_The Publication Committee of the Caxton Club certify that this is one
of an edition of two hundred and fifty-six copies printed on hand-made
paper and three copies printed on Japanese vellum, and that the
printing was done from type which has been distributed._
WAU-BUN
THE "EARLY DAY" OF THE NORTH-WEST
[Illustration: JULIETTE A. McGILL KINZIE.
From oil portrait by G. P. A. Healy, painted in 1855,]
WAU-BUN
THE "EARLY DAY" OF THE
NORTH-WEST
BY
MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE
OF CHICAGO
NEW EDITION, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES, EDITOR OF "THE JESUIT RELATIONS,
AND ALLIED DOCUMENTS," "WISCONSIN HISTORICAL
COLLECTIONS," "CHRONICLES OF BORDER
WARFARE," ETC.
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
THE CAXTON CLUB
MDCCCCI
COPYRIGHT BY THE CAXTON
CLUB, NINETEEN HUNDRED
AND ONE
CONTENTS
PAGE
Editor's Introduction xiii
Author's Preface xxv
CHAPTER I
Departure from Detroit 1
CHAPTER II
Michilimackinac--American Fur Company--Indian Trade--Mission
School--Point St. Ignace 5
CHAPTER III
Arrival at Green Bay--Mrs. Arndt--Gen. Root--Political
Despatches--A Summerset--Shanty-town--Mr. Rolette--Indian
Morning Song--Mr. Cadle's Mission--Party at Mrs. Doty's--Miss
Grignons--Mrs. Baird's Party--Hamilton A.--Mrs. Beall 14
CHAPTER IV
Arrangements for Travelling--Fox River--Judge Doty--Judge
Réaume--M. Boilvin--Canadian Voyageurs; Their Songs--The
Kakalin--Wish-tay-yun--Rev. Eleazer Williams--Passage through
the Rapids--Grande Chûte--Christman 25
CHAPTER V
Beautiful Encampment--Winnebago Lake--Miss Four-Legs--Garlic
Island--Wild Rice 40
CHAPTER VI
Breakfast at Betty More's--Judge Law--Fastidiousness; What
Came of It 47
CHAPTER VII
Butte des Morts--French Cognomens--Serpentine Course of Fox
River--Lake Puckaway--Lac de Bœuf--Fort Winnebago 52
CHAPTER VIII
Major and Mrs. Twiggs--A Davis--An Indian Funeral--Conjugal
Affliction--Indian Chiefs; Talk English--The Wild Cat--The
Dandy 58
CHAPTER IX
Housekeeping; The First Dinner 68
CHAPTER X
Indian Payment--Pawnee Blanc--The Washington Woman--Raising
Funds 72
CHAPTER XI
Louisa--Garrison Life--Dr. Newhall--Affliction--Domestic
Accommodations--Ephraim--New Year's Day--Native
Custom--Day-kau-ray's Views of Education--Capt. Harney's
Mince-Pie 80
CHAPTER XII
Lizzie Twiggs--Preparations for a Journey--The Regimental
Tailor 91
CHAPTER XIII
Departure from Fort Winnebago--Duck Creek--Upset in a
Canoe--Pillon--Encamping in Winter--Four Lakes--Indian
Encampment--Blue Mound--Morrison's--A Tennessee Woman 96
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 107
CHAPTER XV
Rock River--Dixon's--John Ogie--Missing the Trail--Hours of
Trouble--Famine in the Camp--Relief 118
CHAPTER XVI
A Pottowattamie Lodge--A Tempest--Piché's--Hawley's--The
Dupage--Mr. Dougherty--The Desplaines--Mrs. Lawton--Wolf
Point--Chicago 130
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 140
CHAPTER XVIII
Massacre at Chicago 155
CHAPTER XIX
Massacre Continued--Mrs. Helm--Ensign Ronan--Capt. Wells--
Mrs. Holt--Mrs. Heald--The Sau-ga-nash--Sergeant Griffith--
Mrs. Burns--Black Partridge and Mrs. Lee--Nau-non-gee and
Sergeant Hays 171
CHAPTER XX
Treatment of American Prisoners by the British--Captivity of
Mr. Kinzie--Battle on Lake Erie--Cruelty of Gen. Proctor's
Troops--Gen. Harrison--Rebuilding of Fort Dearborn--Red
Bird--A Humorous Incident--Cession of the Territory Around
Chicago 192
CHAPTER XXI
Severe Spring Weather--Pistol-Firing--Milk Punch--A Sermon--
Pre-emption to "Kinzie's Addition"--Liberal Sentiments 201
CHAPTER XXII
The Captives 206
CHAPTER XXIII
Capt. McKillip--Second Sight--Ball at Hickory Creek--Arrival
of the "Napoleon"--Troubles of Embarkation 224
CHAPTER XXIV
Departure for Fort 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 233
