest
of the fort, and carried on his farming operations at the place on
the South Branch which was later known as Hardscrabble. Russell was
evidently the partner of Lee, but aside from this fact nothing is
known about him. The farm was under the immediate superintendence of
an American named Liberty White, who had lived at Chicago for some
time.[570] At the time of the descent of the marauding war party there
were three other persons, in addition to White, at the farmhouse, a
soldier of the garrison named John Kelso,[571] a boy whose name no one
has taken the trouble to record, and a Canadian Frenchman, John B.
Cardin, who had but recently come to Chicago.

[Footnote 567: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 806.]

[Footnote 568: Short reports of the attack by Matthew Irwin and by
Captain Heald are printed in Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 49-50. Longer
and more valuable accounts are contained in the letters of Heald
and John La Lime to Captain William Wells, dated April 15 and 13
respectively, printed in the _Louisiana Gazette_ for May 30, 1812. I
have made use of the copies of these letters made by Lyman C. Draper,
in the Draper Collection, S, Vol. XXVI. The best known account is Mrs.
Kinzie's narrative in _Wau Bun_, 155-60, but its statements require
verification.]

[Footnote 569: Statement of William R. Head in his _Annals of Chicago_,
MS owned by his widow. I have not been able to verify it.]

[Footnote 570: _Wau Bun_, 157. That his first name was Liberty is
stated by Heald. That he had lived at Chicago for some time is evident
from the occurrence of his name in Kinzie's account books.]

[Footnote 571: La Lime's letter to Wells, as printed in the _Louisiana
Gazette_, May 30, 1812, gives the name of John Kelson. From the
similarity of names I infer that the man was John Kelso, a private in
Heald's company.]

Soon after the arrival of the visitors Kelso and the boy, not liking
the aspect of affairs, "cleared out" for the fort. White and Cardin,
less apprehensive of a hostile disposition on the part of the Indians,
remained and were shortly murdered. The former was "shockingly
butchered." He was tomahawked and scalped, his face was mutilated and
his throat cut from ear to ear, and he received two balls through his
body and ten knife stabs in his breast and hip. It was with reason that
Heald declared him to be "the most horrible object I ever beheld in my
life." Cardin was shot through the neck and scalped, but his body was
not otherwise mutilated. It was Heald's belief that the Indians "spared
him a little" out of consideration for his nationality.

Following the murder of White and Cardin, the garrison and the civilian
residents of Chicago endured for some time what may fairly be described
as a state of siege.[572] The murderers were supposed to belong to the
Winnebago tribe, but the efforts of the commander to learn from the
neighboring Indians whether the supposition was correct were in vain.
Accordingly he forbade the Indians to come to the place until he should
learn to what nation the murderers belonged. Kinzie moved his family
into the fort, and all of the other residents of the place outside
the garrison fortified themselves in the house formerly occupied by
Jouett, the Indian agent. Those able to bear arms, fifteen in all,
were organized by Heald into a militia company and furnished with
arms and ammunition from the garrison store.[573] Parties of savages
lurked around, and the whites were forced to keep close to the fort to
avoid the danger of losing their scalps. A few days after the murders
three of the militia, two half-breeds and a Frenchman, deserted, thus
reducing the membership of the company to twelve, the number present at
the time of the massacre. The deserters were believed to have gone in
the direction of "Millewakii," taking ten or a dozen horses with them.

[Footnote 572: The narrative at this point is based on the letters of
La Lime and Heald to Captain Wells, April 13 and 15, 1812.]

[Footnote 573: Letter of Heald to Captain Wells, April 15, 1812;
letter of Sergeant William Griffith to Heald, June 13, 1820, Draper
Collection, U, VIII, 88.]

On May 1 Francis Keneaum, a British subject who lived at Maiden,
reached Chicago attended by two Chippewa Indians, en route for Green
Bay.[574] The party was arrested on suspicion that Keneaum was a
British emissary, and he subsequently made an affidavit showing that he
had been engaged by the brother-in-law of Matthew Elliot, the British
Indian agent, to go on a secret mission to Robert Dickson, the most
active and influential British emissary among the tribes west of Lake
Michigan. The Indians had taken the precaution to conceal the letters
intrusted to them in their moccasins and to bury them.[575] After their
release from detention they proceeded on their way and delivered them
to Dickson, who was passing the winter at the Fox-Wisconsin Portage.
The message which Captain Heald thus failed to intercept was from
no less a person than General Brock, who was seeking to establish
communication with Dickson; and it was due to the communication thus
established that Dickson led his northwestern bands to St. Joseph's to
co-operate in the attack on Mackinac, and in that descent upon Detroit
which had such a fatal effect upon Hull's campaign.[576]

[Footnote 574: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 324.]

[Footnote 575: Edwards, _Life of Ninian Edwards_, 333.]

[Footnote 576: This conclusion is based on the letters, in addition to
those already cited, of Captain Glegg to Dickson printed in _Michigan
Pioneer Collections_, XV, 180-82, 193-95, and the communications
between Glegg and Dickson printed in _Wisconsin Historical
Collection_s, XII, 139-40.]

We have seen already[577] how that campaign progressed to its
disastrous close, and that on its issue hung the fate of Fort Dearborn
and the Northwest. With so much of importance in the immediate vicinity
of Detroit to demand his attention, Hull had little time or thought
to devote to the remote posts at Mackinac and Chicago. News of the
declaration of war was received at Fort Dearborn toward the middle of
July.[578] The tradition was current at Chicago long afterward that
the news was brought by Pierre Le Claire, a half-breed who figured in
the negotiations for the surrender of the garrison on the day of the
massacre, who walked from the mouth of the St. Joseph River to Fort
Dearborn, a distance of ninety miles, in a single day.[579]

[Footnote 577: _Supra_, chap. ix.]

[Footnote 578: Lieutenant Helm's narrative of the massacre says July
10.]

[Footnote 579: Hubbard, _Life_, 126-27.]

On July 14 Hull wrote to Eustis, the Secretary of War, that he would
cause the brig, "Adams," which had been launched ten days before, to be
completed and armed as soon as possible for the purpose of supplying
the posts of Mackinac and Fort Dearborn with the necessary stores and
provisions, if they could be obtained at Detroit.[580] Exactly two
weeks later, however, two Chippewa Indians reached Hull's camp at
Sandwich bringing news of the surrender of Mackinac. The report seemed
so improbable that at first Hull refused to believe it, but close
questioning brought forth so many circumstantial details as to remove
his doubt. On the same day, July 29, he wrote to the Secretary of War,
"I shall immediately send an express to Fort Dearborn with orders to
evacuate that post and retreat to this place or Fort Wayne, provided
it can be effected with a greater prospect of safety than to remain.
Captain Heald is a judicious officer, and I shall confide much to his
discretion."[581]

[Footnote 580: _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, July 14 and 19, 1812.]

[Footnote 581: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, July 29, 1812.]

With the evacuation impending, we come upon some of the most important
questions in the history of Fort Dearborn. The nature of Hull's order
for the evacuation, the demeanor of the savages around the fort
immediately prior to the evacuation, the relations subsisting between
Captain Heald and the officers and men under his control, the degree
of sanity and sense displayed by the commander in dealing with the
difficult situation which confronted him--all these things require
careful consideration. In the accounts of the massacre that have
been written hitherto, these matters have commonly been presented in
such a way as to place the responsibility for the tragedy solely on
Captain Heald's shoulders, and to represent his administration of
affairs as stupid and incompetent to the verge of imbecility. But
there is abundant reason for suspecting that these accounts, which
all proceed, directly or indirectly from a common source, do Heald
grave injustice.[582] If an examination of the available sources of
information confirms this suspicion it is quite time, a century after
the massacre, to correct the popular impression of the affair and do
belated justice to the leader of civilization's forlorn hope on that
day of savage triumph.

[Footnote 582: See, on this point, Appendix II.]

Hull's letter to Eustis of July 29 expressed an intention to confide
much to Heald's discretion in the matter of the evacuation. But his
letter to Heald, although written on the same day, does not fulfil
this intention. The order to evacuate was positive,[583] and the
reason assigned for this step was a want of provisions. Heald was also
peremptorily enjoined to destroy the arms and ammunition. The only
thing confided to his discretion was the disposition of the goods of
the government factory, which he was authorized to give to the friendly
Indians, and to the poor and needy of the settlement.

[Footnote 583: Lost to the world for almost a century, Hull's order was
brought to light a few years since among the Heald papers in the Draper
Collection at Madison, Wisconsin. It was first published by the author
in "Some Notes on the Fort Dearborn Massacre," in the _Mississippi
Valley Historical Association, Proceedings for 1910-11_, 138. The order
reads as follows:

                                                Sandwich July 29th 1812

  _Capt. Nat. Heald._

Sir:--It is with regret I order the Evacuation of your Post owing
to the want of Provisions only a neglect of the Commandant of [word
illegible-possibly Detroit].

You will therefore Destroy all arms & ammunition, but the Goods of the
Factory you may give to the Friendly Indians who may be desirous of
Escorting you on to Fort Wayne & to the Poor & needy of your Post. I
am informed this day that Makinac & the Island of St. Joseph will be
Evacuated on acct of the scarcity of Provision & I hope in my next to
give you an acct. of the Surrender of the British at Maiden as I Expect
600 men here by the beginning of Sept.

                                I am Sir
                           Yours &c

                                Brigadier Gen. Hull.

  Addressed; Capt. Nathan Heald, Commander Fort Dearborn by Express.
]

Unfortunately for Captain Heald's reputation with posterity, the
evacuation order was lost to sight for almost a century. Lieutenant
Helm's labored account of the massacre, written in 1814, states
that the order to Heald was "to Evacuate the Post of Fort Dearborne
by the route of Detroit or Fort Wayne if Practicable."[584] Helm's
narrative, like the evacuation order, was unknown to the public for
almost a century; his version of Hull's order, however, was preserved
in the form of tradition in the family of Kinzie, the trader, to
which Mrs. Helm belonged, and thus after the lapse of a third of a
century it appeared in print in Mrs. Juliette Kinzie's account of the
massacre[585] which was afterward incorporated in her book, _Wau Bun_.

[Footnote 584: Appendix VI.]

[Footnote 585: According to Mrs. Kinzie the order was "to evacuate the
fort, if practicable, and in that event, to distribute all the United
States' property contained in the fort, and in the United States'
factory or agency, among the Indians in the neighborhood." _Wau Bun_,
162.]

[Illustration: GENERAL HULL'S ORDER FOR THE EVACUATION OF FORT DEARBORN

(By courtesy of the Wisconsin State Historical Society)]

The evacuation order closed with the expression by Hull of the hope,
destined never to be realized, of being able to announce in his next
communication the surrender of the British at Maiden. Instead of this,
on August 8 he abandoned Sandwich and recrossed the river to Detroit.
The next day the Indian runner. Winnemac, delivered to Captain Heald at
Fort Dearborn his order for the evacuation.[586] Hull also sent word of
the intended evacuation to Fort Wayne, ordering the officers there to
co-operate in the movement by rendering Captain Heald any information
and assistance in their power.[587] In consequence of this Captain
William Wells, the famous Indian scout, set out for Fort Dearborn at
the head of thirty Miami warriors to assist in covering Heald's retreat.

[Footnote 586: Heald's Journal, Appendix III; his report of the
massacre, Appendix IV; Lieutenant Helm's narrative of the massacre,
Appendix VI.]

[Footnote 587: Heald's report, Appendix IV; Brice, _History of Fort
Wayne_, 206.]

The days following the ninth of August were, we may well believe,
filled with care and busy preparation for Captain Heald and all the
white people in and around Fort Dearborn. Their situation in the heart
of the wilderness was an appalling one, well calculated to tax the
judgment and abilities of Heald, on whose wisdom and energy the fate of
all depended, to the utmost. Apparently Kinzie sought to dissuade Heald
from obeying Hull's order to evacuate. There must be powerful reasons
to justify him in taking this step, yet if sufficiently convincing
ones pertaining to the safety of the garrison existed, it is clear
that Heald should have assumed the responsibility on the ground that
the order had been issued in ignorance of the facts of the situation
confronting the Fort Dearborn garrison.

There were several reasons to be urged against an evacuation. The
fort was well situated for defense. With the garrison at hand it
could probably be held indefinitely against an attack by Indians
alone, providing the supply of ammunition and provisions held out. The
surrounding Indians outnumbered the garrison ten to one, it is true,
but success against such odds when the whites were sheltered behind
a suitable stockade was not unusual in the annals of border warfare.
The red man possessed little taste for besieging a fortified place,
and if the first assault were beaten off, his lack both of artillery
and of resolution to persevere in such a contest rendered his success
improbable, unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor, or the
provisions of the besieged gave out. Moreover, whatever the odds might
be at Fort Dearborn, the probability of making a successful defense
behind the walls of the stockade was immeasurably greater than it would
be in the open country. Both Governor Edwards of Illinois and Harrison
of Indiana were vigorous executives, and if the fort were held, relief
might reasonably be expected before long from the militia which was
then being collected in southern Illinois and Indiana, or even from
Kentucky.

The situation was complicated, too, by the private interests at stake.
Evacuation would mean financial ruin to Kinzie, the trader, and Lee,
the farmer. These considerations Heald properly ignored of course.
But the danger to the families of the soldiers and of the civilians
clustered around the fort was greater and more appalling than to the
garrison itself. There could be no thought of abandoning these helpless
souls, yet the attempt to convey them away with the garrison would
render the retreat exceedingly slow and cumbersome. Kinzie at Chicago
and Forsyth at Peoria were well known and esteemed by the resident
natives, and many of these were well disposed toward the Americans;
the hostile bands might be expected to disperse after a period of
unsuccessful siege, and the property of the settlers and the lives of
the garrison would be saved.

On the other hand, most of these things were as familiar to Hull as
to Heald himself. Practically the only feature of Heald's situation
about which Hull's knowledge might be presumed to be deficient was
that concerning the number and demeanor of the Indians around Fort
Dearborn. But in the provision of his order authorizing Heald to
distribute the goods of the factory "to the Friendly Indians who may
be desirous of escorting you on to Fort Wayne" was a clear indication
of the commanding general's will in case this contingency should be
realized. Obedience to orders is the primary duty of a soldier. He
may not refrain from executing the order of his superior, however ill
advised it may appear to him, unless it is evident that it was issued
under a misapprehension of the facts of the situation, and that the
commander himself, if aware of these facts, would revoke it. The truth
of this proposition is so obvious that it would scarcely be worth while
to state it, were it not for the fact that there has been a practically
unanimous chorus of condemnation of Captain Heald on the part of those
who have hitherto written of the Fort Dearborn massacre because he
acted in accordance with it and obeyed his superior's order. Heald's
own view of his duty is clear, both from the course he followed and
from the narratives of himself and of his detractors. The latter shows
that he paid no attention to the protests against the evacuation made
by Kinzie and such others as the trader was able to influence; while
in his own official report of the massacre Heald does not even discuss
the question of holding the fort or of his reason for evacuating it,
further than to recite the order received from Hull to do so.

The time until the thirteenth of August was doubtless spent in
preparation for the wilderness journey, though actual details are for
the most part wanting. Some slight indication of the commander's labors
is afforded by an affidavit he made in 1817 in behalf of Kinzie and
Forsyth's claims against the government for compensation for the losses
sustained by them in the massacre. In this Heald stated that, being
ordered to evacuate Fort Dearborn and march the troops to Fort Wayne,
he employed sundry horses and mules, with saddles, bridles, and other
equipment, the property of Kinzie and Forsyth, to transport provisions
and other necessities for the troops.[588] On August 13 Captain Wells
arrived from Fort Wayne with his thirty Miami warriors to act as an
additional escort for the troops in their retreat. Probably on this
day a council was held with the Indians at which Heald announced his
intention to distribute the goods among them and evacuate the fort,
and stipulated for their protection upon his retreat.[589] On the
fourteenth the goods in the factory were delivered to the Indians,
together with a considerable quantity of provisions which could not be
taken along on the retreat. The stock of liquor was destroyed, however,
as were also the surplus arms and ammunition. The one was calculated to
fire the red man to deeds of madness, while for the whites to give him
the other would have been to furnish him with the means for their own
destruction.

[Footnote 588: Affidavit of December 2, 1817, Draper Collection,
_Forsyth Papers_, Vol. I.]

[Footnote 589: Heald's report does not mention the holding of a
council; Helm's narrative represents that Wells held the council
with the Indians. This is probably correct as to the main fact that
a council was held, but untrue in representing Wells, rather than
Heald, as the principal participant in it on the part of the whites. A
few months after the massacre the Superintendent of Indian Trade was
initiating measures for recovering from the War Department indemnity
for the goods of the Chicago factory destroyed at the time of the
massacre on the ground that they were delivered by Heald to the Indians
"under a kind of treaty" between the two (Indian Office, Letter Book C,
Mason to Matthew Irwin, February 9, 1813).]

To the resentment kindled among the Indians by the destruction of these
stores the immediate cause of the attack and massacre on the following
day has often been ascribed. That the disappointment of the red man was
keen is self-evident. Yet that but for the destruction of the powder
and whisky there would have been no attack on the garrison seems most
improbable. Heald stated under oath several years later that prior
to the evacuation the Indians had made "much application" to him for
ammunition, and expressed the opinion that but for the destruction
which took place not a soul among the whites would have escaped the
tomahawk.[590]

[Footnote 590: Affidavit of December 2, 1817, Draper Collection,
_Forsyth Papers_, Vol. I.]

All was now ready for the departure, which was to take place on the
morning of the fifteenth. At this juncture there came to the commander
a belated warning. Black Partridge, a Pottawatomie chief from the
Illinois River, came to him with the significant message that "linden
birds" had been singing in his ears and they ought to be careful on
the march they were about to make. At the same time he surrendered his
medal, explaining that the young warriors were bent on mischief and
probably could not be restrained.[591]

[Footnote 591: There are two contemporary versions of this incident;
one is contained in Lieutenant Helm's narrative of the massacre, the
other in McAfee's _History of the Late War_, 98. McAfee's informant
was Sergeant Griffith of Heald's company. Both of the accounts are
very brief. They agree in the main fact that Black Partridge gave the
warning to the interpreter, but Helm alone mentions the surrender of
the medal.]

It was now too late to withdraw from the plan of evacuating the fort,
even if the commander had desired to do so. The next morning dawned
warm and cloudless. Inside the stockade the last preparations for the
toilsome journey had been made. No chronicler was present to preserve
a record of the final scenes, but the imagination can find little
difficulty in picturing them. With all its rudeness and privation,
the Chicago they were leaving was home to the members of the little
party--for some the only one they had ever known. Here the Lees had
lived for half a dozen years; here their children had been born, and
had passed their happy childhood. Here the Kinzies had lived for an
even longer time, and had long since attained a relative degree of
prosperity. Here the soldiers had hunted and skated and fished, and
gone through their monotonous routine duties until they had become
second nature to them. Here the talented young Van Voorhis had dreamed
dreams and seen visions of the teeming millions that were to compose
the busy civilization of this region in the distant future. Hither in
the spring of 1811 the commander had brought his beautiful Kentucky
bride, the niece of Captain Wells; here, true to her ancestry, she had
fallen in love with the wilderness life; and here, three months before,
her life had been darkened by its first great tragedy, the loss of
her first-born son, "born dead for the want of a skilful Midwife." We
may not know the thoughts or forebodings that filled the mind of each
member of the little wilderness caravan, but doubtless home was as
dear, and anxiety for the future as keen, to the humbler members of the
party as to any of those whose names are better known.

Without, in the marshes and prairies and woods that stretched away
from the fort to south and west and north, the representatives of
another race were encamped. Several hundred red warriors, many of
them accompanied by their squaws and children, had gathered about the
doomed garrison. For them, doubtless, the preceding days had been
filled with eager debate and anticipation. The former had concerned
the momentous question whether to heed the advice of the Americans
to remain neutral in the war between the white nations, or whether
to follow their natural inclination to raise the hatchet against the
hated Long Knives and in behalf of their former Great Father. The
latter had hinged about the visions of wealth hitherto undreamed of to
flow from the distribution of the white man's stores among them; or
about the prospect, equally pleasing to the majority, of taking sweet
if belated revenge for the long train of disasters and indignities
they had suffered at the hands of the hated race by the slaughter of
its representatives gathered here within their grasp. As day by day
the runners came from the Detroit frontier with news of the ebbing
of Hull's fortunes and with appeals from Tecumseh to strike a blow
for their race, the peace party among them dwindled, doubtless, as
did the hope of Hull's army. Now, at the critical moment, on the eve
of the evacuation when, if ever, the blow must be struck, had come a
final message from Tecumseh with news of Hull's retreat to Detroit and
of the decisive victory of August 4 over a portion of his troops at
Brownstown. With this the die was cast, and the fate of the garrison
sealed. The war bands could no longer be restrained by the friendly
chiefs, to whom was left the role of watching what they could not
prevent and saving such of their friends as they might from destruction.

And now the stage is set for Chicago's grimmest tragedy. Before us
are the figures of her early days. Let us pause a moment to take note
of some of the actors before the curtain is lifted for the drama.
John Kinzie, the trader, vigorous and forceful and shrewd, with more
at stake financially than anyone else in the company, but, of vastly
greater importance, with a surer means of protection for the lives of
himself and family in the friendship of the Indians. Chandonnai, the
half-breed, staunch friend of the Americans, whom all authorities unite
in crediting with noble exertions to save the prisoners. The friendly
Pottawatomie chiefs, Alexander Robinson, who was to pilot the Healds to
safety at Mackinac, and Black Partridge, who had warned Captain Heald
of the impending attack, and who soon would save the life of Mrs. Helm.
Among the hostile leaders were Black Bird, probably the son of the
chief who had assisted the Americans in plundering St. Joseph in 1781;
and Nuscotnemeg, or the Mad Sturgeon, already guilty of many murders
committed against the whites.[592] There were, of course, many other
chiefs of greater or less degree and reputation. Then there were the
officers and their wives. Heald, the commander, old in experience and
responsibility if not in years; his beautiful and spirited young wife,
whose charm could stay the descent of the deadly tomahawk, and whose
bravery extort the admiration of even her savage captors; Lieutenant
Helm and his young wife, who preferred to meet the impending danger by
the side of her husband. Of the younger men, Van Voorhis and Ronan,
the former has left of himself a winning picture sketched in a letter
a fragment of which has been preserved;[593] the latter is painted in
the only description we have of him, in the pages of _Wau Bun_, as
brave and spirited, but rash and overbearing and lacking a due sense of
respect for his superiors in age and responsibility. These faults of
youth, if in fact they existed, were soon to be atoned by the bravery
with which he met his fate, fighting desperately to the end.

[Footnote 592: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 320; Washburne,
_Edwards Papers_, 57.]

[Footnote 593: For it see pp. 196, 387.]

Sadder, however, than any of these was the situation of some of the
humbler members of the party. That a soldier and officer should face
death with composure was to be expected; that a soldier's wife should
brave danger by his side was not an unknown thing in the annals of the
frontier. But the officers' wives were mounted, and whatever might
happen on the weary march, they were certain to receive the best care
and attention the resources of the company could afford. There were,
too, in their case no children for whom to provide or worry. But
what of the state of mind of those members of the Chicago "militia,"
who in addition to abandoning their homes were burdened with wives
and children, and with inadequate means of providing for them? What
of Mrs. Burns and Mrs. Simmons with their babes of a few months and
the hardships of the march before them? What of the other mothers'
forebodings for their loved ones? What of the wife of Fielding Corbin,
with the pangs of approaching maternity upon her and the prospect of
the dreary journey before her? Perhaps it was a mercy a period was so
soon to be put to her trials. Finally, what of the innocent babies
whose bright eyes were looking out, doubtless, in uncomprehending
wonder, upon the unwonted scene of bustle and excitement around them?

With them but not of them was William Wells, the famous frontier
scout, the true history of whose life surpasses fiction.[594] Member
of a prominent Kentucky family, the brother of Colonel Samuel Wells of
Louisville, he was kidnapped at an early age by the Indians and adopted
into the family of Little Turtle, the noted Miami chieftain. He became
a noted warrior and fought by the side of his red brothers in the
campaigns of 1790 and 1791, when they defeated the armies of Harmar and
St. Clair. Afterward, whether because of a belated consciousness of his
true race identity or of the solicitations of his white relatives and
the pleading of his beautiful niece, Rebekah Wells, he threw in his lot
with the whites. His fame as a scout and fighter soon became as great
among them as it had formerly been with the Indians. He was a perfect
master of woodcraft and of the Indian mode of warfare, and as head of a
special force of scouts he rendered most efficient service in Wayne's
campaign.

[Footnote 594: On the career of Wells see Kirkland, _Chicago Massacre_,
173-78; Roosevelt, _Winning of the West_, IV, 79 ff.; Wentworth, _Early
Chicago_, 45-46, 56-57; speech of Little Turtle in _American State
Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 583; letter of Governor Harrison to the
War Department, October 3, 1809, MS copy in Chicago Historical Society
library.]

Perhaps the most notable tribute to his character is the fact that
despite this change of allegiance he continued to retain the esteem
of his former associates; and that in this period of fierce rivalry
between the two races he enjoyed at one and the same time the esteem
and confidence of such men as Little Turtle on the one side and Anthony
Wayne and William Henry Harrison on the other. At the conclusion of
the Treaty of Greenville Little Turtle made a speech on behalf of the
Indians, expressing his satisfaction with it; in the course of which,
adverting to the subject of the traders, he especially requested
that Wells be stationed by the government at Fort Wayne as resident
interpreter, saying that he possessed the confidence of the Indians as
fully as he did that of the whites. Fort Wayne remained his place of
residence for the remainder of his life and during most of the time he
was serving in the government Indian Department. In 1807 Nathan Heald
came to Fort Wayne as commander of the post, and here met and wooed
Rebekah, the daughter of Samuel, and favorite niece of William Wells.
Now at the summons of love and duty, heedless of the danger to himself,
the latter had hastened with his friendly Miamis from Fort Wayne to
rescue her and assist in the retreat of the garrison. He alone of
all the company, therefore, was present from choice rather than from
necessity. His arrival at Fort Dearborn on the thirteenth must have
afforded the only ray of cheer and hope which came to the settlement in
this time of trial and danger.

All preparations being complete, about nine o'clock the stockade gate
was thrown open and there issued forth the saddest procession Michigan
Avenue has ever known.[595] In the lead were a part of the Miamis, and
Wells, their leader, alert and watching keenly for the first signs of
a hostile demonstration. In due array followed the garrison, the women
and children who were able to walk, and the Chicago militia, the rear
being brought up by the remainder of the Miamis. Most of the children,
being too young to walk, rode in one of the wagons, accompanied,
probably, by one or more of the women. Mrs. Heald and Mrs. Helm were
mounted and near or with their husbands though each couple became
separated early in the combat. The other women and children were on
foot around the baggage wagons, which were guarded by Ensign Ronan,
Surgeon Van Voorhis, the soldiers who had families, and the twelve
Chicago militia.

[Footnote 595: The account of the battle and the massacre which
follows is the result of a study of all the known available sources of
information. Since Appendix II is devoted to a consideration of the
principal sources of our knowledge of the massacre, I have deemed it
unnecessary to cite my authority in each instance for the statements
made here.]

The route taken was due south, parallel with the river until its mouth
was reached and then along the beach, not far, probably, from the
present Michigan Avenue, for most of the land to the east has been
filled in since the beginning of modern Chicago. On the right of the
column moved an escort of Pottawatomies. Below the mouth of the river
began a row of sand hills, or ridges, which ran between the prairie and
the beach, parallel to the latter and distant from it about one hundred
yards. When these were reached the soldiers continued along the beach,
while the Pottawatomies disappeared behind the ridges to the right. The
reason for this soon became apparent. When a distance of about a mile
and a half had been traversed by the soldiers Captain Wells, who with
his militia was some distance in advance, discovered that the Indians
had prepared an ambush for the whites and were about to attack them
from their vantage point behind the bank. Aware of a favorable position
for defense a short distance ahead, he rode rapidly back toward the
main body to urge Heald to press forward and occupy it, swinging his
hat in a circle around his head as he went, as a signal that the party
was surrounded. The heads of the warriors now became visible all along
the line, popping up "like turtles out of the water." The troops
immediately charged up the bank, and with a single volley followed home
with a bayonet charge scattered the Indians before them. But this move
proved as futile as it was brave. The Indians gave way in front only to
join their fellows in another place, on the flank or in the rear, and
the fight went on.

Meanwhile a deadlier combat, which we may perhaps think of as a
separate battle, was raging around the wagons in the rear. Here it
was that the real massacre occurred. Apparently in the charge up the
sand hills and in the ensuing movements the main division of the
regulars under Heald became separated from the rear division, and yet
it was precisely here, where the provisions and the helpless women and
children were placed, that protection was most urgently needed. The
Indians, outnumbering the whites almost ten to one, swarmed around,
some, apparently, even coming from the front to share in the easier
contest at this point. Here were the junior officers, Ronan and Van
Voorhis, and here, apparently, Kinzie had elected to stay. Around the
wagons too were the militia, twelve in number, comprising the male
inhabitants of the settlement capable of bearing arms, who had been
organized and armed by Heald at the time of the April murders. The
combat here was furious, being waged hand to hand in an indiscriminate
melee. Fighting desperately with bayonet and musket-butt the militia
were cut down to a man. But one, Sergeant Burns, escaped instant death,
and he, grievously wounded, was slaughtered an hour after the surrender
by an infuriated squaw. Ronan and Van Voorhis shared their fate as did
the regular soldiers, Kinzie being the only white man at the wagons who
survived. Even the soldiers' wives, armed with swords, hacked bravely
away as long as they were able. In the course of the melee two of the
women and most of the children were slain.

The butchery of these unfortunate innocents constitutes the saddest
feature of that gory day. The measure which had been taken to insure
their welfare was responsible for their destruction; for while the
conflict raged hotly, a young fiend broke through the defenders of
the wagons and climbing into the one containing the children quickly
tomahawked all but one of them. Of the women slain one was Mrs. Corbin,
the wife of a private soldier, who is said to have resolved never to be
taken prisoner, dreading more than death the indignities she believed
would be in store for her. Accordingly she fought until she was cut to
pieces. The other was Cicely, Mrs. Heald's negro serving-woman. She
and her infant son, who also perished, afford two of the few instances
of which we have authentic record of negroes being held in slavery at
Chicago.[596]

[Footnote 596: The printed sources of information concerning Cicely and
her child are Darius Heald's narrative of the massacre in _Magazine
of American History_, XXVIII, 111 ff., and the Heald petition to the
Court of Claims for compensation for property lost in the massacre,
in _Chicago Tribune_, December 8, 1883. The author has a memorandum
prepared by Mrs. Heald for the guidance of her son, Darius, on the
occasion of his visit to Chicago in 1855 for the purpose of procuring
testimony in support of the claim for compensation for the Heald
property lost in the massacre. It contains the following allusions to
Cicely and her son: "John Kinzie at Chicago ... he knew the negro girl
Cicely. He came to buy the negro girl offered me $600. he probably
knows about the horses three in number. He knows about the negro woman
being killed and also her male infant killed in the battle by the
Indians Mrs. Baubee [Beaubien] Knew Capt. Heald and his wife and the
negroes and horses which they had in possession at the time of the
defeat, knows of the killing of the negroes Mrs. Helium [Helm] Get
these two Ladies to relate all their knowledge as regards the loss
of the two slaves the horses and other personal property in their
possession...."]

While this slaughter was going on at the wagons Captain Wells, who
had been fighting in front with the main body of troops, seems to
have started back to the scene to engage in a last effort to save the
women and children. His horse was wounded and he himself was shot
through the breast. He bade his niece farewell, when his horse fell,
throwing him prostrate on the ground with one leg caught under its
side. Some Indians approaching, he continued to fire at them, killing
one or more from his prostrate position. An Indian now took aim at him,
seeing which Wells signed to him to shoot, and his stormy career was
ended. The foe paid their sincerest tribute of respect to his bravery
by cutting out his heart and eating it, thinking thus to imbibe the
qualities of its owner in life. Wells was the real hero of the Chicago
massacre, giving his life voluntarily to save his friends. The debt
which Chicago owes to his memory an earlier generation sought to
discharge by giving his name to one of the city's principal streets.
But to its shame a later one robbed him in large part of this honor, by
giving to that portion of the street which runs south of the river the
inappropriate and meaningless designation of Fifth Avenue.

The close of another brave career was dramatic enough to deserve
separate mention. During the battle Sergeant Hayes, who had already
manifested the greatest bravery, engaged in individual combat with an
Indian. The guns of both had been discharged, when the Indian ran up
to him with uplifted tomahawk. Before the warrior could strike Hayes
ran his bayonet into his breast up to the socket, so that he could not
pull it out. In this situation, supported by the bayonet, the Indian
tomahawked him, and the foemen fell dead together, the bayonet still in
the red man's breast.[597]

[Footnote 597: Schoolcraft, _Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit
... to the Sources of the Mississippi River in the Year 1820_, 392.]

Meanwhile what of Captain Heald and the troops under his immediate
direction? The Miamis had abandoned the Americans at the first sign of
hostilities. After a few minutes of sharp fighting Heald drew off with
such of his men as still survived to a slight elevation on the open
prairie, out of shot of the bank or any other cover. Here he enjoyed a
temporary respite, for the Indians refrained from following him, having
no desire, apparently, to grapple with the regulars at close range in
the open. The fight thus far had lasted only about fifteen minutes,
yet half of the regulars had fallen. Wells and two of the officers
were dead and the other two wounded, and the Americans were hopelessly
beaten. The alternatives before them were to die fighting to the last,
or to surrender and trust to the savages for mercy. After some delay
the Indians sent a half-breed interpreter, who lived near the fort and
was friendly with the garrison, and who in the commencement of the
action had gone over to the Indians in the hope of saving his life, to
make overtures for a surrender. Heald advanced alone toward the Indians
and was met by the interpreter and the chief. Black Bird, who requested
him to surrender, promising to spare the lives of the prisoners. The
soldiers at first opposed the proposition, but after some parleying the
surrender was made, Captain Heald promising, as a further inducement to
the Indians to spare the prisoners, a ransom of one hundred dollars for
every one still living. The captives were now led back to the beach and
thence along the route toward the fort over which they had passed but
an hour or so before. On the way they passed the scene of the massacre
around the wagons. Helm records his horror at the sight of the men,
women, and children "lying naked with principally all their heads off."
In passing the bodies he thought he perceived that of his wife, with
her head severed from her shoulders. The sight almost overcame him, and
we may readily believe that he "now began to repent" that he had ever
surrendered. He was happily surprised, however, on approaching the fort
to find her alive and well, sitting crying among some squaws. She owed
her preservation to the friendly Black Partridge, who had claimed her
as his prisoner.

In the action the white force numbered fifty-five regulars and twelve
militia in addition to Wells and Kinzie, the latter of whom did not
participate in the fighting.[598] Against these were pitted about five
hundred Indians. The white men were better armed, but the Indians
had the advantage of position and of freedom from the incumbrance of
baggage and women and children to protect. Under the circumstances
the odds were overwhelmingly in their favor, and their comparatively
easy victory was but a matter of course. Their loss was estimated by
Heald at about fifteen. The Americans killed in the action comprised
twenty-six regular soldiers, the twelve militia[599] and Captain Wells,
with two of the women and twelve children. A number of the survivors,
too, were wounded.

[Footnote 598: On the number of the regulars and others engaged in the
combat see Appendix IX.]

[Footnote 599: Including Burns, who was wounded in the action and
killed by a squaw about an hour afterward.]

Following the surrender came the customary scenes of savage cruelty.
The friendly Indians could answer only for the prisoners in their
possession. Some of the wounded were tortured to death, and it is
not improbable that some of the prisoners were burned at the stake.
The more detailed story of their fate, along with that of the other
survivors of the battle, is reserved for the following chapter. For
the remainder of the day and the ensuing night the victors surfeited
themselves with the plunder and the torture. The following day the
plundering of the fort and the distribution of the prisoners were
completed, the buildings were fired, and the bands set out for their
several villages. The corpses on the lake shore, bloody and mutilated,
were left to the buzzards and the wolves, and over Chicago silence
and desolation reigned supreme. In March, 1813, Robert Dickson passed
through Chicago on a mission to rouse the northwestern tribes against
the Americans. He reported[600] that there were two brass cannon, one
dismounted, the other on wheels but in the river. The powder magazine
was in a good state of preservation and the houses outside the fort
were well constructed. He urged the Indians not to destroy them, as
the British would have occasion to use them if they should find it
necessary to establish a garrison here.

[Footnote 600: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 262.]




CHAPTER XI

THE FATE OF THE SURVIVORS


Twenty-nine soldiers, seven women, and six children remained alive at
the close of the battle among the sand dunes to face the horrors of
captivity among the Indians. These figures do not include Kinzie, the
trader, and the members of his family, who were regarded as neutrals
and were not included by the Indians in the number of their prisoners.
Concerning the fate of some of the survivors we have full information,
but of others not even the names can be given with certainty, and of
their fate we can speak only in general terms.

The student of the Fort Dearborn massacre finds himself hampered by
a notable dearth of official records. This is due in part to the
destruction, at the time of the massacre itself, of such as existed at
Chicago; to an even greater extent, perhaps, to the destruction of the
records of the War Department at the time of the looting of the Capital
by the British in 1814. Finally, by a departmental ruling promulgated
in 1897, The historical investigator has in recent years been denied
the cold comfort of access to such fragmentary records as do in fact
exist in the files of the War Department.[601] For such official
documents as have been available for this study, therefore, the writer
is indebted to other sources. Some of them were copied by earlier
investigators in the field, before the War Department files were sealed
to the student, and have been printed in various places. Others have
been found in manuscripts or in printed works existing outside the
government archives.

[Footnote 601: This prohibition was removed in 1912, too late, however,
to be of any advantage to the author in the preparation of this
work. For this reason the statements made have been allowed to stand
unchanged.]

The last existing muster-roll of the Fort Dearborn garrison prior
to the massacre has hitherto been supposed to be that for December,
1810.[602] However, the Heald papers belonging to the Wisconsin State
Historical Society include the muster-roll for the period ending May
31, 1812.[603] It shows a garrison strength of fifty-five men, which
was probably the number present at the time of the massacre. No list
of those slain in the massacre has ever been made, nor is there any
comprehensive account of the names and fate of the survivors. The
attempt to construct one[604] from the various fragmentary sources of
information in existence has proved more successful than could perhaps
have been reasonably anticipated. Yet it reveals certain discrepancies
which cannot be harmonized until additional sources of information
shall be uncovered. This is not surprising in view of the confusion
attendant upon the massacre, and the scattering far and wide of the
survivors following it. The passage of time and the absence of records
make it impossible at this date to check up the errors and fill in
the gaps in our information. The hardships endured or the adventures
encountered by those whose experiences have been recorded may have been
no greater or more noteworthy than by those whose fate is now buried
in oblivion. Yet the historian must deal with the information he can
obtain, and this chapter of necessity concerns itself largely with
a comparatively small number of the survivors whose story has been
preserved.

[Footnote 602: Printed in Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 88.]

[Footnote 603: The muster-roll is printed for the first time as
Appendix VIII.]

[Footnote 604: For it see Appendix IX.]

The battle and the massacre proper had barely ended when the dreary
work of torture began. It had been stipulated by Captain Heald that
the lives of the prisoners should be spared, but this agreement was
promptly violated. We cannot speak with much assurance of the details
of the tortures, but concerning the main fact there is no doubt. One
man. Burns, who had been wounded in the battle, was killed by a squaw
about an hour after its conclusion.[605] Possibly this is the man whom
Mrs. Helm refers to as having been stabbed to death with a stable fork
in her presence.[606] In Judge Woodward's letter to General Proctor
upon the survivors of the massacre, Burns is spoken of as a "citizen,"
and he is similarly designated in Helm's account of the massacre. A
letter of Sergeant Griffith to Captain Heald in 1820 clears up the
question of his identity.[607] It shows that he was a sergeant in the
Chicago militia, enrolled by Heald after the murders at the Lee farm
in April, 1812. It confirms the fact of his death at the hands of his
captors after the surrender, and incidentally throws a pleasing light
upon his character, recalling to Heald's mind "the Soldierlike conduct
of ... Burns while engaged with an unequal force of Savages, and the
manner in which he was inhumanly murdered (in your presence) after he
was a prisoner." The _Wau Bun_ narrative represents the Burns family as
living at the time of the massacre on the north bank of the river some
distance above the Kinzie house.[608] Apparently Burns was a discharged
soldier who had made Chicago his permanent home, for the Fort Dearborn
muster-roll for November, 1810, shows that he was then a member of the
garrison and that his term of enlistment would expire in June, 1811.

[Footnote 605: Letter of Sergeant Griffith to Heald, January 13, 1820,
Draper Collection, U, VIII, 88; Judge Woodward to Proctor, October 7,
1812, Appendix VII.]

[Footnote 606: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 176.]

[Footnote 607: Cited _supra_, note 605.]

[Footnote 608: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 155, 159.]

The various accounts generally agree that a number of the prisoners
were put to death during the night following the massacre. Judge
Woodward's letter to Proctor, which, written October 7, 1812, and
based on information given by Heald and Sergeant Griffith, is the
most reliable source of information on this particular point, states
that five soldiers were known to have been put to death at this
time. The _Wau Bun_ narrative, written many years later, makes the
same statement. The Darius Heald narrative states that the Indians
were believed to have gone off down the lake shore on the evening
of the massacre day to have a "general frolic," torturing the
wounded soldiers. Woodward gives the names of two of these victims,
Richard Garner and James Latta, both private soldiers. By a process
of comparison of all the sources concerning those who perished in
captivity we get the names of the other three, Micajah Denison, John
Fury, and Thomas Poindexter.[609] But one account attempts to tell
us how they died, and this, of more than dubious validity, suggests
rather than describes their fate. A half-breed Frenchwoman, who had
remained in her hut on the north side of the river during the battle
and massacre, made her way after its conclusion to a point opposite
the Indian village north of the fort. Here she could see the "torture
ground" where the squaws had three men, and the warriors one white
woman, undergoing the most fearful torture and indignities, "such
as she had never heard of in Canada."[610] Perhaps after all it is
just as well that we have no more detailed description. The fate of
the victims was no more awful than that customarily meted out to the
vanquished white man in the course of his contest with the red man for
the possession of this continent and it is better that the gory details
should sink into oblivion.

[Footnote 609: For the way in which these names are determined see
Appendix IX.]

[Footnote 610: _Head Papers_, in Chicago Historical Society library.]

On the day after the massacre, the fort having been burned and the
plunder and the prisoners divided, the bands began to scatter to
their various homes. The dreary story of the hardships endured by
the captives and the indignities and cruelties meted out to them
by their masters is relieved, happily, now and then by some act of
kindness or generosity calculated to prove that gentleness and humanity
were qualities not entirely unknown, even to the savage red man.
Ultimately the majority of the prisoners were to find their way back to
civilization, but for several death offered the only avenue of escape
from their captivity. For some, indeed, death must have come as a
welcome relief from sufferings far more dreadful.

Such must have been the case with Mrs. Needs, the wife of one of
the soldiers. Her husband, her child, and herself all survived the
massacre, only to die in captivity. The husband died in January, 1813;
the brief record left us contains no indication of the cause of his
death.[611] Annoyed by the crying which hunger forced from the child,
the savages tied it to a tree to perish of starvation or to become the
prey of some wild beast. Still later the wretched mother perished from
cold and hunger. Another prisoner, William Nelson Hunt, was frozen
to death.[612] Hugh Logan, an Irishman, unable to walk because of
excessive fatigue, was tomahawked; such, also, was the fate of August
Mortt, a German, and for a similar reason.[613]

[Footnote 611: _Niles' Register_, June 4 1814.]

[Footnote 612: _Niles' Register_, June 4, 1814. The name is printed as
Nelson; it does not occur in any of the other accounts of the massacre,
nor on the muster-roll of Heald's company of May 31, 1812. The latter
does contain the name of William Nelson Hunt, however, and he is
probably the man designated as Nelson in the newspaper account.]

[Footnote 613: The following letter written by Thomas Forsyth to Nathan
Heald, April 10, 1813, suggests a different reason for the killing of
Mortt. The letter is reproduced in full for the sake of the information
it gives concerning the massacre and the affairs of some of the
participants in it. The original manuscript is the property of Mrs.
Lillian Heald Richmond, of St. Louis, Mo.

  St. Louis 10th April 1813.

  Sir: I had the honor to receive from the hand of Gov. Howard, your
  letter to him of the 24th February last, in answer to his to you
  respecting Kinzie & Forsyth Claims for losses sustained 1st August
  at Chicago, in your letter you mention that you gave Mr. Kinzie a
  quantity of gunpowder for hire of horses to carry provisions, &c
  to Detroit, in that case, the gunpowder was from you to us, for
  hire of horses for public use and of course the gunpowder became
  our property, after the delivery of the gunpowder to Mr. Kinzie,
  I understood from him (K-) that either you or the late Captain
  Wells, and perhaps both, told him, that if he, (K) would destroy
  all his gunpowder and Whiskey, that he should be paid for his
  losses by the U. States all of which was certainly destroyed; in
  your letter to Gov. Howard, you say you seen the Whiskey destroyed
  and that you have no doubt but the gunpowder was also destroyed;
  In that case I would thank you if you would forward on to me at
  this place, a certificate of what you know about the destruction
  of those articles, also the prices of gunpowder, Whiskey, mules
  & horses, at Chicago. I have claimed for each horse $60--Mules
  $90--Whiskey $2 per gallon, gunpowder $2 per lb. this you know was
  the current price for Whiskey and Gunpowder; I paid myself, this
  price for Gunpowder bought out of the Factory of that place, as for
  the horses and Mules they are by no means high; our losses in horn
  cattle, hogs, merchandise &c are very great for which we demand
  nothing for. Depain and Buisson wintered at Chicago last winter
  with goods from Mackinaw, they have bought of[f] Mrs. Leigh and
  her younger child, and another woman which I expect is Mrs. Cooper
  or Burns, Old Mott was a prisoner, and became out of his head last
  Winter and was killed by the Indians.

       Please give my respects to Mrs. Heald.

                       And Remain your most Obedt Servt

                                                 T. Forsyth
]

With relief we turn from these tragic details to the story of the
efforts which were making to restore the captives to civilization.
On September 9 Proctor communicated to General Brock the news of the
massacre at Fort Dearborn, expressing regret over its occurrence and
denying that the British had known anything of the intended attack, or
that the superintendent of the Indian Department had any influence over
the Indians.[614] At the time of writing this letter Proctor believed
that Captain Heald and his wife and Kinzie were the only survivors
of the massacre, and no suggestion was made by him of measures for
the relief of the captives. Soon, however, Captain and Mrs. Heald and
Sergeant Griffith reached Detroit, bringing information that nearly
half of the garrison and a number of women and children were captives
among the Indians. Detroit and Michigan being in the hands of the
British, in the absence of any official representative of the American
government Judge Woodward assumed the duty of procuring the initiation
of measures for the relief of the prisoners. On the strength of the
information furnished by Heald and Griffith he addressed a letter to
Proctor, representing that over thirty Americans had been taken by
the Indians.[615] He urged that immediate measures be taken for their
relief, suggesting the sending a special messenger overland to Chicago,
charged with the duty of collecting the captives who still survived and
information of those who had perished, and supplied with the means of
conveying the former to either Detroit or Mackinac. He further urged
that Captain Roberts, the commander at Mackinac, be instructed to
co-operate in the efforts to rescue the Americans, and assured Proctor
that the funds necessary for the work would be repaid either by the
American government or by private individuals.

[Footnote 614: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 144.]

[Footnote 615: The original draft of this letter is printed in Appendix
VII; the statements in the text are based on the letter as actually
sent. This differed in some respects from the rough draft.]

In consequence of this bold and manly appeal, tardy measures were
instituted by Proctor which resulted in the rescue of a number of
the captives. Woodward was assured that all possible measures would
be taken to secure their release, and two weeks later Proctor, in
reporting the correspondence to his superior, announced that the chiefs
of the tribe concerned in the massacre had been informed of his desire
that the captives be brought to him.[616] Weeks passed, however, and it
was not until the departure of Robert Dickson for the West in February,
1813, that any active measures were taken to recover them.

[Footnote 616: Proctor to Woodward, October 10, 1812, _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, XV, 163; Proctor to Evans, October 28, 1812, _ibid._,
172.]

Dickson, as we have already seen,[617] had led a motley band of
northwestern Indians to the assault on Mackinac in the summer of
1812. In November he proceeded to Montreal and Quebec to lay before
the authorities there a plan he had conceived for securing the active
co-operation of the northwestern tribes in the prosecution of the war
against the Americans.[618] He proposed that large stores of supplies
be sent to Chicago and Green Bay in the spring of 1813, which points
were the most convenient for rendezvous. He himself, if given the
necessary authority and assistance, would proceed by way of Detroit and
Chicago to the Mississippi and collect the warriors at these points,
whence they could be led to the seat of war around Detroit in time to
participate in the operations of 1813.

[Footnote 617: _Supra_, p. 214.]

[Footnote 618: For Dickson's project see _Michigan Pioneer
Collections_, XV, 180-82, 202-4, 208-11, 316--21 _et passim_.]

This plan was accepted by the military authorities and Dickson set out
for the West. On February 15 he was at Sandwich and a month later was
among the Pottawatomies of St. Joseph.[619] Here he was informed that
the Fort Dearborn captives still in the hands of the Indians numbered
seventeen men, four women, and several children. He at once took steps
to secure them, and expressed confidence that he would succeed in
getting them all. On March 22 he was at Chicago, and here penned the
description of the fort to which reference has been made in a preceding
chapter.[620] From this point he hastened on toward the Mississippi.
Early in June he was back at Mackinac at the head of six hundred
warriors, and in addition to these he reported the dispatch of eight
hundred by land to Detroit.[621] That, in the face of such exertions
as these achievements imply, he should have found any time to bestow
on the Fort Dearborn captives, speaks well for both his energy and his
humanity.

[Footnote 619: _Ibid._, XV, 250, 258.]

[Footnote 620: _Supra_, p. 631.]

[Footnote 621: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 321-23.]

Apparently in the press of other matters Dickson neglected to report
further as to his measures for the relief of the captives. In May,
1814, however, nine surviving members of the Fort Dearborn garrison
arrived at Plattsburg, New York, from Quebec.[622] The story they
told was that after the massacre they had been taken to the Fox River
country and there distributed among the Indians as servants. In this
situation they remained about nine months, when they were brought
to Chicago, where they were purchased by a "French trader" acting
under the instructions of General Proctor. Doubtless the "trader"
was Dickson, whose arrival at Chicago, March 22, 1813, falls in the
ninth month after the massacre. From Chicago the captives were sent on
to Amherstberg, or Maiden, and thence to Quebec, where they arrived
November 8, 1813.

[Footnote 622: _Niles' Register_, June 4, 1814.]

The names of the nine men who were thus restored to their countrymen
almost two years after the massacre deserve a place in our narrative.
They were James Van Horn, Dyson Dyer, Joseph Noles, Joseph Bowen, Paul
Grummo, Nathan Edson, Elias Mills, James Corbin, and Fielding Corbin.
With the exception of Grummo, no record has been found of the further
career of these men. His story, written down over four score years
after the massacre, possesses considerable interest, and contains,
moreover, certain details not preserved elsewhere.

In later life Grummo, or De Garmo, as he seems to have been known,
settled at Maumee City, a few miles from Toledo, Ohio. Here on a small
reservation in the early thirties was the gathering-place and council
house of the surviving remnants of the Pottawatomie, Wyandot, and
other tribes. Here, too, gathered various traders, among others Robert
Forsyth, and James Wolcott, whose brother, Alexander, was Indian agent
at Chicago until his death in 1830. From 1837 until about the year
1841 Charles A. Lamb, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of
the story, was the nearest neighbor of Grummo at Maumee City.[623] He
describes him as a tall, well-built man, who always insisted that he
was a participant in the Fort Dearborn massacre.

[Footnote 623: Letter of Charles A. Lamb, August 24, 1893, MS in
Chicago Historical Society library.]

As Lamb remembered his story, Grummo represented that he was employed
as a scout in the summer of 1812, carrying dispatches between Fort
Dearborn and Fort Wayne. After the battle he was adopted by a chief
whose son he had killed in the contest. His new-found father took him,
in company with others, in a northwesterly direction. After traveling
many days, they crossed the Mississippi above the Falls of St. Anthony,
the object of their journey being to induce the tribes to join them in
the war against the Americans. Returning from this mission, Grummo's
captors sold him to the British at Detroit, "or somewhere around
there." By them he was taken to Louisburg where he was kept till the
close of the war, when he found his way to New York.

Such, in brief, was Grummo's story as recorded by Lamb a half-century
after he had heard it. In some respects it is perplexing, and many of
its details are untrustworthy. There is no reason to question Lamb's
sincerity. He frankly admits his liability to error in telling it after
the lapse of so great a time. It is evident, too, that Grummo drew a
long bow in relating his own experiences. This, however, is so common
a characteristic of old soldiers' stories that it need occasion no
particular surprise. Lamb further records that though Grummo, whose
story he has related only briefly, added many things to prove his
veracity, yet he was never able to secure a pension. Both General Cass
and General John E. Hunt exerted their influence in his behalf, but on
the records of the War Department he had been set down as a deserter,
and this charge could not be disproved.

The fortunes of the officers, Heald and Helm, and their wives, may
be followed with less difficulty, though even here we encounter at
times perplexing contradictions. The Indians who secured possession
of Captain Heald and his wife at the close of the battle belonged to
different bands. Owing to the entreaties of Mrs. Heald, however, and
the efforts of Chandonnai, the two were brought together.[624] On
the day after the battle their captors set out with them for the St.
Joseph River, coasting around the southern end of Lake Michigan in a
canoe.[625] The trip consumed, according to Heald's journal, three
days, although the distance is only about one hundred miles.

[Footnote 624: The details as to Chandonnai's agency in the matter
vary somewhat in the different accounts; it is clear that he exerted
his influence, whether by purchasing Mrs. Heald from her captives or
otherwise, to bring the Captain and his wife together, and that the
Healds afterward regarded him in the light of a benefactor.]

[Footnote 625: The principal sources for the captivity of the Healds
are the following: Heald's official report of the massacre (Appendix
IV); his Journal (Appendix III); the Heald papers in the Draper
Collection; the Darius Heald narrative of the massacre as reported,
first, to Lyman C. Draper (Appendix V); and second, to Joseph Kirkland
(_Magazine of American History_, XXVIII, 111-22). A brief account
gained from Sergeant Griffith, the companion of the Healds until they
reached Pittsburgh, is contained in McAfee, _History of the Late War_,
100-101.]

Practically the only details recorded of this journey are contained in
the narrative of Darius Heald to Kirkland in 1892. That these details,
based on second-hand information and written down at so late a date,
cannot be relied upon is obvious. Yet they are of sufficient interest
to merit inclusion here. Both Heald and his wife were badly wounded,
the former being shot in the thigh and through the right forearm,
and the latter having a half-dozen wounds in all, no one of which,
apparently, was dangerous. After the party had traveled for many hours
around the end of the lake a young deer was seen, coming down to the
water in a clump of bushes to get a drink. The travelers drew close to
the shore and the deer was shot by an Indian. They then pitched camp
and dressed the animal. Using the hide as a kneading board Mrs. Heald
stirred some flour which they had brought along in a leather bag into
a stiff paste which she wound around sticks and toasted over the fire.
Captain Heald afterward declared that this was the best bread he ever
ate.

At the mouth of the St. Joseph, which was reached on August 19,
the party halted. The Healds were permitted to stay in the house of
Burnett, the trader, and their wounds were dressed and given medical
attention by an Indian doctor.[626] After a few days most of the
Indians trooped off to participate in the attack on Fort Wayne. In
their absence an avenue of escape opened to the captives. A friendly
Indian, Alexander Robinson, was prevailed upon to conduct them to
Mackinac in his birch-bark canoe. He was assisted by his squaw and,
possibly, by one or two half-breeds, and for the service Heald paid him
one hundred dollars.

[Footnote 626: Among the Heald papers in the Draper Collection is a
certificate of Captain Heald "on honor" that he paid ten dollars to an
Indian for attendance and medicine while sick of his wounds at the St.
Joseph River.]

The distance to Mackinac was three hundred miles along the eastern
shore of Lake Michigan, and the journey consumed sixteen days. The
treatment accorded to the fugitives by Captain Roberts on their arrival
there forms one of the bright spots in the story of the wearisome
captivity. He extended them every kindness within his power to render
their condition as comfortable as possible. Both Captain Heald and
Captain Roberts were Masons, and, as Mrs. Heald told the story in
after-years, they retired to a private room together, when Heald told
his story and asked for help and for protection from the Indians,
who, he feared, were in pursuit of him. Roberts felt doubtful of his
ability to protect the fugitives, but Heald was given his parole and
permission to proceed to Detroit. Sergeant Griffith was permitted to
attend him, and Heald agreed to deliver him up to the British officer
in command upon reaching Detroit. It is of interest to note that one of
the witnesses of Heald's parole was Robert Dickson, the vigilant and
enterprising foe of the Americans in the Northwest. Probably due to the
influence of Captain Roberts, the captives secured passage to Detroit
on a small sailboat, paying to Robert Irwin, the master, seventeen
dollars for their transportation thither. Before parting from Captain
Roberts the latter took out his pocketbook and urged Heald to help
himself, saying he might repay the money if he ever reached home; if
not it would not matter. It was not necessary to accept the generous
offer, however, for before the evacuation Mrs. Heald had taken the
precaution to sew a sum of money in her husband's underclothing, and
this he had succeeded in retaining when stripped of his uniform by his
captors.

On reaching Detroit at the close of September, Heald reported to
General Proctor and was permitted by him to rejoin his countrymen.
Griffith, also, was allowed to continue to attend him "to the U.
States," on Heald's promise to do all in his power to prevent his
serving in arms against the British until regularly exchanged. The
party left Detroit October 4 for Buffalo, to which place they had been
provided with transportation by Proctor. Curiously enough the vessel
which bore them was the "Adams," Kingsbury's erstwhile "navy of the
lakes," which had often journeyed to Chicago on friendly missions
during the life of the first Fort Dearborn. In July Hull had attempted
to fit it out for one more trip to carry provisions to Mackinac and
Fort Dearborn. The successful execution of this project might have
rendered Heald's present journey unnecessary. With the capture of
Detroit the "Adams" had fallen into the hands of the British, and, as
a British vessel, bore the defeated commander to Buffalo. From Buffalo
the party journeyed by land to Erie, and thence by water to Pittsburgh,
which was reached October 12. The movements of Griffith from this time
are unrecorded. The Healds remained here sixteen days, during which
time the commander wrote his official report of the massacre and of
his subsequent movements. Resuming their journey down the Ohio on
November 8 they reached Louisville, the girlhood home of Mrs. Heald,
eleven days later. In their captivity and flight three months of time
had been consumed, and a circuit of nearly two thousand miles had been
traversed, almost all of it by water, much of the way in a canoe or
open boat.[627] The distance from Chicago to Louisville by rail today
is less than one-sixth as long as Heald's route, and can be traversed
in thrice as many hours as the number of months he required.

[Footnote 627: The estimate of the distance made by Heald in his
Journal was nineteen hundred and seven miles. Of this only ninety
miles, from Buffalo to Erie, were traveled by land.]

At the home of Mrs. Heald's parents the fugitives were greeted as
people risen from the dead. Part of the booty captured by the Indians
at the time of the massacre had been taken down the Illinois River and
sold to the whites. It chanced that Colonel O'Fallon, an old friend of
the Healds, saw and recognized certain articles which had been their
personal property. He had ransomed them and sent them to Samuel Wells
at Louisville, as a memento of his brother and daughter who were both
supposed to have been killed. Most of these articles, including Heald's
sword, a comb, finger ring, brooch, and table spoons of Mrs. Heald, are
still in the possession of her descendants.

[Illustration: THE HEALD HOME NEAR O'FALLON, MISSOURI

(From photograph taken in 1912, reproduced by courtesy of the
grandchildren of Major Heald)]

Captain and Mrs. Heald spent the winter at her father's home, and in
the spring of 1813 went to Newport where the ensuing summer was passed.
They shortly returned to the vicinity of Louisville, where in 1814 they
purchased some land and began the erection of farm buildings, into
which they moved late that fall. Three weeks after the massacre, while
he was pushing his weary flight in an open canoe along the desolate
eastern shore of Lake Michigan to Mackinac, Heald had been promoted
to the rank of major.[628] His wounds, which never ceased to trouble
him, incapacitated him for further service, and at the consolidation of
the army in 1814 he was discharged. In 1817 he was granted a pension
of twenty dollars a month, to date from the time of his discharge
from the army in 1814.[629] During this year he removed to Stockland,
now O'Fallon, Missouri. Here he purchased a farm from Jacob Zumwalt
which had been granted to the latter by the Spanish government toward
the close of the eighteenth century.[630] Here Major Heald continued
to reside until his death in 1832, and Mrs. Heald until her demise
a quarter of a century later. Shortly before Heald's death his old
benefactor, Chandonnai, paid him a visit, accompanied by a chief and
a number of other Indians. The members of the party were on their way
to Kansas to view the country and report to their people upon its
desirability. They visited with Major Heald, who caused a sheep and a
beef to be killed for their entertainment and talked over with them
the story of the captivity. The Heald estate is still intact in the
hands of the grandchildren. The old homestead, built by the original
proprietor of hewn walnut logs, with the flooring held in place by
wooden pegs, still stands. Within its walls the first Methodist
sacrament in Missouri is said to have been administered in 1807, by
Rev. Jesse Walker, the pioneer of Methodism in Chicago. For many years
the house has been unoccupied, but it is still in a partial state of
repair. Recently two of its rooms have been fitted up to serve as the
meeting-place of local chapters of the society of Daughters of the
Revolution.

[Footnote 628: _Drennan Papers_, Gushing to Heald, November 9, 1812.]

[Footnote 629: The following letter from William Turner regarding
the granting of Heald's pension discloses a creditable aspect of
the latter's character. The original letter is the property of a
granddaughter of Heald, Mrs. Edmonia Heald McCluer.

                                    Washington City

                                           25th January 1817

  Dear Maj: I have taken the liberty without your approbation or
  knowledge with the assistance of my friend General Parker to
  procure you a full pension as Capt. We were at first in hopes to
  procure it as full pay for a Maj. but on examining the list of
  Officers we found that your promotion as Maj. took place eleven
  days after you received your wound.

  It will take effect from the 10th June 1814 at twenty dollars per
  month which will be six hundred dollars up to the 31st Dec 1816.

  You will excuse me for the liberty I have taken in procuring this
  pension without your knowledge and will explain that I always feel
  it my indisputable duty to render assistance to my fellow citizens
  in all cases but more particularly to a brother officer who has
  served his country as faithfully as you have and whose increasing
  friendship for myself & family have been so conspicuous.

  Should you feel any delicacy in receiving the pension which I trust
  you will not as you are so greatly entitled to it, permit me to
  suggest the propriety of bestowin[g] it on your child or children,
  which will be of service to them at some future period.

  General Parker will enclose to you the warrant or certificate for
  the pension with instructions how you are to obtain the money
  already due.

                                                      Wm. Turner

  Maj. N. Heald
      Louisville, Kentucky
]

[Footnote 630: Letters of Mrs. Rebecca Heald McCluer, granddaughter of
Nathan Heald, to the author, May 7 and June 1, 1912.]

The fortunes of the Kinzie family after the massacre are recounted
with much detail in the family narrative, _Wau Bun_. Unfortunately,
however, the details are untrustworthy. Some of the incidents recited
undoubtedly possess a certain basis of fact, and the broader outlines
of the itinerary of the family may in the main be accepted as correct;
but these things aside, accuracy of statement is no more to be looked
for than in a medieval historical romance.[631] Several days after
the battle the family proceeded by boat to the St. Joseph River[632]
where it remained some weeks with the friendly Pottawatomies, when
Mrs. Kinzie and her children journeyed to Detroit under the escort of
Chandonnai, while John Kinzie remained behind for a time in the hope of
collecting some of his scattered property.

[Footnote 631: Probably there was a kernel of fact around which the
story of the rescue of the family by Billy Caldwell from impending
slaughter at the hands of the Wabash band of Indians was developed.
Forsyth's letter to Heald, January 2, 1813 (_infra_, note 632),
recounts the disappointment of "them murdering dogs from the Wabash,"
who reached Chicago shortly after Heald's departure therefrom. It is
not improbable that they sought to vent their displeasure upon the
Kinzies, nor, if so, that Caldwell, who was a firm friend of Kinzie,
intervened to protect them. That Mrs. Helm may have sought refuge with
Ouilmette's family is equally consonant with probability; but here
as elsewhere it is evident from a critical reading that the bulk of
the narrative is the product of the author's literary imagination.
The account of the rescue of Sergeant Griffith must be regarded in
a similar light. A careful reading of the story, accompanied by the
reflection that Griffith was an experienced frontiersman and soldier,
suffices to convince one of this. Instead of being on the north side
of the river during the battle, Griffith was a participant in it.
Necessarily then, the greater part of the narrative is invalid. Yet
Helm's brief entry concerning Griffith, "Supposed to be a Frenchman
and released," seems to indicate that Mrs. Kinzie's narrative had some
incitement in fact.]

[Footnote 632: According to the family narrative on the third day
after the battle. The following letter from Thomas Forsyth to Heald,
January 2, 1813, shows that in fact it was the fifth day. The letter is
primarily concerned with the property losses of Forsyth and Kinzie, but
incidentally it supplies some interesting data concerning the massacre
and certain of the survivors. The original manuscript is owned by Mrs.
Lillian Heald Richmond of St. Louis, Mo.

                                    St. Louis, 2nd Jany. 1813

  Sir: I have forwarded on to the City of Washington our Claims
  against the U. States for our Whiskey Gunpowders and horses that
  was lost at Chicago in August last. Lt. Helm (who I got off from
  the Indians) has proven by affidavit, to the Quantity of Gunpowders
  and Whiskey, but by a neglect in drawing up his affidavit it does
  not say that Lt. Helm saw the Gunpowder and Whiskey destroyed, say
  850 Lbs. gunpowder and 1,200 Gallons Whiskey. I therefore would
  thank you if you would forward on to the City of Washington, to
  Gov. Howard of this place, who is gone on to that city, and has
  our claims with him, a Certificate or affidavit stating simply the
  destruction of the Gunpowder and Whiskey, (as Lt. Helm has proven
  that he saw the Horses and Mules in possession of the Indians when
  he was a prisoner) will be sufficient.

  The day after the horrid affair, and I believe the very day you
  left Chicago for St. Joseph's I arrived there (Chicago) I remained
  four days with Kinsie and his family, and I left Chicago the same
  day Kinsie left it for St. Joseph's, and I have not heard of him
  since, you was certainly very fortunate in getting of from Chicago
  the moment you did, as I can assure you that a very few days longer
  and probably you would never have left Chicago, as them murdering
  dogs from the Wabash, was very much displeased when they you was
  gone, and said it would be needless to follow you, as the wind was
  fair and they could not overtake you, was they to follow the boat.

  Lynch & Suttenfield was badly wounded, and were both killed before
  the Indians arrived at River Aux Sable. Crosier was taken off from
  River Aux Sable to Green Bay by a Chipeway Indian, an old friend of
  his, and therefore he is free. When you send on the deposition to
  Gov. Howard, direct your letter to him at Lexington Kentucky and
  should he not be there his friends will forward it on to the Seat
  of Government.

       Please give my respects to Mrs Heald.

                  And remains

                      Sir
                    Your most Obedient

                               Servt. Thomas Forsyth
                                                 _Sdg._

  Capt. N. Heald
  Louisville
]

Mrs. Helm shared the fortunes of her mother's family as far as
Detroit. Meanwhile her husband, Lieutenant Helm, was taken by his
captors down the Illinois River. Before leaving Chicago, apparently,
Mrs. Kinzie interceded with her son-in-law's captors in his behalf; her
speech had "the desired effect," and within a few weeks Thomas Forsyth
succeeded in ransoming Helm by the payment of two mares "and a keg of
stuff when practicable."[633] After spending some time with his rescuer
at Peoria, Helm proceeded down the river, arriving at St. Louis October
14, two months after the massacre. Thence he made his way to his
father's home in New York, where he rejoined Mrs. Helm, who had arrived
there shortly before. For some reason not now in evidence, five months
elapsed between Helm's arrival at St. Louis and the conclusion of his
journey, the reunion with Mrs. Helm occurring in March, 1813, seven
months and one week after their separation.[634]

[Footnote 633: Helm's narrative of the massacre, Appendix VI; letter of
Forsyth to Heald, January 2, 1813, _supra_, note 632; Forsyth to John
Kinzie, September 24, 1812, in _Magazine of History_, March, 1912, p.
89.]

