CONTEMPORANEOUS REPORTS.
HARDLY any one institution existing four score years ago, shows so
wondrous a change as does the American newspaper. The steamboat,
railroad, telegraph, telephone, power-press and other mechanical aids
to the spreading of news have all been invented and perfected within
that time, while gas and electric light have aided in the prompt
reproduction of intelligence, and penny-postage in its dissemination.
So that which was then an infant--say rather an embryo--is now a giant.
[Illustration: MASSACRE TREE, 18th STREET.]
The very first published narrative of the massacre which is now at hand
is the following account, very short and full of errors, taken from
the Buffalo Gazette (date not given) and published in Niles' Weekly
Register of October 3, 1812.[AG]
[AG] This paper, published in Baltimore, was the best general chronicle
of events reported by correspondents or appearing in the few and meager
outlying journals of the day.
_Fall of Fort Dearborn, at Chicago._--Yesterday afternoon the Queen
Charlotte arrived at Fort Erie, seven days from Detroit. A flag of
truce soon landed, at Buffalo Creek, Major Atwater and Lieut. J.
L. Eastman, who gave the following account of the fall of Fort
Dearborn: On the first of September a Pottowatomie chief arrived at
Detroit and stated that about the middle of August Captain Wells,
from Fort Wayne [an interpreter], arrived at Fort Dearborn to advise
the commandant of that fort to evacuate it and retreat. In the mean
time a large body of Indians of different nations had collected
and menaced the garrison. A council was held with the Indians, in
which it was agreed that the party in the garrison should be spared
on condition that all property in the fort should be given up. The
Americans marched out but were fired upon and nearly all killed.
There were about fifty men in the fort beside women and children, and
probably not more than ten or twelve taken prisoners. Captain Wells
and Heald [the commandant] were killed.
This brief report interests us in various ways. Detroit was in the
British hands, and the Queen Charlotte a British ship, for Perry's
victory had not yet been won. Major Atwater and Lieut. Eastman, here
liberated by the British under flag of truce, were probably part
of the army surrendered by General Hull on August 16, and paroled;
these officers having remained in Detroit for some unexplained
reason--perhaps because they were citizens of that city, as Atwater is
an old Detroit name. (It has been given to a street there.) The Queen
Charlotte was one of the ships captured by Perry on Sept. 10, 1813, and
was sunk in Put-in-Bay, and twenty years later she was raised, repaired
and put again in commission, this time as a trading-vessel, and it was
on her that John Dean Caton, later Chief Justice of Illinois, and now
(1893) an honored resident of Chicago, took passage at Buffalo with his
bride, in 1834, and came to the land which was to be their home for
sixty years.[AH]
[AH] Mrs. Caton died in 1892.
Regarding the rest of the fugitives we have very scanty reports. The
next item we find is an utterly wild, false and fanciful statement of
Mrs. Helm's vicissitudes, contradicting in every particular her own
narrative, as given in Wau-Bun.
[From Niles' Weekly Register, Saturday, April 13, 1813.]
_Savage Barbarity._--Mrs. Helm, the wife of Lieutenant Helm, who
escaped from the butchery of Chicauga by the assistance of a
humane Indian, has arrived at this place [Buffaloe]. The account
of her sufferings during three months' slavery among the Indians
and three months' imprisonment among their allies, would make a
most interesting volume. One circumstance alone will I mention.
During five days after she was taken prisoner she had not the least
sustenance, and was compelled to drag a canoe (barefooted and wading
along the stream) in which there were some squaws, and when she
demanded food, some flesh of her murdered countrymen and a piece of
Col. Wells' heart was offered her.
She knows the fact that Col. Proctor, the British commander at
Maiden, bought the scalps of our murdered garrison of Chicauga, and
thanks to her noble spirit, she boldly charged him with his infamy in
his own house.
She knows further, from the tribe with whom she was a prisoner, and
who were the perpetrators of those murders, that they intended to
remain true, but that they received orders from the British to cut
off our garrison, whom they were to escort.
Oh, spirits of the murdered Americans! can ye not rouse your
countrymen, your friends, your relations, to take ample vengeance on
those worse than savage bloodhounds?
An Officer.
March 18th, 1813.
This is manifestly written to "fire the patriotic heart" of the country
to rally to the defence of "Buffaloe," a frontier town in deadly fear
of its Canadian neighbors, in sight beyond the Niagara River. Mrs. Helm
herself must have learned with surprise that while she, with the rest
of the Kinzie family, was hospitably entertained at "Parc-aux-vaches,"
on the St. Joseph, she was suffering "three months' slavery among the
Indians;" and later, while living in Detroit, she was enduring "three
months' imprisonment among their allies," the English. Also that
during the five days after the massacre, when she tells us she was,
with much discomfort and more alarm, living in the Kinzie mansion with
her relatives, she was really dragging a canoe, barefooted, wading
along the stream, deprived of all sustenance except the flesh of her
murdered countrymen, especially poor Wells's carved-up and bleeding
heart--which, by the way, she had only heard of; never seen! Such
things serve very well to prove to us that, as creators of imaginative
fiction, newspaper correspondents of those days were equal even to
those of our own.
More absurd, if possible, is a letter printed in Niles' Register of
May 8, 1813, purporting to have been written by one Walter Jordan, a
non-commissioned officer of regulars, stationed at Fort Wayne, to his
wife, in Alleghany County, dated Fort Wayne, October 19, 1812. In the
first place, it is most unlikely that any such white man should have
been in Captain Wells's company and remained unmentioned. We hear of
nobody as arriving but Captain Wells and his thirty Miami Indians. In
our day, it is true, a captain would be likely to be accompanied by
an orderly; but Wells had been brought up in too stern a school to be
provided with such an attendant. Then, too, the narrative bristles with
absurdities. The story is as follows:
I take my pen to inform you that I am well, after a long and perilous
journey through the Indian country. Capt. Wells, myself, and an
hundred friendly Indians, left Fort Wayne on the 1st of August to
escort Captain Heald from Fort Chicauga, as he was in danger of
being captured by the British. Orders had been given to abandon the
fort and retreat to Fort Wayne, a distance of 150 miles. We reached
Chicauga on the 10th of August, and on the 15th prepared for an
immediate march, burning all that we could not fetch with us. On the
15th at 8 o'clock we commenced our march with our small force, which
consisted of Captain Wells, myself, one hundred Confute Indians,
Captain Heald's one hundred men, ten women, twenty children--in all
232. We had marched half a mile when we were attacked by 600 Kickapoo
and Wynbago Indians. In the moment of trial our Confute savages
joined the savage enemy. Our contest lasted fifteen minutes, when
every man, woman and child was killed except fifteen. Thanks be to
God, I was one of those who escaped. First they shot the feather off
my cap, next the epaulet off my shoulder, and then the handle from
the sword; I then surrendered to four savage rascals. The Confute
chief, taking me by the hand and speaking English, said: "Jordan, I
know you. You gave me tobacco at Fort Wayne. We won't kill you, but
come and see what we will do to your captain." So, leading me to
where Wells lay, they cut off his head and put it on a long pole,
while another took out his heart and divided it up among the chiefs
and ate it up raw. Then they scalped the slain and stripped the
prisoners, and gathered in a ring with us fifteen poor wretches in
the middle. They had nearly fallen out about the divide, but my old
chief, the White Racoon, holding me fast, they made the divide and
departed to their towns. They tied me hard and fast that night, and
placed a guard over me. I lay down and slept soundly until morning,
for I was tired. In the morning they untied me and set me parching
corn, at which I worked attentively until night. They said that if I
would stay, and not run away they would make a chief of me; but if I
would attempt to run away they would catch me and burn me alive. I
answered them with a fine story in order to gain their confidence,
and finally made my escape from them on the 19th of August, and
took one of the best horses to carry me, being seven days in the
wilderness. I was joyfully received at Wayne on the 26th. On the
28th day they attacked the fort and blockaded us until the 16th of
September, when we were relieved by General Harrison.
One is uncertain whether to rate this as a yarn made by some
penny-a-liner out of such scraps as might be picked up from common
rumor and the tales of returned stragglers of the thirty Indians who
ran away when the attack began, or the lying story of a fellow who was
really of the party, and one of the leaders, not in the fight, but in
the flight. His enumeration of "one hundred Confute Indians," (no tribe
of that name being known to history) in place of the band of thirty
Miamis, his estimate of Captain Heald's "one hundred men, ten women and
twenty children," his march of "half a mile," his statement that all
were killed except fifteen, which would make the loss of life over two
hundred, in place of Captain Heald's estimate of fifty-two, all tend to
force the conclusion that there was no Walter Jordan in the matter.
The latter part of the story, representing himself as heroically losing
feather, epaulet and sword-hilt to the rascally savages, who still
refrained from inflicting bodily injury on him, his then being kindly
but firmly led to the place where poor Wells, in the presence of his
niece, was waiting to have his head cut off and set up on a pole, and
his heart cut out and divided among the chiefs, etc., tends to the
belief that Walter Jordan was present, ran away, saved himself, reached
Fort Wayne and devised this cock-and-bull story to explain his long
absence, his personal safety and his possession of a horse which did
not belong to him. Another hypothesis is that he started from Fort
Wayne with Wells, deserted on the road, hung around until he got the
story as told by the Indian fugitives, and (finding that his captain
was dead) put a bold face on the matter and came in, bringing a horse
he had been lucky enough to "capture" when its owner was not looking.
The next item is dated more than a year later; a year during which the
wretched captives seem to have suffered miseries indescribable. The
story bears the stamp of truth so far as the escaped fugitives knew it:
[From Niles' Weekly Register, 4th June, 1814.]
Chicago.--Among the persons who have recently arrived at this place,
says the Plattsburg [N. Y.] paper of the 21st ultimo, from Quebec,
are: James Van Horn, Dyson Dyer, Joseph Knowles, Joseph Bowen, Paul
Grummond, Nathan Edson, Elias Mills, James Corbin, Phelim Corbin,
of the First Regiment of U. S. Infantry, who survived the massacre
at Fort Dearborn, or Chicago, on the 15th August, 1812. It will be
recollected that the commandant at Fort Chicago, Captain Heald, was
ordered by General Hull to evacuate the fort and proceed with his
command to Detroit; that having proceeded about a mile and a half,
the troops were attacked by a body of Indians, to whom they were
compelled to capitulate.
Captain Heald, in his report of this affair, dated October 23d, 1812,
says: "Our strength was fifty-four regulars and twelve militia, out
of which twenty-six regulars and all the militia, with two women and
twelve children, were killed in the action.
"Lieut. Linai T. Helm, with twenty-five non-commissioned officers
and privates, and eleven women and children, were prisoners when
we separated." Lieut. Helm was ransomed. Of the twenty-five
non-commissioned officers and privates, and the eleven women and
children, the nine persons above mentioned are believed to be the
only survivors. They state that the prisoners who were not put
to death on the march were taken to the Fox River, in the Indian
territory, where they were distributed among the Indians as servants.
Those who survived remained in this situation about nine months,
during which time they were allowed scarcely a sufficiency of
sustenance to support nature, and were then brought to Fort Chicago,
where they were purchased by a French trader, agreeable to the
directions of General Proctor, and sent to Amherstburg, and from
thence to Quebec, where they arrived November 8th, 1813.
John Neads, who was one of the prisoners, formerly of Virginia, died
among the Indians between the 15th and 20th of January, 1813.
Hugh Logan, an Irishman, was tomahawked and put to death, be not
being able to walk from excessive fatigue.
August Mott, a German, was killed in the same manner for the like
reason.
A man by the name of Nelson was frozen to death while a captive with
the Indians. He was formerly from Maryland.
A child of Mrs. Neads, the wife of John Neads, was tied to a tree to
prevent its following and crying after its mother for victuals. Mrs..
Neads perished from hunger and cold.
The officers who were killed on the 15th of August had their heads
cut off and their hearts taken out and boiled in the presence of the
prisoners. Eleven children were massacred and scalped in one wagon.
Mrs. Corbin, wife of Phelim Corbin, in an advanced stage of
pregnancy, was tomahawked, scalped, cut open, and had the child taken
out and its head cut off.
Turning to the latest muster-roll of the force, dated 1810, we identify
among these survivors the names of Dyson Dyer, Nathan Edson, Paul
Grummow, James Van Home, James Corbin and Phelim Corbin. Among the
perished, August Mott, John Neads and Hugh Logan. To this sad list must
be added four still more pitiable victims--the wife and unborn child
of Phelim Corbin, and the unhappy Mrs. Neads, to whom death must have
been welcome after seeing her little one "tied to a tree to keep it
from following her and crying for victuals."