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--Hasting's Woods--Duck
Creek---Brunêt--Home 245
CHAPTER XXVI
The Agency--The Blacksmith's House--Building a Kitchen--
Four-Legs, the Dandy--Indian Views of Civilization--Efforts
of M. Mazzuchelli--Charlotte 260
CHAPTER XXVII
The Cut-Nose--The Fawn--Visit of White Crow--Parting with
Friends--Christman--Louisa Again--The Sunday-School 269
CHAPTER XXVIII
Plante--Removal--Domestic Inconveniences--Indian Presents--Grand
mother Day-kau-ray--Indian Customs--Indian Dances--The Medicine
Dance--Indian Graves--Old Boilvin's Wake 276
CHAPTER XXIX
Indian Tales--Story of the Red Fox 287
CHAPTER XXX
Story of Shee-shee-banze 295
CHAPTER XXXI
Visit to Green Bay--Disappointment--Return Journey--Knaggs'--
Blind Indian--Mau-zhee-gaw-gaw Swamp--Bellefontaine 303
CHAPTER XXXII
Commencement of Sauk War--Winnebago Council--Crély--Follett--
Bravery--The Little Elk--An Alarm--Man-Eater and His Party--
An Exciting Dance 314
CHAPTER XXXIII
Fleeing from the Enemy--Mâtâ--Old Smoker--Meeting with
Menomonees--Raising the Wind--Garlic Island--Winnebago
Rapids--The Wau-bee-na-kees--Thunder-Storm--Vitelle--
Guardapie--Fort Howard 326
CHAPTER XXXIV
Panic at Green Bay--Tidings of Cholera--Green Bay Flies--Doyle,
the Murderer--Death of Lieut. 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 Americaine--Arrival
at Home 339
CHAPTER XXXV
Conclusion of the War--Treaty at Rock Island--Cholera Among the
Troops--Wau-kaun-kau--Wild-Cat's Frolic at the Mee-kan--
Surrender of the Winnebago Prisoners 353
CHAPTER XXXVI
Delay in the Annual Payment--Scalp Dances--Groundless Alarm--
Arrival of Gov. Porter--Payment--Escape of the Prisoners--
Neighbors Lost--Reappearance--Robineau--Bellair 363
CHAPTER XXXVII
Agathe--"Kinzie's Addition"--Tomah--Indian Acuteness--Indian
Simplicity 372
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 380
Appendix 387
Notes--By Reuben Gold Thwaites 393
Index 421
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Juliette A. McGill Kinzie Frontispiece
From oil portrait by G. P. A. Healy, painted in 1855.
John Harris Kinzie xvi
From copy of oil portrait by G. P. A. Healy, painted by
Daisy Gordon, in possession of Chicago Historical Society.
Title-Page to the Orginal Edition xxiii
Michilimackinac 6
From sketch by Capt. S. Eastman, U. S. A., in Schoolcraft's
"Indian Tribes," vol. iv., p. 188.
Fort Howard in 1855 14
From daguerreotype in possession of Wisconsin Historical
Society.
Four-Legs' Village 42
Entrance to Winnebago Lake (the present town of Neenah). From
sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
Fort Winnebago in 1831 56
From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
A Typical Group of Winnebagoes 64
From photograph in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society.
Chicago in 1820 140
From sketch by H. R. Schoolcraft, in "Indian Tribes,"
vol. iv., p. 192.
Chicago in 1831 142
From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie in original edition.
Map of Chicago in 1830 142
(Original by James Thompson destroyed in Chicago fire,
October 9, 1871.) From copy thereof, in possession of Chicago
Historical Society.
Mark Beaubien 144
From crayon portrait in possession of Chicago Historical
Society.
The Chicago Portage 146
From the first U. S. Government Survey of the region of the
portage and site of Chicago, in possession of Chicago
Historical Society.
Residence of John Kinzie, Esq. 150
(The first house built in Chicago.) From sketch by Mrs.
Kinzie, in original edition.
Old Fort Dearborn, 1803-1812 156
From sketch by Charles H. Ourand, based upon plans drawn by
Capt. J. Whistler, 1808, in possession of Chicago Historical
Society.
Shaubena 198
(Chief of the Pottawattomies.) From photograph of oil portrait
in possession of Chicago Historical Society.
