Willett to capture Fort Ontario. The command assembled at Fort
Stanwix and marched for Oswego. When within a few miles of the fort
their presence was discovered and made known to the British by some
wood-cutters, and Colonel Willett, on learning that his chance of
taking the post by surprise was gone, marched back to Fort Stanwix
without making an attack. Peace was soon declared and no further
operations were conducted.
The post was transferred to the United States in 1796, with the
other frontier posts which Great Britain had held. From then until
the outbreak of the War of 1812 it was allowed to fall into decay,
and at the beginning of that conflict was but partially armed and
quite unable to withstand an enemy. The English, hearing of its
condition, and hearing, moreover, of the presence in the fort of
large quantities of stores of all kinds, sent a fleet with 3000 men
against the place.
The British force appeared before the town May 5, 1814. The
Americans prepared a battery on shore and gallantly repulsed
efforts at landing, until at length the British, through pure force
of numbers, were able to accomplish this first step. The Americans
then retreated up the river in good order, burning the bridges in
their rear. Their number was 300. The British, baffled in taking
any prisoners, burned the barracks, spiked the guns and retired.
The American loss was 6 killed, 38 wounded and 24 missing. The
British loss was 235. From that time to the present Fort Ontario
has remained in possession of the United States.
The years saw the town of Oswego grow up around Fort Ontario. The
fort was rebuilt of wood in 1839 and of stone in 1863. In 1901 the
garrison was withdrawn and the old fort is now a public reservation
for the use of the citizens of Oswego, its days of military life
probably ended forever.
FORT MICHILLIMACKINAC AND FORT HOLMES
MACKINAC ISLAND--MICHIGAN
It was a conjunction of the Church and the State which began the
career of Fort Michillimackinac, more than three centuries ago,
at Saint Ignace, a point on the Canadian side of the Straits of
Mackinac; the Church in the person of the restless Father Marquette
and the State in the form of its indefatigable military servant,
the Sieur de la Salle. In 1673 Father Marquette established the
mission of Saint Ignace in a thriving village of the Ottawas, who
were, Francis Parkman tells us, among the most civilized tribes of
the American natives. Two years later La Salle visited the place
in the _Griffon_, the first vessel to sail the Great Lakes. This
barque the indefatigable Frenchmen had just constructed on Cayuga
Creek just above Niagara Falls.
The beginnings of a fort were already made when La Salle came to
St. Ignace, that is, a palisade had been erected. Its defenders
were Indians. La Salle sent the _Griffon_ back to civilization for
supplies and rigging for a second sailing vessel. Fortunately for
history, which would have lost one of its most picturesque figures,
he decided to remain, himself, at Saint Ignace and not to accompany
his beloved _Griffon_ on its round trip. That bewildered little
ship was overcome by the fury of one of the lakes. At least it
never returned, or was heard of, and reasonable surmise is that it
found its haven beneath the waters. La Salle filled in his spare
hours at Saint Ignace in the casual practice of his profession,
by completing and strengthening the puny defences which Father
Marquette had caused to be erected. Thus came into existence the
first Fort Michillimackinac.
Indian tradition concerning the name Michillimackinac is curious.
It relates that Michapous, chief of spirits, sojourned long in
the vicinity of the Straits of Huron, on a mountain on the border
of the lake. Here he first instructed man to fabricate nets and
to take fish therein. On the island of Michillimackinac he left
spirits named Imakinakos and from these legendary possessors came
the name Michillimackinac which means Great Turtle. The tradition
is not altogether clear. Suffice it to be assured that the word
is of Indian origin, and doubtless its patient originators were
thoroughly well pleased with it.
The next distinguished visitor to Saint Ignace was La Motte
Cadillac, whose name is spread so generously around all of this
lakeside region of Michigan and whose errand was to strengthen the
fort which La Salle had erected on Father Marquette’s foundation.
Useless labor this proved to be, for the growing importance of
Detroit and the determination of the French to build up this
point at the expense of the more northern and less accessible
trading-post caused Saint Ignace to wane in importance and its
stockades to be unoccupied.