[Illustration: THE SECOND BLOCK-HOUSE IN ITS LAST DAYS.]
Mrs. John Kinzie, in a sketch of the life of her husband (Chic. Hist.
Society, July 11, 1877. Fergus' Hist. Series No. 10) says:
In 1816 the Kinzie family returned to their desolated home in
Chicago. The bones of the murdered soldiers, who had fallen four
years before, were still lying unburied where they had fallen. The
troops who rebuilt the fort collected and interred these remains.
The coffins which contained them were deposited near the bank of the
river, which then had its outlet about at the foot of Madison Street.
The cutting through the sand-bar for the harbor caused the lake to
encroach and wash away the earth, exposing the long range of coffins
and their contents, which were afterward cared for and reinterred by
the civil authorities.
There is good reason to believe that Mrs. Kinzie was mistaken in
thinking that the coffins exposed on the lake shore by the action of
the waves, contained the bodies of those who perished in the massacre.
The fort burying-ground certainly was at the place indicated, and the
exposed coffins doubtless contained the bodies of those buried in that
ground; but that does not include the massacre victims. Mr. Fernando
Jones believes them to have been buried at where Seventeenth Street,
extended, would cross Prairie Avenue.
A letter on the matter (kindly furnished me while these pages are in
preparation) reads as follows:
Upon my arrival in Chicago, in the spring of 1835, being fifteen
years of age, I became acquainted with a number of Indian and
half-breed boys, as well as older persons, and visited many times
the location of the Indian massacre of 1812. The spot was pointed
out by some who were children at the time, and by others who had
been informed by their parents. The burial-place where the victims
were interred was quite distinct at that time. There was a mound in
the prairie southwest of the massacre-ground, that was pointed out
as the grave of the vidette, or soldier in advance of the retreating
garrison.
The tradition was that the soldier ran west into the prairie,
thinking to hide in the tall grass, but was pursued and killed and
scalped and his body afterward buried by friendly half breeds.
In the summer of 1836 a number of youngsters, accompanied by some
young Indians and half-breeds, proceeded to examine the lonely
hillock in the plains. The turf still preserved the shape of a
grave. There were in the party as I remember, besides myself, Pierre
Laframbois, Alex Beaubien, Charles Cleaver, J. Louis Hooker and
John C. Haines. After digging about three feet into the ground we
unearthed a skeleton surrounded by bits of woolen cloth, pieces of
leather, brass military buttons and buckles and a brass plate with U.
S. upon it. We became convinced that this was undeniably the grave
of the traditional vidette, and reverently returned the remains into
the grave where they had lain for a quarter of a century, and where
I suppose they still remain. The spot was about a block south of
the Calumet Club-House, near the S. E. corner of Indiana Ave. and
Twenty-first Street. I kept watch of the place until streets were
laid out and the property improved, having resided near it for over
twenty-five years.
Fernando Jones.
No remains of any coffin were found, a fact which would indicate a
battle-field burial; but on the other hand, it seems most improbable
that the Indians would have left belt-plate, buttons and cloth on any
of their victims.
* * * * *
The Indian Problem is solved at last, and by the Indians' own and only
means for the solution of problems--the cutting of the knot. It has
been a long struggle, marked by wrong on both sides and by shame on
ours--theirs was not capable of shame. They had many friends and only
one formidable enemy--themselves.
The Americans met them with the sword in one hand and the olive
branch in the other. They declined the branch and defied the sword.
The English offered them gifts in both hands, and they took all that
was offered, rendering in exchange services disgraceful to the more
civilized party to the contract. The French offered them love, and won
theirs in return. While other whites held aloof, the gay Frenchman
fraternized with them, became one with them, shared their lives and
their pursuits, won their religious allegiance--nay, more; in a gentler
and more irresistible way prevailed over them, for he formed with their
women alliances which furnished the inferior race a hybrid, partly like
themselves, but superior, and able and willing to be their leaders
against the more grasping, less loving Americans. These hybrids have,
in many cases, continued the race on its enlightened side, and there
are not wanting among ourselves splendid specimens of manhood and
womanhood, whose fine figures, flashing eyes, and strong, grave faces,
proclaim the proud possession of the blood of the only really "first
citizens" of our democratic republic.
It is now hard to trace the Indians who departed hence in 1835,
fifty-eight years ago. They are almost "lost tribes." The report for
1890 of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, gives Pottowatomies of
various descriptions scattered in many places. This same is true of the
Ottawas and Chippewas.
The larger part of the Pottowatomies (known of old as the "Woods Band,"
in contradistinction to the "Prairie Band") have renounced tribal
relations and are known as the "Citizen Band." They number scarcely two
thousand souls, and occupy a tract nearly thirty miles square (575,000
acres) in Oklahoma.
The Commissioners' report says but little about them, giving more
attention to the "Prairie Band," since they are still a tribe, and
thus, "wards of the nation." They number only 432, and hold in common
77,357 acres in Kansas, where they are doing fairly, but are pestered
with the dregs of the "Citizen Band," who fall back on the tribe like
the returned prodigal--but unrepentant, and still fit company only for
the husk-eating swine.
Of the "Citizen Band," Special Agent Porter says:
"The Pottowatomies are citizens of the United States, thoroughly
tinctured with white blood. Nearly all of them speak English and read
and write. Some of them are quite wealthy, being good farmers, with
large herds of stock. Their morals are below the standard, considering
their advanced state as a civilized' people."
This is not high praise; still, it gives hope for better things. Peace
and industry coming first, civilization and morality will follow. The
savage Indian is essentially a being of the past (notwithstanding
the survival of a few wild Apaches, a few "ghost-dancers" among the
Sioux, and some other exceptional bodies) and he is succeeded by the
truly civilized Indian (of whom the Cherokees are a splendid example),
a self-respecting, self governing, self-educating, prosperous human
being; not particularly different from the frontiers-man, except by a
slight and diminishing shade of color and by the possession of the best
characteristics of his savage ancestors. It may perhaps be said that
no race of men has ever made as much progress in five generations as
have the "civilized Indians." It is only one hundred and sixty years
since d'Artaguiette, Vinsenne, the Jesuit Senat, and young St. Ange,
son of the French commandant in the Illinois country (Fort Chartres),
were defeated in the Arkansas country and were burned at the stake
by the unconquered Chickasaws, who were "amazed to see the fortitude
with which white men could die." And now, in the territory adjoining
Arkansas on the west, the descendants of the torturers are cultivating
farms, maintaining governments, courts, schools and churches, and
in short, setting an example worthy to be followed by many who have
been "civilized" from the time ages back of the year 1492; when the
innocent, luckless Haytians learned of the existence of the unspeakable
Spaniards, in cruelty the only rivals of the North American aborigines.
* * * * *
What is the reason for the intense interest and curiosity which
clusters about this story of violence and rapine, of heroism, anguish
and death? Other massacres have blotted with blood the pages of
American history. From Deerfield and Schenectady to the Little Bighorn,
our devoted bands have perished at the hands of the American Indian;
and each dark day is suffered to rest as a mere tradition, buried in
the half-forgotten folk-lore of its time and place. Why does the Fort
Dearborn massacre, involving only a few score souls, hold a different
rank in our hearts?
It is because the footsteps of millions are passing over the spot
where it all happened; steamers are churning its peaceful waters;
bells and steam-whistles are rending the air that bore away the sound
of gun-shots, war-whoops and dying cries; and the sculptors' art is
putting into immortal bronze the memory of its incidents. Thus does it
gain an _ex post facto_ importance and a posthumous fame.
[Illustration: BLOCK-HOUSE TABLET]
Transcription of Block-House Tablet:
BLOCK HOUSE OF FORT DEARBORN
This building occupies the site of old
Fort Dearborn which extended a little
across Mich. Ave. and somewhat into the
River as it now is.
The Fort was built in 1803 & 4. Forming
our outmost defense.
By order of Gen. Hull it was evacuated Aug.
15, 1812 after its stores and provisions
had been distributed among the Indians.
Very soon after the Indians attacked and
massacred about fifty of the troops and
a number of citizens including women and
children and next day burned the Fort.
In 1816 it was re-built, but after the
Black-hawk War it went into gradual disuse and
in May 1857 when it was torn down, excepting a
single building, which stood upon this site
till the Great Fire of Oct. 9, 1871.
At the suggestion of the Chicago Historical
Society this tablet was erected by
Nov. 1889. W. M. Hoyt.
Among the world's great cities, Chicago should be the one most
thoroughly recorded. No other that counts her denizens by the million
has among them those born before her annals fairly began. No other has
had such startling vicissitudes. Laid low by slaughter in her infancy
and by fire in her youth, she has climbed with bounding steps, upward
and onward. Toiling, enduring, laughing, prospering, exulting; she has
taken each scourge as a fillip to her energy, each spur as a stimulus
to her courage. Hers is the enthusiasm of youth with the strength of
maturity.
The early days of Paris and London are lost in half-mythical shadow.
Even if told, their incidents might fail to match in interest those
which have befallen their young sister. So much the more zealously
should we who love this youthful aspirant for fame, take care that
the romance of her childhood shall be preserved and handed down to
posterity.
The spirited figure of La Salle (given by Lambert Tree) and Martin
Ryerson's Indian group, are both fine memorials of the dawn of things
in the North-West. Eli Bates's matchless statue of Lincoln is devoted
to a page in the history of the whole Union. Now comes Chicago's latest
treasure, the magnificent group commemorating the massacre of 1812;
a purely civic work, to keep in the minds of Chicago's citizens, for
untold generations, the romance and reality of her struggling infancy.
Honor to the men who, in the intense pressure of the present, still
have thoughts for the past and the future.
* * * * *
At the unveiling, (1881) of the Block-House Tablet (designed by the
Chicago Historical Society) set by William M. Hoyt in the north wall
of his warehouse, facing Rush Street Bridge from the south, Mr. Eugene
Hall read some stanzas of original verse so musical, so poetic and so
apt for the occasion, that I venture (with his permission) to repeat
them here, as a finish to our story.
* * * * *
[Illustration: BEAUBIEN FIDDLE AND CALUMET, IN POSSESSION OF THE
CALUMET CLUB.]
FORT DEARBORN,
CHICAGO,
1881.
Here, where the savage war-whoop once resounded,
Where council fires burned brightly years ago,
Where the red Indian from his covert bounded
To scalp his pale-faced foe:
Here, where grey badgers had their haunts and burrows,
Where wild wolves howled and prowled in midnight bands,
Where frontier farmers turned the virgin furrows,
Our splendid city stands.
Here, where brave men and helpless women perished,
Here, where in unknown graves their forms decay;
This marble, that their memory may be cherished,
We consecrate today.
No more the farm-boy's call, or lowing cattle.
Frighten the timid wild fowl from the slough:
The noisy trucks and wagons roll and rattle
O'er miles of pavement now.
Now are our senses startled and confounded.
By screaming whistle and by clanging bell.
Where Beaubien's merry fiddle once resounded
When summer twilight fell.
Here stood the fort with palisades about it.
With low log block-house in those early hours;
The prairie fair extended far without it.
Blooming with fragrant flowers.
About this spot the buildings quickly clustered;
The logs decayed, the palisade went down.
Here the resistless Western spirit mustered
And built this wondrous town.
Here from the trackless plain its structures started.
And one by one, in splendor rose to view.
The white ships went and came, the years departed,
And still she grandly grew.
Till one wild night, a night each man remembers.
When round her homes the red fire leaped and curled.
The sky was filled with flame and flying embers.
That swept them from the world.
Men said: "Chicago's bright career is ended!"
As by the smouldering stones they chanced to go,
While the wide world its love and pity blended,
To help us in our woe.
O where was ever human goodness greater?
Man's love for man was never more sublime.
On the eternal scroll of our Creator
'Tis written for all time.
Chicago lives, and many a lofty steeple
Looks down today upon this western plain;
The tireless hands of her unconquered people
Have reared her walls again.
Long may she live and grow in wealth and beauty,
And may her children be, in coming years,
True to their trust and faithful in their duty
As her brave pioneers.
[Illustration]
APPENDIX.
A--John Baptiste Pointe de Saible.
B--Fort Dearborn in the War Department.
C--The Whittier Family.
