WAU-BUN,
THE
EARLY DAY IN THE NORTHWEST.
BY
MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE,
OF CHICAGO.
"If we but knew the exact meaning of the word 'WAU-BUN,'
we should be happy."--_Critic_.
"WAU-BUN--The dawn--the break of day."--_Ojibeway Vocabulary_.
* * * * *
PHILADELPHIA
1873
PREFACE.
Every work partaking of the nature of an autobiography is supposed to
demand an apology to the public. To refuse such a tribute, would be to
recognize the justice of the charge, so often brought against our
countrymen--of a too great willingness to be made acquainted with the
domestic history and private affairs of their neighbors.
It is, doubtless, to refute this calumny that we find travellers, for
the most part, modestly offering some such form of explanation as this,
to the reader: "That the matter laid before him was, in the first place,
simply letters to friends, never designed to be submitted to other eyes,
and only brought forward now at the solicitation of wiser judges than
the author himself."
No such plea can, in the present instance, be offered. The record of
events in which the writer had herself no share, was preserved in
compliance with the suggestion of a revered relative, whose name often
appears in the following pages. "My child," she would say, "write these
things down, as I tell them to you. Hereafter our children, and even
strangers, will feel interested in hearing the story of our early lives
and sufferings." And it is a matter of no small regret and
self-reproach, that much, very much, thus narrated was, through
negligence, or a spirit of procrastination, suffered to pass unrecorded.
With regard to the pictures of domestic life and experience (preserved,
as will be seen, in journals, letters, and otherwise), it is true their
publication might have been deferred until the writer had passed away
from the scene of action; and such, it was supposed, would have been
their lot--that they would only have been dragged forth hereafter, to
show to a succeeding generation what "The Early Day" of our Western
homes had been. It never entered the anticipations of the most sanguine
that the march of improvement and prosperity would, in less than a
quarter of a century, have so obliterated the traces of "the first
beginning," that a vast and intelligent multitude would be crying out
for information in regard to the early settlement of this portion of our
country, which so few are left to furnish.
An opinion has been expressed, that a comparison of the present times
with those that are past, would enable our young people, emigrating from
their luxurious homes at "the East," to bear, in a spirit of patience
and contentment, the slight privations and hardships they are at this
day called to meet with. If, in one instance, this should be the case,
the writer may well feel happy to have incurred even the charge of
egotism, in giving thus much of her own history.
It may be objected that all that is strictly personal, might have been
more modestly put forth under the name of a third person; or that the
events themselves and the scenes might have been described, while those
participating in them might have been kept more in the background. In
the first case, the narrative would have lost its air of truth and
reality--in the second, the experiment would merely have been tried of
dressing up a theatre for representation, and omitting the actors.
Some who read the following sketches may be inclined to believe that a
residence among our native brethren and an attachment growing out of our
peculiar relation to them, have exaggerated our sympathies, and our
sense of the wrongs they have received at the hands of the whites. This
is not the place to discuss that point. There is a tribunal at which man
shall be judged for that which he has meted out to his fellow-man.
May our countrymen take heed that their legislation shall never unfit
them to appear "with joy, and not with grief," before that tribunal!
CHICAGO, July, 1855.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Departure from Detroit
CHAPTER II.
Michilimackinac--American Fur Company--Indian Trade--Mission
School--Point St. Ignace
CHAPTER III.
Arrival at Green Bay--Mrs. Arnot--General Root--Political Dispatches--A
Summerset--Shanty-Town--M. Rolette--Indian
Morning Song--Mr. Cadle's Mission--Party at Miss Doty's--Misses
Grignon--Mrs. Baird's Party--Mrs. Beall
CHAPTER IV.
Arrangements for Travelling--Fox River--Judge Doty--Judge
Réaume--M. Boilvin--Canadian Voyageurs: their Songs--The
Kakalin--Wish-tay-yun--Rev. Eleazar Williams--Passage through
the Rapids--Grande Chûte--Krissman
CHAPTER V.