In 1712 the little settlement was moved bodily to the southern side
of the straits at the point where Mackinaw City now stands and the
second Fort Michillimackinac was erected, destined to a far more
eventful history than the first. Time ran on. The French lost their
grip of the New World and surrendered Michillimackinac with other
places to the English. Let us see how the little place looked in
English possession. Parkman has well described it:
Doubling a point he sees before him the red flag of England
swelling lazily in the wind and the palisades and wooden bastions
of Fort Michillimackinac standing close upon the margin of the
lake. On the beach canoes are drawn up and Canadians and Indians
are lazily lounging. A little beyond the fort is a cluster of
the white Canadian houses roofed with bark and protected by
fences of strong round pickets. The trader enters at the gate,
and sees before him an extensive square area surrounded by high
palisades. Numerous houses, barracks, and other buildings form a
smaller square within, and in the vacant space which they enclose
appear the red uniforms of British soldiers, the gray coats of
Canadians, and the gaudy Indian blankets mingled in picturesque
confusion; while a multitude of squaws with children of every hue
stroll restlessly about the place. Such was Fort Michillimackinac
in 1763.
A peaceful spot this was for the scene of bloody savagery which
was shortly to be enacted in its precincts. The Indians who
were neighbors of Michillimackinac had never become reconciled
to the Englishman’s presence in their wilderness. Many of these
savages had fought with the French against the English and had
lost relatives or friends in battle, thus laying the foundations
for blood feuds which in the Indian custom could only be wiped out
with blood. In addition to that, their leaders were conspirators
with the great Pontiac in his aim to push the English back
beyond the mountains whence they had come and to restore the
forests to the savages. When news came in the spring of 1763 of
Pontiac’s activities around Detroit, the Ojibwas and Ottawas near
Michillimackinac determined that they, too, must taste of blood.
The massacre of the garrison of this post was planned.
The Indians’ plans were laid well but they should not have had the
uncontested success that they did have. All accounts point to a
great measure of carelessness and lack of sufficient estimation of
his neighbors on the part of the unhappy commander of the garrison.
This officer was Captain Etherington and with him were about
thirty-five men and the full complement of under-officers. Several
times Etherington was warned that the red-skins were plotting
mischief, and his own observation might have acquainted him with
this fact as well. Yet with true British phlegm he waved aside
all suggestions that were made to him and even went so far as to
threaten to punish any one who disturbed his garrison with stories
of impending disaster. It is not remarkable that the Indians found
him unprepared.
On the morning of the fourth of June the weather was warm and
sultry. It was his majesty King George’s birthday and for this
reason there were festal arrangements at the fort. The soldiers
were allowed liberty to wander where they would, in or out of the
stockades, and the Indians had permission to play a game of ball
in honor of the day. As time went on the fort became filled with
Indians, chiefs and humble followers of the ranks, old hags, young
women and children.
The hour for the ball game approached. This game of ball, or
baggataway as the red men called it, was a favorite with the
Indians. It was very much like the lacrosse of the present day, in
fact was the original of that game. There were two goals and the
players attempted to toss a ball through one of these two goals
with sticks. They were not allowed to use their hands to throw the
ball, so the game required a degree of skill as well as agility and
endurance.
The Ojibwas and the Sacs, two rivals of long standing, were the
contestants and excitement ran high. Captain Etherington, with one
of his lieutenants, was lounging at the gate of the fort whooping
on the Ojibwas, for he had promised them that he would bet on their
side. Suddenly the ball arose in the air in a graceful curve and
fell within the walls of the fort. The players, an excited mob,
burst after it yelling. Suspecting nothing, Etherington stepped
aside with a laugh to let the howling mass sweep in the walls of
the citadel.
The Indians’ stratagem had been completely successful. Before
he knew what was being done, Etherington, with his lieutenant,
was seized and bound, while the Indians, reinforced by their
comrades amongst the spectators of the game, seized tomahawks
which the squaws had concealed beneath their blankets and fell on
the hapless members of the little garrison. There commenced one
of those familiar scenes of butchery with which border tradition
and the accounts of witnesses who escaped have made us familiar.