D--The Kinzie Family.
E--The Wells and Heald Families.
F--The Bones of John Lalime.
G--Letters from a. H. Edwards.
H--Billy Caldwell, "The Sauganash."
I--Indian War Dance.
K--The Bronze Memorial Group.
APPENDIX A.
JEAN BAPTISTE POINTE DE SAIBLE, THE HAYTIAN NEGRO WHO WAS THE FIRST
"WHITE MAN" TO SETTLE IN CHICAGO (1776-77).
[Illustration: COCK-CROW.]
NOT IN JEST, but in grave, sober earnest, the Indians used to say
that "the first white man in Chicago was a nigger." In their view,
all non-Indians were "whites," the adjective having to them only a
racial significance. Then, too the aborigines had no jests--no harmless
ones. Peering into the dim past for early items concerning what is now
Chicago, one comes first to the comparatively clear (though positively
scanty) records of the French--La Salle, Marquette, Tonti, Hennepin,
St. Cosme and their bold associates--who came in by way of the St.
Lawrence in the seventeenth century--1672 to 1700.
From that time there occurs a great blank. Scarcely a ray of light
or word of intelligence pierces the deep gloom for just one hundred
years. Detroit, Mackinaw, Lake Superior, Green Bay, Fort Duquesne and
St. Louis are kept in view. Even Kaskasia and Fort Chartres, both in
Illinois territory, are on record; a circumstance due to the fact, not
generally known, that they were points of importance in John Law's
famous Mississippi scheme. But Chicago was almost as though it had sunk
below the waves of Lake Michigan when La Salle, Marquette and St. Cosme
bade it good-bye.
[Illustration: ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE.]
Suddenly, in 1778, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, the name
reappears in literature in a curious way. It comes to us through a
poetical allusion from the pen of Colonel Arent Schuyler de Peyster,
commandant at Michilimackinac. De Peyster, as his name suggests, was a
New Yorker of the ancient Dutch stock He entered the English army and
in 1757 was commissioned lieutenant in the Eighth, or King's Regiment
of Foot. Necessarily he was and continued to be a royalist, and when
war broke out served King George against Gen. George.
Fortunately for our knowledge of the West during Revolutionary times,
Colonel de Peyster was a scholar and a gentleman as well a soldier and
a Tory He left a volume of "Miscellanies," which was first published
(1813) in Dumfries, Scotland, whither the old soldier retired when the
bad cause for which he made a good fight came to a disastrous end by
the peace of Paris in 1783.[AI] An edition, edited by General J. Watts
de Peyster, of Yonkers, was published in 1888.
[AI] After his return to Scotland, Colonel de Peyster commanded the
"fencibles" (militia), of which Robert Burns was a member, and it was
in his honor that the poet wrote his poem, "To Colonel de Peyster,"
beginning:
"My honored Colonel, deep I feel Your interest in the poets' weal."
and ending, after several stanzas:
"But lest you think I am uncivil To plague you with this draunting
drivel. Abjuring a intentions evil, I quat my pen: The Lord preserve us
frae the devil, Amen! Amen!"
[Illustration: From "Cyclopædia of United States History."--Copyright,
1881 by Harper & Brothers.
GEORGE ROGERS CLARK (LATE IN LIFE).]
Colonel de Peyster's post of loyal service was Mackinaw, whither, as
the "Miscellanies" tell us, he was sent early in 1774, "to command
the post, with the painful task of superintending the lake Indians."
"Canoes arrived with passes signed by the American General Wooster, and
Dr. Benjamin Franklin, wherein it was stipulated that those traders
should not afford any succor whatever to the British garrison."
He adds that "in the spring following they [the Indians] were sent
down to assist General Burgoine in his expedition across Lake
Champlaine"--an entry which recalls the fate of poor Jane McCrea, whose
death at the hands of the Indians, near Saratoga, used to draw tears
from our childish eyes in the good old times before patriotism was no
more.
In that expedition they seem to have done no valuable service to King
George (except the killing of Miss McCrea), and on their return they
were assembled at Mackinaw for the purpose of making a diversion in
favor of the English General Hamilton, whom George Rogers Clark, our
paragon of Western soldiers, had defeated already (though de Peyster
did not know it) and sent across the Alleghanies, a prisoner, to
Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia.
Now comes in the mention of Chicago. De Peyster made a speech to
the assembled redskins, which speech he next day turned into rude
rhyme at the request of a fair lady whom he calls, in gallant French
phrase, "une chère compagne de voyage." The poem is included in the
"Miscellanies."[AJ]
[AJ] The lady was his wife. The marriage was childless, and General J.
Watts de Peyster (1892) says in a private note: "She was _chère_ indeed
to de P's lineal heirs, for her cajolery of the Colonel transferred his
property from his nephew, protege and namesake. Captain Arent Schuyler
de Peyster, to her own people, McMurdo's, or whatever was the name of
her nephews." General de Peyster says that he himself got the story
from Captain Arent Schuyler de Peyster, the namesake in question, and
the discoverer of the "De Peyster Islands," in the Pacific Ocean.
The entire versified speech is too long to quote, interesting though
it be as an unstudied sketch of things of that time and place. Any one
wishing to know more of it can find it in the "Miscellanies," of which
a copy should be easily found in any large library.
SPEECH TO THE WESTERN INDIANS.
Great chiefs, convened at my desire
To kindle up this council-fire,
Which, with ascending smoke shall burn,
Till you from war once more return
To lay the axe in earth so deep
That nothing shall disturb its sleep.
I know you have been told by Clark
His riflemen ne'er miss the mark;
In vain you hide behind a tree
If they your finger-tip can see.
The instant they have got their aim
Enrolls you on the list of lame.
But then, my sons, this boaster's rifles,
To those I have in store are trifles:
If you but make the tree your mark
The ball will twirl beneath the bark.
Till it one-half the circle find,
Then out and kill the man behind.
Clark says, with Louis in alliance
He sets your father at defiance;
That he, too, hopes, ere long, to gain
Assistance from the King of Spain.
Suppose, awhile, his threats prove true.
My children, what becomes of you?
Your sons, your daughters and your wives,
Must they be hacked by their big knives?
Clark, soon repulsed, will ne'er return,
While your war-fire thus clear doth burn.
At Fort St. Joseph and the Post,
Go, lay in ambush for his host,
While I send round Lake Michigan
And raise the warriors to a man.
Who, on their way to get to you.
Shall take a peep at Eschikagou.[AK]
Those runagates at Milwackie
Must now perforce with you agree.
Sly Siggernaak and Naakewoin
Must with Langlade their forces join,
Or he will send them, _tout au diable_
As he did Baptiste Pointe de Saible.[AL]
[AK] A river and fort at the head of Lake Michigan.
[AL] A handsome negro, well educated and settled in Chicago, but much
in the interest of the French.
So steps upon the stage of history the earliest non-Indian settler
of Chicago; a man who built, at about the time of our Declaration
of Independence, the house which was standing within the memory of
hundreds of Chicagoans of 1892--the well-known "Kinzie Mansion," that
faced the north bank of the river where Pine Street now ends.
Mrs. John H. Kinzie, in her delightful book, "Wau-Bun, the Early day
in the North-West," calls him "Pointe au Sable," and says he was a
native of San Domingo, and came from that island with a friend named
Glamorgan; who had obtained large Spanish grants in or about St. Louis.
She adds that Jean Baptiste sold his Chicago establishment to a French
trader named Le Mai, and went back to Peoria where his friend Glamorgan
was living, and died tinder his roof, presumably about 1800. From Le
Mai, the property passed in 1803, to John Kinzie, the real pioneer of
Chicago.
Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) was discovered and even colonized,
by Columbus, in 1492. It had then some two million inhabitants, living
like our first parents in Eden (Genesis I, 27), but the unspeakable
cruelty of the Spaniards so depopulated the splendid and happy island,
that in 1517--twenty-five years later--it was requisite to import negro
slaves to carry on the mining, and to-day not one soul of the original
race survives.
The French began to come in 1630, and by the treaty of Ryswick
[1697] the island was divided between France and Spain. Then began
the greatness of the Haytian negro, which culminated in Toussaint
L'Ouverture, liberator of his race from French slavery and his land
from French domain; and later, victim to Napoleon's perfidy. Under the
French rule many free negroes were educated in France, very probably
Baptiste Pointe de Saible among the rest. At any rate he was of the
adventurous spirit which would rather be first in a new sphere than
last in an old, and so, with Glamorgan, he came over to Mobile or New
Orleans. Then (probably on one of John Law's "Compagnie de l'Occident"
bateaux) he came up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. Louis,
and at last to Peoria, on the Illinois, where he left Glamorgan, and
pushed on to the Pottowatomie outposts where we find him in 1778, the
object of Colonel de Peyster's admiring dislike.
Edward G. Mason, in an address before the Historical society, gives
a tradition in regard to Pointe de Saible's welcome on Chicago soil,
which tradition appears in "Early Western Days," a volume published
by John T. Kingston, formerly a state senator of Wisconsin. It runs
thus: An Indian living south of the Portage River--now called the
Chicago--being out hunting, suddenly came upon a strange object,
half hidden by the underbrush. It was a black face with white eyes
and woolly hair! (Probably no Indian of his tribe had ever seen a
negro.) After gazing at the novel sight awhile, he grunted, "Ugh!
Mucketewees!" (black meat.) He captured the odd animal and carried him
to the village, whither came the Indians from far and near to gaze, to
wonder, and to speculate. Fortunately for Baptiste, for Chicago and
for history, the consensus of opinion called it "bad meat," and so the
creature's life was spared.
Shaubena, a chief of the Pottowatomies, was in and about Chicago long
after their war dance of 1836. He had seen Pointe de Saible, but
unfortunately his knowledge concerning him is not on record. Mr. Mason
says regretfully:
In 1855, at the old Wells Street station, I saw old Shaubena wearing
moccasins, leggins, coat and plug hat with colored strings tied
around it. He was gazing with great delight at the Galena Railway
engine, named for him, and calling the attention of the people on the
platform to it. He doubtless thought that a much more wonderful sight
than old Jean Baptiste.
[Illustration: SHAUBENA IN OLD AGE. (ABOUT 1856.)]
One other mention of Pointe de Saible is thrown up from the almost
barren shore of Western history. The third volume of the Wisconsin
Historical Society's collection contains certain "Recollections"
of Augustin Grignon (a grandson of Sieur Charles de Langlade), who
became the first permanent white settler of Wisconsin about 1735, and,
as we have seen, is named by de Peyster in his verses, among which
"Recollections" occurs the following precious bit:
"At a very early period there was a negro who lived here (Chicago)
named Baptiste Pointe de Saible. My brother, Perish Grignon, visited
Chicago about 1794 and told me that Pointe de Saible was a large man,
that he had a commission for some office, but for what particular
office or for what government I cannot now recollect. He was a trader,
pretty wealthy, and drank freely. I do not know what became of him."
With these bits of chance allusion--touches here and there--we get a
quite distinct impression of the lonely Baptiste. His origin shows
possibility of greatness, for it was the same with that of François
Dominique Toussaint, surnamed l'Ouverture. Like him, he was a French
West-Indian mulatto. He was large, handsome, well-educated and
adventurous, traits which mark pretty clearly his migrations and his
fortunes. Neither in Mobile, New Orleans, Kaskaskia, nor St. Louis
could he probably feel at home, for at each of these places nigritude
was associated with servitude. Among the Peoria Indians he probably
found scanty elbow-room, especially if his friend and rival trader,
Glamorgan, was, as his name implies, of Welsh blood--a race which
gleans close, and thrives where others starve.
Not unnaturally would he, as tradition suggests, aspire to headship of
the great tribe of Pottowatomies, for he knew how vastly superior he
was to the best of them; and quite as naturally would he fail, seeing
that the red strain of blood and the black have even less in common
than has each with the white. At the same time, considering the state
of domestic relations at that time and place, we may be very sure that
he did not fail to "take some savage woman"--one or more--to rear
his dusky race in large numbers and much rude, half-breed gaiety and
contentment.
As to his office, one would like greatly to know something about it,
and is prone to wish that somebody would look it up--in the general
government archives, or those of the North-West Territory, which had
been established in 1788, General St. Clair being its first governor,
and Cincinnati (Losantiville) its capital. Why should it not have been
under Harrison and Wells? It would scarcely have been an English office
in view of the unpleasant allusion by de Peyster, though the English
maintained emissaries hereabouts--fomenters of discontent--away on
almost to the war of 1812. Still, it might be worth while to try the
Canadian records. Barring swell a discovery, it seems probable that the
last word has been written about him.