Beautiful Encampment--Winnebago Lake--Miss Four-Legs--Garlic
Island--Wild Rice
CHAPTER VI.
Breakfast at Betty More's--Judge Law--Fastidiousness; what
came of it
CHAPTER VII.
Butte des Morts--French Cognomens--Serpentine Course of Fox
River--Lake Puckaway--Lac de Boeuf--Fort Winnebago.
CHAPTER VIII.
Major and Mrs. Twiggs--A Davis--An Indian Funeral--Conjugal
Affliction--Indian Chiefs; Talk-English--The Wild-Cat--The
Dandy
CHAPTER IX.
Housekeeping--The First Dinner
CHAPTER X.
Indian Payment--Pawnee Blanc--The Washington Woman--Raising
Funds
CHAPTER XI.
Louisa--Garrison Life--Dr. Newhall--Affliction--Domestic
Accommodations--Ephraim--New-Year's Day--Native Custom--Day-kau-ray's
Views of Education--Captain Harney's Mince-Pie
CHAPTER XII.
Lizzie Twiggs--Preparation for a Journey--The Regimental Tailor
CHAPTER XIII.
eparture from Fort Winnebago--Duck Creek--Upset in a
Canoe--Pillon--Encamping in Winter--Four Lakes--Indian
Encampment--Blue Mound--Morrison's--A Tennessee Woman
CHAPTER XIV.
Rev. Mr. Kent--Losing One's Way--A Tent Blown Down--Discovery
of a Fence--Hamilton's Diggings--Frontier Housekeeping--Wm.
S. Hamilton--A Miner--Hard Riding--Kellogg's Grove
CHAPTER XV.
Rock River--- Dixon's--John Ogie--Missing the Trail--Hours of
Trouble--Famine in the Camp--Relief
CHAPTER XVI.
A Pottowattamie Lodge--A Tempest--Piché's--Hawley's--The Du
Page--Mr. Dogherty--The Aux Plaines--Mrs. Lawton--Wolf
Point--Chicago
CHAPTER XVII.
Fort Dearborn--Chicago in 1831--First Settlement of Chicago--John
Kinzie, Sen.---Fate of George Forsyth--Trading Posts--Canadian
Voyageurs--M. St. Jean--Louis la Liberté
CHAPTER XVIII.
Massacre at Chicago
CHAPTER XIX.
Massacre, continued--Mrs. Helm--Ensign Ronan--Captain
Wells--Mrs. Holt--Mrs. Heald--The Sau-ga-nash--Sergeant Griffith--Mrs.
Burns--Black Partridge and Mrs. Lee--Nau-non-gee and Sergeant
Hays
CHAPTER XX.
Treatment of American Prisoners by the British--Captivity of Mr.
Kinzie--Battle on Lake Erie--Cruelty of General Proctor's
Troops--General Harrison--Rebuilding of Fort Dearborn--Red Bird--A
Humorous Incident--Cession of the Territory around Chicago
CHAPTER XXI.
Severe Spring Weather--Pistol-Firing--Milk Punch--A Sermon--Pre-emption
to "Kinzie's Addition"--Liberal Sentiments
CHAPTER XXII.
The Captives
CHAPTER XXIII.
Colonel McKillip--Second-Sight--Ball at Hickory Creek--Arrival
of the "Napoleon"--Troubles of Embarkation
CHAPTER XXIV.
Departure for Port Winnebago--A Frightened Indian--Encampment
at Dunkley's Grove--Horses Lost--Getting Mired--An Ague
cured by a Rattlesnake--Crystal Lake--Story of the Little Rail
CHAPTER XXV.
Return Journey, continued--Soldiers' Encampment--Big-Foot Lake--Village
of Maunk-suck--A Young Gallant--Climbing--Mountain-Passes--Turtle
Creek--Kosh-ko-nong--Crossing a Marsh--Twenty-Mile Prairie--Hastings's
Woods--Duck Creek--Brunet--Home
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Agency--The Blacksmith's House--Building a Kitchen--Four-Legs, the
Dandy--Indian Views of Civilization--Efforts of M.