Men were stricken down and held between Indians’ knees while they
were scalped, still alive. Women and children were slaughtered.
Bodies of both sexes were mangled. Frenzied red warriors scooped
up handfuls of blood and drank it in gulps. Soon the chapter was
ended. Only a few of the little garrison--kept, like Etherington,
on account of rank or for some particular reasons--were left alive.
[Illustration:
Copyright, Detroit Publishing Company
FORT MICHILLIMACKINAC AND STATE PARK, MACKINAC ISLAND, MICHIGAN]
From this day for four years Fort Michillimackinac was without a
garrison. Then, with the subjection of the red tribes, the English
came back to their border posts and Michillimackinac was once
more filled with soldiery. In the early days of the Revolution
the walls of the fort were strengthened and the garrison was
increased.
The strategic location of the fort had never been advantageous
for purposes of defence, however, so in November, 1779, Major de
Peyster, fearful of attacks by the Americans, moved his garrison
over to the little island of Michillimackinac and built the third
Fort Michillimackinac, that which is standing to-day. The location
which Major de Peyster chose was on the southeastern portion of the
island, which is three miles wide and seven miles long, and there
is a fine harbor at the point chosen for the location of the fort.
This third fort Michillimackinac was occupied by the British on
July 15, 1780, but was not used by them during the Revolution. In
1796 it was turned over to an American garrison as the sequel of
an extensive correspondence between the young new nation and its
tenacious old mother country.
As it was necessary to know what disposition to make of her
newly-acquired border forts, the United States at the close of
the eighteenth century despatched a certain Uriah Tracy to visit
the frontier of the country and report on the condition of the
fortifications there. His letter about Michillimackinac, preserved
in the War Department files, gives a picture of the place in
December, 1800. The body of the letter follows:
HON. SAMUEL DEXTER, Secretary of War:
In consequence of your predecessor’s request to visit post in
the Western territory I proceeded to Plattsburg ... and on to
Michillimackinac. Our fort at Michillimackinac is one of our most
important posts. It stands on an island in the straits which lead
from Lake Michigan into Lake Huron four or five miles from the
head of the strait. Fort Michillimackinac is an irregular work
partly built with a strong wall and partly with pickets; and the
parade ground within it is from 100 to 125 feet above the surface
of the water. It contains a well of never-failing water, a boom
proof used as a magazine, one stone barracks for the use of the
officers, equal if not superior to any building of the kind in
the United States, a good guard-house and barracks for soldiers
and convenient store-houses for produce, etc., with three strong
and convenient block-houses. This post is strong both by nature
and by art and the possession of it has a great influence with
the Indians in favor of the United States. The whole island on
which the fort is situated belongs to the United States and is
five or six miles in length and two or three miles in width. On
the bank of the strait adjacent to the fort stands a large house
which was by the English called Government House and was kept by
the British commander of the fort which now belongs to the United
States.
The island and the country about it is remarkably healthy and
very fertile for so high a northern latitude.
URIAH TRACY.
The breaking out of the War of 1812 found only 57 soldiers under
Lieutenant Porter Hanks at Fort Michillimackinac. Moreover, the
federal authorities at Washington neglected to notify several of
their border forts that war had been declared. Accordingly when
Captain Roberts, in command of a British force consisting of
English soldiers, volunteers and Indians to the number of about
900, descended upon the little post, Michillimackinac was not in
the attitude of resistance.
[Illustration:
Copyright Detroit Publishing Company
OLD BLOCK HOUSE AND MISSION POINT, FORT MICHILLIMACKINAC
RESERVATION, MACKINAC ISLAND, MICHIGAN]
Thus captured by the British, the post was a most important
stronghold for them during the continuance of the conflict between
the two countries. Not only did it give them a base of great
strategic possibilities, but its easy capture had an immense moral
effect upon the Indian tribes round about, bringing many of these
tribes to the British aid and being the direct cause of much of the
Indian trouble that Americans suffered on the western frontier at
this time.