Jean Baptiste's name "Pointe de Saible" (or Sable) might be suspected
of being a description of his residence rather than an inheritance
from his forefathers, for the cabin of squared logs, so early built
and so lately destroyed, stood at the head of the great sand-point
which of old interrupted the course of the Chicago river lakeward, and
turned it south for about half a mile to where it flowed over a long,
fordable, narrow bar formed by the ceaseless sandstream that moves
from north to south along the western shore of Lake Michigan. But the
records and traditions are old enough and exact enough to uphold the
name as a patronymic, and leave the place as a mere coincidence. One
might almost as easily trace it to his lack of grit and perseverance,
seeing that he put his hand to the plow and looked back; that he came
to Chicago in hope and moved away in despair; that having a "homestead
location" he did not stay and "prove up;" that, owning, by occupation,
a thousand million dollars worth of real estate, he sold it for a song
instead of waiting for a "boom." _Point de sable_--"no sand."
The two other characteristics of Chicago's first merchant-prince, which
are preserved for us by lucky chance, are that he was "pretty wealthy"
and that he "drank freely." Only one of these traits has come down to
his successors of a century later. [From "Liber Scriptorum," published
by the Authors' Club, New York.]
Joseph Kirkland.
[Illustration: CHICAGO RIVER. JUNCTION OF NORTH AND SOUTH BRANCHES
(1830).]
[Illustration: Proposed Plan for Improving the Mouth of Chicago River]
APPENDIX B.
FORT DEARBORN RECORDS AT WASHINGTON.
[Illustration]
WAR Department records, back of the war of 1812, are few and
poor; partly, no doubt, for the reason that during that short struggle
a British force, sailing up the Potomac, seized upon the defenceless
little city of Washington and burned its public buildings with their
contents. The Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War (under President
Garfield) at the time of unveiling the Block House Tablet, May 21,
1881, kindly furnished to Mr. Wentworth copies of all documents on file
relating to Fort Dearborn and its garrison, (Fergus' Hist., Series No.
16.)
* * * * *
Extract from a letter written June 28, 1804, by General Henry Dearborn,
Secretary of War under President Jefferson:
Being of opinion that, for the general defence of our country,
we ought not to rely upon fortifications, but on men and steel;
and that works calculated for resisting batteries of cannon are
necessary only for our principal seaports, I cannot conceive it
useful or expedient to construct expensive works for our interior
military posts, especially such as are intended merely to hold
the Indians in check. I have therefore directed stockade works
aided by block-houses to be erected at Vincennes, at Chikago, at
or near the mouth of the Miami of the lakes, and at Kaskaskia, in
conformity with the sketch herewith enclosed, each calculated for a
full company; the block-houses to be constructed of timber slightly
hewed, and of the most durable kind to be obtained at the respective
places; the magazines for powder to be of brick, of a conic figure,
each capable of receiving from fifty to one hundred barrels of
powder. Establishments of the kind here proposed will, I presume,
be necessary for each of the military posts in Upper and Lower
Louisiana, New Orleans and its immediate dependencies excepted. I
will thank you to examine the enclosed sketch, and to give me your
opinion on the dimensions and other proposed arrangements You will
observe the block-houses are to be so placed as to scour from the
upper and lower stories the whole of the lines. The back part of the
barracks are to have port-holes which can be opened when necessary
for the use of musketry for annoying an enemy.
It will, I presume, be proper ultimately to extend palisades round
the block-houses.
* * * * *
Statement compiled from the Records of the Adjutant General's office in
the case of Fort Dearborn, with copies of orders:
Fort Dearborn, situated at Chicago, Ill., within a few yards of
Lake Michigan. Latitude 41° 51' North; Longitude 87° 15' West. Post
established by the United States forces in 1804. (From 1804-12 no
records are on file.)
August 15th, 1812, the garrison having evacuated the post and were
_en route_ for Ft. Wayne, under the command of Captain Nathan Heald,
1st U. S. Infantry, composed of 54 Regular Infantry, 12 Militia
men, and one interpreter, was attacked by Indians to the number of
between 400 and 500, of whom 15 were killed. Those of the garrison
killed were Ensign George Ronan, 1st Infantry, Dr. Isaac Van Voorhis,
Captain Wells, Interpreter, 24 enlisted men, U S. Infantry, and 12
Militia-men; 2 women and 12 children were also killed. The wounded
were Captain Nathan Heald and Mrs. Heald. None others reported. The
next day, August 16th, 1812, the post was destroyed by the Indians.
Reoccupied about June 1816, Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry,
commanding. The troops continued in occupation until October, 1823,
when the post was evacuated and left in charge of the Indian agent;
It was reoccupied Oct. 3rd, 1828.
Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, commanded the post from June
1816, to May 1817, Brevet Major D. Baker to June 1820; Captain
Hezekiah Bradley, 3rd Infantry, to January 1821, Major Alex Cummings,
3rd Infantry, to October, 1821; Lieut. Col. J. McNeal, 3rd Infantry,
to July 1823; Captain John Greene, 3rd Infantry, to October, 1823;
post not garrisoned from October 1823, to October 1828. No returns of
post on file prior to 1828.
* * * * *
Copies of Orders.
ORDER NO. 35.
Adjutant General's Office, Washington, 27 May, 1823.
The Major-General commanding the army directs that Fort Dearborn,
Chicago, be evacuated, and that the garrison thereof be withdrawn to
the headquarters of the 3rd regiment of Infantry.
One company of the 3rd regiment of Infantry will proceed to Mackinac
and relieve the company of artillery now stationed there, which, with
the company of artillery at Fort Shelby, Detroit, will be withdrawn
and ordered to the harbor of New York.
The commanding General of the Eastern department, will give the
necessary orders for carrying these movements into effect, as well as
for the security of the public property at Forts Dearborn and Shelby.
By order of Major-General Brown.
(Signed) Chas. J. Nourse, _Act'g Adjutant-General_.
ORDER NO. 44.
Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 19 August, 1828.
(Extract.) In conformity with the directions of the Secretary of War,
the following movements of the troops will be made.
Two companies of the 5th regiment of Infantry to reoccupy Fort
Dearborn, at the head of Lake Michigan; the remaining eight companies
to proceed by the way of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers to Fort Howard,
Green Bay, where the headquarters of the regiment will be established.
Four Co's of the Reg't to constitute the garrison of Fort Howard; two
Co's for the garrison of Michilimackinac, and two for that of Fort
Brady.
4. The Quartermaster-General's department to furnish the necessary
transportation and supplies for the movement and accommodation of the
troops.
The subsistence department to furnish the necessary supplies of
provisions.
The Surgeon-General to supply medical officers and suitable hospital
supplies for the posts to be established and reoccupied.
5. The Commanding Generals of the Eastern and Western departments
are respectively charged with the execution of this order as far as
relates to their respective commands.
By order of Major General Macomb, Major-General Commanding the Army.
(Signed) R. Jones, _Adjutant-General_.
ORDER NO. 16.
Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, 23 Feb., 1832.
(Copy.) The headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Infantry are
transferred to Fort Niagara. Lieut. Col. Cummings, with all the
officers and men composing the garrison of Madison Barracks,
Sackett's Harbor, will accordingly relieve the garrison of Fort
Niagara; and Major Whistler, on being relieved by Lieut.-Col.
Cummings, with all the troops under his command, will repair to Fort
Dearborn (Chicago, Illinois) and garrison that post.
Assistant Surgeon De Camp, now on duty at Madison Barracks, is
assigned to duly at Fort Dearborn, and will accompany the troops
ordered to that post. These movements will take place as soon as the
navigation will permit.
By order of Major-General Macomb.
(Signed) R. Jones, _Adjutant-General_.
GENERAL ORDER HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. NO. 80.
Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, Nov. 30th, 1836.
(Extract) I. The troops stationed at Fort Dearborn, Chicago, will
immediately proceed to Fort Howard and join the garrison at that
post. Such public property as may be left at Fort Dearborn will
remain in charge of Brevt-Major Plympton, of the 5th Infantry; who
will continue in command of the post until otherwise instructed.
By order of Alexander Macomb, Maj.-Gen. Com'd'g-in-Chief.
(Signed) R. Jones, _Adjutant-General_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF NEW FORT (1850), LAKE HOUSE IN THE DISTANCE.]
When the last fort was being demolished [1856] an old paper was found
which bore internal evidence of being a survival from the first fort.
How it could have survived the flames of 1812 is a mystery. Perhaps
some brick bomb-proof magazine chanced to shelter it, and the builders
of the new fort, finding it, laid it in a closet, where it remained,
hidden and forgotten. One would like to see it to-day--if it also
survived October 9, 1871!
Permission is hereby given for one gill of whiskey each: Denison,[A]
Dyer,[A] Andrews,[A] Keamble (?), Burman, J. Corbin,[A] Burnett,
Smith,[A] McPherson, Hamilton, Fury[A], Grumond[A] (?), Morfitt,
Lynch,[A] Locker,[A] Peterson,[A] P. Corbin,[A] Van Horn,[AM] Mills.
(Signed),
[Illustration: G Ronan (signature)]
November 12th, 1811.
[AM] Appear on the nuster-roll given on page 150. Several of the names
recur in the Plattsburg story of the nine survivors (21 May 1814).
On December 29, 1836, the garrison was finally withdrawn from Fort
Dearborn, and after its thirty-three years of stirring vicissitudes it
passed into a useless old age, which lasted a score of years before
its abandonment as a government possession. In fact, one of its
buildings--a great, barn-like, wooden hospital--was standing, in use as
a hospital storehouse, up to 1871, when the great fire obliterated it,
with nearly all else that was ancient in Chicago.
* * * * *
[Illustration: WAUBANSA STONE WITH GREAT FIRE RELICS.]
An exception to this destruction and the fast gathering cloud of
oblivion, is to be found in an old red granite boulder, with a
rude human face carved on it, which stood in the center of the
fort esplanade, and which is now (1891) one of our few antiquarian
treasures. It is nearly eight feet high by three feet in greatest
diameter, and weighs perhaps 4,000 pounds. In prehistoric times the
Indians used the concave top for a corn-mill, and for many, many weary
hours must the patient and long-suffering squaws have leaned over it,
crushing the scanty, flinty corn of those days into material for the
food of braves and pappooses.
Many persons have looked on it as a relic of prehistoric art--the
sacrificial stone of an Aztec teocalli perhaps--but Mr. Hurlbut gives
the cold truth; more modern, though scarcely less romantic. He says
it was set up in the fort, and soldiers, sick and well, used it as
a lounging-place. Sometimes it served as a pillory for disorderly
characters, and it was a common expression or threat, that for certain
offenses the offender would be "sent to the rock." Waubansa was a
Chicago chief, and a soldier-sculptor tried to depict his features on
the stone; and (to quote Mr. Hurlbut):
"The portrait pleased the Indians, the liege friends of the chief,
greatly; for a party of them, admitted into the block-house to see it,
whooped and leaped as if they had achieved a victory, and with uncouth
gestures they danced in a triumphant circle around the rock."
In 1837 ... Daniel Webster paid a visit to the West, and took Chicago
in his route.... The conveyance was a barouche with four elegant
creams attached. Mr. Webster was accompanied by his daughter and
son. Every wheel-vehicle, every horse and mule in town, it is said,
were in requisition that day, and the senator was met some miles
out by a numerous delegation from this _new city_, who joined in
the procession.... It was the fourth of July, the column came over
Randolph Street bridge, and thence to the parade-ground within the
fort. There were guns at the fort, which were eloquent, of course,
though the soldiers had left some weeks before. The foundation of
all this outcry about Mr. Webster is, that the base and platform on
which that gentleman stood when he made the speech within the fort,
was the rock, the same Waubansa stone.... Justin Butterfield (who
stood directly in front of the senator) swung his hat and cheered the
speaker.
The "statue" was pierced to form the base of a fountain, and was set up
as one of the curiosities of the great Sanitary Commission Fair, held
in 1865, in Dearborn Park, in aid of the sick and wounded in the war
for the Union. In 1856 it was adopted as a relic by the Hon. Isaac N.