[Footnote 634: In _Wau Bun_, p. 187, occurs a moving story of Mrs.
Helm's journey from Detroit to Fort George on the Niagara frontier.
It represents that Helm rejoined his wife in Detroit, where both were
arrested by order of the British commander and sent on horseback in
the dead of winter through Canada to Fort George. No official appeared
charged with their reception, and on their arrival they were forced to
sit waiting outside the gate for more than an hour, without food or
shelter, notwithstanding the fact that Mrs. Helm was a delicate woman
and the weather was most cold and inclement. When Colonel Sheaffe
learned of this brutal inhospitality he expressed his indignation
over it, and treated the prisoners kindly until they were exchanged,
when they made their way to their friends in New York. Aside from the
improbability that Helm, finding himself safe among his own countrymen
at St. Louis, would voluntarily go to Detroit to become a prisoner of
the British, the truth of Mrs. Kinzie's detailed narration is disproved
by the explicit statement of Helm in his narrative of the massacre that
after separating from his wife near the fort on the day of the massacre
they met again at his father's home in the state of New York, "she
having arrived seven days before me after being separated seven months
and one week."]

The story of Mrs. Simmons and her infant daughter is in some respects
the most interesting and heroic of the narratives of the Fort Dearborn
captives.[635] Her husband was one of the little band of soldiers who
died fighting in defense of the wagons. Among the children in the wagon
was his son, David, two years of age, who perished beneath the tomahawk
of the young fiend who slaughtered the children collected there. Mrs.
Simmons on foot survived the massacre and succeeded in preserving her
daughter, Susan, a babe of six months, whom she carried in her arms.
Perceiving the delight which the savages derived from tormenting their
prisoners, she resolved to suppress any manifestation of anguish. If
the family narrative may be credited, her resolution was promptly put
to a terrible test. The slain children were collected in a row, among
them the gory corpse of her son, and she was led past them in the
effort to discover from her bearing whether any of them had belonged to
her. She passed through the ordeal without a sign of recognition, and
according to the same account, endured the long months of her terrible
captivity without once shedding a tear.

[Footnote 635: For the story of the captivity of Mrs. Simmons the
principal source is the family narrative. _Heroes and Heroines of the
Fort Dearborn Massacre. A Romantic and Tragic History of Corporal John
Simmons and His Heroic Wife_, by N. Simmons, M.D. The book is of value
only for its story of the experiences of Mrs. Simmons and her daughter.
The Fort Dearborn muster-roll for May, 1812, shows that Simmons was not
a corporal as stated, but only a private. In general the book must be
used with great caution.]

In the division of the captives Mrs. Simmons fell along with others
into the hands of some savages from the vicinity of Green Bay. On the
morning after the massacre they crossed the Chicago River and began the
homeward march. The weather was warm and the hardship of the journey
for Mrs. Simmons, aside from the fatigue of the travel, consisted
mainly in being compelled to do the drudgery of her captors, such as
gathering fuel and building fires. On the march she walked, carrying
her baby the entire distance, two hundred miles or more. The hardships
of the march were as nothing in comparison with the reception which
awaited its conclusion. Runners were sent in advance to announce the
approach of the war party to the members of the tribe in camp, and as
it drew near the women and children streamed forth to meet it. They
saluted the captives with a fusillade of insults, kicking and otherwise
abusing them. Arrived at the village, they were put under close guard
until the following day.

In the morning the village was early astir, and preparations were made
for subjecting the captives to the ordeal of running the gauntlet.
A long double line was formed by the women and children in an open
space before the wigwams, and each of the soldiers was compelled to
run between the lines, receiving the blows dealt out with sticks and
clubs by those composing them. Mrs. Simmons' hope of being spared this
ordeal proved vain, and she was led to the head of the line. Wrapping
her babe in her blanket, and enfolding it in her arms to shield it, she
ran rapidly down the path of torment and reached the goal, bleeding and
bruised, but with the infant unharmed.

At this stage of her persecutions the mother encountered an unexpected
act of kindness. An elderly squaw led her into her wigwam, washed her
wounds, and gave her food and an opportunity to rest. The new-found
friend continued her kindly services as long as Mrs. Simmons remained
in the same camp with her; and the captive ever afterward spoke of her
as her "Indian mother," and regretted her inability to repay the favors
received from her.

Meanwhile Robert Dickson was collecting the western tribes to lead
them to the scene of war on the Lake Erie frontier. The warriors
rendezvoused at Green Bay, from which place the chieftain, Black Hawk,
destined to play a prominent role in the Northwest twenty years later,
led a party of live hundred southward around Lake Michigan, past the
slaughtered garrison of Fort Dearborn, and onward to the frontier.[636]
The band to which Mrs. Simmons belonged seems to have participated in
this movement of the western tribes. The captive retraced her weary
way from Green Bay to Chicago and the bones of her murdered husband,
carrying her baby as before. From Chicago her captors led her around
the lake to Mackinac; the length of the entire journey was about six
hundred miles, and winter closed in before it was completed. Scantily
clad, suffering from cold, weariness, and hunger, the mother strove
desperately to save her child, and accomplished the almost incredible
exploit of carrying it in safety to Mackinac.

[Footnote 636: Black Hawk, _Life_, 40-42.]

Here she was cheered by the prospect of ransom or exchange; but the
sequel proved that her trials were as yet but half surmounted. To
accomplish her release she was sent to Detroit. The terrible march was
again resumed, this time in the dead of winter. The route led through
three hundred miles of wilderness; deep snows with occasional storms
impeded the progress; her clothing was in rags, and food was so scarce
that she was often constrained to appease her hunger by eating roots,
acorns, and nuts, found under the snow. The child, now a year old, had
much increased in weight, while the mother's strength was diminishing.
But the prospect of release at the end of the journey buoyed up her
hopes and she continued to struggle on.

From Detroit to her parental home near Piqua, Ohio, the journey was
comparatively easy. The first stage took her to Fort Meigs, then in
command of General Harrison, where she arrived late in March, 1813.
Here she learned that a supply train which had recently come from
Cincinnati was about to return, and that it would pass within a few
miles of her father's home. She accordingly secured passage in one of
the government wagons. She still had over a hundred miles to travel
over wet and swampy roads in early spring time; but in comparison
with her earlier travels this stage of the journey must have seemed
luxurious enough. About the middle of April she left the train at a
point within four miles of her home, walked to the blockhouse where
her parents had taken refuge from marauding Indians, and rejoined the
family circle which had long mourned her as dead. Three years before,
with husband and baby son, she had set out for her new home at Fort
Dearborn. Both husband and son were dead and she now returned a widow,
but with another child, who had been born at Fort Dearborn in February,
1812. Safe among her former friends, the brave woman at last broke
down; to use her own language she "did nothing but weep for months."

There were still other dangers and trials, however, for Mrs. Simmons
to pass through. In August a murderous attack was made by some
marauding Indians upon the family of Henry Dilbone, who had married
the sister of Mrs. Simmons. Mr. and Mrs. Dilbone were working together
in the flax field, with their four young children close at hand.
Near the close of the day's work their dog raised an alarm, and at
almost the same instant the husband fell shot through the breast.
The savage sprang forward from his place of concealment to take his
victim's scalp. But the latter though mortally wounded was not dead,
and gathering his remaining strength he rose, ran to the edge of the
field, and leaped the fence which separated it from an adjoining swamp,
where he fell among the bushes. The Indian abandoned the pursuit and
turned back after Mrs. Dilbone, who had fled for concealment into
the neighboring corn. Her flight was vain, however, for she was soon
overcome, tomahawked, and scalped. The slayer now turned his attention
to the four children, the eldest of whom was ten years of age and the
youngest seven months. They, meanwhile, had been making what progress
they could toward the house. Instead of pursuing them the warrior made
off into the forest, fearing probably that the noise caused by the
discharge of his gun and the screams of Mrs. Dilbone would attract
rescuers to the spot.

The neighbors were quickly aroused and a company went in search of
Mr. and Mrs. Dilbone. The corpse of the latter was found and carried
together with the children to the blockhouse of the Simmons family. The
search for Mr. Dilbone was given over for that night, through fear of
an ambuscade. In the morning it was resumed and he was soon found, too
weak to move or even to cry out. He, too, was borne to the blockhouse,
where he expired the following day. Thus after her own escape from
captivity and death at the hands of the savages, Mrs. Simmons found
herself once more in the midst of bloodshed and slaughter--her sister
and brother-in-law slain, her nephews orphaned. To such perils were the
people on the northwestern frontier exposed during these troublesome
and bloody years.

The story of the later career of Mrs. Simmons and her daughter can
quickly be told. The latter in due course of time grew to womanhood
and became the wife of Moses Winans. The couple first settled in
Shelby County, Ohio, but in 1853 they removed to Springville, Iowa.
Mrs. Simmons, who had previously taken up her abode in her daughter's
family, removed with them to Iowa, and died at Springville in
1857.[637] Mrs. Winans' husband died in 1871, and seventeen years later
she went to Santa Ana, California, to make her home with her younger
daughter. She lived to become the last survivor of the Fort Dearborn
massacre, dying at Santa Ana, April 27, 1900.[638]

[Footnote 637: For this and the following facts concerning Mrs. Winans
see the letters and affidavits pertaining to the securing of a pension
for Susan Simmons Winans in the Chicago Historical Society library.]

[Footnote 638: Gale, _Reminiscences of Early Chicago_, 133.]

An interesting although necessarily incomplete narrative of the
fortunes of the surviving members of the Burns family may be
constructed by assembling the facts contained in several widely
scattered sources of information. The killing of the husband, Thomas
Burns, an hour after the surrender has already been described.[639] A
son of Mrs. Burns by a former marriage, Joseph or James Cooper, was
also a member of the slaughtered militia.[640] To complete the tale of
the mother's bereavement, her two children next in age perished in the
massacre. The mother with two children, one of them an infant, alone
survived to undergo the horrors of captivity among the Indians.[641]
Concerning this captivity we have two accounts, both of them brief and
unsatisfactory. Mrs. Kinzie relates in _Wau Bun_ that Mrs. Burns and
her infant became the prisoners of a chief, who carried them to his
village. His wife, jealous of the favor shown by her lord and master
to the white woman and her child, treated them with the greatest
hostility, and on one occasion sought unsuccessfully to brain the
infant with a tomahawk. Soon after this demonstration the prisoners
were removed to a place of safety. The author further relates that
twenty-two years after the massacre she encountered a young woman on a
steamer, who, hearing her name, introduced herself and raising the hair
from her forehead displayed the mark of the tomahawk, which so nearly
had been fatal to her.[642]

[Footnote 639: _Supra_, pp. 227, 234.]

[Footnote 640: Letter of Griffith to Heald, January 13, 1820, Draper
Collection, U, VIII, 88.]

[Footnote 641: Griffith speaks of three children of Mrs. Burns. Helm's
account of the massacre and the letter of Abraham Edwards to John
Wentworth, which will be considered presently, mention only two, and
this harmonizes with Heald's list of the survivors.]

[Footnote 642: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 188-89.]

The other narrative was given to John Wentworth in 1861 by the son of
Abraham Edwards, who was hospital surgeon in Hull's army at Detroit in
1812.[643] He settled at Detroit in 1816, and there the family made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Burns. Her daughter, Isabella Cooper, became
an inmate of the Edwards home, and thus the younger Edwards became
familiar with the story. Together with her mother and sister she had
been an occupant of one of the wagons when the evacuation of Fort
Dearborn took place. A young Indian pulled her out of the wagon by her
hair, but the child, though only about nine years of age, fought him to
the best of her ability, biting and scratching. Finally he threw her
down, scalped her, and was about to tomahawk her, when an old squaw
who had frequently visited at her father's house intervened and saved
her life. The rescuer later took the child to her wigwam where she
cared for her and healed her wound, although a spot on the top of her
head the size of a silver dollar remained bare. She and her mother and
sister remained among the Indians two years, when they were taken to
Mackinac, purchased by some traders, and sent to Detroit.

[Footnote 643: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 54-60.]

The narrative thus told by Edwards to Wentworth fifty years after the
massacre is confirmed in part by a letter of Sergeant Griffith to
Captain Heald in 1820.[644] Griffith had recently been to Detroit, and
wrote to Heald, then living on his farm in Missouri, to enlist his
support in procuring a pension for Mrs. Burns. She was then living in
Detroit, supporting herself and her three surviving children by her
own labor. A number of officers and others had interested themselves
in the project of obtaining a pension for her. Her husband had been
enrolled by Heald as a sergeant in the militia, in which capacity he
had served for several months and finally given up his life. Of all
this the government had no record or knowledge, however, and so Heald's
certificate as to the nature of Burns's services was needed. In the
absence of any knowledge concerning the success of the pension project,
we may hope that the government ministered to the needs of the widow
who had suffered so grievously in the Fort Dearborn massacre. Edwards
records that Mrs. Burns died at Detroit about the year 1823. He also
states that the daughters were living as late as 1828, at which time he
left Detroit, and that he had since heard they were living in Mackinac.
With this, except for the brief notice by Mrs. Kinzie of a meeting with
one of them, which has already been mentioned, our knowledge of them
comes to an end.

[Footnote 644: Letter of Griffith to Heald, January 13, 1820, cited
_supra_, note 640.]

Hovering on the border between myth and history are a number of stories
concerning the fate of others who went through the massacre. Some of
these may be true, while some are certainly without foundation in
fact; they are grouped together here because of the impossibility of
confirming their claim to validity. The story of little Peter Bell
will probably forever remain an unsolved mystery. In September, 1813,
a British officer, Captain Bullock, addressed an inquiry from Mackinac
to General Proctor concerning the disposition to be made of certain
prisoners whom the Indians had surrendered to the British at that
post.[645] Among others he mentioned Peter Bell, a boy of five or six
years of age, "whose Father and mother were killed at Chicagoe." He had
been purchased from the Indians by a trader and brought to Mackinac
in July, 1813, in accordance with the orders of Robert Dickson. The
mystery concerns the identity of the child. The time and manner of his
rescue harmonizes with what is known of Dickson's work for the relief
of the Chicago captives. But in none of the accounts of Fort Dearborn
and the little settlement around its walls prior to 1812, is there
any mention of a Bell family. The various accounts of the massacre
establish conclusively the proposition that there were nine women among
the whites on that day. Two of these were killed; the names of all of
them are known, and the list contains no Mrs. Bell. Moreover, it is
clear from the sources that six children survived the massacre. The
names of all these are known, but that of Peter Bell is not among them.
The only explanation of the child's identity which suggests itself is
that he was taken captive at some other place than Chicago and that his
captors for some reason, perhaps because of the ransom offered, saw
fit to surrender him as one of the children taken at Fort Dearborn.
Whatever the true explanation may be, a mournful interest attaches to
the forlorn little waif who thus appears for a moment amidst the wreck
of battle, only to sink again into oblivion.

[Footnote 645: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 392.]

The fate of the Lee family is recorded in the pages of Wau Bun.[646]
All of its members except the mother and an infant child were killed
during the battle. The fate of the girl, twelve years of age, was
particularly pathetic. On leaving the fort, she had been placed upon
horseback, but being unused to riding she was tied to the saddle for
greater security. During the battle her horse ran away and the rider,
partially dismounted yet held by the bands, hung dangling as the animal
ran. From this predicament she was rescued by Black Partridge, with
whom she had been a great favorite; but finding her badly wounded, he
terminated her sufferings with a blow of the tomahawk.

[Footnote 646: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 189-91.]

The mother and her infant child were taken by Black Partridge to his
village. There the infant fell ill and Black Partridge fell in love,
instituting a campaign for the hand of his captive. Unable to cure
the sick child, he took it during the winter to Chicago, where a
French trader had established himself since the massacre. The trader,
M. Du Pin, not only prescribed for the child, but learning of Black
Partridge's designs upon its mother, proceeded to ransom her and then
in turn to marry her.[647] This story is repeated with embellishments
by Matson, who, with curious disregard for consistency, includes an
important feature not found in the original. He avers that the child
who was dragged by the horse and afterward tomahawked was Lillian Lee,
ten years of age; and that she had a sister two years older who escaped
unharmed, was taken by her captors to the Kankakee, and the following
spring was carried to St. Louis, where she married a man named Besson,
and was still living in East St. Louis at the time Matson's book was
written.[648]

[Footnote 647: In his letter to Heald, April 10, 1813 (_supra_, note
613), Forsyth stated that "Dupain and Buisson wintered at Chicago last
winter with goods from Mackinaw, they have bought of[f] Mrs. Leigh and
her younger child, and another woman which I expect is Mrs. Cooper or
Burns."]

[Footnote 648: Matson, _Pioneers of Illinois_, 257-62. The book was
published in 1882. Notwithstanding the author's statement that he had
interviewed Mrs. Besson and "listened to her thrilling narrative,"
there is much in his account to excite distrust. It recites many
details which are obviously purely imaginary, and for the rest follows,
in the main, the account in _Wau Bun_.]

The story of David Kennison, a survivor of the Fort Dearborn garrison,
is worthy of preservation, if only because of the remarkable career of
the man.[649] Born in New Hampshire in 1736, if his own story of his
age is to be accepted, a member of the Boston Tea Party, a participant
in Lexington and Bunker Hill and many another battle of the Revolution,
he had reached the respectable age of seventy-one when, in March, 1808,
he enlisted in the army for the regular term of five years. Probably
this was a re-enlistment, for Kinzie's account books show that he was
at Chicago as early as May, 1804. The garrison muster-roll for May,
1812, shows that he was present for duty at that time. The supposition
that he was a participant in the massacre three months later rests upon
inference, for his name is nowhere expressly mentioned in connection
with that event. Presumably he was one of the small number of survivors
who returned from captivity concerning whom no definite record is left.
In his old age Kennison told of further service in the War of 1812, but
it is evident that his memory had become confused upon the subject.

[Footnote 649: The account given here of Kennison is drawn from the
following sources: the _Chicago Democrat_, November 6 and 8, 1848, and
February 25, 26, 27, 1852; the _Chicago Daily News_, December 19, 1903;
the Fort Dearborn garrison payroll for the quarter ending December 31,
1811, and the muster-roll for the period ending May 31, 1812, both
among the Heald papers in the Draper Collection (for the latter see
Appendix VIII); the garrison muster-roll for December, 1810, printed
in Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 88. Many of the details concerning the
career of Kennison are, of course, of doubtful validity.]

After the war Kennison settled in New York, and in the ensuing years
of peace met with physical injuries far more numerous and serious than
in all of his years of warfare. A falling tree fractured his skull and
broke his collar bone and two ribs; the discharge of a cannon at a
military review broke both of his legs; and the kick of a horse on his
forehead left a scar which disfigured him for life. Notwithstanding
these accidents, Kennison succeeded in becoming a husband four times
and a father twenty-two, and in living to the mature age of one hundred
and fifteen. Late in life he became separated from all his children,
and in 1845 he came to Chicago where his last years were spent. He drew
a pension of eight dollars a month for his Revolutionary services, and
until 1848 eked out this means of support by manual labor. Becoming
incapacitated for the latter, however, he entered the Chicago Museum;
in his card to the public announcing this step he explained that the
smallness of his pension obliged him to take it to provide himself with
the necessary comforts of life. For the last twenty months of his life
the veteran was bedridden, but his sight and hearing, which for a time
had been deficient, became perfect again, and he retained his ordinary
faculties to the end. His death occurred February 24, 1852.

It was fitting that such a character should receive an imposing
funeral. On the day before his death, in response to a request
presented in his behalf that he be saved from the potter's field,
the City Council had voted that a lot and a suitable monument be
provided for him in the City Cemetery. The funeral was held from the
Clark Street Methodist Church, and several clergymen assisted in the
services. At their conclusion a procession moved in two divisions
from the church to the cemetery, to the accompaniment of cannon
booming at one-minute intervals. In the procession were the mayor and
the councilmen, a detachment of the United States army, the various
military companies and bands of the city, companies of firemen, and
others. Upon this spectacle and that of the interment, which was marked
by the usual military honors, a large proportion of the population
of the city gazed. The cemetery occupied a portion of the ground now
included in Lincoln Park. When the use of this for burial purposes was
abandoned a number of years later, nearly all of the bodies interred in
it were removed. Kennison's was one of the few left undisturbed. For
many years the site of his grave had practically been forgotten, when,
in 1905, with appropriate ceremonies it was marked by a massive granite
monument, erected by a number of patriotic societies. Thus it has come
to pass that Kennison's burial place possesses a prominence of which
the humble soldier in life can hardly have dared to dream. Veteran of
our two wars against Great Britain, participant in the Boston Tea Party
and the Fort Dearborn Massacre, he enjoys the unique distinction of a
grave in Chicago's most famous park, overlooking the blue waters of
Lake Michigan.

Another massacre story, concerning the mythical character of which
there can be no doubt, is noticed here because of the use that has
been made of it by a historian of acknowledged worth and ability.
Among the beautiful sheets of water which dot the surface of the Lower
Peninsula of Michigan is Diamond Lake near the town of Cassopolis.
In its midst lies Diamond Lake Island, a wooded expanse of perhaps
forty acres in extent. This was occupied in the early days of white
settlement in Cass County by an aged recluse who bore the prosaic
name of Job Wright, but who was often more romantically designated as
the hermit of Diamond Lake Island. The hermit eked out a living by
fishing, hunting, trapping, and basket-weaving. Since he was of an
uncommunicative disposition, his neighbors were free to give rein to
their imagination in constructing the story of his past, and the scars
upon his face furnished a visible support for the rumor that he had
been a soldier.[650]

[Footnote 650: For the story of Job Wright see Mathews, _History of
Cass County, Michigan_, 65-66; _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XIV,
265-67.]

Another character of note in Cass County three-quarters of a century
ago was Shavehead, the erstwhile leader of a band of renegade Indians.
Shavehead's peculiar cognomen was due to his fashion of dressing his
head; the hair at the base of the head was shaved off, and the rest
gathered in a bunch and tied at the top. He had been throughout his
lifetime the persistent foe of the whites, and among the early settlers
of Cass County he enjoyed a reputation for knavery and villainy which
must, if he was aware of it, have delighted his heart.

With old age Shavehead fell upon evil days. His followers disappeared,
and with the advance of white settlement and the disappearance of
game the old chief was reduced to sore straits for food. At times,
however, he succeeded in securing a supply of fire-water sufficient
to obliterate for the time being the memory of his troubles. On one
occasion the hermit, visiting Cassopolis to dispose of his wares, had
his attention attracted by a group of men and boys on the village
street who were being harangued by an Indian. Shavehead, for it was
he, partially intoxicated, was gesticulating wildly, relating the
warlike exploits of his stormy past. As the white man paused to listen,
the old chief was describing the massacre at Fort Dearborn, and the
slaughter of the women and children around the baggage wagons. As he
proceeded with his boastings the hermit muttered words of recognition,
and involuntarily drew his gun from his shoulder as though to terminate
Shavehead's recital together with his life; he, too, had fought near
the baggage wagons. Changing his mind, however, he listened patiently
to the end, but when at sundown the Indian left the town the soldier
followed on his track. "The red man and the white passed into the shade
of the forest; the soldier returned alone. Chief Shavehead was never
seen again. He had paid the penalty of his crime to one who could, with
some fitness, exact it."[651]

[Footnote 651: Mason, _Chapters from Illinois History_, 321.]

Such is the story of Shavehead and the hermit of Diamond Lake Island.
So complete is it in its tragic fitness that one would fain believe it.
Yet, though it received the approval of Edward G. Mason, it must be
pronounced purely mythical, at least so far as its connection with Fort
Dearborn is concerned. That Shavehead and Job Wright are historical
characters in the early settlement of Cass County is clear. That the
former took part in the Fort Dearborn Massacre is possible, and even
probable. But that he met his death at the hands of Job Wright there
is no proof whatsoever. Various other accounts exist, in fact, having
apparently an equal claim on our credulity with the one already cited,
of the manner in which Shavehead met his end.[652] Furthermore there
is no evidence that Job Wright was a member of the Fort Dearborn
garrison in 1812. On the contrary, that he was not may be stated with
a positiveness bordering on certainty. That he was not a member of
Heald's company is shown by the muster-roll of the garrison for May
31, 1812, while the possibility of his belonging to the militia is
negatived by the positive statements of both Heald and Helm that all of
the latter were slain.

[Footnote 652: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XIV, 266-67.]

It remains to relate what is perhaps the strangest tale of all,
concerning the survivors of the massacre. For it we are indebted to
Moses Morgan, whose share in the building of the second Fort Dearborn
has already been explained.[653] In October, 1816, two of the men
detailed to select timber for the work of construction proceeded in a
skiff far up the North Branch, when they came upon a half-concealed
Indian hut. They were first apprised of its proximity by the shrill
shrieks of the squaws, who had seen their boat as it approached. As
they turned their skiff to retreat they heard the voice of a white
man, imploring them to stop and talk with him. The man spoke good
English, indifferent French, and poor Winnebago. He informed them that
he was one of the members of Heald's company. He had been wounded in
the battle, but was mercifully saved by an elderly squaw, whom he had
often provided with something to eat. She prevented the Indians from
scalping him, and with the help of her girls moved him across the river
and put him under some bushes. Here they cared for him, attending to
his wounds, although both they and he suffered much from lack of food.
As soon as he could be moved the women tied him onto a flat piece of
timber taken from the burnt fort, and dragged him to a small lake some
forty miles to the northward. Here he found himself compelled to take
the old squaw for a wife or perish from starvation. Upon her sudden
death, a year before the visit of the sawyers, he had taken the two
oldest girls to be his squaws. There was a third girl, younger than
these, and the three women and himself comprised the inmates of the hut.

[Footnote 653: _Supra_, p. 134.]

When the sawyers reported their discovery at the encampment it was
feared the squaws would spirit away their common husband. On the
following day the surgeon. Doctor Gale, accompanied the sawyers to the
hut, taking a boat load of presents for the squaws. It appeared that
the inmates were about to change their location, and as a preliminary
step the soldier had taken the youngest girl to be his third wife.
She was then one hundred and fifty moons, or thirteen years old, but
had desired to be married before leaving the vicinity of her mother's
burial place.

Doctor Gale examined the man's wounds and found that they had healed,
but with unnecessarily poor results, one leg being shortened and one
arm of little use. The doctor took down his name and other personal
details, and listened to his story of the massacre. He refused to
return to civilization as long as the squaws would live with him and
care for him; but he promised to bring them to visit the encampment,
exacting, however, a promise that the little squaw should not be
ridiculed by the soldiers. Nothing more was ever seen of the man, a
fact not much to be wondered at. The surgeon wrote out his account of
the interview and handed it, together with the memoranda he had made,
to the adjutant, by whom in some manner it was lost. That the story did
not, like the wounded soldier, pass into complete oblivion is owing to
the quite accidental circumstance of its narration by Moses Morgan to
Head, whose interest in Chicago history led him to preserve it.




CHAPTER XII

THE NEW FORT DEARBORN


The British negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent which brought the War
of 1812 to a close made strenuous efforts to compel the renunciation
by the United States of its sovereignty over all of that portion of
the old Northwest not included within the line drawn by the Treaty of
Greenville of 1795. The avowed object of this provision was to erect
a permanent barrier between the United States and the possessions of
Great Britain in that region by forever securing the territory thus
surrendered by the former to the Indians. The American representatives
refused even to consider this proposition, however, and in the end the
British were compelled to abandon it. Their contention that the Indian
should be admitted as a party to the treaty was also abandoned, and,
as finally agreed upon, it provided for a better definition of the
boundaries between the two nations, but for no surrender of territory
on either side.

The counterpart for the Northwest of the Treaty of Ghent was the
negotiation during the summer of 1815, by two commissions representing
the United States, of over a score of treaties with the various tribes
of that region.[654] One commission, consisting of Governor Edwards
of Illinois and Governor Clark of Missouri Territory and Auguste
Chouteau, the St. Louis Indian trader, met the diplomats of the red
race at Portage des Sioux near the mouth of the Illinois River; the
other, composed of General Harrison, General Duncan McArthur, and John
Graham, conducted its negotiations at Spring Wells near Detroit. Except
for the Sacs and Foxes, who manifested a belligerent attitude for some
months longer, the autumn of 1815 witnessed the conclusion of treaty
making and the formal restoration of peace to the harassed northwestern
frontier. But the British influence over the tribes was still powerful,
despite the bitterness of the red men over their desertion, as they
chose to regard it, by their former ally. The American influence over
the tribes of Wisconsin and the territory farther west was as yet but
slight.[655] Though nominally this region had long acknowledged the
sovereignty of the United States, in fact it had remained commercially
dependent upon Great Britain; and the British possessed, as a matter of
course, the sympathy and affection of the red man.

[Footnote 654: For the treaties and accompanying documents see
_American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 1-26.]

[Footnote 655: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XVIII, xii.]

With the restoration of peace, therefore, it remained for the Americans
to establish an effective control over the northwestern tribes. The
dominance of the British trader over them must be broken, and to this
end garrisons must be scattered throughout the country to overcome the
tribes and give countenance to the American traders in their efforts to
compete successfully with their British rivals.

How the situation was viewed by well-informed Americans may be learned
from a letter written by Lewis Cass to the Secretary of War in the
spring of 1816.[656] Calling attention to the indications of a renewal
by the British Indian Department of its old aggressive attitude with
reference to the Indians of the United States, Cass pointed out the
existence of three great channels for carrying on trade between Canada
and the Indians of the Mississippi and Missouri country. These were,
first, by way of Chicago and the Illinois River; second, by Green
Bay and the Fox-Wisconsin waterway; third, from Lake Superior to the
headwaters of the Mississippi. Of these the great channel at that time
was the second. Through it great quantities of goods were smuggled into
the Indian country of the United States. This practice could be cut
off, Cass urged, so far as the Illinois and the Fox-Wisconsin river
routes were concerned, by the establishment of garrisons at Green Bay
and Chicago. To stop smuggling altogether, however, there must also be
a post near the Grand Portage.

[Footnote 656: _Ibid._, XIX, 376-79.]

Almost a year before this John Kinzie had transmitted to Cass an
argument in favor of the re-establishment of a garrison at Chicago to
take the place of the one that had been destroyed in the massacre of
1812.[657] Kinzie was, of course, greatly interested in the adoption
of this proposal, for it would make possible the renewal by him under
favorable conditions of the pursuit of a livelihood at Chicago. He
pointed out that the hostility for the Americans of the tribes around
Lake Michigan, between Mackinac and the southern end of the lake, was
mainly due to their intercourse with the traders of the Southwest
Company, who were hostile to the American traders. Because of lack of
game these tribes were forced to migrate at certain seasons to the
waters of the Fox, Chicago, and Illinois rivers, and as an incident to
this migration they generally rendezvoused at Chicago in the spring.
For this reason a garrison there was necessary to preserve order among
the Indians and to restrain the British traders, whose influence would
ever keep them hostile to the United States.

[Footnote 657: Kinzie to Cass, July 15, 1815; Indian Office, Book 204,
Letter Book I, 90.]

Before the close of the summer of 1815 the government determined
not only to establish garrisons at Chicago and Green Bay, but to
reoccupy Prairie du Chien and erect a new fort at Rock Island on
the Mississippi, and another in the vicinity of the Falls of St.
Anthony.[658] At the same time it was planned to restore the government
factory at Chicago for the conduct of the Indian trade, and to
establish new factories at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien.[659] To
the Third Infantry under Colonel Miller, then stationed at Detroit,
was allotted the duty of garrisoning the forts at Mackinac, Green
Bay, and Chicago.[660] Colonel Miller with his station at Mackinac
was to have command of the three posts. Two companies, Bradley's and
Baker's, were destined for Chicago. In the absence of Major Baker, the
ranking officer, Captain Hezekiah Bradley, commanded the detachment.
The companies comprising the Green Bay contingent were ordered to
embark June 9.[661] Whether the Chicago detachment accompanied them on
their way does not appear, but on June 30 it was on board the schooner
"General Wayne" off the "Manitoo" Island in Lake Michigan. Here the
first inspection was held, and a roster of the companies was made.[662]
Of the one hundred and thirty-three men enrolled in the two companies
one hundred and twelve were present on this expedition.

[Footnote 658: Flagler, _History of the Rock Island Arsenal_, 14-16;
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 376-89. The decision to
restore Fort Dearborn was reached at least as early as June, 1815
(_ibid._, 384).]

[Footnote 659: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 380-84.]

[Footnote 660: _Drennan Papers_, Department orders dated Detroit, June
7 and 8, 1816.]

[Footnote 661: For a short account of the establishment of the fort at
Green Bay see Neville, _Historic Green Bay_, chap. vi.]

[Footnote 662: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns.]

On July 4 the expedition arrived at Chicago. The public buildings
were found to have been entirely destroyed with the exception of
the magazine, which was badly damaged.[663] Numerous small parties
of Indians visited the soldiers during the first few weeks, but no
hostility was manifested by them. But one account preserves the details
of the events attending the construction of the new Fort Dearborn, and
this one is rambling and unreliable.[664] It relates that some Detroit
traders, foreseeing a demand for vegetables upon the arrival of the
garrison, had sent some Canadian half-breeds to Chicago in the spring
of 1816 to start a truck garden. Upon the arrival of the "General
Wayne" the troops landed and a temporary camp for the protection of
themselves and the stores was established in a pasture near the old
fort. Some garden seeds had been brought along, and one of the first
tasks was to prepare a garden. Two half-breeds, Alexander Robinson
and Ouilmette, and their squaws with their ponies were engaged to
prepare the ground. With the aid of the soldiers the task was soon
accomplished; but whether from the lateness of the season or for some
other reason, the gardening experiment was not a success. The Canadian
gardeners, who had planted in May about four miles up the South Branch,
brought in vegetables for sale to the garrison at high prices.

[Footnote 663: _Ibid._, Bradley to Parker, August 3, 1816.]

[Footnote 664: _Head Papers_, narrative of Moses Morgan.]

Meanwhile the construction of the fort was being prosecuted. In
addition to the garrison, pit-sawyers and other workmen had been
brought from Detroit. A grove of pine trees near the lake shore about
four miles north of the river was selected, and the logs were rolled
into the lake and rafted down to the mouth of the river and up the
stream to a point opposite the site of the fort. Bands of Indians
straggled around the buildings to gaze at the work of construction, beg
for tobacco, and pilfer any unguarded tools that might be concealed
under their blankets. The visits of the squaws and their papooses to
the camp became so frequent and obnoxious that a heavier detail was
required to mount guard by day to keep them away from the tents than
was necessary by night. A detail of soldiers guarded the pit-sawyers at
the pine grove on the north shore, who were engaged in cutting out the
sawn lumber for roofs and floors. The Indians remained peaceable, but
the sawyers' fears of them were easily excited. From this unpromising
situation a real romance shortly developed. The disappearance of two
of the Canadian pit-sawyers, who when last seen were in the company of
an Indian, intensified the fears of their associates. Their anxiety
was soon relieved by the reappearance of the men accompanied by two
young squaws whom they had taken to wife. They had determined to take
up their abode with a band of Indians residing on the Calumet, and had
returned to demand their saws and the wages that were due them. Their
requests were satisfied and they were allowed to depart, but not until
the adjutant had read the marriage service to them and the garrison and
workmen had celebrated the occasion with a holiday.

A few months after the arrival of the garrison Major Long of the
engineer department of the army, who was to acquire fame several years
later as an explorer, came to Chicago in search of information for
a topographical report which he was preparing on the region roughly
corresponding to the modern states of Illinois and Indiana.[665]
He found that the construction of the fort had been pushed with
commendable industry, and reported that it would probably be brought
to completion in the course of the following season. It was on a point
of land formed by a bend in the river about eight hundred yards from
its mouth. Curiously enough he reported that a more eligible site for
the fort was afforded on the opposite side of the river, on the point
of land between it and the lake. This location would more completely
command the entrance to the river, and would also command the anchorage
to a considerable extent. Perhaps the reason for this dissent from the
judgment of the officers who had located the first and second forts may
be inferred from Long's recommendation that the position he approved
should be fortified in a manner calculated to resist any naval force
that might be brought against it. Evidently he had in contemplation the
possibility of another war with Great Britain, while both the first and
second Fort Dearborn were designed to afford protection against Indian
attacks only.

[Footnote 665: The report is printed in full in the _National
Register_, III, 193-98.]

With the fort constructed and the garrison re-established, life at
Chicago assumed in the main the aspects which it had borne before the
massacre. Fort Dearborn was no longer, as in the old days, the farthest
outpost of the United States in the Northwest, but it was still only an
isolated wilderness station. Fort Wayne was the nearest post-office,
and between this place and Chicago the mail was carried by foot
soldiers once or twice a month.[666] Other agencies for maintaining
connection with the outside world were few and irregular. The conduct
of the business pertaining to the garrison and the operations connected
with the prosecution of the fur trade were responsible for most of
them. The provisions for the garrison were for the most part brought
around the lakes in schooners, although the live stock destined to
supply the soldiers with fresh meat was sometimes driven overland
to Chicago.[667] The historian of Major Long's expedition reported
in 1823 that the total annual lake trade of Chicago, including the
transportation of supplies for the garrison, did not exceed the cargo
of five or six schooners.[668]

[Footnote 666: In describing Chicago in 1818 Hubbard says (_Life_, 38)
once a month. A report of the Post-Office Department, January 14, 1825
(_American State Papers_, Vol. XV, Post-Office Department, 136), shows
that at that time the mail was carried between Fort Wayne and Green Bay
once a month. J. Watson Webb, who was post adjutant at Fort Dearborn
in 1821-22 states (Letter to John Wentworth, October 31, 1882) that
he sent a sergeant and a private to Fort Wayne fortnightly to bring
the mail for Chicago and Green Bay, and that a similar detail from the
latter place was always on hand to receive and carry forward the mail
destined for that place.]

[Footnote 667: Keating, _Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's
River_, I, 183. A letter from Captain Bradley of Fort Dearborn in the
winter of 1816 (_Drennan Papers_, Bradley to McComb, December 3, 1816)
announces that "a drove of hogs consisting of about three hundred
recently arrived here for the contractor." At the time of the Chicago
Treaty of 1821 two hundred head of cattle were driven from Brownstown
to Chicago to supply fresh meat for the Indians in attendance on the
negotiations (Schoolcraft, _Travels in the Central Portions of the
Mississippi Valley_, 375). In June of this same year Rev. Isaac McCoy,
while traveling from the mouth of the St. Joseph River to Fort Wayne,
met a party engaged in driving cattle through the wilderness to Chicago
(McCoy, _History of Baptist Indian Missions_, 108-9).]

[Footnote 668: Keating, _op. cit._, I, 164.]

The existence of war interrupted but did not entirely prevent the
conduct of the Indian trade at Chicago. The business of the American
traders was broken up, but their lives were safe, even in the midst of
the slaughter which attended the massacre.[669] The winter following
the massacre two French traders, Du Pain and Buisson, established
themselves with a stock of goods in the abandoned house of John
Kinzie.[670] What success they met with, or whether they returned in
the following years, does not appear, but the needs of the Indians were
supplied to some extent by Robert Dickson, whose plans for stirring up
the northwestern tribes against the Americans necessitated the sending
of large quantities of goods to Chicago to distribute among his red
allies.[671] The restoration of Fort Dearborn was the signal for the
return of the American traders to Chicago. Among the early arrivals was
John Crafts, the representative of a Detroit firm, who is said to have
established himself at Chicago some time during the year 1816.[672]
His trading house was on the South Branch, not far from the Lee Cabin,
where the murders of April, 1812, occurred. Crafts pursued his calling
with success for several years, but the competition of the American Fur
Company at last proved too strong, and in 1822 his establishment passed
into its possession. Crafts became its employee at the same time, and
continued to reside at Chicago until his death, several years later.

[Footnote 669: Kinzie and all his family passed through the massacre
unscathed. Thomas Forsyth came to Chicago the day after the massacre
and remained with the Kinzies several days (_supra_, note 632).]

[Footnote 670: _Supra_, note 613. Mrs. Kinzie gives the name as Du Pin
(_Wau Bun_, 190). Her story of his rescue of Mrs. Lee and her baby from
captivity and threatened matrimony at the hands of Black Partridge has
already been told (p. 255).]

[Footnote 671: For a list of the goods to be sent from Mackinac to
Chicago for Dickson at the opening of navigation in the spring of 1813
see _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 224.]

[Footnote 672: On Crafts see Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, _passim_;
Andreas, _History of Chicago_, Vol. I, _passim_. It is usually said
that he was in the employ of Mack and Conant of Detroit, but Hurlbut
suggests (_Chicago Antiquities_, 409) that Abraham Edwards was his
employer.]

John Kinzie's interest in the restoration of Fort Dearborn has already
been noted. The exact date of his return to Chicago is uncertain,
but it apparently occurred during the latter half of the year 1816.
In an affidavit made September 14, 1816, Kinzie described himself as
"of the city of Detroit."[673] The last entry in his account book at
Detroit bears date of June 16, 1816, and the first entry at Chicago
occurs on January 10, following.[674] From the same source we learn
that the revival of Kinzie's commercial activities at Chicago was
coincident with the return of the garrison; for under date of June
13 occurs the invoice of a "Chicago Adventure," followed three days
later by a second. The principal items of the first invoice are butter
and whisky--four kegs and ten pounds of the former, and two barrels,
containing sixty-eight gallons, of the latter. The contents of the
second invoice pertain wholly to live stock, the principal items being
five head of oxen and a mare and colt.

[Footnote 673: Copy of affidavit concerning the wounds received by
Heald in the Chicago massacre, MS in possession of Mr. Wright Johnson
of Rutherford, New Jersey.]

[Footnote 674: _Barry Transcript._]

The Kinzie family was again established in the old home and the trader
resumed his calling. He seems never to have recovered, however, the
leading position as a trader which he held before the war. Within a few
months after his return to Chicago he arranged with Varnum and Jouett
to act as interpreter for both the factory and the Indian agency, and
relinquished his trade with the Indians.[675] He continued to act as
interpreter for some time, and several years later, when Wolcott had
succeeded Jouett as Indian agent at Chicago, Kinzie was appointed
subagent, receiving separate compensation for each appointment.[676] In
addition to his services with the government he again entered into the
Indian trade during these years, part of the time on his own account,
and later, according to Hubbard, as an employee of the American Fur
Company.[677]

[Footnote 675: Indian Department, Letter Book, Cass Correspondence,
Kinzie to Cass, January 25, 1817; Jouett to Cass, January 25, 1817. All
of the Indian Department letter books to be cited are preserved in the
Pension Building at Washington.]

[Footnote 676: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 365.]

[Footnote 677: Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 31.]

An important part of the life at Chicago in this period centered in
the government Indian establishment, the restoration of which was
coincident with the return of the garrison to Fort Dearborn. During the
year 1815 Charles Jouett received the appointment of Indian agent, and
Jacob B. Varnum was designated as factor.[678] Jouett had been agent at
Chicago for several years prior to the War of 1812, but had resigned
in the year 1811 and settled in Mercer County, Kentucky.[679] He now
returned to the government service and to his old position at Chicago.
His residence during this second incumbency was a log house on the
north side of the river, possibly the same house which had sheltered
the Burns family in the period before the massacre. It was far from
adequate to the needs of Jouett's family, and in 1817 he complained
bitterly of it and of the indifference of the officers of the garrison
concerning his plight.[680] The house he described as "a little hut
that a man of humanity would not suffer his negroes to live in." It was
fourteen feet square, with but a single chair, which Jouett had brought
with him from Kentucky, and there were nine persons in the family,
including servants, to be accommodated. Jouett's indignant appeal
produced little result, however. When Wolcott succeeded him as agent
in 1819 he found the agency house a "mere shell," which necessitated
rebuilding entirely to make it habitable.[681]

[Footnote 678: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 380-95. Jouett
was first appointed agent at Green Bay and Colonel John Bowyer agent
at Chicago; at Jouett's request, however, a change was made in the
appointments, Jouett going as agent to Chicago and Bowyer to Green Bay
(_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 391-92, 399).]

[Footnote 679: On Jouett see Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 102 ff.;
Andreas, History of Chicago, 87.]

[Footnote 680: Indian Department, Letter Book, Jouett to Cass, February
1, 1817.]

[Footnote 681: Indian Department, Cass correspondence, Wolcott to Cass,
January 1, 1820.]

Jouett was a lawyer by training, and both before and after his
second residence at Chicago he held the office of judge, the first
time in Kentucky, the second in Arkansas Territory. He was a man of
remarkable physique, six feet three inches in height, broad-shouldered
and muscular. Among the Indians he was known as "the White Otter,"
and it is said that he possessed a commanding influence over them.
His daughter recalled in after years that the red men were frequent
visitors at her father's home, and that the dusky callers were
especially kind to the children, her sister and herself. Their nurse
was an Indian girl, a faithful and devoted servant, who afterward
married a soldier of the garrison. In 1819 Jouett again resigned the
Indian agency and returned to Kentucky. His place was filled by the
transfer to the Chicago agency of Doctor Alexander Wolcott, who had
been appointed "Agent to the Lakes," in April, 1818.[682]

[Footnote 682: Indian Office, Letter Book D, 241, Calhoun to Wolcott,
April 22, 1818; _ibid._, 277, Calhoun to Wolcott, March 27, 1819.]

Jacob B. Varnum, Chicago's only government factor after the War of
1812, belonged to an old and prominent New England family.[683] Through
the family influence Varnum secured, when but twenty-three years of
age, the appointment as government factor at Sandusky, Ohio.[684] He
remained there until the news of Hull's surrender at Detroit, causing
the precipitate retreat of the Ohio militia from Sandusky, compelled
the abandonment of the factory. Varnum thereupon entered the army and
served until the close of the war. On the return of peace, finding
himself without an occupation, he applied for a position in the
Department of Indian Trade, and in the summer of 1815 was appointed
factor at Chicago.

[Footnote 683: For it see Varnum, _The Vanums of Dracutt_. James
Mitchell Varnum was a brigadier-general during the Revolution. His
brother, Joseph B. Varnum, was speaker of the lower house of Congress
from 1807 to 1811, and United States senator from Massachusetts, from
1811 to 1817.]

[Footnote 684: The account which follows is based upon the journal of
Jacob B. Varnum.]

At this time it was the expectation of the department to establish the
factory before the winter set in.[685] On receiving the news of his
appointment Varnum set out for Erie by way of Buffalo, where he met
Matthew Irwin, who had been factor at Chicago before the war and was
now en route to establish the new factory at Green Bay. After a rough
passage from Buffalo to Erie, in "a miserable apology for a schooner,"
the officials learned that the goods for the Indian trade, which were
to have preceded them thither, had not arrived, and that the movement
of the military to Chicago and Green Bay had been postponed to the
following year. This involved the postponement of the establishment
of the factories as well; nevertheless the naval commander at Erie
resolved to take the goods, should they arrive in time, on to Mackinac
that season, there to await the departure of the military expedition in
the spring. Irwin thereupon returned to his home, while it was agreed
that Varnum should go on to Mackinac in charge of the goods.

[Footnote 685: _Varnum's Journal_; Mason to Varnum, August 20, 1815,
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIX, 391-95.]

Varnum's narrative of the autumn voyage through the lakes from Erie
to Mackinac presents a vivid picture of the discomforts and dangers
of travel on the Great Lakes a century ago. The expedition consisted
of two government vessels, the "Porcupine" and the "Ghent." The naval
officers considered themselves insulted and degraded by the menial
service of transporting merchandise. They therefore took no pains to
protect the goods from ruin by water, and but little, apparently, to
promote the comfort of the luckless factor. At Detroit a lady was
given passage to Mackinac. In order to make room for her Varnum had to
surrender the berth he had occupied thus far, and received in exchange
for it one so near the bottom of the vessel that in rough weather the
bilge water would spurt into it, keeping it wet most of the time.

The commander was a "perfect tyrant," as far as his power extended,
and Varnum avers that during the four weeks they were together
he witnessed the infliction of more severe and often undeserved
punishments than during all the remainder of his life. The stories of
the floggings meted out by the commander's orders sicken the reader,
after the lapse of a century, as they did the helpless witness at the
time. On the second day out the negro cook, with whom the commander
professed he would not part for his weight in gold, was given a dozen
lashes because his master conceived the meat was not sufficiently
cooked. A sailor possessed of an undue propensity for liquor had been
unmercifully flogged for getting drunk, and threatened with a hundred
lashes upon a repetition of the offense. Notwithstanding this the
offense was repeated. The delinquent was ordered stripped and lashed to
the shrouds. Varnum went below to escape witnessing the scene. In due
time the commander came down, raging because the culprit had borne the
torture so stoically. After receiving a hundred lashes without uttering
a groan the tyrant demanded of him a promise not to repeat the offense,
under pain upon refusal of receiving a second hundred on his now raw
and bloody back. The torture proceeded and seventeen lashes had been
administered when the victim gave in, making the promise required and
begging for mercy. At the entrance to Lake Huron the rapid current made
it difficult for sailing vessels to steer an even course. Dissatisfied
with the helmsman's efforts the commander ordered a fresh man to the
wheel, and the one who had been relieved received a dozen lashes. The
new steersman promptly encountered the same difficulty and was as
promptly relieved and flogged; and this routine was kept up until every
seaman on board had taken his turn at the wheel and received his quota
of lashes before the vessel got into the lake.

At Mackinac Varnum opened and dried the goods which had been wet, and
then settled down to pass the long winter. Despite the extreme cold,
and the desolation produced by the recent war, the winter's confinement
proved to be one of the pleasantest periods of his whole life. He
had a comfortable room with a good stove and plenty of firewood. The
days were spent in reading, or, in pleasant weather, in excursions to
the nets of the fishermen or elsewhere. The evenings were devoted to
social amusements participated in by the merchants and the officers of
the garrison. Among the latter were two brothers of Franklin Pierce,
afterward President of the United States, one of whom, Captain Benjamin
K. Pierce, wooed and married a half-breed French and Indian girl.[686]

[Footnote 686: _Varnum's Journal_; _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
XIV, 36, 40-41.]

Among the arrivals on the first vessel in the spring was a beautiful
young woman from Detroit who came to visit her aunt. Varnum became
enamored of her, and a romance began which was to culminate sadly
enough at Chicago only a year later. The impression which the fair
stranger made upon him was thus graphically set forth after the lapse
of half a century: "She was a girl of polished manners, tall and
graceful in her walk, and of striking symmetry of form. Her hair was
auburn; her eyes dark blue, and remarkably transparent skin blended
with a due proportion of red. I thought her in point of beauty quite
equal to any lady I had seen."

That the young girl's beauty had a real existence, apart from the
imagination of the fond lover, is shown by the reminiscences of Mrs.
Baird of her childhood days at Mackinac. After a lapse of seventy
years she alluded to her as "a beautiful woman, who was married at
Mackinac."[687] Three months after the first meeting the beautiful girl
became Varnum's bride, the marriage being solemnized by Major Puthuff
in the absence of any minister of the gospel at Mackinac. A few days
later the couple embarked with the factory goods on the "Tiger" bound
for Chicago, whither the troops under Captain Bradley had recently
preceded them. On their arrival the skeleton of a log hut on the south
side which had survived the destruction in 1812 was assigned to Varnum
to serve both as a store and as a dwelling. It was about twenty feet
square, a story and a half in height, and without a floor. Varnum
caused a floor of puncheons to be laid, made of logs split out four
or five inches thick and roughly hewed on the face, and procured the
erection of a lean-to for a kitchen. A large portion of the goods were
stored in the loft, the remainder being deposited with Kinzie for
retail purposes.

[Footnote 687: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIV, 26.]

In this hovel the brief period of the wedded life of the young couple
was passed. According to the chronicler the winter passed "pleasantly
enough." But for him there was the diversion of his business, and for
recreation he indulged in frequent hunting excursions. For the young
wife no relief from the lonely monotony and the grinding hardship of
such an existence was possible. With the coming of spring she fell
ill from approaching maternity. They had no servants, and there was
no possibility of procuring any, but fortunately Mrs. Varnum's sister
came on a visit and afforded assistance during the time of trouble.
In June, 1817, the birth occurred, but the child was stillborn, and
the trial killed the mother. The simple words of the husband written
long afterward may well be permitted to terminate our recital of
the pathetic tragedy: "Its long suffering mother survived but a few
moments. Thus was I bereft of a beloved wife and the anticipated hope
of a family. The mother with the child in her arms was buried a few
yards from my house, where they rested when I left Chicago, 1822."

Two years passed, when Varnum joined a horseback party on a trip to
Detroit. With the hot season the Indian trade ceased and the recreation
of hunting was suspended. Diversions wholly failed, and the principal
occupation consisted in fighting mosquitoes. The journey would involve
a ride of seven hundred miles in fly time, yet Varnum gladly entered
upon it to escape the deadly monotony of life at Chicago. Aside from
Varnum the party consisted of Major Baker, John Dean, who had come to
Chicago as an army contractor in 1816, and a guide. The route taken
was by way of Fort Wayne and thence down the Maumee River and on to
Detroit. The destination was reached after eleven days of travel,
Varnum making his entry into Detroit after nightfall, covered with mud
from head to foot as the result of being thrown from his horse into a
swamp almost at the end of the journey.

Detroit was at that time a small village where each person interested
himself in the affairs of all the rest. Upon the arrival of Varnum with
no ostensible business the ready conclusion was reached that he had
come in search of a wife. Although he denied such an intention, within
two months he confirmed the expectation of the villagers by contracting
a second marriage alliance. In the autumn of 1819 he embarked with
his wife and her sister on a schooner for Chicago. The weather was
pleasant and the company jovial. Arrived at Chicago the new wife began
housekeeping under more favorable circumstances than her predecessor
had done. The soldiers had constructed a new dwelling for the factor,
under Varnum's superintendence; Mrs. Varnum had brought with her
two servants, and the society of the place had improved somewhat.
Several of the officers had brought on their families, and a spirit of
friendliness and sociability prevailed, evening parties with dancing
and other amusements being frequently held.

Among the inhabitants of Chicago during this period were several who
had figured prominently in the massacre of 1812. About the time of
Kinzie's return came Lieutenant Helm and his wife.[688] In 1817 they
were living on the south side of the river in a small square house
without a floor.[689] In lieu of this a tarpaulin was spread down, and
tarpaulin was also hung about the walls. No one has taken the trouble,
apparently, to record the duration of this domestic establishment.
Mrs. Helm continued a resident of Chicago for many years, and frequent
mention of her later doings is made by the family historian in the
pages of _Wau Bun_. No mention of Lieutenant Helm occurs, however, and
even the fact of his existence is ignored. The reason for this silence
is perhaps revealed by certain court records of Peoria County, within
whose boundaries Chicago was for a time included. These show that in
1829 Helm was still living, residing, apparently, in Clay County,
Illinois.[690] In October of this year Mrs. Helm received a divorce
from him together with alimony and the custody of their child.

[Footnote 688: Helm's name appears in Kinzie's account book in January,
1817, and again in January, 1818.]

[Footnote 689: Recollections of Mrs. Baird, _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XIV, 26.]

[Footnote 690: McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 108.]

To what extent Jean Baptiste Chandonnai made Chicago his home in the
period of the second Fort Dearborn is also somewhat uncertain. It
is related by Mrs. Baird that he was here in the employ of Kinzie
shortly after the return of the troops, and his wife, coming to join
him, was a passenger from Mackinac on the same schooner which brought
Mrs. Baird and her mother to Chicago. The date of this visit is given
as 1816, though it seems probable it actually occurred the following
year. During the next few years Chandonnai was engaged in the fur trade
in the region tributary to Chicago.[691] What the Indians received
from him in exchange for their furs is perhaps sufficiently indicated
by a consignment of goods sent to him from Mackinac, September 19,
1818, consisting of four barrels of whisky and six barrels of flour.
Evidently the order had called for a larger quantity of fire-water,
for the consignment was accompanied by the explanation that no more
liquor could be promised because of its dearness and "uncommon
scarcity." The next year Chandonnai betrayed the confidence reposed in
him by the American Fur Company, by selling his furs to John Crafts
and refusing to pay the company for the merchandise with which he
had procured them.[692] The latter appealed to Kinzie to exert his
influence in its behalf. That he did so with good effect seems evident
from a later letter expressing gratitude for his exertions in securing
the payment of a portion of the claim against Chandonnai. The writer
urges a continuance of these efforts, and asks if a mortgage cannot be
secured on the lands granted to Chandonnai by the Indians. What was,
apparently, the sequel to this claim appeared fourteen years later
in a clause of the Chicago Treaty of 1833. Among the grants of money
made to individuals was the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars
to Chandonnai, one thousand of which "by the particular request" of
the latter was to be paid to Robert Stuart, agent of the American Fur
Company.

[Footnote 691: See on this point the letters of Ramsey Crooks printed
in Andreas, _History of Chicago_, I, 94-95.]

[Footnote 692: _Ibid._, I, 95.]

Perhaps the most picturesque character in the little group of civilian
residents of Chicago in the decade which began with the restoration of
Fort Dearborn was Jean Baptiste Beaubien. He was descended from an old
Canadian family, one of whose members is said to have been a follower
of La Salle. About the middle of the eighteenth century a branch of
the family established itself at Detroit, where the future citizen of
Chicago was born in the year 1787.[693] He early engaged in the Indian
trade, and according to the custom of the time married a squaw. He is
said to have had a daughter born at Chicago as early as 1805, but the
details both of his early migrations and of his marriage alliances
are rather hazy. In 1814 he married Josette La Framboise, who was a
servant in the family of John Kinzie at the time of the massacre. How
soon after this Beaubien made Chicago his permanent place of residence
is not certainly known, but in 1817 he purchased a house of John Dean,
the army contractor, and thenceforth continued to reside on the Fort
Dearborn reservation until, in the early thirties, his attempt to gain
title to it precipitated the struggle over the Beaubien Land Claim
which became famous in the annals of early Chicago.

[Footnote 693: Beaubien family genealogy, MS in Chicago Historical
Society library.]

An interesting feature of the life of Chicago and the adjoining region
during the period under consideration was afforded by the periodical
visits of the Illinois "brigade" of the American Fur Company. From
its headquarters at Mackinac each autumn a number of trading outfits
departed for the various trading posts scattered throughout the
Northwest. Each brigade was composed of voyageurs organized into boat
crews, the number of the latter varying with the importance of the
station which constituted the destination of the brigade.[694] The
goods were transported in bateaux, each manned by half a dozen men
and carrying about three tons of merchandise. The Illinois brigade
consisted of a dozen boats carrying, including the families of the
traders, about a hundred persons.

[Footnote 694: On the operations of the American Fur Company see
Hubbard, _Life_, _passim_.]

Each autumn for a number of years this fleet made its way from Mackinac
down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and around its southern end to
Chicago. From the south branch of the river the boats and goods were
forced at the expense of much toil and hardship across the portage and
down the Des Plaines until navigable water was reached on the Illinois
River. Here the brigade broke up, small parties going to the various
trading stations of the Illinois and its tributaries, and the winter
was passed in bartering the goods for the furs of the Indians. With
the opening of navigation in the spring the outfit reassembled and the
return journey to Mackinac was begun. The boats, now laden with furs,
were forced up the Illinois and the Des Plaines, the difficulty on
the latter stream arising now from the excess of water, rather than
from its scarcity, and the labor of stemming the raging current of the
swollen stream. The remainder of the journey from Chicago, around the
lake to Mackinac, was made with comparative ease.

We are indebted to the recollections of Gurdon S. Hubbard for an
intimate picture of the life and activities of the traders who composed
the Illinois brigade. Hubbard first visited the Illinois country as
a youth of sixteen in the autumn of 1818. Approaching Chicago, the
brigade spent the night at the mouth of the Little Calumet River.
At dawn the party set out, in holiday attire and with flags flying,
upon the last twelve miles of the lake voyage. At Douglas Grove young
Hubbard landed, and climbing a tree gazed in wonder upon the first
prairie he had ever beheld. In the foreground was a sea of waving
grass, intermingled with a profusion of wild flowers; in the distance
the groves of timber at Blue Island and along the Des Plaines River. A
herd of wild deer appeared in view, while a pair of red foxes emerged
from the grass within gunshot of the enraptured youth. To the northward
could be seen the whitewashed walls of Fort Dearborn sparkling in the
sunlight, while on the blue surface of the lake the brawny voyageurs
urged onward the fleet of bateaux, their flashing oars keeping time
with the music of the boat song.

Descending from his observation point, Hubbard made his way toward the
fort, and found the traders encamped on the north side of the river
to the west of Kinzie's house. Here he was entertained and a firm
friendship between him and the Kinzie family soon developed. The young
visitor was to return to Chicago frequently during the following years,
until in 1834 he made it his permanent home and shortly became one of
the foremost citizens of the struggling but optimistic young city.

Interesting glimpses of the manner of life in and around the new Fort
Dearborn are afforded by the accounts of travelers who occasionally
visited this frontier station. The reception of Storrow at Fort
Dearborn in 1817, "as one arrived from the moon," has already been
mentioned.[695] Storrow was greatly impressed with the strategic
advantages possessed by Chicago, which he thus early pointed out marked
it as the future place of deposit for the whole region of the upper
lakes.[696] He described the climate and soil as excellent, although
not all visitors of this early period agree with him in this opinion.
At the time of his visit traces of the massacre yet remained, and
Storrow encountered one of the "principal perpetrators," Nuscotnemeg,
or the Mad Sturgeon.

[Footnote 695: _Supra_, p. 153.]

[Footnote 696: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, VI, 183-84.]

From the pen of Mrs. Baird, whose visit to Chicago was probably
made in the same year as that of Storrow, we get a more detailed
description.[697] The vessel which transported her from Mackinac had
for its cargo "the familiar load of pork, flour, and butter." There
were no ports of call on the western side of Lake Michigan, and the
master after seeking in vain at Chicago for a return cargo had finally
to take on a ballast of sand and gravel. Mrs. Baird draws a pleasant
picture of the household of her host, John Kinzie. The establishment
included a number of "men and women retainers." There was as yet no
bridge across the river, the only means of passage being a canoe or
dugout, as in the days before the massacre. In this craft, with the two
Kinzie children, eight and ten years of age, acting as her crew, Mrs.
Baird first crossed the Chicago River.

[Footnote 697: _Ibid._, XIV, 25 ff.]

In the summer of 1820 Governor Cass of Michigan Territory, returning
from a voyage of exploration to the sources of the Mississippi River,
arrived in mid-August at Chicago with a party of sixteen men in
two canoes.[698] At Chicago the party separated. Cass with several
attendants proceeded on horseback along the Indian trail to Detroit,
while the scientists of the expedition. Captain Douglas and Henry R.
Schoolcraft, completed the circuit of Lake Michigan by continuing
around its eastern shore to Mackinac. Schoolcraft, like Storrow, was
greatly impressed with the natural advantages possessed by Chicago,
and predicted for it a glowing future. With the extinguishment of the
Indian title to the surrounding country immigration would flow in, and
Chicago would become the dèpôt for the inland commerce between the
northern and southern sections of the Union, and "a great thoroughfare
for strangers, merchants, and travelers."

[Footnote 698: For an account of the expedition see Schoolcraft,
_Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit ... to the Sources of the
Mississippi River in 1820_.]

No little discernment was requisite thus to perceive the future
destiny of the rude frontier hamlet which according to Schoolcraft's
estimate contained, exclusive of the military but ten or a dozen houses
and a population of sixty souls. Quite different from Schoolcraft's
description was that of the historian of Major Long's expedition to the
sources of the St. Peter's River three years later.[699] He described
the climate as inhospitable, the soil sterile, and the scenery
monotonous and uninviting. The village consisted of a few huts of log
or bark, low, filthy, and disgusting, displaying not the least trace
of comfort, and inhabited by "a miserable race of men," scarcely equal
to the Indians from whom they were descended. Nor could the chronicler
perceive the brilliant future in store for Chicago which Schoolcraft
had foretold. He granted that "at some distant day," when the country
between the Wabash and the Mississippi should become populated, Chicago
might become a point in the line of communication between the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi; but even the intercourse which would be
carried on through this channel would, he thought, be at all times a
limited one.

[Footnote 699: Keating, _Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's
River_, I, 163-65.]

From September, 1821, until June, 1823, the commander of Fort Dearborn
was Lieutenant-colonel John McNeil.[700] Colonel McNeil was a man of
interesting personality in many ways. Physically he was the rival of
General Scott for being the tallest and heaviest man in the army,
and the equal in size of "Long John" Wentworth, Chicago's well-known
editor, mayor, and congressman.[701] He was a soldier of the War of
1812, during the course of which he was twice brevetted for gallant
conduct, the first time in the battle of Chippewa and the second in
the battle of Niagara.[702] Mrs. McNeil was a half-sister of Franklin
Pierce, later President of the United States. She was described over
half a century later, by one who as a young soldier had come under
her influence, as a "most estimable woman," whose kindness and wise
counsels had had a beneficial influence on his whole life.[703] For a
daughter born to Mrs. McNeil at Fort Dearborn the father subsequently
claimed the distinction of having been the first child born in the
new fort.[704] Their only son, Lieutenant J. Winfield Scott McNeil,
who died in 1837 of wounds received in a battle with the Seminole
Indians,[705] was a young boy during the time his father was stationed
at Fort Dearborn.

[Footnote 700: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns.]

[Footnote 701: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 24-25. In 1857 Wentworth was
said to be the tallest man in Chicago, measuring about six feet and a
half and weighing two hundred and thirty pounds (Chicago Magazine, I,
399).]

[Footnote 702: Heitman, _Dictionary of the United States Army_, I, 679.]

[Footnote 703: Van Cleve, _Three Score Years and Ten_, 31.]

[Footnote 704: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 24.]

[Footnote 705: _Ibid._, Heitman, _op. cit._, I, 679.]

James Watson Webb, who later acquired national renown as editor,
politician, and diplomat, was stationed at Fort Dearborn as a young
Heutenant during a part of the period of McNeil's incumbency as
commander. The descendant of an old New York family, Webb ran away from
home at the age of seventeen, and going to Washington secured as the
result of a personal interview with Calhoun, then Secretary of War, a
commission in the army. In October, 1821, he joined the Fort Dearborn
garrison and remained here until the following June. Webb's service
at Fort Dearborn was marked by a bold and arduous exploit. Toward the
end of January, 1822, John Kinzie, who was then acting as sub-Indian
agent, communicated to Colonel McNeil information which he had received
from a friendly Chippewa chief of a plot on the part of the Sioux and
Fox Indians to overwhelm the garrison at Fort Snelling on the upper
Mississippi the following spring.[706] It was desirable to send word
to Fort Armstrong of the plot, from which place the news could be
forwarded up the Mississippi to Fort Snelling. Lieutenant Webb, though
barely twenty years of age, volunteered for this service. Accompanied
by a sergeant and a Pottawatomie guide, he set out on February 4,
intending to proceed to the post of a French trader on the Rock River
and there secure a Winnebago guide for the remainder of the trip. Upon
reaching there, however, he found the Winnebagoes celebrating their
war dance. To secure a guide from them was out of the question. During
the night Webb and his companion set out, ostensibly to return to
Chicago, but in reality to make their way across the prairie to Fort
Armstrong. The weather was bitterly cold and they were exposed to the
double danger of death from freezing and of being intercepted by the
Indians. Neither materialized, however, and in due time Webb's message
was delivered to the commander at Fort Armstrong.

[Footnote 706: For Webb's account of the affair see his letter to John
Wentworth, October 31, 1882, in Chicago Historical Society library,
and Andrews, _Biographical Sketch of James Watson Webb_, 11-15. For
Kinzie's report of the plot to Cass, February 1, 1822, see Indian
Department, Cass correspondence.]

