  BUILDING OF THE FIRST FORT DEARBORN. A Red Coat of 1812 A "red-coat" of 1812. D DELAYING our narrative for a moment, we here bring upon the scene another figure—the most distinguished and heroic of all who were to play a part in the terrific tragedy which formed its climax—William Wells. This license must have been signed in the old De Saible house. No fort was here yet, nor any government office or officer, so far as we know. Indeed, this page records, for the first time in history, the fact that William Wells was in Chicago before 1812. Eight years later his niece was to appear on the scene, arriving as the bride of Captain Heald, then commanding Fort Dearborn. But to return to Captain Whistler and the embryo fort. A glimpse of early garrison-life appears in the personal narrative of Captain Thomas C. Anderson, published in Volume IX of the Wisconsin Historical Collection: During my second year [1804-5] at Min-na-wack, or Mill-wack-ie [Milwaukee] Captain Whistler, with his company of American soldiers, came to take possession of Chicago. At this time there were no buildings here except a few dilapidated log huts covered with bark. Captain Whistler had selected one of these as a temporary, though miserable, residence for his family, his officers and men being under canvas. On being informed of his arrival I felt it my duty to pay my respects to the authority so much required by the country. On the morrow I mounted Kee-ge-kaw, or Swift-goer, and the next day I was invited to dine with the Captain. On going to the house, the outer door opening into the dining-room, I found the table spread, the family and guests seated, consisting of several ladies, all as jolly as kittens. The fort consisted of a stockade large enough to contain a parade-ground and all the fort buildings, officers' quarters, barracks, offices, guard-house, magazine, etc., and also two block-houses, each built so that the second story overhung the lower, thus giving a vertical fire for musketry to guard against an enemy's setting fire to the house. One of these was at the southeast corner and the other at the northwest. There were entrances on the south side (Michigan Avenue), and on the north or water side, where a sunken road led down to the river. Mr. FORT DEARBORN, 1803-4. (Fergus' Series, No. 16) Beside the fort, the government put up an "Agency House," which stood on the river bank just west of the sunken road that led from the fort to the water. Mrs. Kinzie describes this building as an old-fashioned log-house with a hall running through the middle, and one large room on each side. Piazzas extended the whole length of the building, in front and rear. It played a part in the final tragedy, and was destroyed with the fort on August 15, 1812. Munsell's "History of Chicago" gives the following picture at and after the building of the first fort: When the schooner Tracy set sail and slowly vanished in the northwestern horizon, we may fancy that some wistful glances followed her. For those left behind it was the severing of all regular ties with "home," for years or forever. An occasional courier from They had the lake for coolness and beauty in summer; the forest for shelter, warmth and cheer in winter; masses of flowers in spring, and a few—very few—fruits and nuts in autumn, such as wild grapes and strawberries, wintergreen-berries, cranberries, whortleberries, hazel-nuts, walnuts, hickory-nuts, beech-nuts, etc. There was no lack of game to be had for the hunting, or fish for the catching. The garrison had cattle, therefore there was doubtless fresh beef, milk and butter. So a "good provider," as John Kinzie doubtless was (we know that he was the soul of hospitality) would be certain to keep his wife's larder always full to overflowing. The garrison officers' families made company for each other and the Kinzies and Jouetts; the soldiers gave protection and a thousand other services to all, and the two fifers and two drummers made music—such as it was. This rude melody was not all they had, however, for John Kinzie was a fiddler as well as a trader and a silver-smith ("Shaw-nee-aw-kee," or the "silver-smith," was his Indian name), and in the cool summer evenings, sitting on his porch, would send the sound of his instrument far and wide, over river and plain, through the dewy silence of the peaceful landscape. They had love and marriage, birth and death, buying and selling and getting gain; and, happily, had not the gift of "second sight," to divine what lay before them; what kind of end was to come to their exile. Mr. Wentworth's Fort Dearborn speech (Fergus' Historical Series No. 16, page 87) quotes a letter he had received from Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War under President Garfield. From it we learn that no muster-roll of the garrison at Fort Dearborn in 1811 or 1812 is on file at the War Department, but that the general returns of The deficiency of records in the archives of the War Department may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the British, after the so-called "battle" of Bladensburgh, took Washington and burned all the government buildings. In 1811 Captain Nathan Heald, then in command of Fort Dearborn, went down to Kentucky, where he married Rebekah Wells daughter of Captain Samuel Wells and niece of William. Mrs. Heald's narrative of these events, as reported to me by her son, is as follows: In the summer of 1811, Captain Heald, then in command of Fort Dearborn, at Chicago, got leave of absence to go down to Louisville, to get married. He went on horseback, alone, traveling by compass. They were married, and after the wedding started north on horseback for Fort Dearborn. There were four horses—two for the bride and groom, one for the packs and blankets, and one for a little Rebekah was much pleased with her reception, and found everything bright and cheerful. She liked the wild place, the wild lake and the wild Indians; everything suited her ways and disposition, "being on the wild order herself," she said; and all went on very pleasantly. Among other gayeties there was skating in winter up and down the frozen river, and Ensign Ronan was a famous skater. Sometimes he would take an Indian squaw by the hands, she holding her feet still, and swing her back and forth from side to side of the little stream, until he came to a place where there was a deep snowdrift on the bank, when he would (accidentally, of course) loose his grip on her hands, and she would fly off into the snowdrift and be buried clear out of sight. In 1812 the peaceful quiet was rudely startled, then assaulted, then destroyed. The first breach of the peace was the killing by Mr. Kinzie (in self-defense) of one