Arnold--member of Congress during the war and one of the staunchest and
ablest of patriots, and most devoted of friends to the soldiers--who
moved it to his home, in Erie street. Mr. Arnold's house was burned
with the rest in the great fire of 1871, and old "Waubansa" passed
through the flames with the same unmoved look he had preserved through
his earlier vicissitudes. Afterward numerous fire relics were grouped
about him and a photograph taken, wherein, for the first time, he looks
abashed, as if conscious of the contrast between his uncouthness and
the carvings which surround his antique lineaments. The stone stands
open to the public view in the grounds adjoining the new home (100 Pine
Street), which Mr. Arnold built after the fire, and in which he lived
up to the time of his lamented death, in April, 1884.
* * * * *
Who were the victims of August fifteenth, 1812? What were the names of
the killed, the wounded, the tortured, the missing? This is a question
to which only the merest apology for an answer can be given. In tens
of thousands of cases the very act of dying for one's country forbids
the possibility of becoming known to fame. Nameless graves dot our
land from north to south, and from east to west, especially from the
Susquehanna to the Rio Grande and from the Ohio to the Gulf. Heaven
knows who were those dead, and who they might have become if they had
not died when and where they did. Let us hope that somewhere in the
universe they have their record--on earth they are forgotten.
I have aimed at recording every surviving name of the dwellers in
Chicago up to the massacre. As an effort toward that end, I give, on
the next page, the last muster and pay-roll of the troops at the old
fort, as shown by existing records. It is headed:
"Muster roll of a company of Infantry under the command of Captain
Nathan Heald, in the First Regiment of the United States, commanded by
Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, from Nov. 30, when last mustered, to December
31, 1810."
It concludes with a certificate in the following form, identical, by
the way, with the formula in use in our army to this day (1893):
Recapitulation.--Present, fit for duty, 50; sick, 5; unfit for
service, 3; on command, 1; on furlough, 1; discharged, 6. Total, 67.
We Certify on honor that this muster-roll exhibits a true statement
of the company commanded by Captain Nathan Heald, and that the
remarks set opposite their names are accurate and just.
J. Cooper, S. Mate.
Ph. O'Strander, Lieutenant commanding the Company,
Names. Rank. Appointed or Remarks and changes
enlisted. since last muster.
*Nathan Heald Captain 31 Jan. 1807 On furlough in Mass
Philip O'Strander 2nd Lieut. 1 May 1808 { Present Of Capt. Rhea's
{ Co. Asst M y Agt. Sick.
Seth Thompson " 18 Aug. 1808 Present
*John Cooper Surg Mate 13 June 1808 "
Joseph Glass Sergeant 18 June 1806 "
*John Crozier " 2 July 1808 "
Richard Rickman " 10 May 1806 "
Thomas Forth Corporal 6 July 1807 "
*Asa Campbell " 26 Jan. 1810 "
*Rhodias Jones " 9 Dec. 1807 "
* Richard Garner " 2 Oct. 1810 "
George Burnet Fifer. 1 Oct. 1806 "
John Smith " 27 June 1806 "
*John Hamilton Drummer 5 July 1808 "
*Hugh McPherson " 20 Oct. 1807 "
*John Allen Private 27 Nov. 1810 "
George Adams " 21 Aug. 1806 "
Presley Andrews " 11 July 1806 " (sick.)
Thomas Ashbrook " 29 Dec. 1805 Term expired 29 Dec. 1810.
Thomas Burns " 18 June 1806 Present.
Patrick Burke " 27 May 1806 " (sick.)
Redmond Berry " 2 July 1806 "
William Best " 22 April 1806 Present unfit for service
James Chapman " 1 Dec. 1805 Time expired 1 Dec. 1810.
James Corbin " 2 Oct. 1810 Present.
Fielding Corbin " 7 Dec. 1805 Time expired 7 Dec. 1810.
Silas Clark " 15 Aug. 1806 On command at Ft. Wayne
James Clark " 4 Dec. 1805 Time expired 4 Dec. 1810.
*Dyson Dyer " 1 Oct. 1810 Present (sick).
Stephen Draper " 19 July 1806 "
*Daniel Dougherty " 13 Aug. 1807 "
Michael Denison " 28 April 1806 "
*Nathan Edson " 6 April 1810 "
*John Fury " 19 March 1808 "
"Paul Grummo " 1 Oct. 1810 "
*William N. Hunt " 18 Oct. 1810 "
John Kelsoe " 17 Dec. 1808 Time expired 17 Dec. 1810
*David Kennison " 14 March 1808 Present.
*Sam'l Kirkpatrick " 20 Dec. 1810 Re-enlisted 20 Dec. 1810.
*Jacob Laudon " 28 Nov. 1807 Unfit for service.
*James Lutta " 10 April 1810 .........................
*Michael Lynch " 20 Dec. 1810 Re-enlisted 20 Dec. 1810.
*Michael Leonard " 13 April 1810 Present.
Hugh Logan " 5 May 1806 "
*Frederick Locker " 13 April 1810 "
Andrew Loy " 6 July 1807 "
August Mott " 9 July 1806 "
Ralph Miller " 19 Dec. 1805 Term expired 19 Dec. 1810
Peter Miller " 13 June 1806 Present, unfit for service.
*Duncan McCarty " 2 Aug. 1807 Present.
Patrick McGowan " 30 April 1806 "
James Mabury " 14 April 1806 "
William Moffit " 23 April 1806 "
John Moyan " 28 June 1806 "
*John Neads " 5 July 1808 "
*Joseph Noles " 8 Sept 1810 "
*Thomas Poindexter " 3 Sept. 1810 "
William Pickett " 6 June 1806 "
*Frederick Peterson " 1 June 1808 "
*David Sherror " 1 Oct. 1810 "
*John Suttonfield " 8 Sept. 1807 "
*John Smith " 2 April 1808 "
*James Starr " 18 Nov. 1809 "
Phillip Smith " 30 April 1806 "
*John Simmons " 14 March 1810 "
*James Van Home " 2 May 1810 " (sick).
Anthony L. Waggoner " 9 Jan. 1806 " (sick).
* Men who are likely to have been in service at the time of the
massacre.
APPENDIX C.
THE WHISTLER FAMILY.
[Illustration: WILD ONION.]
ACCORDING to Gardner's Military Dictionary, Captain John
Whistler was born in Ireland. He was originally a British soldier, and
was made prisoner with General Burgoyne at the battle of Saratoga,
in 1777, where our General Henry Dearborn was serving as Major.
The captives were conducted to Boston, where, by the terms of the
capitulation, they should have been paroled; but for some reason (which
the English, by considered no sufficient excuse for not complying with
the military agreement) the Continental Congress held them as prisoners
of war until the peace of 1783.
John Whistler did not return to England, but joined the American army
and became first sergeant, and then won his way to a captaincy in the
First Infantry, in which capacity he came, in 1804, and built the first
Fort Dearborn. He was brevetted major in 1812, and served with his
company until it was disbanded after the close of the war (June, 1815).
He died in 1827 at Bellefontaine, Missouri, where he had been military
storekeeper for several years. John Wentworth (Fort Dearborn; Fergus'
Historical Series, No. 16, p. 14) says:
Some writers contend that had Captain Whistler been in charge of the
fort instead of Captain Heald, the massacre would not have taken
place. Captain Heald has had no one to speak for him here. But he was
appointed from Massachusetts a second lieutenant in 1799, and could
not be supposed to have that acquaintance with the characteristics of
the Indians which Whistler had, who had been in his country's service
ever since Burgoyne's surrender in 1777, and principally against the
Indians, and frequently participating in the campaigns of General
Arthur St. Clair, in one of which he was wounded.
Of him Captain Andreas says (Hist. Chi. Vol. I, p. 80):
After the war he married and settled in Hagerstown, Md., where his
son William was born. He enlisted in the American army and took
part in the Northwestern Indian War, serving under St. Clair and
afterward under Wayne. He was speedily promoted, rising through the
lower grades to a lieutenancy in 1792, and became a captain in 1794.
He rebuilt the fort in 1815[AN] [after the destruction and massacre
in 1812] and removed to St. Charles, Mo., in 1817. In 1818 he was
military storekeeper at St. Louis, and died at Bellefontaine. Mo., in
1827. He was a brave and efficient officer, and became the progenitor
of a line of brave and efficient soldiers.
[AN] Apparently an error. The second fort was built by Captain Hezekiah
Bradley, who was sent here for that purpose with two companies of
infantry, arriving July 4, 1816.
His son, George Washington Whistler, was with Captain John when the
family came to Chicago, being then three years old. This is the Major
Whistler who became a distinguished engineer in the service of Russia.
Another son. Lieutenant William Whistler, with his young wife (Julia
Ferson) came to Chicago with Captain Whistler. He will be mentioned
later as one of the last commandants of Fort Dearborn, holding that
post until 1833. He lived until 1863.
Julia Ferson, who became Mrs. William Whistler, was born in Salem,
Mass., 1787. Her parents were John and Mary (La Dake) Ferson. In
childhood she removed with her parents to Detroit, where she received
most of her education. In May, 1802, she was married to William
Whistler (born in Hagerstown Md., about 1784), a second lieutenant
in the company of his father. Captain John Whistler, U. S. A., then
stationed at Detroit. (Fergus' Historical Series No. 16.) She visited
Chicago in 1875, when, at eighty-seven, her mind and memory were
of the brightest, and conversation with her on old matters was a
rare pleasure. Mrs. General Philip Sheridan is her grand niece, and
cherishes her relationship as a patent to high rank in our Chicago
nobility. No portrait of John Whistler is known to exist. For
likenesses of Major and Mrs. William Whistler see pages 58 and 59.
[Illustration: MRS GWENTHLEAN [WHISTLER] KINZIE (1891).]
A daughter of William and this charming old lady was born in 1818, and
named Gwenthlean. She was married at Fort Dearborn, in 1834, to Robert
A. Kinzie, second son of John Kinzie, the pioneer. Mrs. Gwenthlean
Kinzie is now living in Chicago, and has been consulted in the
preparation of this narrative.[AO]
[AO] On mentioning to Judge Caton that Mrs Robert Kinzie was again
living here following a long absence, the venerable Chief-Justice,
after a moment's thought, sad: "Yes, I remember the marriage, and that
the bride was one of the most beautiful women you can imagine. I have
never seen her since that time. Ladies were not plentiful in this part
of the world then, and we were not over particular about looks, but
Gwenthlean Whistler Kinzie would be noted for her beauty anywhere at
anytime." And on looking at the lady herself, one can well believe all
that can be said in praise of her charms in her girlish years--sixteen
when she was married.
Mr. Hurlbut (Chicago Antiquities, p. 83) gives the following spirited
account of a visit made in 1875 to Mrs. Julia (Ferson) Whistler, wife
of William and daughter-in-law of old John, the whilom soldier in
the army of General Burgoyne. (It will be observed that Mr. Hurlbut
slightly mistook his war record).
Very few of the four hundred thousand reasonably adult individuals
now residing in Chicago are aware that the person of whom we
are going to speak is now a visitor in Chicago. After so long a
period--since early in the century; before those of our citizens
who have reached their "three-score years and ten" were born, when
she came, a trustful wife of sixteen, and stepped a shore upon
the river-bank--it is not a little remarkable that she is to-day
again passing over and around the locality of her early home. Under
the gentle supervision of this married maiden's blue eyes our
stockade-fortress, then so far within the wilderness, was erected.
Yet, of all those who came in that summer of 1803; the sailor-men
of that vessel, the oarsmen of that boat, the company of United
States soldiers, Captain and Mrs. Whistler and their son, the
husband and his bride of a year; all, we may safely say, have bid
adieu to earth excepting this lone representative. These are some
of the circumstances which contribute to make this lady a personage
of unusual interest to the dwellers here. A few particulars in the
life of Mrs. Whistler, together with some of the facts attending
the coming of those who arrived to assist in the building of Fort
Dearborn, will certainly be acceptable.
It was a coveted pilgrimage which we sought, as any one might
believe, for it was during the tremendous rain-storm of the evening
of the 29th of October, 1875, that we sallied out to call at Mrs.