In May, 1823, an order was issued from Washington for the evacuation
of Fort Dearborn, and the following autumn the garrison departed.[707]
Doctor Alexander Wolcott, who had succeeded Jouett as Indian agent at
Chicago, continued to serve in this capacity until his death in 1830.
In July, 1823, he married Ellen Marion, the eldest daughter of John
Kinzie's second family,[708] and upon the removal of the garrison took
up his residence in the fort. The circumstances of Wolcott's marriage
well illustrate the primitive conditions which prevailed at Chicago
in this period. There was no justice of the peace, minister of the
gospel, or other person at Chicago authorized to solemnize marriages.
It chanced that William S. Hamilton, son of the famous statesman,
Alexander Hamilton, who had adopted a roving life in the wilderness of
northern Illinois, had taken a contract to supply the garrison at Fort
Howard with beef cattle. John Hamlin, one of the early residents of
Peoria who held a commission as justice of the peace, had accompanied
Hamilton on a trip to Green Bay with a drove of cattle. On the return
journey he reached Chicago about July 20, and advantage was taken of
his presence by the prospective bride and groom to have their marriage
ceremony performed.

[Footnote 707: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 47; _Drennan Papers_, Fort
Dearborn post returns.]

[Footnote 708: McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 99.]

With the garrison departed most of the life at Chicago. During the
next few years little occurred to interrupt the monotonous course of
existence. Rarely a new settler, attracted by the presence of relatives
who had gone before, or lured westward by the hope of improving his
material condition, would direct his steps to Chicago. Periodically the
Indians, who still held possession of the country tributary to Chicago,
would assemble to receive their annuities, the payment of which had
been stipulated in various treaties. At such times the place teemed
with savages and excitement for a few days, during which the traders
reaped a golden harvest. Finally in 1827 occurred the Winnebago War,
which for a time furnished plenty of excitement for Chicago, and led
eventually to the reoccupation of Fort Dearborn by a garrison of United
States troops.




CHAPTER XIII

THE INDIAN TRADE


To omit from the history of early Chicago an account of the Indian
trade would be like giving the play of Hamlet with the principal
character left out. Its origin is coeval with the advent of the white
man in this region; and until almost the close of the period covered
by this volume it constituted the basis of the commerce of the region
tributary to the upper Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin. With the
advance of the settler into the Northwest the wild game receded before
him; and its disappearance marked the passing of the Indian trade, soon
to be followed by the red man himself. As a rule, the first white man
to penetrate the wilderness was the trader, and the Indian's conception
of the white race was based upon his intercourse with the traders,
the class of whites with whom he was most familiar. Upon these he was
dependent for the gun, ammunition, and other supplies which quickly
became essential to his existence; and most of the problems which grew
out of the contact of the two races centered around the conduct of the
Indian trade.

As early as 1675, Marquette found French traders had entered Illinois
and established themselves below Chicago, in the vicinity, apparently,
of the junction of the Des Plaines River with the Kankakee.[709] Thus
early, too, certain of the Indians themselves had turned traders, and
Marquette was attended, on his second visit to Illinois, by a party
of Illinois Indians who were returning from Canada with merchandise
to trade with the members of their own race for furs.[710] One of
the party, named Chachagwessiou, was "greatly esteemed" among his
nation because, in part at least, he was engaged in the fur trade; and
this, in spite of the fact that he and his associates subjected their
kinsmen to the same extortion as did the white traders. That it was
primarily for the sake of the fur trade that the French valued the
country is a fact easily demonstrable. The economic foundation of La
Salle's colony was the Indian trade which he expected to develop. For
its exclusive possession he sought and obtained the royal license, and
against interlopers upon his privileged monopoly he waged relentless
warfare. With his death the license to carry on trade at Fort St. Louis
passed to his faithful Heutenant, Tonty, For many years from his lofty
stronghold he continued to trade with the Indians of the surrounding
region. But the French government looked upon the enterprise with a
jealous eye, and early in the eighteenth century at its request Tonty's
establishment at the rock of St. Louis was abandoned and he himself
departed for lower Louisiana, where he shortly met his death.

[Footnote 709: _Jesuit Relations_, LIX, 175 ff.]

[Footnote 710: _Ibid._, LIX, 165, 167, 175 _et passim_.]

During the greater part of the eighteenth century there was, as far as
known, no civilized establishment at Chicago, That traders may have
established themselves here for a shorter or longer time is entirely
possible, but there was no regular French post here as has often been
stated. Until the end of the French régime the trade of the territory
around Chicago found outlet at the neighboring posts. The nearest of
these was St. Joseph, but there were others at Mackinac, Green Bay,
Ouiatanon, and in the French settlements of lower Illinois.[711]

[Footnote 711: For the posts of the interior and their trade, toward
the close of the French régime, see Bougainville's memoir in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XVIII, 167 ff.]

The first trading establishment at Chicago of which we have any
certain knowledge was that of Baptiste Point du Sable in the latter
years of the eighteenth century. Hugh Heward, who in 1790 passed from
Lake Michigan by way of the Chicago Portage to the Illinois, tarried
at Chicago a day to prepare for the further journey. He exchanged
his canoe for a pirogue belonging to Du Sable, and bought from him a
quantity of flour and pork, for which he gave in exchange thirteen
yards of cotton cloth.[712] How long Du Sable continued to reside here
or how extensive was his trade is somewhat conjectural. It is evident
that during the closing years of the century the St. Joseph traders,
Burnett and Kinzie, at times extended their trading operations around
the lake as far as Chicago. It is evident, too, from the fact that when
the garrison came in 1803 there were four traders' huts here, that
still other traders had established themselves at Chicago for a shorter
or longer period.[713]

[Footnote 712: Heward, _Journal_.]

[Footnote 713: See in this connection the letters of William Burnett,
the St. Joseph trader, in Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 49-70,
_passim_.]

So far as existing records are concerned, the first quarter of the
nineteenth century marks the heyday of the Indian trade at Chicago.
The establishment of the garrison here not only attracted traders
and others, as in the case of Kinzie, but it also resulted in the
handing down of more numerous and extensive accounts of the trading
activities of this region than had ever been done before. Perhaps the
most important private source of information for the period prior to
1812 is the transcript of names in Kinzie's account books.[714] Far
overshadowing this in importance for the whole period from 1805 to
1822, however, are the records of the Department of Indian Trade, which
maintained a government factory at Chicago.

[Footnote 714: _Barry Transcript_.]

The trading operations of Kinzie during the first period of his
residence at Chicago were evidently of considerable importance. An
entry at St. Joseph in April, 1804, less than a month before the
removal to Chicago, shows that the sum of two hundred and forty-five
pounds was invested in a single "adventure" at Peoria. That similar
enterprises were being simultaneously conducted appears from an entry
a week later concerning "Billy Caldwell's adventure." At Chicago, in
addition to the trade he himself conducted and the "adventures" he
financed, Kinzie was in partnership with his half-brother, Thomas
Forsyth, during the entire period prior to 1812. Although the
articles of indenture of Jeffrey Nash describe Kinzie and Forsyth as
"Merchants of Chicago,"[715] Forsyth was stationed at Peoria until his
establishment was broken up by Captain Craig's militia in the late
autumn of 1812. In Kinzie's account book under date of June 13, 1806,
settlements with four individuals, amounting in all to fourteen hundred
and thirty-one pounds, are noted. The names of these men, Sigrain,
Bourbonnais, LaVoy, and Maisonneuf, furnish a typical illustration of
the nationality of the men who conducted the Illinois fur trade in the
first decade of the nineteenth century.

[Footnote 715: _Supra_, p. 150-52.]

Some individual entries taken at random from Kinzie's account books
may be of interest as showing the prices that prevailed at Chicago
a century ago. Thirty bushels of corn sold in 1805 for forty-five
dollars. The same year, however, two bushels were sold by Kinzie to
Ramsey Crooks for five dollars. Another entry for 1806 states that
tobacco sold at fifty cents a pound; whisky at fifty cents a quart;
powder at $1.50 a pound; and shot at thirty-three cents a pound. In May
of this year butter was quoted at fifty cents, the same price which
Kinzie paid at Detroit ten years later for a shipment of ten pounds
sent on his first Chicago adventure after the return of the garrison
to Fort Dearborn. This same "adventure" included two barrels of whisky
invoiced at ten shillings or $1.25 a gallon. A comparison of this with
the selling price already noted of fifty cents a quart would seem to
indicate that the profit from the sale of fire-water proceeded mainly
from the dilution of it with water, which the traders customarily
practiced. Returning to 1806, flour is priced at ten cents a pound,
while the pay of six boatmen, hired to assist in pulling a trader's
craft up the river, is fifty cents a day. In 1810 raisins sold for four
shillings and tea for twenty shillings a pound; while the price of "1
tyson" which Jouett ordered was thirty shillings. "A silver brooch for
six rats," "2 large silver crosses, $7.50," and "Francis Bourbonnaé Dr.
to 1 negro wench sold him by Indenture £160" are entries which suggest
their own explanation.

It seems evident that the fur trade of Illinois in the period under
consideration was of considerable magnitude. "I had no idea of
there being so extensive a trade carried on in that quarter," wrote
Colonel Kingsbury to Captain Whistler in the fall of 1804, in reply
to an inventory which the latter had sent him of peltries passing
Fort Dearborn the preceding spring.[716] The operations of Kinzie
and Forsyth could have constituted but a small part of the fur trade
of Illinois at this period. In the spring of 1805 Kingsbury was
himself at Chicago, seeking to conduct a company of soldiers down
the Illinois River to establish a new fort near the mouth of the
Missouri.[717] Whistler had been ordered to secure suitable boats for
the transportation of the detachment, but his efforts to do so had been
unavailing. Upon Kingsbury's arrival at Chicago, however, he succeeded
in securing two traders' bateaux on condition that the goods, amounting
to one hundred packs of peltry and ten bags, should be transported to
Mackinac in the brig "Adams," which had brought the troops to Chicago.
A few entries from Kinzie's account book will serve further to show
the extent of the trade which passed through Chicago. June 14, 1806,
Ouilmette is charged with the hire of a wagon and oxen to transport a
trader's goods to the forks of the Illinois River. Three weeks later
Hugh Pattinson and Company become indebted to Kinzie for the labor of
four men for six days each pulling boats up the river, and at the same
time for the portage of one hundred and fifty-six packs of peltries. In
July, 1807, Kinzie transported forty-six packs across the portage for
James Aird, and in the same month on two occasions transported enough
for Auguste Chouteau to incur charges of almost forty pounds. A similar
entry in July, 1808, charges Chouteau with two hundred and fifty-six
dollars for carrying one hundred and twenty-eight packs from Mount
Joliet to Chicago.

[Footnote 716: _Kingsbury Papers_, Whistler to Kingsbury, August 14,
1804; Kingsbury to Whistler, September 10, 1804.]

[Footnote 717: For this expedition see _ibid._, Gushing to Kingsbury,
February 20, 1805; Kingsbury to Smith, June 2, 1805; Smith to
Kingsbury, June 1, 1805; Kingsbury to Brevoort, June 2, 1805; Kingsbury
to Williamson, July 10, 1805, _et passim_.]

The government factory or trading house constituted a notable feature
of the Indian trade at Chicago after 1805. The policy of the government
toward the red man which found expression in the factory system was
fraught with such significance, not only for the Indian trade, but also
for the larger subject of the relations between the two races, that
it seems desirable at this point to present a somewhat comprehensive
account of it. The origin of the policy of government trading houses
dates from the early colonial period. In the Plymouth and Jamestown
settlements all industry was at first controlled by the commonwealth,
and in Massachusetts Bay the stock company had reserved to itself the
trade in furs before leaving England.[718] In the last-named colony
a notable experiment was carried on during the first half of the
eighteenth century in conducting "truck houses" for the Indians. About
the close of this period Benjamin Franklin, whose attention had been
called to the abuses which the Indians of the Pennsylvania frontier
suffered at the hands of the private traders, investigated the workings
of the Massachusetts system and recommended the establishment of public
trading houses at suitable places along the frontier.[719]

[Footnote 718: Turner, _Indian Trade in Wisconsin_, 58.]

[Footnote 719: Franklin, _Works_, II, 221. The letter is not certainly
by Franklin, but he is supposed to have been its author. See _ibid._,
217, footnote.]

The first step toward a national system of Indian trading
establishments was taken during the opening throes of the Revolution.
The establishment of friendly relations with the Indians appeared to
the second Continental Congress a matter of the "utmost moment."[720]
Accordingly it was resolved, July 12, 1775, to establish three Indian
departments, a northern, a middle, and a southern, with appropriate
powers for supervising the relations of the United Colonies with the
Indians. In November of the same year a committee, of which Franklin
was a member, was directed to devise a plan for carrying on trade with
the Indians, and ways and mean for procuring the goods proper for
it.[721]

[Footnote 720: _Journals of the Continental Congress_, II, 174.]

[Footnote 721: _Ibid._, III, 350, 365, 366.]

Acting upon the report of this committee, in January, 1776, the
Congress adopted a series of resolutions outlining a general system
of governmental supervision of the Indian trade, and appropriating
the sum of forty thousand pounds to purchase goods for it.[722] These
were to be disposed of by licensed traders, acting under instructions
laid down by the commissioners, and under bond to them to insure
compliance with the prescribed regulations. The following month
Congress further manifested its good intentions toward the native
race by passing resolutions expressing its faith in the benefits to
accrue from the propagation of the gospel and the civil arts among the
red men, and directing the commissioners of Indian affairs to report
suitable places in their departments for establishing schoolmasters
and ministers of the gospel.[723] Owing to the exigencies of the war,
however, these plans for the establishment of a trading system and for
the civilization of the Indians were alike frustrated. The struggle
with the mother country absorbed all the energies and resources of
the Revolutionary government. How this affected the prosecution of
the plans for the Indian Departments, which had been entered upon so
hopefully in the beginning of the war, is sufficiently shown by the
fact that the expenses of the government in behalf of the Indians fell
from two hundred and sixty-one thousand dollars in 1776 to thirty-five
hundred dollars in 1779; and the total amount for the five years from
1779 to 1783 inclusive was less than one-tenth the sum spent in the
single year 1776.[724]

[Footnote 722: _Ibid._, IV, 96-98.]

[Footnote 723: _Ibid._, IV, III.]

[Footnote 724: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 210. The
sum spent in 1776 was $261,783.44; for the five years from 1779 to 1783
inclusive it was $25,641.34.]

During the period of the Confederation the subject of the Indian trade
was frequently acted upon by Congress, but no systematic effort was
made to regulate it until 1786. In that year an ordinance was passed
dividing the Indian Department into two districts and appointing a
superintendent and a deputy for each.[725] They were to execute the
regulations of Congress relating to Indian affairs, and to grant
licenses to trade with the Indians. Only citizens of the United States
whose good moral character had been certified to by the governor of a
state were eligible to licenses; they were to run for one year and to
be granted upon the payment of fifty dollars and the execution of a
bond to insure compliance with the established regulations. To engage
in trade without a license incurred a penalty of five hundred dollars
and forfeiture of goods.

[Footnote 725: For a sketch of the relations of the government with the
Indians see the report of Calhoun, Secretary of War, to Congress in
1816 (_American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 181 ff.); for the
act of 1786 see _ibid._, I, 14.]

This was, apparently, a judicious system, but the government of the
Confederation had about run its course, and the general paralysis
which overtook it, and the confusion incident to the change to a new
form of government, prevented the new policy toward the Indians from
being carried into effect. Prominent among the problems which the new
national government found pressing upon it for solution was the subject
of Indian relations and, in this connection, the question of the
regulation of the Indian trade. In 1790 the licensing system of 1786
was temporarily adopted, but shorn of some of its valuable features.
There was no prohibition against foreigners and no fee was required
for a license. This system was continued without essential change
until 1816, when an act was passed prohibiting foreigners from trading
with Indians of the United States, except by special permission of the
President and under such regulations as he should prescribe.

The young government shortly entered upon the most serious Indian war
in all its history, and not until one of its armies had been repulsed
and another destroyed did Anthony Wayne succeed, in 1795, in bringing
the hostile red men to recognize the superior might of the nation he
represented. At the close of this war Congress, at the instigation
of Washington, determined to experiment with another system of
conducting the Indian trade. In the session of 1795, stirred up by the
repeated recommendations of Washington, that body debated a bill for
the establishment of Indian trading houses.[726] Though the bill was
defeated at this time its purpose as stated by its supporters is worth
noting. It was regarded as constituting a part only of a comprehensive
frontier policy; this policy embraced the threefold design of the
military protection of the frontier against Indian invasions, the legal
protection of the Indian country against predatory white incursions,
and the establishment of trading houses to supply the wants of the
Indians and free them from foreign influence. It was believed that
these three things embraced in one system would bring about the great
desideratum, peace on the frontier; but that without the last the other
parts of the plan would prove totally ineffectual.

[Footnote 726: _Annals of Congress_, 3d Congress, 1262-63.]

The defeat of the advocates of the system of government trading houses
in 1795 was neither final nor complete. Their principal measure had
failed of passage, but at this same session Congress appropriated the
sum of fifty thousand dollars to begin the establishment of public
trading houses,[727] and two were accordingly started among the
Cherokees. Creeks, and Chickasaws of the Southwest. The next year a
second act was passed, carrying an appropriation of one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, in addition to an annual allowance for the
payment of agents and clerks.[728] The President was authorized to
establish trading houses at such places as he saw fit for carrying on
a "liberal trade" with the Indians. The agents and clerks employed
were prohibited from engaging in trade on their own account, and were
required to give bonds for the faithful performance of their duties.
The act was to run for two years, and the trade was to be so conducted
that the capital sum should suffer no diminution.

[Footnote 727: _Ibid._, 4th Congress, 1st session, 152; _American State
Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 583.]

[Footnote 728: _Annals of Congress_, 4th Congress, 1st session, 282-85;
for the act itself, see _ibid._, 4th Congress, 2d session, 2889-90.]

Notwithstanding the appropriation and act of 1796, for several
years no extension of the system of trading houses beyond the two
experimental establishments of 1795 was attempted; nor did the
government avail itself, to any considerable extent, of the money
appropriated for this purpose. The total amount appropriated in 1795
and 1796 was two hundred thousand dollars. In December, 1801, the
Secretary of War reported that only ninety thousand dollars of this
amount had been drawn upon, and that the number of trading houses was
still limited to the two that had been first established.[729] Even
the act authorizing the system had expired in 1799, and in spite of
repeated recommendations to Congress in the matter no action had been
taken to renew it.

[Footnote 729: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 653-55.]

In the debates over the passage of the Act of 1796 it was made evident
that even the supporters of the measure regarded it in the light of an
experiment.[730] The recent war had cost one and a half million dollars
annually; it was worth while to try another method of securing peace
on the frontier. Since the Canadian trading company was too powerful
for individual Americans to compete successfully with it the government
must assume the task. If upon trial the plan should prove a failure,
it could be abandoned. On the other hand it was objected that public
bodies should not engage in trade, which was always managed better by
individuals; fraud and loss could not be guarded against; nor should
the people be taxed for the sake of maintaining trade with the Indians.
In spite of these objections and prophecies, the report of 1801 showed
that the original capital had suffered no diminution, but had, in
fact, been slightly increased; this, too, despite losses that had been
incurred through the failure of the sales agent, to whom the peltries
had been assigned, to dispose of them before many had become ruined.

[Footnote 730: _Annals of Congress_, 4th Congress, 1st session, 220-32.]

It remains to speak of the degree of success achieved in the broad
objects for the attainment of which the system had been inaugurated.
Concerning this the report of the Secretary of War in 1801 was entirely
favorable.[731] As far as it had been established the effects of the
system upon the disposition of the Indians had been very salutary. The
several tribes were desirous of participating in its advantages, and
no doubt was felt that its extension would be attended by all the good
effects originally contemplated by the government, and this without any
diminution of the original fund.

[Footnote 731: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 653-55.]

Two years later, in January, 1803, Jefferson stated in a message
to Congress that private traders, both foreign and domestic, were
being undersold and driven from competition, that the system was
effective in conciliating the good will of the Indians, and that
they were soliciting generally the establishment of trading houses
among them.[732] At the same time the Secretary of War reported the
establishment of four new stations, at Detroit, Fort Wayne, Chickasaw
Bluffs, and among the Choctaws, to which the remainder of the money
appropriated in 1796 had been applied.[733] This remained the number
until 1805, when four more were established: at Arkansas on the
Arkansas River, at Nachitoches on the Red River, at Belle Fontaine
near the mouth of the Missouri, and at Chicago.[734] The following
year a trading house was established at Sandusky on Lake Erie, and in
1808 three more, at Mackinac, at Fort Osage, and at Fort Madison.[735]
Meanwhile the two original houses had been removed to new locations and
two others, those at Detroit and at Belle Fontaine, had been abandoned.

[Footnote 732: _Ibid._, I, 684.]

[Footnote 733: _Ibid._, I, 683.]

[Footnote 734: Report of John Mason, Superintendent of Indian Trade,
April 12, 1810, _ibid._, I, 768 ff.]

[Footnote 735: _Ibid._]

From 1808 until the beginning of the War of 1812 there were thus
twelve factories in operation. At each was stationed an agent, or
factor, and at most an assistant, or clerk, as well. The salaries of
the former prior to 1810 ranged from $750 to $1,250, in most cases
not exceeding $1,000; the pay of the latter from $250 to $650; in
both cases subsistence was granted in addition.[736] In 1810 the
superintendent of the trade estimated that of the total amount of
$280,000, which had been invested in the business, $235,000 still
remained; the loss in the capital invested to this date was therefore,
in round numbers, $45,000.[737] The four-year period ending in 1815,
on the other hand, in spite of the disturbance to trade which attended
the operations of the War of 1812, produced a profit of almost
$60,000.[738] Approximately three-fourths of this gain was swallowed up
in the destruction, during the war, of the factories at Chicago, Fort
Wayne, Sandusky, Mackinac, and Fort Madison; but this was the fortune
of war and not in any way the fault of the system.

[Footnote 736: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 737: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 738: Report of Crawford, Secretary of War, March 13, 1816,
_ibid._, II, 26-28.]

The establishment of a factory at Chicago was determined upon in the
spring of 1805, and on March 19 Ebenezer Belknap of Connecticut was
commissioned as factor.[739] The factory at Detroit was to be abandoned
and the goods and furniture for the factor's dwelling to be removed to
Chicago.[740] To supplement the stock of goods for the Indian trade
removed from Detroit an initial invoice of new goods to the value
of eight thousand dollars was ordered to be sent to Detroit for the
Chicago factory.[741] Belknap's instructions shed much light upon the
practice followed when a new factory was to be established. He was
to receive a salary of $1,000 a year and in addition to this $365 in
lieu of subsistence.[742] He was empowered to employ, if necessary, a
"principal clerk" at a salary not to exceed $500; if a young man could
be procured for the place at a salary of $200 or $300, this was to be
done. When a new factory was established an allowance to the factor of
$200 for household furniture and domestic utensils and $25 yearly for
the same purpose after the first year was made. Since Belknap was to
take over the outfit of the Detroit factory his initial allowance for
this purpose was reduced to $100.

[Footnote 739: Belknap's commission, Indian Office, Letter Book B, 69.
In some cases two or more of these letter books are designated in the
same way. In such cases the volume in question can be determined by
taking account of the dates of the contents.]

[Footnote 740: _Ibid._, 72, War Department (unsigned) to Belknap, April
12, 1805; _ibid._, 438, Dearborn to John Johnston, June 3, 1805.]

[Footnote 741: _Ibid._, 68, John Smith to William Davy, April 12, 1805.]

[Footnote 742: Belknap's commission, _ibid._, 69; his instructions,
April 12, 1805, _ibid._, 72.]

The establishment of the Chicago factory was not unattended with
difficulties. Munroe, the Detroit factor, was indisposed to surrender
the public property in his possession, and much embarrassment was
experienced on this account.[743] Scarcely had Belknap had time to
proceed to his destination when warning came to the War Department
that his character was not what it should be.[744] Our information
concerning the difficulty is but scanty, but the outlines of the
situation are clear. An investigation into the fitness of Belknap for
the position was instituted,[745] and as a precautionary measure it
was decided to appoint a "suitable character" as his assistant, with
instructions to report faithfully to the War Department concerning
the character and conduct of his superior.[746] Apparently the
investigation confirmed the charges against Belknap, for before the end
of November the choice of a successor to him was being considered,[747]
and on December 31, 1805, the luckless factor's services at Chicago
terminated.[748] He was superseded by Thomas Hayward, who had been
acting as his assistant since the third of the preceding October.
Belknap proceeded to Washington, and in a preliminary interview with
his superiors gave such an account of himself as to imbue them with
the belief that partisan rancor had been responsible for the charges
preferred against him.[749] With this our information concerning the
matter abruptly terminates, and we can only hope that the fuller
investigation established his innocence of the charge against him.

[Footnote 743: Various letters in the Indian Office letter books refer
to this difficulty, particularly one from the War Department (unsigned)
to William Davy, Superintendent of Indian Trade, May 17, 1805 (Letter
Book B, 76). I have not been able to learn how the trouble was finally
settled.]

[Footnote 744: Indian Office, Letter Book B, 104, War Department to
William Davy, August 31, 1805.]

[Footnote 745: _Ibid._, 104, War Department to Davy, August 31, 1805;
_ibid._, 136, War Department to Davy, November 22, 1805.]

[Footnote 746: _Ibid._, 104, War Department to Davy, September 26,
1805.]

[Footnote 747: _Ibid._, 136, War Department to Davy, November 22, 1805.]

[Footnote 748: Indian Office, Letter Book A, 94, John Mason to Davy,
March 10, 1808.]

[Footnote 749: Indian Office, Letter Book B, 218, War Department to
Davy, May 12, 1806.]

Thomas Hayward continued in charge of the Chicago factory until the
spring of 1807, when he resigned his appointment. No successor could
be found at once, and accordingly Jouett, the Indian agent, was asked
to take temporary charge of the factory,[750] A few weeks later the
President of the United States "approbated" the appointment of Joseph
B. Varnum, a clerk in the War Department, to the vacant position.[751]
Varnum came highly recommended by his superiors, and his services as
factor gave equal satisfaction to his new employer. "No young man
possess[es] more purity of morals or integrity of Character," wrote
his superior at the time he was appointed to his new position, and he
further expressed the conviction that Varnum would perform his new
duties with "perfect fidelity."[752]

[Footnote 750: _Ibid._, 304, War Department to General John Shee,
Superintendent of Indian Trade, May 12, 1807; _ibid._, 314, War
Department to Jouett, May 19, 1807.]

[Footnote 751: _Ibid._, 318, War Department to Shee, June 6, 1807.]

[Footnote 752: Indian Office, Letter Book B. The letter is unsigned but
probably was written by Dearborn.]

Varnum took up his new work at Chicago the last of August. The invoice
of the household furniture belonging to the factory made on this date
by Jouett and Kinzie is still preserved.[753] His predecessors had not
made use of the full $200 allowed for this purpose, apparently, for the
invoice shows the total original cost of the equipment to have been
$142.87. The appraisers estimated the present value of the articles at
about 80 per cent of the original cost. The meager equipment included
six chairs, one table, and one camp and two cot bedsteads; the most
prominent items among the kitchen utensils being two brass and four tin
kettles, valued at fifteen dollars.

[Footnote 753: Department of Indian Trade, Chicago invoice book.]

In 1808 it was decided to establish a factory at Mackinac. Under the
impression that Varnum preferred this station to the one at Chicago the
appointment was made, and Matthew Irwin of Philadelphia was designated
to succeed Varnum at Chicago.[754] Varnum, too late, protested against
his transfer, preferring to remain at Chicago, but the appointment of
Irwin had already been made, and it was decided that the arrangement
could not be altered. Irwin's salary and subsistence was fixed at
$1,165, $200 less than his predecessor had been given.[755] He was
expected to proceed to Chicago at once, and to arrive there in time
to permit Varnum to open the factory at Mackinac the same season.
This plan miscarried, however. Irwin in charge of a consignment of
goods went as far as Albany; here the goods were stored and the factor
returned to Philadelphia to pass the winter. In the spring of 1809
he again started for Chicago.[756] His tenure as factor lasted three
years. The outbreak of war in 1812 terminated the usefulness of the
factory for the time being, and Irwin proceeded to wind up its affairs.
The stock of furs on hand was sent by vessel to Mackinac, only to fall
into the hands of the British. On July 5 Irwin left Chicago, having
closed the storehouse and delivered the keys to Doctor Van Voorhis.[757]

[Footnote 754: Indian Office, Letter Book A, 196, John Mason to Matthew
Irwin, August 8, 1808; Letter Book B, 436, War Department to Irwin, May
6, 1809.]

[Footnote 755: Indian Office, Letter Book A, 196, Mason to Irwin,
August 8, 1808.]

[Footnote 756: _Ibid._, 348, Mason to Irwin, May 6, 1809.]

[Footnote 757: Indian Office, Letter Book C, 131, Mason to Irwin,
February 9, 1813.]

With the plans for the restoration of the Chicago factory after the war
Irwin was again appointed factor, but before the factory had actually
been established his appointment was changed from Chicago to Green
Bay. His was the only incumbency of the latter factory, his service
there continuing from its establishment in 1816 to the abandonment of
the factory system six years later. Irwin returned to Pennsylvania,
his native state, where he died in 1845.[758] He was of medium height,
well proportioned, "of pleasing deportment, and quite interesting and
popular in his address."

[Footnote 758: For a sketch, of Irwin's life see _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, VII, 269-70.]

From the records of the Department of Indian Trade, and the reports
of the Superintendent printed in the volumes of the American State
Papers devoted to Indian affairs, considerable information concerning
the operations of the Chicago factory can be gleaned. The buildings of
the factory cost $1,000, and the value of the furniture prior to the
war was placed at $134.31.[759] The operations for the four-year period
ending September 30, 1811, produced a profit of $3,454.24.[760] This
favorable showing was due to the fact that the peltries received at the
Chicago factory consisted chiefly of hatters' furs on which a profit
was made, and shaved deer skins, which deteriorated comparatively
little in handling.[761] For the year ending April 1, 1812, the
business done at Chicago showed a profit of $1,773.94, a larger gain
than for any similar period thus far.[762] At the last-mentioned date
the stock on hand amounted to almost $12,500, and the total value of
the stock, buildings, peltries, and other assets was $13,727.15. When
Fort Dearborn was evacuated in the following August, Captain Heald
distributed the merchandise of the factory, amounting in value to more
than $6,000, among the Indians. Prior to this nearly $5,000 worth of
peltries and furs had been shipped to Mackinac, all of which, like
the peltries belonging to Kinzie and Forsyth, fell into the hands
of the British. Together with the loss incurred through debts owed
by the Indians or by members of the Fort Dearborn garrison, and the
destruction of the buildings and furniture of the factory, the total
loss of the Chicago factory was $13,074.47.[763]

[Footnote 759: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 770, 792.]

[Footnote 760: _Ibid._, 792.]

[Footnote 761: _Ibid._, 788, 792.]

[Footnote 762: _Ibid._, II, 40.]

[Footnote 763: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, U, 59.]

That the operations of the Chicago factory prior to the War of
1812 were, on the whole, successful, can scarcely be doubted. The
realization of a profit from the Indian trade had never entered into
the calculations of the founders of the factory system, yet, as has
been shown, a steady profit was realized from the Chicago factory,
at least from the year 1807 on. How well the factory fulfilled its
primary function of regulating the prices of the private traders is
significantly shown by the unconscious testimony of Black Partridge
and Petchaho, the latter the brother and successor of Gomo, the head
chief of the Illinois River Pottawatomies. In 1814 they complained to
Thomas Forsyth, who visited them as a representative of the United
States Indian Department, of the high prices of goods in the sutler's
store at Fort Clark. They pleaded that the United States take pity on
them and establish a factory at Fort Clark, and expressed the hope that
they would be able to get goods as cheap in this way "as they formerly
did in the factory at Chicago."[764] At another time Forsyth himself,
than whom no one was more familiar with the conditions affecting the
Indian trade in Illinois, stated that no one who bought his goods in
this country could sell them as cheaply as the factories. The British
traders only could oppose the factories, and this was possible because
of their extensive credit, and the superior quality of their goods.[765]

[Footnote 764: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 337.]

[Footnote 765: _Ibid._, XI, 344.]

[Illustration: MRS. REBEKAH HEALD

From a daguerreotype taken in later life

(By courtesy of Mrs. Lillian Heald Richmond, St. Louis. Missouri)]

From the time of its re-establishment in 1816 the factory was conducted
at Chicago until the abolition of the government trading-house system
in 1822; but the Chicago factory did not acquire during this time the
trade and influence enjoyed by the first factory in the period before
the War of 1812. The reasons for this failure to recover the old-time
influence will be set forth in connection with the consideration of the
failure and abolition of the factory system as a whole.

We have seen that the system of government trading houses was entered
upon as an experiment, and that as such it was renewed from time to
time. Congress never abolished the earlier system of licensed private
traders, and never gave a whole-hearted support to the competing
system. Herein lay the chief cause of the ultimate failure of the
experiment, and here, too, is to be found the principal reason for the
limited degree of influence and success achieved by the government
trading houses during its continuance. Upon the formation of the
American Fur Company by John Jacob Astor, that powerful corporation,
operating from Mackinac as a center, undertook to monopolize the Indian
trade of the Northwest. There ensued for a few years the most vigorous
exploitation of the fur trade which this region ever witnessed. The
American Fur Company, in connection with other private traders, was
antagonized by the government factory system, and consequently left no
stone unturned to overthrow it. Partly because of this, but in part
from the operation of other factors, to be noted in their place, the
trade of the Chicago and Green Bay factories largely disappeared prior
to 1820; and it had been decided, in fact, to discontinue them and
establish a new one on the St. Peter's River when Congress, under the
urging of Senator Benton, decided in 1822 to abolish the entire factory
system.

The system of government trading houses had been established under
the influence of a twofold motive. The primary consideration of
the government's Indian policy was the maintenance of peace on the
frontier. This could best be accomplished by rendering the Indian
contented, and by freeing him from the influence of foreigners. Not
merely his happiness, but his very existence depended upon his securing
from the whites those articles which he needed but which he himself
could not produce; and since the private traders took advantage of his
weakness and ignorance to exploit him outrageously in the conduct of
the Indian trade, it was argued that the welfare of the Indian would
be directly promoted, and indirectly the peace of the frontier be
conserved, by the establishment of government trading houses upon the
principles that have been indicated.

The theory underlying the government factory system seemed sound, but
in practice several obstacles to its successful working, powerful
enough in the aggregate to cause its abandonment, were encountered. Not
until 1816 was an act passed excluding foreigners from the trade, and
even then such exceptions were allowed as to render the prohibition of
little value.[766] The amount of money devoted to the factory system
was never sufficient to permit its extension to more than a small
proportion of the tribes. However well conducted the business may have
been, this fact alone would have prevented the attainment of the larger
measure of benefit that had been anticipated.

[Footnote 766: See report of the Committee on Indian Affairs to
Congress in 1817, in _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II,
127; Irwin-McKenney correspondence and report of Jedediah Morse in
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, VII, 269 ff.]

Another and inherent cause of failure lay in the difficulty of public
operation of a business so special and highly complicated in character
as the conduct of the Indian trade. Great shrewdness, intimate
knowledge of the native character, and a willingness to endure great
privations were among the qualifications essential to its successful
prosecution. The private trader was at home with the red man, his
livelihood depended upon his exertions, and he was free from the moral
restraints which governed the conduct of the government factor. Above
all he was his own master, free to adapt his course to the exigencies
of the moment; the factor was hampered by regulations prescribed by a
superintendent who resided far distant from the western country; and
he, in turn, by a Congress which commonly turned a deaf ear to his
repeated appeals for amendment of the act governing the conduct of
the trade. The factor's income was assured, regardless of the amount
of trade he secured; nor was he affected by losses due to errors of
judgment on his part, as was the private trader. Too often he had, at
the time of his appointment, no acquaintance with the Indian or with
the business put in his charge. To instance a single case, Jacob Varnum
at the time of his appointment to the Sandusky factory was a native
of rural New England, who had neither asked for nor desired such an
appointment. It is doubtful whether he had ever seen an Indian, and he
was certainly entirely without mercantile experience; yet he had for
competitors such men as John Kinzie, Thomas Forsyth, and Antoine De
Champs, men who had spent practically their whole lives in the Indian
trade.

The goods for the government trade must be bought in the United
States, and the peltries secured in its conduct must be sold here.
This worked disaster to the enterprise in various ways. From their
long experience in supplying the Indian trade the English had become
expert in the production of articles suited to the red man's taste.
It was impossible for the government, buying in the United States, to
match, in quality and in attractiveness to the Indian, the goods of
the Canadian trader. Even if English goods were purchased of American
importers, the factory system was handicapped by reason of the higher
price which must be paid. On the other hand the prohibition against
the exportation of peltries compelled the superintendent of the trade
to dispose of them in the American market. Experience proved that
the domestic demand for peltries, particularly for deer skins, did
not equal the supply; so that the restriction frequently occasioned
financial loss. But there were further restrictions in the act of
1806 which narrowed the choice of a market even within the United
States.[767] That these restrictions would operate to diminish the
business, and accordingly the influence of the government trading
houses, is obvious.

[Footnote 767: Report of the Superintendent of Indian Trade, January
16, 1809, _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 756; for the act
of 1806 see _Annals of Congress_, 9th Congress, 1st session, 1287-90.]

Another group of restrictions worked injury to the factory system
through their failure to accommodate the habits and desires of the
Indian. To trade with the government the Indian must come to the
factory. The private trader took his goods to the Indian. The red
man was notably lacking in prudence and thrift, and was careless and
heedless of the future. He was, too, a migratory being, his winters
being devoted to the annual hunt, which frequently carried him several
hundred miles away from his summer residence. Before setting out on
such a hunt he must secure a suitable equipment of supplies. Since he
never had money accumulated, this must be obtained on credit and be
paid for with the proceeds of the ensuing winter's hunt. The factor was
prohibited, for the most part, from extending such credit; the private
trader willingly granted it, and furthermore he frequently followed
the Indian on his hunt to collect his pay as fast as the furs were
taken. In such cases as the factor did extend credit to the Indian, the
private trader often succeeded in wheedling him out of the proceeds of
his hunt, leaving him nothing with which to discharge his debt to the
factor.

The greatest advantage, perhaps, enjoyed by the private trader
involved at the same time the most disgraceful feature connected
with the Indian trade. From the first association of the Indian with
the white race his love of liquor proved his greatest curse. The
literature of the subject abounds in narrations of this weakness, and
the unscrupulous way in which the white man took advantage of it. For
liquor the Indian would barter his all. It constituted an indispensable
part of the trader's outfit, and all of the government's prohibitions
against its use in the Indian trade were in vain, as had been those of
the French and British governments before it. The Indians themselves
realized their fatal weakness, but although they frequently protested
against the bringing of liquor to them, they were powerless to overcome
it. The factor had no whisky for the Indian, and consequently the
private trader secured his trade.

The remedy for this state of affairs is obvious. Either the government
should have monopolized the Indian trade, at the same time extending
the factory system to supply its demands; or else the factory system
should have been abandoned and the trade left entirely to private
individuals under suitable governmental regulation. The former course
had been urged upon Congress at various times, but no disposition to
adopt it had ever been manifested. The time had now arrived to adopt
the other alternative. Soon after Thomas Hart Benton entered the
Senate he urged upon Calhoun, then Secretary of War, the abolition
of the factory system. Calhoun's opinion of the Superintendent of
Indian Trade, Thomas L. McKenney, was such that he did not credit
Benton's charges of gross mismanagement, and accordingly he refused to
countenance the proposition.[768] This refusal led Benton to make an
assault upon the system, in the Senate.[769] In this two advantages
favored his success: as the inhabitant of a frontier state he was
presumed to have personal knowledge of the abuses of the system he was
attacking; and as a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs he was
specially charged with the legislative oversight of matters pertaining
to the Indians.

[Footnote 768: Benton, _Thirty Years View_, I, 21.]

[Footnote 769: For the debate see _Annals of Congress_, 17th Congress,
1st session, I, 317 ff. For the documents see _American State Papers,
Indian Affairs_, II, _passim_.]

Benton believed and labored to show that the original purpose of
the government trading houses had been lost sight of; that the
administration of the system had been marked by stupidity and fraud;
that the East had been preferred to the West by the Superintendent
of Indian Trade in making purchases and sales; in short that the
factory system constituted a great abuse, the continued maintenance
of which was desired only by those private interests which found a
profit therein. In view of all the circumstances of the situation his
conclusion that the government trading houses should be abolished
was probably wise; but the reasons on which he based this conclusion
were largely erroneous. His information was gained from such men as
Ramsey Crooks, then and for long years a leader in the councils of
the American Fur Company. This organization had a direct interest in
the overthrow of the factory system. Its estimate of the value of
the latter was about as disingenuous as would be the opinion today
of the leader of a liquor dealers' organization of the merits of the
Prohibition party. In view of the charges of Crooks it is pertinent
to inquire why, if the factory system was so innocuous, the American
Fur Company was so eager to destroy it; and if a monopoly of the fur
trade was so repugnant to the sense of fairness why was Crooks willing
to see his company replace the government of the United States in the
enjoyment of that monopoly?[770]

[Footnote 770: Chittenden, _American Fur Trade of the Far West_, I, 18.]

Benton's charge of fraud on the part of the superintendent and the
factors failed to convince the majority of the senators who spoke in
the debate, and the student of the subject today must conclude that the
evidence does not sustain them. There was more truth in his charges
with respect to unwise management of the enterprise; but for this
Congress, rather than the superintendent and factors, was primarily
responsible. It is evident, too, that in spite of his claim to speak
from personal knowledge, Benton might well have been better informed
about the subject of the Indian trade. One of his principal charges
concerned the unsuitability of the articles selected for it by the
superintendent. But the list of items which he read to support this
charge but partially supported his contention.[771] Upon one item,
eight gross of jews'-harps, the orator fairly exhausted his powers of
sarcasm and invective. Yet a fuller knowledge of the subject under
discussion would have spared him this effort. Ramsey Crooks could have
informed him that jews'-harps were a well-known article of the Indian
trade. Only a year before this tirade was delivered the American Fur
Company had supplied a single trader with four gross of these articles
for his winter's trade on the Mississippi.[772]

[Footnote 771: _Annals of Congress_, 17th Congress, 1st session, I,
319.]

[Footnote 772: American Fur Company invoices of goods sold to traders,
MSS in the Detroit Public Library. For similar invoices see _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XI, 377-79; _Michigan Pioneer Collections_,
XXXVII, 309-11. Mr. Lewis Beeson of Niles, Michigan, has several dozen
jews'-harps in his collection of relics from the site of old Fort St.
Joseph.]

Although Benton's charges so largely failed of substantiation, yet the
Senate approved his motion for the abolition of the factory system.
The reasons for this action are evident from the debate.[773] Even
his colleagues on the Committee of Indian Affairs did not accept
Benton's charges of maladministration. They reported the bill for
the abolition of the trading-house system in part because of their
objections to the system itself. It had never been extended to more
than a fraction of the Indians on the frontier; to extend it to all
of them would necessitate a largely increased capital, and would
result in a multiplication of the obstacles already encountered on
a small scale. The complicated nature of the Indian trade was such
that only individual enterprise and industry was fitted to conduct it
with success. Finally the old argument which had been wielded against
the initiation of the system, that it was not a proper governmental
function, was employed. The trade should be left to individuals, the
government limiting itself to regulating properly their activities.

[Footnote 773: See, for example, the arguments of Johnson and Lowrie,
_Annals of Congress_, 17th Congress, 1st session, I, 339-44.]

Benton's method of abolishing the factory system exhibited as little
evidence of statesmanship as did that employed by Jackson in his
more famous enterprise of destroying the second United States Bank.
In 1818 Calhoun, as Secretary of War, had been directed by Congress
to propose a plan for the abolition of the trading-house system. In
his report he pointed out that two objects should be held in view in
winding up its affairs : to sustain as little loss as possible, and to
withdraw from the trade gradually in order that the place vacated by
the government might be filled by others with as little disturbance as
practicable.[774] Neither of these considerations was heeded by Benton.
He succeeded in so changing the bill for the abolition of the system as
to provide that the termination of its affairs should be consummated
within a scant two months, and by another set of men than the factors
and superintendent.[775] That considerable loss should be incurred in
winding up such a business was inevitable. Calhoun's suggestions would
have minimized this as much as possible. Benton's plan caused the
maximum of loss to the government and of confusion to the Indian trade.
According to a report made to Congress in 1824 on the abolition of the
factory system, a loss of over 50 per cent of the capital stock was
sustained.[776]

[Footnote 774: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 181-85.]

[Footnote 775: _Annals of Congress_, 17th Congress, 1st session, I,
318, 351, 354.]

[Footnote 776: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 513.]

The journal of Jacob Varnum sheds some light upon the losses sustained
at the Chicago factory, by reason of the operation of Benton's
amendments. Varnum relates that A. B. Lindsay, "a hanger-on about the
offices for an appointment for years," superseded him in charge of the
factory. "After remaining in Chicago as long as his instructions would
permit without making any sale or collecting the debts, he packed all
the goods and shipped them to Detroit, where they were again offered
for sale; and were finally auctioned off without a guarantee of any
kind as to payment. They sold at good prices--the purchasers, not
intending to pay, were indifferent as to the prices offered, and, what
was foreseen in Detroit, no satisfaction of value was received by the
government, and Lindsay, a man without a single business qualification,
got credit for the prompt and satisfactory manner with which he had
closed the business, and subsequently received an appointment in the
Custom service."

These statements, coming from an interested source, should, of
course, be subjected to due scrutiny; but in at least one respect
they receive confirmation from Lindsay himself. In 1823 in the course
of a congressional investigation into the closing up of the Indian
trading houses, under cross-examination at the hands of McKenney, the
deposed superintendent, Lindsay stated that he had never been engaged
in the Indian trade, and that he did not know the proper weight of a
three-point northwest blanket, nor what its dimensions should be.[777]
It further appears from the financial statement rendered by him that
though the property at Chicago invoiced nearly $16,000 he turned over
to the government less than $1,250 in cash, the two principal items in
his account consisting, in round numbers, of bills receivable to the
amount of $5,000 and losses on sales of $7,000.[778]

[Footnote 777: _Ibid._, 420.]

[Footnote 778: _Ibid._, 518.]

The failure of the trading-house system constitutes but one chapter
in the long and sorrowful story of the almost total failure of the
government of the United States to realize in practice its good
intentions toward the Indians. The factory system was entered upon from
motives of prudence and humanity; that it was productive of beneficial
results cannot be successfully disputed; that it failed to achieve
the measure of benefit to the red race and the white for which its
advocates had hoped must be attributed by the student, as it was by
Calhoun, "not to a want of dependence on the part of the Indians on
commercial supplies but to defects in the system itself, or in its
administration."[779] The fatal error arose from the timidity of the
government. Instead of monopolizing the field of the Indian trade, it
entered upon it as the competitor of the private trader. Since its
agents could not stoop to the practices to which the latter resorted,
the failure of the experiment was a foregone conclusion. Yet it did
not follow from this failure that with a monopoly of the field the
government would not have rendered better service to the public than
did the private traders. Lacking the courage of its convictions, it
permitted the failure of perhaps the most promising experiment for the
amelioration of the condition of the red man upon which it has ever
embarked.

[Footnote 779: _Ibid._, 181-85.]




CHAPTER XIV

WAR AND THE PLAGUE


Almost a dozen years had passed since the coming of Captain Bradley's
troops to Chicago to plant again the banner of civilization on the spot
where savagery had triumphed in 1812, and nearly half as many since
the garrison had been withdrawn from Fort Dearborn in 1823, when the
humdrum quiet of the little settlement was broken by new rumors of war.
Two Indian wars and a visitation of war's twin scourge of humanity, the
plague, coming in quick succession, served to relieve the monotony of
life at Chicago during the next few years.

The first of the Indian outbreaks, the Winnebago War, occasioned little
actual fighting, but it filled the frontier settlements with alarm,
caused the movement of several hundred soldiers, many of them for
hundreds of miles, and was concluded by a formal treaty between the
United States and the disaffected tribes. That it was not attended by
more bloodshed was due to the prompt display by the government of an
overwhelming military force which awed the red man into submission.

Driven to desperation by the encroachments and aggressions of the
whites, and encouraged, possibly, by the removal of the garrisons
from Chicago and Prairie du Chien, the Winnebagoes in the summer of
1827 were in a mood for war. The first outbreak occurred on the upper
Mississippi toward the end of June. A keelboat, returning from a trip
to Fort Snelling with provisions for the garrison at Fort Crawford,
was attacked by the Winnebagoes near the mouth of the Bad Axe River.
On the same day a murderous assault was made upon the family of a
Canadian half-breed named Gagnier, living a short distance from Prairie
du Chien.[780] The nature of the immediate provocation for the attack
upon the keelboat is a matter of dispute. The assault upon the family
of Gagnier, however, was deliberately planned by a band of Winnebagoes,
which had suffered great indignities at the hands of the whites.[781]
The leaders of the band deliberated over their wrongs and resolved
to enforce the native law of retaliation. The choice of the agent to
commit the act fell upon Red Bird, a chief who was beloved by the
Indians and respected and admired by the whites. Noted for his friendly
disposition toward the whites, Red Bird undertook the commission of his
band with the intention of pretending to fulfil it and reporting to his
tribe that he had been unable to find a victim.

[Footnote 780: On these events see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
_passim_.]

[Footnote 781: _Ibid._, V, 201 ff.]

This plan, unfortunately, miscarried. Being upbraided for his conduct
and taunted as a coward, Red Bird resolved to redeem his reputation and
set out for Prairie du Chien, accompanied by WeKau and a third Indian,
determined to execute his commission in grim earnest. The chance
presence of an old trader at the house of Mr. Lockwood, which the
party first visited, caused them to refrain from committing there the
intended violence.[782] Crossing the prairie they came to the house of
Gagnier, about three miles from the town. Here they found the husband,
his wife, a babe of eleven months, and a discharged soldier named
Lipcap. The presence of the visitors at first excited no particular
comment. They asked for food and Mrs. Gagnier had turned to provide it
when the bloody work began. Gagnier was shot by Red Bird and Lipcap by
the third Indian, while Mrs. Gagnier engaged in a struggle with WeKau
in which she succeeded in wresting from him his gun. He turned and ran
and she pursued him, but overcome by excitement or fear, and finding
herself powerless to fire the gun, she made her way to the village and
gave the alarm. Meanwhile WeKau again entered the cabin and scalped the
babe, apparently executing the horrible task with deliberation in order
to secure as much hair with the scalp as possible. When a posse arrived
from Prairie du Chien the murderers had departed; the babe was still
alive and, strangely enough, recovered from its ghastly wounds and grew
to womanhood.

[Footnote 782: _Ibid._, II, 161; V, 199.]

In the same month of June, 1827, Governor Cass and Colonel Thomas
L. McKenney were sent to negotiate on behalf of the United States a
treaty with the Winnebagoes and other tribes of Wisconsin respecting
the boundaries which had been provided for in the Treaty of Prairie
du Chien of 1825.[783] On reaching Butte des Morts on Fox River, the
place designated for the council, the commissioners found but a single
band of Winnebagoes represented, and learned at the same time of the
hostile disposition of the tribe and of the outrages committed on the
Mississippi.

[Footnote 783: Smith, _Life and Times of Lewis Cass_, 185; Young, _Life
of General Cass_, 93; Schoolcraft, _Personal Memoirs_, 265-67.]

In this emergency Cass decided on a bold and energetic course. Leaving
the camp at Butte des Morts in charge of Colonel McKenney, he himself
set out in a large canoe manned by a dozen boatmen for the seat of
trouble.[784] The route to Prairie du Chien led through the midst of
the disaffected tribe. In his descent of the Wisconsin River Cass came
upon the Winnebago encampment. Undaunted by the manifest signs of
hostility which were displayed on his approach he landed and harangued
the savages and persuaded them to smoke the calumet. As he turned to
leave, a young brave sought to assassinate him, but the attempt was
frustrated by an older man striking his gun aside.

[Footnote 784: Cass's trip see Schoolcraft, _Personal Memoirs_, 266;
Smith, _Cass_, 185-90; Young, _Cass_, 93-96; Hubbard, _Life_, 150-51;
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, II, 166, 330; V, 156-57.]

On reaching Prairie du Chien on the morning of July 4 Cass did what
he could to encourage the terrified settlers, who were gathered in
the abandoned Fort Crawford in momentary expectation of an attack,
and took into the service of the United States the impromptu military
company which had been organized.[785] He then passed quickly down to
Galena, the center of the lead-mining district. The news from Prairie
du Chien of the Indian hostilities had spread terror and dismay among
the miners, who with one accord fled in wildest panic to Galena.[786]
The roads were lined with men, women, and children in momentary fear
of the dread tomahawk or scalping-knife, and the encampment of the
fugitives on Apple River on the first night of the alarm was said to
have extended four miles and numbered three thousand persons. Such was
the state of confusion and panic when Cass arrived at Galena on July
6. Quickly enrolling a company of riflemen, it was dispatched on a
keelboat for Prairie du Chien, while Cass's canoemen sped onward in the
opposite direction to carry the news to St. Louis and set the regulars
under General Atkinson's command at Jefferson Barracks in motion. The
destination was reached in record time,[787] and soon Atkinson at the
head of seven hundred troops was proceeding up the Mississippi River by
steamer to the scene of hostilities.

[Footnote 785: For the occurrences at Prairie du Chien see James H.
Lockwood's narrative, _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, II, 157 ff.]

[Footnote 786: _Ibid._, II, 329.]

[Footnote 787: On the rapidity of Cass's descent of the Mississippi see
Young, _Cass_, 96; Smith, _Cass_, 189-90: Schoolcraft says (_Personal
Memoirs_, 267) that the entire circuit from Butte des Morts to Saint
Louis, and back again by way of the Illinois River and Chicago, was
made "in an incredible short space of time."]

Instead of returning with the regulars, Cass and his party ascended the
Illinois River to Chicago. Fortunately for them heavy rains had raised
the Des Plaines to such a height that it was possible to pass up it
and across the portage to Chicago without disembarking from the canoe.
In the course of this passage nightfall overtook the party in Mud
Lake. Fearful of staving a hole in their birch-bark canoe, the boatmen
anchored it by thrusting their paddles into the mud on either side. In
this dreary spot, tormented by mosquitoes and with the rain descending
in torrents to the accompaniment of intense thunder and lightning, the
future senator, cabinet officer, and presidential candidate passed the
hot July night.

The arrival of Cass at Chicago the following morning has been
described by Gurdon S. Hubbard, who chanced to be in Chicago at this
time, at the home of his friend, John Kinzie.[788] The inmates of the
household were at breakfast when the sound of the Canadian boat song
was heard, faintly at first, but gradually growing louder. Kinzie
recognized the leading voice as that of his nephew, Robert Forsyth,
private secretary to Governor Cass, and made his way to the front
porch, followed by the rest of the company. Looking up the river
they beheld Cass's canoe bearing rapidly down upon them, the boatmen
keeping time with their paddles to the music of the song. It was soon
at hand and during the brief stay which Cass made the Chicagoans
learned for the first time of the outbreak of war and the outrages on
the Mississippi. They learned, also, the reason of the unusual conduct
of Big Foot's band of Indians at Chicago a few days before.[789] The
buildings of the abandoned Fort Dearborn were at this time under the
custody of the Indian agent, Doctor Alexander Wolcott. With his family
he was living in one of them, while the others were occupied by several
French and American families. The annual payment to the Pottawatomies
had drawn to Chicago a large number of Indians. Upon receiving their
annuity all had departed except a portion of Big Foot's band, who lived
at the modern Lake Geneva. In the night following the payment, during a
violent storm of wind and rain, the soldiers' barracks were struck by
lightning and destroyed, together with the storehouse and a portion of
the guardhouse.

[Footnote 788: Hubbard, _Life_, 150-51; _Caldwell and Shabonee_, in
"Fergus Historical Series," No. 10, 41-46; _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, VII, 341-43.]

[Footnote 789: _American Historical Collections_, _loc. cit._]

The alarm of fire soon roused the little settlement, and men and women
to the number of about forty turned out. The barracks and storehouse
were seen to be doomed and so the attention was devoted to saving the
remaining structures. Robert Kinzie, wrapped in a wet blanket, mounted
to the roof of the guardhouse, which was already on fire, while the
others formed a line to the river along which water was passed to
him in buckets and other available utensils. Despite his burns and
the danger he ran, Kinzie maintained his position until, about dawn,
the fire was subdued. During all this time Big Foot's followers idly
viewed the struggle, ignoring the appeals made to them for assistance.
The next day they started for their homes, but the subject of their
strange behavior furnished food for discussion at Chicago, until the
information brought by Cass a few days later explained it and their
disaffection.

With the departure of Cass the inhabitants of Chicago assembled for
consultation.[790] It was determined to send the chiefs, Shabbona and
Billy Caldwell, to Big Foot's village to gather information concerning
the plans of the Winnebagoes and the intentions of Big Foot's band. The
friendly chiefs at once departed upon their mission. On reaching Lake
Geneva they separated; Caldwell secreted himself near the town, while
Shabbona entered it, and was promptly imprisoned on the charge of being
a spy and a friend of the Americans. This he denied, pretending that
having heard of the threatened hostilities with the whites he had come
to take counsel with Big Foot's followers concerning the course of his
own people. By dint of argument and dissimulation he finally obtained
permission to return, accompanied by a number of Big Foot's band, to
his village. Both Caldwell and Shabbona separately made their way back
to Chicago and reported the result of their mission.

[Footnote 790: _Ibid._]

Their report plunged the settlement into a state of panic akin to
that which had earlier seized upon the inhabitants of Prairie du Chien
and Galena. A consultation was held, in the course of which Hubbard
suggested that a messenger be sent to the settlements on the Wabash for
assistance. Volunteers for this service were called for, but no one
except Hubbard himself appeared desirous of undertaking it; against his
going the objection was raised that in his absence no one else could
control the voyageurs, most of whom were in his employ. Notwithstanding
this, it was finally decided that Hubbard should go. He left Chicago
in the afternoon and reached Danville, one hundred and twenty miles
away, on the following day, having changed mounts about midnight at
his trading house on the Iroquois River. The news of his mission was
spread abroad, and a force of fifty men or more was quickly raised to
march to the relief of Chicago.[791] Before starting five days' rations
were cooked. Many of the volunteers were without horses of their own.
Most of these were supplied with mounts by neighbors who were to stay
at home, but the number of horses available was insufficient to supply
all the men and five set forth on foot. In other respects the company's
equipment was even more inadequate. The food supply was insufficient
and the arms were most heterogeneous in character. Squirrel rifles,
flintlocks, old muskets, "or anything like a gun" that could be found
had been seized, and some of the men had no guns at all. The latter, as
well as those whose arms were insufficient, were supplied by Hubbard,
who also issued flour and salt pork, from his trading house on the
Iroquois River.

[Footnote 791: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, narrative of
Hezekiah Cunningham, in "Fergus Historical Series," No. 10, 47 ff.
Cunningham, who was a member of the Danville company which marched to
Chicago, says it numbered fifty men, while Hubbard gives the number as
one hundred.]

The march to Chicago was completed, after numerous vicissitudes, near
the close of the fourth day. The Vermilion River was up, running bank
full and with a strong current. The men and saddles were taken across
in a canoe and an effort was made to compel the horses to swim. When
the force of the current struck them, however, they would circle
about and return to the bank. Provoked at the delay Hubbard mounted
"old Charley," a large, steadygoing horse, and plunged in, the other
horses being driven in after him. In the swift current "Charley" became
unmanageable, when Hubbard dismounted on the upper side, and seizing
him by the mane with one hand and swimming with the other guided him
toward the opposite shore. During the march rain fell most of the time.
The condition of the streams and the intervening country compelled
some of the footmen to turn back, and two of the men with horses also
abandoned the expedition.

The company reached Chicago in the midst of a tremendous thunder
storm. The welcome extended by the settlers, who had been in momentary
expectation of an attack, was naturally most hearty. If the narrator's
reminiscences may be trusted, a touch of genuine burlesque was now
added to the warlike scenes of the last few days. During Hubbard's
absence the settlers had organized a military company composed of a
few Americans interspersed among a considerable number of Canadian
half-breeds. The former, perceiving that the Danville company was
a better-looking crowd than their own, proposed to abandon their
associates and join it. This feeling stirred up a quarrel, but the
officers quelled the disturbance and the discontented men remained with
their own command. The Danville company remained at Chicago a number of
days, keeping guard day and night, until news arrived from Green Bay
that a treaty of peace had been made with the Winnebagoes. In their joy
over the good news the citizens brought forth barrels of whisky and
other liquors and a general drinking bout ensued.

Thus hilariously ended Chicago's part in the Winnebago War. Its speedy
and bloodless conclusion was due primarily to the energetic measures
of Governor Cass. From Chicago he had passed up the western shore of
Lake Michigan to Green Bay, and entering the Fox River had come again
to the place of council at Butte des Morts, after a circuit of eighteen
hundred miles. The prompt movement of troops from every direction
upon the country of the Winnebagoes quickly convinced them of the
hopelessness of resistance. From Jefferson Barracks, Fort Snelling, and
Fort Howard, detachments of regulars converged upon the disaffected
tribesmen, while a force of volunteers from Galena under General Dodge
marched overland toward the Wisconsin Portage. On August 11 Cass
concluded with the tribes concerned the treaty of Butte des Morts,
which settled, for the time being, the boundary questions which had
grown out of the Treaty of Prairie du Chien of 1825.[792] Although the
Winnebagoes were parties to the treaty, the liberty was reserved by the
United States of punishing the perpetrators of the recent outrages and
exacting from them guaranties of good conduct in the future.

[Footnote 792: _Treaties between the United States of America and the
Several Indian Tribes, from 1778 to 1837_, 412-15.]

The treaty concluded, Cass returned to Detroit, while the military
continued its task of running down the culprits wanted. On September 1
the troops from Fort Howard under command of Major Whistler encamped
at the Fox-Wisconsin Portage.[793] The following day three separate
messages arrived from the hostile Winnebago encampment announcing that
the murderers, WeKau and Red Bird, would be surrendered the day after,
and begging the military not to strike. The murders at Prairie du Chien
had been committed deliberately in accordance with the Indian law of
retaliation. From their standpoint the murderers had perpetrated no
crime, but had performed a meritorious and public-spirited act. Yet now
that the white man's armies were at hand, they voluntarily surrendered
themselves to save their countrymen from further punishment.

[Footnote 793: Thomas L. McKenney's narrative, _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, V, 178 ff.]

About noon of the following day a body of Indians was descried
approaching Whistler's camp. As they drew nearer the voice of Red Bird
singing his death song could be heard. The military was drawn out in
line to receive the delegation and a dramatic ceremony ensued. On the
right and slightly advanced was the band of musicians. In front of
the center, at a distance of a few paces, stood the murderers. Red
Bird and WeKau; on their right and left, forming a semicircular group,
were the Winnebagoes, who had accompanied them. All eyes were fixed
on the magnificent figure of Red Bird: six feet in height, erect, and
perfectly proportioned, his very fingers "models of beauty"; on his
face the most noble and winning expression; his every movement imbued
with grace and stateliness; his dress of barbaric splendor, consisting
of a suit of white deer skin appropriately fringed and decorated, and
over the breast and back a fold of scarlet cloth; no wonder he seemed
to the spectators, even of the hostile race, "a prince born to command
and worthy to be obeyed."

The effect of Red Bird's presence was heightened by the contrast,
in all outward respects, presented by the miserable WeKau.
"Meagre--cold--dirty in his person and dress--crooked in form--like the
starved wolf, gaunt, hungry, and bloodthirsty," his entire appearance
accorded with the conception of a fiend who could scalp a babe in the
cradle.

Red Bird stood erect without moving a muscle or altering the expression
on his face. The music having ceased and all being seated except the
speakers, the latter began their address. Its substance was that two
of the murderers had voluntarily surrendered themselves in response to
the white man's demand; as their friends they had come in with them,
and hoped their white brothers would agree to accept the horses they
had brought in satisfaction of the offense. They asked kind treatment
for their friends, and urged that they should not be put in irons. The
spokesman for the whites replied with much advice, which was doubtless
excellent from the white man's point of view. They were told that the
prisoners should be tried by the same laws as the white man, and the
promise was given that for the present they should not be put in irons.

At the conclusion of the harangue Red Bird stood up facing Major
Whistler. In physique and bearing the latter--the same magnificent
athlete who had bested the champion of the natives in the Fort Dearborn
foot race a score of years before--was a worthy representative of his
race. After a moment's pause the words, "I am ready," came from the
lips of Red Bird. Advancing a step or two he paused, saying, "I do not
wish to be put in irons. Let me be free. I have given away my life--it
is gone"--stooping and taking some dust between his fingers and thumb,
and blowing it away--"like that. I would not take it back. _It is
gone._" Throwing his hands behind him to indicate that he was leaving
all things behind, he marched briskly up to Major Whistler, breast
to breast. A platoon wheeled backward from the center of the line of
soldiery. Whistler stepped aside. Red Bird and WeKau marched through
the line and were conducted by a file of men to a tent prepared for
them in the rear, and the ceremony was concluded.

The fate of Red Bird may quickly be told. Together with seven others
of his tribe who had surrendered themselves to the whites he was
taken to Prairie du Chien and imprisoned to await trial on the charge
of murder.[794] Their imprisonment was regarded by the Indians as a
punishment worse than death itself. Red Bird bore his confinement
hardly and at length sickened and died. WeKau and another of his
associates were finally brought to trial, in September, 1828. They
were found guilty and sentenced to be hung on December 26, but before
the time set for the execution arrived both were pardoned by President
Adams. The other prisoners were discharged for lack of evidence to
convict them.

[Footnote 794: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 366-68; VIII,
264-65; Smith, _History of Wisconsin_, 1, 250-51.]

Although the Winnebago War was thus easily ended, it was not
without important consequences. The Indians had been cowed, but not
conciliated. The original cause for their dissatisfaction had not
been removed; the aggressions of the lead miners continued, and the
specter of white domination still menaced them as before the uprising.
The confinement and death of Red Bird, whom they believed to have
been poisoned by the Americans,[795] did not tend to alleviate their
dissatisfaction, while the withdrawal of the troops after the brief
summer campaign of 1827 emboldened them again. At the close of the year
1827 Joseph Street, the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, reported
to Governor Edwards of Illinois that the Winnebagoes were greatly
dissatisfied, and would, in his opinion, resist the execution of Red
Bird if they could induce any other tribe to join them.[796] The
following spring news was carried to the British post at Drummond's
Island, to which place many of the American Indians resorted annually
for presents, that several of the northwestern tribes were planning an
uprising against the Americans.[797]

[Footnote 795: Speech of Nayocantay at Drummond's Island, June 30,
1828, _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XXIII, 146.]

[Footnote 796: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 366-68.]

[Footnote 797: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XXIII, 144-51.]

To restrain the dissatisfied tribes between Lake Michigan and the
Mississippi by the presence of an adequate military force, it was
determined permanently to regarrison Fort Crawford and Fort Dearborn,
and in addition to establish a new post at the Wisconsin Portage.[798]
To the latter was given the name of Fort Winnebago, and its garrison
muster-rolls during the next few years contain the names of many men
who later won national fame and reputation.[799] Our primary interest,
however, is centered in Chicago. On October 3, 1828, after an interval
of five years, Fort Dearborn was reoccupied by a regular garrison of
about sixty men, comprising companies A and I of the Fifth Infantry,
under command of Major John Fowle.[800] The Fifth Regiment had been
stationed at Jefferson Barracks prior to the Winnebago outbreak. In
connection with the general shifting of troops and the re-establishment
of garrisons occasioned by that trouble, to which allusion has
already been made, the garrisons at Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, and
Fort Howard, consisting of detachments of the Second Infantry, were
moved down the lakes to Fort Gratiot and Fort Niagara, while the
Fifth Regiment relieved the Second in garrisoning the places named
and in addition sent two companies to reoccupy Fort Dearborn.[801]
The latter probably came up the Illinois River route. The remaining
eight companies moved up from St. Louis by way of the Wisconsin and
Fox Rivers, with the expectation that the march of so large a body of
soldiery through the heart of their territory would produce a quieting
effect upon the minds of the Winnebago and other tribes.[802]

[Footnote 798: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIV, 70-71.]