Mazzuchelli--Charlotte
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Cut-Nose--The Fawn--Visit of White Crow--Parting with
Friends--Krissman--Louisa again--The Sunday-School
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Plante--Removal--Domestic Inconveniences--Indian Presents--Grandmother
Day-kau-ray--Indian Customs--Indian Dances--The Medicine-Dance--Indian
Graves--Old Boilvin's Wake
CHAPTER XXIX.
Indian Tales--Story of the Red Fox
CHAPTER XXX.
Story of Shee-shee-banze
CHAPTER XXXI.
Visit to Green Bay--Disappointment--Return Journey--Knaggs's--Blind
Indian--Ma-zhee-gaw-gaw Swamp--Bellefontaine
CHAPTER XXXII.
Commencement of the Sauk War--Winnebago
Council--Crély--Follett--Bravery--The Little Elk--An
Alarm--Man-Eater and his
Party--An Exciting Dance
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Fleeing from the Enemy--Mâtâ--Old Smoker--Meeting with
Menomonees--Raising the Wind--Garlic Island--Winnebago Rapids--The
Waubanakees--Thunder-Storm--Vitelle--Guardapié--Fort Howard
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Panic at Green Bay--Tidings of Cholera--Green Bay Flies--Doyle,
the Murderer--Death of Lieutenant Foster--A Hardened Criminal--Good
News from the Seat of War--Departure for Home--Shipwreck
at the Grand Chûte--A Wet Encampment--An Unexpected
Arrival--Reinforcement of Volunteers--La Grosse Américaine--Arrival
at Home
CHAPTER XXXV.
Conclusion of the War--Treaty at Rock Island--Cholera among the
Troops--Wau-kaun-kah--Wild-Cat's Frolic at the Mee-kan--Surrender
of the Winnebago Prisoners
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Delay in the Annual Payment--Scalp-Dances--Groundless Alarm--Arrival
of Governor Porter--Payment--Escape of the Prisoners--Neighbors
Lost--Reappearance--Robineau--Bellaire
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Agathe--"Kinzie's Addition"--Tomah--Indian Acuteness--Indian
Simplicity
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Famine--Day-kau-ray's Daughter--Noble Resolution of a Chief--Bread
for the Hungry--Rev. Mr. Kent--An Escaped Prisoner--The
Cut-Nose again--Leave-taking with our Red Children--Departure
from Fort Winnebago
APPENDIX
THE "EARLY DAY" IN THE NORTHWEST.
CHAPTER I.
DEPARTURE FROM DETROIT.
It was on a dark, rainy evening in the month of September, 1830, that we
went on board the steamer "Henry Clay," to take passage for Green Bay.
All our friends in Detroit had congratulated us upon our good fortune in
being spared the voyage in one of the little schooners which at this
time afforded the ordinary means of communication with the few and
distant settlements on Lakes Huron and Michigan.
Each one had some experience to relate of his own or Of his friends'
mischances in these precarious journeys--long detentions on the St.
Clair flats--furious head-winds off Thunder Bay, or interminable Calms
at Mackinac or the Manitous. That which most enhanced our sense of
peculiar good luck, was the true story of one of our relatives having
left Detroit in the month of June and reached Chicago in the September
following, having been actually three months in performing what is
sometimes accomplished by even a sail-vessel in four days.
But the certainty of encountering similar misadventures would have
weighed little with me. I was now to visit, nay, more, to become a
resident of that land which had, for long years, been to me a region of
romance. Since the time when, as a child, my highest delight had been in
the letters of a dear relative, describing to me his home and mode of
life in the "Indian country," and still later, in his felicitous
narration of a tour with General Cass, in 1820, to the sources of the
Mississippi--nay, even earlier, in the days when I stood at my teacher's
knee, and spelled out the long word Mich-i-li-mack-i-nac, that distant
land, with its vast lakes, its boundless prairies, and its mighty
forests, had possessed a wonderful charm for my imagination. Now I was
to see it!--it was to be my home!