Colonel R. A. Kinzie's, for an introduction to the lady's mother,
Mrs. Whistler. When we entered the parlor, the venerable woman was
engaged at the center table, in some game of amusement with her
grand-children and great grand-children, seemingly as much interested
as any of the juveniles. (We will remark here that five generations
in succession of this family have lived in Chicago.) She claimed
to enjoy good health, and was, apparently, an unusual specimen of
well preserved faculties, both intellectual and physical. She is
of tall form, and her appearance still indicates the truth of the
common report, that in her earlier years she was a person of uncommon
elegance. A marked trait of hers has been a spirit of unyielding
energy and determination, and which length of years has not yet
subdued. Her tenacious memory ministers to a voluble tongue, and we
may say, briefly, she is an agreeable, intelligent, and sprightly
lady, numbering only a little over 88 years. "To-day," said she,
"I received my first pension on account of my husband's services."
Mrs. Whistler resides in Newport, Kentucky. She has one son and
several grandsons in the army. Born in Salem, Mass., July 3rd, 1787,
her maiden name was Julia Ferson, and her parents were John and
Mary (LaDake) Ferson. In childhood she removed with her parents to
Detroit, where she received most of her education. In the month of
May, 1802, she was married to William Whistler (born in Hagerstown,
Md., about 1784), a second lieutenant in the company of his father,
Captain John Whistler, U. S. A., then stationed at Detroit. In the
summer of the ensuing year, Captain Whistler's company was ordered
to Chicago, to occupy the post and build the fort. Lieutenant James
S. Swearingen (late Col. Swearingen of Chillicothe, O.) conducted
the company from Detroit overland. The U. S. Steamer "Tracy," Dorr
master, was despatched at same time for same destination, with
supplies, and having also on board Captain John Whistler, Mrs.
Whistler, their son George W., then three years old [afterwards the
distinguished engineer in the employ of the Russian government]
Lieutenant William Whistler, and the young wife of the last named
gentleman. The schooner stopped briefly on her route at the St.
Joseph's river, where the Whistlers left the vessel and took a
row-boat to Chicago. The schooner, on arriving at Chicago, anchored
half a mile from the shore, discharging her freight by boats. Some
two thousand Indians visited the locality while the vessel was here,
being attracted by so unusual an occurrence as the appearance, in
these waters, of a "big canoe with wings." Lieutenant Swearingen
returned with the "Tracy" to Detroit.
There were then here, says Mrs W., but four rude huts or traders'
cabins, occupied by white men, Canadian French with Indian wives; of
these were Le Mai, Pettell and Ouilmette. No fort existed here at
that time, although it is understood (see treaty of Greenville) that
there had been one at a former day, built by the French, doubtless,
as it was upon one of the main routes from New France to Louisiana,
of which extensive region that government long held possession by
a series of military posts. [It is said that Durantaye, a French
official, built some sort of a fortification here as early as 1685.]
Captain Whistler, upon his arrival, at once set about erecting a
stockade and shelter for their protection, followed by getting
out the sticks for the heavier work. It is worth mentioning here
that there was not at that time within hundreds of miles a team of
horses or oxen, and, as a consequence, the soldiers had to don the
harness, and with the aid of ropes drag home the needed timbers.
The birth of two children within the fort we have referred to
elsewhere. Lieutenant Whistler, after a five years' sojourn here,
was transferred to Fort Wayne, having previously been made a first
lieutenant. He distinguished himself at the battle of Maguago, Mich.,
August 9th, 1812; was in Detroit at the time of Hull's surrender,
and, with Mrs. Whistler, was taken prisoner to Montreal; was
promoted to a Captain in December, 1812, to Major in 1826, and to
Lieutenant-Colonel in 1845. At his death he had rendered sixty-two
years continuous service in the army, yet Mrs. W. says she remembers
but six short furloughs during the whole time. He was stationed at
various posts, besides those of Green Bay, Niagara, and Sackett's
Harbor; at the last named post General Grant (then a subaltern
officer) belonged to the command of Colonel W. In June, 1832, Colonel
Whistler arrived again at Fort Dearborn, not the work which he had
assisted to build twenty-eight years before, for that was burned in
1812, but the later one, erected in 1816-17. He then remained here
but a brief period.
Colonel William Whistler's height at maturity was six feet two
inches, and his weight at one time was 250 pounds. He died in
Newport, Kentucky, December 4th, 1863.
Captain John Whistler, the builder and commandant of the first
Fort Dearborn (afterwards Major W.) was an officer in the army of
the Revolution. We regret that we have so few facts concerning his
history; nor have we a portrait or signature of the patriot. It is
believed that when ordered to Chicago he belonged to a regiment of
artillery. He continued in command at Fort Dearborn until the fore
part of 1811, we think, for we notice that his successor. Captain
Heald, gave to the Pottowatomie chief "Little Chief" a pass to St.
Louis, dated July 11, 1811. Mrs. Whistler expressed to us her opinion
that had Captain W. been continued in command, the Chicago massacre
would not have happened. Major John Whistler died at Bellefontaine.
Mo., in 1827.
Colonel James Swearingen was a second lieutenant in 1803, when
he conducted the company of Captain Whistler from Detroit across
Michigan to Chicago. The regiment of artillery, with which he was
connected, is understood to have been the only corps of that branch
of defence. Lieutenant Swearingen continued in the service until
about 1816, attaining the rank of colonel, when he resigned his
commission and made his residence in Chillicothe, O., where he died
on his eighty-second birthday, in February, 1864.
Mrs. Julia (Ferson) Whistler died at Newport, Ky., in 1878, at the ripe
age of ninety years.
James McNeil Whistler, the eccentric and distinguished London artist,
is descended from old John, the Burgoyne British soldier, through
George Washington Whistler, the great American engineer in the Russian
service.
It is interesting to observe that both our old leading families, the
Whistlers and the Kinzies, have furnished successive generations of
soldiers to their country. The heroic death of John Harris Kinzie,
second, will be noted in the Appendix D, which is devoted to the Kinzie
family. Of the Whistlers, some of the name have been constantly in the
military service, and when the two families joined by the marriage of
Robert Kinzie and Gwenthlean Whistler the racial tendency continued.
General Garland Whistler, son of Colonel William Whistler, was a
graduate of West Point, and a soldier in the war for the Union. He
is now on the retired list. His son. Major Garland Whistler, also a
graduate, was in the late war and is still in the service. Major David
Hunter Kinzie, son of Robert (uniting the two families), left West
Point for active service in the Union war. He is now at the Presidio,
California. Captain John Kinzie, another son of Robert, is stationed at
Omaha.
APPENDIX D.
THE KINZIE FAMILY.
[Illustration]
BEGINNING at a point even further back in the dim past than the
building of Pointe de Saible's cabin, we take up the narrative of
the lives of its latest owners, John Kinzie was born in Quebec about
1763, son of John McKenzie, or McKinzie, a Scotchman, who married Mrs.
Haliburton, a widow, with one daughter,[AP] and died when his son
John was very young. Mrs. McKenzie made a third marriage, with one
William Forsyth, who had served under General Wolfe in the taking of
Quebec. William Forsyth, with wife, children and step-children, lived
many years in New York, and later in Detroit. While they lived in New
York, John McKinzie, afterward John Kinzie, was sent, with two Forsyth
half-brothers, to school in Williamsburgh, just across the East river;
a negro servant, or slave, going every Saturday night to bring the
three boys home. One Saturday there was no Johnnie to be found--the
embryo frontiers-man had runaway. He got on board a sloop bound for
Albany and fell in with some one who helped him on to Quebec, where he
found employment in the shop of a silver-smith; and there he remained
three years and learned the trade which later gave him the Indian
name, "Shaw-nee-aw-kee"--silver-smith.
[AP] This daughter, half-sister of John Kinzie, is said in Wau-Bun to
have possessed beauty and accomplishments, and to have lived to become
the mother of General Fleming and Nicholas Low, both very well known in
New York and Brooklyn.
We next find him in Detroit, with his mother and step-father, who
had moved thither with their Forsyth children.[AQ] Robert Forsyth, a
grandson of William, was well known in Chicago in the decade before the
Union War. He was an officer of the Illinois Central Railway, and his
tall, handsome figure, his bluff, hearty manners and his unquestionable
ability', made him a general favorite.
[AQ] William Forsyth kept a hotel in Detroit for many years and died
there in 1790 Robert, one of his sons, was in the service of the
American government during the war of 1812. Thomas, who became Major
Thomas Forsyth, U. S. A., was born in Detroit, December 5, 1771. Before
the war of 1812, he was Indian Agent among the Pottowatomies at Peoria
Lake. After the war of 1812 he was sent as U. S. Indian Agent among
the Sauks and Foxes, with whom he remained many years. He died at St.
Louis, October 29, 1833. Colonel Robert Forsyth, an early resident of
Chicago, was the son of Major Thomas Forsyth; George, another son of
William Forsyth, was lost in the woods near Detroit, August 6, 1778.
(Andreas' Hist. Chic.) Mrs. Kinzie quotes from the record in an old
family Bible, as follows: "George Forsyth was lost in the woods 6th
August, 1778, when Henry Hays and Mark Stirling ran away and left
him. The remains of George Forsyth we're found by an Indian the 2d of
October, 1776 close by the Prairie Ronde." Family tradition gives some
particulars of the disaster, adding the touching fact that after its
fourteen months' exposure there was nothing to identify the body but
the auburn curls and the little boots.
While at Detroit, John Kinzie began his long career as Indian-trader,
beginning with the Shawnees and Ottawas in the Ohio country. In this
way he made the acquaintance of two Indian girls, who, when young,
had been captured on the Kanawha River and taken to Chillicothe, the
headquarters of the tribe. Their names were Margaret and Elizabeth
McKenzie, and their story is thus romantically told by Rufus Blanchard
in his admirable "Discovery of the Northwest and History of Chicago."
(R. Blanchard & Co., Wheaton, Ill. 1881.)
Among the venturesome pioneers of Virginia was a backwoods-man
named McKenzie. He, with a number of his comrades, settled at the
mouth of Wolf's creek, where it empties into the Kanawha. During
Dunmore's War on the frontier [about 1773] the Shawanese, in one of
their border forays, came suddenly upon the home of McKenzie, killed
his wife and led two of his children into captivity. The names of
the young captives were Margaret, ten years old, and Elizabeth;
eight years old. They were taken to Chillicothe, the great Indian
Town of the Shawanese, where they were adopted into the family of
a high-bred Indian chief and raised under the tender care of his
obedient squaw, according to custom. Ten years later Margaret was
allowed to accompany her foster-father on a hunting-excursion to
the St. Mary's River, near Fort Wayne. A young chief of the same
tribe became enamored by the graces and accomplishments of the
young captive, but Margaret recoiled from her swarthy lover and
determined not to yield her heart to one who had no higher destiny
for her than to ornament his leggings with porcupine quills--one of
the highest accomplishments of which a squaw is capable. Margaret's
lover approached the camp where she was sleeping, intending to force
her to become his wife. According to the Indian custom, a din of
yells and rattle of a drum announced the intentions of the would-be
bridegroom to the terrified victim. The heroine fled to the forest
for protection.
[Illustration: JOHN K. CLARK.]
Fortunately her dog followed her as she fled down the bank of the
St. Mary's River, to the stockade, half a mile distant, where
the horses were kept. The footsteps of her detestable lover were
close behind. She turned and set her dog at him, and reached the
stockade, unhitched a horse, leaped upon his back and took her flight
through the wilderness, seventy-five miles, to her Indian home at
Chillicothe. The horse died the next day after he had performed so
wonderful a feat without rest or sustenance. This heroic girl and
her sister, Elizabeth, became afterward mothers of some of the first
pioneers of Chicago.
After the adventures of Margaret, as just told, she, with her sister,
Elizabeth, were taken to Detroit by their foster-father, and there
they became acquainted with John Kinzie--and they were married.
Elizabeth at the same time met a Scotchman named Clark and married
him. The two young couples lived in Detroit about five years, during
which time Margaret (Kinzie) had three children, William, James and
Elizabeth; and Elizabeth (Clark) had two, John K. and Elizabeth.