Big Foot's Village and Lake 250
From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
The Grand Chûte--Fox River 346
From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
Black Hawk 354
(Head-man of the Rock River Sacs.) From oil portrait by
R. M. Sully, in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society.
Fort Winnebago in 1834 353
(Indian agency buildings on hill to left.) From oil painting,
based upon plans and local traditions, by Isaac A. Ridgway.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
The early history of Chicago has much to do with the Kinzies and
their connections. It is particularly fortunate that one of this
family should have given to the world, out of the abundance of her
recollections of the "early day," what has become a classic in
the historical literature of the Middle West--the Northwest of a
half-century ago.
Kinzie is but an abbreviated form of the old Scotch name of Mackenzie.
John Mackenzie must have been among the first subjects of Great Britain
to emigrate to Canada upon the downfall of the French regime; for his
son John (afterwards called Kinzie) was born in Quebec, in 1763, the
year of the Paris treaty. The family soon moved to Detroit, and there
the elder Mackenzie died, during John's infancy.
The widow had previously been married to a Mr. Haliburton, by whom she
had a daughter, a beautiful and accomplished girl, who in turn became
the mother of General Fleming, Nicholas Low, and Mrs. Charles King, of
New York. John Kinzie was the only issue of the second marriage. In due
time, Mrs. Mackenzie married a third husband--William Forsyth, another
Scotchman, who had come to New York in 1750, fought under Wolfe on the
Plains of Abraham, and was twice wounded. The Forsyths moved to New
York City, whither young John Kinzie was taken. When some ten or eleven
years of age, while at school at Williamsburg, on Long Island, with two
of his half-brothers, Kinzie, a restless, adventurous youth, ran away
to his native town, Quebec. There he was, when nearly starved, picked
up on the streets by a silversmith, and incidentally learned something
of the craft of his benefactor. There are evidences of his being in
Detroit, as a fur-trader, as early as 1795; and by the close of the
century this thrifty young Scotchman is known to have had trading
establishments on the Maumee, at Sandusky, and at St. Josephs, on Lake
Michigan.
Young Kinzie's life had been a continual romance, but it was no less
so than that of his first love. During one of the numerous forays over
the Virginia border, made by the Shawanese during Lord Dunmore's War
(1774), a band of these barbarians swooped down upon the rude cabin of
Isaac McKenzie, who had established himself at the junction of Wolf's
Creek with the Kanawha River. McKenzie's wife was killed, but their
two young and beautiful children, Margaret and Elizabeth, were borne
away to the great Shawanee town of Chillicothe, in what is now Ohio.
Here, in accordance with Indian custom, the girls were adopted into the
family of a chief, one of whose squaws was assigned to their tender
rearing.
After eighteen years, when Margaret had developed into a young woman
of rare loveliness, she accompanied her foster-father upon a hunting
expedition to the vicinity of the present Fort Wayne, in Indiana. A
young Shawanee chief, present at the hunt, paid mad suit to this forest
beauty; but, still pining for civilization, she scorned her Indian
lover, and he set out to take her by force, as had ever been among his
people the custom of rejected suitors. At midnight, as the nomadic
village was echoing with the din made by the chief's followers, who
were preparing to assist in this intended capture of a wife, Margaret
silently stole from her wigwam, for it was a case in which custom
decreed that she must rely solely upon herself, and took refuge in the
depths of the forest. Her persistent lover was close at her heels. She
ordered her faithful dog to attack him, and while man and brute were
engaged in savage combat, flew through the woods to the stockade where
the ponies were kept. Leaping on the back of a favorite, Margaret plied
him with rope-end and voice, through seventy-five miles of wilderness,
all the way to her barbaric home in Chillicothe, where the poor animal
dropped dead. Here, at last, she was safe from her lover's attentions.
Not long after Margaret's thrilling experience, the two girls were
taken to Detroit by their foster-father, who proudly showed them to his
white friends. The old chief, however, recked not of the power of love.
A Scotchman named Clark became enamoured of Elizabeth, and John Kinzie
saw in Margaret his heart's desire. The two couples mated in Indian
fashion, and lived together in the woods for some five years--Elizabeth
bearing two children, and Margaret three (William, James, and
Elizabeth).
When the strength of Indian power in the country north-west of the Ohio
River was at last broken in the decisive battle at the Fallen Timbers,
followed by the treaty of Greenville (1795), and in another year by
the removal of British garrisons from the posts on the upper lakes,
communication was again possible between the American colonists and
the Northwest. Isaac McKenzie heard of the presence of his daughters
in the Michigan wilderness, and in his old age laboriously worked his
way thither to visit them. There was a pathetic reunion; and when
the white-haired frontiersman went back to Virginia, Margaret and
Elizabeth, declining the legal marriage proffered by their consorts,
followed him to the old home, Margaret leaving her children to be cared
for by their father.