[Footnote 799: Among others may be mentioned Jefferson Davis, David E.
Twiggs, William J. Worth, E. V. Summer, and E. Kirby Smith. See on this
the "History of Fort Winnebago" in _Wisconsin Historical Collections_,
XIV, 75 ff.]

[Footnote 800: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns, October,
1828.]

[Footnote 801: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XIV, 70; Wentworth,
Early Chicago, 27.]

[Footnote 802: On the movement of the troops see _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XIV, 70; Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 27; statement of
General Hunter in Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 490.]

For two and one-half years companies A and I of the Fifth Infantry
continued to garrison Fort Dearborn. Major Fowle remained in command
until December, 1830, when he was granted six months' leave of absence
and Lieutenant Hunter succeeded to the command. He later became
prominent in his profession and during the Civil War rose to the rank
of major-general. At this time he was a West Point graduate of eight
years' standing, who since his arrival at Fort Dearborn in the autumn
of 1829 had wooed and married Maria Indiana, the daughter of John
Kinzie. Captain Martin Scott, another member of the little group of
officers in this period, was noted for his eccentricities.[803] He was
famous for his skill as a marksman and passionately fond of hunting.
Probably because of this trait, he maintained a numerous array of dogs.
Both Scott and Hunter had been stationed at Fort Snelling, where each
acquired a reputation for firmness, not to say obstinacy, in adhering
to views which had once been formed. Upon one occasion they determined
to find out by actual experiment which could abstain the longer from
eating. At the end of two days Scott surrendered unconditionally; it
was the general opinion of the garrison that Hunter would have perished
rather than yield.

[Footnote 803: For an intimate characterization of Captain Scott see
Van Cleve, _Three Score Years and Ten_, chap. iii.]

Notwithstanding the scare which had caused the regarrisoning of Fort
Dearborn, the months passed into years without any occasion for the
actual services of the soldiers arising. In the spring of 1831 the fort
was again abandoned, the garrison being ordered to Green Bay.[804] Less
than a year later, however, Major Whistler, who had seen the first Fort
Dearborn built in 1803, was ordered from Fort Niagara to Chicago with
two companies of the Second Infantry.[805] He arrived on June 17, 1832,
and for the third time since its rebuilding, less than a score of years
before, Fort Dearborn housed a garrison. The order for its reoccupation
was issued in February, but before Whistler's force arrived the Black
Hawk War had begun and Chicago and Fort Dearborn were crowded with
panic-stricken settlers. The disaffected Sac leader. Black Hawk, on
April 6, at the head of five hundred warriors and their squaws and
children, had crossed the Mississippi River and begun the invasion of
the state of Illinois. Therewith began for Illinois her last Indian
war, and for Chicago and Fort Dearborn a period of excitement and
activity on a greater scale than the place had ever known.

[Footnote 804: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 30. An account of the
breaking-up of the garrison is given by Mrs. Kinzie in _Wau Bun_,
chaps, xxiii and xxiv.]

[Footnote 805: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 30.]

The Black Hawk War constitutes one of the saddest chapters in all
the long story of the spoliation of the red race at the hands of
the white. Notable for the number of men of national prominence in
American history who participated in it, it is no less notable for the
blundering and unworthy course pursued by the whites, first in bringing
it on and second in waging it to a conclusion. The names of two
Presidents of the United States, Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor;
of the only President of the Southern Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; of
a presidential candidate, and for a full generation the most notable
soldier in America, Winfield Scott; of senators and governors and
generals in profusion--A. C. Dodge, Henry Dodge, John Reynolds, George
W. Jones, Sidney Breese, Henry Atkinson, Albert Sydney Johnston, Joseph
E. Johnston, David E, Twiggs, S. P. Heintzelman, John A. McClernand, E.
D. Baker, William S. Harney, and Robert Anderson, among others--furnish
ample evidence that no other Indian war in American history was
participated in by so many notable men.[806]

[Footnote 806: This list of participants is drawn from the Drennan
Papers, Fort Dearborn post returns, and Stevens, _Black Hawk War_,
_passim_.]

The history of the war may be found in many places, and the design
of the present narrative is limited to a recital of it from the point
of view of its bearing upon Chicago and the results for Chicago's
development which proceeded from it.[807] Black Hawk had planned
his return to Illinois under the belief that the Winnebagoes,
Pottawatomies, and other tribes and even the British would ally with
him against the Americans.[808] Before the actual crossing he was
partly disabused of this idea, but only in part. His immediate purpose
was to raise a crop of corn on Rock River, with the Winnebagoes of
that locality, and prepare for active warfare in the fall. This design
was frustrated by the action of the whites. Governor Reynolds promptly
called out the Illinois militia, and early in May four regiments,
numbering sixteen hundred men, accompanied by Governor Reynolds
himself, were at Fort Armstrong, ready to co-operate with the small
force of regulars under Atkinson in the pursuit and overthrow of Black
Hawk's band.[809]

[Footnote 807: Many contemporary' narratives are printed in the volumes
of the _Wisconsin Historical Collections_; for the most part they
should be used with discrimination. For a sane and useful brief account
of the war see Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War." in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XII, 217-65. Stevens, _Black Hawk War_, is a
detailed and valuable narrative. In using it due allowance must be made
for the author's too evident anti-Indian bias.]

[Footnote 808: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XII, 227, 231.]

[Footnote 809: _Ibid._, XII, 232-34.]

Meanwhile Black Hawk had learned in a council with the Pottawatomies
that while Big Foot and some others were hot for war, the bands of
Shabbona and Wabansia were determined to remain at peace with the
whites. The news of Black Hawk's incursion spread rapidly among the
scattered settlements, carrying in its train confusion and panic.
Many of the settlers abandoned their homes and fled for protection to
the larger settlements; some left the country never to return; others
gathered for mutual protection within rude stockade forts, which were
hastily improvised. On May 14 an advance division of the pursuing army
under Major Stillman encountered Black Hawk and a small number of
his warriors, and in the engagement that ensued the whites sustained
a disgraceful defeat.[810] The raw Illinois militiamen, filled with
zeal for the killing of Indians, rushed headlong into the contest,
regardless of the efforts of their officers to restrain them. Although
they outnumbered the Indians in the proportion of eight or ten to
one,[811] their flight, upon receiving the first fire of the latter,
was no less precipitate. For all but a handful, who fell fighting
bravely to cover the retreat, the flight continued to Dixon's Ferry,
twenty-five miles away, and many did not pause even here, but pressed
madly on to their homes.

[Footnote 810: On the battle of Stillman's Run see _ibid._, XII,
236-30; Stevens, _op. cit._, chap, xix.]

[Footnote 811: Stillman's force numbered three hundred and forty-one
men; Black Hawk stated that he had forty followers, and Reynolds
credited him with not to exceed fifty or sixty (_Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, XII, 235, 237).]

In comparison with the panic which ensued upon the news of Stillman's
overthrow, the earlier panic of the settlers, from which they had
already recovered in a measure, seemed trivial.[812] The terror excited
by the exaggerated stories of the militia spread consternation, not
only throughout the frontier immediately affected, but eastward into
Indiana and southern Michigan.[813] Rumor multiplied many fold the
number of Black Hawk's followers. From Dixon's Ferry, on the day after
the defeat of Stillman, Governor Reynolds "by the light of a solitary
candle" penned a call for two thousand more volunteers.[814] Shabbona
and his friends, at the risk of their own lives, set forth to warn
the settlers of their danger.[815] Most of them fled to cover. At
Chicago, where the citizens had organized a militia company early in
May, the whole surrounding population gathered within Fort Dearborn,
with two hundred armed men on guard. Yet in the terror of the first
panic an appeal was dispatched to the acting governor of Michigan for
assistance.[816]

[Footnote 812: _Ibid._, XII, 238-40; Beggs, _Early History of the West
and Northwest_, 97 ff.]

[Footnote 813: For a semi-humorous account of the panic in southwestern
Michigan see Henry Little, "A History of the Black Hawk War in 1832,"
in _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, V, 152 ff. On the scare in Indiana
see, _e.g._, [Banta] _History of Johnson County, Indiana_, 126 ff.]

[Footnote 814: Stevens, _op. cit._, 139.]

[Footnote 815: _Ibid._, 148; _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XII,
39; Matson. Memories of Shaubena, 114 ff.]

[Footnote 816: The muster-roll of the Chicago company is printed
in Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 64-65. For the appeal to the acting
governor of Michigan for assistance see letter of Thomas Owen, Indian
agent at Chicago, May 21, 1832, printed in the _New York Mercury_, June
6, 1832.]

Of the scenes of wild confusion and fear which attended the flight
of the settlers to Chicago and other points, and the hardships
endured at Chicago, a graphic description has been left by one of the
participants. Rev. Stephen R. Beggs.[817] He had recently settled at
Plainfield, Illinois, when "the inhabitants came flying from Fox River,
through great fear of their much dreaded enemy. They came with their
cattle and horses, some bareheaded and others barefooted, crying, 'The
Indians! The Indians!'" Those of the adjoining settlements who were
able fled with all speed for Danville, only a few of the men remaining
behind to look after their property as best they might. Some friendly
Indians shortly came to allay their fears, but believing them to be
hostile, without allowing them an opportunity to explain, the settlers
mounted horses and fled after those who had gone before. The Indians
pursued, seeking vainly to correct the mistake, but this served only to
increase the terror of the whites.

[Footnote 817: Beggs, _op. cit._, 97 ff.]

The residents of Plainfield at first determined to defend themselves.
The house of Beggs was turned into a fort, the outbuildings being torn
down to furnish logs for the construction of a breastwork. Here one
hundred and twenty-five people, old and young, assembled. Ammunition
was scarce, however, and they had but four guns among them. As the
next best means of defense a supply of axes, hoes, forks, and clubs
was requisitioned. A few days later the Chicago militia to the number
of twenty-five, hearing of their plight, came, accompanied by an equal
number of friendly Indians, to the rescue. The next day militia and
Indians in separate companies set forth to reconnoiter along the Fox.
At nightfall one of the whites and a few of the Indians returned,
bringing "fearful stories" of having been captured by the Indians, and
the warning that Fort Beggs would be attacked that night or the next at
the latest.

This information precipitated a fresh panic. "The stoutest hearts
failed them, and strong men turned pale, while women and children wept
and fainted, till it hardly seemed possible to restore them to life,
and almost cruel for them to return from their quiet unconsciousness
to a sense of their danger." Immediate flight, either to Ottawa
or Chicago, was debated, but after discussion was dismissed as
impracticable, and the resolution was reached to remain in the fort
and sell their lives as dearly as possible. Two days passed with
occasional alarms, when every man was ordered to his post to prepare
to meet an attack. Instead of the enemy, however, the Chicago militia
appeared. The joy of the inmates of Fort Beggs was tempered by the
news they brought of the terrible Indian Creek massacre a dozen miles
north of Ottawa.[818] The Chicagoans advised the immediate abandonment
of Fort Beggs and retirement either to Ottawa or Chicago. The latter
destination was decided upon, and the ensuing night was spent in busy
preparation for the march. Early the next morning the company set
out, escorted by the Chicago militia, and by sunset had completed the
forty-mile journey to Chicago and safety.

[Footnote 818: This occurred on Tuesday, May 20, 1832. Beggs states
(_op. cit._, 101) that the Chicagoans brought the news of it to
Plainfield on Wednesday evening. For an account of the massacre and the
narrative of the captivity of the Hall girls, the only prisoners taken,
see Stevens, _op. cit._, 146 ff.]

Although Chicago afforded the fugitives a safe refuge, there was for
them no cessation of hardship. The place was crowded to overflowing.
Beggs and his wife were compelled to take up their abode in a room
fifteen feet square, already occupied by several other families. The
plight of the inmates under such conditions may easily be imagined. One
afternoon in the midst of a violent thunderstorm a stroke of lightning
broke open the end of their room and passed down the wall to the
room beneath, leaving a charred seam within a few inches of a keg of
gunpowder. The next morning Mrs. Beggs gave birth to a child. If the
chronicler's statistics are accurate, fifteen infants were born during
their stay at the fort.

Whatever apprehensions of danger the refugees at Chicago were still
under must have been materially relieved by the arrival on June 12 of
a force of Michigan militia under General J. R. Williams. Assembled at
Detroit and other points in the latter part of May, they had finally
pushed forward, after numerous vicissitudes arising from incompetent
leadership, to Chicago, where they assumed for a short time the
responsibility of the defense of Fort Dearborn.[819] This service
was terminated by the arrival successively, on June 17, of the two
companies of regulars under Major Whistler from Fort Niagara, and
five days later of a regiment of three hundred mounted militia from
embark on board the "Napoleon" for transportation across the lake to
St. Joseph, whence they were to be marched to Niles and mustered out
of the service. Many of the settlers who had taken refuge at Fort
Dearborn shortly began to depart, some of them under armed escort, for
their homes.[820] Meanwhile from the seat of government at Washington
the military had been set in motion for the scene of war, and Chicago
became the appointed rendezvous for a larger body of soldiery than had
ever yet been gathered here. From Fortress Monroe. Fort McHenry, Fort
Columbus, Fort Niagara, Fort Gratiot, Fort Brady, and other places
infantry and artillery to the number of one thousand men were started
for Chicago, and General Winfield Scott was ordered from the seaboard
to take charge of the operations against Black Hawk.[821] Three weeks
after the arrival of Major Whistler's detachment General Scott arrived.
With him, too, came a peril before which the menace of the hostile
Indians paled into insignificance. Instead of peace and tranquillity,
the settlers were plunged anew into panic by the appearance in their
midst of the dreaded Asiatic cholera.

[Footnote 819: On the movements of the Michigan militia see Stevens,
_op. cit._, chap, xxxvii.]

[Footnote 820: Beggs, _op. cit._, 104.]

[Footnote 821: _Drennan Papers_, copies of orders to the various
detachments, and post returns of the troops sent to Chicago; _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XII, 241.]

From Europe where it had prevailed for many weeks the cholera crossed
the ocean, making its first appearance in America at Quebec in the
early part of June.[822] From here it quickly passed up the St.
Lawrence to Montreal and then southward to Albany. The legislature
of New York met in special session, June 21, to devise measures for
preventing the spread of the disease, but less than two weeks later it
reached New York City, and by July 4 eleven deaths from it had occurred
there. The next day was observed as a day of fasting and prayer by
many of the churches of the city but the plague rapidly increased in
virulence and in the two weeks ending July 28 over fourteen hundred
deaths occurred. By the end of August the disease had practically
spent its force in New York, but meanwhile the pestilential wave was
passing southward and westward over the country. By late autumn it
was estimated that one thousand deaths from cholera had occurred at
Philadelphia and an equal number at Baltimore, and at New Orleans
over a hundred persons a day were dying from cholera and yellow fever
combined, a rate which, if continued, would depopulate the city in a
year's time.[823]

[Footnote 822: _New York Mercury_, June 20, 1832, November 21, 1832,
_et passim_.]

[Footnote 823: _Ibid._, November 21, 1832.]

During the latter part of June the various detachments of regulars from
the Atlantic Coast were proceeding toward Chicago.[824] At Buffalo
the troops embarked on board the steamers, "Henry Clay," "Superior,"
"William Penn," and "Sheldon Thompson."[825] While passing up the
lakes the cholera made its appearance among the soldiers. More potent
than the hostile red man, it disrupted the expedition.[826] Two of the
vessels got no farther than Fort Gratiot, where the virulence of the
pestilence compelled the soldiers to land.[827] The others continued,
after a period of delay, to Chicago, where the troops were compelled to
halt until the pestilence had spent its force and the survivors were
again fit for the field.

[Footnote 824: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns. Six
companies of artillery from Fortress Monroe left New York June 26, and
on June 30 were at Clyde in that state. Company E, Fourth Artillery,
started from Fort McHenry, June 18. The route followed by the seaboard
companies was by way of New York City to Buffalo and thence by vessel
around the lakes.]

[Footnote 825: Letter of Captain A. Walker, October 30, 1860, in
_Chicago Weekly Democrat_, March 23, 1861.]

[Footnote 826: For an account of Scott's expedition and the cholera
outbreak see Stevens, _op. cit._, chap, xxxvi; Scott's own narrative
is given in his Memoirs, I, chap, xviii; additional material occurs
in Wentworth, Early Chicago, passim; Niles' Register, Vols. XLII and
XLIII, _passim_; the _New York Mercury_ for 1832, _passim_.]

[Footnote 827: Letter of Captain A. Walker in Chicago Weekly Democrat,
March 23, 1861; letter from an officer on the _Henry Clay_, in _New
York Mercury_, July 18, 1832.]

The ravages among the men of the detachment of Colonel Twiggs which
was landed at Fort Gratiot were so awful as to banish discipline to the
winds.[828] Those of the command who were not stricken dispersed in
every direction. Many, stricken later, died in the woods or along the
roadway, the terrified inhabitants refusing them shelter or assistance.
According to a letter from an officer of the Second Infantry, dated
July 11, of Twiggs' three hundred and seventy men, twenty or thirty had
died and about two hundred had deserted.[829] From another contemporary
newspaper report it appears that the detachment consisted of both
infantry and artillery, and that the great majority of desertions
occurred in the former branch of the service.[830] Of two hundred and
eight recruits, thirty had died and one hundred and fifty-five had
deserted; while of one hundred and fifty-two artillerymen, twenty-six
had died and but twenty had deserted.

[Footnote 828: Letters of John Nowell in Niles' Register, July 28,
1832; of Captain A. Walker in _Chicago Weekly Democrat_, March 23,
1861; letters from Detroit (unsigned) in _New York Mercury_, July 18,
1832.]

[Footnote 829: _New York Mercury_, July 18, 1832.]

[Footnote 830: _Niles' Register_, August 11, 1832.]

No fatalities occurred on the "Sheldon Thompson," the steamer on
which General Scott had embarked, until Mackinac had been passed and
Lake Michigan entered. Before setting out for the Northwest Scott,
anticipating an outbreak of the plague, had taken lessons from Surgeon
Mower, stationed in New York, upon its character and treatment.[831]
On Scott's particular steamer the disease broke out suddenly and with
fatal violence. The only surgeon on board became panic-stricken, drank
a bottle of wine, and went to bed sick, and, to quote the commander's
grim comment, "ought to have died." In this crisis Scott himself
turned doctor, applying as best he could the medicine and treatment
suggested by Surgeon Mower. He himself states that his principal
success consisted in preventing a general panic. From beginning to
end of the cholera visitation he set the example to his subordinates
of exhibiting no sign of fear concerning it, visiting and personally
attending to the wants of the afflicted. In comparison with this
exhibition of fearlessness, the courage required on the field of
battle seems trivial.[832] Some time after the Mexican War, Scott
told John Wentworth that he had often been in the midst of danger and
suffering, but "he had never felt his entire helplessness and need of
Divine Providence as he did upon the lakes in the midst of the Asiatic
Cholera. Sentinels were of no use in warning of the enemy's approach.
He could not storm his works, fortify against him, nor cut his own way
out, nor make terms of capitulation. There was no respect for a flag
of truce, and his men were falling upon all sides from an enemy in his
very midst."[833]

[Footnote 831: Scott, _Memoirs_, I, 218 ff.]

[Footnote 832: The terror of the troops and of the citizens in the
vicinity of Detroit has already been noticed. A concrete instance of
the dread which the cholera inspired is given by Mrs. Kinzie, who was
at Green Bay when the news of the approach of the plague reached that
place. She relates (_Wau Bun_, 340) that the news was brought to her
by a relative, "an officer who had exhibited the most distinguished
courage in the battlefield, and also in some private enterprises
demanding unequalled courage and daring." When he had broken the news
he "laid his head against the window-sill and wept like a child." This
effect was produced, not by the actual presence of the pestilence, but
by the news of its ravages at Detroit and the fear of its advent at
Green Bay.]

[Footnote 833: Wentworth, _Early Chicago_, 37.]

The "Sheldon Thompson" reached Chicago on the afternoon of July
10.[834] Since there was no harbor, and the bar at the mouth made it
impossible for the vessel to enter the river, the troops must be landed
in small boats, which was done the next day. The troops under Major
Whistler, who had been occupying Fort Dearborn since June 17, were
promptly moved out and on July 11 the fort was converted into a general
hospital for the use of Scott's men.[835] During the night which
elapsed between the arrival at Chicago and the landing of the troops
the following morning three more of the company died and their bodies
were consigned to the bottom of the lake. Years afterward the captain
of the steamer recalled that their forms could plainly be seen through
the clear water from the deck, exciting such disagreeable sensations in
the minds of the beholders that it was deemed prudent to weigh anchor
and shift the vessel a sufficient distance from the spot to shut out
the gruesome sight.[836]

[Footnote 834: Scott to Governor Reynolds, July 15, 1832, in _Niles'
Register_, August 11, 1832.]

[Footnote 835: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns, October,
1832.]

[Footnote 836: Letter of Captain A. Walker, in _Chicago Weekly
Democrat_, March 23, 1861.]

For several days the pestilence raged at Fort Dearborn with violence
similar to that previously manifested at Fort Gratiot. The official
medical report shows that two hundred cases were admitted to the
hospital in the course of six or seven days, fifty-eight of which
terminated fatally.[837] The terror which the cholera inspired was due
as much, apparently, to the rapid progress of the disease as to the
high percentage of mortality which prevailed among its victims. The
first soldier who perished on the "Henry Clay" was stricken in the
evening of July 5 and died seven hours later.[838] On Scott's vessel,
the "Sheldon Thompson," men died in six hours after being in perfect
health. Sergeant Heyl "was well at nine o'clock in the morning--he was
at the bottom of Lake Michigan at seven o'clock in the afternoon."[839]
The author of the statement which has just been quoted gives a graphic
description of his own illness, from which at the time of writing he
was in process of recovering. He was serving as officer of the day
when the "Sheldon Thompson" arrived at Chicago, and superintended the
landing of the sick on board the vessel. "I had scarcely got through
my task," he wrote two days later, "when I was thrown down on the deck
almost as suddenly as if shot. As I was walking on the lower deck I
felt my legs growing stiff from my knees downward. I went on the upper
deck and walked violently to keep up the circulation of the blood. I
felt suddenly a rush of blood from my feet upwards, and as it rose my
veins grew cold and my blood curdled.... My legs and hands were cramped
with violent pain."[840]

[Footnote 837: Hyde, _Early Medical Chicago_, 18-19. I have not had
access to the original report on which this statement is based.
Hyde says these two hundred cases occurred among "the Entire force
of one thousand." This statement, which does not include Whistler's
two companies, is evidently erroneous. The entire force ordered to
Chicago numbered only a thousand men, and several hundred of these had
already been dissipated through death and desertion, or by delaying
at Fort Gratiot and elsewhere. I have not learned the number of men
at Fort Dearborn at this time, but evidently it was much less than
one thousand; the rate of sickness and mortality was, of course,
correspondingly greater.]

[Footnote 838: _New York Mercury_, July 18, 1832.]

[Footnote 839: Letter from an officer of Scott's command, dated Fort
Dearborn, July 12, _Niles' Register_, August 11, 1832.]

[Footnote 840: _Ibid._]

Some interest attaches to the methods employed by physicians in
treating the disease, especially in view of what transpired at Chicago.
In general it may be said that on both sides of the ocean the medical
profession was helpless to stay its course. In London over one-half
of the twenty-three hundred and eighty-two cases which occurred prior
to April 12 terminated fatally.[841] At the same time the deaths in
Paris from cholera numbered several hundred daily. It was everywhere
noted that persons addicted to intemperance were especially prone to
fall before the disease. The first six victims among the soldiers
on the "Henry Clay" were all intemperate men.[842] The surgeon who
attended Scott's men at Fort Dearborn treated all cases with calomel
and blood-letting. This proved so efficacious, according to his report,
that he regarded the disease as "robbed of its terrors."[843] In view
of the nature of the remedies employed, and the fact that fifty-eight
of the two hundred cases admitted to the hospital terminated fatally,
in addition to the deaths which occurred on board the steamer, the
grounds for his satisfaction are not entirely clear. But few fatalities
occurred among the men of Major Whistler's two companies, who had
been removed some distance from the fort and were attended by another
physician, Doctor Harmon.[844] Strangely enough he attributed his
success to the fact that he did not employ calomel in the treatment of
the disease. That some of the soldiers who came with Scott to Chicago
were subjected to other treatment than the blood-letting and calomel
described in the surgeon's report seems evident from the statements
of the officer whose sudden seizure on board the "Sheldon Thompson"
has been described. The doctor administered eight grains of opium to
him and made him rub his legs as fast as he could; he was also made to
drink a tumbler and a half of raw brandy. At the time of writing the
patient described himself as "out of danger," but whether because of
this treatment would be hazardous to affirm.

[Footnote 841: _New York Mercury_, May 23, 1832.]

[Footnote 842: Letter from Fort Gratiot dated July 7, 1832; _ibid._,
July 18, 1832.]

[Footnote 843: Hyde, _Early Medical Chicago_, 19.]

[Footnote 844: _Ibid._, 14.]

The spread of the contagion at Chicago was checked before the end of
July, and on the twenty-ninth of the month Scott set out, accompanied
by a few officers, along the Chicago-Galena trail for the seat of
war, leaving orders for Lieutenant-colonel Eustis to follow him with
all of the troops who should be able to move by the third of August.
Scott reached Prairie du Chien and assumed command of the army on
August 7, only to find that the war had been brought to a close.
The Illinois militia under Henry and Dodge and the regulars under
Atkinson had roused Black Hawk's band from the wilderness fastness
to which it had retired in the neighborhood of Lake Koshkonong, and
hotly pursued it across southern Wisconsin, through the beautiful
Four-Lakes country where the capital of the state has since been
located, to the Mississippi River about forty miles above the mouth
of the Wisconsin. Here on August 2 in the battle of the Bad Axe,
which shortly degenerated into a massacre, Black Hawk's band was
practically destroyed, and the war concluded. The red leader himself,
seeing the end at hand, had deserted his party the night before the
battle, and with a few followers had fled eastward to the Dalles of the
Wisconsin.[845] About three hundred of his deserted band succeeded in
escaping across the Mississippi, either before or during the affair at
the Bad Axe, but half of these were shortly slaughtered by a party of
one hundred Sioux, whom General Atkinson had sent after them. Of the
band of nearly one thousand persons who had crossed the Mississippi
in April not more than one hundred and fifty lived to tell the tragic
story of the Black Hawk War, "a tale fraught with dishonor to the
American name."[846]

[Footnote 845: Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War," in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XII, 258.]

[Footnote 846: _Ibid._, XII, 261.]

General Scott's first act after assuming command of the army was to
order the discharge of the volunteers.[847] On August 10 he started
down the Mississippi by steamer to Fort Armstrong, intending there
to bring the war to a formal close by the negotiation of a treaty of
peace. The troops from Chicago, who were making their way, meanwhile,
across Illinois to the seat of war in obedience to Scott's orders,
were met at Dixon's Ferry by news of the termination of the war, and
orders to change their destination to Fort Armstrong. Here, while
awaiting the bringing-in of the prisoners, and examining those brought
in to determine their share of responsibility for the war, Scott was
once more confronted by the enemy that had wrought such havoc among
the troops in the journey around the Lakes and at Chicago. About
August 26 the cholera again broke out among his troops with all the
virulence of a first attack.[848] Four companies of United States
Rangers had been enlisted, one from Illinois, two from Indiana, and
one from Missouri.[849] The Illinois company, while proceeding to
the seat of war, had been, like Eustis' detachment of regulars from
Chicago, directed to make its way to Rock Island. On the way down Rock
River from Dixon's Ferry, the soldiers were attacked by cholera; some
were left behind, ill, on the march, and others died after reaching
camp near Rock Island. Whether or not it was brought by these troops,
the disease soon made its appearance in Rock Island, the first death
occurring August 27.[850]

[Footnote 847: Stevens, _op. cit._, 247-48.]

[Footnote 848: Scott, _Memoirs_, I, 221; _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_, X, 231.]

[Footnote 849: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, X, 231.]

[Footnote 850: Scott's Order No. 16, August S, 1832, printed in
Stevens, _op. cit._, 248-40.]

The outbreak of the plague halted, for the time being, the progress
of arrangements for the treaty. The Indians who had not yet assembled
were directed to remain away until a new summons should be sent them,
and those at hand were permitted to disperse. In this connection there
occurred a striking exhibition of the red man's devotion to his code
of honor. Among the prisoners whose cases were awaiting disposition
were three Sacs who were accused of having murdered some Menominees
in accordance with the Indian law of retaliation. Scott set them at
liberty to seek safety in the prairies from the pestilence, having
first exacted a promise that in response to a prearranged signal, to
be hung out from, a dead tree on the subsidence of the pest, they
would return to stand their trial. The cholera having passed away the
signal was displayed, and a day or two later the murderers presented
themselves.[851] It is pleasing to be able to add that an appeal which
Scott had already dispatched to Washington in their behalf met with a
favorable response and that it was not necessary to take the lives of
the men who esteemed their honor so highly.

[Footnote 851: Stevens, _loc. cit._, Scott, _Memoirs_, I, 221-23.]

Scott's measures for coping with the cholera at Rock Island were no
less energetic and courageous than those he had already taken in
dealing with the earlier outbreak of the plague. In a characteristic
order to his troops, issued the day after the first death occurred, he
recited the facts of the situation and commanded a strict observance
of the proper sanitary regulations.[852] He stated that having himself
seen much of the disease, he knew the generating cause of it to be
intemperance. Every soldier, therefore, who should be found intoxicated
after the issuance of this order would be compelled, as soon as his
strength should permit, to dig a grave large enough for his own
reception, as such grave could not fail soon to be wanted "for the
drunken man himself or some drunken companion." This order was given,
it was added, as well to serve for the punishment of drunkenness as
to spare good and temperate men the labor of digging graves for their
worthless companions.

[Footnote 852: Stevens, _op. cit._, 248-49.]

The troops were camped in tents in close order exposed for several
days to cold rains.[853] The groans and screams of the afflicted,
audible to everyone, added to the horror of the scene. In the face
of this situation the hearts of the stoutest quailed. Through it all
General Scott ministered personally to the wants of the afflicted,
officers and privates alike, freely exposing himself to disease and
death in the most terrible form, and by his example exciting confidence
and courage in all.[854] The ravages of the cholera were finally
checked by removing the troops from their camp on Rock Island to small
camps on the bluffs on the Iowa side of the Mississippi.[855]

[Footnote 853: Captain Henry Smith's narrative, in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, X, 165. The author was himself an officer in
General Atkinson's brigade during the war.]

[Footnote 854: _Ibid._; Scott, _Memoirs_, I, 230-32.]

[Footnote 855: Flagler, _Rock Island Arsenal_, 22; _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, X, 166.]

On September 15 and 21, 1832, treaties were concluded by General Scott
and Governor Reynolds, acting on behalf of the United States, with the
Winnebago and the Sac and Fox Indians respectively, which formally
terminated the war.[856] The former were compelled to cede their lands
in southern Wisconsin to the United States, and accept in their stead
a new home west of the Mississippi in the modern state of Iowa; the
latter surrendered an important tract of their territory on the western
side of the Mississippi, extending northward from the northern boundary
of Missouri. Thus was punishment meted out by the victors--to the Sacs
and Foxes for their active participation in the war, to the Winnebagoes
for the sympathy and covert assistance extended by them to the former.
Black Hawk, the leader of the forlorn red hope in this disastrous
foray, was taken, after several months' imprisonment, upon a tour of
the East, with the design of imbuing him with a conviction of the
futility of further resistance to the whites. Upon his return, shorn of
all political power, he was permitted to live out the remainder of his
life in retirement, the quiet and peace of which contrasted strangely
with the tempestuousness of his active career. No better defense of
his action in going to war with the whites can be made than he himself
offered in the course of a Fourth of July speech shortly before his
death: "Rock River was a beautiful country. I loved my towns, my
cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for it."[857]

[Footnote 856: _Treaties ... from 1778 to 1837_, 503 ff.]

[Footnote 857: Stevens, _op. cit._, 271.]

Upon the conclusion of peace the troops which had been gathered at
Rock Island were dispersed in various directions. The survivors of
the six companies of artillery which had left Fortress Monroe in June
for the seat of war returned to that place in November. Their return
route from Rock Island was down the Mississippi and up the Ohio and
the Kanawha to Charleston and thence across Virginia to the final
destination.[858] On September 23 six companies of infantry of the
Second and Fifth Regiments under Lieutenant-colonel Cummings left Rock
Island for Chicago.[859] Seven days later the detachment was in camp,
on the east branch of the "River du Pagan" near Chicago.[860] Evidently
the "Du Pagan" was the modern Du Page. The next day Major Whistler's
two companies of the Second Infantry, which were included in the
detachment, moved into Chicago and once more took up their quarters in
Fort Dearborn. Two days later, October 3, Lieutenant-colonel Cummings
left Chicago for Fort Niagara with the two companies of the Fifth
Infantry which had come from that place four months before to take
part in the war. The destination of the remaining companies of the
detachment which had marched from Rock Island to Chicago is not in
evidence.

[Footnote 858: _Niles' Register_, November 17, 1832.]

[Footnote 859: _Drennan Papers_, Fort Dearborn post returns for 1832.]

[Footnote 860: _Ibid._]

Thus the Black Hawk War passed into history. It remains to speak
of the momentous results for Chicago and the country west of Lake
Michigan which accrued from it. By the war the beautiful region of
northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin was first fairly made known to
the whites. "The troops acted as explorers of a large tract of which
nothing had hitherto been definitely known among white men."[861]
It has even been said that portions of the country which the armies
traversed had previously been as little known to the Indians themselves
"as the interior of Africa was to Stanley when he first groped his way
across the Dark Continent." One of the Illinois militiamen wrote of the
Four-Lakes country that if these lakes were anywhere else they would
be regarded as among the wonders of the world.[862] On the shores of
one of them stands today the capital of Wisconsin, and on the very spot
over which the troops of Dodge and Henry pressed in hot pursuit of the
fleeing red men has grown up one of America's greatest universities.
With the close of the war the East was flooded with books, pamphlets,
and newspaper articles describing the newly discovered paradise. The
result of this thorough advertising was a rush of immigrants to take
possession of it. No other point in all the West profited by this as
did Chicago. Her position at the foot of Lake Michigan, on the great
highway of trade and travel between the lakes and the Mississippi,
which it was expected the construction of the canal from the Chicago
River to the Illinois, long under agitation, would shortly open up,
secured to her commercial advantages which no other point in the
Northwest could rival. Chicago became, therefore, the great entrepôt
for the onrushing tide of immigrants. In turn the development of her
hinterland provided the substantial basis for a trade, growing ever
vaster, of which Chicago constituted the natural outlet and center. The
fulfilment of the prophecy made by Schoolcraft a dozen years before
that Chicago would become the dèpôt for the inland commerce between the
northern and southern sections of the Union, and "a great thoroughfare
for strangers, merchants, and travellers," was at hand. The lethargy of
a century and a half was about to be thrown off, in the birth of a new
Chicago whose name was to become the synonym for energy, enthusiasm,
and progress.

[Footnote 861: Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War," in _Wisconsin
Historical Collections_, XII, 264.]

[Footnote 862: Wakefield, quoted in _ibid._, XII, 252.]




CHAPTER XV

THE VANISHING OF THE RED MAN


The Treaty of Paris of 1783 which closed the Revolutionary War gave
the new nation whose birth it marked the Mississippi River for its
western boundary, and a line through the middle of the Great Lakes
and extended thence to the Mississippi, as its boundary on the north.
Until Wayne's victory over the northwestern tribes in the battle of
Fallen Timbers, in August, 1794, however, the grip of the red man
upon the territory north of the Ohio River was practically unbroken.
Certain treaties had been made, it is true, carrying cessions of land
to the whites in this region,[863] but their validity was contested by
powerful tribes and factions among the Indians, and the tide of white
settlement was still confined to the country closely bordering upon the
Ohio River. By the Treaty of Greenville, a year after his victory over
the Indians, Wayne secured the cession by them to the United States of
about twenty-five thousand square miles of land, comprising roughly the
southern half of the present state of Ohio together with a long and
narrow strip of land in southwestern Indiana.[864] At the same time,
however, the Indian ownership of the remainder of the Northwest, aside
from certain reservations which were specially excepted, was conceded.
The extinguishment of the Indian title, thus formally recognized, to
the soil of the Northwest required two score years of time and the
negotiation of dozens of treaties. Its consummation marked the passing
of the red man from the imperial domain of the old Northwest.

[Footnote 863: See _supra_, pp. 109-10.]

[Footnote 864: For a further account of the terms of the treaty see pp.
124-25.]

From the beginning of his term as governor of Indian Territory,
Harrison pursued the policy of procuring by treaties of cession the
Indian lands. This policy was pressed by him, and later by other
representatives of the national government in the Northwest, at every
suitable opportunity. To the omnipresent land hunger of the whites the
development of the agitation led by Tecumseh, and his brother, the
Prophet, was primarily due. The treaties negotiated by Harrison at Fort
Wayne in September, 1809, by which almost three million acres of land
was conveyed to the whites, especially angered Tecumseh, who threatened
to put to death the chiefs who had signed them.[865] His purpose to
form an Indian Confederacy to stay the farther advances of the whites
and the alienation of the lands belonging to the Indians was boldly
avowed to Harrison at Vincennes in August, 1810. He viewed the policy
pursued by the United States of purchasing the red man's lands as "a
mighty water ready to overflow his people," and the confederacy he was
forming among the tribes to prevent any individual tribe from selling
without the consent of the others was the dam he was erecting to resist
this mighty water.[866]

[Footnote 865: _Supra_, p. 191.]

[Footnote 866: Drake, _Tecumseh_, 129.]

Tecumseh's dam, however, proved ineffectual to accomplish its purpose.
As well might he seek to turn back the waters of the Mississippi as
to stay permanently the westward tide of white settlement. By treaty
after treaty the red man's birthright was pared away, until he had lost
possession of practically all of the old Northwest. The methods pursued
in the negotiation of all these treaties were similar. They will be
sufficiently illustrated in the account of the two Chicago treaties of
1821 and 1833.

About the middle of the year 1804 the Sac Indians murdered
three Americans who had settled above the mouth of the Missouri
River.[867] Governor Harrison journeyed to St. Louis to demand
from the representatives of the tribe to which the murderers
belonged satisfaction for the offense. Advantage was taken of the
situation to obtain from the Sacs and Foxes a cession of lands. By
a treaty concluded November 3, 1804, in return for an insignificant
consideration,[868] the two tribes ceded over fifty million acres of
land in Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin to the United States. The
portion of the cession east of the Mississippi included all the land
between that stream and the Illinois River and its tributary, the
Fox, extending northward to a line drawn from the latter stream to a
point on the Wisconsin, thirty-six miles above its mouth. But this
magnificent cession was ultimately to cost the Americans far more than
the paltry sum stipulated in the treaty. Black Hawk and others of his
faction among the Sacs protested that the chiefs who made the cession
had acted without the authorization or knowledge of their people,[869]
and the disputes engendered over the terms of the cession furnished the
principal cause of the Black Hawk War.

[Footnote 867: Dawson, _Harrison_, 58 ff.]

[Footnote 868: Goods to the value of $2234.50 were given to the
Indians, and the payment of an annuity of $1,000 was promised.]

[Footnote 869: Black Hawk, _Life_, 27-28.]

In August, 1816, the Indian title to that portion of the Sac and
Fox cession lying north of a line drawn due west from the southern
extremity of Lake Michigan was revived.[870] At the same time the
United States secured possession of a strip of land lying along
Lake Michigan ten miles north and ten miles south of the mouth of
the Chicago River, and extending thence in a general southwesterly
direction to the Fox and Illinois rivers, so as to give the whites
control of the route by the Chicago River and Portage to the Illinois.
Control over this strip of land was desired to facilitate the building
of the proposed canal. "Of all the Indian treaties ever made, this
will be remembered when all others, with their obligations, are
forgotten."[871] The sectional surveys of the country lying on either
side of the zone included in this cession of 1816 were made at
different times. The section lines were not made to meet each other,
and diagonal offsets along the entire length of the Indian grant
resulted. So long as the present system of land surveys endures, all
sectional maps of this portion of Illinois will be disfigured by the
triangular fractions which resulted from this error in the original
surveys.

[Footnote 870: Treaty of August 24, 1816, _Treaties ... from 1778 to
1837_, 197.]

[Footnote 871: Blanchard, _The Northwest and Chicago_, I, 491.]

The various treaties by which the United States acquired the Indian
title to the land of the Northwest were held at such places as best
suited the convenience of the parties to the transaction. Two notable
ones were concluded at Chicago, the first in 1821, the second twelve
years later. Fortunately for the historian the scenes attending the
negotiation of each of these treaties have been described by witnesses
possessed of unusual narrative skill.

The purpose of the Treaty of 1821 was to secure from the Pottawatomies
a considerable tract of land in southern Michigan extending from
Grand River southward to the northern boundary of Indiana. The United
States Commissioners, Governor Cass and Solomon Sibley, accompanied
by Henry R. Schoolcraft as secretary, left Detroit for Chicago July
3, 1821.[872] The route from Detroit to Chicago usually followed at
this time was the overland trail, which necessitated a journey of
about three hundred miles; the alternative was to go by schooner or
other vessel around the lakes, which entailed a journey twice as long.
Cass's party pursued neither of these routes, however. Partly because
of business on the Wabash, partly from a desire to explore the country,
it was decided to travel in a large canoe by way of the Maumee and
the Wabash rivers to the Ohio and thence to and up the Illinois to
Chicago.[873]

[Footnote 872: Schoolcraft, _Travels in the Central Portions of the
Mississippi Valley_, 15 ff.]

[Footnote 873: _Ibid._, 9.]

Several weeks later the party was at Starved Rock on the Illinois.
Here the canoe was abandoned because of the impossibility of proceeding
farther by water and the journey was continued on horseback. The
last few miles of the way the travelers were almost constantly in
the company of parties of Indians, dressed in their best attire
and decorated with medals, feathers, and silver bands; all, like
Cass's party, were making their way to Chicago to participate in the
negotiations over the treaty.[874] The gaudy and showy dresses of the
Indians, with their spirited manner of riding and the jingling caused
by the striking of their ornaments, created a novel and interesting
scene. Since they were converging upon Chicago from all parts of
an extensive circle of country, the nearer Cass and his associates
approached the more compact the assemblage became, and they found their
cavalcade augmented and the dust, confusion, and noise increased at
every bypath which intersected their way.

[Footnote 874: _Ibid._, 335.]

In all three thousand Indians gathered at Chicago to attend upon the
work of treaty making. To accommodate this assemblage an "open bower"
had been erected on the north side of the river under the guns of the
fort to serve as the council house.[875] At the first formal session
of the council, which occurred on August 17, Cass set forth in a
short speech, the delivery of which was punctuated at every point by
the "hoah," indicative of attention, the object of the government in
calling the red men together. Without in any way indicating their
attitude, the chiefs adjourned for deliberation. Two days later they
were ready with their answer, which was delivered by the Wabash
chieftain, Metea, the greatest orator of the Pottawatomies. With a
mixture of boldness and humility he advanced a number of reasons for
aversion on the part of the red men for making the cession desired,
and concluded with a flat refusal of Cass's proffer. Speech-making in
profusion followed, interspersed with frequent adjournments, in the
course of which day after day passed away. From the point of view of
the Indians there was no reason for hurry. They were being entertained
and fed at the expense of the government, and it was natural that
they should improve the opportunity to the utmost. Not only was the
occasion an enjoyable one, but by assuming a recalcitrant attitude and
prolonging the council a better bargain might be driven.

[Footnote 875: Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, 337 ff.]

Some misapprehensions concerning the terms of a former treaty were
effectually dispelled by the commissioners, the wavering and the
stubborn were won over, and on August 29 the treaty was concluded.[876]
The Ottawa tribe was to receive an annuity of one thousand dollars
forever, while the Pottawatomies were to be paid five thousand dollars
annually for twenty years. On behalf of the Ottawas the government
agreed, also, to expend fifteen hundred dollars annually for ten years
for the support of a blacksmith and a teacher and the promotion of
the arts of civilization. In similar fashion the sum of one thousand
dollars was to be expended annually for fifteen years for the
maintenance of a teacher and a blacksmith among the Pottawatomies.

[Footnote 876: For it see _Treaties ... from 1778 to 1837_ 297 ff.]

The foregoing provisions were of general application. The treaty
contained in addition a list of special reservations of tracts of land
which were granted to individuals, usually of mixed descent. The story
of the influences responsible for these provisions of the treaty afford
a view of the methods by which the terms of such cessions in the Indian
treaties of this period were ordinarily devised. The provisions for
supporting the work of instructing and civilizing the Indians were due
to the exertions of Rev. Isaac McCoy, the founder of Carey's Mission
among the Pottawatomies, near the modern city of Niles. Unable himself
to come to Chicago, he sent a representative to urge upon both the
commissioners for the United States and the Indians the recognition of
his project for establishing a mission among the latter.[877] Of more
importance, he enlisted the support of Colonel William A. Trimble,
who had recently resigned his office in the army and become a United
States senator from Ohio. On his way to Chicago to attend the council
he stopped at Carey's, and having listened to McCoy's unfolding of
his plans and his need of aid to realize them, promised to exert his
influence in the missionary's behalf at Chicago. Largely because of
this championship, apparently, the provisions already recounted for the
support of blacksmiths and teachers among the tribes involved in the
cession were made. Shortly afterward McCoy received the appointment as
teacher of the Pottawatomies, and his associate, Mr. John Sears, the
similar appointment among the Ottawas, while the selection and control
of the blacksmiths was also confided to McCoy.[878]

[Footnote 877: McCoy, _History of Baptist Indian Missions_, 113.]

[Footnote 878: Cass to McCoy, July 16, 1822, _ibid._, 145 ff.]

"To bring about such an arrangement as this," wrote McCoy, "had cost
us much labor, watchfulness, and anxiety. Others, in their intercourse
with the Indians, had money and goods with which to purchase their
consent to measures to which they otherwise felt disinclined; but we
had neither money nor consciences that could be thus used."[879] The
significance of this statement becomes evident upon examination of the
list of special reservations provided for by the treaty. The traders
and their half-breed families and their descendants, shrewder and
more influential than the full-blooded Indians, provided for their
future welfare by procuring the reservation to themselves of generous
tracts of land. That these special grants of land were obtained by
the use of improper methods and influences, as McCoy has charged, can
scarcely be doubted.[880] One of the witnesses to the treaty was Jean
Baptiste Beaubien, the Chicago trader. It can hardly be deemed a mere
coincidence that among the grants to individuals are included one
half-section of land to each of his sons, Charles and Madore, by his
Ottawa squaw, Mahnawbunnoquah, who had by this time been dead for many
years. To the chieftain Peeresh, or Pierre Moran, who guided Cass's
party from Starved Rock to Chicago,[881] and whose racial affiliations
are sufficiently indicated by his name, was granted one section of
land at the mouth of the Elkhart River, while two more sections were
reserved for his children. "To William Knaggs, or Waseskukson, son
of Chesqua, one-half of a section of land," reads another clause of
the treaty. Reference to the list of witnesses who signed it reveals
the name of "W. Knaggs, Indian Agent," and this individual acted as
interpreter during the negotiation of the treaty.[882] Pierre Le Clerc,
or Le Claire, the half-breed who had assisted in negotiating the
surrender of the defeated Fort Dearborn garrison in August, 1812, now
received a section of land on the Elkhart, and his brother, Jean B. Le
Clerc, half as much. Another participant in the Fort Dearborn massacre,
Jean Baptiste Chandonnai, whose activities as a trader at Chicago and
elsewhere have already received our attention,[883] was granted two
sections of land.

[Footnote 879: McCoy, _op. cit._, 113-14.]

[Footnote 880: The policy of bribing the leaders among the Indians was
deliberately adopted by the agents of the government, including such
men even as Lewis Cass. On January 1, 1821, Alexander Wolcott, the
Chicago agent, thus addressed Cass relative to the contemplated Indian
treaty and the expenses of his agency for the ensuing year: "To induce
the Pottawatomies to sell their lands, particularly the district of
Saint Joseph's to which they are much attached it will be requisite to
bribe their chief men by very considerable presents and promises; and
that should be done, in part at least, before the period of treating
arrives, so that time may be given for its effects to spread through
the body of the nation In short, it appears to me that a small portion
of the sum appropriated to the treaty can be disposed of in the best
and most efficient manner in conciliating and securing before hand the
principal men of the nation" (Indian Department, Cass Correspondence,
Wolcott to Cass, Jan. 1, 1821). Cass in reply expressed his approval of
the proposal.]

[Footnote 881: Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, 321.]

[Footnote 882: _Ibid._, 365.]

[Footnote 883: _Supra_, p. 277.]

Among the most highly favored recipients of special grants by this
treaty were the traders Burnett and Bertrand, and their families.
Burnett had married KawKeemee, the sister of the Pottawatomie
chieftain, Topinabee, and Bertrand had also married a squaw. The
success of these families in securing special favors for themselves
from the Indians and the government is evidenced by the recurrence of
their names in many treaties. Both Burnett and Bertrand were present
at Chicago and exerted their influence in support of the commissioners
at a critical stage in the negotiations.[884] John Burnett received by
the treaty two sections of land, and four of his children one section
each, near the mouth of the St. Joseph River. To the wife of Bertrand
was given one section of land, and to each of her five children one
half-section. To John La Lime, son of Nokenoqua, a half-section of
land was granted. Presumably he was the son of the Fort Dearborn
interpreter slain by John Kinzie in 1812. The latter was now sub-Indian
agent, and assisting in the negotiation of the treaty. Whose influence
was responsible for the special grant to young La Lime can only be
conjectured.

[Footnote 884: Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, 352-53.]

The fatal love for liquor which was working the ruin of the Indians
was significantly manifested during the course of the negotiations
over this treaty. To their honor the commissioners determined not
to supply the Indians with liquor until the negotiations should be
concluded. This did not meet the approval of the latter, however,
and in his speech of August 22 Metea gave expression to their
dissatisfaction.[885] Cass answered him with a spirited rebuke,
repelling the implication of parsimony and showing that the liquor
had been denied the Indians out of regard for their own welfare, that
they might be able to keep sober and protect their interests in the
negotiations. He concluded by painting the baneful influence of whisky
upon them, and appealing to them to wait, if they were determined to
drink, until a proper time. The rebuke was effective in quieting their
importunities upon the subject until the negotiations were concluded a
week later. Then their pent-up thirst for the liquor, which they had
stipulated should accompany the distribution of goods, overcame their
power of self-control. The aged Topinabee pleaded with Cass for the
"milk" he had brought for them, but was told that the goods were not
yet ready to be issued. "We care not for the land, the money, or the
goods," he rejoined; "it is the whisky we want--give us the whisky."
The whisky was shortly provided, and within twenty-four hours ten
shocking murders had been committed.[886]

[Footnote 885: _Ibid._, 350.]

[Footnote 886: Schoolcraft, _op. cit._, 387-88; McCoy, _op. cit._, 116,
146-47.]

The in-rush of white settlers which followed the close of the Black
Hawk War made necessary the early removal of the Indians from northern
Illinois. The Pottawatomies and allied tribes still held title to a
large tract of land between Lake Michigan and Rock River and extending
northward from the line drawn due west through the southernmost point
of Lake Michigan. With a view to securing the cession of this land and
the removal of its owners to some point west of the Mississippi, the
last and greatest Indian council ever held at Chicago was convened
in September, 1833. It was meet that every warrior of the tribes
concerned in the proposed negotiation should attend the grand pow
wow, bringing his squaws, papooses, ponies, and dogs with him, and
accordingly several thousand Indians assembled.[887] From far and near,
too, gathered "birds of passage" of the white race, representing every
gradation of character from rascality to respectability.

[Footnote 887: Latrobe (_Rambler in North America_, II, 201) says the
number was estimated at five thousand. Shirreff says (_Tour through
North America_, 227) "it was supposed nearly 8,000 Indians were
assembled." Porter says (_Earliest Religious History of Chicago_, 71)
that on the appointed day "Indians began to pour in by thousands." All
three writers were in Chicago while the treaty was being negotiated.]

The Chicago of September, 1833, was "a mush-room" village of a few
score houses.[888] Most of them had been hastily erected since the
preceding spring and were small and unsubstantial.[889] "Frame and
clapboard houses were springing up daily," wrote Latrobe, the English
traveler, who visited Chicago while the council was in progress,
"under the active axes and hammers of the speculators, and piles
of lumber announced the preparation for yet other edifices of an
equally light character."[890] The one business street of the place
was South Water Street, along which a row of one-story log houses
sprawled westward from the reservation, its monotony only slightly
broken by the two or three frame stores which the village at this time
boasted.[891] The unwonted concourse of visitors in attendance upon
the treaty taxed the accommodations of the place to the utmost. There
were "traders by scores and hangers-on by hundreds."[892] According
to one observer, a stranger to America, a "general fair" and "a kind
of horse market" seemed to be in progress.[893] Large wagons drawn by
six or eight oxen and heavily loaded with merchandise were arriving
and departing. In the picturesque language of Latrobe there were
"emigrants and land speculators numerous as the sand, horse dealers and
horse-stealers--rogues of every description, white, black, brown, and
red---half-breeds, quarter-breeds, and men of no breed at all; dealers
in pigs, poultry, and potatoes; men pursuing Indian claims, some for
tracts of land, others for pigs which the wolves had eaten;--creditors
of the tribes, or of particular Indians, who know they have no chance
of getting their money if they do not get it from the government
agents; sharpers of every degree; peddlers, grogsellers; Indian agents
and Indian traders of every description, and Contractors to supply the
Pottawatomies with food."[894]

[Footnote 888: Shirreff (_op. cit._, 226) gives the number of houses as
about one hundred and fifty. Latrobe (_op. cit._, II, 206) speaks of
"the half a hundred clapboard houses."]

[Footnote 889: Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, 206; Hoffman, _Winter in the
West_, I, 199, 202; letter of Charles Butler in Andreas, _History of
Chicago_, I, 129-30.]

[Footnote 890: Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, 209.]

[Footnote 891: Porter, _Earliest Religious History of Chicago_, 70.]

[Footnote 892: _Ibid._, 71.]

[Footnote 893: Shirreff, _op. cit._, 228.]

[Footnote 894: Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, 206.]

The few primitive hotels were, of course, utterly unable to accommodate
comfortably the crowds of strangers who clamored for board and
lodging. Latrobe characterizes his hotel, which was, apparently, the
Sauganash, kept by Mark Beaubien, as "a vile, two-storied barrack,"
within which "all was in a state of most appalling confusion, filth
and racket."[895] The public table was such a scene of confusion that
the traveler felt compelled to avoid it. The French landlord was "a
sporting character" and "everything was left to chance, who in the
shape of a fat housekeeper, fumed and toiled around the premises from
morning to night."

[Footnote 895: _Ibid._, II, 209.]

The character of the impression which the traveler forms is determined
as much by his standard of judgment as by the conditions he actually
encounters. Latrobe was a cultivated English gentleman, habituated to
another manner of life than that which prevailed upon the American
frontier. The picture drawn by Shirreff, himself a sturdy farmer,
of Chicago's inns in September, 1833, is perhaps fairer than that
of Latrobe; yet even when measured by his more lenient standards
the conditions described seem crude enough.[896] His hotel was so
disagreeably crowded that the landlord could not positively promise a
bed, although he would do his best to accommodate his guests. His house
was "dirty in the extreme, and confusion reigned throughout," but the
traveler temperately observes that the extraordinary circumstances of
the village went far to extenuate this. The table was amply supplied
with substantial provisions, although they were indifferently cooked
and served "still more so." At bedtime the guest was assigned to a
dirty pallet in the corner of a room ten feet square which contained
two small beds already occupied. But he was not to enjoy even this poor
retreat without molestation. Toward morning he was aroused from a sound
sleep by "an angry voice uttering horrid imprecations," accompanied
by a demand to share the bed. The lighted candle in the hands of the
speaker showed that the intruders were French traders. Shirreff checked
their torrent of profanity with a dignified rebuke, which caused them
to withdraw from the room, leaving him in undisturbed possession of the
bed.

[Footnote 896: Shirreff, _op. cit._, 228-29.]

The thousands of savages congregated to barter away their birthright
presented an extraordinary spectacle.[897] Although several different
tribes were represented, their dress and appearance depended upon
individual caprice and the means of gratifying it, rather than upon
tribal customs and distinctions. Those who possessed the means
generally attired themselves in fantastic fashion and gaudy colors.
As a rule the warriors were attired more gaily and were more given to
dandyism than were the squaws. All of the men, except a few of the very
poorest, wore breechclouts and blankets. Most of them added to these
articles leggings of various colors and degrees of ornamentation; while
those who were able disported themselves in loosely flowing jackets,
rich sashes, and gaudy shawl or handkerchief turbans. The squaws wore
blue or printed cotton cloths and the richer ones had embroidered
petticoats and shawls. The various articles of clothing of both men and
women were covered with gewgaws of silver and brass, glass beads, and
mirrors, such as had from time immemorial been supplied to the Indians
by the traders. The women wore ornaments in their ears and occasionally
in their noses, while the faces of both sexes were bedaubed with paint,
blue, black, white, and vermilion, applied according to more or less
fanciful designs.

[Footnote 897: For the picture that follows I have drawn on the works
of Latrobe, Shirreff, and Porter, already cited.]

On every hand the camps of the natives were to be seen. The woodlands
and prairies surrounding the village, and the sand hills along the
lake shore, were studded with their wigwams, while herds of ponies
browsed in all directions. Along the river were many groups of tents,
constructed of coarse canvas, blankets, and mats, surrounded by poles
supporting meat, moccasins, and rags. The confined area within was
often covered with half-rotten mats or shavings, over which men, women,
children, and baggage sprawled promiscuously.

The treaty-making offered to the red man an opportunity of indulging
in an extended carousal. Supplied with food by the commissioners and
with liquid refreshment by the traders, for the present his cup of
contentment overflowed. Gossiping, gambling, racing, and loafing were
the order of the day. "Far and wide the grassy Prairie teemed with
figures; warriors, mounted or on foot, squaws, and horses. Here a race
between three or four Indian ponies each carrying a double rider,
whooping and yelling like fiends. There a solitary horseman with a long
spear, turbaned like an Arab, scouring along at full speed; groups of
hobbled horses; Indian dogs and children, or a grave conclave of grey
chiefs seated on the grass in consultation."[898]

[Footnote 898: Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, 210.]

Of one of these "grave conclaves" a story has been handed down which
smacks strongly of the age of chivalry.[899] Two finely built young
men who were the best of friends, the sons of two chiefs, Seebwasen
and Sanguanauneebee, were courting the same young squaw, the daughter
of Wampum, a Chippewa chief from Sheboygan. The lovers had proposed to
decide the question as to which should possess the girl by fighting a
duel. Their fathers had submitted this proposition to a council for
decision. The result of the weighty deliberation was that the youths
should fight to the death, the survivor to take the girl. They were
brought before their elders and informed of this decision. Their ponies
were brought forth, their manes and tails were decked with ribbons,
and the saddles and the duelists themselves with beads, brooches, and
other ornaments. After the ponies had been driven once or twice around
the council place, the duelists and their friends set out for the place
of encounter, swimming their horses across the river, and drew up at
an open spot on the north side. Crude flags attached to poles stuck up
in the sand gave notice that a fight to the death was impending, while
guards were placed to clear a ring for the encounter. Outside the ring,
alone, her arms akimbo and her attitude one of indifference, stood the
girl over whom the duel was to be waged. The time was an hour before
sundown, and four or five hundred spectators, Indians and white men,
were gathered around.

[Footnote 899: For it see _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XV,
460-63. The story as at present preserved was told to the secretary of
the Wisconsin Historical Society by the son of the Milwaukee trader,
Jacques Vieau, who attended the negotiation of the treaty.]

One of the duelists wheeled to the right and the other to the left.
Then their horses were brought sideways together, head to tail and tail
to head. As the signal was given each fighter drew his long-bladed
knife. A hubbub arose among the spectators as they clashed, the squaws
rending the air with their cries. Thrust followed upon thrust, the
blood spurting forth as each blow was given. The bloody work could not
continue long, of course. Soon Sanguanauneebee's son cried out in his
death agony and toppled over backward, his arm raised for a blow, his
opponent's knife in his spine. A moment later Seebwasen's son fell over
and died. The girl, bereft of both her lovers, at last manifested some
concern, and wrung her hands in frenzy. The assemblage dispersed and
the primitive tragedy was ended.

It is painfully evident from a study of the treaty and of the
descriptions of the scenes attending its negotiation which have come
down to us, that the public sentiment of the frontier had become
demoralized by the opportunities for dishonest gain afforded by the
cession of the lands belonging to the red man. Unscrupulous individuals
were never lacking to take advantage of these opportunities, and
others, who under a proper system of administration of affairs
pertaining to the Indians would have scorned corrupt practices,
permitted their honesty to be undermined by the influence of the
example of their fellows in the mad scramble for plunder. The Treaty of
1833 afforded the last, and at the same time the greatest, opportunity
at Chicago for individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of the
Indians or of the government of the United States. Since both the red
man and the government submitted meekly to the process, a carnival of
greed and graft ensued.

A set of temporary plank huts had been erected on the north side
of the river for the accommodation of the commissioners and their
dependents, and a "spacious open shed" had been constructed, also on
the north side, to serve as the council house.[900] The commissioners
were Governor George B. Porter of Michigan, Thomas J. V. Owen,
Indian agent at Chicago, and William Weatherford. About the middle
of September they assembled the chiefs in a preliminary council and
Governor Porter explained the purpose of the assembly, urging upon
them the wisdom of acceding to the government's wishes. The chiefs
received the proposal without enthusiasm, disclaiming any desire to
part with their lands. The request that they return a prompt answer to
the government was negatived with equal decision. The next day they
indulged in a "begging dance" through the streets of the town. Half
a hundred painted Indians on horseback followed some thirty naked
savages on foot, as they danced, whooped, and shouted from the fort
down South Water Street, stopping before each door to receive whisky,
tobacco, or bread. To the pioneer minister of the gospel who reports
the scene they appeared like the very incarnation of evil. Several
days passed. In vain the signal gun from the fort boomed out its daily
notice of the assemblage of the council, for the chiefs would not
assemble. At length, on the afternoon of September 21 they were induced
to come together. The council fire was kindled and the commissioners
and interpreters gathered at one end of the chamber, while twenty or
thirty chieftains occupied the other. The relative positions of the
groups of white and red men representing the two races seemed to typify
their relation to each other: "The glorious light of the setting sun
streaming in under the low roof of the council-house, fell full on the
countenances of the former as they faced the West--while the pale light
of the East hardly lighted up the dark and painted lineaments of the
poor Indians whose souls evidently clave to their birthright in that
quarter."[901]

[Footnote 900: For the further account of the negotiations I have drawn
upon the works of Latrobe, Shirreff, and Porter, as before; chiefly,
however, upon Latrobe.]

[Footnote 901: Latrobe, _op. cit._, II, 214.]

For a few days longer the Indians refused the proffered terms. At
length, urged by the agents and traders, the chiefs one after another
submitted to the inevitable, until, on September 26, the treaty
was concluded. The real significance of the submission cannot be
better stated than in the words of the talented Latrobe, who was a
keen-sighted spectator of the proceedings. "The business of arranging
the terms of an Indian Treaty," he observed, "lies chiefly between the
various traders, agents, creditors, and half-breeds of the tribes, on
whom custom and necessity have made the degraded chiefs dependant,
and the Government Agents. When the former have seen matters so far
arranged that their self-interest, and various schemes and claims are
likely to be fulfilled and allowed to their heart's content--the silent
acquiescence of the Indian follows of course; and till this is the case
the Treaty can never be amicably effected."[902]

[Footnote 902: _Ibid._, II, 215. An editorial in the first number
of the first newspaper published in Chicago, commenting on the
difficulties encountered by the commissioners in the early stages of
the negotiations, says: "The various and clashing interests of the
Traders were powerfully operating, and altogether seemed, for some
days, to render doubtful the accomplishment of this great and vastly
important object" (_Chicago Weekly Democrat_, November 26, 1833).]

The treaty[903] provided that the Pottawatomies and allied tribes
should cede their lands to the west of Lake Michigan and their
remaining reservation in southwestern Michigan, supposed to contain
about five million acres, to the United States, and within three
years' time remove beyond the Mississippi River. In return they were
to receive five million acres of land in the West for their new home;
the United States was to transport them thither and pay the cost of
their support for one year after their arrival; and the expenditure
in their behalf of sums of money aggregating almost a million dollars
was agreed upon. These provisions were regarded as very liberal on the
part of the United States.[904] In comparison with similar treaties
of the time this view was doubtless justified; but an examination
of the disposition of the money which the United States was to pay
confirms Latrobe's account of the influence by which the terms of
the treaty were shaped. Except for a few minor bequests the entire
sum appropriated was devoted to six principal purposes which fall
naturally into two groups of three each. The sum of three hundred
and twenty thousand dollars was devoted to the payment for twenty
years of an annuity of sixteen thousand dollars. For the erection of
mills, blacksmith shops, and houses, the employment of physicians,
blacksmiths, and mechanics, and the promotion of civilization
generally, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars were set aside; while
the sum of seventy thousand dollars was devoted to educational purposes
and the encouragement of the domestic arts.

[Footnote 903: For it see _U.S. Statutes at Large_, VII, 431 ff.]

[Footnote 904: Porter, _op. cit._, 72.]

This group of provisions, which were calculated to redound to the
advantage of the red man, requires no discussion. The second group,
from which he derived little or no advantage, calls for extended
consideration. It was agreed that goods and provisions to the value
of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars should be distributed
to the Indians, one portion at the conclusion of the negotiations,
the residue during the ensuing year. The sum of one hundred and ten
thousand dollars was devoted to the satisfaction of "sundry individuals
in behalf of whom reservations were asked, which the Commissioners
refused to grant." A list of the persons thus favored, together with
the amount granted to each, was appended to the treaty as Schedule
A. Finally, provision was made for the payment of one hundred and
seventy-five thousand dollars to various individuals to satisfy claims
made by them against the tribes concerned in the treaty, "which they
have admitted to be justly due." The list of claimants with the amount
allowed in each case constituted Schedule B of the treaty.

It was in connection with the contents of Schedules A and B that the
most striking display of greed and dishonesty occurred. Judged by the
standards of the time, some of the requests for reservations were
doubtless proper; measured by the same standards, too, some of the
claims advanced were probably valid; yet there is no room to doubt
that a large proportion of the grants to individuals under these two
heads were improperly made. "It was an apportionment," remarks Andreas
of the one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars granted under
Schedule B, "of the ready money of the tribes among all the whites who
could bring a claim against an Indian. The honest debtor and the unjust
and dishonest claimant absorbed the fund. How large a portion of it
represented robbery, theft, and perjury will never be known until the
great book is opened at the last day."[905]

[Footnote 905: Andreas, _History of Chicago_, I, 126-27.]

Doubtless this is true, yet the impropriety of many of the claims
allowed is patent even today. The story of "Snipe" and his claim for
pay for hogs which the wolves had eaten is probably fairly typical of
the groundlessness of most of these claims. "Snipe," whose real name,
unfortunately, has not been recorded, was a farmer from the St. Joseph
country, who came to Chicago in the same stage which brought Latrobe
and Shirreff, to prosecute a claim against the Indians, which on his
own statement of the case was improper.[906] He had intended to make
a great deal of pork that season, but upon collecting his hogs from
the woods, where they had run for five months, he could number only
thirty-five instead of fifty-five. The Indians had been hunting hogs,
he stated, and he expected the government agents to allow his claim for
the twenty which were missing.

[Footnote 906: For the story of "Snipe" see Latrobe, _op. cit._, II,
188-89; Shirreff, _op. cit._, 220.]

Due provision was, of course, made for the influential chiefs, who
were frequently half-breeds, and either themselves engaged in the
Indian trade or the descendants of traders. To Billy Caldwell and
Alexander Robinson life annuities of four hundred and three hundred
dollars respectively were granted. In addition, each was to be given
ten thousand dollars, although before payment this sum was cut in
half in each case. Besides these provisions Caldwell's children were
granted six hundred dollars, and the children of Robinson four hundred.
Pokagon, the St. Joseph River chieftain, received two thousand dollars.
The families of Burnett and Bertrand, the St. Joseph traders, were
well provided for. The various members of the latter family alone
received grants aggregating thirty-nine hundred dollars. Jean Baptiste
Chandonnai received one thousand dollars under schedule A, and two
thousand five hundred under Schedule B. Joseph La Framboise, a Chicago
half-breed who ranked as chief, was the recipient of numerous favors.
By the Chicago Treaty of 1821 he had been granted a section of land.
Now, aside from a life annuity of two hundred dollars, he received one
grant of three thousand dollars and he and his children another of one
thousand. Numerous other bequests were made to individuals bearing the
name of La Framboise, whose precise relation to Chief Joseph it does
not seem worth while to attempt to determine.