The English set to energetically fortifying the point as soon as
they had assumed charge. A hill-top back of Fort Michillimackinac
became the site for a block-house which is standing to this day,
and the walls of Mackinac were strengthened and made greater. A
letter from R. McDouall, the British commander, of date July 17,
1814, says:
I am doing my utmost to prepare for their (the American)
reception. Our new works on the hill overlooking the old fort
are nearly completed and the block-house in the centre will be
finished this week, which will make the position one of the
strongest in Canada. Its principal defect is the difficulty of
finding water near it, but that obviated and a sufficient supply
of provisions laid in, no force that the enemy can bring will be
able to reduce it.
The Englishman’s opinion of the invulnerability to attack of his
block-house was proved by events and was evidently shared by the
Americans, for, when they came in force against Michillimackinac,
they attacked from a different quarter. The American forces were
under the command of Colonel Croghan and Major Holmes, who was
beloved throughout the American army for his engaging personality
and many fine qualities. During the short and unsuccessful attack
Holmes was mortally hurt. At the conclusion of the war, when
Michillimackinac and its new block-house were surrendered by
Great Britain to the United States, the name of this talented
young officer was applied to the block-house. The surrender of
Michillimackinac took place July 18, 1815.
From the date of its surrender until 1895 Fort Michillimackinac was
regularly garrisoned by United States troops, but in this latter
year the garrison was withdrawn and the works were left in the
charge of a caretaker. The block-houses were in rather dilapidated
condition and the grounds had become overgrown when, in 1909, the
Mackinac Island State Park Commission of Michigan was created and
in the hands of this organization the old fort has fared well. The
block-house has been restored and the grounds of the fort and its
buildings have been maintained at the public expense. Every year
Michillimackinac is visited by sight-seers and the island is a
popular summering place for many.
FORT MASSAC
NEAR METROPOLIS--ILLINOIS
The far too far-seeing French in 1702, in furtherance of their
design of dominion in North America, despatched a detachment of
about thirty men from Kaskaskia under the temporal command of M.
Juchereau de St. Denis and the spiritual direction of fiery Father
Mermet to establish a trading post, mission and fort, as near as
convenient to the mouth of the Ohio River to guard the southern
access to this vital means of travel. The result of this expedition
was the establishment of Fort Massac, the site of the future little
city of Metropolis, Illinois.
Consider the map as it is to-day, showing Metropolis and the
surrounding country, and see the fine position that Fort Massac
had in the day of its establishment: It was about thirty-six miles
above the mouth of the Ohio, quite far enough up to be out of the
reach of any flood of that great torrent and also to be beyond the
convenient call of marauding expeditions which might be making the
Mississippi their route north; it faced to the south the mouth of
the Tennessee River and was not far from where the Cumberland and
Wabash rivers joined their courses to the Ohio, and thus it had
fine trading advantages. Therefore it is not to be wondered at
that for a time the new post flourished mightily. Juchereau traded
and Father Mermet preached to satisfied savages and Frenchmen.
Of Father Mermet’s work it has been said that his gentle virtues in
every-day life and his fervid eloquence in the spiritual rostrum
made him beloved and respected by all.
At early dawn his pupils came to church dressed neatly and
modestly each in a deer-skin or robe sewn together from several
skins. After receiving lessons they chanted canticle; mass was
then said in presence of all the Christians, the French and the
converts--the women on one side and the men on the other. From
prayers and instructions the missionaries proceeded to visit
the sick and administer medicine, and their skill as physicians
did more than all the rest to win confidence. In the afternoon
the catechism was taught in the presence of the young and old,
when every one, without distinction of rank or age, answered the
questions of the missionary. At evening all would assemble at the
chapel for instruction, for prayer and to chant the hymns of the
Church. On Sunday and festivals, even after vespers, a homily was
pronounced; at the close of the day parties would meet in houses
to recite the chaplets in alternate choirs and sing psalms till
late at night. Saturday and Sunday were the days appointed for
confession and communion and every convert confessed once in a
fortnight. The success of this mission was such that marriages
of the French immigrants were sometimes solemnized with the
daughters of the Illinois according to the rites of the Catholic
church.