Elizabeth in due course legally married a Virginian named Jonas
Clybourn, and Margaret also legally united domestic fortunes with one
Benjamin Hall of that state. Sons of these second unions eventually
came to Chicago, and took prominent parts in the drama of pioneer life
in Illinois and Wisconsin.
In 1800, John Kinzie married Eleanor (Lytle) McKillip, the widow of
a British officer, who had had by him a daughter named Margaret. The
Kinzies, with their infant son, John Harris (born at Sandwich, Ontario,
July 7, 1803), apparently settled at Chicago in the spring of 1804,
John Kinzie being the trader at Fort Dearborn, then just constructed.
Kinzie was also appointed sub-Indian agent, and later was a government
interpreter. His connection with the massacre at Fort Dearborn, in
1812, is best related in _Wau-Bun_ itself. In 1823, he was appointed a
justice of the peace; in 1825, agent at Chicago for the American Fur
Company; he died at Chicago in 1828, aged sixty-five. His four children
by Eleanor were: Jolm Harris (1803), Ellen Marion (1805), Maria Indiana
(1807), and Robert Allen (1810). His two children by Margaret McKenzie
were tenderly reared by Mrs. Kinzie, who, before her marriage, had
been fully informed of the circumstance of the earlier union under the
forest code of the day.
[Illustration: JOHN HARRIS KINZIE.
From copy of oil portrait by G. P. A. Healy, painted by Daisy Gordon,
in possession of Chicago Historical Society.]
It is with John Harris Kinzie that our immediate interest lies. His
early youth was spent in Chicago; he was nine years of age at the time
of the massacre in 1812; during the next four years the family remained
in Detroit, only returning to Chicago when (1816) the former town was
captured by General Harrison; in 1818, he was sent to Mackinac to be
apprenticed to the American Fur Company. Carefully trained to the
conduct of the fur trade, then the principal commercial interest in
the Northwest, young Kinzie was sent, in 1824, to Prairie du Chien,
where he learned the Winnebago language and thereof partly constructed
a grammar. Two years later, we find him installed as private secretary
to Governor Lewis Cass, in whose company he assisted in making numerous
treaties with the aborigines. It was while in this service that he went
to Ohio to study the language and habits of the Wyandots, of whose
tongue he also compiled a grammar. His remarkable proficiency in Indian
languages led to his appointment, in 1829, as Indian agent to the
Winnebagoes, at Fort Winnebago (Portage, Wisconsin). Upon the death of
his father, he fell heir to the Winnebago name, "Shawneeaukee," which
appears so frequently in the text of _Wau-Bun_.
August 9, 1830, Kinzie--now styled "Colonel" by courtesy, because of
his office as Indian agent--was married at Middletown, Connecticut,
to Juliette A. Magill, the authoress of the book of which this is a
new edition. Very little has been garnered concerning the early life
of Miss Magill. She was born in Middletown, September 11, 1806, but
appears to have lived much in the national metropolis, and to have
enjoyed a wide and intimate acquaintance with the "best families" of
the city; her education was certainly not neglected.
The honeymoon of the young pair was in part spent in New York City.
They were at Detroit a few weeks after the wedding, however, and thence
took the steamer "Henry Clay" for Green Bay. The text of _Wau-Bun_
commences with the departure from Detroit, and carries us forward
to their arrival at Green Bay, and later at Fort Winnebago; their
horseback trip to Chicago, the following March, is also interestingly
described. They appear to have permanently made their home in Chicago
in 1834.
In 1841, Colonel Kinzie was appointed registrar of public lands;
seven years later, he was canal collector at Chicago, occupying the
position until President Lincoln commissioned him as a paymaster in the
Union army, with the rank of major. He was still holding this office
when, in the early summer of 1865, being in failing health, he went to
Pennsylvania in company with his wife and son, but died in a railway
carriage near Pittsburg, upon the 21st of June. His widow, two sons,
and a daughter survived him; together with the reputation among his
contemporaries of possessing a lovable, sympathetic soul, broad enough
to appreciate the many good traits of the commonly despised savage,
concerning whom he knew more than most men.
Mrs. Kinzie's death came upon September 15, 1870, while spending the
season at Amagansett, on Long Island, New York. She had sent to a
druggist for some quinine, but through inadvertence he instead sent
morphine, in the taking of which she lost her life. The heroine of
_Wau-Bun_, besides wielding a graceful pen and a facile pencil, was
a woman with marked domestic virtues, and in every walk of life a
charming character.