Another pioneer Chicagoan whose Indian affiliations now proved valuable
to him was Antoine Ouilmette. By the Treaty of Prairie du Chien
of July, 1829, he had been given eight hundred dollars for losses
sustained at the time of the Chicago massacre, and by the same treaty
his wife and children were granted two sections of land a few miles
north of Chicago.[907] Now he again received the sum of eight hundred
dollars. Whether this was in payment of the same damages already
recompensed by the Treaty of Prairie du Chien is not recorded, but in
view of the identity of the sums involved, and the way in which the
claims of others against the Indians which had long since been settled
were repaid at this treaty, the supposition that such was the case does
not seem at all improbable. To one daughter, Mrs. Mann, was given one
thousand dollars and to another, Mrs. Welch, two hundred dollars; a
third daughter, Josette, also received two hundred dollars, although
this was probably at the instigation of John H. Kinzie. Finally, still
another allowance of two hundred dollars was made to Ouilmette's
"children."

[Footnote 907: _U.S. Statutes at Large_, VII, 321, 604.]

Since the identity of "Snipe" is unknown, it is not possible to say
whether his effort to secure compensation for his hogs "which the
wolves had eaten" was successful. That a large number of traders and
other persons were influential enough to gain more than generous
recognition at the hands of the commissioners, however, is quite
apparent from a study of Schedules A and B. Thus Jean Baptiste Beaubien
obtained recognition on more than one count. His sons, Madore and
Charles, were granted three hundred dollars each under Schedule A. His
wife, Josette, received five hundred dollars under the same schedule,
and her children, of whom, presumably, he was the father, received one
thousand dollars. In addition to these grants, both Madore and his
father received sums of money in payment of claims against the Indians.

But few of the traders who shared in the distribution of the public
funds can receive individual mention. The disappointment of James
Kinzie over the denial of his request for a reservation might be
supposed to have been measurably assuaged by the five thousand dollars
granted him in lieu thereof. Since Kinzie was of pure American descent,
it is difficult to justify this grant on any ground of recognized
propriety. The same may be said of the aspiration of Robert A. Forsyth
for a reservation, which he was forced to forego for the more paltry
donation of three thousand dollars. A claim which he preferred for the
same amount under Schedule B was allowed, however, as well as another
claim for thirteen hundred dollars, and in addition to all this he was
made trustee of grants to various individuals amounting to many hundred
dollars more.

It can hardly be regarded as a mere coincidence that the names of
many of those who signed the treaty as witnesses on behalf of the
United States should be enrolled in the list of beneficiaries under
it. Thus, of those already mentioned, Robert Forsyth, James Kinzie,
and Jean Baptiste Beaubien were witnesses of the treaty. William Ewing
was secretary of the commission, and to him and G. W. Ewing a claim
of five thousand dollars was allowed. Luther Rice and James Connor
acted as interpreters. Rice received two thousand five hundred dollars
under Schedule A, while various sums were granted to individuals
bearing the name of Rice, whose relation to the interpreter there is
now no means of determining. Connor was allowed a claim of twenty-two
hundred and fifty dollars; and in conjunction with another man of the
same name received seven hundred dollars under Schedule A. Thomas
Forsyth witnessed the treaty and was allowed payment of a claim of
fifteen hundred dollars. "J. C. Schwarz Adj.M.M." likewise witnessed
the treaty, and "John C. Schwarz," who was doubtless the same person,
received forty-eight hundred dollars by it. In like manner "Laurie
Marsh" signed the treaty and a claim of "Lowrian Marsh" for thirty-two
hundred and ninety dollars was recognized by it. George Hunt, another
witness, who had been engaged in the Indian trade at Chicago a short
time before, was given nine hundred dollars in satisfaction of a
claim and seven hundred and fifty dollars in lieu of a reservation
which he had requested. B. B. Kercheval, still another signer of
the treaty, secured fifteen hundred dollars. Gholson Kercheval, who
was the sub-Indian agent at Chicago, was one of the few witnesses,
aside from the commissioners and the officers of the garrison, who
received nothing from it. A year later, however, October 1, 1834, by an
amendatory treaty signed at Chicago by a small number of chiefs he was
granted two thousand dollars for services rendered the Indians in the
Black Hawk War.[908]

[Footnote 908: _U. S. Statutes at Large_, VII, 447.]

It is, of course, conceivable that this payment was a proper one,
even though the propriety of requiring the friendly Pottawatomies
to pay for the services of the captain of the Chicago militia
company in the Black Hawk War is not at this late day apparent.
The largest single beneficiary by the treaty under Schedule B was
the American Fur Company. Robert Stuart had come on from Mackinac
to attend the negotiations and look out for the interests of his
company in connection therewith.[909] Of the success of his mission
some indication is afforded by the fact that over one-tenth of the
total sum of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars awarded
to individuals in payment of claims against the Indians went to the
American Fur Company.[910] In addition to this, of the sum allotted to
Jean Baptiste Chandonnai under Schedule A, one thousand dollars were,
by his "particular request," to be paid to Robert Stuart, agent of the
American Fur Company. While engaged in the Indian trade at Chicago
fourteen years before, Chandonnai had received goods from the American
Fur Company on credit, for which he afterward refused to pay. A part of
the debt thus repudiated had been secured through Kinzie's influence.
Apparently advantage was now taken of the opportunity presented by the
cession of the Pottawatomie lands to secure payment of the remainder,
ostensibly from the Indians but in reality from the government. The
impropriety of requiring either party to pay the debts of Chandonnai
is self-evident. Notwithstanding his "particular request," Chandonnai
evidently could not be trusted himself to pay the debt, with the money
of the government given into his possession, and so it was arranged
it should pass directly from the agent of the United States to the
American Fur Company.

[Footnote 909: Stuart was among those who signed the treaty. For his
attendance upon it see Porter, _op. cit._, 72; also Porter (Mary),
Eliza Chappell Porter, 100.]

[Footnote 910: Robert Stuart, as agent of the company, received
seventeen thousand dollars, and James Abbott, also on behalf of the
company, twenty-three hundred dollars.]

The dubious character of the claims presented and allowed at this
treaty is still further exemplified by the role played in it by
the heirs of John Kinzie. Both of his sons, John H. and Robert A.
Kinzie, attended the negotiation and signed the treaty as witnesses.
The latter was at the time proprietor of a trading establishment at
Chicago. John H. Kinzie, the elder brother, had a wide acquaintance
throughout the Northwest, with the Indians and whites alike. He had
been at different times in the employ of Robert Stuart of the American
Fur Company, secretary to Governor Cass, and sub-Indian agent at Fort
Winnebago.[911] He had recently resigned the latter position, laid out
the land pre-empted by the family into town lots, and thrown in his
fortune with that of the nascent Chicago. The interests of the Kinzie
heirs, therefore, were advocated by influential spokesmen. Even the
welfare of numerous half-breed dependents of the family was provided
for. To the old family servant of John Kinzie, Victoire Porthier,[912]
and her children, the sum of seven hundred dollars was given under
Schedule A. Her brothers, Jean Baptiste and Thomas Mirandeau, and
her sisters, Jane and Rosetta, received among them the sum of twelve
hundred dollars with the provision that John H. Kinzie should act as
trustee of the fund. Thomas is the "Tomah" of _Wau Bun_, the lad who
had been taken by Kinzie to Fort Winnebago the preceding winter to
become a member of his household.[913] That Jean Baptiste had also been
a servant of the Kinzies at Chicago is stated by the author of _Wau
Bun_.[914] Another member of John Kinzie's household for whom a grant
of money was secured was Josette, the daughter of Antoine Ouilmette.
Like "Tomah" she was a mere child.[915] She had been a member of
Kinzie's household since the spring of 1831. She was granted two
hundred dollars and Kinzie was appointed trustee of the fund.

[Footnote 911: A sketch of Kinzie's career written by his widow is
printed in Andreas, _op. cit._, I, 97-99.]

[Footnote 912: For her connection with Kinzie see _ibid._, I, 105.]

[Footnote 913: Andreas, _op. cit._, I, 105; Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 376.]

[Footnote 914: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, 376.]

[Footnote 915: She was ten years old in 1831 (_ibid._, 233).]

Of the one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars paid out under
Schedule B, over one-eighth was given to the four sons and daughters
of John Kinzie and to his stepdaughter, Mrs. Helm. To the latter
the sum of two thousand dollars was granted, while twenty thousand
dollars were divided in equal portions among the former. In addition
to all this, a second claim of Robert A. Kinzie for twelve hundred and
sixteen dollars was allowed. Although there is no record in the treaty
of the grounds on which the various demands presented were based,
the improper character of these claims seems obvious. Whatever the
basis of the smaller claim of Robert Kinzie may have been, the twenty
thousand dollars apportioned in equal amounts among the four brothers
and sisters must have been claimed by virtue of some inheritance from
the father. The facts that two of the claimants were women, who of
course had never engaged in the Indian trade, and each of whom had been
for some years the wife of a government official; that the claims of
all were equal in amount; and that Robert Kinzie presented a second
claim, which was allowed, all point to this conclusion. A claim for
damages at the hands of the Indians inherited from John Kinzie must
necessarily have been based on the losses he sustained in connection
with the Chicago massacre. The losses of Kinzie and Forsyth at that
time had been severe, and Forsyth at least had made strenuous efforts
to obtain compensation from Congress for them.[916] Whatever ground
there may have been for compensation from this source, there was none
whatever for claiming it from the Indians in connection with the
cession of their lands. The losses sustained were due to acts of war,
for which, at the close of the War of 1812 mutual forgiveness and
oblivion had been pledged in the treaties between the United States and
the various northwestern tribes.[917] John Kinzie lived until 1828,
and was for several years interpreter and sub-Indian agent at Chicago.
He assisted in negotiating various treaties,[918] yet notwithstanding
ample opportunity he apparently made no effort to secure compensation
from the Indians for his losses. In the space of a few months after his
death, however, his family twice secured from the government, through
the medium of an Indian treaty, the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars.
By the treaty with the St. Joseph River Pottawatomies negotiated at
Carey's Mission in September, 1828, Robert Forsyth was granted the sum
of twelve hundred and fifty dollars and the widow and heirs of John
Kinzie thirty-five hundred. The allowance to the latter, it was stated,
was "in consideration of the attachment of the Indians to her deceased
husband, who was long an Indian trader, and who lost a large sum in the
trade by the credits given to them and also by the destruction of his
property."[919] It was further explained that this money was in lieu of
a tract of land which the Indians gave to John Kinzie, and upon which
he lived.

[Footnote 916: See, _e.g._, his letters to the Secretary of War in
_Wisconsin Historical Collections_, XI, 351-55; also his letters to
Captain Heald, January 2 and April 10, 1813, _supra_, notes 613 and
632.]

[Footnote 917: See, _e.g._, the Treaty of Portage des Sioux, July 2,
1815, with the Illinois River Pottawatomies. Article I provides that
"every injury or act of hostility by one or either of the contracting
parties against the other shall be mutually forgiven and forgot." About
a dozen treaties concluded at this time with the various tribes contain
this same provision _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, II, 2 ff.]

[Footnote 918: Treaty with the Wyandots and other tribes concluded at
St. Mary's, September 17, 1818; treaty with the Delawares at the same
place, October 3, 1818; treaty with the Miamis October 6, 1818; treaty
with the Pottawatomies at Chicago in 1821.]

[Footnote 919: For the treaty see U.S. Statutes at Large, VII, 317-19.
For the schedule of sums granted to individuals see _ibid._, 603-4.]

It is unnecessary to speculate upon the question of the location
of this land, for the Indians were powerless to alienate their
land to individuals, a fact which was, of course, well known to
the commissioners who negotiated the treaty. It is worth noting,
however, that two of the signers of the treaty were Alexander Wolcott,
son-in-law of Kinzie, and Robert Forsyth, the beneficiary of the
smaller grant. Less than a year later, at the treaty concluded at
Prairie du Chien with the Ottawas, Pottawatomies, and Chippewas,
in July, 1829, the heirs of Kinzie again claimed and received the
sum of thirty-five hundred dollars. The claim this time was "for
depredations committed on him [Kinzie] by the Indians at the time of
the massacre of Chicago and at St. Joseph's, during the winter of
1812."[920] The treaty stipulated that the sums paid to claimants
were "in full satisfaction" of the claims brought by them against
the Indians. Alexander Wolcott assisted in negotiating this treaty
also, and both he and his brother-in-law, John H. Kinzie, signed it.
Thus in 1829 the heirs of Kinzie obtained "full satisfaction" from
the Pottawatomies and allied tribes for the losses sustained in 1812,
despite the fact that by solemn treaty between the United States and
the Indians mutual forgiveness and oblivion for the hostile acts of
each had been decreed. But the payment in full in 1829 was as little
successful in disposing of the matter as the treaty of 1815 had been,
for the self-same claimants utilized the opportunity presented by
the Pottawatomie cession of 1833 to raise themselves to comparative
affluence by extracting, ostensibly from the Indians but in reality
from the government, the sum of twenty thousand dollars more.

[Footnote 920: For the treaty see _ibid._, 320-22; for the schedule of
claims see _ibid._, 604.]

Nor is the grant of two thousand dollars to Mrs. Helm by the
Treaty of 1833 less dubious in character. Lieutenant Helm had come
to Fort Dearborn in the summer of 1811 in straitened financial
circumstances.[921] Since his pay was but twenty-five dollars a month,
he can scarcely have increased his fortune materially in the ensuing
period of a little over a year. In fact, during this time, his account
with the government factory steadily increased, and when the store was
closed by Irwin in July, 1812, was one of the largest on the factor's
books.[922] In the nature of things he could not have lost any great
amount of property at the time of the massacre. Whatever it was,
however, Mrs. Helm had already been compensated for it. By the Treaty
of Prairie du Chien of July, 1829, she received eight hundred dollars
"for losses sustained at the time of the capture of Fort Dearborn,
in 1812," with the stipulation, of course, that this payment was "in
full satisfaction" of all claims. Like her half-brothers and sisters,
however, she now again received compensation, and her claims, like
theirs, had waxed greater with the passage of time and the increase
of opportunity for collecting them. The ignoring of Lieutenant Helm's
interest in the money collected for the destruction of his property was
due to the fact that in the summer of 1829 Mrs. Helm obtained a divorce
from him.[923] The decree provided that she should hold in her own
right, as a part of the alimony allowed her, all of the money or other
property granted to her as one of the heirs of John Kinzie in the late
treaty of Prairie du Chien. Although the latter antedates the granting
of the divorce decree by almost eleven weeks, it is evident that Mrs.
Helm's spokesmen at the negotiation of the treaty had arranged its
terms, as far as they related to her, with this provision of the decree
in view.

[Footnote 921: See _supra_, p. 177.]

[Footnote 922: Indian Trade Department, Chicago Petty Ledger, MS volume
in Pension Building.]

[Footnote 923: McCulloch, _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago_, 108.]

A few days after the treaty had been concluded the distribution of
goods to the Indians for which it made provision was begun. Of the
one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of goods which
the Indians were to receive, eighty thousand dollars' worth were
distributed at this time, in addition to the payment of the annuity
in cash. But little reflection is required to show that the Indians
themselves profited little by the wealth bestowed upon them. The
greater part of it quickly passed from their hands to the coffers of
the traders, much of it in exchange for bad whisky; and the red man was
probably more injured than benefited by the mess of pottage for which
he had surrendered his birthright.

Jeremiah Porter, the pioneer preacher, has left a vivid description
of the proceedings which accompanied the payment to the Indians.[924]
The money and goods were paid to heads of families according to the
number in each household. The money was paid in silver half-dollars,
and some heads of families received four hundred of these coins, which
were thrown into the corner of their dirty blankets and "carried off
in triumph." The scenes attending the payment were full of excitement.
The distribution was continued on Sunday the same as during the week.
"Thousands of human beings--some sitting, some standing, others lying
on the grass in all imaginable positions, some riding, some fighting,
and one bleeding to death, the main artery of his arm being cut off,
while his murderer stood a prisoner, struggling in the arms of a female
avenger of blood"--such were the scenes enacted that Sabbath day.
Meanwhile the minister preached to his little flock from the text, "And
he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to
their charge, and fell asleep."

[Footnote 924: Porter, _Earliest Religious History of Chicago_, 72-74.]

In preparation for the payment the traders had ordered large quantities
of whisky, anticipating a golden harvest. To their chagrin, however,
a strong south wind prevailed for many days, so that no vessels
could come up the lake while the Indians were here. Temperance men
and Christians rejoiced, while the traders were correspondingly
disappointed. In consequence of this "Divine protection" of the
Indians, they carried away from Chicago a large amount of the silver
which, but for the contrary wind, would have been wasted in revelry and
debauchery.[925]

[Footnote 925: Porter, who wrote many years after the event, states
that the amount paid in silver was fifty thousand dollars, and
estimates that the savages took away thirty thousand dollars among
them.]

Two years passed when in the summer of 1835 the natives assembled at
Chicago to receive the last payment of their annuity and to prepare for
the long journey to their new home beyond the Mississippi. Chicago had
long been a favorite resort with the Pottawatomies. Here they had come
to hold their councils and to receive their annuities. Here almost a
quarter of a century before they had gained their most signal triumph
over the race that was crowding them ever westward. Since the last
great gathering two years before, the sprawling village had developed
into what, to the unsophisticated red man, must have seemed a veritable
metropolis. The signs of civilization which it presented to their
wondering gaze, although crude enough from the point of view of the
twentieth century, must have brought home to them the realization that
their birthright had passed into the possession of a mightier race;
already they were strangers in the land of their nativity.

As on happier occasions of meeting, however, the Indians danced and
sang and drank and fought. Several thousand had assembled,[926] and
much the same picturesque and motley scenes were presented as had
attended the gathering of 1833. "Some were well dressed, well mounted,
and dignified," wrote Porter. "These were, I suppose, civilized and
Christianized Indians from St. Joseph. Others were ragged, dirty,
half-naked, and drunk, singing their fiendish songs.... Thousands are
around us. I can hardly raise my eyes to my window without seeing them
in some form--men racing on horseback or women riding by with their
heavy panniers full of flour, or beef, or children. Many of the horses
have bells on them that are ringing all day. Some of the men and some
of the women also have bells on their limbs which ring with each step
they take."[927] "A more motley group eye never beheld," wrote the
reporter for Chicago's only newspaper, the _Weekly Democrat_. "Their
clothing is of every color, bright red predominating, and bedizened
with bracelets, ribbons, and feathers." The reporter dismisses the
entire subject of the gathering in a single paragraph, however, in
the course of which he nonchalantly imparts the information that "On
Monday, we understand that one was tried by his tribe for the murder
of a squaw, and sentenced to death. He was shot by the chief a short
distance from town."[928]

[Footnote 926: Jeremiah Porter wrote in his journal at the time,
"thousands are around us" (Chicago Times, December 19, 1875). The
_Chicago Weekly Democrat_, August 19, 1835, estimated the number
present at from two thousand to four thousand. John Dean Caton, who was
a resident of Chicago and deeply interested, in the Indians, puts the
number (_Miscellanies_, 139) at live thousand.]

[Footnote 927: Journal of Jeremiah Porter, in _Chicago Times_, December
19, 1875.]

[Footnote 928: _Chicago Weekly Democrat_, August 19, 1835.]

Before quitting forever their ancient council ground the warriors
indulged in a last great war dance. The matchless charm of Irving has
immortalized the Moor's farewell to his beloved land. More dramatic
in its picturesque savagery, and worthier far of the life he had led,
was the Pottawatomie's farewell to Chicago. Driven westward by the
advancing tide of civilization, in the final moments of their expiring
tenure of their homeland the warriors gave a demonstration of their
devotion to their ancient ideals, by staging before their conquerors
such an exhibition of savagery as appalled the stoutest hearts.

As many warriors as could be mustered, about eight hundred in number,
assembled in the council house on the north side of the river.[929]
Their only covering was a strip of cloth about the loins and a
profusion of paint of brilliant colors with which the face and body
were hideously decorated. Their hair, long, coarse, and black, was
gathered into a scalp lock on top of the head and profusely decorated
with hawk and eagle feathers, some strung together so as to extend
down the back nearly to the ground. Led by a band of musicians, the
procession moved westward from the council house along the bank of the
river until the North Branch was reached. Crossing this on the old
bridge, it turned to the south along the West Side to the bridge across
the South Branch, not far from Lake Street. This was crossed in turn,
and the procession moved eastward on Lake Street and came to an end in
front of Fort Dearborn.

[Footnote 929: For the ceremony I have drawn upon the graphic
description of Caton (_Miscellanies_, 141-45), who was an eye-witness
of the proceedings.]

[Illustration: THE TRANSFORMATION OF A CENTURY

Grant Park and Michigan Avenue, where the Fort Dearborn garrison
marched to destruction one hundred years ago]

Every effort was made to render the dance, which to the participants
was "a funeral ceremony of old associations and memories," impressive
and solemn. The procession moved slowly, the warriors advancing with
a continual dance. In front of every house along their course a stop
was made and extra feats were performed. The musicians produced a
discordant din of hideous noises by beating on hollow vessels and
striking sticks and clubs together.

The Sauganash Hotel at that time stood on the corner of Lake and
Market Streets, where a quarter of a century later Abraham Lincoln
received that nomination for the presidency which involved the
nation in civil war. From its second-story parlor windows a group of
spectators, chiefly ladies, gazed out upon the strange exhibition. From
this vantage point John D. Caton, a future chief justice of the Supreme
Court of Illinois, looked down upon the dance. It was mid-August,
the morning was very warm, and the exertions of the warriors caused
the perspiration to pour forth almost in streams. "Their eyes were
wild and blood-shot," writes Caton, "their countenances had assumed
an expression of all the worst passions which can find a place in
the breast of a savage; fierce anger, terrible hate, dire revenge,
remorseless cruelty, all were expressed in their terrible features.
Their muscles stood out in great hard knots, as if wrought to a tension
which must burst them. Their tomahawks and clubs were thrown and
brandished about in every direction with the most terrible ferocity,
and with a force and energy which could only result from the highest
excitement, and with every step and every gesture they uttered the most
frightful yells, in every imaginable key and note, though generally the
highest and shrillest possible. The dance, which was ever continued,
consisted of leaps and spasmodic steps, now forward and now back
or sideways, with the whole body distorted into every imaginable
unnatural position, most generally stooping forward, with the head and
face thrown up, the back arched down, first one foot thrown forward
and then withdrawn, and the other similarly thrust out, frequently
squatting quite to the ground, and all with a movement almost as quick
as lightning. Their weapons were brandished as if they would slay
a thousand enemies at every blow, while the yells and screams they
uttered were broken up and multiplied and rendered all the more hideous
by a rapid clapping of the mouth with the hand."

The impression produced upon the spectators by such an exhibition can
readily be imagined. Many of those who had gathered at the Sauganash
were recent arrivals from the East and knew nothing of the Indians
but what they had been told of their butcheries and tortures. Others,
like Caton himself, had been for some time familiar with the red men.
But the spectacle tried the nerves of even the stoutest, and all felt
that one such sight was sufficient for a lifetime. From the Sauganash
parlors, whose windows faced the west, the parade was visible some time
before it reached the North Branch bridge, and from this place all the
way to the bridge across the South Branch and down Lake Street to the
hotel itself. As they came upon the bridge, the wild band of musicians
in front redoubled their blows to increase the noise. When the head
of the column had reached the front of the hotel, "leaping, dancing,
gesticulating, and screaming, while they looked up with hell itself
depicted on their faces, at the _chemokoman_ squaws in the windows, and
brandished their weapons as if they were about to make a real attack in
deadly earnest, the rear was still on the other side of the river, two
hundred yards off; and all the intervening space including the bridge
and its approaches, was covered with this raging savagery glistening in
the sun, reeking with streamy sweat, fairly frothing at their mouths as
with unaffected rage, it seemed as if we had a picture of hell itself
before us, and a carnival of the damned spirits there confined, whose
pastimes we may suppose should present some such scene as this."

Thus did the red man play his savage role to the end. It was a brave
show which he enacted that summer morning, but it was nothing more. For
him the scepter of power had departed, and this was his final farewell.
A few weeks later he took up his weary journey toward the sunset, and
Chicago knew him no more. The red man had vanished, and Chicago and
Chicago's future were committed to the care of another and mightier
race.




APPENDICES




APPENDIX I

JOURNAL OF LIEUTENANT JAMES STRODE SWEARINGEN, "REMARKS ON THE ROAD
FROM DETROIT TO CHICAGO," JULY-AUGUST, 1803[930]

[Footnote 930: The Journal was kept by Swearingen while en route to
Chicago in temporary command of the company of United States soldiers
going to establish the first Fort Dearborn in the summer of 1803.
The original manuscript is at present the property of a grandson of
Swearingen, Mr. James S. Thatcher, of Dallas, Tex. Since access to it
was impossible the text presented here is taken from a typewritten
copy of the original made for the Chicago Historical Society in 1903
by another descendant of Swearingen, Miss Marian Scott Franklin, of
Chillicothe, Ohio.]


Detroit, July, 14th, 1803.

Left this place this morning at half past five o'clock, for Chicago and
proceeded about 26 miles and encamped at five o'clock p.m., on a small
branch of bad water. The land is generally good timbered, with large
oak, ash, and hickory. A great deal of underbrush. Crossed no waters
except the river Roush.

Friday, July, 15th.

Proceeded on our march at half past four a.m.., 20 miles, and encamped
at 1 o'clock p.m., on the river Huron, which is very low. The land is
generally level and wet. Several swamps, badly timbered, and the road
very bad on account of being so wet. Fine weather.

Saturday, July, 16th.

Proceeded on our march at 6 o'clock a.m., 18 miles, and encamped at a
small Indian village near three small lakes and branch, at 2 o'clock,
p.m. The land is generally level and poor, timbered with oak, several
prairies, not of a good quality. The weather is warm. Clear days.

Sunday, July, 17th.

Proceeded on our march at 7 o'clock a.m., 20 miles, and encamped at 5
o'clock P.M., on a handsome branch of cool, good water, near a spring
of clear, fine water. The land is generally poor and hilly. Passed a
lake of about 2 miles in length and one half in breadth, and a spring
and a handsome branch of fine water. At this branch, there is every
appearance of a large bed of iron ore. Fine weather.

Monday, July, 18th.

Proceeded on our march at 15 minutes past 2 o'clock p.m., 18 miles and
encamped on Grand river, at 7 o'clock, p.m., near a village. Crossed
two small branches, passed several ponds of water. Grand river is about
30 feet wide and tolerably rapid. At this time it is shallow. The land
is poor, hilly, and barren, except the river bottom, which is about a
half mile wide and well timbered, with ash, oak, and beech. Weather
fine and cool.

Tuesday, July, 19th.

Proceeded on our march at 6 o'clock, a.m., 25 miles, and encamped on
the river Kehanimasoo, at 15 minutes after 6 o'clock. The river is
about 60 feet wide, tolerable rapid, and not deep. The banks are low,
no bottoms. The land is hilly, poor and barren. About four and a half
miles from the river, there is a handsome spring and large branch.
This day we crossed several handsome branches of tolerable good water,
several large swamps, prairies, &c. &c. The weather is warm and fine.

Wednesday, July, 20th.

Proceeded on our march at half past 6 o'clock, a.m., 27 miles and
encamped on the river Kehanimasoo, at 6 o'clock p.m. This day we
crossed Little Kehanimasoo, at 6 miles from our encampment, and several
other small branches. The land is tolerably good in places, remainder
open, oak land, soil thin. Fine weather.

Thursday, July, 21st.

Proceeded on our march at half past 6 a.m., 15 miles, and encamped
on the river Kehanimasoo, at 3 o'clock, p.m. The land is broken and
barren, timber generally small oak, except the last four miles, which
is fine rich land well timbered. Crossed several small branches and
passed near some handsome lakes and prairies, some of which, are low
and swampy. Fine, cool weather. 9 o'clock, p.m. smart shower.

Friday, July, 22nd.

Proceeded on our march at 15 minutes past 7 o'clock a.m. The land in
places, tolerably good. Most of this day's march, is through level
barrens, large prairies 9 miles through, soil not good. Crossed 2
branches in the morning. Fine weather.

Saturday, July, 23rd.

Proceeded on our march at 9 o'clock a.m., 12 miles and encamped near
an Indian village at 2 o'clock, p.m., near the edge of a small lake of
very bad water. The land in general, tolerably good, well timbered,
with ash, oak, beech, sugar trees, etc. Several large grass swamps,
roads very bad on account of fallen timber. 9 o'clock p.m., heavy storm
of rain and wind.

Sunday, July, 24th.

Proceeded on our march at 7 o'clock a.m., 19 miles and encamped in a
prairie near a creek at 6 o'clock p.m. The land is part very good,
timber, ash, beech, and sugar trees. Greater part very poor and barren,
several large creeks, prairies, swamps. A handsome spring in the edge
of a wet prairie, 12 miles from encampment.

Monday, July, 25th.

Proceeded on our march at 15 minutes past 8 o'clock a.m., 12 miles
to the river St. Josephus and encamped on the bank near Kinzey's
Improvement, at 1 o'clock p.m. The first mile is through a very
handsome prairie, through a small piece of tolerable woodland. One
mile to the river Limmonet, Crossed a handsome branch at the mouth
and proceeded down this river about two miles, crossed it, 3 miles
through tolerably good oak land, timber tall and handsome, to an Indian
village, on the river near the mouth, crossed it at this village, and
proceeded up the river St. Josephus, 5 miles, crossed several handsome
branches. Several showers of rain. The land from the village is barren
and poor.

Tuesday, July, 26th.

Detained her[e] on account of sending for [boats?] to the Kenkakee
river, which is 6 miles from this place. Portage 4 miles, from St.
Josephus river to the Kenkakee river. Kenkakee is a branch of the
Illinois and is navigable, a short distance above this, for small
crafts. In the spring there is no portage, the two waters connect.

Wednesday, July, 27th.

Proceeded down the river, 15 minutes past 12 o'clock with 17 men and
baggage, 36 miles, and encamped on the river bank, at half past 6
o'clock, p.m. The remainder of the men, marched by land. This river is
generally very rapid and shoal bank very good.

Thursday, July, 28th.

Proceeded down the river at half past 6 a.m., 40 miles and encamped at
the mouth, at 2 o'clock p.m. The bank at this place is about 60 feet
high, level oak land back. From Kinzey's, to this place, by land, is 36
miles. Detained at this place until the 12th of August. The weather was
generally very good. Distance from Detroit to this place is 272 miles.

Friday, August, 12th, 1803.

Proceeded on our march up the lake at 6 o'clock a.m., 14 miles and
encamped at 1 o'clock, p.m., on account of the roughness of the lake.
Several very heavy showers of rain.

Saturday, August, 13th.

Detained on account of the roughness of the lake. High winds.

Sunday, August, 14th.

Still detained on account of the roughness of the lake and high winds.

Monday, August, 15th.

Proceeded on our march at 5 o'clock, a.m., 39 miles and encamped at
half past 5 p.m. near an old fort. Heavy storm of wind and rain, in the
night. 12 miles from encampment is a handsome Indian village, 3 miles
to a river about 20 yards wide, shallow, 12 miles to a small river,
then 12 miles to plain [place?] of encampment.

Tuesday, August, 15th.

Proceeded on our march at 15 minutes past 5 o'clock a.m. 33 miles, and
encamped on the Little Calamac river, at 16 minutes past 5 o'clock,
p.m. Crossed the Grand Calamac river, at 8 o'clock a.m., 12 miles from
encampment.

Wednesday, August, 17th.

Proceeded on our march at 6 o'clock a.m., 34 miles and encamped on
the Chicago river, at 2 o'clock p.m. This river is about 30 yards wide
where the garrison is intended, to be built, and from 18 feet and
upwards, deep, dead water, owing to its being stopped up at the mouth,
by the washing of sand, from the lakes. The water is not fit to use.
The bank where the fort is to be built is about 8 feet high and a half
mile above the mouth. The opposite bank is not so high, not being a
difference, of more than two feet, by appearances. The banks above are
quite low. The distance from Detroit, to the mouth of the St. Josephus,
is 272 miles. From the mouth of the St. Josephus to Chicago, 90 miles,
making in the whole 362 miles.


PORTAGE.

A portage from the Chicago river, so as to get into the Illinois
river, which is 400 miles from the lakes, or the mouth of Chicago. This
portage is 6 miles above the mouth and a short distance, across into a
small creek, which discharges itself into the river, 16 miles from this
place, at a village, from thence, into a small lakes and creeks, until
intersected, by the Illinois river, from thence into the Mississippi.
In the spring or time of high water, small crafts, may pass without any
land carriage.




APPENDIX II

SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THE FORT DEARBORN MASSACRE


The history of lost manuscripts, even in so new a country as the United
States, contains not only much of interest to the curious, but much
of profit to the serious, who are genuinely interested in the work of
preserving the records of the past. Various have the fortunes of these
precious documents been. Some have been used by frugal housewives to
cover jelly glasses or pack eggs, others have gone to feed the paper
mill or the furnace; while all the time our libraries and historical
societies are longing for the opportunity to secure such materials for
preservation for the use of future generations. At times, however,
the very measure of placing manuscripts within the protecting walls
of an institution has been responsible for their oblivion. Either the
document has been mislaid and its resting-place forgotten, or actual
destruction has come upon it.

The history of manuscripts pertaining to the Fort Dearborn tragedy
furnishes numerous illustrations of these various contingencies. One
of the most important of them, a document of several hundred pages,
disappeared, apparently for all time, from the home of the Heald family
a half-century ago. Another, Lieutenant Helm's massacre narrative,
after being lost to sight for three-quarters of a century, was
discovered a few years since in the Detroit Public Library. A third,
the fatal order of Hull to Captain Heald for the evacuation of the
fort, long supposed to have been destroyed, has been for over forty
years, unknown to historical workers, a part of the Draper Collection,
now the property of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Still other
documents gathered with loving care within the walls of the local
Historical Society by citizens of Chicago, by reason of this fact were
doomed to perish in one or other of the fires which have twice consumed
the Society's archives. Such was the fate of the papers of Lieutenant
Swearingen, destroyed in the great fire of 1871, a few years after he
had presented them to the Society. Such was the fate, also, of John
Kinzie's account books with their unique picture of early Chicago in
the years from 1804 to 1824.

Fortunately in both these instances a remnant of the original has been
preserved to us through the very fact of its retention in private
hands. Swearingen retained part of his private papers, and some of
these, including the original journal of the march of the troops from
Detroit to Chicago in 1803 to establish the first Fort Dearborn, are
still in the possession of his descendants.[931] Of Kinzie's account
books a transcript of the names together with some additional data
is all that remains.[932] Its preservation is due to the fortunate
circumstance that ten years before the Chicago Fire the list was copied
for the use of a historical worker, who carried it with him when he
left Chicago to enter the Union army. More than forty years later, on
the occasion of the centennial of the founding of Fort Dearborn, the
original books having been destroyed, it was returned to the Historical
Society.

[Footnote 931: For the Journal see _supra_, Appendix I.]

[Footnote 932: The allusion is to the _Barry Transcript_, which has
been cited in various footnotes.]

A source of equal regret to the investigator is the fact that many of
the documents pertaining to the massacre which actually remain to us
are a disappointment in one respect or another. Captain Heald, who of
all men was best qualified to speak with authority, left a report of
only a page to cover the entire period from the preliminary massacre
at Chicago in April until his arrival in Pittsburgh late in October.
Lieutenant Helm, who should have been the best qualified witness after
Heald, labored long and arduously upon a narrative which goes into
minute detail with respect to the massacre itself; on examination,
however, it becomes evident that much of the author's labor was
directed to the end of misstating rather than revealing the facts.
McAfee, one of the best historians of the War of 1812, deriving his
information from Sergeant Griffith, a participant in the massacre,
saw fit to devote but three pages to his account of the fall of Fort
Dearborn. Finally, in Mrs. Kinzie, the author of _Wau Bun_, the
youthful Chicago gained a writer of more than usual charm, who from
her position in the Kinzie family and her proximity to the massacre
in point of time enjoyed an opportunity now gone forever to gain
from eye-witnesses of the events attending the massacre information
for an authoritative narrative; yet her account is perhaps the most
disappointing, from the historical point of view, of any with which we
have to deal.

It is our immediate task, however, to estimate the sources of
information that remain to us for what they are worth. First in
order must be placed the report of Captain Heald to the government.
His official rank, the concise yet inclusive manner of expression,
the early date, October 23, 1812, all unite to give it priority of
consideration. Hull's terse compliment, "Captain Heald is a judicious
officer, and I shall confide much to his discretion," Heald's record
in the service, the peculiar circumstances under which he took command
at Fort Dearborn, and the few papers of his in existence, show him to
have been an officer of merit and of judgment. In striking contrast
with the narratives of some of his detractors, Heald's report is
marked by an air of candor and plain common sense. He gives not the
slightest intimation of any feeling of prejudice or hostility toward
anyone in the garrison or settlement. Kinzie, the trader, who looms so
large in the _Wau Bun_ narrative, is not even mentioned. No statements
calculated to challenge the reader's credulity are made. From any point
of view the report must be ranked as historical material of a high
order of excellence, our only ground for disappointment proceeding from
its brevity.

Heald's official report is supplemented to some extent by his journal,
which sketches the main events of his life until after his retirement
from the army, and by a number of letters and papers in the Draper
Collection and in the possession of his descendants. The second
important source is the narrative of Lieutenant Helm, written in the
summer of 1814. It is approximately three times as long as Heald's
report, and describes the actual battle with much detail. Written by
the officer second in command of the troops, it would be of inestimable
value to the student in supplementing Heald's report, were it not for
the fact that in this instance the author's candor is as conspicuous by
its absence as it is by its presence in the former one.

Further consideration of Helm's narrative is reserved for the present.
After these accounts of the two ranking officers, who were also the
only ones to survive the battle, must be placed the narratives of their
wives as recorded by their descendants. These are the relation of
Rebekah Heald as told to her son, Darius Heald, and his family, and the
Helm-Kinzie account embodied in Mrs. Juliette Kinzie's _Wau Bun_.

Rebekah Heald was the only one, apparently, of those concerned in the
massacre who took the trouble to write a comprehensive account of her
life in Chicago. Before her death in 1856 she dictated to a niece a
large number of facts connected with her early life. The manuscript
was foolscap and contained, according to her son's recollection of it,
several hundred pages.[933] During the Civil War the Heald residence in
St. Charles County, Missouri, was ransacked from cellar to garret by
a band of Union soldiers. Among other things which were taken by the
marauders was Captain Heald's sword, and Mrs. Heald's manuscript. The
sword was recovered by a negro boy, but the manuscript has never since
been seen, and was probably destroyed at the time.[934]

[Footnote 933: For the history of this manuscript, together with Darius
Heald's recital to Kirkland of his mother's story of the massacre, see
_Magazine of American History_, XXVIII, 111-22.]

[Footnote 934: Curiously enough, if Darius Heald's impression is
correct, it was a Chicago regiment which perpetrated the act of
destruction (_ibid._, 122).]

Fortunately we have an indication of the character of its contents in
the recital by Darius Heald of his mother's story as he remembered it
from hearing her tell it "a hundred times." His narrative has been
recorded in two forms, with an interval of many years between them.
In 1868 he was interviewed by Lyman Draper, the famous collector in
the field of western history, who at the time was on one of his tours
in search of historical information. Draper's record of the interview
was, however, buried away among his papers, and has until the present
time been unknown to workers in the field of Chicago history.[935] In
ignorance, therefore, of the Draper interview, Darius Heald was again
interviewed, almost a quarter of a century later, by Joseph Kirkland,
and the story which he obtained was considered by him sufficiently
important to lead him to write his book. The Chicago Massacre.[936] A
comparison of the two versions affords in some degree a test of the
reliability of the Darius Heald narrative. It reveals, as might be
expected, discrepancies in matters of detail, but the final impression
left by the comparison is that neither Darius Heald nor his mother
was animated by any conscious purpose to deceive. Produced under such
circumstances as have already been described, the limitations of the
narrative are obvious, and proper caution must be preserved and due
allowance for error made in the use of it. Subject to these limitations
it may be regarded as a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the
massacre.

[Footnote 935: The narrative is printed for the first time as Appendix
V.]

[Footnote 936: The entire narrative is printed in the _Magazine of
American History_, XXVIII, 111-22. For the use which Kirkland made of
it see his book, _The Chicago Massacre_.]

We may now direct our attention to the Kinzie family narrative of the
tragedy as told by Mrs. Juliette A. Kinzie, the daughter-in-law of
John Kinzie, the trader. Like the narrative of Rebekah Heald, as told
by her son Darius, it comes down to us in two forms. Put forth at
first anonymously in pamphlet form in 1844,[937] it appeared twelve
years later as a part of the author's book _Wau Bun, or The Early Day
in the Northwest_. It was published at a time when the consciousness
of Chicago's future destiny was already dawning on its citizens. To a
developing popular interest in the city's past was joined a general
lack of information concerning her greatest tragedy. Mrs. Kinzie's
narrative, claiming to be based on the testimony of eye-witnesses,
spoke with assurance and precision on a subject about which all others
were ignorant. Its statements have commonly been accepted without
question or criticism, and have constituted the foundation, and usually
the superstructure as well, of almost all that has been written upon
the Fort Dearborn massacre. Sober historians and fanciful novelists
alike have made it the quarry from which to draw the material for their
narratives. Says Moses in his Illinois, published in 1889: "Without
exception, historians have relied for their facts in regard to the
massacre upon the account given of the event by Mrs. Juliette A.
Kinzie ...."; and although he points out the possibility of an undue
criticism of Captain Heald, he concludes that its statements "bear upon
their face the appearance of truth and fairness."[938] While it is
true that some dissent from the general chorus of confidence in Mrs.
Kinzie's narrative has been voiced,[939] the statement made by Thwaites
in 1901 that it "has been accepted by the historians of Illinois as
substantially accurate, and other existing accounts are generally based
upon this,"[940] still stands as entirely correct.

[Footnote 937: _Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812,
and of Some Preceding Events_ (Chicago, 1844).]

[Footnote 938: Moses, _Illinois, Historical and Statistical_, I,
251-52.]

[Footnote 939: Notably by Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, and Kirkland,
_Chicago Massacre_. Carl Dilg and William R. Head, two recent workers
in the local antiquarian and historical field, both repudiated it.
Both men were unscientific in their methods and animated by violent
prejudices, however. Dilg's papers are now owned by the Chicago
Historical Society, while most of Head's were destroyed a few months
after his death in 1910. A few fragments are in the Chicago Historical
Society library, while a considerably larger number are still in the
possession of the widow, Mrs. William R. Head, of Chicago.]

[Footnote 940: Kinzie, _Wau Bun_, Caxton Club edition, p. xix.]

A critical examination of Mrs. Kinzie's narrative is, then, essential
to any study of the Fort Dearborn massacre. The author was born at
Middletown, Conn., in September, 1806, and seems to have enjoyed
educational advantages unusual for girls in her generation. Her
uncle. Doctor Alexander Wolcott, was for almost a dozen years prior
to his death in 1830 government Indian agent at Chicago. Through the
circumstance of his having married the daughter of John Kinzie, the
niece became acquainted with her brother, John Harris Kinzie, and in
August, 1830, the young couple were married.[941] Shortly afterward
the bride was brought by her husband to Wisconsin, where he held the
position of sub-Indian agent at Fort Winnebago. Here they resided
until 1834, when Chicago became their permanent home. Mrs. Kinzie,
therefore, possessed no contemporary or personal knowledge of the Fort
Dearborn massacre, her information being derived from members of her
husband's family subsequent to her marriage. Of these the ones best
qualified to give her first-hand information were her mother-in-law
and her husband's half-sister, Mrs. Helm. Since the older woman did
not witness the actual conflict, for this part of her narrative Mrs.
Kinzie purports to quote directly the words of Mrs. Helm, though it is
evident that not all that passes for direct quotation from the latter
was actually derived from her.

[Footnote 941: A sketch of the early life of Mrs. Kinzie by her
daughter is appended to the Rand-McNally 1903 edition of _Wau Bun_.]

In the preface to the pamphlet narrative of 1844 Mrs. Kinzie
explained that the record had been taken many years since from the
lips of eye-witnesses of the events described, and written down simply
for the purpose of preserving to her children "a faithful picture
of the perilous scenes through which those near and dear to them
had been called to pass." Her record of the massacre is thus on a
footing of equality with that of Darius Heald, in that each is based
on information derived from participants in the events attending
the massacre. From the point of view of the historian, however, it
possesses at least one marked advantage over the latter. The Heald
narrative was reduced to writing for the first time in 1868, over half
a century after the occurrence of the events described. The pamphlet
edition of the Kinzie narrative was published in 1844, almost a quarter
of a century-earlier. Aside from this priority in point of time,
its author possessed, at the time she received her information, the
conscious purpose of preserving it in written form, if not, indeed,
of publishing it. Unfortunately, however, these obvious advantages
possessed by Mrs. Kinzie are offset by qualities in her narrative
which destroy, in large part, the historical value it might otherwise
have possessed. The evident inability of the author to state the facts
correctly is manifest throughout the work. It abounds in details that
could not possibly have been remembered by Mrs. Kinzie's supposed
informants; in others that could not have been known to them; and in
still others that could never have occurred. Undaunted by the absence
of records, Mrs. Kinzie repeats speeches and dialogues verbatim,
as she, apparently, conceived they should have been recited. Thus
the warning speech of Black Partridge, the order of Hull for the
evacuation, and the speech of the Miami chieftain at the beginning of
the fight are given with all the precision of stenographic reports.
The Black Partridge incident is undoubtedly founded on fact, but Mrs.
Kinzie's version of his speech is just as certainly the product of
her own literary imagination.[942] That Hull sent an order for the
evacuation was, of course, a matter of common knowledge; that Mrs.
Kinzie possessed a copy of it or could pretend to report it literally
is so improbable that even though the original order had never been
recovered, we might reasonably regard her version of it as unreliable.
Concerning the speech of the Miami chief, if delivered at all, it could
not have been in the form which Mrs. Kinzie has recorded; nor could
Mrs. Helm, from whom it purports to be reported, possibly have heard it
uttered.

[Footnote 942: Mrs. Kinzie's version of this speech, which has
frequently been quoted, affords a typical illustration of her practice
of embellishing the narrative with details wholly imaginary. The two
source accounts of the incident both agree that Black Partridge sought
out the interpreter in order to deliver his warning. According to Helm
the two waited upon Heald, to whom "the Indian gave up his medal &
told Heald to beware of the next day that the Indians would destroy
him & his men." Thus Helm, writing within two years of the event, did
not attempt to do more than give the substance of Black Partridge's
speech. Nor could he possibly have done otherwise, if there is any
truth in his further statement that the warning was concealed from the
other officers by Heald and that Wells alone knew of it. Despite this
handicap and the equally serious one that the warning was uttered by
Black Partridge in his native tongue, Mrs. Kinzie was able, over thirty
years later, to report it as follows: "Father, I come to deliver up
to you the medal I wear. It was given me by the Americans, and I have
long worn it in token of our mutual friendship. But our young men are
resolved to imbrue their hands in the blood of the whites. I cannot
restrain them and I will not wear a token of peace while I am compelled
to act as an enemy."]

But a graver fault than the foregoing vitiates the narrative. The
account of the events attending the massacre is highly partisan,
manifesting throughout a bitter antipathy to Captain Heald and a
corresponding idealization of Kinzie. Probably the author is herself
responsible for the latter feature; the responsibility for the former
must be shared with her informants. Their representations concerning
the massacre, and the role played by Captain Heald therein, would
obviously be similar to those of Lieutenant Helm. The extent of his
antipathy for, and misrepresentations of, his commander will be set
forth presently. It is probable that the younger Mrs. Kinzie never
saw his narrative of the massacre, although her own account repeats
many of the statements contained in it. The fact of their occurrence
in the earlier narrative, however, does not of itself establish their
reliability. It merely shifts the responsibility for them to Helm and
compels an inquiry as to the character of his narrative; and the result
of such an inquiry is to dispel all confidence in its reliability and
in the candor of its author.

Finally the historical value of Mrs. Kinzie's book is lessened by the
author's fondness for romance and for dramatic effect, which too often
overshadow her zeal for the simple truth. It was this characteristic
of the book, apparently, which led Kirkland to conclude that the
author intended it to be regarded as a romance rather than as sober
history. Whatever the truth may be as to her intention, there can be no
gainsaying Kirkland's verdict that the book reads like a romance. In
capacity for adventure its characters rival the traditional medieval
knight; while over it all the author has thrown a glamor of romance
which was strikingly absent from the crass materialism of life on the
northwestern frontier a century ago.

It had been arranged by Kinzie that Mrs. Kinzie and her children
should be taken across the lake to St. Joseph in a boat in charge of
the servants and some friendly Indians. Kinzie himself went with the
troops. The boat was detained at the mouth of the river, however, and
here Mrs. Kinzie spent the time during the battle and massacre. Mrs.
Helm had ridden out with her husband, and thus was actually present in
the battle. She soon became separated from her husband and apparently
was with the rear division around the wagons during the fighting
there. According to her own story as told in _Wau Bun_, at the height
of the fighting she drew aside and with philosophic calmness began to
compose herself to meet her end. While thus engaged the surgeon, Van
Voorhis, came up, wounded and panic-stricken, "every muscle of his face
quivering with the agony of terror." Oblivious of the helplessness
and inexperience of the young woman, he frantically sought some
assurance of safety from her. While the battle raged around she strove
to discourage his hope and to arouse him to meet his fate with manly
firmness. She even pointed out the soldierly behavior of Ronan, who,
though mortally wounded and nearly down, was fighting with desperation
on one knee. This appeal to the example set by Ronan was, however, in
vain, eliciting from the surgeon only the astonishing rejoinder "with
a convulsive shudder," that he had "no terrors of the future--he is an
unbeliever."

The remarkable dialogue was interrupted at this point by a young Indian
who attempted to tomahawk Mrs. Helm. She dodged the blow, and closing
with the warrior struggled to secure his knife. From this predicament
she was suddenly snatched by Black Partridge, who bore her to the
lake and plunged her into the water. Instead of drowning her as she
expected, he held her in a position which permitted her to breathe, and
she soon discovered that he had taken this way of saving her from the
tomahawk. When the firing died down he bore her to the shore and up the
sand bank, whence she was conducted back to the Pottawatomie camp west
of the fort on the south side of the river.

Such is Mrs. Helm's narrative of her experience in the massacre
itself, as reported by Mrs. Kinzie. It is evident that only a portion
of the tragedy came under her own personal observation, although in
_Wau Bun_ all the remainder of the narrative, many pages in length,
is represented as being quoted directly from her. If any portion of
the _Wau Bun_ account of the massacre is worthy of credence it should
be this which recites Mrs. Helm's personal experience. Unfortunately
the credibility of even this portion is dubious. That the actor should
emphasize her own part in the affair is, of course, only natural. That
the dialogue with Van Voorhis occurred as represented is, under all the
circumstances, simply incredible. Unfortunately we have no other record
of how Van Voorhis met his fate, and so for nearly three-quarters of a
century his memory has been blackened by this cruel tale, thoughtlessly
taken up and repeated in the numerous accounts of the massacre based on
that contained in _Wau Bun_. The little we know of Van Voorhis tends
to the belief that he was a young man of more than usual spirit and
breadth of vision. His friend and college classmate, Surgeon Cooper,
testified to his personal worth and bravery, and to the end of his
life protested that the _Wau Bun_ version of his death was a cruel
slander.[943] More significant is the testimony of the fragment of
a single letter of Van Voorhis, of which a copy has been preserved.
Writing from his lonely station in October, 1811, he thus foretold the
future destiny of this region: "In my solitary walks I contemplate what
a great and powerful republic will yet arise in this new world. Here,
I say, will be the seat of millions yet unborn; here the asylum of
oppressed millions yet to come. How composedly would I die could I be
resuscitated at that bright era of American greatness--an era which I
hope will announce the tidings of death to fell superstition and dread
tyranny."[944] The man who at the age of twenty-two could pen these
lines is the only one of the whites present on the day of massacre who
is represented as having behaved like a poltroon and a coward.

[Footnote 943: Wilson, _Chicago from 1803 to 1812_.]

[Footnote 944: Van Voorhis, _Ancestry of Wm. Roe Van Voorhis_, 144.]

The story of the rescue of Mrs. Helm by Black Partridge has come to
be regarded as a classic in the early history of Chicago. It has been
made the dominant theme of the massacre monument, and has been accepted
without question by practically all who have written upon the massacre.
Yet it may well be doubted whether the event as described by Mrs.
Kinzie in _Wau Bun_ ever actually occurred. That Black Partridge saved
Mrs. Helm is probably true, but that the affair possessed the romantic
aspect which it has come to assume in the popular mind, or that Mrs.
Helm distinguished herself by her heroism seems unlikely.

The evidence in support of this conclusion is largely negative.
Lieutenant Helm's labored narrative, written in 1814, contains no
mention of the Black Partridge rescue, or of any heroism displayed by
his wife. Concerning her deportment in the massacre he simply records
that, having believed her slain, he was astonished on coming to the
Indian camp to see her "sitting among the squaws crying." In 1820 the
careful and scholarly Schoolcraft passed through Chicago. He gives us
an account of the massacre which he derived chiefly from John Kinzie,
whose guest he was for several days.[945] He describes, among other
things, the duel to the death between Sergeant Hayes and an Indian. The
story is curious and interesting enough to justify him in recording and
commenting upon it. But it is not more curious and thrilling than that
of the Black Partridge rescue of Mrs. Helm, Kinzie's stepdaughter. Why
did Kinzie relate the one and omit to relate the other to Schoolcraft?
Or if Schoolcraft, who is always careful to make note of anything
curious or unusual, was told of the rescue story, why did he fail to
record it? Was there in fact no such rescue, or is the omission due to
its commonplaceness?

[Footnote 945: Schoolcraft, _Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit
... to the Sources of the Mississippi River in the Year 1820_, 390-93.]

We may now consider the narrative of Lieutenant Helm, sent to Augustus
B. Woodward, of Detroit, in November, 1815.[946] Unfortunately it adds
but little to our knowledge of the massacre--why will be apparent upon
analysis. It is a partisan document for which the writer expects court
martial. Its purpose is evidently to discredit Captain Heald. Helm's
letter to Woodward shows that he had spent some time in preparing
it. Yet the manuscript contains many erasures and alterations. It is
strangely inaccurate with respect to dates, and as strangely precise
in certain details not likely to be noticed or remembered on a battle
field. It makes Hull's order arrive one day too early, the eighth of
August. It also makes Winnemac advise Heald, through Kinzie's agency,
to evacuate at once, the next day if possible, and urge him to change
the usual route to Fort Wayne. Wells is represented as arriving on the
twelfth with the report that the Indians about Fort Wayne are hostile
and will probably interrupt the troops on the march.

[Footnote 946: For the narrative, together with Helm's letter to
Woodward, June 6, 1814, announcing it, see Appendix VI.]

On the day of his arrival Wells held a council with the Indians to
the amount of "500 warriors 179 women and children," as a result of
which he gave the opinion that they also were hostile and would attack
the garrison on the march. On this date, August 12, Helm asserts
that the fort had two hundred stand of arms, six thousand pounds of
powder, four pieces of artillery, an adequate supply of shot and
lead, and three months' supply of Indian corn, besides two hundred
head of homed cattle and twenty-seven barrels of salt. In addition,
three months' provisions had been expended between August seventh and
twelfth, how or why the writer does not say. After the survey had
been made, Kinzie (here Kinzie is erased in the manuscript and Wells
substituted)--Wells demanded of Heald if he intended to evacuate, and
received an affirmative reply. Helm and Kinzie now urged Wells to ask
Heald to destroy the ammunition and liquor. Wells declined, but offered
to accompany Kinzie and Helm. To their representations Heald replied
that he had received positive orders to deliver to the Indians "all the
Public Property of whatsoever nature," that it was bad policy to tell
a lie to an Indian, and that such a crime might irritate the natives
and result in the destruction of his men. Kinzie thereupon offered to
assume the responsibility by fabricating an order from Hull; to this
scheme Heald assented; Kinzie wrote an order "as if from genl. Hull"
and gave it to Heald, and the arms and ammunition were destroyed.

The account of the battle and massacre then follows. It contains some
information of value, but unfortunately it is mingled with much that
is evidently untrue. The attack began at ten o'clock in the morning,
at a distance of a mile and a half from the fort. In a few minutes all
but ten of the men were killed or wounded. Helm called upon his men
to follow him to the prairie, then moved forward under heavy fire one
hundred and five paces, when he wheeled to the left to "avoid being
shot in the back." This careful enumeration, while under heavy fire, of
the exact number of paces taken by the troops can hardly convince the
student of the writer's sincerity. Waiving this point, however, it is
apparent that the Indians on Helm's flank were gaining his rear and he
wheeled to the south to intercept them. The Indians now stopped firing
"and nevour more renewed it." Helm at once ordered the men to reload
their guns. He now discovered Captain Heald, "for the first time to my
knowledge during the battle. He was coming from towards the Indians
and to my great surprise they nevour offered to fire on him." The
inference which the writer wishes to convey is plain, but it is also
evident that Heald had been engaged in battle farther south, and that
he had already taken steps to stop further slaughter by bargaining for
surrender. A futile attempt on the part of the soldiers to charge was
followed by more parleying on Heald's part. Passing over the details,
Helm represents that while Heald was agreeing with Black Bird upon the
terms of surrender he himself with the men who were left fell back to
an elevation near at hand. For a reason hinted at but not explained the
men now regarded Helm as their commander. Heald repeatedly inquires of
his subordinate what he intends to do. The men on the other hand beg
him not to surrender. He urges them not to be uneasy for he has already
done his best for them and will not surrender unless they are willing.

Even the hostile savages now became aware of the quiet usurpation of
the command by Helm during the heat of the battle. The half-breed
interpreter who had conducted the negotiations between Captain Heald
and Black Bird came running to warn Helm not to surrender until a
general council of the Indians had agreed to the terms. Helm replied
that he "had no Ideah of surrender." The interpreter now collected the
Indians and after haranguing them returned with the promise that they
would spare the lives of Helm and his men if they would surrender. He
also informed them that the lives of Kinzie and some of the women and
children had already been spared. This last news enlivened Helm and his
men, for they "well knew Mr. Kinzie stood higher than anny man in that
country" among the Indians, and that "he might be the means of saving
us from utter destruction, which afterwards proved to be the case."

There follows a description of the scene of the massacre at the wagons
which filled Helm with horror. There are a number of other details
that need not be noticed here. The document is of great interest
and of considerable value, but its partisan character is evident
throughout. In his desire to cast discredit upon Captain Heald, Helm
played fast and loose with the facts of the situation. The length to
which he was billing to go in the effort to impugn Heald's judgment
is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the story of the forged order
for the destruction of the arms and ammunition. Even in the absence
of positive evidence, the inherent improbability of the tale is
such as to arouse grave suspicion of its validity. The discovery of
Hull's order for the evacuation changes this suspicion to certainty.
Since Heald was expressly enjoined to destroy the surplus arms and
ammunition the whole tale concerning the forged order is obviously
a sheer invention. Further misstatements occur in connection with
the account of the supplies on hand at the time of the evacuation.
Instead of two hundred stand of arms, the last Fort Dearborn inspection
return shows that there were approximately one-third this number;[947]
and the number of surplus muskets destroyed did not exceed half a
dozen. Instead of twenty-seven barrels of salt there were, according
to a letter of Heald, written six weeks after the massacre, but
seventeen barrels.[948] That there were seventy muskets instead of
two hundred, and seventeen barrels of salt in place of twenty-seven,
is of no particular consequence, for in each case the supply was more
than sufficient. But the inaccuracy of Helm's statements is of some
significance, as affording evidence of the untrustworthiness of his
narrative, even in matters concerning which no adequate motive for
misrepresentation is apparent. The connection between Helm's narrative
of the massacre and that of Mrs. Kinzie in the pages of _Wau Bun_
has already been pointed out. The two proceed from a common source,
and have a common bias against Captain Heald. Helm was the original
traducer of Heald. Almost a hundred years elapsed before his narrative
appeared in print, and Mrs. Kinzie was probably unaware of its
existence. Notwithstanding this its spirit is faithfully reflected in
the latter's account, and through its agency passed into the literature
of the Fort Dearborn massacre. Thus the partisan statements of a bitter
enemy, who did not hesitate to pervert the truth in order to discredit
his commander, taken up and reproduced by others, have been potent to
blast the reputation of Heald to the present time, a century after the
massacre.[949]

[Footnote 947: _Heald Papers_, Draper Collection, U, Vol. VIII.]

[Footnote 948: Heald to Augustus Porter, contractor for the western
posts, September 26, 1812. MS owned by the author.]

[Footnote 949: The issues raised by Helm's account of the massacre
render it a matter of regret that but little authentic information
is extant concerning him. Judge Woodward, in his letter to Proctor
concerning the Chicago captives, speaks highly of Helm (Appendix VII):
there is evidence, however, which tends to invalidate Woodward's
estimate of Helm's character. The following sheds some light upon the
characters respectively of Heald and his detractor. Heald was twice
wounded in the battle of August 15, receiving a bullet in the hip and
another through the arm. The former wound never ceased to trouble him
(Physician's certificates, _Heald Papers_, in Draper Collection), and
he carried the bullet which caused it to his grave. Helm received a
slight flesh wound in the heel, from which he recovered so quickly that
within six weeks Forsyth reported him "in good health and spirits"
(letter of Thomas Forsyth to John Kinzie, September 24, 1812, printed
in _Magazine of History_, XV, 89; see also, infra, letter of Heald
to B. Roberts, December 1, 1825). Heald refrained from applying for
a pension, and when one was procured for him by two of his friends
without his knowledge, the latter, in breaking the news to him, thought
it worth while to urge him not to decline it, and to suggest that
he bestow it upon his children in case he felt any delicacy about
accepting it himself (_supra_, note 620). It is apparent from the
letter of Heald to B. Roberts, December 1, 1825 (printed below), that
when Helm came to apply for a pension he not only made what he might of
his wound, but also preferred a claim against the government for money
advanced by him from his own funds to purchase articles for the troops
at Chicago. This claim Heald denominated "entirely false & without the
least foundation imaginable"; and further that any vouchers which Helm
might submit in support of his claim were fraudulent. Heald's emphatic
condemnation of Helm's assertions and claim find support in what we
know of Helm's financial situation at the time. See on this _supra_,
p. 365. In view of this it seems unlikely, without regard to Heald's
testimony, that he was in a position to advance money to buy articles
for the soldiers.

[_Letter of Heald to B. Roberts_]

                                   St. Charles Missouri

                                          1 December 1825.

  Dear Sir, I have reed, your Letter from Russellsville on the
  subject of Capt Helms claims on the Government. As to his wound
  reed, at Chicago I know nothing that can be of service to him in
  order that he may procure a pension, all that I can say of my own
  knowledge is that I discovered he walked a little lame, soon after
  the action was over, but I had no opportunity to find out the cause
  of it, before we were seperated. I was told about 10 days after
  the action by Mr. Kinzie, the stepfather of Mrs. Helm, that Capt.
  Helm's wound was very trifling & could not injure him. I have since
  seen Mr. Thos. Forsyth with whom Capt. Helm resided for several
  mo[n]ths immediately after the action and he told me that Capt.
  Helms wound was of no consequence, & that it appeared to be nothing
  more than a small flesh wound in one of his heals & did not disable
  him in the least.

  The statement he made to you respecting the articles he says he
  purchased for the troops & advanced the money out of his own funds
  to pay for them is entirely false & without the least foundation
  imaginable. And If he has any vouchers to support the claim, depend
  upon it Sir, they are fraudulent.

  Should you wish for my deposition stating my own knowledge of Capt.
  Helms

  Should you wish for my deposition to support Capt. Helms claim for
  a Pension, I am perfectly willing to give it, but I can say nothing
  more than I have said in this letter of my own knowledge.

  The Honbl. B. Roberts

          Member of Congress.

The original manuscript from which the foregoing is taken is the copy
of the letter retained by Heald, and is owned by his granddaughter,
Mrs. Wright Johnson, of Rutherford, N.J.]

After the sources of information derived from the two surviving
officers and their wives follow a number of reports of distinctly
lesser importance which found their way into the newspapers of the
time. Several of these were preserved from oblivion by being reprinted
during the few weeks following the massacre in that general repository
of information, _Niles' Register_. The number of such reports which
require consideration here is small. The news of the fall of Fort
Dearborn was borne to the nearest American settlements more rapidly
than might, in view of all the circumstances, have been expected.
As early as August 28 a report of it was published in the _Western
Courier_, of Louisville.[950] It consisted of an extract from a letter
received at Louisville from an officer of the army who apparently was
at or in the vicinity of Fort Wayne. It stated correctly enough the
leading facts that the fort had been evacuated, the garrison attacked
after marching "about one mile," and that Heald had surrendered on
receiving assurances of mercy for the garrison. It erred, however, in
reporting Heald and his wife among the slain, as well as all but three
of Wells's Miamis. From these three survivors, it was stated, the
information had been gained.

[Footnote 950: A copy of this paper is owned by the Chicago Historical
Society.]

In similar fashion the news of the massacre was carried to Detroit,
now in the hands of the British, about the first of September. The
first printed account from this source is found in _Niles' Register_
for October 3, copied from an earlier number of the _Buffalo Gazette_.
Considering the source of the information, the brief narrative
corresponds more closely to the facts as we know them than might be
expected. A Pottawatomie chief had brought the news to Detroit, from
which place it had been carried eastward by the British warship, the
"Queen Charlotte"; a flag of truce sent ashore at Fort Erie conveyed
the news to the Americans there, from which place, presumably, it was
carried to Buffalo. The account places the number of survivors at ten
or twelve, and, like the Louisville report, includes Captain Heald
among the slain.[951]

[Footnote 951: For other early newspaper reports of the massacre see
Hurlbut, _Chicago Antiquities_, 175-77.]

More important than either of the foregoing is the report which
appeared in the _Missouri Gazette_ of September 19, 1812. It
represents[952] Captain Wells as bringing the order from Hull for the
distribution of the stores among the Indians and the evacuation of the
fort. Heald prepared to comply with the order, but thought prudent to
destroy all the powder and whisky before distributing the goods. The
Indians suspected this, overheard the staving-in of the powder kegs,
and charged Wells with the fact. He denied it, however, and the goods
were distributed to about eight hundred Indians. Signs of discontent
were already manifest among the Indians when on the fourteenth an
Indian runner arrived with a large red belt. He had been sent by Main
Poc, the inveterate enemy of the Americans, who lived on the Kankakee
but who was now fighting with Tecumseh's forces near Maiden. The
message the runner bore acquainted the Indians around Fort Dearborn
with the British successes and Hull's predicament on the Detroit
frontier; it added that a vessel would be dispatched in a few days for
Chicago with goods and ammunition for the Indians, and urged them to
strike the Americans immediately.

[Footnote 952: I have not had access to the paper itself, but have
made use of the copy of the article made by Lyman C. Draper, in the
Draper Collection, S, XXVI, 76.]

This message, added to the discontent over the destruction of the
powder and whisky, precipitated the attack. The next day, about ten
o'clock, the troops, fifty-four in number, with ten citizens, nine
women, and eighteen children, evacuated the fort. After they had gone
about a mile they were attacked by about four hundred Indians, and a
general slaughter ensued. Thirty soldiers, including the doctor and
the ensign, all of the citizens, two women, and twelve children were
torn to pieces. The heart of Wells was torn out and divided among the
different bands. In the midst of the carnage Mrs. Heald had sunk on the
ground and an Indian had a war club raised to drive into her head, when
she was rescued by a young Frenchman who purchased her with a mule.
Heald's captors gave him his liberty, contrary to the wishes of the
other savages. The commander and his wife were given protection in the
house of a trader, where their wounds were dressed, and at the time of
the report they were in process of recovery.

