  FATE OF THE FUGITIVES. E EVERY word bearing upon the adventures of the handful of Chicagoans left alive on Sunday, August 16th, 1812, has been carefully looked up and faithfully transcribed. Those words are few enough; the silence and darkness that enshroud their fate are more pathetically eloquent than speech could well be. To begin with the Healds, who, as we have seen, were brought again together on the morning of August 16th, by the half-breed, Chandonnais. Darius Heald continues his report of his mother's narrative, as follows: It is thought that the Indians went off down the lake to have "a general frolic;" in other words, to torture to death the wounded prisoners. On the night of the sixteenth, Captain and Mrs. Heald, accompanied by an Indian named Robinson [probably Chief Robinson, well known in Chicago for many years], embarked in a canoe and, unmolested, commenced their journey to Mackinaw. Chandonnais' friendship was no half-way matter. They traveled all that night and all next day, until late in the evening, when they saw a young deer coming down to the water in a little clump of bushes to get a drink. They drew as near the shore as possible, and the Indian lad stepped out and waded to the shore, skipped down the bank behind the deer and shot it. Then they pitched camp, dressed the deer, using the hide as a kneading-board, whereon Mrs. Heald stirred up some flour (they having brought a Here should come in, (according to Mrs. Helm's account in Wau-Bun) mention of a halt of some days at the mouth of the St. Joseph's river. It seems to me quite probable that the lapse of time had obliterated from Darius Heald's memory that part of his mother's narrative; or that he passed over, in talking to the stenographer, a matter which a timely question would have brought out. (See the Wau-Bun story, further on.) They pushed on to Mackinaw, as Captain Heald said he had no chance of getting clear except by going to a British officer, and it was here that his parole was taken. It happened that Captain Heald and the officer in command at Mackinaw were both Free Masons, and Mrs. Heald says that they went off into a room by themselves, and that Captain Heald told his story and asked for help. He said that the Indians would pursue them, would not be more than twenty-four hours behind, and that a body would overtake them, and asked the British officer if he could protect them. The British officer said it would be a very hard matter in the fix they were in. If the Indians came down they might be overpowered; but that he would do this: He had a little "sailer" [a sailing-boat], and he would put Captain Heald and his wife in that and anchor it near the shore, and as soon as there were signs of Indians would signal them to start. He then took out his pocket-book and told Captain Heald to help himself "But," said Captain Heald, "we may never meet again." "That," said the officer, "makes no difference. You have a wife and I have no one on whom to spend money. I can do without it. You take it and use it, and if it is ever convenient to send it back you may do so." Mrs. Heald says she never knew why the officer should have been so kind to them, but laid it to the fact of their both being Masons; but said she "could never get anything out of him" (Captain Heald), although she tried more than once, and that she "never expected to get to know Masonic secrets." However, Captain Heald did not take the money of the noble and generous enemy, for he had at that moment some two hundred dollars, probably in gold, which his provident wife had sewn in the cuffs of his undershirt, a circumstance which would indicate that she, at least, foresaw possible tribulation before they left the fort. The Indians came in sight looking one hundred strong, and the British officer gave the sign for the little boat to move on. They went down to Detroit, and thence to Buffalo, whence they crossed to Pittsburg and went down the Ohio River, having procured, through an officer, some conveyance by which to go down the river, and they then drifted down, part of the way by boat and part of the way by raft, and in this way reached Kentucky soil. They reached Mrs. Heald's old home by night, past midnight, and rapped for admittance. Colonel Samuel Wells asked, "Who's there?" "A friend," said Captain Heald. "Well, who are you?" "Well, I am a friend." Mrs. Heald then spoke up and said, "Yes, two friends." Colonel Wells thought he recognized a woman's voice, and came to the door and opened it, and found himself face to face with his daughter, whom he had not seen for nearly two years, whom he had supposed to be dead, who left him as a bride and returned home as a wounded prisoner. They had been two months on the way from Fort Dearborn to Kentucky. Before her death, in 1856, Mrs. Heald had dictated to Mrs. Kerr, her niece, a large number of facts connected with her life. The manuscript was foolscap, and contained, Mr. Heald thinks, some hundreds of pages. It was in existence up to the time of the Union War, and he remembers seeing it wrapped up in a newspaper and tied with twine, at the Heald residence, in St. Charles County, Missouri, near the town of O'Fallon. During one of the incursions of Union soldiers the house was ransacked from top to bottom. Captain Heald's sword was taken away, and, greatest loss of all, that manuscript then disappeared, Mr. Heald thinks probably destroyed—burned among other papers supposed to be of no value. A negro boy, who had been raised by Mr. Heald, received word that that sword had been left somewhere not far from home, and was then being used as a corn-knife, and he obtained it and brought it back to Mr. Heald, who recognized it as what was left of his father's old sword; but alas! the manuscript has never been heard of—probably never will be. This is the nearest approach now possible to a reproduction of the facts it contained. The Wau-Bun narrative is more circumstantial, if not more trustworthy, and tends naturally in a different direction. It goes on: Along with Mr. Kinzie's party was a non-commissioned officer who had made his escape in a singular manner. As the troops