The first public appearance of Mrs. Kinzie as an author was in 1844,
when there appeared from the press of Ellis & Fergus, Chicago, an
octavo pamphlet of thirty-four pages, with a plate, entitled _Narrative
of the Massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, and of Some Preceding
Events_. This publication was anonymous; but as it bore the name of
John H. Kinzie as the holder of the copyright, most readers assumed
that he was the author. In time, it came to be known that his wife had
written the work. The footnote to the opening page of chapter xviii of
_Wau-Bun_ (page 155 of our text) says that her story of the massacre
was first published in 1836; but apparently no copies of this early
publication are now extant. Mrs. Kinzie's narrative was of course
obtained from first hands, her husband and other members of her family
having been witnesses of the tragedy; it has been accepted by the
historians of Illinois as substantially accurate, and other existing
accounts are generally based upon this. With slight variation, the
contents of the pamphlet were transferred to the pages of _Wau-Bun_, of
which they constitute chapters xviii, xix, and xx.
_Wau-Bun_ itself first appeared in 1856 (8vo, pp. 498), from the press
of Derby & Jackson, New York. A second edition was published in 1857,
by D. B. Cooke & Co., of Chicago, the same plates being used, with
nothing changed but the title-page. Very likely it was printed by Derby
& Jackson, in New York, for the Chicago booksellers named--a familiar
device with the publishing trade. A third edition, an entire reset, in
cheap duodecimo form, without illustrations, was published in 1873 by
J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia (pp. 390). The Lippincotts had,
in 1869, the year before her death, published a novel by Mrs. Kinzie,
entitled _Walter Ogilby_, which apparently had a fair sale; and their
reprint of _Wau-Bun_, which by this time had become scarce and out
of copyright, was no doubt made to still further cultivate a market
created by the novel. Even this reprint is now rare.
_Wau-Bun_ gives us our first, and in some respects our best, insight
into the "early day" of the old Northwest.[A] The graphic illustrations
of early scenes which the author has drawn for us are excellent of
their kind, indicating an artistic capacity certainly unusual upon
the American frontier of seventy years ago. But better than these is
the text itself. The action is sufficiently rapid, the description is
direct, and that the style is unadorned but makes the story appear to
us the more vivid. Upon her pages we seem to see and feel the life at
the frontier military stockades, to understand intimately the social
and economic relations between the savages and the government officials
set over them, to get at the heart of things within the border country
of her day. It is the relation of a cultivated eye-witness, a woman
of the world, who appreciates that what she depicts is but a passing
phase of history, and deserves preservation for the enlightenment
of posterity. Many others have, with more or less success, written
narratives within the same field; Mrs. Kinzie herself occasionally
trips upon dates and facts, and sometimes she deliberately glosses
where the antiquarian would demand recital of naked circumstance; but
take _Wau-Bun_ by large and small, and it may safely be said that to
students of the history of the Middle West, particularly of Illinois
and Wisconsin, Mrs. Kinzie has rendered a service of growing value, and
of its kind practically unique.
[Footnote A: Similar reminiscences, almost as excellent in their
way, but more limited in scope, are: Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Van
Cleve's _Three Score Years and Ten_ (Minneapolis, 1888), and Elizabeth
Thérèse Baird's articles in vols, xiv and xv, _Wisconsin Historical
Collections_.]
It is fitting that the Caxton Club should publish a new edition of this
early Chicago classic, with the needed accessories of notes, index, and
additional illustrations. The book deserves to be better known of the
present generation, who will find in it a charming if not fascinating
narrative, giving them an abiding sense of the wonderful transformation
which seventy years have wrought in the development of the Old
Northwest.
The present writer has selected the illustrations and furnished the
Notes, Introduction, and Index to this edition, and exercised a general
oversight of its make-up; to others, however, have been left, by the
Caxton Club, the responsibility for the proof-reading of the text.
Mrs. Eleanor Kinzie Gordon, of Savannah, Ga., a daughter of Colonel and
Mrs. John H. Kinzie, has kindly read the proof-sheets of Introduction
and Notes, and offered several valuable suggestions, which have been
gratefully incorporated in the text.
R. G. T.
Madison, Wis., October, 1901.
[Illustration]
[** Reproduction of Original Cover
WAU-BUN,
THE
"EARLY DAY"
IN
THE NORTH-WEST.
BY MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE,
OF CHICAGO.
With Illustrations.
NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY DERBY & JACKSON, 119 NASSAU STREET. CINCINNATI:
H. W. DERBY & Co. 1856.]
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.
THE "EARLY DAY" OF THE NORTH-WEST
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[1]--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,[2]
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 live-long 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,[3] 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 Franchère 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.