The treaty of Greenville, 1795, having restored peace on the border,
Mr. Isaac McKenzie, the father, received tidings of his children,
and went to Detroit to see them. The two young mothers, with their
children, returned with their father to their old home, to which
arrangement both of their husbands consented. A final separation was
not intended, but time and distance divorced them forever. Mr. Kinzie
afterwards moved to St. Joseph's, where he married a Mrs. McKillip,
the widow of a British officer. Margaret married Mr. Benjamin Hall,
of Virginia, and Elizabeth married Mr. Jonas Clybourn of the same
place. David, the oldest son of Benjamin Hall and Margaret, made a
journey to Chicago in 1822, and he remained there three years. On
his return to Virginia his flattering account of the place induced
a number of persons to emigrate thither. The first of these was
Archibald Clybourn, the eldest son of Elizabeth, who remained a
permanent resident and an esteemed citizen, well known to thousands
of the present inhabitants of Chicago. His mother was Elizabeth the
captive, who, with her second husband, Mr. Clybourn, soon afterwards
came to Chicago. Mr. Benjamin Hall was another of the Chicago
pioneers who emigrated to Chicago in consequence of David Hall's
commendations of its future promise. Margaret, the captive, was his
aunt, and to him the writer is indebted for the detail of Margaret's
and Elizabeth's history. Mr. Hall is now a resident of Wheaton. He
came to Chicago in 1830 and was the proprietor of the first tannery
ever established there.
[Illustration: ARCHIBALD CLYBOURN.]
[Illustration: James Kinzie (signature)]
Elizabeth Kinzie, daughter of John Kinzie, became the wife of Samuel
Miller, of a respectable Quaker family in Ohio. She was highly
respected by all who knew her. Her husband kept the Miller House, at
the forks of the Chicago River. James Kinzie came to Chicago about
1824, and was well received by his father. [James is mentioned by Mr.
Kinzie in a letter written in 1821, given later in this article].
This is the romantic story taken by Mr. Blanchard from the lips of
the nephew of one of the captive girls, and given in his valuable
history. Some of the circumstances stated as fact may be questionable,
especially the "marriage" of the girls to Mr. Kinzie and Mr. Clark.
Their summary removal by their father, and their marriage to other
men, considered with the marriage of Mr. Kinzie and Mr. Clark to other
women, seems to cast doubt upon the occurrence of any ceremonies, civil
or religious. Those relations were lightly held at that time and place.
There is doubtless a "bend sinister" somewhere, but it seems unlikely
that James Kinzie and Elizabeth and Samuel Miller would have left the
legitimacy of the more distinguished branch of the family unassailed if
it had been assailable. (It is said that Mrs. Miller did chafe under
the scandal.)
[Illustration: Samuel Miller (signature)]
In 1800 John Kinzie married Eleanor (Lytle) McKillip, widow of a
British officer, who had one daughter, Margaret, afterward Mrs.
Lieutenant Helm. In the same year he moved to the St. Joseph's River,
which empties into Lake Michigan on its eastern side, nearly opposite
Chicago, and there set up his trading-house. His son, John Harris
Kinzie, was born at Sandwich, opposite Detroit, where his mother
chanced to be spending a day when he made his unexpected appearance.
In 1803 John Kinzie visited Chicago, having probably learned of the
approaching establishment of Fort Dearborn, and bought the Le Mai
house, built by Jean Baptiste Pointe de Saible, some twenty-five
years before. He moved into it with his family in the following year.
From that time to his death, in 1828, he is the most conspicuous and
unique figure in Chicago history, and fairly deserves the name of the
father of the city. His branch trading-posts existed in Milwaukee, at
Rock River, on the Illinois and Kankakee Rivers, and in the Sangamon
country. To quote again Andreas (Hist. Chic. Vol. I, P. 73):
This extended Indian trade made the employment of a large number of
men at headquarters a necessity, and the Canadian voyageurs in the
service of Mr. Kinzie were about the only white men who had occasion
to visit Chicago during those early years. He was sutler for the
garrison at the fort in addition to his Indian trade, and also kept
up his manufacture of the ornaments in which the Indians delighted.
During the first residence of Mr. and Mrs. John Kinzie in Chicago,
three children were born to them--Ellen Marion in December, 1805;
Maria Indiana in 1807, and Robert Allen, February 8, 1810. Margaret
McKillip, Mr. Kinzie's step-daughter, who married Lieutenant Linai T.
Helm of Fort Dearborn, and also Robert Forsyth, nephew of Mr. Kinzie,
were at times members of his family, the latter being the first
teacher of John H. Kinzie.
Henry H. Hurlbut in his delightful "Chicago Antiquities,"[AR] says:
By what we learn from a search in the county records at Detroit,
John Kinzie seems to have been doing business there in the years
1795-97 and '98. In May, 1795, some portion of the Ottawa tribe of
Indians conveyed lands on the Maumee to John Kinzie, silver-smith, of
Detroit; also in the same year to John Kinzie, merchant, of Detroit.
It appears, also, from the same records, that in September, 1810,
John Kinzie and John Whistler Jr. were lately copartners in trade at
Fort Dearborn, and in the same year John Kinzie and Thomas Forsyth
were merchants in Chicago. We are told by Robert A. Kinzie that his
father was sutler at Fort Dearborn when he came to Chicago in 1804;
possibly Mr. Whistler Jr. was his partner in that enterprise. In
October, 1815, John Kinzie and Thomas Forsyth were copartners in
trade in the District of Detroit, Territory of Michigan. In March,
1816, appear on the records the names of John Kinzie, silver-smith,
and Elenor, his wife, of Detroit. By these items it seems that though
Mr. Kinzie took up his residence in Chicago in 1804 [the first entry
here upon his books bore date May 12, 1804] and that he left here
after the battle of August, 1812, returning in 1816, yet he was
still identified with Detroit, certainly until the summer of 1816.
We notice that he was a witness at the treaty of Spring Wells, near
Detroit, in September, 1815. He was one of the interpreters.
[AR] A book full of bits of old-time gossip, traditions and skeptical
notes on other traditions, controversial criticism on Wau-Bun and
other books, and good-humored raillery, aimed at persons and things of
the early day. Only five hundred copies were printed, and the book is
becoming scarce, but some copies remain for sale in the family of its
author, 27 Winthrop Place, Chicago.
Wau-Bun gives a long and romantic biography of John Kinzie and his
progenitors; such a sketch as would naturally (and properly) be made
by a daughter-in-law, writing during the lifetime of many of the
persons directly interested in the facts related, but omitting things
which would shock the sensibilities of those persons, and mar the
literary symmetry of the picture set forth in her pages. She does not
allude to the Margaret McKenzie episode, never mentions James Kinzie,
well-known Chicagoan as he was, and also ignores another matter which
the integrity of history requires to be stated, and which the lapse
of almost three generations should disarm of the sting which might
attach to it at the time of Wau-Bun. This matter is the killing, in
self-defense, of John Lalime, by John Kinzie. (See Appendix F.)
[Illustration: MRS. JULIETTE KINZIE (1856).
Author of "Wau-Bun."]
After the massacre and the subsequent events so romantically described
in Wau-Bun, Mr. Kinzie returned, probably in the autumn of 1816, to
Chicago, where he reoccupied the historic house. To sit on his front
porch and watch the building of a new fort in the old spot must have
been a mingling of pleasure and pain. All that had passed since the
original incoming of twelve years before must have seemed like a dream.
The lake to the eastward, the river in front, the prairie beyond and
the oak woods behind him were all as of old; but here around him were
the children born and reared in the intervening years; here were new
soldiers to take the place of the little band sacrificed four years
ago. There, scattered over the sand-hills, were the bleaching bones of
the martyred dead, and within dwelt an enduring memory of the horrors
of their killing.
[Illustration: JOHN HARRIS KINZIE (1827).
From a miniature in possession of the Kinzie family.]
And where were the savings of a lifetime of industry, courage and
enterprise? Gone beyond recall. He made heroic efforts to redeem
something from the wreck, traveling in Indian fashion and in Indian
dress from one to another of the places where he had had branch
trading-posts, and where debts were due to him. But it takes only a
slight knowledge of affairs in a new country to see clearly that after
war has disturbed and ravaged a district, and four years of absence
have wasted the goods and scattered the debtors, every dollar saved
would have cost in the saving two dollars' worth of work and sacrifice
of strength and time. That his salvage was small and his later days
quite devoid of the ease and comfort which his hard-won early success
should have guaranteed him, we have the testimony of a letter written
by him August 19, 1821, to his son John H., after he had placed the
latter with the American (Astor's) Fur Company at Mackinaw:
Dear Son--I received your letter by the schooner. Nothing gives me
more satisfaction than to hear from you and of you. It does give
both myself and your mother a pleasure to hear how your conduct is
talked of by every one that hopes you every advantage. Let this
rather stimulate you to continue the worthy man, for a good name is
better than wealth, and we cannot be too circumspect in our line of
conduct. Mr. Crooks speaks highly of you and try to continue to be
the favorite of such worthy men as Mr. Crooks, Mr. Stewart and other
gentlemen of the firm. Your mother and all of the family are well and
send their love to you. James[AS] is here, and I am pleased that his
returns are such as to satisfy the firm.
[AS] John's half-brother, son of the captive girl, Margaret McKenzie.
I have been reduced in wages, owing to the economy of the government.
My interpreter's salary is no more and I have but $100 to subsist
on. It does work me hard sometimes to provide for your brothers and
sisters on this and maintain my family in a decent manner. I will
have to take new measures. I hate to change houses, but I have been
requested to wait Conant's arrival. We are all mighty busy, as the
treaty commences to-morrow and we have hordes of Indians around us
already. My best respects to Mr. Crooks and Stewart and all the
gentlemen of your house.
Adieu. I am your loving father,
[Illustration: John Kinzie (signature)]
This is said to be the only letter of John Kinzie's that is known to
exist. (A large and invaluable collection of papers were given in 1877
to the Historical Society by John H. Kinzie, and perished with the
society building in the great fire of 1871). No portrait of John Kinzie
has ever been found.
He assisted in negotiating the treaty of 1821, before mentioned;
addressing the Indians to reconcile them to it, and signing it as a
sub-agent, which post he filled under his son-in-law, Dr. Alexander
Wolcott, Indian agent. In 1825 he was appointed Justice of the Peace,
for Peoria county.
Captain Andreas remarks on John Kinzie's standing with the Indians as
follows:
The esteem in which Mr. Kinzie was held by the Indians is shown by
the treaty made with the Pottowatomies September 20, 1828, by one
provision of which they gave to Eleanor Kinzie and her four children
by the late John Kinzie $3,500 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 them and
also by the destruction of his property. The money is in lieu of a
tract of land which the Indians gave the late John Kinzie long since,
and upon which he lived.
There is no doubt that the Indians had a warm feeling for the Kinzies.
At the same time it seems probable that the treaty in question, like
all other treaties, was carefully arranged by the whites and merely
submitted to the Indians for ratification. The Indians did not give any
money, all payments came from the United States, and were made to such
persons (other than Indians) as the commissioners thought best to care
for. As to the land given by the Indians to Mr. Kinzie and on which he
lived, where was it? The Indians had parted with the Chicago tract, six
miles square, nine years before Mr. Kinzie arrived at Fort Dearborn. It
is true that in May, 1795, the Ottawas (not the Pottowatomies) conveyed
land in Ohio to John Kinzie and Thomas Forsyth; but he certainly never
lived on it. He also lived at Parc-aux-vaches, on the St. Joseph's
river, from 1800 to 1804. It is possible, though not probable, that the
Indians made him a grant there.
[Illustration: JOHN HARRIS KINZIE IN LATER LIFE.]
Everyone who visited the hospitable "Kinzie mansion" was glad to do so
again. Let us follow the good example.
The structure, as put up by Pointe de Saible, and passed through the
hands of Le Mai to John Kinzie, was a cabin of roughly squared logs.
In Kinzie's time it was beautified, enlarged, improved and surrounded
by out-houses, trees, fences, grass plats, piazza and garden. "The
latch string hung outside the door,"[AT] and all were free to pull it
and enter. Friend or stranger, red-man or white could come and go, eat
and drink, sleep and wake, listen and talk as well. A tale is told of
two travelers who mistook the house for an inn, gave orders, asked
questions, praised and blamed, as one does who says to himself, "Shall
I not take mine ease in mine inn?" and who were keenly mortified
when they came to pay their scot and found that there was none to
pay. In front (as the picture shows) were four fine poplars; in the
rear, two great cotton-woods. The remains of one of these last named
were visible at a very late period. (Who knows just how lately?) In
the out-buildings were accommodated dairy, baking-ovens, stables and
rooms for "the Frenchmen," the Canadian engages who were then the
chief subordinates in fur-trading, and whose descendants are now
well-known citizens, their names perpetuating their ancestry--Beaubien,
Laframboise, Porthier, Mirandeau, etc.
[AT] This odd expression of welcome came from the old style of
door-fastening; a latch within lifted by the hand or by a string which
was poked through a gimlet hole, so that it could be pulled from the
outside. To lock the door the household simply pulled in the string and
kept it inside.