were about leaving the fort it was found that the baggage horses of the This man had been for a long time on the sick report, and for this reason was given the charge of the baggage instead of being placed with the troops. His efforts to recover the horses being unsuccessful, he was hastening to rejoin his party, alarmed at some appearances of disorder and hostile indications among the Indians, when he was met and made prisoner by To-pee-nee-be. Having taken from him his arms and accoutrements, the chief put him in a canoe and paddled him across the river, bidding him make for the woods and secrete himself. This he did, and the following day in the afternoon, seeing from his lurking-place that all appeared quiet, he ventured to steal cautiously into the garden of Ouilmette, where he concealed himself for a time behind some currant-bushes. At length he determined to enter the house, and accordingly climbed up through a small back window into the room where the family were. This was just as the Wabash Indians left the house of Ouilmette for that of Mr. Kinzie. The danger of the sergeant was now imminent. The family stripped him of his uniform and arrayed him in a suit of deerskin, with belt, moccasins and pipe, like a French engage. His dark complexion and large black whiskers favored the disguise. The family were all ordered to address him in French, and although utterly ignorant of the language, he continued to pass for a Weem-tee-gosh, On the third day after the battle, the family of Mr. Kinzie, with the clerks of the establishment, were put into a boat under the care of FranÇois, a half-breed interpreter, and conveyed to St. Joseph's, where they remained until the following November, under the protection of To-pe-nee-bee's band. They were then conducted to Detroit under the escort of Chandonnais and their trusty Indian friend, Kee-po-tah, and delivered up as prisoners of war to Colonel McKee, the British Indian Agent. Mr. Kinzie was not allowed to leave St. Joseph's with his family, his Indian friends insisting on his remaining and endeavoring to secure some remnant of his scattered property. During his excursions with them for that purpose he wore the costume and paint of Captain and Mrs. Heald had been sent across the lake to St. Joseph's, the day after the battle. The former had received two wounds and the latter seven in the engagement. ALEXANDER ROBINSON (in old age). Chief of the Pottowatomies, Chippewas, and others. Lieutenant Helm, who was likewise wounded, was carried by some friendly Indian to their village on the Au Sable, and thence to Peoria, where he was liberated by the intervention of Mr. Thomas Forsyth, the half-brother of Mr. Kinzie. Mrs. Helm had accompanied her parents to St. Joseph's, where they resided in the family of Alexander Robinson, After their arrival in Detroit Mrs. Helm was joined by her husband, when they were both arrested, by order of the British commander, and sent on horseback, in the dead of winter, through Canada, to Fort George, on the Niagara frontier. When they arrived at that post there seemed no official appointed to receive them, and notwithstanding their long and fatiguing journey, in weather the most cold and inclement, Mrs. Helm, a delicate woman of seventeen years, was permitted to sit waiting in her saddle, without the gate, for more than an hour before the refreshment of fire or food, or even the shelter of a roof, was offered to her. When Colonel Sheaffe, who had been absent at the time, was informed of this brutal inhospitality, he expressed the greatest indignation. He waited on Mrs. Helm immediately, apologized in the most courteous manner, and treated her and Lieutenant H. with the most considerate kindness, until, by an exchange of prisoners, they were liberated and found means to reach their friends in Steuben County, New York. Captain Heald had been taken prisoner by an Indian from the Kankakee who had a strong personal regard for him, and who, when he saw the wounded and enfeebled state of Mrs. H., released her husband that he might accompany his wife to St. Joseph's. To the latter place they were accordingly carried, as has been related, by Chandonnais and his party. In the mean time, the Indian who had so nobly released his prisoner returned to his village on the Kankakee, where he had the mortification of finding that his conduct had excited great dissatisfaction among his band. So great was the displeasure manifested that he resolved to make a journey to St. Joseph's and reclaim his prisoner. News of his intention being brought to To-pee-nee-bee and Kee-po-tah, under whose care the prisoners were, they held a private council with Chandonnais, Mr. Kinzie and the principal men of the village, the result of which was, a determination to send Captain and Mrs. Heald to the island of Mackinac and deliver them up to the British. They were accordingly put in a bark canoe and paddled by Robinson and his wife a distance of three hundred miles along the coast of Michigan, and surrendered as prisoners of war to the commanding officer at Mackinac. This, though discordant with the shorter report received from the Healds, certainly seems to have sound basis of truth. I have no doubt that the Captain and his wife did halt at St. Joseph's and that John Kinzie had something As an instance of the procrastinating spirit of Captain Heald it may be mentioned that even after he had received certain intelligence that his Indian captor was on his way from the Kankakee to St. Joseph's to retake him, he would still have delayed another day at that place to make preparation for a more comfortable journey to Mackinac. Mrs. Helm's acuteness in finding flaws in Captain Heald is quite interesting. But as this Kankakee information must have come entirely through Indian channels, and as the savage plan is ever to strike first and warn afterward, I am prone to suspect that he applied the "personal equation," and made light of the tale; and that there was in fact little in it to frighten a brave man and his heroic wife. (Per contra, see the Mackinaw incident.) The soldiers, with their wives and surviving children, were