[Illustration: MEMORIAL MONUMENT
(Erected by Illinois Daughters American Revolution)
From the River
FORT MASSAC, ON THE OHIO (LA BELLE RIVIERE)]
Tradition says that the site of Massac had been used by de Soto
for a palisade in 1542, but whether this is true there is no
positive evidence to prove. Juchereau’s settlement consisted of
a palisaded fort, a trading house, several log cottages and the
chapel which Mermet christened “Assumption,” and this name was
applied to the entire settlement for some years. The name “Massac”
did not originate until half a century later. For a time, indeed,
the point was known as the “Old Cherokee Fort.”
Juchereau was removed from Massac and went to the southern waters
of the Mississippi, where he found many large “fish to fry” which
need not be described in this chapter, and the good Father Mermet
was taken back to Kaskaskia. Deprived of its mainsprings in this
fashion, the little post began to languish and shortly came to
grief because of rising disaffection among the surrounding Indians.
The place was abandoned by the French fleeing for their lives and
leaving behind them thirteen thousand buffalo skins which were
eagerly seized by the Indians from whom they had been purchased
at the rate of munificence usual to those days. Tradition has it
that the post was re-established by adventurers shortly after its
abandonment and was used as a trading centre pure and simple, but
the once lively little foundation of Juchereau and Mermet was not
again conspicuous in the events of that border until the French and
Indian War of 1756-63.
During this time it was a rendezvous for the French on the Ohio
River and was their last defence in the campaign of the English
which finally wrested La Belle Riviere from the lilies of France.
In 1756 French soldiers landed here in force, threw up earthworks
and erected a stockade with four bastions mounting eight cannon.
Henceforth in French records the site was known as Fort Massac. In
1763, by the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Massac became an English
possession together with all of the rest of the French strongholds
in North America, but it was not until the spring of 1765 that the
troops of France finally marched out from the fort. The English
during the thirteen years that they held the Illinois country never
occupied the point with troops.
The event in which Fort Massac played a part, which was to have
the greatest influence in its section, took place, however, not
during its French and Indian days, but later, when the American
colonies were asserting their independence of the Mother Country.
All of the Illinois country was held then by His Majesty’s troops,
but it was common information that the French inhabitants of the
conquered country were not extraordinarily well disposed to their
rulers and that the garrisons of the English strongholds here had
been largely reduced to aid the fight on the eastern sea-coast.
Accordingly it entered the head of one George Rogers Clark, a
daring borderman of twenty-six years, Virginian by birth, that it
would not be an impossible task to take from the English by force
the country which they had in this manner seized from the French.
June, 1778, saw him landing at Fort Massac, then ungarrisoned, with
a small body of men, and this same day probably saw the American
flag unfurled for the first time west of the Ohio River, as it is
confidently believed that Clark brought a copy of the new standard
with him. From Fort Massac the expedition set out and achieved the
ends which its commander forevisioned with many deeds of daring.
It opened the gates to American settlement of all the northwest
country of the United States.
Fort Massac was not occupied by troops until 1794, when, in view
of probable collision with Spain and France, Washington despatched
Major Thomas Doyle, of the United States Army, to rebuild and
occupy the post. This was done and for some years it was of
importance. In 1797 about thirty families had settled in the
neighborhood, Captain Zebulon Pike being in command of a garrison
of eighty-three men. At different times General Anthony Wayne and
James Wilkinson occupied the fort as their head-quarters. In 1812
it was garrisoned by a Tennessee volunteer regiment, but at the
close of that conflict the fort was evacuated once more.
In 1855, according to an account of Governor Reynolds, of Illinois,
Fort Massac was in good condition. The walls, 135 feet square, were
strong and at each corner was a stout bastion. A large well of
sweet water was within the fortress and the walls were palisaded
with earth between the wood.