Captain Andreas says:
The Kinzie house was no gloomy home. Up to the very time of their
forced removal, the children danced to the sound of their father's
violin and the long hours of frontier life were made merry with sport
and play. Later the primitive court of Justice Kinzie must have been
held in the "spare room"--if spare room there was.
[Illustration: ROBERT ALLEN KINZIE.]
Hurlbut, in his "Chicago Antiquities," says:
The last distinguished guest from abroad whom the Kinzies entertained
at the old house was Governor Cass; in the summer of 1827. This was
during the Winnebago Indian excitement. Gurdon Hubbard says: "While
at breakfast at Mr. Kinzie's house we heard singing, faint at first
but gradually growing louder as the singer approached. Mr. Kinzie
recognized the leading voice as that of Bob Forsyth, and left the
table for the piazza of the house, where we all followed. About where
Wells Street crosses, in plain sight from where we stood, was a light
birch bark canoe, manned with thirteen men, rapidly approaching, the
men keeping time with the paddles to one of the Canadian boat-songs;
it proved to be Governor Cass and his secretary, Robert Forsyth, and
they landed and soon joined in."
The visit of Governor Cass was just before the "Winnebago scare" of
1827. He it was that informed the lonely, unarmed and defenceless
post of Fort Dearborn of the Winnebago uprising. Gurdon Hubbard at
once proposed to ride down the "Hubbard Trail" for help. The others
objected for fear they might be attacked before his return; but it
was finally decided that he should go, and go he did. At Danville he
raised, within about a day, fifty volunteers, armed and mounted, and
started for Fort Dearborn. They reached the Vermilion, then at flood
and running "bank-full" and very rapidly. The horses on being driven
in would turn and come back to shore. Hubbard, provoked at the delay,
threw off his coat, crying: "Give me old Charley!" Mounting the horse
he boldly dashed into the stream, and the other horses crowded after
him. "The water was so swift that Old Charley became unmanageable; but
Hubbard dismounted on the upper side, seized the horse by the mane,
and, swimming with his left hand, guided the horse in the direction of
the opposite shore. We were afraid he would be washed under, or struck
by his feet and drowned, but he got over."[AU]
[AU] See "the Winnebago Scare" by Hiram W. Beckwith, of Danville.
Fergus' Historical Series No. 10.
[Illustration: KINZIE MANSION AS GIVEN IN WAU-BUN.]
The brave rescuers arrived and stayed, petted and feasted by the
Chicagoans of that day, until a runner came in from Green Bay, bringing
word that Governor Cass had made peace with the Indians.
According to Mr. Hurlbut, as the old master neared his end the old
homestead also went to decay. The very logs must have been in a
perishing condition after fifty years of service, and the lake sand,
driven by the lake breezes, piled itself up against the north and east
sides. Then, too, the standard of comfort had changed. Son-in-law
Wolcott had rooms in the brick building of the unoccupied fort. Colonel
Beaubien had a frame house close to the fort's south wall (now Michigan
Avenue and River Streets), and thither the Kinzies moved. What more
natural than that the ancient tree, as it tottered to its fall, should
lean over toward the young saplings that had sprung up at its foot? It
is the way of the world.
[Illustration: GURDON SALTONSTALL HUBBARD, IN MIDDLE LIFE.]
It was in 1827 that Mr. Kinzie, and whatever then formed his household,
quitted the historical log house for the last time. In 1829, it was
(says Andreas) used for a while by Anson N. Taylor as a store. In
March, 1831, Mr. Bailey lived in it and probably made it the post
office, its first location in Chicago, as he was the first postmaster.
The mail was then brought from Detroit on horseback, about twice a
month.
Captain Andreas says:
After 1831 and 1832, when Mark Noble occupied it with his family,
there is no record of its being inhabited. Its decaying logs were
used by the Indians and immigrants for fuel, and the drifting sands
of Lake Michigan was fast piled over its remains. No one knows when
it finally disappeared, but with the growth of the new town, this
relic of the early day of Chicago passed from sight to be numbered
among the things that were.
Mrs. Robert Kinzie says now (1893) that she is sure that the house was
standing when she was married in the fort, in 1834, and she thinks long
afterward She scouts the idea that those solid logs were used by the
Indians or immigrants for fuel.
The following account of Mr. Kinzie's death was learned from Mr. Gurdon
S. Hubbard: "He remained in full vigor of health in both body and
mind, till he had a slight attack of apoplexy, after which his health
continued to decline until his death, which took place in a few months,
at the residence of his son-in-law. Dr. Wolcott, who then lived in the
brick building, formerly used as the officers' quarters in the fort.
Here, while on a brief visit to Mrs. Wolcott (Ellen Marion Kinzie), he
was suddenly attacked with apoplexy. Mr. Hubbard, then living in Mr.
Kinzie's family, was sent for, and on coming into the presence of the
dying man he found him in convulsions on the floor, in the parlor, his
head supported by his daughter. Mr. Hubbard raised him to a sitting
position and thus supported him till he drew his last breath. The
funeral service took place in the fort and the last honors due to the
old pioneer were paid with impressive respect by the few inhabitants of
the place."
Mr. Kinzie's remains were first buried in the fort burying ground
on the lake shore south of the old fort (about Michigan Avenue and
Washington Street) whence they were later removed to a plot west of the
present water-works (Chicago Avenue and Tower Place) and finally to
Graceland, where they now rest.
Unfortunately there exists no portrait of John Kinzie. The portrait
of John H. Kinzie, taken from a miniature, and that of his wife, the
author of Wau-Bun, are kindly furnished by their daughter, Mrs. Nellie
Kinzie Gordon. There has also been copied an oil portrait of the last
named lady herself, painted by Healy in 1857, when she was about to
quit her native city for her home in Savannah, Georgia, which departure
was a loss still remembered and regretted by her many Chicago friends
and admirers; in other words by all of the Chicago of 1857 which
survives to 1893.
[Illustration: MRS. NELLIE (KINZIE) GORDON.]
A fourth portrait of this honored branch of the pioneer stock is
that of the son, John H. Kinzie, Jr., who died for his country in a
manner which must endear his memory to every Union loving patriot. The
following touching sketch of his life and death is contributed by a
near relative of the brave young martyr.
John Harris Kinzie, Jr., was born in 1838. He was educated as a civil
engineer at the Polytechnic Institute of Ann Arbor, Mich. He served in
the navy during the war and met his tragic fate in 1862, while master's
mate on the gun-boat Mound City, commanded by Admiral Davis.
While attacking a fort on the White River, a shot from the fort's
battery penetrated the boiler of the Mound City. In the terrific
explosion that followed, young Kinzie and more than ninety others were
scalded and blown overboard.
The hospital boat of the fleet immediately set out to rescue the
wounded men. As Kinzie struck out for the boat, his friend Augustus
Taylor, of Cairo, called out to him to keep out of the range of the
fort as the sharp-shooters were evidently picking off the wounded men
in the water. This proved to be true; young Kinzie was shot through the
legs and arras by minié balls as he was being lifted into the boat.
[Illustration: JOHN HARRIS KINZIE, JR]
He soon heard the shouts of his comrades; and turning to one of his
friends, he said:
"We have taken the fort. I am ready to die now."
He sank rapidly and died the following morning, June 18, just as the
sun was rising. He left a young wife barely eighteen years old, a
daughter of Judge James, of Racine, Wisconsin, and his own little
daughter was born three months after his death.
It was necessary to put a guard over the person of Colonel Fry (who
was captured with the fort) to save him from being sacrificed to
the indignation the men felt against him for having ordered his
sharp-shooters to pick off the scalded men and shoot them in the water.
APPENDIX E.
WILLIAM WELLS AND REBEKAH WELLS HEALD.
[Illustration]
GRATITUDE to our first hero and martyr calls for a somewhat
extended study of his life, and it will be found interesting enough to
repay the attention.
Colonel Samuel Wells and his brother Captain William Wells were
Kentuckians; the family being said to have come from Virginia. William,
when twelve years old, was stolen by the Indians from the residence of
Hon. Nathaniel Pope, where both brothers seem to have been living. He
was adopted by Me-che-kan-nah-quah, or little Turtle, a chief of the
Miamis, lived in his house and married his daughter Wa-nan-ga-peth, by
whom he had several children, of whom the following left children:
Pe-me-zah-quah (Rebekah) married Captain Hackley, of Fort Wayne,
leaving Ann and John Hackley, her children.
Ah-mah-qua-zah-quah (a "sweet breeze"--Mary) born at Fort Wayne May 10,
1800, married Judge James Wolcott March 8, 1821; died at Maumee City,
(now South Toledo,) O., Feb. 19, 1834, leaving children as follows:
William Wells Wolcott, Toledo; Mary Ann (Wolcott) Gilbert, South
Toledo; Henry Clay Wolcott, South Toledo, and James Madison Wolcott,
South Toledo.
Jane (Wells) Grigg, living at Peru, Indiana; has children.
Yelberton P. Wells, St. Louis, died leaving one child.
William fought on the side of the Indians in the campaign of 1790
and 1791, when they defeated the Americans under Generals Harmer and
Saint Clair. The story of his reclamation, as told by Rebekah (Wells)
Heald to her son Darius, and repeated by him to a stenographer, in my
presence, in 1892, is quite romantic.
Rebekah was daughter of Samuel Wells, elder brother of William, and was
therefore niece of the latter. She must have been born between 1780 and
1790. We learn from the story of her son, the Hon. Darius Heald, as
follows:
She was fond of telling the story of her life, and her children and
her friends were never tired of listening to it. [Her son thinks he
has heard her tell it a hundred times.] She would begin away back in
her girlhood, spent in the country about Louisville, Kentucky, when
her father. Colonel Samuel Wells, was living there; and tell how
they all wanted uncle William Wells, whom they called their "Indian
uncle," to leave the Indians who had stolen him in his boyhood, and
come home and belong to his white relations. He hung back for years,
and even at last, when he agreed to visit them, made the proviso that
he should be allowed to bring along an Indian escort with him, so
that he should not be compelled to stay with them if he did not want
to.
Young Rebekah Wells was the one who had been chosen to go to the
Indian council with her father, and persuade her uncle William to
come and visit his old home; she, being a girl, very likely had more
influence with him than any of the men could have had. William Wells
was at that time living a wild Indian life, roaming up and down the
Wabash river, and between the lakes and the Ohio. Probably the place
where the battle of Tippicanoe was fought, in 1811, near the present
site of La Fayette, Indiana, was pretty near the center of his
regular stamping ground.
After much hesitation he consented to get together a party of braves,
somewhere from seventy-five to a hundred, and visit his relatives.
Little Turtle, whose daughter he had married, was along, very likely
commanding the escort. They went down to the falls of the Ohio river,
about opposite Louisville, and camped, while William Wells, with a
picked band of twenty-five, crossed the river and met with his own
people. Then the question arose as to whether he was the brother of
Colonel Samuel Wells, and he asked to be taken to the place where
he was said to have been captured, to see if he could remember the
circumstances. When he reached there, he looked about and pointed
in a certain direction and asked if there was a pond there; and
they said: "Well, let's go and see." So they went in the direction
indicated, and to be sure they saw the pond; and he said that he
could remember that pond. Then he saw a younger brother present, whom
he had accidentally wounded in the head as a child, and he said to
his brother:
"Now if you are my brother there ought to be a mark on the back of
your head, where I hit you with a stone one day;" and the brother
held up his head, and William lifted the hair and found the scar, and
he said: "Yes, I am your brother."
William was now convinced for the first time that he was the brother
of Colonel Samuel Wells, but he went back with his Indian friends,
his father-in-law, Little Turtle, and the rest, and it was not until
sometime later that he told Little Turtle that, although he had
fought for his Indian friends all his life, the time had now come
when he was going home to fight for his own flesh and blood. It was
under a big tree on the banks of the Miami that he had this talk, and
he pointed to the sun and said: "Till the sun goes up in the middle
of the sky we are friends. After that you can kill me if you want
to." Still they always remained friends, and agreed that if in war,
if one could find out on which side of the army the other was put,
he would change positions so as not to be likely to meet the other
in battle; and if one recognized the other while fighting, he would
never aim to hit him. They also had the privilege of meeting and
talking to each other, it being understood that nothing was to be
said about the opposing numbers of their armies. They were not to act
as spies but simply to meet each other as friends.