dispersed among the different villages of the Pottowatomies, upon the Illinois, Wabash and Rock River, and at Milwaukee, until the following spring, when they were, for the most part, carried to Detroit and ransomed. We should like to believe the hopeful views here given regarding the fate of the remaining prisoners. In truth, this account is as well authenticated as is that given in the Niles' Register, as copied from a Plattsburgh (N. Y.) newspaper, and given later in this work. Mrs. Burns, with her infant, became the prisoners of a chief who carried her to his village and treated her with great kindness. His wife, from jealousy of the favor shown to the white woman and her child, always treated them with great hostility. On one occasion she struck the infant with a tomahawk, and narrowly missed her aim of putting an end to it altogether. The family of Mr. Lee had resided in a house on the lake-shore, not far from the fort. Mr. Lee was the owner of Lee's Place, which he cultivated as a farm. It was his son who ran down with a discharged soldier to give the alarm of "Indians" at the fort on the afternoon of the 7th of April. The father, the son, and all the other members had fallen victims on the 15th of August, except Mrs. Lee and her young infant. These were claimed by Black Partridge and carried to his village on the Au Sable. He had been particularly attached to a little girl of Mrs. Lee's, about twelve years of age. This child had been placed on horseback for the march, and as she was unaccustomed to the exercise, she was tied fast to the saddle, lest by any accident she should slip off or be thrown. She was within reach of the balls at the commencement of the engagement, and was severely wounded. The horse set off on a full gallop, which partly threw her, but she was held fast by the bands which confined her, and hung dangling as the animal ran violently about. In this state she was met by Black Partridge, who caught the horse and disengaged her from the saddle. Finding her so much wounded that she could not recover, and that she was suffering great agony, he put the finishing stroke to her at once with his tomahawk. He afterwards said that this was the hardest thing he ever tried to do, but he did it because he could not bear to see her suffer. He took the mother and her infant to his village, where he became warmly attached to the former—so much so that he wished to marry her; but, as she very naturally objected, he treated her with the greatest respect and consideration. He was in no hurry to release her, for he was in hopes of prevailing on her to become his wife. In the course of the winter her child fell ill. Finding that none of the remedies within their reach were effectual, Black Partridge proposed to take the little one to Chicago, where there was now a French trader living in the mansion of Mr. Kinzie, and procure some medical aid from him. Wrapping up his charge with the greatest care he set out on his journey. When he arrived at the residence of M. du Pin, he entered the room where he was, and carefully placed his burden on the floor. "What have you there?" asked M. du Pin. "A young raccoon which I brought you as a present," was the reply, and opening the pack he showed the little sick infant. When the trader had prescribed for its complaint, and Black Partridge was about to return to his home, he told his friend his proposal to Mrs. Lee to become his wife, and the manner in which it had been received. M. du Pin entertained some fears that the chiefs resolution might not hold out, to leave it to the lady herself whether to receive his addresses or not, so he entered at once into a negotiation for her ransom, and so effectually wrought upon the good feelings of Black Partridge that he consented to bring his fair prisoner at once to Chicago, that she might be restored to her friends. Whether the kind trader had at the outset any other feeling than sympathy and brotherly kindness, we cannot say—we only know that in process of time, Mrs. Lee became Madame du Pin, and that they lived together in great happiness for many years after. So disappears, from earliest Chicago annals, the name of Lee. The father had been a householder, living somewhere about where the new Public Library is now building, and his farm was (after PÈre Marquette's "cabinage") the very first settlement on the West Side of the South Branch or "Portage River." His son escaped from the murderers at "Hardscrabble" in spring, only to perish, with his father, during the massacre, or perhaps in the "general frolic" that followed. Then the widow becomes Mrs. du Pin and we hear no more of the Lees. There is a grim completeness about the domestic drama. On Friday it has father, mother, son, daughter and baby, on Saturday, father and son are killed in battle (or by torture) and daughter mangled by a horse's feet and finished by a tomahawk; a few months later the puny baby is brought in to be "doctored" and then the widow marries again and lives on "in great happiness." The fate of Nau-non-gee, one of the chiefs of the Calumet village, and who is mentioned in the early part of the narrative, deserves to be recorded. During the battle of the 15th of August, the chief object of his attack was one Sergeant Hays, a man from whom he had received many acts of kindness. After Hays had received a ball through the body, this Indian ran up to tomahawk him, when the Sergeant, collecting his remaining strength, pierced him through the body with his bayonet. They fell together. Other Indians running up soon dispatched Hays, and it was not until then that his bayonet was extracted from the body of his adversary. The wounded chief was carried after the battle to his village on the Calumet, where he survived for several days. Finding his end approaching; he called together his young men, and enjoined them in the most solemn manner to regard the safety of their prisoners after his death, and to take the lives of none of them, from respect to his memory, as he deserved his fate from the hands of those whose kindness he had so ill-requited.
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