This early report is worthy of notice for several reasons. It is
notably accurate in some respects, and as notably incorrect in others.
The figures given for the participants in the massacre and for the
slain are surprisingly accurate for so early an unofficial report. On
the other hand, while the order for the evacuation is given with a fair
degree of accuracy, the account of its transmission to Fort Dearborn
and the date of its arrival is entirely wrong. It is to be noted that
thus early to the destruction of the ammunition and liquor is ascribed
a large degree of responsibility for the massacre, and that a version
of the ransoming of Mrs. Heald with a mule appears. It is evident
that this report must have come from someone familiar with the facts
concerning the massacre. Although it is not susceptible of proof, the
opinion may be hazarded that this person was Thomas Forsyth, of Peoria,
Kinzie's half-brother. He came to Chicago the day after the massacre,
and started to return to Peoria a few days later.[953] He was active
and enterprising, and not long afterwards was acting as an agent of the
government among the Illinois River Indians. He was well known at St.
Louis, and it seems not unlikely that he would have forwarded thither
at the earliest opportunity an account of what had occurred at Chicago.

[Footnote 953: Letter of Forsyth to Heald, January 2, 1813, _supra_,
note 632.]

Another report of the massacre, published in _Niles' Register_ May
8, 1813, requires more extended consideration. It purports to be an
extract from a letter of Walter Jordan, "a non-commissioned officer of
the Regulars at Fort Wayne," to his wife, October 19, 1812. The writer
claims to have been a member of Wells's relief expedition, and thus
to have been a participant in the Fort Dearborn massacre. According
to the letter Wells left Fort Wayne August 1, accompanied by Jordan
and one hundred "Confute" Indians to escort Heald on his retreat from
Chicago to Fort Wayne, "a distance of 150 miles." Wells reached Chicago
August 10, and on the fifteenth all was in readiness for an immediate
march, all the property that could not be removed having been burned.
The force which evacuated the fort consisted of "Capt. Wells, myself
and 100 Confute Indians, Capt. Heald's 100 men, 10 women, and 20
children--in all 232." After a ten-minute conflict, in the course of
which the "Confute" allies deserted to the enemy, all but fifteen of
the whites were killed. But "thanks be to God," Jordan was numbered
among the survivors. If his escape was as miraculous as the narrative
represents it to have been, his thankfulness was not inappropriate.
First the feather was shot off his cap, then the epaulet from his
shoulder, and finally the handle from his sword. Unwilling, apparently,
to tempt Providence further, Jordan now surrendered to "four savage
rascals." His good fortune did not desert him, however; the Confute
chief, taking him by the hand, assured him his life would be spared,
but invited him to "come and see what we will do with your Captain."
Leading the way to Wells they cut off his head and put it on a pole,
took out his heart, and, having divided it among the chiefs, "ate it
up raw." After this the fifteen survivors were parceled out among the
victors. The band to whom Jordan fell promised, if he would stay with
them, to make a chief of him; if he tried to escape they would burn him
alive. Despite this alternative, having gained their confidence with a
"fine story," Jordan made his escape and reached Fort Wayne on August
26, two days before it was blockaded by the Indians.

If Jordan was in fact a member of Wells's party and this is an
authentic account of the massacre by an eye-witness, it must be
regarded as one of our most valuable sources of information. Its early
date, the detailed description of events, and the precise enumeration
of the forces engaged, combine with its first-hand character to give it
this rank. If, on the other hand, the narrative is not to be accorded
this high estimate, it must be dismissed as a mendacious and worthless
fabrication. The circumstances of the case render the assumption of any
middle ground between these positions impossible.

Turning to Jordan's letter, even a casual inspection compels the
adoption of the latter position. Waiving the question whether such a
person as Walter Jordan ever in fact existed, the complete silence
of all other sources as to his presence in Wells's party and at the
Chicago massacre is enough to rouse grave suspicion concerning the
truth of his story. His misstatements concerning the expedition of
Wells and the massacre itself change this suspicion into certainty.
Neither lapse of time nor second-hand information can be urged in
extenuation of his false statements about the number of Wells's
followers and of Heald's party. Aside from this consideration, the
misstatements as to the time of Wells's trip, the tribe to which his
followers belonged, and the distance from Fort Wayne to Chicago can
hardly be explained on any other hypothesis than that of deliberate
fabrication. Surely "a non-commissioned officer of the Regulars at Fort
Wayne" would not substitute for the Miamis a purely imaginary tribe of
Indians, having no existence outside the pages of his letter. A more
Falstaffian tale than that of Jordan's miraculous escape from death, or
a more improbable one than that detailing the circumstances attending
the death of Wells would be difficult to imagine. Further refutation of
the narrative is unnecessary, nor would it deserve the space that has
already been devoted to it but for the fact that some have been misled
into a belief in its reliability.

The correspondence of Judge Woodward of Detroit with General Proctor
relative to the survivors of the massacre constitutes a source of
information of the highest quality.[954]' With the massacre itself,
however, it deals only incidentally, being limited to a consideration
of the survivors and the means of rescuing them from captivity.
Woodward was perhaps the most prominent citizen of Detroit and Michigan
Territory, noted for his eccentricity and his ability. On the arrival
of Captain Heald and his wife and Sergeant Griffith at Detroit early in
October, Woodward set himself the task of gaining all the information
they could give him concerning the losses in the battle and the
survivors of the massacre, and this information he incorporated a few
days later in a vigorous letter to Proctor, the British commander
at Detroit, appealing to him to take all the measures in his power
to recover the unfortunate captives. It is probable that Heald and
Griffith could not speak with entire accuracy concerning the losses
sustained and the number of these survivors, but they were of course
able to give Woodward valuable information on the subject; and his
letter to Proctor constitutes one of our most valuable sources of
information concerning it.

[Footnote 954: For Woodward's letter to Proctor, October 7, 1812, see
Appendix VII.]

An account of the massacre drawn in large part from the same source as
Woodward's information, but written a few years later, is contained
in McAfee's _History of the Late War_, published in 1816. McAfee was
a Kentuckian and himself a soldier in the war, having served as an
officer in the regiment of Colonel Richard M. Johnson. Because of this,
and because his information was largely gathered from participants in
the events described, his history possesses much of the flavor of a
first-hand narrative. McAfee gives a short account of the destruction
of Fort Dearborn, based on information received from Sergeant Griffith,
who was also a member of Johnson's regiment. The narrative, being thus
second-hand, is open to criticism in certain respects, but the chief
occasion for regret is that McAfee's purpose was satisfied with so
brief an account; for the source of his information, the early date of
the history, and the character of McAfee as a historian all tend to
the belief that had it suited his purpose to enter more fully into the
account of Fort Dearborn, a narrative of great value would have been
produced.

We come, after these contemporary accounts, to the recollections and
reminiscences told in old age by participants, or relatives or friends
of participants, in the massacre. Some of these have proved to be of
considerable value for the reconstruction of our story, but in most
sources of this character the traces of time and of failing memory
are plainly to be seen. Moreover, some of them are affected by the
narrator's personal friendships or antipathies, and given in support
or contradiction of some partisan account. Few of them are or pretend
to be more than fragmentary accounts of the battle. Among such sources
may be mentioned the testimony of Black Hawk,[955] of Shabbona,[956] of
Joseph Bourassa,[957] and of Paul De Garmo.[958]

[Footnote 955: Black Hawk, _Life_, 42.]

[Footnote 956: _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, VII, 416-18.]

[Footnote 957: Draper Collection, S, XXIII, 165 ff.]

[Footnote 958: De Garmo's story is contained in a letter of Charles A.
Lamb, August 24, 1803, MS in the Chicago Historical Society library.]

Logically belonging in the same class as the foregoing, but requiring
in each case more extended consideration, are the narratives of
Alexander Robinson, of Moses Morgan, and of Susan Simmons Winans.
Robinson was one of the chiefs in the massacre who was friendly to
the whites and did what he might to save them. He it was who piloted
the Healds and Sergeant Griffith in their three-hundred-mile canoe
voyage from the St. Joseph River to Mackinac. He was one of the last
survivors of the massacre, living in the immediate vicinity of Chicago
until 1872, and well known to the generation of Chicagoans before the
great fire. For some reason the first generation of writers upon early
Chicago history did not take the trouble to secure from Robinson his
version of the massacre. A manuscript which purports to contain his
story of the affair is, however, in the possession of the Chicago
Historical Society. The information contained in it purports to have
been secured by Carl A. Dilg in a series of interviews with the
daughter of Robinson some time after the chief's death. Dilg considered
it of great importance, but a careful study of it compels the
conclusion that it possesses practically no historical value. It was
not put in writing until three-quarters of a century had elapsed; more
important, Robinson himself was illiterate, and the story, third-hand
at best, was elicited from his daughter in a series of interviews
extending over several years, by a man whose prejudices were so violent
and methods of work so unscientific as to render confidence in its
reliability impossible.

The account of Susan Simmons Winans, of great value from one point
of view, must, for the actual affair of the massacre, be classed
with the story of Robinson. Mrs. Winans, the infant daughter of John
Simmons, was saved by her mother from the slaughter at the wagons. Both
mother and child appeared as if from the dead in April, 1813, after a
series of adventures which recall the age of miracles and providential
protection. Mrs. Simmons lived until 1857, and her daughter, Mrs.
Winans, until 1900, being the last known survivor of the massacre. Both
mother and daughter frequently narrated to their relatives the story
of their captivity, the daughter's knowledge having been derived, of
course, from her mother. A relative. Doctor N. Simmons, the son of a
brother of John Simmons, moved by family pride in the narrative and
possessed of some slight literary ability, published in 1896 a small
volume which contained, in addition to the story of his kinsfolk, a
sketch of the massacre and of the Pottawatomie tribe of Indians.[959]
The account of the massacre is a reprint of Edward G. Mason's narrative
in his _Chapters from Illinois History_, and the volume is of value
solely for the account it gives of the captivity and later life of Mrs.
Simmons and her daughter.

[Footnote 959: Simmons, N., _Heroes and Heroines of the Fort Dearborn
Massacre_.]

Finally, we may consider the massacre narrative of Moses Morgan as
preserved by William R. Head. Among the workmen who helped to build the
second Fort Dearborn in 1816 was Moses Morgan, foreman of a gang of
carpenters. He had served as a volunteer in Hull's army in 1812, and
after his exchange from the captivity consequent upon the surrender
of Detroit, had re-entered the service as a carpenter. He soon became
a foreman, and in this capacity assisted in the building of Commodore
Perry's fleet on Lake Erie. In 1816 he was ordered to accompany the
troops sent to rebuild the fort at Chicago. In later life he became the
neighbor at Carlinville, Ill., of William R. Head, who for many years
before his death in 1910 was a resident of Chicago. Head early became
interested in local history, and for a period of forty years was a
tireless collector of data pertaining to early Chicago and Illinois.
Among other things, he recorded the story told him by Moses Morgan.
It contains many details not found elsewhere, and if it were of such
a character that these could be relied upon, it would constitute an
exceedingly valuable source of information.

Unfortunately, however, it exhibits many defects. The account
was written out by Head late in life from notes taken and from
recollections of his various conversations with Morgan many years
before. Head, like Dilg, was lacking in historical training, while
he held a number of theories concerning the massacre and possessed a
violent antipathy for everything connected with the Kinzie family. In
his old age he undertook a revision of his manuscript, which further
militated against its reliability; finally, to complete the tale of
defects, after his death the mass of notes and other material which
he had accumulated, and by which the correctness of his statements
might to some extent have been tested, was burned as rubbish by his
family. Because of the unreliable character of the narrative but little
dependence can be placed upon it, particularly in those portions which
involve Head's theories or his prejudices. Yet it seems possible to
trust some of its statements and accordingly some use has been made of
it in the present work. There is no reason to question the character
and integrity of either Morgan or Head, or to suppose that either
consciously misrepresented the facts. The more reliable portion of the
narrative has been utilized in the chapter on the fate of the survivors
of the massacre. The part which deals with the tragedy itself is given
here because of its human interest, in spite of a lack of confidence in
its historical worth.

When the garrison came, in the summer of 1816, to rebuild the fort,
many evidences of the massacre were still to be seen. Many attempts
were made by the officers to get an exact account of the destruction of
the first fort from the Indians and the half-breeds who knew the facts.
No dependence, however, could be placed upon their statements. Previous
to the coming of the troops some of these residents had boasted of
the part they had taken in the slaughter. For obvious reasons their
denials were now as strenuous as their former boasting had been loud.
It was found that tales of the fight were being manufactured by
the interpreters, and some of them were dismissed, but without any
favorable results in the form of desired information.

One account was obtained by a soldier's wife from Okra, Ouilmette's
wife, and a half-breed French woman. These women had, they said,
watched the departure of the troops from the fort. From a favorable
vantage point on the north side of the river where Ouilmette's hut
stood they had watched the troops march out, the Captain and his wife
being the last to leave. There were two army wagons, one containing the
women and children and the personal baggage, drawn by Lee's horses; to
the other, laden with ammunition and provisions, three pairs of steers
were yoked. Soon the women heard the sound of firing and smelled the
powder smoke, but from their position on the north side of the river
they were unable to see the fight.

Another and fuller story was obtained from a wounded soldier
of Heald's command who was found, under circumstances already
described,[960] living a few miles up the North Branch. In presenting
the details, it should be noted that they bear throughout the imprint
of Head's theories and prejudices. There were not provisions enough for
a long siege. The garrison should not have left so soon. Kinzie was not
faithful in his interpretations. Lieutenant Helm was so drunk on the
morning of August 15 that he was not able to retain his place in line.
There were two wagons, one of which was guarded by the militia and the
soldiers who had children. The troops marched out close to the water's
edge, and when the wagons had gone a short distance beyond the mouth
of the river two half-grown Pottawatomie boys began shooting at the
animals hitched to the wagons, wounding one of the horses and causing
it to lie down. The steers attached to the army wagon turned quickly
around, breaking the wagon-pole, and half overturning the wagon. For
a time the men about the wagons stood patiently in line surrounded by
a group of friendly Indians. Then the strange Indians, not finding
the ammunition and provisions in the fort, came rushing down upon the
wagons. As they came on the men gave three volleys, killing many of
them. The surrender was made by the Captain to Black Bird, and the
valuables and money were given under a promise of protection for the
men. The Captain and a sergeant were turned over to Robinson to be
saved for their money. The general opinion when Morgan left Chicago was
that the delay caused by the Indian boys' attack upon the teams was the
chief reason why the party did not escape; that the attack upon the
wagons took place beyond the mouth of the river; and that the ensign
made a mistake in commanding his men to fire so quickly.

[Footnote 960: _Supra_, pp. 260-61.]




APPENDIX III

NATHAN HEALD'S JOURNAL[961]

[Footnote 961: Printed for the first time from the original manuscript
among the Heald papers in the Draper Collection at Madison, Wis. The
Journal was kept by Heald in a small blank book about 3 × 6 inches in
size. It contains in addition to the autobiographical matter presented
here a number of pages of memoranda consisting of military data,
financial entries, medical and household recipes, and so forth.]


Nathan Heald, the son of Thomas Heald & Sibyl, his wife, was born
in New Ipswich in the state of New Hampshire the 24th of September
1775, and entered the army of the U. States as an Ensign the 2nd of
March 1799. In the spring of 1800 went to Springfield in Mass. on the
Recruiting Service.

In the spring of 1801 left Springfield with a Detachment of Recruits
under the command of Capt. Lyman to join the western Army, and arrived
at Wilkinson Ville on the Ohio early in the fall of the same year. Left
Wilkinson Ville late in the fall of the same year, with a Detachment
of 4 Companies of Inf under the Command of Capt. R. Bissell & went up
Tennessee River 2 or 3 miles above the mouth of Bear Creek, built a
cantonment &c.

In the spring of 1802, a part of the Army being disbanded, I went to
Vincennes with a Detachment of Capt. Lyman's company to join that post.

In the spring of 1803, went on Command to Detroit with Gov'r Harrison,
& returned to Vincennes the next fall, having been sick at Detroit all
summer.

In the beginning of 1804, went to Chilicothe Ohio on the Recruiting
service; spent the summer following at Maysville Ky on the same service
& returned to Vincennes in the fall of the same year.

In the spring of 1805, went to Fort Massack where I commanded till
late in the fall of the same year when I sat out on furlough for
Concord Mass. and arrived there in January 1806. Attended a Genl.
Court Martial as a Member on the seaboard in New Hampshire the same
winter, and went to New London Conn, on the Recruiting service with
Cap. Stoddard in the spring. Left New London late in the summer & went
to New Brunswick N.J. on the same service, & in the fall, was ordered
to Fort Wayne, by the way of Philadelphia where I joined Capt. Stoddard
with a Detachment of Recruits & went with him to Newport on the Ohio,
then by myself to Fort Wayne, where I arrived and took the command in
Jan. 7 1807. On the 31st of that month & the same year was promoted to
a Capt. in 1st Reg't Infantry.

In the spring of 1807 went to Detroit to sit on a Gen'l Court Martial &
returned to Fort Wayne in the summer.

In June 1810 left Fort Wayne & went to Chicago to Command that Post,
went on furlough to Massachusetts in the fall of the same year and
returned by the way of Kentucky where I was married to Rebecca Wells
the daughter of Gen'l Samuel Wells and Mary his wife, on the 23d of May
1811, and arrived at Chicago in June with Mrs. Heald.

On the 4th of May 1812, we had a son born dead for the want of a
skilful Midwife.

On the 9th of Augt, 1812, rec'd orders from Genl Wm. Hull to evacuate
the Post of Chicago and proceed with my Command to Detroit.

On the 15th Marched for Detroit & was attacked by about 500 Indians
two miles from the Fort and there was killed in the action 1 Ensign, 1
Surgeon's Mate, 24 Non-Commissioned Officers Musicians & Privates, 12
Militia including Capt. Wells of the Indian Department at Fort Wayne,
2 Women & 12 Children. Myself, one Lieut. 25 Non-Commiss. Officers
Musicians & Privates and eleven Women & Children were captured by the
Indians. On the 16th, that is the day after [the] action, Mrs. Heald
& myself were taken to the St. Joseph River by our new Masters. The
journey was performed in three days by coasting the Lake (Michigan)
and we remained with them (both being badly wounded & unable to help
ourselves) till the 29 of the same Month when we took our departure for
Michilimackinac in a Birch Canoe, with Sergeant Griffith, one of the
unfortunate prisoners, and 3 Frenchmen & a Squaw. The 14th of Sept.
we all arrived safe at Michilimackinac. I was there Paroled by Capt.
Roberts, the British Comma[n]dant, & permitted to proceed to Detroit
with Mrs. Heald & the Sergeant.

Left the Island on the 19th of the month (Sept.) and arrived at
Detroit the 22nd--was there permitted by Capt. Proctor to proceed to
the U. States on Parole. Left Detroit the 4th of October, and arrived
at Buffalon the 8th in the old Brigg Adams. Left Buffalon the 10th and
arrived at Pittsburg the 22nd.

Left Pittsburgh the 8th Nov. and arrived at Louisville the 19th.

  The distance from Chicago to Michilimackinac in coasting the Lake
  on the east side is                                     400 miles
  Thence to Detroit                                       300
  Thence to Buffalon                                      280
  Thence to Erie by land                                   90
  Thence to Pittsburgh by land but we travelled by water  132
  Thence to Louisville by water                           705
                                                         ----
                                                   Total 1907

On the 26th of August 1812, I was promoted to a Major in the 4th Regt.
Inf'y.

The winter of 1812-13 Mrs. Heald & myself spent at her father's, and
went to Newport in the spring where we spent the summer following &
returned to Mr. Jacob Geiger's near Louisville & spent the winter of
1813-14. The spring and summer following I was engaged in putting
up buildings on a piece of Land I bought of Mr. Wand joining Jacob
Geiger's Plantation & moved into the buildings late in the fall of 1814.

At the Consolidation of the Army in 1814 I was disbanded, being then a
Major in the 19th Regt. of Inf'y.

Mary Sibyl Heald was born at her Grandfather's near Louisville on the
17th of Ap'l 1814.

Margaret Ann Heald born at my House near Louisville the 9th of Dec'r
1816 Kentucky.

Feb 15 th 1817 sold my House & Lot near Louisville Ky to Mr. Jacob
Geiger for $3000.

March 22nd 1817. Left Louisville with my family for St. Charles County
Missouri Territory and arrived there the 15 th of Apl. following.

Spent the summer of 1817 at Joseph Batys plantation.

Nov'r 1817 moved to a Plantation I bought of Jacob Zumwalt for $1000.

Rebecca Hackley Heald was born in St. Charles County the 7th January
1819.

21st September 1820. Mr. Geiger's family arrived from Kentucky.

Nov'r 2nd Mrs Geiger died of a consumption. (Nov) 6th Mr. Geiger with
his Children sat out for Kentucky.

17th October (1820) Bought a House and lot in St. Charles of Antoine
Ganis for the sum of $450. cash in hand.

Rebecca Hackley Heald Died 16th Jan'y 1821, between the hours of 8 & 9
P.M. Aged 2 Years & 10 days.

Darius Heald born on Sunday Jan'y 27th 1822, at 3 o'Clock in the
morning. The Moon 5 days old, in the sign of (Aries) State of Missouri
St. Charles County.




APPENDIX IV

CAPTAIN HEALD'S OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE EVACUATION OF FORT DEARBORN[962]

[Footnote 962: The report has been published in various places, usually
with the opening sentence omitted. As presented here the report is
taken from the Drennan Papers, copied from Brannan's _Official Military
and Naval Letters_ (Washington, 1823), 84.]


                                    Pittsburg, October 23d, 1812.

  Sir: I embrace this opportunity to render you an account of the
  garrison of Chicago.

  On the 9th of August last, I received orders from General Hull to
  evacuate the post and proceed with my command to Detroit, by land,
  leaving it at my discretion to dispose of the public property as
  I thought proper. The neighboring Indians got the information as
  early as I did, and came in from all quarters in order to receive
  the goods in the factory store, which they understood were to be
  given them. On the 13th, Captain Wells, of Fort Wayne, arrived
  with about 30 Miamies, for the purpose of escorting us in, by the
  request of General Hull. On the 14th, I delivered the Indians all
  the goods in the factory store, and a considerable quantity of
  provisions which we could not take away with us. The surplus arms
  and ammunition I thought proper to destroy, fearing they would make
  bad use of it if put in their possession. I also destroyed all the
  liquor on hand after they began to collect. The collection was
  unusually large for that place; but they conducted themselves with
  the strictest propriety till after I left the fort. On the 15th,
  at 9 o'clock in the morning, we commenced our march: a part of the
  Miamies were detached in front, and the remainder in our rear, as
  guards, under the direction of Captain Wells. The situation of the
  country rendered it necessary for us to take the beach, with the
  lake on our left, and a high sand bank on our right, at about 100
  yards distance.

  We had proceeded about a mile and a half, when it was discovered
  that the Indians were prepared to attack us from behind the
  bank. I immediately marched up with the company to the top of
  the bank, when the action commenced; after firing one round, we
  charged, and the Indians gave way in front and joined those on
  our flanks. In about fifteen minutes they got possession of all
  our horses, provisions, and baggage of every description, and
  finding the Miamies did not assist us, I drew off the few men I
  had left, and took possession of a small elevation in the open
  prarie, out of shot of the bank or any other cover. The Indians
  did not follow me, but assembled in a body on the top of the bank,
  and after some consultations among themselves, made signs for me
  to approach them. I advanced towards them alone, and was met by
  one of the Potawatamie chiefs, called the Black Bird, with an
  interpreter. After shaking hands, he requested me to surrender,
  promising to spare the lives of all the prisoners. On a few moments
  consideration, I concluded it would be most prudent to comply
  with his request, although I did not put entire confidence in his
  promise. After delivering up our arms, we were taken back to their
  encampment near the fort, and distributed among the different
  tribes. The next morning, they set fire to the fort and left the
  place, taking the prisoners with them. Their number of warriors was
  between four and five hundred, mostly of the Potawatamie nation,
  and their loss, from the best information I could get, was about
  fifteen. Our strength was fifty-four regulars and twelve militia,
  out of which, twenty-six regulars and all the militia were killed
  in the action, with two women and twelve children. Ensign George
  Ronan and doctor Isaac V Van Voorhis of my company, with Captain
  Wells, of Fort Wayne, are, to my great sorrow, numbered among the
  dead. Lieutenant Lina T. Helm, with twenty-five non-commissioned
  officers and privates, and eleven women and children, were
  prisoners when we were separated. Mrs. Heald and myself were taken
  to the mouth of the river St. Joseph, and being both badly wounded,
  were permitted to reside with Mr. Burnet, an Indian trader. In a
  few days after our arrival there, the Indians all went off to take
  Fort Wayne, and in their absence, I engaged a Frenchman to take us
  to Michilimackinac by water, where I gave myself up as a prisoner
  of war, with one of my sergeants. The commanding officer, Captain
  Roberts, offered me every assistance in his power to render our
  situation comfortable while we remained there, and to enable us to
  proceed on our journey. To him I gave my parole of Honour, and came
  on to Detroit and reported myself to Colonel Proctor, who gave us a
  passage to Buffaloe; from that place I came by way of Presque Isle,
  and arrived here yesterday.

       I have the honor to be yours, &c.,

                                       N. Heald,
                                       _Captain U.S. Infantry_.

       Thomas H. Gushing, Esqr.,
          Adjutant General.




APPENDIX V

DARIUS HEALD'S NARRATIVE OF THE CHICAGO MASSACRE, AS TOLD TO LYMAN C.
DRAPER IN 1868[963]

[Footnote 963: For an account of the two Darius Heald narratives
of the massacre see _supra_, p . 381. The earlier narrative of the
two, which is presented here, was related in an interview with Lyman
C. Draper in 1868. It is printed here for the first time, from the
original manuscript in the Draper Collection. It has never been used
by historical writers hitherto, nor, apparently, has the fact of its
existence been known.]


In a newspaper account preserved by D. Heald, somewhat
fragmentary--evidently an obituary notice of Maj. Heald--is the
following, supplying a few words toward the close in brackets:

"Maj. Heald was in command of Fort Dearborn, Chicago, in 1812, when
an order was presented to him by a British officer [an Indian, Mr.
D. Heald believes] from Gen. Hull to deliver up the post, with all
the public property therein. The officer was accompanied by several
hundred Indians who, after the troops had left the garrison, commenced
an indiscriminate massacre of the men, women & children. The Major
endeavored to rally the few who were armed, but was so severely wounded
in the very outset as to be deprived of every means of resistance. In
this situation he was about to be dispatched by some of the Indians
and was only saved by the interference of a young man, a half-breed
connected with the Indians by the name of _Jean Baptist Chandonnis_,
through whose persuasions & the hope of a considerable reward which
he held out to the savages, they were induced to desist from their
murderous design, & to take him a prisoner. Mrs. Heald was in the early
part of the action separated from her husband & fell in company with
her uncle, the late _Maj. Wm. Wells_, formerly Indian Agent at Fort
Wayne. In the running fight which this brave man kept up with a dozen
of the Indians, & while dying of the wounds he had received, he killed
three of their best warriors, two with his rifle & the third with his
dirk. Mrs. Heald was wounded in the breast, in both arms and in the
side. To her unshaken [firmness] is she indebted [for the preservation
of her own life and that of] her husband [by the aid of] their friend
Chandonis."

[_From Darius Heald_]

Maj. Heald resolved to retire for Detroit. Can't tell when nor where
the militia came from who were killed. Wells thought there would be
difficulty, yet thought they might effect their escape, & strongly
advised the attempt, saying the longer they remained the more Indians
there would be ready to intercept them when they should start, as they
would have to do when starved out. Thinks there was no opposition to
evacuation by any of the officers. Mrs. Heald used so to represent
it. Capt. Wm. Wells got there perhaps three or four days before the
evacuation, nothing was then destroyed; the secreting the ammunition in
the well was after he came, as also the destruction of the whiskey, so
the Indians should not have it to infuriate them.

The government Indian goods were distributed to the Indians, who were
receiving them as the garrison left. Capt. Wells & the militia were
half a mile in advance. The Indians had formed a half circle at the
east end of the Lake, & the west end of which was left open for the
Americans to enter. They did enter. This half moon trap was about
three-fourths of a mile long. Wells discovered them as he neared their
upper or western line, the advanced party were fired on, returned the
fire & fell back to the main body. Wells gave a signal with his hat
before reaching Maj. Heald & the main body. Wells & party yet some
distance off, mounted on ponies, waving his hat, indicating that their
march was intercepted. Indians' heads now began to pop up all along the
line. Then Maj. Heald formed his men in battle line on a sand hill, the
wagons were made part of the line of defence. The Indians would get up
as near as they could, behind trees, bushes & sand banks to protect
them, would fire upon Heald's band, who would repel these attacks.
Discovering a short distance ahead a better position for defence, Maj.
Heald got the wagons containing sick soldiers, women & children between
the troops & the Lake, made a charge, drove the Indians & secured this
more desirable position.

The Indians kept crowding up & a running fight took place, seemingly
from the fort to where the wagons were. Mrs. Heald found herself in
front & near her uncle, who rode up beside her, saying, "My child,
I'm mortally wounded." The blood was oozing from his mouth & nose.
Shot through the lungs. She inquired if he might not possibly recover.
"No, I can't live more than an hour," and added, "My horse is also
badly wounded & I fear cannot carry me to where the wagons are. I must
hasten." His horse soon fell & caught one of the dying captain's legs
under him; but Wells managed to disengage himself. Mrs. Heald now said
to him, "See, there are Indians close by." He replied, "I care not.
I cannot last but a few minutes; I will sell my life as dearly as
possible; as there is no apparent hope for your escape, my dear child,
I trust you will die as bravely as a soldier." He now fell to the
ground & shot as he lay, with his rifle & then with his pistol, thus
dispatching two Indians; while reloading several other Indians came up
& laying as if dead he made a last effort, raised his rifle & killed
another, then hastily bidding his niece farewell, adding that he had
done all he could in his weakness, the advancing Indian host had now
come up, readily recognized him, though painted black & dressed like an
Indian, & while some of them, disingenuously, treacherously, spoke of
saving him, one of their number pointed his gun at Wells' head, seeing
which the dying man pointed his finger at his heart, & made a circular
motion around the crown of his head, thus indicating where to shoot
him, & take his scalp, in another instant he lay in death, when his
heart was taken out, cut up into small bits, distributed & eaten, that
they might prove as brave as he. His scalp was then torn off, his body
well hacked & cut to pieces.

Mrs. Heald received her wo[u]nds while close by her brave uncle, three
wounds in one arm, one in the other, one cut across her breast, one in
her side, only one bone, & that in one of her arms, broken. She stuck
to her horse, was surrounded by the savages & taken prisoner. She had
no weapon of defense. Doesn't know what Indian took her, except that
he was a young chief. She & her horse were led off and taken to where
the squaws were. On the way the Indians charged her with being an
_Ep-i-con-yare--a_ Wells. This, from supposed policy, she denied. The
squaws came out to meet the approaching party, and one of these forest
ladies at once commenced pulling out the blanket from under Mrs. Heald,
which was spread over the saddle, & on which she sat, when she tried to
see if she could use her right hand, which was the least disabled of
the two, & plied her riding whip two or three times smartly over the
adventurous squaw's bare neck and shoulders, who quickly relinquished
her hold and retreated beyond the reach of this white squaw warrior.
The young chief who had her in charge let go the bridle & raised a
hearty yell of rejoicing at the daring intrepidity of his prisoner,
exclaiming, "brave squaw! Epiconyare!" He seemed resolved on protecting
& serving her, & appeared to admire her spirit. He would afterwards
take the unfortunate squaw, who was supposed to be his wife, & exhibit
to the Indians the marks on her shoulders & relate the circumstances of
her receiving them, when they would all raise a hearty laugh, which the
squaw herself seemed to enjoy as much as the others.

The chief gave directions to the squaws who lifted Mrs. Heald from her
horse, to dress the wounds with poultices, which they did, & rendered
her condition very comfortable.

In the fight she had observed one of the officers fall, perhaps her
husband. She inquired as to Maj. Heald's fate, saying she was the white
captain's squaw. They told her he was wounded & a prisoner to another
band, & had not yet marched away. She then told them she wanted to see
him & share his fate in company with him. They told her that she and
her husband belonged to different parties, and she could not go with
him. She insisted that she must see him or die. A squaw who had dressed
her wounds now addressed her as Epi-con-yare, and she now frankly
acknowledged the relationship, and said if she had been a man she would
have fought as long as a red skin could have been found.

Now Jean Baptist Chandonnis made quite a speech to the Indians of the
band who had her, appealing to them in their native language, saying
that she was an Ep-i-con-yare, that she was not only related to a brave
man, but was the wife of a brave officer, and had proved herself a
brave & spirited woman, and ought to be permitted to see her husband,
and closed with a noble appeal in her behalf. He obtained their promise
to remain until he could go and see the Indian who had Captain Heald as
his prisoner. He at once repaired to the other camp & informed [Captain
Heald] about his wife; & prevailed on his Indian captor to mount him on
a poney, though wounded, & conveyed him to where his wife was, when an
affecting meeting took place. The good-hearted Chandonnis then tried
to effect a trade, an arrangement by which the two prisoners should
be kept together. At length Chandonnis purchased Mrs. Heald from her
captor for an old mule captured there and a bottle of whiskey, and had
her placed with her husband.

In the fight the Indians got in the rear & were killing sick soldiers,
women and children when Heald & party commenced falling back, but they
were overpowered, killed and taken. Capt. Heald also captured, all at
last, in a hand-to-hand fight, all mixed up, whites & Indians.

The Indians used guns, spears, bows & arrows, in the fight.

Thinks the prisoners, Mr. & Mrs. Heald, were some thirty days reaching
Mackinaw where Capt. Heald, being a mason, was befriended by the
British officer in command there, one of the fraternity, & was treated
very kindly, who offered to loan him any amount of money, tendering
him his pocketbook even; adding that if he ever reached home he could
return it--if not it would all be right.

It was believed by Mrs. Heald that it was her spirited conduct that
induced the Indians to spare her & her husband, both badly wounded, &
in such condition would be troublesome & cumbersome.

Mrs. Heald saw & read Mrs. Kinzie's Waubun & said it was exaggerated &
incorrect in its relation of the Chicago massacre. Don't know the name
of the Indian who took Capt. Heald.

Mrs. Heald said the Indians were not drunk.

Mr. D. Heald thinks the friendly Miamis who came with Wells to escort
in the troops were what Maj. Heald speaks of as militia [which I doubt,
as it seems that the friendly Indians took no part in the fight,
whereas some of the "militia" were killed, as Heald's report shows.
L.C.D.]

Thinks Wells painted himself as much to disguise his person as for
anything else. Mrs. Heald said that she did not see the incident of
Mrs. Helm (if it was her) being sent by her captor into the edge of the
lake for safety.

In 1831, Chandonnis called & visited Maj. Heald & wife, accompanied
by a chief, and spent two or three days there, they being cordially
entertained, Maj. H. killing a beef & a sheep & gave them a feast
of fresh meat, & talked over the story of the eventful captivity.
Chandonnis & others were then on their way to Kansas as a deputation
to view the country & report the result of their observations to their
people.

Just before the evacuation of Chicago, Mrs. Heald had sewed into a
wamus, or roundabout, several hundred dollars in paper money, & gave
the since chief Alex. Robinson $100. for conveying Maj. Heald & wife
to Mackinaw, which he safely accomplished. This garment Maj. Heald
wore under his regular military suit, & when his outside clothing was
stripped from him, the old wamus & money were left untouched.

Page 615 of Peck's edition of _Annals of the West_, says Mrs. Heald was
attacked in a boat, this is a mistake.

The Indians were not troublesome as represented in that work, as
crowding into the fort before the evacuation.

Wells arrived the 13th, see Heald's official report in the "Annals."

Maj. Heald was so disabled that he was not engaged in any other active
military service subsequently. After a few years his wounds gradually
grew worse, so that he had to use a crutch & cane, & these wounds
finally hastened his death, the ball was never extracted.

Can't say about Capt. Heald first going to Chicago in 1810, don't know
whether there was then any garrison there or not.

Mrs. Heald was born in Jefferson Co., Ky., in 1790, was in her 21st
year when married in May, 1811.

Mr. Heald has got a small water-color likeness of his grandfather,
Gen'l Sam'l Wells, and a daguerreotype[964] of Mrs. Rebecca Heald.
There is no likeness extant of Maj. Heald.

[Footnote 964: Now owned by his daughter, Mrs. Lillian Heald Richmond,
of St. Louis; for a reproduction of it see p. 300.]




APPENDIX VI

LIEUTENANT HELM'S ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRE. TOGETHER WITH THE
LETTER[965] OF HELM TO JUDGE WOODWARD ANNOUNCING THE NARRATIVE

[Footnote 965: The letter as printed here is copied from the
original manuscript in the Detroit Public Library. Notwithstanding
Helm's statement that the narrative would be ready in two weeks, an
endorsement on the back of it indicates that it was not received by
Woodward until November 10, 1815. In the meantime Heald had severed his
connection with the army, near the close of 1814. In view of Helm's
apprehensions of being court-martialed for his story, it seems not
unlikely that there is some relation between Heald's retirement and its
long-delayed appearance. Words and phrases which have been crossed out
in the original manuscript of the letter and of the massacre narrative
are printed in italics and put within brackets.]


                           Flemington New Jersey 6th June, 1814.

  Dear Sir: I hope you will excuse the length of time I have taken
  to communicate the history of the unfortunate massicree of Chicago
  it is now nearly finished and in two weeks you may expect it--as
  the history cannot possibly be written with truth without eternally
  disgracing major Heald I wish you could find out whether I shall
  be cashiered or censured for bringing to light the conduct of so
  great a man as many thinks him--You know I am the only Officer that
  has escaped to tell the news some of the men have got off but where
  they are I know not they could be able to testify to some of the
  principal facts--I have waited a long time expecting a court of
  inquiry on his conduct but see plainly it is to be overlooked--I
  am resolved now to do myself justice even if I have to leave the
  service to publish the history, I shall be happy to hear from you
  immediately on the receipt of this--

                                I have the honor to be
                                Sir--
                                  with great respect
                                  Your Obt Hb Servt
                                              L. T. Helm.

Augustus B. Woodward Esqr.
Washington City.

[Addressed] Flemington                          [Paid] 17
            Jun 6th.
                Augustus B. Woodward, Esq.
                         Milton,
                    [_Washington City_]
                                 Va.

[Endorsed]
       Helm, Mr. Linah T.,
       letter from
          Dated Flemington
        New Jersey
         June 6th. 1814.
       Received at Washington.

           June
           14th
           1814.

[Illustration: LIEUTENANT HEALD'S NARRATIVE OF THE FORT DEARBORN
MASSACRE

(By courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)]


THE MASSACRE NARRATIVE[966]

[Footnote 966: The narrative, like the letter (_supra_), is copied from
the original manuscript in the Detroit Public Library. The tabular list
of the survivors of the massacre which seems to have accompanied the
narrative is written in pencil and on paper of a different size than
that used for the narrative proper. The sheet is in such condition that
a number of the names would be undecipherable but for the light shed by
a comparison with the Fort Dearborn muster-roll of May 31, 1812.]

Some time in [_March_] April, about the 7th-10, a party of
Winnebagoes came to Chicago and murdered 2 Men this gave a Sufficient
ground for to suppose the Indians Hostile as they had left every sign
by scalping them & leaving a weapon say a war mallet as a token of
their returning in June, Mr. Kinzie sent in a letter from the Interior
of the Indian country to inform Capt. Heald that the Indians were
Hostile inclined & only waiting the Declaration of War to commence
Hostilities this they told Kenzie In confidence on the 10th of July
Capt. Heald got the information of War being declared & on the 8th. of
august got Genl. Hull's order to Evacuate the Post of Fort Dearborne
by the route of Detroit or Fort Wayne if Practicable. This Letter was
brot by a Potowautemie Chief Winnemeg & he informed Capt. Heald through
Kenzie to evacuate immediately the next day if possible as the Indians
were hostile & that the Troops should change the usual Route to go
to Fort Wayne. [_The Evacuation took place on the 15 August prior to
this_] Capt. William Wells arrived from Fort Wayne on the 12th August
with 27 Miamis and after a council being held by him with the tribes
there assembled to amount of 500 warriors 179 women & children he
after council declared them Hostile & that his opinion was that they
would interupt us on our route. Capt. Wells enquered into the State
of the arms, ammunition & Provisions [_of the fort_] we had 200 stand
of arms [_over them_] four pieces of artillery 6000 lb of Powder &
a sufficient quantity of shot Lead &c. 3 Months provisions taken in
Indian Corn & all this on the 12th. Of August having prior to this
expended 3 month Provisions at Least in the interval between the 7th &
the 12th of august, exclusive of this we had at our command 200 Head of
Homed Cattle & 27 barrels of Salt--after this Survey [_Kinzie_] Wells
demanded of Capt Heald if he intended to evacuate, his answer was he
would. Kenzie then with Lt. Helm cald on Wells and requested him to
call on Capt Heald and cause the ammunition & arms to be destroyed but
Capt Wells insisted on Kenzie & Helm to join with him This being done
Capt Heald Hestitated & observed that it was not sound Pollicy to tell
a lie to an Indian that he had received a positive order from Gen. Hull
to deliver up to those Indians all the public Property of whatsoever
nature particularly to those Indians that would take in the Troops &
that he could not alter it, & that it might irritate the Indians & be
the means of the Destruction of his Men Kenzie Volunteered to take the
responsibility on himself provided Capt Heald would consider the Method
he would point out a safe one. He agreed, Kenzie wrote an order as if
from Genl. Hull & gave it into Capt Heald it was supposed to answer &
accordingly was carried into effect. The ammunition & Muskets were all
destroyed the night of the 13th, the 15th. we evacuated the Garrison
& about one and [_a_] half mile from the Garrison we were informed by
Capt Wells that we were surrounded & the attack by the Indians began,
about 10 of the Clock Morning the men in a few minutes were with the
exception of 10 all killed and wounded the Ensign and Surgeons Mate
were both killed the Capt and myself both badly wounded during the
battle I fired my piece at an Indean and felt confident I killed him
or wounded him badly, I immediately called to the men to follow me in
the pirara or we would be shot down before we could load our guns we
had proceded under a heavy fire about an hundred & 5 paces when I made
a wheel to the left to observe the motion of the Indeans and avoid
being shot in the back which I had so far miraculously escaped Just as
I wheeled I received a ball through my coat pocket which struck the
barrel of my gun and fell in the lineing of my coat in a few seconds
I received a ball in my right foot which lamed me considerably the
Indeans happened immediately to stop firing and nevour more renewed
it I immediately ordered the men that were able, to load their guns
and commence loadin for them that were not able, I now discovered
captain Heald for the first time to my knowledge during the battle,
he was coming from towards the Indeans and to my great surprise they
nevour offered to fire on him he came up and ordered the men to form
that his intentions were to charge the boddy of indeans that were on
the bank of the Lake where we had just retreated from they appeared to
be about 300 strong we were 27 including all the wounded he advanced
about 5 steps and not atal to my surprise was the first that halted
some of the men fell back instead of advanceing we then gained the
only high piece of ground their was near, we now had a little time to
reflect and saw death in every direction, at this time an interpiter
from the In[_d_]eans advanced towards us and called for the Captain
who immediately went to meet him (the interpiter was a half indean and
had lived a long time within a few yards of the fort and bound to Mr.
Kinzie he was allways very friendly with us all) a chief by the name
of Blackbird advanced to the interpiter [_the capt_] and met the Capt
who after a few words conversation delivered him his sword and in a few
minutes returned to us and informed me he had offered 100 dollars for
every man that was then liveing, he sayed they were then decideing on
what to do, they however in a few minutes called him again and talked
with him some time when he returned and informed me they had agreed if
I and the men would surrender by laying down our arms they would lay
down theirs meet us half way shake us by the hand as friends and take
us back to the fort. I asked him if he knew what they intended doing
with us then, he sayed they did not informe him he asked me if I would
surrender, the men were at this time crouding to my back and began to
beg me not to surrender. I told them not to be uneasy for I had already
done my best for them and was determined not to surrender unless I saw
better prospects of us all being saved and then not without [_their
being_] they were willing the Capt asked me the [_third_] second time
what I would doo without an answer, I discovered the interpiter at this
time running from the Indeans towards us and when he came in about 20
steps the Capt put the Question the third time the Interpiter called
out Lieut dont surrender for if you doo they will kill you all for
their has been no general council held with them yet you must wait and
I will go back and hold a general council with them and return and
let you know what they will doo. I told him to go for I had no Ideah
of surrender he went and collected all the indeans and talked for
some time, when he returned and told me [_if_] the Indeans sayed if I
would surrender as before described they would not kill any [_of us_]
and sayed it was his opinion they would doo as they sayed for they
had already saved Mr. Kinzie and some of the women and children this
enlivened me and the men for we well knew Mr. Kinzie stood higher than
anny man in that country among the Indeans and he might be the means
of saveing us from utter destruction which afterwards proved to be the
case we then surrendered and after the Indeans had fired of our guns
they put the Capt myself and some of the wounded men on horses and
marched us to the bank of the lake where the battle first commenced
when we arrived at the bank and looked down on the sand beach I was
struck with horror at the sight of men women and children lying naked
with principally all their heads off, and in passing over the bodies
I was confident I saw my wife with her head off about two feet from
her sholders tears for the first time rushed in my eyes but I consoled
myself with a firm belief that I should soon follow her, I now began
to repent that I had ever surrendered but it was two late to recall
and we had only to look up to him who first caused our existence, when
we had arrived in half a mile of the Fort they halted us made the men
sit down form a ring round them began to take off their hats and strip
the Capt they attempted to strip me but were prevented by a chief who
stuck close to me, I made signes to him that I wanted to drink for
the weather was very warm he led me off towards the Fort and to my
great astonishment saw my wife siting among some squaws crying our
feelings can be better judged than expressed they brought some water
and directed her to wash and dress my wound which she did and bound
it up with her pocket handkerchief, they then brought up some of the
men and tommyhawked [_some_] one of them before us, they now took Mrs.
Helm across the river (for we were nearly on its bank) to Mr. Kinzies,
we met again at my Fathers in the state of New York she having arrived
seven days before me after being seperated seven months and one week
she was taken in the direction of Detroit and I was taken down the
Illinois river and was sold to Mr. Thomas Forsyth half brother of Mr.
Kinzies who a short time after effected my escape, this Gentleman was
the means of saveing many lives on the Warring frontier I was taken on
the 15th of August and arrived safe among the americans at St. Louis on
the 14th. of October.

Captain Heald through Kenzie sending his two Negroes got put on board
a Indean boat going to St. Joseph & from that place got to Makinac by
Lake Michigan in a Birch Canoe--The night of the 14th the Interpreter
and a Chief black patredge waited on Capt Heald the Indian gave up his
medal & told Heald to beware of the next day that the Indians Would
destroy him & his men this Heald never communicated to one of his
officers there was but Capt Wells that was acquainted with it you will
observe Sir that I did with Kenzie protest against Dest[_r_]oying the
arms ammunition and Provisions untill that Heald told me positively
that he would evacuate at all Hasards--

15 of August we evacuated the Fort the number of soldiers was 52
privates & musichn 4 officers & Physician 14 Citizens 15 children
and 9 women, the baggage being in front with the Citizens Women and
Children I [_could not_] & on the [_Beach_] Margin of the Lake we
having advanced to gain the Prarie I could not see the massacre but
Kinzie with Doctor Van Vorees being ordered by Capt Heald to take
charge of the Women & children remained on the Beach & Kinzie since
told me he was an Eye witness to the Horred scene the Indians came down
on the baggage waggons for Plunder they Butchered every male citizen
but Kenzie two women & 12 Children in the most inhuman manner Possible
opened them cutting off their Heads & taken out their Hearts, several
of the women were wounded but not dangerously.

[Endorsed on back] Mr. Helm. Nov. 10, 1815.

  Nathan Heald                1. Released.
  Lina T. Helm                2    Do
  Nathan Edson                3 ...................
  Elias Mills                 4 ...................
  Thos. Point Dexter          5 ...................
  August Mort                 6 Died Natural
  James Latta                 7 Killed
  Michael Lynch               8 Killed
  John Suttinfield            9 Killed
  John Smith Senr.           10 Released
  John Smith Junr.           11 ...................
  Nathan Hurt                12 Deserted
  Richard Garner             13 Killed
  Paul Grumo                 14 ...................
  James Vanhorn              15 ...................
  Wm Griffiths             { 16 Supposed to be a
  Joseph Bowen             { 17 frenchman and Released
  John Fury                  18 ...................
  John Crozier               19 Deserted
  John Needs                 20
  Daniel Daugherty           21
  Dyson Dyer                 22 Killed
  John [Prestly] Andrews     23 Killed
  James Starr                24 Killed
  Joseph Noles               25
  James Corbin               26
  Fielding Corbin            27
     Citizens
                                { Mortally wounded
  Jos. Burns                 28 { since killed


  [Names of women on reverse page]

                    Women taken prisoners. }
  Mrs. Heald              Released.        }
  Mrs. Helm                   Do           }
  Mrs. Holt    }
  Mrs. Burns   }
  Mrs. Leigh   } Prisoners.
  Mrs. Simmons }
  Mrs. Needs   }
  ..........   }

  Killed in the action      }
  Mrs. Corbin               }
  Mrs. Heald's Negro woman  }

  Children yet in Captivity
  Mrs. Leigh's 2 one Since Dead N D
  Mrs. Burns 2
  Mrs. Simmon[s] 1
  13 Children Killed during the action
  11 Citizens including Capt. Wells.
  --------------------------------------------------------
  John Kinzie taken but not considered as a Prisoner of War
  --------------------------------------------------------
  54 Rank & file left the Garrison




APPENDIX VII

LETTER OF JUDGE AUGUSTUS B. WOODWARD TO COLONEL PROCTOR CONCERNING THE
SURVIVORS OF THE CHICAGO MASSACRE[967]

[Footnote 967: Copied from the original rough draft of the letter
in the Detroit Public Library. The letter as actually sent differed
slightly from the rough draft. The latter is presented here with all
its erasures and changes. Words and phrases crossed out in the original
manuscript are printed in italics and placed within brackets.]


                                          Michigan, Oct. 7, 12.

Sir, It is already known to you that on Saturday the fifteenth day of
August last, an order having been given to evacuate fort dearborn,
an attack was made by the savages of the vicinity on the troops and
persons appertaining to that garrison, on their march, and at the
distance of about [_after before they had marched_] three miles from
the fort [_three of the survivors of that terrible massacre_] and the
greater part of the number barbarously and inhumanly massacred. Three
of the survivors of that unhappy and terrible disaster having since
reached this country I have employed some pains to collect the number
and names of those who were not immediately slain and to ascertain
whether any hopes might yet be entertained of saving the remainder. It
is on this subject that I wish to interest your feelings and to solicit
the benefit of your interposition convinced that you [_will ever_]
estimate humanity among the brightest virtues of the soldier. [_On the
policy of associating uncivilized men in the hostile operations of
civilized powers, or on the rules and limitations on which a savage
force if employed at all should be regulated, I will say nothing
because I am impressed with a strong conviction that if any British
officer had been present on this melancholy occasion the consequences
would have been extremely different, infinitely less to be regretted.]

I find, Sir, that the party consisted of ninety-three persons.
Of these the [_regular_] military [_forces_] including officers,
non-commissioned officers, and privates, amounted to fifty-four. The
[_militia_] citizens not acting in a military capacity consisted of
twelve. The number of women was nine and that of the children eighteen.
The whole of the citizens were slaughtered, two women, and twelve
children. Of the military twenty-six were killed at the time of the
attack, and accounts have [_reached_] arrived of at least [_four_] five
of the surviving prisoners having been put to death in the course of
[_that_] the same night. There will remain then twenty-[_four_]three
of the military, seven women and six children, whose fate with the
exception of the three who have come in, and of two others who are
known [_understood_] to be in safety at St. Joseph's, remains to be
yet ascertained. Of these [_I will fur_]--amounting--[_to_] in all to
thirty-one persons I will furnish you with the names of all that I have
been able to identify. First. There is one officer a lieutenant, of the
name of Linah T. Helm, with whom I have had the happiness of a personal
acquaintance. His father is a [_respectable_] gentleman of Virginia
& of the first respectability who has since settled in the state of
New York. He is an officer of great merit and the most unblemished
character. The lady of this gentleman a young and [_beautiful_] amiable
victim of misfortune was separated from her husband. She was delivered
up to her father-in-law, [_a British subject,] who was present,
[_but_] Mrs. Helm was transported into the Indian country a hundred
miles from the scene of action and has not since been heard of at this
place. Second. Of six non-commissioned officers four survived the
action. [_Their names are_] John Crozier a sergeant, Daniel Dougherty
a corporal, and one other corporal by the name of Bowen. The other is
William Griffin a Serjeant who is now here. [_In addition to_] With
these may be included John Fifer Smith a fifer.

Third. Of the privates it is said that five, and it is not known how
many more were put to death in the night after the action. Of those
who are said to have thus suffered I have only been able to collect
the names of two Richard Gamer and James Latte. Mr. Burns a citizen
severely wounded was killed by a squaw in the day time about an hour
after the action. There will thus remain to be accounted for of whom I
can only give the following names--Micajah Dennison and John Fury were
so badly wounded in the action that [_perh_] little hope was indulged
of their recovery. Dyson Dyer, William Nelson Hunt, Duncan McCarty,
Augustus Mott, John Smith Senior, father of John Smith before named as
a fifer, James Van Horn.

Fourth. Of the [_six_] five women whose fate remains to be ascertained
I am enabled to give the names of all. They were Mrs. Bums wife to the
citizen before mentioned as killed after the attack. Mrs. Holt, Mrs.
Lee, Mrs. Needs, Mrs. Simmons. Among these women were six children
saved out of the whole number which was eighteen, part of them,
belonging to the surviving mothers & part to those who were slain.
[_The_] As to the means of preserving them I can only suggest the
sending a special messenger to that quarter charged with collecting the
prisoners who may survive and transmitting them to Michillimackinac. A
communication to Capt. Roberts at that place may co-operate.

[_The permis_]

[Endorsed] Chicago prisoners, Oct. 7. 1812.




APPENDIX VIII[968]


MUSTER-ROLL OF A COMPANY OF INFANTRY UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPT. NATHAN
HEALD IN THE FIRST REGIMENT OF INFANTRY COMMENDED BY COLONEL JACOB
KINGSBURY FROM THE 20TH OF APRIL WHEN LAST MUSTERED TO THE 31ST OF MAY,
1812

[Footnote 968: Printed for the first time from the original manuscript
among the Heald Papers in the Draper Collection.]

                                      Date of    To what time                      Remarks and
  No.   Names          Rank         appointment   engaged or     Names Present   alterations since
                                   or enlistment   enlisted                        last muster

   1  Nathan Heald    Capt.        31 Jan'y 1807  .............  Nathan Heald
   2  Lina T. Helm    2nd Lieut.   15 Dec'r 1808  .............  Lina T. Helm
   3  George Ronan    Ensign        1 March 1811  .............  George Ronan
   4  Isaac N. Van    Surg'n Mate   1 March 1811  .............  Isaac N. Van
        Voorhis                                                    Voorhis

   1  Isaac Holt      Sergeant     22 Apl.  1811  22 Apl.  1816  Isaac Holt
   2  Otho Hays          "         23 Apl.  1811  23 Apl.  1816  Otho Hays
   3  John Crozier       "          2 July  1808   2 July  1813  John Crozier
   4  Wm. Griffith       "          1 May   1812   1 May   1817  Wm. Griffith    Joined by enlisting
                                                                                   at this place 1 May 1812.

   1  Thomas Forth    Corporal      6 July  1807   6 July  1812  Thos. Forth
   2  Joseph Bowen       "         22 Apl   1811  22 Apl   1816  Joseph Bowen

   1  George Burnett  Fifer         1 July  1811   1 July  1816   George Burnett
   2  John Smith        "          22 Apl.  1811  22 Apl.  1816   John Smith
   3  Hugh McPherson  Drumr        20 Oct.  1807  20 Oct.  1852   Hugh McPherson
   4  John Hamilton     "           5 July  1808   5 July  1813   John Hamilton

   1  John Allin      Private      27 Nov.  1810  27 Nov.  1815   John Allin
   2  George Adams       "         21 Aug.  1811  21 Aug.  1816   George Adams
   3  Prestly Andrews    "         11 Apl.  1811  11 Apl.  1816   Prestly Andrews
   4  James Corbin       "          2 Oct.  1810   2 Oct.  1815   James Corbin
   5  Fielding Corbin Private      25 Oct.  1811  25 Oct.  1816  Fielding Corbin
   6  Asa Campbell       "         26 Jan'y 1810  26 Jan'y 1815  Asa Campbell
   7  Dyson Dyer         "          1 Oct.  1810   1 Oct.  1815  Dyson Dyer
   8  Stephen Draper     "         19 Apl.  1811  19 Apl.  1816  Stephen Draper
   9  Dan'l Daugherty    "         13 Aug.  1807  13 Aug.  1812  Dan'l Daugherty   Re-enlisted 1st June 1812.
  10  Micajah Denison    "         23 Jan'y 1811  23 Jan'y 1816  Micajah Denison
  11  Nathan Edson       "          6 Apl.  1810   6 Apl.  1815  Nathan Edson
  12  John Fury          "         19 March 1808  19 March 1813  John Fury         Sick.
  13  Paul Grummo        "          1 Oct.  1810   1 Oct.  1815  Paul Grummo
  14  Richard Garner     "          2 Oct.  1810   2 Oct.  1815  Richard Garner
  15  Wm. N. Hunt        "          8 Oct.  1810   8 Oct.  1815  Wm. N. Hunt
  16  Nathan A. Hurtt    "         29 Dec.  1811  29 Dec.  1816  Nathan A. Hurtt
  17  Rodias Jones       "          9 Dec.  1807   9 Dec.  1812  Rodias Jones
  18  David Kinison      "         14 March 1808  14 March 1813  David Kinison
  19  Sam'l Kilpatrick   "         20 Dec.  1810  20 Dec.  1815  Sam'l Kilpatrick
  20  John Kelso         "          3 May   1812   3 May   1817  John Kelso        Joined by re-enlisting
  21  Jacob Landon       "         28 Nov.  1807  28 Nov.  1812  Jacob Landon     at this place 3d May 1812.
  22  James Latta        "         10 Apl.  1810  10 Apl.  1815  James Latta
  23  Michael Lynch      "         23 Dec.  1810  23 Dec.  1815  Michael Lynch
  24  Hugh Logan         "          5 Feby. 1811   5 Feby. 1816  Hugh Logan
  25  Frederick Locker   "         13 Apl.  1810  13 Apl.  1815  Frederick Locker
  26  August Mortt       "          9 Apl.  1811   9 Apl.  1816  August Mortt
  27  Peter Miller       "         24 July  1811  24 July  1816  Peter Miller
  28  Duncan McCarty     "         31 Aug.  1807  31 Aug.  1812  Duncan McCarty
  29  Wm. Moffett        "         23 Jany. 1811  23 Jany. 1816  Wm. Moffett
  30  Elias Mills        "         26 Oct.  1811  26 Oct.  1816  Elias Mills
  31  John Needs         "          5 July  1808   5 July  1813  John Needs
  32  Joseph Noles       "          8 Sept. 1810   8 Sept. 1815  Joseph Noles
  33  Thos. Poindexter   "          3 Sept. 1810   3 Sept. 1815  Thos. Poindexter  Sick.
  34  Wm. Prickett       "          7 March 1811   7 March 1816  Wm. Prickett
  35  Frederick Peterson "          7 June  1808   7 June  1813  Frederick Peterson
  36  David Sherror      "          1 Oct.  1810   1 Oct.  1815  David Sherror
  37  John Suttenfield   "          8 Sept. 1807   8 Sept. 1812  John Suttenfield
  38  John Smith         "          2 Apl.  1808   2 Apl.  1813  John Smith
  39  James Starr        "         18 Nov.  1809  18 Nov.  1814  James Starr
  40  John Simmons       "         14 March 1810  14 March 1815  John Simmonds
  41  James Vanhorn      "          2 May   1810   2 May   1815  James Vanhorn

[The roll concludes with a table of recapitulation, a certificate as
to its correctness, signed by Heald and Van Voorhis, and a certificate
by Heald, dated Louisville, December 3, 1812, that the foregoing is a
true copy of the original muster-roll.]




APPENDIX IX

THE FATED COMPANY: A DISCUSSION OF THE NAMES AND FATE OF THE WHITES
INVOLVED IN THE FORT DEARBORN MASSACRE


No comprehensive record of the names and fate of those who composed
the company which marched out of Fort Dearborn under Captain Heald on
the morning of August 15, 1812, has ever been made. Here for the first
time, a hundred years after the massacre, an effort is made to supply
such a record. Such success as has been achieved is due to a study,
in addition to the sources of information which have been used by
previous workers in the local historical field, of several new sources
unknown to or unused by students hitherto. The most important of these
is the Fort Dearborn muster-roll for May 31, 1812. This, together
with the list of survivors given by Lieutenant Helm, the data left by
Captain Heald,[969] and the letter of Judge Woodward to Colonel Proctor
constitutes the basis of the present study.

[Footnote 969: Aside from the Fort Dearborn muster-roll for May 31,
1812, the papers left by Heald which are of chief importance for our
subject are the following: the official report of the evacuation
(Appendix IV); Heald's Journal (Appendix III); the Fort Dearborn
quarterly returns for the quarter ending June 30, 1812; the monthly
return for June, 1812; a tabular statement concerning the troops
engaged in the massacre and their fate; a summary statement concerning
the women, and concerning the men who perished in captivity. With the
exception of the official report all of these papers are in the Draper
Collection.]

At the outset of the effort to name and account for the members of
the fatal company, a difficulty is encountered concerning the precise
number of regular soldiers in Heald's company. In his official Report,
Heald stated that his force of regulars numbered fifty-four. Whether
he intended to include himself in this number is not clear. The
tabular statement, preserved among his papers, of the composition of
his force and its fate, which gives the total strength of his company
as fifty-four, exactly one-half of whom were slain, would seem to
indicate that he did. Yet the latter document disagrees with the Report
in the number of slain, which the Report gives as twenty-six. Turning
to Heald's Journal we find the number of soldiers slain in the battle
placed at twenty-six, and the number of survivors at twenty-seven,
which would give a total strength of fifty-three. There is reason for
believing that the number of regulars slain in the battle was in fact
twenty-six, but it is manifestly impracticable to determine certainly,
from the accounts left by Heald, the exact strength of his company
on the morning of the massacre. Heald had, to the end of his life,
the garrison muster-roll for May 31, 1812, and other contemporary
records, and these are still preserved. An examination of them
suggests an explanation of the reason for his conflicting statements.
The garrison muster-roll for May 31 and the monthly return for June
each show a strength of fifty-five men, while the quarterly return of
June 30 and the inspection return of the same date show a strength of
fifty-four. The first two agree in showing four officers and fifty-one
non-commissioned officers, musicians, and privates present; the third
shows three officers and fifty-one of lesser rank present, and the
fourth four officers and fifty of lesser rank. There is disagreement,
then, between the contemporary returns over the number of the garrison
at the end of June; yet it is evident that its nominal strength at that
time was four officers and fifty-one men of lesser rank, although one
of the fifty-five may possibly have been absent. There is no reason
to suppose that there was any alteration in this number between the
end of June and the fifteenth of August. Without venturing to say
that there is any unquestionable preponderance of evidence that the
strength of Heald's company, including himself, on the latter date was
fifty-five rather than fifty-four, from a consideration of all the
factors involved I incline to believe that it was. In the calculations
and statements that follow, therefore, it is to be understood that the
total number of regular soldiers involved in the massacre is reckoned
as fifty-five.

Including the commander, then, ninety-six persons comprised the doomed
company which evacuated the fort on the morning of the fifteenth of
August. These fall logically into several groups, varying greatly as
to size: John Kinzie, a neutral and non-combatant; Wells, the leader
of the Miamis; the nine women and eighteen children of the company;
the twelve Chicago residents composing Heald's "militia" company; and
finally the fifty-five regulars. The first two of these require but
little consideration here, as the fortune of each has been discussed
elsewhere. Wells was slain, while Kinzie passed unscathed even through
the carnage around the wagons where not another white man escaped with
his life.

There is no uncertainty respecting the fate of the women of the
company. The subject has already been discussed at length and only a
brief recapitulation need be given here.

  No.     Name                               Fate

   1  Cicely, Mrs. Heald's negro slave   Killed in battle

   2  Mrs. Fielding Corbin               Killed in battle

   3  Mrs. Heald                         Returned to civilization

   4  Mrs. Helm                          Returned to civilization

   5  Mrs. Lee                           Returned to civilization
                                           (Ransomed by Depain and
                                           Buisson at Chicago)

   6  Mrs. Holt                          Returned to civilization
                                           (Possibly the woman ransomed
                                           along with Mrs. Lee)

   7  Mrs. Burns                         Returned to civilization

   8  Mrs. Simmons                       Returned to civilization

   9  Mrs. Needs                         Died in captivity of exposure
                                           and hardship

Of the eighteen children in the massacre only a very incomplete record
can be made from the sources that have come to light thus far. Neither
Mrs. Heald nor Mrs. Helm had children; each of the remaining seven
women, with the possible exception of Mrs. Corbin, had one or more.
Mrs. Burns had several, some of whom bore her former name of Cooper;
probably several belonged to Mrs. Lee. Black Cicely had one child, and
Mrs. Simmons two. One child each at least, and perhaps more, belonged
to Mrs. Needs and Mrs. Holt. Twelve of the children perished in the
massacre, most of them in one wagon at the hands of a single fiend,
and six survived it. One of these, the Needs child, met perhaps the
saddest fate of all the company, being tied to a tree by the savages
and left behind to die. The other five returned with their mothers to
civilization. Two of them belonged to Mrs. Burns, and one each to Mrs.
Simmons, Mrs. Holt, and Mrs. Lee.

Unless additional sources of information shall come to light, the
names of most of the members of the Chicago "militia" will forever
remain unknown. All of the twelve men were killed in the combat except
the leader, Thomas Burns, who, badly wounded, was killed a short time
later by a squaw. One of his followers was his stepson. Joseph, or
James, Cooper; Lee, the farmer, must have been another although there
is no positive record to this effect. Of the others the names of
but one or two can be conjectured even. If the boy who escaped from
the April massacre was the son of Lee, he doubtless was one of the
militiamen. Probably Louis Fettle, who lived at Chicago from 1803 to
1812 and then disappeared from recorded history, was still another. In
this connection the conjecture may be hazarded that Pierre LeClaire,
the half-breed interpreter, was one of the twelve. Griffith represents
that he deserted at the beginning of the fight, for which Griffith at
first intended to kill him, but relented when LeClaire pleaded that it
was the only way to save his life. If the suggestion that LeClaire was
one of the militiamen be accepted, the statements of Heald and others
that all of them perished must be regarded as erroneous. This view,
however, would explain Heald's statement in his Journal, otherwise
erroneous, that twelve militia, including Wells perished.