John Lalime, Indian interpreter at Fort Dearborn. The second event was of a different kind. A man named Lee. CABIN IN THE WOODS. This spot was not far from the place where PÈre Marquette passed the winter of 1674-75; perhaps the very same ground. (See Munsell's History of Chicago for a copy of the good Father's journal, with parallel translation.) Mrs. John Kinzie, first in a pamphlet dated in 1836, and published in 1844, and later in Wau-Bun, gives an extremely picturesque account of the alarm, evidently taken down from the lips of those who had been present; namely her husband (then a boy), his mother, Mrs. John Kinzie, and his half-sister, Mrs. Helm. It was the evening of the 7th of April, 1812. The children of Mrs. Kinzie were dancing before the fire to the music or their father's violin. The tea-table was spread, and they were awaiting the return of their mother, who was gone to visit a sick neighbor. [Mrs. John Burns, living at about where is now the crossing of Kinzie and State Streets, had just been delivered of a child.] Suddenly their sports were interrupted; the door was thrown open and Mrs. Kinzie rushed in pale with terror, and scarcely able to articulate. "The Indians! The Indians!" "The Indians! What? Where?" "Up at Lee's place, killing and scalping!" With difficulty Mrs. Kinzie composed herself sufficiently to give the information that while she was up at Burns's a man and a boy were seen running down with all speed to the opposite side of the river; that they called across to give notice to Burns's family to save themselves, for the Indians were at Lee's place, from which they had just made their escape. Having given this terrifying news they made all speed for the fort, which was on the same side of the river that they were. All was now consternation and dismay. The family were hurried into two old pirogues [dug-out tree-trunks] that were moored near the house, and paddled with all possible haste across the river to take refuge in the fort. Mrs. Kinzie goes on to give the fullest account we have of this initial murder, fitting prelude to the bloody drama to follow a few months later. Here is a condensation of her narrative: In the afternoon a party of ten or twelve Indians, dressed and painted, arrived at the Lee house, and according to their custom, entered and seated themselves without ceremony. Something in their appearance and manner excited the suspicions of one of the family, a Frenchman [Debou], who remarked: "I don't like the looks of those Indians; they are not Pottowatomies." Another of the family, a discharged soldier, said to a boy (a son of Lee): "If that is the case, we had better get away if we can. Say nothing, but do as you see me do." As the afternoon was far advanced, the soldier walked leisurely toward the two canoes tied near the bank. They asked where he was going. He pointed to the cattle which were standing among the hay-stacks on the opposite bank, and made signs that they must go and fodder them and then return and get their supper. KINZIE MANSION—1812. He got into one canoe and the boy into the other. When they gained the opposite side they pulled some hay for the cattle, and when they had gradually made a circuit so that their movements were concealed by the hay-stacks, they took to the woods and made for the fort. They had run a quarter of a mile when they heard the discharge of two guns successively. They stopped not nor stayed until they arrived opposite Burns's place (North State and Kinzie streets), where they called across to warn the Burns family of their danger, and then hastened to the fort. A party of soldiers had that afternoon obtained leave to go up the river to fish. The commanding officer ordered a cannon to be fired to warn them of their danger. Hearing the signal they took the hint, put out their torches and dropped down the river as silently as possible. It will be remembered that the battle of Tippecanoe, the preceding November, had rendered every man vigilant, and the slightest alarm was an admonition to "beware of Indians." When the fishing-party reached Lee's place, it was proposed to stop and warn the inmates. All was still as death around the house. They groped their way along, and as the corporal jumped over the small enclosure he placed his hand on the dead body of a man. By the sense of touch he soon ascertained that the head was without a scalp and was otherwise mutilated. The faithful dog of the murdered man stood guarding the remains of his master. Captain Heald, writing from the fort, gives a shorter statement, adding some further particulars: Chicago, April 15, 1812.—The Indians have commenced hostilities in this quarter. On the sixth instant, a little before sunset, a party of eleven Indians, supposed to be Winnebagoes, came to Messrs. Russell and See's cabin, in a field on the Portage branch of the Chicago River, about three miles from the garrison, where they murdered two men; one by the name of Liberty White, an American, and the other a Canadian Frenchman whose name I do not know. [Debou.] White received two balls through his body, nine stabs with a knife in his breast, and one in his hip, his throat was cut from ear to ear, his nose and lips were taken off in one piece, and his head was skinned almost as far round as they could find any hair. The Frenchman was only shot through the neck and scalped. Since the murder of these two men, one or two other parties of Indians have been lurking about us, but we have been so much on our guard they have not been able to get any scalps. HUMAN SCALP. Among all the tribes of savages met by various immigrations of Europeans, a thousand differences of arms, implements, manners, habits and customs were observed. Some were more barbarous, others less; but there was one trophy one weapon, one trait, invariable and universal—the bleeding scalp, the sharp scalping-knife, the rage for scalping. This proves much. It shows that killing was not a mere means to an end, but the end aimed at. It shows that sheer, unadulterated, unmitigated murder was the ideal grace of manhood. The brain-pan of man, woman or child yielded its covering, torn away warm and quivering, and the possessor was sure of the honor and favor of his fellows, men, women and children. No woman shed a tear over the locks of a sister woman; no child over the curls of a baby. Savagery the world has ever known, and isolated instances of wholesale destruction of non-combatants in the drunkenness of victory; but there is no record of a whole race, consisting of many tribes, spread over many lands, enduring for many generations, where such diabolism was the general ethnic trait. |
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