Our ride to the quay, through the dark by-ways, in a cart, the only
vehicle which at that day could navigate the muddy, unpaved streets of
Detroit, was a theme for much merriment, and not less so, our descent of
the narrow, perpendicular stair-way by which we reached the little
apartment called the Ladies' Cabin. We were highly delighted with the
accommodations, which, by comparison, seemed the very climax of comfort
and convenience; more especially as the occupants of the cabin
consisted, beside myself, of but a lady and two little girls.
Nothing could exceed the pleasantness of our trip for the first
twenty-four hours. There were some officers, old friends, among the
passengers. We had plenty of books. The gentlemen read aloud
occasionally, admired the solitary magnificence of the scenery around
us, the primeval woods, or the vast expanse of water unenlivened by a
single sail, and then betook themselves to their cigar, or their game of
euchre, to while away the hours.
For a time the passage over Thunder Bay was delightful, but, alas! it
was not destined, in our favor, to belie its name. A storm came on, fast
and furious--what was worse, it was of long duration. The pitching and
rolling of the little boat, the closeness, and even the sea-sickness, we
bore as became us. They were what we had expected, and were prepared
for. But a new feature of discomfort appeared, which almost upset our
philosophy.
The rain, which fell in torrents, soon made its way through every seam
and pore of deck or moulding. Down the stair-way, through the joints and
crevices, it came, saturating first the carpet, then the bedding, until,
finally, we were completely driven, "by stress of weather," into the
Gentlemen's Cabin. Way was made for us very gallantly, and every
provision resorted to for our comfort, and we were congratulating
ourselves on having found a haven in our distress, when, lo! the seams
above opened, and down upon our devoted heads poured such a flood, that
even umbrellas were an insufficient protection. There was nothing left
for the ladies and children but to betake ourselves to the berths,
which, in this apartment, fortunately remained dry; and here we
continued ensconced the livelong day. Our dinner was served up to us on
our pillows. The gentlemen chose the dryest spots, raised their
umbrellas, and sat under them, telling amusing anecdotes, and saying
funny things to cheer us, until the rain ceased, and at nine o'clock in
the evening we were gladdened by the intelligence that we had reached
the pier at Mackinac.
We were received with the most affectionate cordiality by Mr. and Mrs.
Robert Stuart, at whose hospitable mansion we had been for some days
expected.
The repose and comfort of an asylum like this, can be best appreciated
by those who have reached it after a tossing and drenching such as ours
had been. A bright, warm fire, and countenances beaming with kindest
interest, dispelled all sensations of fatigue or annoyance.
After a season of pleasant conversation, the servants were assembled,
the chapter of God's word was solemnly read, the hymn chanted, the
prayer of praise and thanksgiving offered, and we were conducted to our
place of repose.
It is not my purpose here to attempt a portrait of those noble friends
whom I thus met for the first time. To an abler pen than mine should be
assigned the honor of writing the biography of Robert Stuart. All who
have enjoyed the happiness of his acquaintance, or, still more, a
sojourn under his hospitable roof, will carry with them to their latest
hour the impression of his noble bearing, his genial humor, his untiring
benevolence, his upright, uncompromising adherence to principle, his
ardent philanthropy, his noble disinterestedness. Irving in his
"Astoria," and Franchere in his "Narrative," give many striking traits
of his early character, together with events of his history of a
thrilling and romantic interest, but both have left the most valuable
portion unsaid, his after-life, namely, as a Christian gentleman.
Of his beloved partner, who still survives him, mourning on her bereaved
and solitary pilgrimage, yet cheered by the recollection of her long and
useful course as a "Mother in Israel," we will say no more than to offer
the incense of loving hearts, and prayers for the best blessings from
her Father in heaven.