I have reserved for consideration last the most perplexing problem,
that concerning the regulars of the Fort Dearborn garrison. The names
of the fifty-five men are preserved in the muster-roll of May 31, 1812.
The only man who attempted to record the names of those who survived
the battle was Helm, and his list, while incomplete, and inaccurate
in various respects, furnishes the most convenient starting-point for
determining the names of those slain in the battle, and the subsequent
fate of the survivors. Excluding Burns, the militiaman. Helm lists the
following twenty-seven survivors:

   1. Captain Nathan Heald
   2. Lieutenant Lina T. Helm
   3. Sergeant John Crozier
   4. Sergeant Wm. Griffith
   5. Corporal Joseph Bowen
   6. John Smith, fifer
   7. Private Prestly Andrews
   8. Private Fielding Corbin
   9. Private James Corbin
  10. Private Daniel Daugherty
  11. Private Dyson Dyer
  12. Private Nathan Edson
  13. Private John Fury
  14. Private Richard Garner
  15. Private Paul Grummo
  16. Private Wm. N. Hunt
  17. Private James Latta
  18. Private Michael Lynch
  19. Private Elias Mills
  20. Private August Mortt
  21. Private John Needs
  22. Private Joseph Noles
  23. Private Thomas Poindexter
  24. Private John Smith
  25. Private James Starr
  26. Private John Suttenfield
  27. Private James Van Horn

As far as it goes the accuracy of this list is confirmed by other
sources of information, except for Andrews and Starr, concerning whose
fate there is no mention elsewhere. On the other hand Woodward, whose
information was obtained from Heald and Griffith, names Denison and
McCarty, the former badly wounded, among the survivors; the report
of the nine survivors who arrived at Plattsburg, New York, in 1814,
adds the name of Hugh Logan; while David Kennison, who was buried at
Chicago with great civic pomp forty years later, evidently survived the
massacre despite the fact that his name does not appear in any of the
sources. We have, therefore, the names of thirty-one survivors, three
more than there actually were. Probably two of the names in error are
those of Andrews and Starr, mentioned above; possibly the third is that
of Logan, although obviously there can be certainty respecting none of
the three. A comparison of this list with the complete garrison roll
discloses the names of those certainly slain in the battle, twenty-four
in number, as follows:

   1. Surgeon Isaac Van Voorhis
   2. Ensign George Ronan
   3. Sergeant Isaac Holt
   4. Sergeant Otho Hays
   5. Corporal Thomas Forth
   6. George Burnett, fifer
   7. John Hamilton, drummer
   8. Hugh McPherson, drummer
   9. Private John Allin
  10. Private George Adams
  11. Private Asa Campbell
  12. Private Stephen Draper
  13. Private Nathan A. Hurtt
  14. Private Rhodias Jones
  15. Private Samuel Kilpatrick
  16. Private John Kelso
  17. Private Jacob Landon
  18. Private Frederick Locker
  19. Private Peter Miller
  20. Private Wm. Moffett
  21. Private Wm. Prickett
  22. Private Frederick Peterson
  23. Private David Sherror
  24. Private John Simmons

There were twenty-six slain, however, according to Heald's Report and
Journal. The two names needed to complete the list are probably those
of Prestly Andrews and James Starr.

We have thus reached, although not with absolute certainty in every
case, the names of twenty-nine survivors and the twenty-six who lost
their lives in the battle. It remains to follow the fortunes of
the former and trace out those who perished in captivity and those
who finally returned to their countrymen. Helm's list is of little
assistance here, for his account of the fate of the survivors is both
incomplete and inaccurate. The fate of twelve of the twenty-seven on
his list is left a blank; opposite the names of five stands the word
"released," and opposite two "deserted." In fact, eleven perished in
captivity and eighteen returned to civilization. It is evident that
Helm was ignorant of the arrival of the nine Fort Dearborn soldiers at
Plattsburg in the spring of 1814, and of the news they brought of their
comrades who had perished in the wilderness. One of the nine he records
as killed, one as released, and leaves the fate of the others blank.
Why Hunt and Crozier should have been set down as deserters is not
apparent. In fact, the former froze to death in captivity, while the
latter effected his release through the agency of a friendly Indian.

The most practicable starting-point for determining the names of those
who perished in captivity and those who escaped from it is afforded by
Heald's tabular statement. This indicates that twenty-seven survived
the battle, nine of whom died in captivity, and eighteen returned to
civilization. Our study, however, has already established the names
of twenty-nine survivors of the battle. On the assumption, which
there are strong reasons for making, that the two not included in
Heald's statement perished in captivity, the names of all belonging
to the latter class, and of all who were restored to freedom, can
be determined. Elsewhere Heald gives the names of nine who died in
captivity. They were:

  1. Richard Garner
  2. Wm. N. Hunt
  3. James Latta
  4. Michael Lynch
  5. August Mortt
  6. Hugh Logan
  7. John Needs
  8. Thomas Poindexter
  9. John Suttenfield

The accuracy of this list is confirmed by other sources with respect
to all except Poindexter, concerning whose fate there is no mention
elsewhere. The two names wanting to complete the list of those who
perished in captivity are Micajah Denison and John Fury, who according
to Woodward were so badly wounded in the battle that but little hope
was entertained of their recovery.

With this list of eleven as our basis it is possible to determine with
reasonable assurance the names of the men who were tortured to death
the night following the massacre. Forsyth's letter shows that Lynch and
Suttenfield, badly wounded, were killed by the Indians, while en route
to the Illinois River. The report of the Plattsburg group of survivors
accounts for the death of four others. Hunt froze to death; Needs died
about the middle of January, 1813, probably from the hardships of his
captivity; Logan and Mortt were tomahawked because of their inability
to keep up with their captors. The five remaining, Garner, Latta,
Denison, Fury, and Poindexter, are evidently the men who were tortured
to death at Chicago. Concerning the first two we have the positive
statement of Woodward in his letter to Proctor. The belief that this
was the fate of the others rests, obviously, on inference and deduction.

To determine the names of the eighteen who returned to civilization it
is now necessary only to eliminate these eleven names from the list
of the twenty-nine survivors already given. Concerning the return
of twelve of the eighteen there are positive records, while that of
Kennison may safely be inferred from our knowledge of his later life
and death at Chicago. Of the other five no mention or record has been
found, and their names are obtained only by the process of analysis
which has already been gone through. In the list that follows these
five are given last:

   1. Captain Nathan Heald
   2. Lieutenant Lina T. Helm
   3. Sergeant Wm. Griffith
   4. Corporal Joseph Bowen
   5. Private James Corbin
   6. Private Fielding Corbin
   7. Private Dyson Dyer
   8. Private Nathan Edson
   9. Private Paul Grummo
  10. Private Elias Mills
  11. Private Joseph Noles
  12. Private James Van Horn
  13. Private David Kennison
  14. Sergeant John Crozier
  15. Private Daniel Daugherty
  16. Private Duncan McCarty
  17. John Smith, fifer
  18. Private John Smith (father of the preceding)

Although some doubt necessarily attends the conclusions which have been
reached concerning the fate of some of the members of the Fort Dearborn
garrison, practical certainty attaches to the conclusion reached
concerning the great majority, and it is believed that the present
study is as accurate and complete as can be made with the sources of
information at present available. The study may properly conclude with
a tabular recapitulation, embodying the conclusions reached as to the
names and fate of the regular soldiers of the Fort Dearborn garrison on
the morning of August 15, 1812.

  1. Nathan Heald       Capt.           Returned to civilization
  2. Lina T. Helm       2nd Lieut.      Returned to civilization
  3. George Ronan       Ensign          Killed in battle near the baggage wagons
  4. Isaac Van Voorhis  Surgeon's mate  Killed in battle near the baggage wagons

  1.   Isaac Holt         Sergeant    Killed in battle
  2.   Otho Hays          Sergeant    Killed in battle in individual duel with an Indian
  3.   John Crozier       Sergeant    Returned to civilization
  4.   Wm. Griffith       Sergeant    Returned to civilization

  1.   Thomas Forth       Corporal    Killed in battle
  2.   Joseph Bowen       Corporal    Returned to civilization

  1.   George Burnett     Fifer       Killed in battle
  2.   John Smith         Fifer       Returned to civilization
  3.   Hugh McPherson     Drummer     Killed in battle
  4.   John Hamilton      Drummer     Killed in battle

  1.   John Allin         Private     Killed in battle
  2.   George Adams       Private     Killed in battle
  3.   Prestly Andrews    Private     Killed in battle
  4.   James Corbin       Private     Returned to civilization
  5.   Fielding Corbin    Private     Returned to civilization
  6.   Asa Campbell       Private     Killed in battle
  7.   Dyson Dyer         Private     Returned to civilization
  8.   Stephen Draper     Private     Killed in battle
  9.   Daniel Daugherty   Private     Returned to civilization
  10.  Micajah Denison    Private     Badly wounded in battle; tortured to
                                        death the ensuing night
  11.  Nathan Edson       Private     Returned to civilization
  12.  John Fury          Private     Badly wounded in battle; tortured to
                                        death the ensuing night
  13.  Paul Grummo        Private     Returned to civilization
  14.  Richard Garner     Private     Tortured to death the night after the
                                        massacre
  15.  Wm. N. Hunt        Private     Frozen to death in captivity
  16.  Nathan A. Hurtt    Private     Killed in battle
  17.  Rhodias Jones      Private     Killed in battle
  18.  David Kennison     Private     Returned to civilization; died at
                                        Chicago in 1852
  19.  Samuel Kilpatrick  Private     Killed in battle
  20.  John Kelso         Private     Killed in battle
  21.  Jacob Landon       Private     Killed in battle
  22.  James Latta        Private     Tortured to death the night after the
                                        massacre
  23.  Michael Lynch      Private     Badly wounded; killed by the Indians
                                        en route to the Illinois River
  24.  Hugh Logan         Private     Tomahawked in captivity because unable to
                                        walk from fatigue
  25.  Frederick Locker   Private     Killed in battle
  26.  August Mortt       Private     Tomahawked in captivity
  27.  Peter Miller       Private     Killed in battle
  28.  Duncan McCarty     Private     Returned to civilization
  29.  Wm. Moffett        Private     Killed in battle
  30.  Elias Mills        Private     Returned to civilization
  31.  John Needs         Private     Died in captivity
  32.  Joseph Noles       Private     Returned to civilization
  33.  Thos. Poindexter   Private     Tortured to death the night after the
                                        massacre
  34.  Wm. Prickett       Private     Killed in battle
  35.  Frederick Peterson Private     Killed in battle
  36.  David Sherror      Private     Killed in battle
  37.  John Suttenfield   Private     Badly wounded; killed by the Indians
                                        while en route to the Illinois River
  38.  John Smith         Private     Returned to civilization
  39.  James Starr        Private     Killed in battle
  40.  John Simmons       Private     Killed in battle
  41.  James Van Horn     Private     Returned to civilization




BIBLIOGRAPHY




BIBLIOGRAPHY


  Adams, Henry. _History of the United States of America. 1801-1817_
      (New York, 1903-4). 9 vols.

    The standard general authority for the period it covers. Vol.
  VI, 1811-13, contains an account of the contest with Tecumseh, the
  opening of the War of 1812, and of Hull's campaign and surrender.

  Alvord, Clarence W. "The Conquest of St. Joseph, Michigan, by the
      Spaniards in 1781," _Missouri Historical Review_, 11, 195-210.

    A critical study, presenting a new interpretation of the
  expedition. Condemns sharply the prior study of the same expedition
  by Mr. E. G. Mason, in his _Chapters from Illinois History_.

  American Fur Company invoices (MS).

    These papers, in the possession of the Detroit Public Library,
  are useful for the light they shed upon the operations of the
  American Fur Company.

  _American State Papers._ Documents, legislative and executive,
      of the Congress of the United States, from the first session
      of the first to the third session of the thirteenth Congress
      inclusive.

    The two volumes devoted to Indian affairs are the ones of
  principal importance to this work. They contain a large mass of
  material pertaining to the relations between the Indians and the
  United States during the early period of our national existence.

  Andreas, A. T. _History of Chicago._ From the earliest period to
      the present time (Chicago, 1884). 3 vols.

    One of the best of the type of commercial histories compiled for
  popular consumption. Volume I treats of the period covered by this
  work.

  [Andrews, George H.] _Biographical Sketch of James Watson Webb_
      (New York, n.d.). Pamphlet.

    Reprinted from the _Morning Courier and Enquirer_, September 16.
  1858. A frankly laudatory sketch by an intimate friend and business
  associate of the subject.


  Babcock, Kendric Charles. "The Rise of American Nationality,
      1811-1819" (New York, 1906).

    Constitutes Vol. XIII of _The American Nation: a History_ (Albert
  Bushnell Hart, editor).

  Banta, D. D. _History of Johnson County, Indiana._ From the
      earliest time to the present, with biographical sketches,
      notes, etc., together with a short history of the Northwest,
      the Indiana Territory, and the state of Indiana (Chicago, 1888).

  Barry, Rev. Wm. Transcript of names in John Kinzie's account books
      kept at Chicago from 1804 to 1822 (MS).

    The original account books, four in number, were burned in the
  destruction of the library of the Chicago Historical Society in
  the Chicago Fire of 1871. Before the outbreak of the Civil War
  James Grant Wilson conceived the project of writing a history of
  early Chicago and commissioned Rev. William Barry, founder and
  first secretary of the Chicago Historical Society, to make for his
  use a complete transcript of the names in Kinzie's account books.
  Wilson's project never materialized, owing to the disarrangement
  of his plans and occupation caused by the outbreak of the war.
  The transcript came into the possession of the Chicago Historical
  Society in 1902. It consists of about fifty closely written pages
  containing about two thousand names, with brief entries frequently
  concerning the commercial transaction in question. It was jealously
  guarded by Wilson, and since by the Historical Society, and has
  never been accessible to students hitherto. It is a unique and
  valuable source of information for the period with which it deals.

  Beaubien family genealogy (MS).

    Compiled by Clarence M. Burton of Detroit. I have used the
  typewritten copy presented by him to the Chicago Historical Society.

  Beggs, Rev. S. R. _Pages from the Early History of the West and
      Northwest._

  Embracing reminiscences and incidents of settlement and growth,
      and sketches of the material and religious progress, of the
      states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, with especial
      reference to the history of Methodism (Cincinnati, 1868).

    Beggs was a pioneer Methodist preacher of northern Illinois
  in the early thirties. The book contains a vivid account by a
  participant of the scenes of excitement at Chicago and in northern
  Illinois in 1832 in connection with the Black Hawk War.

  [Benton Thomas H.] _Thirty Years' View; or, a History of the
      Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820
      to 1850...._ By a senator of thirty years (New York, 1854). 2
      vols.

    Benton led the fight in the Senate on the government factory
  system. The book contains a brief partisan account of his
  activities in this connection.

  _Black Hawk._ Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-hia-kiak or Black Hawk ...
      with an account of the course and general history of the late
      war ... (Boston, 1834).

    The work, edited by J. B. Patterson, purports to have been
  dictated by Black Hawk to Antoine Le Clare, a half-breed
  interpreter. Its trustworthiness has been called in question, but
  for the purposes for which it has been cited in this work, at
  least, it seems worthy of credence.

  Blanchard, Rufus. _Discovery and Conquests of the Northwest with
      the History of Chicago_ (Wheaton, Ill., 1881).

    A later edition of this work was brought out at Chicago in 1898
  in two volumes. It is carelessly and uncritically written, but
  contains some information obtained by the author in interviews with
  pioneers which is not to be had elsewhere.

  Brice, Wallace A. _History of Fort Wayne from the Earliest Known
      Accounts of this Point to the Present Period ...._ (Fort Wayne,
      Indiana, 1868).


  Carter, Clarence Edwin. _Great Britain and the Illinois Country,
      1762-1774_ (Washington, 1910).

    One of the prize essays of the American Historical Association.

  Caton, John Dean. _Miscellanies_ (Boston, 1880).

    Contains a description by a sympathetic and highly intelligent
  observer of the Pottawatomies' farewell to Chicago in 1835.

  Charlevoix, P. de. _Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle
      France, avec le journal historique d'un voyage fait par ordre
      du roi dans l'Amérique Septentrionale_ (Paris, 1744). 6 vols.

    One of the best of the seventeenth-century accounts of New
  France. The first four volumes comprise the Histoire ... de la
  Nouvelle France: the last two constitute the journal and bear
  the separate title Journal d'un voyage fait par ordre du Roi
  dans l'Amérique Septentrionale; addresse à Madame la Duchesse de
  Lesdiguières. The Histoire has been translated into English by John
  G. Shea (q.v.) and there are two English editions of the Journal.

  Charlevoix, Father. _Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières; Giving
      an Account of a Voyage to Canada and Travels through That Vast
      Country, and Louisiana, to the Gulf of Mexico._ Undertaken by
      order of the present king of France (London, 1763).

  Chicago Historical Society. Collections (Chicago, 1882-1910), Vols.
      I-IX.

    Unlike the usual series of collections of historical societies,
  the contents of each of these volumes pertain in most cases to a
  single subject. Those which have been of use in the preparation of
  this work will be cited under their separate titles.

  Chittenden, Hiram Martin. _The American Fur Trade of the Far West._
      A history of the pioneer trading posts and early fur companies
      of the Missouri Valley and the Rocky Mountains and of the
      overland commerce with Santa Fe (New York, 1902). 3 vols.

    The standard authority for the subject treated; contains a
  chapter on the abolition of the government factory system.

  Cooley, Thomas McIntyre. _Michigan, a History of Governments_
      (Boston, 1895).

  Craig, Oscar J. "Ouiatanon," in _Indiana Historical Society
      Publications_, Vol. II, No. 8.


  Davidson, Alexander, and Bernard Stuvé. A Complete History of
      Illinois, from 1673 to 1884 (Springfield, Ill., 1884).

  Dawson, Moses. _A Historical Narrative of the Civil and Military
      Services of Major-general William H. Harrison, and a
      Vindication of His Character and Conduct as a Statesman, a
      Citizen, and a Soldier._ With a detail of his negotiations
      and wars with the Indians until the final overthrow of the
      celebrated chief Tecumseh, and his brother the Prophet
      (Cincinnati, 1824).

    Although frankly partisan this is a source of prime importance
  for the relations between the Indians and the whites in the
  Northwest during Harrison's long régime as governor of Indiana
  Territory.

  Dilg, Carl. Papers (MS).

    Dilg was a Chicago archaeologist and antiquarian, full of
  industry and zeal, but with rather erratic methods of work and
  violently partisan in his advocacy of his theories. After his
  death his papers were purchased by the Chicago Historical Society.
  From the point of view of this work they contain a small amount of
  useful information, difficult to extract from the mass of chaff in
  which it is embedded.

  Dillon, John B. _A History of Indiana from Its Earliest Exploration
      by Europeans to the Close of the Territorial Government in 1816
      ... and a General View of the Progress of Public A fairs in
      Indiana from 1816 to 1856_ (Indianapolis, 1859).

    An excellent state history by a careful and scholarly worker,
  whose efforts to preserve the early history of his state were but
  little appreciated by the generation to which he belonged.

  Drake, Benjamin. _Life of Tecumseh, and His Brother the Prophet;
      with a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians_ (Cincinnati,
      1856).

    An unpretentious but creditable narrative, based to a
  considerable extent on source material. There were at least two
  earlier editions of the work than the one which I have used.

  Draper, Lyman C. Collection (MS).

    Lyman C. Draper was an indefatigable collector during a long
  lifetime of materials pertaining to western history. Upon his death
  his papers became the property of the Wisconsin State Historical
  Society, of which he had long been the secretary. The documents of
  chief importance in the preparation of the present work are the
  Heald Papers. For a fuller account of the Collection see Thwaites,
  _How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, and Other Essays in
  Western History_ (Chicago, 1903), 335 ff.

  Drennan, Daniel O. Papers (MS).

    Drennan was employed by the Chicago Historical Society to search
  in the archives of the War Department at Washington for documents
  pertaining to Chicago and Fort Dearborn. The papers consist of
  attested copies of several hundred documents, chiefly military
  orders and communications, covering the years from 1803 to 1836.

  Dunn, J. P., Jr. _Indiana, a Redemption from Slavery_ (Boston,
      1893).

  Edwards, Ninian W. Papers (MS).

    Edwards was the first and only territorial governor of Illinois,
  and later served as governor of the state. His papers, which
  comprise' four bound volumes of letters and other manuscripts, were
  presented to the Chicago Historical Society by his son, Ninian Wirt
  Edwards. They constitute an indispensable source of information
  for the history of Illinois in the period covered by them. They
  have been of only minor assistance in the preparation of this work,
  however, owing to the fact that until practically the close of the
  period of which it treats Chicago was separated from the settled
  portion of southern Illinois by a broad expanse of wilderness, and
  both politically and commercially was much more closely affiliated
  with Michigan Territory and Detroit. Many of the manuscripts in the
  collection have been published in Edwards, _History of Illinois ...
  and Life and Times of Ninian Edwards_, and Washburne (editor), _The
  Edwards Papers_.

  Edwards, Ninian W. _History of Illinois from 1778 to 1833; and Life
      and Times of Ninian Edwards_ (Springfield, Ill., 1870).


  Farrand, Livingston. _Basis of American History 1500-1900_ (New
      York, 1904).

    This constitutes volume II of _The American Nation: a History_
  (Albert Bushnell Hart, editor).

  Fergus Historical Series.

    This consists of thirty-five pamphlets, numbered consecutively,
  pertaining to the early history of Chicago and Illinois. They were
  issued by the Fergus Printing Company of Chicago. Those numbers to
  which reference has been made in the present work are cited under
  their separate titles.

  Flagler, Major D. W. _A History of the Rock Island Arsenal from
      Its Establishment in 1863 to December, 1876; and of the Island
      of Rock Island, the Site of the Arsenal, from 1804 to 1863_
      (Washington, 1877).

    The early pages of this work give a brief account of the island
  of Rock Island in the period beginning with 1804.

  Franklin, Benjamin. _The Complete Works of. Including His Private
      as Well as His Official Correspondence ..._ John Bigelow,
      editor (New York, 1887-89). 10 vols.

  French, B. F. _Historical Collections of Louisiana, Embracing Many
      Rare and Valuable Documents Relating to the Natural, Civil, and
      Political History of That State_ (New York, 1846-53). 5 vols.

    Contains translations of many of the records of the early French
  explorers in the Mississippi Valley.


  Gale, Edwin O. _Reminiscences of Early Chicago and Vicinity_
      (Chicago, 1902).

    The recollections in old age of one who spent practically his
  entire life at Chicago. The book is written in familiar and
  entertaining style, but is quite uncritical and abounds in the
  faults common to this species of historical work.

  Gordon, Eleanor Lytle Kinzie. _John Kinzie, the "Father of
      Chicago"; a Sketch_ (1912). Pamphlet.

    A fanciful and highly laudatory sketch by the granddaughter of
  Kinzie, drawn chiefly from her mother's book, _Wau Bun_. Contains
  the latest restatement by a member of the family of the Kinzie
  tradition.

  Gordon, Nelly Kinzie (editor). _The Fort Dearborn Massacre, Written
      in 1814 by Lieutenant Linai T. Helm, One of the Survivors._
      With letters and narratives of contemporary interest (Chicago,
      [1912]).

    This volume contains the documents printed in Appendices VI and
  VII of the present work, chaps, xviii, xix, and xxii of Kinzie's
  _Wau Bun_, and a reprint of the author's sketch of her grandfather,
  John Kinzie, noted in the reference immediately above. The text of
  Helm's massacre narrative, the document of chief importance in the
  collection, has been freely emended without giving any notice to
  the reader of the fact. In similar fashion the composition of the
  chapters from _Wau Bun_ has been liberally emended, and in at least
  one instance an important interpolation has been made, without
  warning to the reader.

  Grover, Frank R. "Some Indian Landmarks of the North Shore"
      (Chicago, n.d.). Pamphlet.

An address read before the Chicago Historical Society, February 21,
1905.

  ----. "Father Francois Pinet S.J., and his Mission of the Guardian
      Angel of Chicago (L'Ange Gardien) A.D. 1696-1699" (Chicago,
      1907).

A paper read before a joint meeting of the Chicago and Evanston
Historical Societies, November 27, 1906. The author is uncritical and
his works should be used with caution. In the present work he contends
that "there is not the slightest doubt" that Pinet's Mission stood on
the site of the present Skokie March within the limits of the village
of Gross Point.


  [Hay, Henry]. Journal from Detroit to the Miami River (MS).

This manuscript in the Detroit Public Library is the journal of a
Detroit trader who spent the winter of 1789-90 at the French settlement
near the Rapids of the Maumee. It gives an interesting and graphic
picture of the life of this pro-British settlement during the winter.
The chief importance of the journal to the present work consists in
the information it gives about John Kinzie, whose convivial companion
throughout the winter the journalist became. The journal does not
contain the author's name; I have accepted tentatively the ascription
of it by Mr. Clarence M. Burton to Henry Hay.

  Head, Wm. R. Papers (MS).

    Head was a Chicago antiquarian who for many years industriously
  collected data pertaining to the early history of Chicago and
  Illinois. Most of his papers were destroyed, following his death in
  1910. A few of them are in the possession of the Chicago Historical
  Society, however, and a somewhat larger number were until recently
  retained by his widow. For an estimate of their character, and
  their value to the present work see Appendix II.

  Heald, Nathan. Papers (MS).

    These papers, of prime importance for the reconstruction of
  the story of the Fort Dearborn massacre, and the fortunes of the
  Healds, are now widely scattered. Much the more important of
  those still in existence are in the Draper Collection, for which
  they were procured, apparently, at the time of Lyman C. Draper's
  interview with Darius Heald in 1868. Those which remained in the
  possession of the family were exposed to the vicissitudes of
  chance and the weather until a few years since, when an awakening
  realization of their historical importance led to a division of
  such as still remained among the various representatives of the
  family, the grandchildren of Nathan Heald, by whom they are now
  carefully preserved. Such as could be assembled were collected for
  the use of the writer in preparing the present work by Mr. Wright
  Johnson of Rutherford. New Jersey, a son-in-law of Darius Heald.
  There are a few Heald papers, also, among the Kingsbury Papers in
  the Chicago Historical Society library.

  Hebberd, S. S. _History of Wisconsin under the Dominion of France_
      (Madison, 1890).

    Important chiefly for its treatment of the long wars of the
  Fox Indians with the French. The author takes issue with the
  conclusions of Park man in certain important respects.

  Heitman, Francis B. _Historical Register and Dictionary of the
      United States Army, from Its Organization, September 29, 1789,
      to March 2, 1903_ (Washington, 1903). 2 vols.

  Hennepin, Father Louis. _Nouvelle découverte d'un tres grand
      pays situé dans l'Amérique entre le Noveau Mexique et le Mer
      Glaciate ..._ (Utrecht, 1697-98). 2 vols.

    Vol. II bears the title "Noveau voyage d'un pais plus grand que
  L'Europe ..."

  ----. _A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America._ Reprinted
      from the second London Edition of 1698 ... by Reuben Gold
      Thwaites (Chicago, 1903). 2 vols.

  Heward, Hugh. Journal (MS).

    This is the journal of a trader who made a trip from Michigan by
  way of the Chicago Portage to lower Illinois in 1790. The original
  manuscript is owned by Mr. Clarence M. Burton of Detroit. There is
  a verbatim copy of it in the Chicago Historical Society library.

  [Hoffman, Charles Fenno]. _A Winter in the West._ By a New Yorker
      (New York, 1835). 2d ed., 2 vols.

    Contains a graphic description of the village of Chicago at the
  time of the author's visit in the winter of 1834.

  Hubbard, Gurdon Saltonstall. Autobiographical Sketch (MS).

    Hubbard first visited Chicago as an employee of the American Fur
  Company in 1818. With the development of the modern city in the
  early thirties he became, and remained for half a century, one of
  its prominent citizens. This manuscript deals with his early career
  in the fur trade. It forms the basis of the published Life of
  Hubbard.

  ----. _Incidents and Events in the Life of; Collected from Personal
      Narratives and Other Sources and Arranged by His Nephew, Henry
      E. Hamilton_ ([Chicago,] 1888).

    This work, while written in the first person and largely drawn
  from the Hubbard manuscript cited above, is not strictly an
  autobiography, a fact sufficiently indicated by the title. Taken
  as a whole it constitutes a valuable and graphic picture of the
  methods of conducting the fur trade in the halcyon days of the
  American Fur Company, and of the manner of life incident thereto.
  It is of chief value to the present work for its account of the
  passing of the Chicago Portage. A new edition of the work was
  issued in Chicago in 1911 with the title _The Autobiography of
  Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard: Pa-pa-ma-ta-be, "The Swift Walker."_

  Hulbert, Archer Butler. _Portage Paths: the Keys of the Continent_
      (Cleveland, 1903).

    This work constitutes Vol. VII of the series "Historic Highways
  of America."

  Hull, William. _Memoirs of the Campaign of the Northwestern Army of
      the United States, A.D. 1812._ In a series of letters addressed
      to the citizens of the United States. With an appendix
      containing a brief sketch of the Revolutionary services of the
      author (Boston, 1824).

    This work contains Hull's own exculpation to his countrymen for
  his course in the campaign of 1812.

  Hurlbut, Henry H. _Chicago Antiquities._ Comprising original items
      and relations, letters, extracts, and notes pertaining to early
      Chicago (Chicago, 1881).

    A useful collection of source material, arranged in discursive
  fashion, and of very uneven value.

  ----. _Father Marquette at Mackinaw and Chicago_.

  Hutchins, Thomas. _A Topographical Description of Virginia,
      Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina._ Reprinted from the
      original edition of 1778; edited by Frederick Charles Hicks
      (Cleveland, 1904).

  Hyde, James Nevins. _Early Medical Chicago._ An historical sketch
      of the first practitioners of medicine, with the present
      faculties, and graduates since their organization, of the
      medical colleges of Chicago (Chicago, 1879). Pamphlet.

    This is No. 11 in the Fergus historical series. Of value for
  its account of the cholera outbreak and the methods of treatment
  employed at Chicago in 1832. Contains the only defense I have seen
  of Surgeon Van Voorhis against the charge of cowardice made in
  Kinzie's _Wau Bun_.

  Illinois State Historical Library Collections (Springfield,
      1903-11).

  Illinois State Historical Society. _Transactions_ (Springfield,
      1901-1911). Nos. 1-15.

  Indian Office. Letter books and other documents (MS).

These comprise a great mass of manuscripts and records pertaining to
the relations between the United States and the various Indian tribes
preserved in the Pension Building at Washington. For the most part they
have been used but little, if at all, by historical workers. Those
which have proved of chief assistance in the preparation of the present
work are the letter books and other records of the Department of Indian
Trade. Among these are the daybook kept by Matthew Irwin as factor at
Chicago, his petty ledger, the Chicago order book, and other volumes
relating to the operations of the Chicago factory and of the government
trading-house system in general.

  Indiana Historical Society. _Publications_ (Indianapolis,
      1895-1905), Vols. I-III.


  James, James Alton. "Indian Diplomacy and Opening of the Revolution
      in the West," in _Wisconsin State Historical Society,
      Proceedings_, 1909, 125 ff.

  ----. "Some Problems of the Northwest in 1779," in Essays in
      _American History, Dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner_, Guy
      Stanton Ford, editor (New York, 1910).

  ----. "The Significance of the Attack on St. Louis, 1780," in
      _Mississippi Valley Historical Association Proceedings_ for
      1908-9, 199 ff.

  ----. "George Rogers Clark and Detroit 1780-1781," in Mississippi
      Valley Historical Association Proceedings for 1910-11, 291 ff.

  _Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents_; Travels and Explorations
      of the Jesuit missionaries in New France 1610-1791, Reuben Gold
      Thwaites, editor (Cleveland, 1896-1901). 73 vols.

    Valuable for the movements of the early missionary explorers and
  their work among the Indians of the Northwest in the early French
  period.

  Johnston, William. "Notes of a Tour from Fort Wayne to Chicago,
      1809." MS in Chicago Historical Society library.

    A detailed description of the route between Fort Wayne and
  Chicago, together with brief observations on Fort Dearborn and the
  Chicago Portage. The MS is a copy, approximately contemporary, of
  the original.

  _Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789._ Edited from the
      original records in the Library of Congress by Worthington
      Chauncey Ford, Chief, Division of Manuscripts (Washington,
      1904-10). 18 vols.

  Keating, William H. _Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of
      St. Peter's River, Lake Winnipeek, Lake of the Woods, etc,
      etc._ Performed in the year 1823, by order of the Hon. John
      C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, under the command of Stephen H.
      Long, Major, U.S. T.E. (Philadelphia, 1824). 2 vols.

    The explorers passed through Chicago and the historian of the
  expedition has left an unusually doleful description of the place
  and of its prospects.

  Kingsbury, Jacob. Papers (MS).

    Kingsbury was an officer in the army in command of Detroit and
  other northwestern posts at various times from 1804 to 1812,
  and the officer first selected by the government to lead the
  northwestern army in the campaign of 1812. His papers, in the
  possession of the Chicago Historical Society, consist of letter
  books, original letters, and other documents, and shed much light
  upon conditions in the Northwest, particularly in the army, in this
  period. The Library of Congress possesses three bound volumes of
  Kingsbury's correspondence, but their contents are of comparatively
  slight importance for the present work.

  Kinzie, John. Genealogy of the Descendants of (MS).

    This is a typewritten manuscript in the Chicago Historical
  Society library, compiled by Mrs. Gordon, the granddaughter of
  Kinzie. It deals only with the descendants of the trader's second,
  or legitimate, family.

  ----. Family Genealogy (MS).

    This is a portion of a lengthy typewritten genealogical record
  of the Kinzie, Lytle, and other families of early Detroit owned by
  Clarence M. Burton of Detroit. It was compiled by an advocate of
  the claims to legitimacy of the offspring of Kinzie's first family,
  and later submitted to the criticism of Mrs. Gordon, who believes
  that her grandfather's first family was an illegitimate one.

  [Kinzie, Mrs. John H.] _Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago,
      August 15, 1812, and of Some Preceding Events_ (Chicago, 1844).
      Pamphlet.

    Aside from some scattered source material, this is the first
  printed account of the massacre, and it constitutes the basis
  of almost all the later accounts that have been written to the
  present time. The author was a daughter-in-law of John Kinzie,
  and her information was obtained chiefly from his wife and his
  stepdaughter, the wife of Lieutenant Helm. The narrative is
  fanciful and unreliable, yet because of the use made of it by later
  writers a knowledge of it is now necessary to any understanding of
  the literature pertaining to the Fort Dearborn massacre.

  ----. _Wau Bun, the "Early Day" of the Northwest._ New edition,
      with an introduction by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Chicago, the
      Caxton Club, 1901).

    The first edition of this work appeared in 1856. The author
  incorporated in it her earlier narrative of the Fort Dearborn
  massacre. For the rest the work deals with her experience in
  the West from 1830 to 1834, and with the early history of her
  husband's family. Although from some points of view the work
  possesses historical value, from the viewpoint of the present work
  the judgment of a recent correspondent of the writer that it "is
  interesting as fiction very slightly founded on fact, but worthless
  as a work of history" is scarcely too severe.

  Kirkland, Joseph. "The Chicago Massacre in 1812," in _Magazine of
      American History_, XXVIII, 111 ff.

    Kirkland interviewed Darius Heald in 1892, and this is his report
  of the latter's narrative of the Chicago massacre as told by his
  mother, Mrs. Rebekah Heald.

  ----. _The Chicago Massacre of 1812._ A historical and biographical
      narrative of Fort Dearborn (now Chicago). How the fort and city
      were begun, and who were the beginners (Chicago, 1893).

    This little work was inspired by the author's rediscovery of the
  Darius Heald-Rebekah Heald narrative of the massacre. In it he
  strives to reconcile this narrative with that of Mrs. Kinzie in
  _Wau Bun_.


  Lahontan, Baron de. _New Voyages to North America_, Reuben Gold
      Thwaites, editor (Chicago, 1905). 2 vols.

  Latrobe, Charles Joseph. _The Rambler in North America, 1832-1833_
      (London, 1835). 2 vols.

    One of the best of the series of descriptions by foreigners of
  their travels in the United States of which the first half of the
  nineteenth century was so prolific. Contains a graphic description
  of the scenes attending the negotiation of the Chicago Treaty of
  1833, of which the author was an eye-witness.

  Legler, Henry E. "Chevalier Henry de Tonty," in Parkman Club
      Publications, No. 3. (Milwaukee, 1896).

    A sympathetic and scholarly summary of Tonty's career in America.


  McAfee, Robert B. _History of the Late War in the Western Country._
      Comprising a full account of all the transactions in that
      quarter, from the commencement of hostilities at Tippecanoe, to
      the termination of the contest at New Orleans on the return of
      peace (Lexington, Ky., 1816).

    One of the best of the contemporary narratives of the War of
  1812. Contains an account of the Fort Dearborn massacre drawn from
  Sergeant Griffith, a participant.

  McCoy, Isaac. _History of Baptist Indian Missions._ Embracing
      remarks on the former and present condition of the aboriginal
      Indian tribes; their settlement within the Indian Territory,
      and their future prospects (Washington, 1840).

    An account of the courageous and self-sacrificing labors of the
  founder of Carey's Mission among the St. Joseph Pottawatomies.
  Sheds some light on the Chicago Treaty of 1821.

  McCulloch, David. _Early Days of Peoria and Chicago._ An address
      read before the Chicago Historical Society at a quarterly
      meeting held January 19, 1904 ([Chicago], n.d.). Pamphlet.

  ----. "Old Peoria," in _Illinois State Historical Society
      Transactions_, 1901.

  McLaughlin, Andrew C. "The Western Posts and the British Debts,"
      in _American Historical Association, Annual Report for 1894_,
      413-44 (Washington, 1895).

    The standard study of this subject.

  McMaster, John Bach. _A History of the People of the United States
      from the Revolution to the Civil War_ (New York, 1891-1906).
      Vols. I-VI.

  Map: Bellin, M. _Carte de l'Amérique Septentrionale depuis le 28
      degré de latitude jusqu'au 72._ Par M. Bellin, Ingénieur de la
      marine et du depost des plans, ... (1755).

    Shows an abandoned French post at Chicago.

  Map: Homann, Johannes Baptista. _Totius Americae Septentrionalis
      et Meridionalis, novissima representatio quam ex singulis
      recentium geographorum tabulis collecta luci publicae
      accommodavit_ (Nuremberg, [1700?]).

    Shows La Salle's Fort Miami at Chicago.

  Map: Moll, Herman. _Atlas Minor: or a New and Curious Set of
      Sixty-two Maps, in Which Are Shown All the Empires, Kingdoms,
      Countries, States in All the Known Parts of the Earth ..._
      (London, n.d.).

  Map: Popple, Henry. _A Map of the British Empire in America with
      the French and Spanish Settlements Adjacent Thereto_ (London,
      1733).

  Map: Rocque, John. _A General Map of North America: in Which Is
      Expressed the Several New Roads, Forts, Engagements, &c. Taken
      from Actual Surveys and Observations Made in the Army Employed
      There, from the Year 1754 to 1761;_ drawn by the late John
      Rocque, topographer to his Majesty.

  Margry, Pierre. _Découvertes et établissements des Français
      dans l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique Septentrionale
      (1614-1754);_ mémoires et documents orignaux (Paris,
      1876-1886). 6 vols.

    The early volumes contain a mass of source material pertaining to
  the work of La Salle in North America.

  Martin. _Report of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court
      of the State of Louisiana_, comprising Louisiana Term Reports
      IV and V (New Orleans, 1852).

    Contains the decision of the court in the case of _Kinzie and
  Forsyth_ vs. _Jeffrey Nash_.

  Mason, Edward G. _Chapters from Illinois History_ (Chicago, 1901).

    Contains several charmingly written chapters on Illinois in the
  early French period, based to a large extent on a study of the
  original sources; a study of the Spanish expedition against St.
  Joseph in 1781, which has until recently been regarded as the
  standard treatment of the subject; and the address of Mason on the
  occasion of the unveiling of the Fort Dearborn massacre monument.
  The historical value of the latter study is much inferior to that
  of the preceding ones.

  ----. "Early Visitors to Chicago," in _New England Magazine_
      (Boston), new ser., VI, 188 ff.

  Matson, N. _French and Indians of Illinois River_. 2d ed.
      (Princeton, Ill., 1874).

  ----. _Memories of Shaubena with Incidents Relating to Indian Wars
      and the Early Settlement of the West_ (Chicago, 1890).

  ----. _Pioneers of Illinois_. Containing a series of sketches
      relating to events that occurred previous to 1813, ... drawn
      from history, tradition, and personal reminiscences (Chicago,
      1882).

    The author of these three works was an Illinois pioneer possessed
  of more zeal for preserving the history of early Illinois than
  he was of critical insight. Despite the advantage he enjoyed of
  personal acquaintance and contact with many of the characters
  treated in his works, but little confidence can be had in the
  accuracy of his statements, while it is often obvious that they
  have no tangible basis in fact.

  Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society. _Collections and
      Researches_ (Lansing, 1887-1910). Vols. I-XXXVIII.

    This series contains a vast number of documents, indifferently
  edited for the most part, bearing on the history of the Northwest.

  _Mississippi Valley Historical Association Proceeding_s (Cedar
      Rapids, 1909-12). Vols. I-IV.

    The volumes in this new series are ably edited and their
  contents, relating to the history of the Mississippi Valley region,
  are in general of a high order of excellence.

  _Missouri Historical Review_ (Columbia, 1907-12). Vols. I-VI.

    Moses, John. _Illinois, Historical and Statistical._ Comprising
  the essential facts of its planting and growth as a province,
  county, territory, and state ... (Chicago, 1889). 2 vols.


  Neville, Ella Hoes, Sarah Greene Martin, and Deborah Beaumont
      Martin. _Historic Green Bay, 1634-1840_ (Green Bay, Wis., 1893).

  _Niles' Register ..._ (Baltimore), 1811-49. 76 vols.


  O'Callaghan, E. B. (editor). _Documents Relative to the Colonial
      History of the State of New York_ (Albany. 1853-58). 10 vols.

  Parkman, Francis. _A Half-Century of Conflict_ (Boston, 1897). 2
      vols.

    This covers the first half of the eighteenth century, and
  includes an extensive account of the Fox wars. The series to
  which the work belongs has long ranked as a classic in American
  historical literature, yet the account of the Fox wars is now
  obsolete in many respects, and requires rewriting in the light of
  the mass of documents brought to light since Parkman's work was
  done.

  ----. _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West_ (Boston,
      1897). 2 vols.

    This work still remains the standard authority on the subject
  treated.

  ----. _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (Boston, 1897).

    Some of the conclusions expressed in this work have been
  challenged by Hebberd (Wisconsin under the Dominion of France), and
  other writers.

  Peyster, Arent Schuyler de. _Miscellanies by an Officer_ (Dumfries,
      1813).

    A reprint of the original edition of this work has been issued
  under the editorship of J. Watts de Peyster (New York, 1888).

  Polk, James K. _The Diary of James K. Polk during His Presidency,
      1845 to 1849_ ... Edited and Annotated by Milo Milton Quaife
      ... (Chicago, 1910). 4 vols.

    This constitutes Vols. VI to IX inclusive of the Chicago
  Historical Society Collections.

  Porter, Rev. Jeremiah. _The Earliest Religious History of Chicago_.
      An address before the Chicago Historical Society in 1859
      (Chicago, 1881). Pamphlet.

    This work is No. 14 in the Fergus Historical Series.

  Porter, Mary H. _Eliza Chappell Porter_. A Memoir (Chicago, 1892).


  Quaife, Milo Milton. "Some Notes on the Fort Dearborn Massacre,"
      in _Mississippi Valley Historical Association Proceedings_ for
      1910-11, 112 ff.

    A critical estimate of the printed accounts of the Fort Dearborn
  massacre, more particularly of Mrs. Kinzie's _Wau Bun_.


  Reynolds, John. _The Pioneer History of Illinois_. Containing the
      discovery in 1673, and the history of the country to the year
      1818, when the state government was organized. 2d ed., with
      portraits, notes, and a complete index (Chicago, 1887).

  Roosevelt, Theodore. _The Winning of the West_ (New York, 1889-96).
      4 vols.

  Vols. Ill and IV of this work contain a good account of the Indian
      troubles in the Northwest and the campaigns of Harmar, St.
      Clair, and Wayne in the opening years of the new national
      government.

  Schoolcraft, Henry R. _Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit
      Northwest through the Great Chain of American Lakes to the
      Sources of the Mississippi River in the Year 1820_ (Albany,
      1821).

    This volume has a second title-page with a somewhat longer title.
  The author was an observer of more than usual intelligence and zeal
  who spent a great many years in the Northwest as Indian agent at
  Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac. The expedition described in this
  volume was sent out by the government under the leadership of Lewis
  Cass. The Journal contains a description of Chicago in 1820 and an
  account of the massacre based in part on information obtained from
  John Kinzie.

  ----. _Summary Narrative of an Exploratory Expedition to the
      Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820: Resumed and Completed
      by the Discovery of Its Origin in Itasca Lake, in 1832 ..._
      (Philadelphia, 1855).

  ----. _Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley:
      Comprising Observations on Its Mineral Geography, Internal
      Resources, and Aboriginal Population_ (New York, 1825).

  The "travels" which furnished the material for this work comprised
      a circuit by Schoolcraft from Detroit by way of the Maumee and
      Wabash rivers to the Ohio, across southern Illinois, up the
      valley of the Illinois River to Chicago, and thence around
      the lakes to Detroit. Most of the journey was made in a large
      canoe, the remainder on horseback. The occasion for making it
      was the Chicago Treaty of 1821 to which Schoolcraft came with
      Lewis Cass in the capacity of secretary. The work contains,
      therefore, the most valuable account in existence of the
      negotiations attending that treaty.

  ----. _Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the
      Indian Tribes on the American Frontier, with Brief Notices of
      Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842_
      (Philadelphia, 1851).

  Shirreff, Patrick. _A Tour through North America; Together with
      a Comprehensive View of the Canadas and United States._ As
      adapted for agricultural emigration (Edinburgh, 1835).

    The author of this work was a shrewd farmer, and his observations
  upon the people among whom he came are characterized by a degree
  of sanity and fairness all too rare, unhappily, in the works of
  English travelers in the United States in this period. Shirreff
  came to Chicago in 1833 in the same stage that brought Latrobe. His
  observations on the place, and on the proceedings attending the
  Indian treaty which was in process of negotiation may profitably be
  compared with those of Latrobe.

  [Scott, Winfield]. _Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott, LL.D._
      Written by himself (New York, 1864). 2 vols.

    Valuable for the cholera epidemic of 1832, and for Scott's share
  in the Black Hawk War.

  Shea, John Gilmary. "Chicago from 1673 to 1725," in _Historical
      Magazine_ (New York, April, 1861).

    A brief summary, now of little importance.

  ----. (editor). _History and General Description of New France._ By
      the Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S. J. Translated, with notes
      by John Gilmary Shea (New York, 1866-1872).

    A reprint of this work has been issued (New York, 1900), edited
  by Noah F. Morrison.

  ----. _The Catholic Church in Colonial Days ... 1521-1763_ (New
      York, 1866).

  ----. _History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of
      the United States, 1529-1854_ (New York, 1857).

  ----. _Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, by Cavalier, St.
      Cosme, Le Seur, Gravier, and Guignas_ (Albany, 1861).

    Contains an English translation, abounding in numerous errors,
  of St. Cosme's letter describing the expedition of the party of
  Seminary priests to which he belonged to the lower Mississippi
  country in 1698-1699. Valuable for its account of Chicago and the
  Chicago Portage. The original manuscript is in the archives of
  Laval University at Montreal. There is an attested copy of the
  manuscript in the Chicago Historical Society library.

  Simmons, N. _Heroes and Heroines of the Fort Dearborn Massacre._ A
      Romantic and Tragic History of Corporal John Simmons and His
      Heroic Wife (Lawrence, Kansas, 1896).

    A slight work with many faults. It is, however, practically the
  only source of information concerning the captivity of Mrs. Simmons
  and her infant daughter.

  Smith, William Henry (editor). _The St. Clair Papers._ The life and
      public services of Arthur St. Clair ... with his correspondence
      and other papers (Cincinnati, 1881).

  Smith, W. L. G. _The Life and Times of Lewis Cass_ (New York, 1856).

  Smith, William R. _The History of Wisconsin._ In three parts,
      historical, documentary, descriptive (Madison, 1854).

  Smith, Dr. William. Letter of, to James May, dated Fort Dearborn,
      December 9, 1803.

    Smith was the first surgeon at Fort Dearborn. This letter is
  the earliest contemporary document from Fort Dearborn that I have
  knowledge of. Contains some information about the founding of the
  fort not to be found elsewhere. The letter is in the Detroit Public
  Library.

  Stevens, Frank E. _The Black Hawk War, Including a Review of Black
      Hawk's Life_ (Chicago, 1903).

    By far the most extensive and valuable account of the war. The
  author's sympathies are too strongly enlisted on the side of
  the whites, however, to entitle it to be ranked as an impartial
  history. The work is profusely illustrated.

  Steward, John F. _Lost Maramech and Earliest Chicago_ (Chicago,
      1903).

  Stiles, Henry Reed (editor). _Joutel's Journal of La Salle's
      Last Voyage 1684-1687 ..._ New edition with historical and
      biographical introduction, annotations, and index (Albany,
      1906).

    This is a reprint of the English edition of Joutel's Journal
  published in 1714. It is an incomplete and garbled translation of
  the original, which is printed in Margry, Vol. III.

  Stoddard, Major Amos. _Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of
      Louisiana_ (Philadelphia, 1812).

    The author was sent by the government of the United States to
  take possession of Louisiana in 1803, and he became the first
  territorial governor.

  Swearingen, James Strode. Papers in the Chicago Historical Society
      library (MS).

    These consist of three documents, copies, apparently, of the
  originals, which were loaned for this purpose by Lyman C. Draper.
  They comprise an interview with Swearingen by an agent of Draper
  in 1865; a letter of Swearingen's written at that time, concerning
  his share in bringing the troops from Detroit to Fort Dearborn in
  1803; and a detailed account of his subsequent career. For a fuller
  account of these papers see Quaife, "That First Wilderness March
  to Chicago," in _Chicago Record-Herald_, August II, 1912. Their
  existence has been unknown until recently, and no use has hitherto
  been made of them by students.


  Tanner, John. _A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
      Tanner ... during Thirty Years Residence among the Indians of
      the Interior of North America._ Prepared for the press by Edwin
      James, M.D. (New York, 1830).

    Tanner journeyed from Mackinac to St. Louis in 1820 by way of the
  Chicago Portage and Illinois River. The book contains a valuable
  account of the crossing of the portage in the dry season of the
  year.

  Teggart, Frederick J. "The Capture of Saint Joseph, Michigan,
      by the Spaniards in 1781," in _Missouri Historical Review_
      (Columbia, 1911), V, 214-28.

    This is the third and most recent critical study, that has
  been made of this subject. It is based in part on hitherto
  unused documents. The author dissents rather violently from the
  conclusions of Professor Alvord, and tends in the main to approve
  the earlier study of Edward G. Mason.

  Thwaites, Reuben Gold. _How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest,
      and Other Essays in Western History_ (Chicago, 1903).

    Among the "other essays" is an account of the Draper Collection
  in the possession of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

  _Treaties between the United States of America and the Several
      Indian Tribes from 1778 to 1837_ (Washington, 1837).

    The use of the various collections of Indian treaties is attended
  with some perplexity. Some of the treaties made can be found only
  in this one; some others, printed elsewhere, are without one or
  more of the schedules and special provisions which were ordinarily
  an accompaniment of Indian treaties.

  Turner, Frederick J. "The Character and Influence of the Fur
      Trade in Wisconsin," in _Wisconsin State Historical Society
      Proceedings for 1889_ (Madison, 1880), 52 ff.

    This was an address delivered on the occasion of the annual
  meeting of the Society. It was afterward expanded by the author
  into the work cited immediately below.

  ----. "The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in
      Wisconsin," in _Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical
      and Political Science_, IX, 543-615 (Baltimore, 1891).

  _U.S. Congress, Debates and Proceedings in. Annals of the Congress
      of the United States ..._ (Washington, 1834-56). 42 vols.

    This collection covers the period from 1789 to 1824; it was
  continued in the Register of Debates in Congress (1825-37). 14 vols.

  _United States of America vs. the Economy Light and Power Company_
      (Chicago, 1912). 3 vols.

    The evidence in this case, which involves the question of the
  physical character and the historical use of the Des Plaines
  River, constitutes one of the most exhaustive investigations ever
  made, probably, of a comparatively obscure historical question.
  The original testimony, of which the printed record is only an
  abstract, constitutes a vast storehouse of information and expert
  critical opinion concerning the Chicago area, given under oath and
  subject to cross-examination.

  U.S. Public Statutes at Large. Vol. VII (Boston, 1853) bears the
      title. _Treaties between the United States of America and the
      Indian Tribes_ (Richard Peters, Esq., ed.).


  Van Cleve, Charlotte Ouisconsin. _Three Score Years and Ten. Life
      Long Memoirs of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other Parts of
      the West_ (Minneapolis, 1888).

    This volume contains the reminiscences, charmingly written, of
  the author's life, first as daughter and later as wife of an army
  officer, at Fort Snelling, Fort Winnebago, and other posts. Some of
  the persons whose characters are sketched were stationed at Fort
  Dearborn, either before or after the author's acquaintance with
  them.

  Van Voorhis, Elias W. _Notes on the Ancestry of Major Wm. Roe Van
      Voorhis, of Fishkill, Duchess County, New York_ (privately
      printed, 1881).

  Varnum, Jacob. Journal (MS).

    Varnum was factor at Chicago from 1816 to 1822. This document
  is an account of his life to 1822, cast in the form of a journal.
  It was made-up in 1865 from papers and other data in the writer's
  possession. The copy in the Chicago Historical Society library,
  a typewritten manuscript, was furnished by John Marshall Varnum,
  author of The Varnums of Dracutt.

  Varnum, John Marshall. _The Varnums of Dracutt (in Massachusetts)_,
      (Boston, 1907).

  _Virginia State Papers._ Calendar of Virginia state papers and
      other manuscripts ... preserved in the capitol at Richmond
      (Richmond, 1875-85). Vols. I-V.

  Volney, C. F. _A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States
      of America._ With supplementary remarks upon Florida; on the
      French colonies on the Mississippi and Ohio, and in Canada;
      and on the aboriginal tribes of America. Translated, with
      occasional remarks, by C. B. Brown (Philadelphia, 1804).

    Contains an account of an extended interview, at Philadelphia in
  1798, with Little Turtle and Captain William Wells.

  Vose, George L. _A Sketch of the Life and Works of George W.
      Whistler, Civil Engineer_ (Boston, 1887).


  Walker, Charles I. _The Northwest during the Revolution_ (Madison,
      1871). Pamphlet.

    This was delivered as the annual address before the Wisconsin
  State Historical Society, January 31, 1871.

  Washburne, E. B. (editor). _The Edwards Papers._ Being a portion
      of the collection of the letters, papers, and manuscripts
      of Ninian Edwards, ... presented to the Chicago Historical
      Society, October 16th, 1883, by his son, Ninian Wirt Edwards
      (Chicago, 1884).

    This work constitutes Vol. III of the Chicago Historical Society
  Collections.

  Webb, James Watson, letter to John Wentworth, October 31, 1882 (MS).

    This letter, in the Chicago Historical Society library, contains
  the narration in old age of the writer's recollections of life at
  Fort Dearborn, sixty years before.

  Weld, Isaac Jr. _Travels through the States of North America, and
      the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the Years 1795,
      1796, and 1797._ 4th ed. (London, 1800), 2 vols.

    Contains an account of the distribution of goods at Maiden to the
  Indians.

  Wentworth John. _Early Chicago. Fort Dearborn._ An address
      delivered at the unveiling of the memorial tablet to mark the
      site of the blockhouse on Saturday afternoon, May 21, 1881 ...
      (Chicago, 1881).

    This constitutes No. 16 of the Fergus Historical Series. As
  published it embraces a number of documents and other material not
  contained in the original address.

  Whistler, John. Genealogy of the family of (MS).

    This document, compiled by James Whistler Wood, a grandson of
  John Whistler, is in the Chicago Historical Society library.

  Wilson, James Grant. "Sketch of the Life of Lieutenant James Strode
      Swearingen, Together with the Journal Kept by Him on the March
      from Detroit to Chicago in 1803," in _New York Herald_, October
      4, 1903.

  ----. Chicago from 1803 to 1812 (MS).

    A sketch based largely on information gained from Surgeon John
  Cooper, who was stationed at Fort Dearborn from 1803 to 1811.

  Winans, Susan Simmons. Papers Pertaining to the Securing of a
      Pension for (MS).

    These papers, in the Chicago Historical Society library,
  constitute the only available source of information concerning the
  life of the last known survivor of the Fort Dearborn massacre.

  Winsor, Justin. _Cartier to Frontenac: Geographical Discovery in
      the Interior of North America in Its Historical Relations,
      1534-1700_ (Boston, 1894).

    This and the two volumes which follow are standard authorities
  for their respective periods and subjects. They are particularly
  notable for the use made by the author of historical maps as a
  basis for his narrative.

  ----. _The Mississippi Basin: the Struggle in America between
      England and France 1697-1763_ (Boston, 1895).

  ----. _The Westward Movement: the Colonies and the Republic West of
      the Alleghenies 1763-1798_ (Boston, 1897).

  ----. _Narrative and Critical History of America_ (Boston, 1889). 8
      vols.

  Wisconsin State Historical Society. _Collections of the State
      Historical Society of Wisconsin._ Vols. I-XIX (Madison, Wis.,
      1855-1910).

    This constitutes one of the most valuable collections of material
  in print for the history of the Northwest.


  Young, William T. "Sketch of the Life and Public Services of
      General Lewis Cass...." 2d ed. (Detroit, 1852).




INDEX


  Abbott, James, trading-post at Chicago, 130;
    marriage, 130-31, 158, 170.

  Abbott, Robert, trading-post at Chicago, 130.

  "Adams," sailing-vessel, visits Chicago, 154;
    Hull plans to equip, 214-15, 243;
    carries Heald to Buffalo, 243;
    carries furs to Mackinac, 289.

  Adams, John Quincy, pardons Winnebago murderers, 320.

  Aird, James, crosses Chicago Portage, 289.

  Algonquin Indians, expedition against Iroquois, 51-52.

  Allouez, Father, successor to Marquette, 29;
    at Chicago, 29.

  Alvord, Clarence W., study of Spanish attack on St. Joseph, 100, 439.

  American Bottom, settlements of, 82.

  American Fur Company, Illinois brigade, 10, 14-15, 278-79;
    John Crafts employee of, 269;
    claim against J. B. Chandonnai, 277, 360-61;
    seeks monopoly of Indian trade, 301;
    hostility to factory system, 306;
    grants to, 360-61; invoices, 439.

  American State Papers, 439.

  Anderson, Robert, in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Anderson, Thomas G., narrative of, 135.

  Andreas, A. T., history, 439.

  Apple River, camp on, 313.

  Arkansas, factory at, 295.

  Armstrong, Fort, J. Watson Webb's mission to, 283;
    Illinois militia at, 324;
    peace negotiations at, 334-35, 337;
    troops ordered to, 335.
    See also Rock Island.

  Army, condition in 1812, 203-5.

  Astor, John Jacob, founds American Fur Company, 301.

  Atkinson, Henry, in Winnebago War, 313;
    in Black Hawk War, 323, 334.


  Bad Axe, battle, 334.

  Bad Axe River, keelboat attacked near mouth, 310.

  Baird, Mrs., reminiscences, 274, 277;
    description of Chicago, 280-81.

  Baker, Daniel, company ordered to Chicago, 264-65;
    horseback journey to Detroit, 275-76.

  Baker, E. D., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Baltimore, cholera at, 329.

  Barry, Rev. William, founder of Chicago Historical Society, 143;
    transcript of John Kinzie's account books, 440.

  Beaubien, Charles, grant to, 346, 359.

  Beaubien, Jean Baptiste, career, 278;
    grants to, and family, 346, 358-59.

  Beaubien, Josette, grant to, 359.

  Beaubien, Madore, grant to, 346, 359.

  Beaubien, Mark, keeps hotel, 350.

  Beaubien family, genealogy, 440.

  Beaubien land claim, 278.

  Beauharnois, Charles, ancestry, 66;
    and Fox wars, 69-70, 76-77.

  Beauharnois, Fort, evacuated, 66.

  Beeson, Louis, collection of relics, 306.

  Beggs, Rev. Stephen R., narrative of Black Hawk War, 325-27;
    history, 440.

  Beggs, Fort, in Black Hawk War, 326-27.

  Belknap, Ebenezer, factor at Chicago, 296-97.

  Bell, Peter, story of, 254.

  Belle Fontaine, Fort, established, 17, 154;
    factory at, 295.

  Bennett, Lieutenant, operations against Americans, 92-94;
    arrests Du Sable, 140;
    praises Du Sable, 141-42.

  Benton, Thomas H., author of Graham and Phillips' report, 16;
    attacks factory system, 301, 305-8;
    history, 440.

  Bertrand, Kinzie's trading house at, 132.

  Bertrand, trader, grants to, 347;
    grants to family. 357.

  Big Foot, in Winnebago War. 314-15;
    favors war with whites, 324.

  Biloxi, founded, 36.

  Bird, Henry, attack on Clark, 95.

  Black Bird, speech, 193; receives surrender of Heald, 229, 390, 401,
    407, 418.

  Black Hawk, leads Indians to Canadian frontier, 249;
    in Black Hawk War, 322-25, 334;
    later career, 337;
    on Fort Dearborn massacre, 397;
    Life, 440.

  Black Hawk War, 322-29;
    cause, 342.

  Black Partridge, warns Heald, 220-21, 223, 384, 420;
    rescues Mrs. Helm, 223, 230, 386-88;
    captor of Mrs. Lee, 255;
    asks for factory at Fort Clark, 300.

  Black Watch Regiment, occupies Fort Chartres, 81.

  Blanchard, Rufus, history, 440-41.

  Blue Jacket, Indian leader at Fallen Timbers, 120;
    at Maumee Rapids, 146.

  Board of Trade, reports to, 3, 44.

  Boston Tea Party, David Kennison in, 256-57.

  Bougainville, memoir, 47.

  Bouquet, Henry, ends Pontiac War, 80.

  Bourassa, Joseph, recollections, 397.

  Bowen, Joseph, captivity, 238-39;
    survivor of massacre, 423.

  Bowyer, John, Indian agent, 270.

  Bradley, Hezekiah, company ordered to Chicago, 264-65.

  Bradstreet, John, in Pontiac's war, 80.

  Brady, Fort, troops sent to Chicago, 328.

  Brant, Joseph, buys supplies of Kinzie, 145.

  Breese, Sidney, in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Brevoort, Commodore, commands "navy of the lakes," 154.

  British, reports to Board of Trade, 3, 44;
    plans for campaign of 1779, 94-95;
    Cruzat's plans against, 98;
    raid Ohio River settlements, 103-4;
    policy in Northwest, 106-8;
    encourage Indians against United States, 108, 122, 181, 194, 196;
    hostility toward Americans, 115;
    build fort at Maumee Rapids, 118;
    aid Indians in battle of Fallen Timbers, 121;
    Wayne destroys houses and stores, 121;
    surrender Northwestern posts, 126;
    influence over Indians, 178, 263;
    fear war following Chesapeake affair, 187-88;
    seek Indian aid against Americans, 188, 194;
    warn Tecumseh against premature war, 195;
    strength in Northwest in 1812, 198-99;
    ask renunciation of portion of Northwest, 262;
    capture furs of Chicago factory, 299.
    See also English.

  Brock, Isaac, operations against Hull, 210;
    letter to Proctor, 236.

  Brodhead, Daniel, ordered to assist Clark, 113.

  Brownstown, American defeat, 222.

  Buffalo Gazette, report of Fort Dearborn massacre, 393.

  Buisson, winters at Chicago, 236;
     trading establishment at Chicago, 268.

  Bullock, Captain, letter to Proctor, 254.

  Burnett family, grants to, 357.

  Burnett, John, grant to, 347.

  Burnett, William, expects fort at Chicago, 129;
    letter of, 155;
    dispute with Pattinson, 156;
    Healds stay with, 241, 407;
    extends trade to Chicago, 287.

  Burns, Thomas, resident of Chicago before 1812, 167;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 227, 230, 234, 252, 423, 430;
    career, 233-34;
    in Chicago militia, 253.

  Burns, Mrs. Thomas, in Fort Dearborn massacre, 224;
    ransomed, 236;
    captivity and later life of, 252-53;
    children, 252-53, 430.

  Bushy Run, battle, 80.

  Butte des Morts, treaty, 312, 317.


  Cahokia, St. Cosme at, 42;
    Pinet at, 42;
    British garrison at, 81;
    population in 1778, 82;
    surrenders to Clark, 87;
    residents join Spanish expedition against St. Joseph, 100;
    Mrs. La Compt's career at, 137-38.

  Caldwell, Billy, trading adventure, 287;
    mission to Big Foot's village, 315;
    grants to, 352.

  Calhoun, John C, report on Indian trade, 291;
    confidence in T. L. McKenney, 305;
    plan for abolition of factory system, 307-9.

  Calumet Portage, use, 24.

  Campbell, Anthony, in garrison feud, 171-72.

  Campbell, Robert, in battle of Fallen Timbers, 121.

  Canada, England gains, 79;
    De la Balme's project against, 98;
    objects to terms of treaty of 1783, 107;
    invasion feared, 187-88;
    West desires conquest, 196;
    Dearborn's plans for invading, 205;
    Hull's invasion, 206, 209.

  Canal, across Chicago Portage, 5-8, 12-14, 19-20, 339, 342.

  Cardin, John B., murdered, 212-13.

  Carey's Mission, founded, 345;
    treaty at, 363-64.

  Cass, Lewis, crosses Chicago Portage, 12, 15-16, 19, 313;
    on evil of Liquor to Indians, 183;
    aids Grummo, 240;
    proposals for garrisons in the Northwest, 263;
    party visits Chicago, 281;
    in Winnebago War, 312, 315, 317-18;
    negotiates Chicago Treaty of 1821, 343-48.

  Cassopolis, and story of Job Wright, 258-59.

  Caton, John D., account of Pottawatomie dance, 369-70, 441.

  Cavelier, party crosses Chicago Portage, 18, 38-39;
    at Chicago, 38-39, 44.

  Cerré, Gabriel, adventure on Chicago Portage, 18-19.

  Chachagwessiou, trader, 285.

  Chambolee, bribed to capture Siggenauk, 101.

  Champlain, expedition against Iroquois, 51-52.

  Chandonnai, Jean Baptiste, in Fort Dearborn massacre, 222-23;
    rescues Healds, 240, 409, 412;
    visits Healds, 245,413;
    trading career, 277;
    grants to, 347, 357-58;
    claim of American Fur Company against, 277, 360-61.

  Charlevoix, Father, tour, 11-12, 16;
    journal, 45-46;
    in Fox Wars, 63;
    writings, 441.

  Chartres, Fort, Fox raids reach, 55;
    De Noyelles retires to, 75;
    English take possession, 81.

  Chemin River, Michigan City at mouth, 100;
    Du Sable located on, 139.

  Cherokee Indians, factory established among, 293.

  Chesapeake affair, 188.

  Chevalier, Louis, leads Pottawatomies against Americans, 90;
    aids Spanish against St. Joseph, 101.

  Chicago, natural advantages, 1;
    strategic location, 2;
    Marquette's camp, 24-28;
    Allouez at, 29-30;
    Cavelier's party at, 37-38, 44;
    origin of name, 38;
    mission of Guardian Angel, 38-42;
    St. Cosme's party at, 40-42;
    French cease to visit, 42;
    Wayne secures cession of land at, 42-43, 123, 125;
    French fort at, 42-50, 123;
    rendezvous for campaign against Indians, 45, 59;
    for campaign against St. Louis, 95;
    for soldiers in Black Hawk War, 328;
    Illinois war party at, 60;
    Langlade's party at, 97;
    proposals for fort at, 127;
    rumors of fort at, 129;
    earliest resident, 136-37;
    first white woman resident, 137-38;
    "father" of, 145, 148;
    John Kinzie locates at, 147;
    slavery at, 148-52, 177, 228, 288;
    first wedding, 157-58;
    civilian residents before 1812, 167;
    militia company in Fort Dearborn massacre, 167, 224-25, 227, 407,
      413, 430-31;
    in Winnebago War, 317;
    in Black Hawk War, 325-27;
    Indians plan visit to Prophet, 193;
    speech of chiefs from, at Maiden, 193;
    Indian murders, 212-13;
    arrest of Francis Keneaum, 213-14;
    goods of factory distributed to Indians, 217-18;
    indemnity for loss of, 220;
    establishment of factory, 264, 272, 295;
    history of factory, 296-301, 308;
    operations of Robert Dickson, 237-39;
    residence of David Kennison at, 256-57;
    establishment of fort urged, 263-64;
    Indians gather at, 264;
    gardening enterprises, 265-66;
    life after establishment of second Fort Dearborn, 267-84;
    bringing of supplies to, 268;
    Indian trade at, 268-69, 285-309;
    John Kinzie's career at, after 1816, 269-70;
    residence of Jouett at, 270-71;
    visits of American Fur Company traders, 278-79;
    G. S. Hubbard's first visit, 279-80;
    S. A. Storrow's description, 280;
    Mrs. Baird's description, 280-81;
    visit of Cass in 1820, 281;
    Schoolcraft's description, 281;
    Schoolcraft's prophecy, 281, 339;
    Keating's description, 281-82;
    payments to Indians at, 284, 314, 366-67;
    marriage of Alexander Wolcott, 284;
    traders' huts at, 287;
    in Winnebago War, 313-17;
    in Black Hawk War, 325-39;
    description in 1833, 349;
    Indian duel, 352-53;
    Pottawatomies' farewell to, 368-70.
    See also Fort Dearborn.

  Chicago Portage, 3-20;
    war party passes, 65;
    builds fort at, 68;
    Americans to enjoy free use of, 125;
    travelers carried across, 143-44, 289;
    American Fur Company traders cross, 279;
    Hugh Heward crosses, 286;
    Lewis Cass crosses, 313;
    United States gains control over, 342;
    Swearingen's description, 377.

  Chicago River, bar at mouth, 6, 133, 331, 376;
    Des Plaines empties into, 9;
    Americans enjoy free use of, 125.

  Chicago Treaty of 1821, 183, 343-48.

  Chicago Treaty of 1833, 277, 348-66.

  Chicago-Detroit trail, 68, 131, 343.

  Chicago-Galena trail, Scott traverses, 334.

  Chickasaw Bluffs, factory established at, 295.

  Childs, Ebenezer, crosses Chicago Portage, 10.

  Chippewa Indians, Sacs and Foxes wage war on, 77;
    numbers of, 83;
    disloyal to British, 94;
    plot of, against Northwestern posts, 193;
    followers of Keneaum, 213-14;
    bring Hull news of surrender of Mackinac, 215;
    Indian rescues Crozier, 246;
    chief reveals plot against Fort Snelling, 283;
    treaty with, at Prairie du Chien, 364.

  Choctaw Indians, factory established among, 295.

  Cholera, epidemic, 328-37.

  Chouteau, Auguste, negotiates treaties, 262;
    furs taken across Chicago Portage, 289.

  Cicely, slave girl, 177;
    death, 227-28, 430.

  Clark, cattle dealer, 167.

  Clark, husband of Elizabeth McKenzie, 147.

  Clark, Fort, appeal for factory at, 300.

  Clark, George Rogers, operations in Revolution, 84-104;
    leads Kentuckians against Indians, 109.

  Clark, William, appeal of Fox Indians to, 184;
    negotiates treaties, 262.

  Clybourne, Jonas, marriage, 147.

  Columbus, Fort, troops sent to Chicago, 328.

  Confederation, Indian trade policy, 291-92.

  Congress, Continental, Indian policy, 290-91.

  Connor, James, grant to, 359.

  Cooper, Isabella, in Fort Dearborn massacre, 252-53.

  Cooper, John, surgeon at Fort Dearborn, 143, 149;
    reports of life at, 160-61;
    description of, 163;
    privilege to suttle at, 172-73, 175;
    resigns from army, 175;
    on death of Van Voorhis, 387.

  Cooper, Joseph, death, 252;
    stepson of Burns, 431.

  Cooper, Mrs. See Mrs. Burns.

  Corbin, Fielding, captivity 238-39.

  Corbin, Mrs. Fielding, in Fort Dearborn massacre, 224;
    death, 227.

  Corbin, James, captivity, 238-39.

  Corn Island, Clark builds blockhouse on, 85-86.

  Courselle, house at Chicago, 167.

  Court martial, proceedings at Detroit, 161-63;
    of mutineers in Hull's army, 208.

  Covington, Leonard, in battle of Fallen Timbers, 121.

  Crafts, John, trading house at Chicago, 268-69.

  Crawford, Fort, settlers take refuge in, 312;
    regarrisoned, 321.

  Creek Indians, factory established among, 293.

  Crespel. Father, shocked at tortures, 65.

  Crevecoeur, Fort, built, 31-32;
    destroyed, 32.

  Croghan, George, mission to western tribes, 81.

  Crooks, Ramsey, buys corn of Kinzie, 288;
    charges of, against factory system, 305-6.

  Crozier, John, captivity, 246;
    survivor of massacre, 423;
    fate, 433.

  Cruzat, Antoine, plans against British, 98.

  Cummings, Alexander, in Black Hawk War, 338.


  Dablon, Father, report of Joliet's expedition, 4-5.

  Danville, militia company in Winnebago War, 315-17;
    settlers flee to, 326.

  Daugherty, Daniel, survivor of Fort Dearborn massacre, 423.

  Davis, Jefferson, at Fort Winnebago, 321;
    in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Dawson, Moses, on strength of Harrison at Tippecanoe, 200;
    biography of Harrison, 442.

  Dean, John, horseback journey to Detroit, 275;
    J. B. Beaubien buys house, 278.

  Dearborn, first Fort, establishment, 127-30, 134-36;
    John Whistler appointed commander, 130;
    John Cooper, surgeon, 143, 149;
    life at, 153-77;
    description of, and surroundings, 164-67;
    garrison feud, 171-76;
    Main Poc threatens, 193;
    Indian plot against, 193;
    strength of garrison in 1812, 198, 428-29;
    and Hull's campaign, 211;
    news of War of 1812 received, 214, 416;
    Hull plans to send supplies to, 214-15;
    Hull's order for evacuation, 215-17, 378, 383, 403. 406, 409, 416;
    evacuation of, 217-20;
    Wells reaches, 219, 225;
    ruins of, in 1813, 231;
    last muster roll, 232-33, 247, 256, 259, 425-29;
    measures for relief of captives, 237-39;
    Nathan Heald commander of, 403;
    supplies on eve of massacre, 388-91, 417.

  Dearborn, second Fort, establishment, 264-67;
    John McNeil commander, 282;
    first white child born in, 282;
    garrison withdrawn, 283, 310, 322;
    burning of barracks, 314;
    regarrisoned, 321-22;
    settlers take refuge in, 325;
    converted into cholera hospital, 331-32.

  Dearborn, Fort, massacre, preliminary, 212-13, 416;
    participants in, 222-25;
    forces and losses in, 230;
    fate of survivors, 232-61, 422-24;
    account of, in Heald's Journal, 403;
    Heald's official report, 406-8;
    Helm's narrative, 415-21;
    fate of women in, 421, 430;
    Woodward's letter concerning survivors, 422-24;
    names and fate of participants, 428-36;
    fate of children, 430.
    See also Chicago.

  Dearborn, Henry, plans for campaign of 1812, 205;
    inactivity, 209-10.

  De Champs, Antoine, trader, 138, 303.

  Defiance, Fort, built, 118;
    Wayne retires to, 122.

  De Garmo, Paul. See Grummo.

  De la Balme, Augustin, project against Detroit, 98;
    sends detachment against St. Joseph, 99.

  DeLery, report of siege of Detroit, 56, 58.

  De Leyba, Francisco, friendly to Clark, 87;
    defense of St. Louis, 95-96;
    death, 98.

  De Lignery, Marchand, expedition against Foxes, 65.

  Denison, Micajah, death, 235, 433-34;
    wounded, 423.

  Denonville, campaign against Iroquois, 38;
    on effects of liquor on Indians, 183.

  De Noyelles, Nicolas, expedition against Foxes, 70-75.

  Department of Indian Trade, records of, 287, 299, 447.

  De Peyster, Arent Schuyler, proposes expedition against Illinois
    posts, 90;
    defies Clark, 91-92;
    verses, 93;
    succeeds Hamilton at Detroit, 94;
    efforts to capture Siggenauk, 100-101;
    sends force against Americans, 103;
    statement about Du Sable, 139.

  De Quindre, Louis, defeats Hamelin's party, 99;
    efforts against Spaniards, 102.

  Des Moines River, Fox post on, 72-73.

  Des Plaines River, fluctuations. 6-8, 16-17;
    Thomas Tousey explores, 12-13.
    See also Chicago Portage.

  Detroit, Fox siege, 55-58;
    war party at Chicago, 61;
    resists Indian attack, 80;
    center of British control of Northwest, 81, 84;
    defenses in 1770, 82;
    British expect assault, 91;
    De Peyster stationed at, 94;
    De la Balme's project against, 98;
    Clark's plans against, 103-4;
    outpost of Americans in Northwest, 128;
    court-martial proceedings at, 161-63;
    John Whistler transferred to, 175;
    Indian plot against, 103;
    Indian attacks diverted to frontier, 194;
    garrison in 1812, 198;
    appeal of settlers for protection, 200-201;
    invasion of Canada from, planned, 205;
    capture, 210;
    effect of capture on Northwest, 211.

  Dickson sends warriors to, 238;
    journey of Mrs. Simmons to, 249;
    trip of Jacob B. Varnum and party to, 275-76;
    J. B. Beaubien born at, 278;
    factory discontinued, 295-96;
    goods of Chicago factory shipped to, 308.

  De Villiers, Louis Coulon, captures George Washington, 66.

  De Villiers, Nicolas Coulon, marches against Foxes, 66;
    commander at Green Bay, 69;
    slain, 70.

  Diamond Lake Island, and story of Job Wright, 258-59.

  Dickson, Robert, leads Indians to Detroit frontier, 194;
    Keneaum's mission to, 213-14;
    describes ruins of Fort Dearborn, 231;
    rouses Indians against Americans, 237-38;
    rescues Fort Dearborn captives, 238-39, 254;
    witnesses Heald's parole, 242;
    collects warriors at Green Bay, 249;
    sends goods to Chicago, 268.

  Dilbone, Henry, assault upon, and family, 250-51.

  Dilg, Carl, papers, 382, 442;
    rejects Mrs. Kinzie's narrative, 382;
    records Alexander Robinson's narrative, 398.

  Dillon, John B., history, 442.

  Dixon's Ferry, flight of Stillman's force to, 324;
    Governor Reynolds issues call for troops from, 325;
    orders to soldiers at, 335.

  Dodge, A. C, in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Dodge, Henry, in Winnebago War, 317;
    in Black Hawk War, 323, 334, 337-38.

  Dorchester, Lord, hostility toward Americans, 115, 118.

  Dorr, Lieutenant, commander of "Tracy," 131.

  Douglas, Captain, companion of Schoolcraft, 281.

  Draper, Lyman C, records Darius Heald's narrative of Fort Dearborn
    massacre, 381, 409-14.

  Draper Collection, Heald papers in, 380, 442.

  Drennan, D. O., papers, 130, 442.

  Drummond's Island, distribution of presents to Indians at, 320.

  Dubuisson, report of siege of Detroit, 55.

  Du Page River, troops camp on, 338.

  Du Pain (Depain, Du Pin), trader, at Chicago, 236, 268.

  Durand, employer of Du Sable, 140.

  Durantaye, fort of, 47-48.

  Du Sable, Baptiste Point, De Peyster mentions, 93;
    career, 138-42;
    trading post at Chicago, 286.

  Dyer, Dyson, captivity, 238-39.


  Economy Light and Power Company, case of, 7, 456.

  Edson, Nathan, captivity, 238-39.

  Edwards, Abraham, narrative of Burns family, 252-53;
    employer of John Crafts, 269.

  Edwards, Ninian, Main Poc's speech to agent of, 182;
    seeks to obtain Indian murderers, 193;
    negotiates treaties, 262;
    report to, 320;
    papers, 443, 457.

  Elliot, Matthew, British Indian Agent, 214.

  English, compete for fur trade, 53;
    overthrow French in America, 79.

  Erie Indians, exterminated, 52.

  Erie, Lake, Hull urges armed control of, 205-6.

  Ewing, G. W., grant to, 359.

  Ewing, William, grant to, 359.


  Factory, to be re-established at Chicago, 264;
    system, 289-309;
    distribution of goods at Chicago, 406.
    See also Fur Trade; Indian Trade; Trade.

  Fallen Timbers, battle of, 119-21;
    Hamtramck's part in, 131;
    Tecumseh in, 186;
    sole decisive victory over Indians, 199.

  Fever, among Northwestern garrisons, 135, 158-59.

  Fifth Infantry, movements, 321, 338.

  Finney, Fort, Treaty of, 109.

  Firearms, Iroquois gain, 52.

  Forsyth, Robert, at Maumee City, 239;
    secretary to Lewis Cass, 314;
    grants to, 359, 363;
    signs treaty, 364.

  Forsyth, Thomas, relations with Jeffrey Nash, 148-52;
    Heald employs horses of, 219;
    losses in Fort Dearborn massacre, 236, 246, 363-64;
    Indians esteem, 218;
    letter to Heald, 236, 255;
    ransoms Helm, 246;
    partner of John Kinzie, 287;
    on operations of factory system, 300-301;
    witnesses treaty, 359-60;
    author of narrative of Fort Dearborn massacre, 394.

  Forsyth, William, marries Mrs. Kinzie, 145.

  Fort, French, at Chicago, 42-50;
    French forts abandoned, 65;
    Pontiac plans to destroy English, 80;
    Cass urges establishment in Northwest, 263.

  Fortress Monroe, troops in Black Hawk War, 328-29, 336-37.

  Four-Lakes country, pursuit of Black Hawk through, 334;
    beauty of, 338-39.

  Fourth Infantry, honors to, 207;
    quells mutiny, 208.

  Fowle, John, commander at Fort Dearborn, 321.

  Fox Indians, wars against French, 45-46, 51-78;
    request liquor be kept from, 184;
    plot against Fort Snelling, 283.
    See also Black Hawk War; Sacs and Foxes.

  Fox-Wisconsin Portage, Dickson winters at, 214;
    Fort Winnebago at, 321 .

  Fox-Wisconsin waterway, 54, 263, 321.

  Franklin, Benjamin, and government trading houses, 296.

  Fraser, Lieutenant, mission, 80-81;
    report of, 82.

  French, highways to Mississippi, 3;
    seek route to South Sea, 22;
    traders in Illinois, 25-27, 285;
    Iroquois hostility for, 51-52;
    wars with Foxes, 45-46, 51-78;
    compete with English for fur trade, 53;
    power in Northwest tottering, 76-78;
    overthrow in America, 79;
    negotiations in Treaty of 1783, 103;
    importance of fur trade to, 286.

  Frontenac, Count, version of Joliet's report, 4-5;
    recalled, 35;
    breaks up Pinet's mission, 39.

  Fur trade, death knell of, 20;
    English-French competition for, 53;
    Fox war hinders, 58-59;
    British desire to control in Northwest, 107;
    Indians engage in, 285;
    volume of, in Illinois, 288-89.
    See also Factory; Indian Trade; Traders.

  Fury, John, death, 235, 433-34;
    wounded, 423.


  Gage, Fort, British garrison at, 81.

  Gagnier family, assault on, 310-11.

  Gale, E. O., reminiscences, 443-44.

  Gale, John, and story of Fort Dearborn captive, 260-61.

  Galena, panic of settlers, 312-13;
    volunteers from, in Winnebago War, 317.

  Galvez, Bernardo de, operations against British, 94.

  Garner, Richard, death, 234, 423, 434.

  Gary (Guarie), trader, 138.

  Gary River, name of North Branch, 138.

  Gautier, Charles, operations against Americans, 90-93.

  Geiger, Jacob, relations with Heald, 404.

  "General Wayne," carries troops to Chicago, 265.

  Geneva, Lake, home of Big Foot's band, 314.

  Ghent, Treaty of, 262.

  Gibault, Father, assists Clark. 86-87.

  Glaize River, Wayne destroys villages on, 117-18.

  Gomo, gives news of Main Poc, 194.

  Gordon, Eleanor, writings, 444.

  Graham, John, negotiates treaties, 262.

  Graham, R., report of, 16, 19.

  Grand Portage, need of fort at, 263.

  Grant, Ulysses S., serves under William Whistler, 169.

  Gratiot, Fort, garrisoned, 321;
    troops from, sent to Chicago, 328;
    cholera at, 329-30.

  Great Lakes, ice in, 7;
    New France extends to, 52;
    Jacob B. Varnum's voyage on, 272-73;
    northern boundary of United States, 272-73.

  Green Bay, Foxes threaten, 54;
    abandoned, 65, 80;
    post reoccupied, 69, 80;
    Sacs refuse to return to, 70;
    Dickson plans to send goods to, 238;
    captivity of Mrs. Simmons at, 248-49;
    Dickson collects warriors at, 249;
    American fort established, 263-65;
    factory established, 264;
    French post at, 286;
    Fort Dearborn garrison ordered to, 322;
    cholera panic at, 330-31.
    See also Fort Howard.

  Greenville, Wayne establishes camp at, 116;
    Wayne retires to, 123;
    Prophet begins career at, 186;
    Treaty of, 42-43, 122-25, 191, 225, 262, 340;
    second Treaty of, 179.

  "Griffin," built, 30;
    lost, 31-32.

  Griffith, William, letter of, 234, 253;
    captivity, 236, 242-43;
    informant of McAfee, 379, 397;
    survivor of massacre, 423;
    intends to kill Le Claire, 431.

  Grignon, Augustin, statements about Du Sable, 141.

  Grover, Frank R., on Pinet's mission, 40-41;
    addresses, 444.

  Grummo (De Garmo), Paul, captivity, 238-40;
    account of Fort Dearborn massacre, 397.

  Guardian Angel Mission, 37-42.

  Guignas, Father, captivity, 66.


  Hagar, Albert D., on Marquette's route, 24.

  Hall, Benjamin, Margaret Kinzie marries, 147.

  Hamelin, Jean Baptiste, expedition against St. Joseph, 99.

  Hamilton, Alexander, letter to, 153;
    death, 156;
    son of, 284.

  Hamilton, Henry, rouses Indians against Americans, 84;
    expedition against Vincennes, 87-88;
    captured, 80;
    orders of, for campaigns against Americans, 90-91;
    imprisonment of, 94.

  Hamilton, Joseph, marriage, 168;
    in garrison feud, 173-74;
    sent to Fort Belle Fontaine, 175.

  Hamilton, William S., contractor, 284.

  Hamlin, John, performs marriage ceremony, 284.

  Hamtramck, John, commander at Detroit, 130;
    death, 131;
    on injustice to Indians, 180.

  Hardin, John, murder of, 115.

  Harmar, Fort, Treaty of, 109-10, 122, 190-91.

  Harmar, Josiah, expedition of, 111.

  Harmon, Dr., treatment of cholera, 333.

  Harney, William S., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Harrison, Fort, place in Northwestern frontier, 197;
    garrison in 1812, 198.

  Harrison, William H., dealings with Tecumseh, 120, 190-92, 341;
    governor of Indiana Territory, 128;
    on liquor-drinking by Indians, 183-84;
    on injustice to Indians, 180-81;
    protests against witchcraft delusion, 187;
    seeks to obtain Indian murderers, 193;
    difficulty with militia, 204;
    commander of Fort Meigs, 250;
    negotiates treaties, 262, 340-42;
    biography, 442.

  Hay, Henry, journal, 145-46, 444.

  Hayes, Otto, death, 228-29, 388.

  Hayward, Thomas, factor at Chicago, 297.

  Head, William R., papers, 134, 149, 382, 444-45;
    preserves Moses Morgan narrative, 261, 399;
    rejects Mrs. Kinzie's narrative, 382.

  Heald, Darius, narrative of massacre, 234, 241, 380-82, 384, 409-14, 449;
    birth, 405.

  Heald, Nathan, desires leave of absence, 153, 176;
    birth of children, 159, 404-5;
    commends John Whistler, 174;
    transferred to Fort Dearborn, 175-76;
    visits New England, 175-76;
    marriage, 176-77;
    receives news of Indian depredations, 211-12;
    report of April murders, 212;
    organizes militia company, 213;
    Hull commends, 215, 380;
    Hull's order to, to evacuate Fort Dearborn, 215-17, 378, 393, 403, 406,
      409, 416;
    responsibility for Fort Dearborn massacre, 215, 217-19;
    preparations for evacuation, 219-20;
    Black Partridge's warning to, 220-21, 223, 384, 420;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 223, 226, 229;
    stipulates prisoners to be spared, 233;
    letter of William Griffith to, 234, 253;
    letters of Thomas Forsyth to, 236, 246, 255;
    captivity, 240-3, 403-4, 407;
    wounds, 241, 244, 391, 403, 407, 414;
    later life, 244-45;
    pension, 244, 391-92;
    home of, 245;
    home looted, 381;
    gives factory goods to Indians, 300;
    report of massacre, 379-80, 406-8;
    antipathy of Mrs. Kinzie's narrative, 385;
    conduct in massacre, 389-90, 415-20;
    journal, 402-5;
    obituary, 409;
    papers, 428, 445.
    See also Chicago; Fort Dearborn.

  Heald, Mrs. Rebekah, birth of children, 159, 404-5;
    marriage, 176-77;
    death of children, 159, 221, 405;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 223, 226, 394, 409-13;
    memorandum on property losses, 228;
    captivity, 240-43, 403-4, 407;
    wounds, 241, 403, 407, 409, 411-12;
    later life, 244-45;
    narrative of massacre, 380-82, 410-14;
    birth, 414;
    daguerreotype of, 414.

  Heintzelman, S. P., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Helm, Leonard, surrenders Vincennes, 87-88.

  Helm, Linai T., member of court-martial, 163;
    transferred to Fort Dearborn, 177;
    financial condition, 177, 365;
    version of evacuation order, 216;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 230, 401;
    captivity, 246-47, 419-20;
    later career, 276;
    narrative of massacre, 378-80, 385, 387-91;
    version of Black Partridge's warning, 384;
    wound, 391-92;
    pension, 392;
    letter to Judge Woodward announcing narrative of massacre, 415-16;
    list of survivors of massacre, 421, 431-33;
    survivor of massacre, 423.

  Helm, Mrs. Linai T., in Fort Dearborn massacre, 223, 226, 385-88, 419;
    rescue of, 223, 230, 386-88, 413;
    captivity, 246-47;
    second residence at Chicago, 276;
    divorce, 276, 311;
    grants to, 362, 364-65;
    informant of Mrs. Kinzie, 383;
    survivor of massacre, 423.

  Hempstead, Stephen, statements about Du Sable, 141-42.

  Hennepin, Father, expedition planned, 32;
    New Discovery, 49-50.

  Henry, James, in Black Hawk War, 334, 337-38.

  Henry, Patrick, approves Clark's plans, 85;
    Fort Vincennes named after, 89.

  "Henry Clay," carries troops to Chicago, 329;
    cholera on, 332-33.

  Hesse, Emanuel, operations of, in 1780, 95.

  Heward, Hugh, dealings with Du Sable, 140-41, 286;
    journal, 445.

  Heyl, Sergeant, death, 332.

  Hopson, John, crosses Chicago Portage, 10.

  Horses, use of, on Chicago Portage, 11-13, 15-19;
    in building first Fort Dearborn, 134.

  Howard, Fort, troops from, in Winnebago War, 317-18.

  Hubbard, Gurdon S., crosses Chicago Portage, 10, 14-15;
    preserves story of Cerré, 18;
    preserves story of Gary, 138;
    first visit to Chicago, 279-80;
    describes arrival of Cass at Chicago, 313-14;
    brings militia from Danville, 315-17;
    writings, 446.

  Hulbert, A.B., Portage Paths, 3, 7, 446.

  Hull, William, seeks to counteract British machinations among Indians, 188;
    campaign of 1812, 205-10, 214, 222;
    order for evacuation of Von Dearborn, 215-17, 378, 393, 403, 406,
      409, 416;
    commends Heald, 380;
    memoirs, 446.

  Hunt, George, grant to, 360.

  Hunt, John E., aids De Garmo, 240.

  Hunt, Thomas, commander at Detroit. 158.

  Hunt, William N., death, 236, 433.

  Hunter, David, commander at Fort Dearborn, 321-22.

  Huron Indians, forays against Foxes, 46, 67-69;
    Iroquois ruin, 52;
    foray against Mascoutens, 61-62;
    defeat Foxes, 62;
    join De Noyelles' expedition, 70.


  Iberville, expedition of, 36.

  Illinois, British attempts to gain possession of, 80-81;
    plans against, in 1781, 97-98;
    Indian depredations in, 193-94;
    settlements in 1812, 197;
    fur traders in, 25-26, 285;
    operations of American Fur Company in, 278-79;
    volume of fur trade in, 288-89;
    militia in Black Hawk War, 324-25, 334.

  Illinois Indians, village at Starved Rock destroyed, 33;
    Foxes wage war against, 55, 77;
    Foxes attack, 59;
    war party comes to Chicago, 60;
    war with Foxes, 63-64;
    abandon Starved Rock, 64;
    part in De Lignery's expedition, 65;
    thievery of, 134;
    engage in fur trade, 285.

  Illinois Mission, founded, 28;
    Allouez appointed to, 29;
    success of, 39.

  Illinois River, Joliet and Marquette on, 23-24;
    highway between Great Lakes and Mississippi, 51, 263;
    Americans to enjoy free use of, 125;
    Indians cede land at mouth of, 125;
    ascent of, by Cass, 313;
    by Fort Dearborn garrison, 321.

  Independence Day, celebration, 123.

  Indians, as carriers on Chicago Portage, 18;
    population in Northwest, 83, 198-99;
    neutrality in Revolution, 83;
    British policy toward, 84, 106-8;
    desert Lieutenant Bennett, 93-94;
    threaten Langlade, 97;
    relations with United States in Northwest, 108-9, 264;
    raid Ohio frontier, 111, 115;
    British encourage against United States, 108, 122, 181, 194, 196;
    and building of first Fort Dearborn, 133-34;
    ideas of land ownership, 178-79;
    failure of United States government policy toward, 179-84;
    use of liquor, 178-79, 182-84, 188-90, 304, 347-48;
    patient endurance of evils, 185;
    Americans urge to neutrality, 188, 194;
    Tecumseh and Prophet attempt to reform, 186-90;
    Tecumseh attempts to unite, 190-92;
    oppose cession of lands, 191;
    visit Maiden, 193;
    plot against Northwestern posts, 193;
    murders in Illinois, 193-94;
    prowess as warriors, 199;
    horrors of warfare, 200-201;
    Dickson leads against Americans, 237-38;
    treaties with, in Northwest, 262-63;
    policy of Continental Congress toward, 290-91;
    of Confederation toward, 291;
    ask establishment of government trading houses, 294-95;
    plan rising against Americans, 320;
    code of honor, 335-36;
    title to land of Northwest, 340;
    bribery of, 345-46.

  Indian Creek massacre, 327.

  Indian trade, basis of, 53;
    competition for, 78;
    of Northwest, rivalry over, 107;
    at Chicago, 285-309;
    department, records of, 287, 299, 447;
    factory system, 289-309.

  Indiana, territory created, 128;
    Harrison's messages to legislature, 180-81, 183;
    fears of settlers, 190-92, 325;
    settlements in 1812, 197;
    militia in Black Hawk War, 327-28.

  Iroquois Indians, destroy Illinois village, 33;
    Denonville's campaign against, 38;
    war party attacks Foxes, 46;
    Champlain joins expedition against, 51-52;
    gain firearms, 52;
    encourage Foxes, 54;
    Christian, join foray against Foxes, 70;
    share in De Noyelles' expedition, 70, 73-75;
    Foxes ally with, 77;
    Butler's speech to, 118.

  Iroquois River, Hubbard's trading house on, 316.

  Irwin, Matthew, factor at Chicago, 166, 298-99;
    in garrison feud, 173;
    report of, on April murders, 212;
    factor at Green Bay, 272, 299.

  Irwin, Robert, conveys Healds to Detroit, 242.


  Jacques, companion of Marquette, 24, 26-7.

  Jay, John, negotiates treaty, 103, 125-26.

  Jefferson, Fort, St. Clair's army reaches. 114;
    commander killed, 116.

  Jefferson, Thomas, resigns governorship, 103;
    message on trading-house system, 294-95.

  Jefferson Barracks, troops from, in Winnebago War, 313, 317;
    Fifth Infantry at, 321.

  Jesuit order, proselyting work, 38-39.

  Jews'-harp, use of in Indian trade, 306.

  Johnston, Albert Sidney, in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Johnston, Joseph E., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Joliet, Louis, on Chicago Portage, 4-6, 8;
    proposes canal at Chicago Portage, 5-6, 19;
    expedition of, 22-24.

  Jones, George W., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Jordan, Walter, report of Fort Dearborn massacre, 394-96.

  Jouett, Charles, names son for La Lime, 149;
    Indian agent at Chicago, 166, 270-71;
    in garrison feud, 173-76;
    house fortified, 213;
    in charge of Chicago factory, 297;
    invoices furniture of factory, 293.

  Joutel, narrative, 36-38.

  Juries, western, refuse to convict of crimes against Indians, 180-81.


  Kankakee River, Charlevoix follows, 11-12, 16, 45;
    not used by Marquette, 28-29;
    John Kinzie trades on, 147.

  Kaskaskia, population in 1778, 82;
    Clark captures, 86.

  KawKeemee, wife of Burnett, 347.

  Keating, William H., narrative of Long's expedition, 10, 448;
    on Chicago's lake trade, 268;
    description of Chicago, 281-82.

  Keith, Governor, memorial to Board of Trade, 44.

  Kelso, John, escapes from April murders, 212.

  Kendall, Amos, on character of militia 203-4.

  Keneaum, Francis, mission of, 213-14.

  Kennison, David, career, 255-57;
    survivor of massacre, 432, 434.

  Kentucky, G. R. Clark settles in, 85;
    county of, created, 85;
    inhabitants raid Indians, 109, 111;
    volunteers in Wayne's army, 116-17;
    people kill Indians, 180.

  Kercheval, B. B., grant to, 360.

  Kercheval, Gholson, grant to, 360.

  Kickapoo Indians, allies of Foxes, 56;
    war parties against Foxes, 58;
    desert Foxes, 66.

  Kingsbury, Jacob, papers, 17, 448;
    crosses Chicago Portage, 17, 289;
    establishes Fort Belle Fontaine, 154;
    contents of letter books, 155-56;
    birth of daughter, 158;
    court martial proceedings, 162-63;
    commends John Whistler, 174;
    offered command of Northwestern army, 206;
    letter to John Whistler, 288.

  Kinzie, Elizabeth, comes to Chicago, 147.

  Kinzie, Ellen Marion, marriage, 284.

  Kinzie, James, comes to Chicago, 147;
    grant to, 359.

  Kinzie, John, carries traders across portage, 16, 19;
    house at Chicago, 142, 166, 268;
    account books, 143, 149, 167, 256, 269, 287, 289, 378-79;
    career, 145-52;
    kills John La Lime, 149-50;
    relations with Jeffrey Nash, 151-52;
    dispute with Pattinson, 156;
    performs marriage ceremony, 158;
    in garrison feud, 172-74;
    moves family into Fort Dearborn, 213;
    and evacuation of Fort Dearborn, 218-19, 417, 420;
    Heald employs horses, 219;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 222, 227, 230, 232, 385, 420, 429;
    losses in massacre, 236, 246, 363-64;
    experiences of family after massacre, 246;
    urges re-establishment of fort at Chicago, 264;
    career at Chicago after 1816, 269-70;
    sub-Indian agent, 270, 363;
    goods of factory deposited with, 275;
    American Fur Company appeals to, 277;
    household, 280;
    learns of plot against Fort Snelling, 283;
    trading operations, 287-88;
    invoices furniture of factory, 298;
    recognizes Cass's party, 313-14;
    helps negotiate treaty, 347;
    claims of heirs, 361-65;
    tells story of death of Sergeant Hayes, 388;
    and story of forged order, 389, 417;
    influence over Indians, 390, 419;
    writes Heald of Indian hostility, 416;
    biography, 444;
    family, genealogy, 448.

  Kinzie, Mrs. John, marriage, 145-46;
    intercedes for Helm, 246;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 385.

  Kinzie, John H., share in Chicago Treaty of 1833, 358, 361-64;
    sub-Indian agent, 361, 383;
    signs Treaty of Prairie du Chien, 364;
    marriage, 383.

  Kinzie, Mrs. Juliette A. (John H.), account of Du Sable, 139, 142;
    story of Ouilmette, 144;
    narrative of April murders, 212;
    version of evacuation order, 216;
    story of cholera panic, 330-31;
    narrative of Fort Dearborn massacre, 379, 382-88, 391, 413;
    writings, 448-49.

  Kinzie, Maria Indiana, marriage, 322.

  Kinzie, Robert, in Fort Dearborn fire, 314;
    grants to, 361-64.

  "Kinzie's Improvement," 132, 375.

  Kirkland, Joseph, interviews Darius Heald, 381;
    estimate of _Wau Bun_, 385;
    writings, 449.

  Knaggs, William, grant to, 346.

  Koshkonong, Lake, Black Hawk retreats to, 334.


  La Barre, Lefevre de, hostile to La Salle, 35.

  La Compt, Mrs., career, 137-38.

  La Framboise, Joseph, grant to, 358.

  La Framboise, Josette, marriage. 278.

  La Framboise, Mrs., statement about Du Sable, 141.

  Lahontan, Baron de, maps, 4;
    crosses Chicago Portage, 17-18;
    writings, 449.

  La Lime, John, occupies Kinzie's house, 142;
    career, 148-50;
    house, 166;
    reports Indian depredations, 104;
    report of April murders, 212.

  La Lime, John [son of above ?], grant to, 347.

  Lamb, Charles A., story of Grummo, 239-40.

  Land, process of obtaining cessions, 178-79;
    Tecumseh's contentions, 190-92, 341;
    hunger of whites for, 178, 341.

  Langlade, Charles de, captures Pickawillany, 78, 90;
    operations against Americans, 90-93;
    in attack on St. Louis, 95, 97;
    and Du Sable, 139.

  La Salle, description of Chicago Portage, 4-11;
    uses St. Joseph Portage, 5;
    early explorations, 21;
    at Chicago, 21-22;
    career, 30-36;
    survivors of Texan expedition, 37-38;
    followers build fort at Chicago, 47;
    colony founded on Indian trade, 286.

  Latrobe, Charles J., account of Chicago Treaty of 1833, 349-57;
    writings, 449.

  Latta, James, death, 234.

  Laval, Bishop, Pinet appeals to, 39.

  Le Claire (Le Clerc), Jean B., grant to, 347.

  Le Claire (Le Clerc), Pierre, brings news of war to Fort Dearborn, 214;
    grant to, 347;
     member of Chicago militia, 431.

  Lee, farmer at Chicago, 167;
    murders at farm of, 212-13;
    evacuation means financial ruin, 218;
    captivity of family, 254-55;
    member of Chicago militia, 431.

  Lee, Lillian, death, 255.

  Lee, Mrs., ransomed, 236, 255;
    captivity, 254-55.

  Le Mai, resident of Chicago, 142;
    home of, 166.

  Lincoln, Abraham, in Black Hawk War, 323;
    nomination, 370.

  Lincoln Park, Kennison buried in, 257.

  Linctot, expedition of, 92-93.

  Lindsay, A.B., closes Chicago factory, 308.

  Lipcap, murder of, 311.

  Liquor, Burnett needs, 129;
    Du Sable's stock, 140;
    Indians plied with, at treaties, 178-79;
    efforts to suppress traffic vain, 182;
    effects on Indians, 182-84, 188-90, 304;
    given to Indians, 188;
    Prophet forbids use of, 189-90;
    destruction of, at Fort Dearborn, 220, 236, 246, 389, 393-94, 406, 410;
    drinking at close of Winnebago War, 317;
    drinkers victims of cholera, 333, 336;
    eagerness of Indians for, 347-48;
    Mrs. Heald ransomed with, 412.

  Little Turtle, in St. Clair's defeat, 114;
    at Fallen Timbers, 120;
    contentions at Treaty of Greenville, 123;
    at Maumee Rapids, 146;
    on evils of liquor-drinking, 184.

  Lockwood, James H., attack upon family averted, 311.

  Loftus, Major, defeat of expedition, 80.

  Logan, Hugh, death, 236, 404.

  Logan, James, report of, 3-4, 44, 50.

  London, cholera at, 333.

  Long, Stephen H., topographical report, 8, 266-67;
    expedition of, 281.

  Long River, story of, 17-18.

  Louisiana, La Salle takes possession, 34;
    La Salle the father of, 36;
    France loses, 79;
    and establishment of Fort Dearborn, 128-29;
    court upholds free character of Illinois Territory, 151-52;
    revolt discussed, 156;
    attacks on settlements proposed, 194.

  Louvigny, makes peace with Foxes, 58;
    expedition against Foxes, 59, 62-63;
    trading project, 127.

  Loyalists, anger of patriots for, 106.

  Lynch, Michael, death, 246, 433-34.


  McAfee, Robert B., version of Black Partridge's warning, 221;
    account of Fort Dearborn massacre, 379, 397;
    history, 449.

  McArthur, Duncan, negotiates treaties, 262.

  McClernand, John A., in Black Hawk War, 323.

  McCoy, Rev. Isaac, meets cattle drivers, 268;
    share in Chicago Treaty of 1821, 345-46;
    history, 449.

  McHenry, Fort, troops from, sent to Chicago, 328-29.

  Mcintosh, Fort, treaty of, 109, 190-91.

  McKee, Captain, gives liquor to Indians, 188.

  McKenney, Thomas L., Benton's charges against, 305;
    cross examines Lindsay, 308;
    negotiates treaty, 312.

  McKenzie, Elizabeth, story of, 146-47.

  McKenzie, Isaac, recovers daughters, 147.

  McKenzie, Margaret, story of, 146-47.

  McKillip, Mrs. Eleanor, marries John Kinzie, 145-46.
    See also Kinzie, Mrs. John.

  McKillip, Margaret, marries Lieutenant Helm, 147.
    See also Helm, Mrs.

  McNeil, John, commander of Fort Dearborn, 282.

  McNeil, Mrs. John, half-sister of Franklin Pierce, 282.

  McNeil, J. W. S., son of John McNeil, 282.

  Mackinac, rendezvous against Foxes, 59;
    captured in Pontiac's war, 80;
    English reoccupy, 80;
    expect assault, 91;
    Patrick Sinclair takes command, 94;
    last Northwestern post surrendered, 126;
    outpost of Americans in Northwest, 128;
    dullness of life at, 153;
    Indian plot against, 193;
    garrison in 1812, 198;
    Hull learns of surrender, 209, 215;
    Dickson's share in capture, 214, 237;
    Hull plans to supply, 214-15;
    Dickson leads warriors to, 238;
    experience of Healds at, 242;
    Jacob B. Varnum winters at, 273-74;
    headquarters of American Fur Company, 278;
    French post at, 286;
    factory at, 295, 298;
    garrison changed, 321.

  Madison, Fort, factory at, 295.

  Mahnawbunnoquah, wife of J. B. Beaubien, 346.

  Main Poc, speech on injustice to Indians, 182;
    followers threaten Fort Dearborn, 193;
    marauding of, 194;
    sends news of Hull's reverses, 393.

  Maiden, distribution of goods to Indians, 188;
    Northwestern Indians visit, 193;
    Hull's operations before, 209;
    Brock reaches, 210;
    Hull hopes for surrender of, 217.

  Mann, Mrs., grant to, 358.

  Mantet, trading project, 127.

  Maps, list of, 450.

  Marest, Father, in Fox war, 58.

  Marietta, founded, 109;
    settlements near, raided, 111.

  Marquette, Father, crosses Chicago Portage, 9;
    interest in exploration, 22;
    founds mission of St. Ignace, 23;
    joins Joliet's expedition, 23;
    second expedition, 24-29;
    death, 28;
    Indian traders accompany, 285.

  Marsh, Laurie, grant to, 360.

  Mascouten Indians, allies of Foxes, 56;
    kill Miami squaws, 56-57;
    war parties against French, 58;
    Huron foray against, 61-62;
    desert Foxes, 66.

  Mason, Edward G., credits French fort tradition, 43;
    describes fort at Chicago, 47;
    study of Spanish attack on St. Joseph, 100;
    credits story of Job Wright, 259;
    account of Fort Dearborn massacre reprinted, 399;
    writings, 451.

  Massac, Fort, Heald commander of, 402.

  Massachusetts, government trading houses, 290.

  Matchekewis, joins in attack on St. Louis, 95.

  Matson, N., account of Du Sable, 139;
    account of captivity of Lee family, 255;
    writings, 255, 451.

  Maumee City, settlement at, 239.

  Maumee Rapids, British build fort at, 118;
    settlement at, 145-46;
    Hull's army reaches, 209.

  Maumee River, Wayne destroys villages on, 117-18;
    Cass and Schoolcraft ascend, 343.

  Meigs, Fort, Mrs. Simmons reaches, 250.

  Meigs, Governor, raises militia for Hull's campaign, 207.

  Metea, speech of Cass to, 183;
    Pottawatomie orator, 344.

  Miami, De la Balme captures, 98.

  Miami, Fort, location, 4, 44, 49;
    La Salle builds, 31;
    captured in Pontiac's war, 80.

  Miami Indians, Harmar's expedition against, 110-11;
    St. Clair to establish fort among, 112;
    villages ravaged, 122;
    followers of Wells in Fort Dearborn massacre, 217, 219, 225, 229,
      406, 416.

  Michigan, settlements in 1812, 196-97;
    Hull as governor, 205;
    Hull surrenders to British, 210;
    panic of settlers in Black Hawk War, 325;
    militia in Black Hawk War, 327-28.

  Militia, character in 1812, 203-4.

  Mills, Elias, captivity, 238-39.

  Milwaukee, character of Indian population, 83;
    Indians join Spaniards against St. Joseph, 100.

  Mirandeau Jean Baptiste, grant to, 362.

  Mirandeau, Thomas, grant to, 362.

  Mississippi River, Joliet and Marquette descend, 22-23;
    Hennepin's exploration planned, 32;
    La Salle descends, 34;
    Spain seeks exclusive navigation, 105;
    Cass descends, 313;
    Black Hawk's followers cross, 323, 334;
    western boundary of United States, 340.

  Missouri Gazette, report of Fort Dearborn massacre in, 393-94.

  Moll, Herman, description of Chicago Portage, 3-4;
    maps, 4, 450.

  Montgomery, John, pursues British, 97.

  Montigny, threatens Foxes, 64.

  Moreau, Pierre, courier de bois, in Illinois, 25-27.

  Morgan, George, urges expedition against Detroit, 84.

  Morgan, Moses, workman on second Fort Dearborn, 134;
    describes Ouilmette, 145;
    story of Fort Dearborn captive, 260-61;
    narrative of massacre, 399-401.

  Mortt, August, death, 236, 334.

  Moses, John, estimate of Mrs. Kinzie's narrative, 382;
    history, 451.

  Mount Joliet (Monjolly), portage extends to, 11-12, 16;
    furs transported between, and Chicago, 289.

  Mud Lake, La Salle describes, 6;
    passage of, by American Fur Company traders, 14-15;
    Cass passes night on, 313.

  Murders, of Indians by whites, 180-82;
    by Indians in Illinois, 193-94.


  Nachitoches, factory at, 295.

  Nakewoin, joins Spaniards against St. Joseph, 100.

  "Napoleon," transports Michigan militia, 328.

  Nash, Jeffrey, case of, 148, 150-52, 450;
    articles of indenture, 287.

  Navy, in War of 1812, 202-3.

  Nayocantay, speech, 320.

  Necessity, Fort, capture of, 66.

  Needs, John, death, 433-34.

  Needs, Mrs. John, fate, 235-36.

  New Orleans, cholera at, 329.

  Niagara, portage at, 4;
    council at, 109;
    invasion of Canada from, planned, 205.

  Niagara, Fort, garrison changes, 321-22;
    troops from, sent to Chicago, 327-28;
    troops return to, 338.

  Nicolet, Jean, exploration of, 52.

  Niles, Fort St. Joseph at, 45;
    militia mustered out at, 328;
    Carey's Mission near, 345.

  Niles' Register, reports of Fort Dearborn massacre in, 392-96.

  Noles, Joseph, captivity, 238-39.

  Nontagarouche, taunts De Noyelles, 73.

  Northwest, Indian population at opening of Revolution, 83;
    French-Spanish efforts to gain, 105;
    posts held by British, 106-7;
    relations between Indians of, and United States after Revolution, 108;
    territorial government provided, 109;
    title to land of, 125, 340;
    posts surrendered to Americans, 126;
    Wayne's victory makes settlement possible, 127-28;
    unrest of Indians, 178;
    dangers to frontier, 196-97;
    defenses in 1812, 197-98;
    strength of British and Indian forces in, 198-99;
    panic of settlers, 200;
    effect of Hull's capture on, 211;
    United States asked to renounce portion of, 262;
    government to establish garrisons in, 264;
    American Fur Company attempts to monopolize trade of, 301;
    treaties closing War of 1812 in, 363.

  Nuscotnemeg, murders white men, 193-94;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 223;
    Storrow meets, 280.


  O'Fallon, John, ransoms property of Healds, 243.

  O'Fallon (Missouri), Heald home at, 244-45.

  Ohio, admission of, 128;
    conduct of militia in Fort Wayne campaign, 204;
    militia in Hull's army, 206-7;
    Hull's advance through, 207-9.

  Ohio, Falls of, Clark builds blockhouse at, 85-86;
    Clark retires to, 94;
    expedition against Clark at, 95;
    British plan to attack Clark at, 104.

  Ohio Company, founds Marietta, 109.

  Ohio River, British raid settlements, 103-4.

  Okra, tells story of Fort Dearborn massacre, 400.

  Onontio, designation of French governor and king, 64.

  Onorakinguiah, bravery of, 73-74.

  Ordinance of 1787, prohibition of slavery in, upheld, 152.

  Osage, Fort, factory at, 295.

  Ottawa Indians, follow Prophet's advice, 190;
    plot of, against Northwestern posts, 193;
    and Chicago Treaty of 1821, 344-45;
    treaty with, at Prairie du Chien, 364.

  Ottawa River, French follow route of, 52.

  Ouashala, Fox chief, 63;
    nephew burned, 64.

  Ouiatanon, population, 82;
    Linctot reaches, 93;
    French post at, 286.

  Ouiatanon Indians, measles among, 59-60;
    visited by De Noyelles, 71.

  Ouilmette, Antoine, transports travelers across portage, 13, 19, 143;
    career, 142-45;
    house of, 166;
    hired to prepare garden, 265;
    hires wagon, 289.

  Ouilmette, Josette, grant to, 358, 362.

  Owen, Thomas J. V., negotiates treaty, 354.


  Paris, Treaty of, 79, 340;
    cholera at, 333.

  Parkman, Francis, account of siege of Detroit, 55;
    writings, 452.

  Patrick Henry, Fort, named, 89.

  Pattinson, Hugh, dispute with John Kinzie, 156;
    hires furs carried across Chicago Portage, 289.

  Peck, John M., Annals of the West corrected, 414.

  Peoria, variations of name, 77;
    Du Sable at, 139-40;
    John Kinzie trades at, 147, 287;
    servitude of Jeffrey Nash at, 152;
    Helm at, 246.
    See also Fort Clark; Fort Crevecoeur; Lake Peoria.

  Peoria, Lake, Fort Crevecoeur at, 31-33;
    Linctot at, 92;
    Montgomery reaches, 97;
    Spaniards leave boats at, 101;
    Indians cede land at, 125.

  Pepin, Lake, French fort on, abandoned, 65.

  Petchaho, asks establishment of factory at Fort Clark, 300.

  Petite Fort, fight at, 99-100.

  Pettle, Louis, trader, 142;
    member of Chicago militia, 431.

  Phillips, Joseph, report of, 16, 19.

  Pickawillany, capture of, 78, 90.

  Pierce, Benjamin K., marriage, 274.

  Pierce, Franklin, brothers at Mackinac, 274;
    Mrs. McNeil a half-sister, 282.

  Pinet, Father, mission of, at Chicago, 38-42, 137;
    at Cahokia, 42.

  Pitt, Fort, resists Indian attack, 80;
    importance of, 83.

  Pittsburgh, Wayne establishes camp near, 116;
    Healds at, 243.

  Plainfield (Ill.), panic of settlers, 325-27.

  Poindexter, Thomas, death, 285, 434.

  Pokagon, grant to, 357.

  Pomme de Cigne River, Fox forts on, 72.

  Popple, Henry, map, 44, 450.

  Portage des Sioux, whites killed near, 193;
    treaties negotiated at, 262.

  Porter, George B., negotiates treaty, 354.

  Porter, Rev. Jeremiah, describes Indian gathering at Chicago, 366-67;
    writings, 452.

  Porteret, Pierre, companion of Marquette, 24.

  Porthier, Mrs. Victoire, version of La Lime's death, 150;
    grant to, 361-62.

  Pottawatomie Indians, numbers at opening of Revolution, 83;
    plot against Northwestern posts, 193;
    Dickson among, at St. Joseph, 238;
    at Maumee City, 239;
    payment of annuity to, 314;
    in Black Hawk War, 323-24;
    treaties with, 343-66;
    Carey's Mission among, 345;
    farewell to Chicago, 367-70.

  Prairie du Chien, factory and garrison at, 264;
    garrison withdrawn, 310;
    militia organized, 312;
    treaties of, 312, 317, 358, 364-65;
    Red Bird's imprisonment at, 319-20;
    General Scott at, 334.

  Presque Isle, captured in Pontiac's war, 80.

  Proctor, Henry A., disclaims responsibility for Fort Dearborn massacre, 236;
    orders Fort Dearborn captives ransomed, 239;
    letter of Woodward to, 239, 422-24, 428;
    letter of Bullock to, 254;
    paroles Heald, 403.

  Prophet, The, career, 185-90;
    cause of agitation led by, 341.

  Puthuff, Major, performs marriage ceremony, 274.


  "Queen Charlotte," carries news of Fort Dearborn massacre, 393.


  Ramezay, Claude de, recommends fort at Chicago, 44.

  Rangers, protect Ohio frontier, 111;
    cholera among United States, 335.

  Recovery, Fort, built, 116;
    assault on, 117.

  Red Bird, attacks Gagnier family, 310-11;
    surrender and death, 318-20.

  Revolution, in the West, 81-104.

  Reynolds, John, story of Mrs. La Compt, 137-38;
    in Black Hawk War, 323-25, 337;
    negotiates treaty, 337;
    history, 452.

  Rhea, James, troops fever-stricken, 159;
    transferred to Fort Wayne, 175-76.

  Rhone River, floods of, 7, 9.

  Rice, Luther, grant to, 359.

  Roberts, Charles, and recovery of Fort Dearborn captives, 237;
    treatment of Healds, 242, 403, 407, 413.

  Robinson, Alexander, statements about Du Sable, 141-42;
    resident of Chicago in 1816, 144;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 223;
    conveys Healds to Mackinac, 241-42, 413-14;
    hired to prepare garden, 265;
    grants to, 357;
    narrative of massacre, 398;
    given charge of Heald, 401.

  Rock Island, garrison to be established, 264;
    cholera at, 335-37;
    troops leave, 337-38.
    See also Fort Armstrong.

  Rock River, Montgomery's expedition on, 97;
    Black Hawk plans to raise crop on, 324;
    march of troops along, 335;
    Black Hawk's speech on beauty of country, 337.

  Ronan, George, ordered to Fort Dearborn, 177;
    account of, in _Wau Bun_, 223;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 226;
    death, 407.

  Russell, April murders at farm of, 212-13.


  Sac Indians, allies of Foxes, 56;
    shelter Foxes, 70;
    assist Americans, 91;
    murderers of Menominees, 335-36;
    murder Americans, 341.

  Sac and Fox Indians, confederation, 70;
    wage war on Illinois and Chippewas, 77;
    part in attack on St. Louis, 95-96;
    maintain hostile attitude, 262;
    treaties with, 337, 341-42.

  St. Ange, Jean de, commands Charlevoix's escort, 63;
    leads expedition against Foxes, 66.

  Sainte Ange, Pilette de, early resident of Chicago, 137.

  St. Clair, Arthur, governor of Northwest Territory, 109;
    negotiates treaty of Fort Harmar, 109-10;
    calls for troops, no; expedition of, 111-14;
    letters of, 153, 180.

  St. Cosme, Father, crosses Chicago Portage, 11, 17;
    letter of, 40;
    party of, at Chicago, 40-42;
    at Cahokia, 42.

  St. Ignace, Mission of, 23.

  St. Joseph, Linctot plans to attack, 93;
    Hamelin captures, 99;
    Spanish attack on, 100-103;
    studies of, 100,102, 439, 451, 455;
    Fort Dearborn garrison camps at, 130, 132, 136;
    captivity of Healds at, 241, 403, 407;
    French post at, 286;
    Michigan militia at, 328.

  St. Joseph, Fort, at Niles, 45;
    captured in Pontiac's war, 80;
    relics from, 306.

  St. Joseph Portage, La Salle uses, 5;
    Hubbard uses, 15;
    description of, 375.
    See also Kankakee River.

  St. Joseph River, Harmar destroys towns on, in; Swearingen descends, 132;
    Kinzie removes to, 146;
    traders operate at Chicago, 287.

  St. Lawrence River, gives French access to interior, 2.

  St. Louis, British attack on, 95-97;
    preparations against in 1781, 100;
    treaty negotiated at, 341-42.

  St. Louis, Fort, navigation begins at, 6;
    built, 35;
    Cavelier's party at, 37-38;
    ordered abandoned, 44:
    Tonty succeeds La Salle at, 286.
    See also Starved Rock.

  St. Mary's River, Harmar destroys towns on, 111;
    Wayne ravages villages on, 122.

  St. Peter's River, Long's expedition to, 281;
    factory to be established on, 301.

  Sandusky, captured in Pontiac's war, 80;
    John Kinzie at, 145;
    Jacob B. Varnum at, 271, 303;
    factory at, 295.

  Sandwich, Hull captures, 209;
    abandons, 217;
    Dickson at, 238.

  Sauganash Hotel, 350, 369.

  Sault Ste. Marie, English abandon, 80;
    reoccupy, 80;
    garrison changed, 321.

  Schoolcraft, Henry R., crosses Chicago Portage, 12, 15-16, 19;
    records information about Du Sable, 141;
    description of Chicago in 1820, 281,339;
    describes Chicago Treaty of 1821, 343;
    account of Fort Dearborn massacre, 388;
    writings, 453.

  Schwartz, J. C, grant to, 360.

  Scott, Charles, joins Wayne with Kentucky troops, 117.

  Scott, Martin, eccentricities, 322.

  Scott, Winfield, physical stature, 282;
    in Black Hawk War, 323, 328-37;
    Memoirs, 453.

  Sears, John, teacher among Ottawas, 345.

  Second Infantry, movements of, 321, 338.

  Sendale, Peter, court martial of, 163.

  Settlement, geographic factors, 2;
    rush of, west of Alleghenies, 109.

  Shabbona, mission to Big Foot's village, 315;
    opposes war, 324;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 397.

  Shavehead, story of, 258-59.

  Shawnee Indians, employed on Chicago Portage, 18;
    Tecumseh a Shawnee, 185-86.

  Shea, John G., translation of St. Cosme's letter, 40;
    writings, 454.

  "Sheldon Thompson," carries troops to Chicago, 329;
    cholera on, 330-32.

  Shirreff, Patrick, observations on Chicago, 348-51, 357;
    writings, 453.

  Sibley, Solomon, negotiates treaty, 343.

  Siggenauk, in Spanish attack on St. Joseph, 100;
    De Peyster tries to capture, 100-101.

  Simcoe, John, hostility toward Americans, 115;
    builds fort at Maumee Rapids, 118;
    proposes fort at Chicago, 127.

  Simmons, David, death, 247.

  Simmons, John, death, 247.

  Simmons, Mrs. John, in Fort Dearborn massacre, 224;
    captivity, 247-51;
    later career, 251.

  Sinclair, Patrick, commander at Mackinac, 94;
    operations against Americans, 95-98;
    arrests Chevalier, 101.

  Sioux Indians, French trade with. 54;
    and Foxes ally, 76-77;
    in attack on St. Louis, 95, 98;
    plot against Fort Snelling, 283;
    kill Black Hawk's followers, 334.

  Smith, E. Kirby, at Fort Winnebago, 321.

  Smith, William C, occupies Kinzie's house, 142;
    praises La Lime, 149;
    first Fort Dearborn surgeon, 170;
    part in garrison feud, 171-72;
    letter of, 454.

  Snelling, Fort, plot of Sioux and Foxes against, 283;
    troops from, in Winnebago War, 317.

  "Snipe," story of, 357-58.

  South Water Street, only business street, 349;
    Indians dance down, 354.

  Southwest Company, traders hostile to Americans, 264.

  Spain, British plans against, 94-95;
    efforts to regain Northwest, 105;
    war with, discussed, 156.

  Spanish, operations in lower Mississippi Valley, 94;
   defense of St. Louis, 95-96;
    expedition against St. Joseph. 100-103;
    king, on ownership of Northwest, 103.

  Spring Wells, treaties negotiated at, 262.

  Starved Rock, capital of La Salle's colony, 5;
    Tonty ordered to fortify, 32;
    Iroquois destroy village at, 33;
    Fort St. Louis built on, 35;
    Foxes destroyed near, 46, 66-67;
    French retire to, 60-61;
    Foxes capture, 64;
    Illinois abandon, 64.
    See also Fort St. Louis.

  Stevens, Frank E., writings, 323,455.

  Stillman, Isaiah, defeat of, 324.

  Storrow, Samuel A., reception at Fort Dearborn, 153;
    description of Chicago, 280.

  Street, Joseph, report of, 320.

  Stuart, Robert, agent of American Fur Company, 277;
    at Chicago Treaty of 1833, 360-61.

  Sumner, E. V., at Fort Winnebago, 321.

  "Superior," carries troops to Chicago,329.

  Suttenfield, John, death, 246, 433.

  Swearingen, James S., leads troops to Chicago, 131-34;
    connection with Fort Dearborn, 170;
    journal, 373-77;
    papers, 378-79, 455.


  Talon, Jean Baptiste, sends Joliet to explore Mississippi, 22-23.

  Tamaroa Indians, St. Cosme stationed among, 42.

  Tanner, John, crosses Chicago Portage, 13, 19, 143-44;
    narrative of, 455.

  Tarke, speech of, 124.

  Taylor, Zachary, in Black Hawk War, 323.

  Tecumseh, protagonist of Harrison, 120;
    career, 185-92;
    repudiates Tippecanoe affair, 195;
    attacks Hull's line of communications, 209;
    sends to Chicago news of Hull's retreat, 222;
    cause of agitation led by, 341;
    biography, 442.

  Teggart, Frederick J., study of Spanish attack on St. Joseph, 100,
    102, 455.

  Thompson, Seth, in garrison feud, 173-76;
    death, 177.

  Thwaites, Reuben G., on Mrs. Kinzie's massacre narrative, 382.

  "Tiger," carries Jacob B. Varnum to Chicago, 274.

  Tippecanoe, battle, 192;
    Tecumseh repudiates, 195;
    forces engaged, 199-200.

  Tippecanoe Creek, Tecumseh's town at mouth of, 188.

  Tonty, Illinois career, 31-36;
    in Denonville's campaign, 38;
    trading license at Fort St. Louis, 44, 286;
    describes Durantaye's fort, 47-48.

  Topinabee, brother-in-law of Burnett, 347;
    pleads for whisky, 348;
    Pottawatomie chief, 377.

  Tousey, Thomas, explores Des Plaines River, 12-13.

  "Tracy," voyage to Chicago in 1803, 131-32.

  Trade, rivalry over, at Fort Dearborn, 172;
    channels of, 263;
    dependence of Indians upon, 285;
    Indian, at Chicago, 285-309.
    See also Indian Trade; Traders.

  Traders, French, in Illinois, 25-26, 285;
    treachery of, to British, 96;
    influence of Canadian, in Northwest, 128;
    disputes of, 156;
    sympathize with British, 198;
    smuggle goods into Northwest, 263;
    carried across Chicago Portage, 289;
    interest of, in Chicago Treaty of 1833, 355.

  Treaties, with Indians of Northwest, 108-10, 191, 262-63;
    Indian ideas concerning, 178;
    whites break, 180-81;
    Indian fidelity to, 181;
    collections of, 456;
    Treaty of Greenville, 42-43, 122-25, 191, 225, 262, 340;
    of Paris, 79;
    of Utrecht, 79;
    of alliance with France, 103;
    of 1789, 103, 105, 107, 340;
    of Fort Finney, 109;
    of Fort Harmar, 109-10, 122-23, 190-91;
    of Fort Mcintosh, 109, 190-91;
    John Jay's treaty, 125-26;
    second, of Greenville, 179;
    Chicago, of 1821, 183, 343-48;
    of Ghent, 262;
    Chicago, of 1833, 277, 348-66;
    of Butte des Morts, 312, 317;
    of Prairie du Chien, 312, 317, 358, 364-65.

  Trimble, William A., at Chicago Treaty of 1821, 345.

  Trueman, Alexander, murder of, 115.

  Turkey River, British capture boat near mouth of, 96.

  Turner, William, letter of, 244.

  Twiggs, David E., at Fort Winnebago, 321;
    in Black Hawk War, 323;
    cholera among troops of, 329-30.


  United States, discord with Great Britain, 106;
    relations with Northwestern Indians, 108, 263;
    reluctant to begin war, 110,115;
    Indian policy, 179-84, 292-93;
    military power in 1812, 201-2;
    unreadiness for war, 202-5;
    navy in War of 1812, 202-3;
    army in 1812, 203-5;
    factory system, 289-309;
    rangers, cholera among, 335.

  Urbana, Hull's army at, 207-8.

  Utrecht, Treaty of, 79.


  Van Cleave, Charlotte Ouisconsin, reminiscences, 456.

  Van Horn, James, captivity, 238-39.

  Van Voorhis, Isaac, stationed at Fort Dearborn, 177;
    letter of, 196, 223, 387;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 226, 420;
    given key of factory, 299;
    death 386-87, 407.

  Varnum, Jacob B., career, 270-76;
    ignorance of Indian trade, 303;
    on abolition of Chicago factory, 308;
    journal, 457.

  Varnum, Joseph B., commends John Whistler, 174;
    factor at Chicago, 297-98;
    at Mackinac, 298.

  Venango, captured in Pontiac's war, 80.

  Vermilion River, Danville militia cross, 316.

  Vincennes, population, 82;
    Clark gains, 87;
    Hamilton captures, 87-88
    Clark's expedition against, 88-89,
    position of, in frontier, 97;
    Council of 1810, 190-92;
    Heald stationed at, 402.


  Wabansia, opposed to war, 324.

  Wabasha, operations against Americans, 95, 98.

  Walker, Rev. Jesse, pioneer preacher, 245.

  Wapsipinicon River, Fox posts on, 72.

  War of 1812, strength of contestants, 201-5;
    news of declaration, at Maiden, 209;
    at Fort Dearborn, 214.

  Washington, Fort, Harmar starts from, 110;
    St. Clair's expedition gathers at, in; army flees to, 114;
    Wayne establishes camp near, 116.

  Washington, George, captured, 66;
    favors Clark's projects, 103;
    opinion of Wayne, 115-16;
    sends Jay to England, 125;
    appoints Wayne to receive Northwestern posts, 126;
    on frontier violence toward Indians, 180;
    advocates government factory system, 292.

  _Wau Bun_, account of Fort Dearborn massacre in, 216, 382-88, 413;
    of April murders, 212;
    of Ronan, 223;
    of Thomas Burns, 234;
    of captivity of Kinzie family, 245;
    of captivity of Mrs. Helm, 247;
    of captivity of Mrs. Burns, 252;
    of fate of Lee family, 254-55;
    ignores Helm, 276.

  Wayne, Anthony, gains land at Chicago, 42-43, 123;
    expedition of, 115-22;
    negotiates Treaty of Greenville, 122-25;
    receives surrender of Northwestern posts, 126;
    appreciates importance of Chicago, 127;
    victory of Fallen Timbers, 119-21, 199, 292, 340;
    courts martial under, 162;
    generalship, 199.

  Wayne, Fort, built, 122;
    garrison fever-stricken, 158;
    William Whistler transferred to, 169;
    Rhea transferred to, 176;
    Indian plot against, 193;
    garrison in 1812, 198;
    campaign, 204;
    officers at, ordered to assist Heald, 217;
    Heald commander at, 225, 403;
    St. Joseph Indians join in attack on, 241;
    mail between Chicago and, 267;
    factory at, 295.

  Weatherford, William, negotiates treaty, 354.

  Webb, J. Watson, letter of, 267, 457;
    Fort Dearborn career, 282-83;
    biography, 439.

  WeKau, attacks Gagnier family, 310-11;
    surrender and fate of, 318-20.

  Welch, Mrs., grant to, 358.

  Wells, Rebekah, marriage, 176-77.
    Sec also Heald, Mrs. Rebekah.

  Wells, William, in St. Clair's defeat, 115;
    leader of Wayne's scouts, 117;
    uncle of Rebekah Wells, 176;
    learns of plot against Americans, 193;
    reports movements of Main Poc, 194;
    leads force to relief of Heald, 217, 219. 395, 406, 416;
    career, 224-25;
    in Fort Dearborn massacre, 226-28;
    and council with Indians, 388;
    on destruction of liquor and ammunition, 389;
    death, 395, 403, 407, 400-11.

  Wentworth, John, letter of Abraham Edwards to, 252-53;
    physical stature, 282;
    statements of Scott to, on cholera, 331;
    addresses, 458.

  West, desires war with Great Britain, 195-96.

  Western Courier, report of Fort Dearborn massacre in, 392.

  Whisky. See Liquor.

  Whistler, George W., career of, 169.

  Whistler, James A. McNeil, and Fort Dearborn, 169-70.

  Whistler, John, commander at Fort Dearborn, 130;
    marriage of daughter, 130-31, 158, 170;
    "father" of Chicago, 148;
    attempts journey to Cincinnati, 154-55;
    map of Fort Dearborn and vicinity, 163-67;
    career, 168;
    in garrison feud, 171-76;
    transferred to Detroit, 175;
    letter to, 288;
    family, genealogy, 458.

  Whistler, John, Jr., partner of Kinzie, 172.

  Whistler, Sarah, marriage, 130-31, 158, 170.

  Whistler, William, journey to Chicago, 131;
    race with Indian, 160-61;
    career, 168-69;
    in garrison feud, 171;
    in Winnebago War, 318-19;
    in Black Hawk War, 322, 327, 331, 333, 338.

  Whistler, Mrs. William, and founding of Fort Dearborn, 133, 168-69.

  White, Liberty, murder of, 212-13.

  "William Penn," carries troops to Chicago, 329.

  Winans, Susan Simmons, career, 251;
    narrative of, 398-99.

  Winnebago, Fort, established, 321;
    J. H. Kinzie subagent at, 561, 383.

  Winnebago Indians, news of depredations, 211-12;
    commit April murders, 213, 416;
    celebrate war dance, 283;
    treaties with, 312, 317, 337;
    in Black Hawk War, 323-24.

  Winnebago War, 284, 310-21.

  Winnemac, brings evacuation order, 217, 416;
    advises Heald, 388, 416.

  Winsor, Justin, description of Chicago Portage, 3;
    writings, 458.

  Wisconsin, Nicolet explores, 52;
    abandoned to Indians, 65;
    British influence over Indians of, 263.

  Wisconsin River, British assemble at mouth of, 95;
    Black Hawk flees to Dalles of, 334.
    See also Fox-Wisconsin Waterway.

  Witchcraft delusion, 187.

  Wolcott, Alexander, Indian agent at Chicago, 239, 270-71, 383;
    marriage, 383-84;
    in charge of abandoned fort, 314;
    urges bribery of Indian leaders, 346;
    signs treaty. 364.

  Wolcott, James, at Maumee City, 239.

  Woodward, Augustus B., letter to Proctor, 234, 237, 396-97, 422-24, 428;
    Helm narrative sent to, 388;
    letter of Helm to, announcing narrative, 415.

  Worth, William J., at Fort Winnebago, 321.

  Wright, Job, story of, 258-59.

  Wyandot Indians, approve Treaty of Greenville, 124;
    appeal of, 179;
    at Maumee City, 239.


  Zumwalt, Jacob, Heald buys plantation of, 244, 404.

       *       *       *       *       *


Transcriber Note

Due to the fact that much of the text are reprinted from other sources,
the spelling and hyphenation were not standardized. So, Checagou,
Chicagou, Chikagwa, etc. all refer to what is currently called Chicago.
Ep-i-con-yare, Epi-con-yare and Epiconyare were all retained as is.