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Letter from the Author.
DANVILLE, ILL., Nov. 5, 1883.
MY DEAR FERGUS:--Herewith is the wind-up. The Introductory to the chapter on "Illinois and Indiana Indians", also a foot-note on Judge Hall, to be put as marked. I could find no other place where I could place it with any propriety. It cost me more time and labor to chip it out than any other side-spur I have undertaken. I have one of the very few complete sets of his publications extant, which I have been years in collecting, and they contain "lots of good things." I revised and condensed the note two or three times and have, for brevity's sake, squeezed everything out of it except dry facts. Yet I hope that even these may revive or keep in memory the debt Illinois and the West owe to Judge Hall. The statute of limitations has ran too long against him, John M. Peck, and a few others who might be named; while semi-annual dividends of praise have been regularly, often in advance, to much less deserving men.
The proof-slips I return O. K.'d with corrections of my own and the adoption, with thanks, of those queried by the proof-reader, whom I take to be your father. I will be obliged if you will lay away the proof-slips and page-proofs for me to have when I come up, which will be about the 21st instant, when I expect to remain two or three days.
I hope the work will now soon be out, and that you will get back more than your money and labor on the venture. I feel that the matter is, as reliable as to facts, dates, names, places, etc., as painstaking research can well make it. Every statement has been compared and verified with all original authorities, as well as the several collators upon the same subject that I could command for reference. Nothing has been retained that would not bear these tests; and, as a sequence, many pleasing fictions have been discarded. Should you ever subsoil in this field of inquiry, you will be amazed at the carelessness and the discrepancies, the prejudices, and the pure fancies of writers upon our aboriginal history that you will unearth on every hand, until, in the course of your investigations, you will come to doubt if much true history is to be found for your pains at last.
Yours truly,
H. W. BECKWITH.
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Introductory.
THE account given of the Indians, in the following chapters, is condensed from a volume prepared by the writer four years ago, with some new matter added in the revision. It is mostly the result of his gleanings over a wide field of antiquated books of travel and maps long since out of print, or copies of manuscript-correspondence of a private or official character, little of which is accessible to the general reader.
Our knowledge of the aboriginal occupants of this country is fragmentary, at best. They kept no records and had no historians. The little we know of them is to be found in the writings of persons who, if not their natural enemies, had little interest in doing them justice. As a rule, early travelers and observers have alluded to their capabilities, their manners and customs, only in an incidental way. We know but very little of the Indians who formerly occupied the territory between the Alleghanies and Mississippi; and the little information that has been preserved concerning them is so scattered through the volumes of authors who wrote from other motives, or at different dates, or of different nations, without taking thought to discriminate, that no satisfactory account of any particular tribe is now attainable. The best that may be done is to select such of these disjointed scraps as bear evidence of being the most reliable, and arrange them in something like chronological order. In his endeavor to do this, the writer has had no theories to bolster up or morbid sentiments to gratify. He has only quoted or condensed from authorities regarded as standard; and this without prejudice in favor of or against the people whose history he has attempted to briefly give.
The mental and physical training of the two races, their habits and purposes of life were so radically different that they could not peaceably occupy the same territory in common. Either the red hunter must quit the chase and give up his nomadic life, or the civilized white must degenerate into a savage. Hence the Indian, being the weaker party, gave away before the operations of an inexorable law, the severity of which could, at best, have been only tempered. It was but obeying a natural law, inherent inhumanity everywhere, that he defended his country against the encroachments of another race; and the strife between the two
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for its possession, furnishes material for many thrilling events connected with its history.In spite of whatever official injunctions to the contrary, the Indians were as systematically debauched with whisky, contaminated with vices, and as persistently overreached by the servants of Count Frontenac, governor of New France, over two centuries ago, as they have been, from that time until now, by the agents and traders of every successive executive in charge, whether French or British, dictating at Quebec or New York, or American, directing from Washington City. And the complaints of the early Jesuit priests against these wrongs were as unavailing in correcting them as the protests of President Jefferson, Gov. Harrison, Gen. Cass, Judge Hall,
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in later times. The chronic "Indian Question" is no nearer a settlement now than it was in colonial days, and it never will be until either the unfortunate subjects of it are all dead, or we shall have abandoned the prolonged attempt to reconcile the indulgences of a remorseless greed with the ways of justice and humanity.The remnants of tribes, who formerly owned the country east of the Missouri, were sent beyond that river to live, mostly, by hunting in competition with other natives in regions where game had already become scarce. The lapse of time has neutralized
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the bitterness of the conquest that ended with their final removal from our midst; so that now we ought to accord them the even-handed justice to which they are historically entitled.When attainable, the writer has preserved the aboriginal names of lakes, rivers, Indian villages, and other historical localities coming within range of the subjects treated. In the choice of material he has also endeavored to make such selections as will best serve the double purpose of sketches of the several tribes named, and illustrate characteristics common to them all.
H. W. BECKWITH.
DANVILLE, ILL., November, 1883.
"The Letters from the West", "The Illinois, Monthly Magazine", and its continuation, where many of the originals may be found, or the germs can be traced from which elaborations were subsequently made. The whole, aside from their acknowledged literary merits, possess great historical value, as they present while they preserve a faithful picture of the early West.
Besides the above, in 1836, he published a life of Gov. Wm. H. Harrison, which, for perspicuity, fidelity, and elegance of diction, is the best of the many that have appeared. In 1848, he prepared a "Memoir of Thos. Posey, Major-General and Governor of Indiana", published in "Sparks' American Biographical Series". He also wrote the "History of the Indian Tribes of North America", aided by Col. Thomas L. McKenney of the Indian Department; published 1838-44 and 1858, in three large volumes, with 120 Indian portraits, taken mainly from the Indian Gallery, formerly in the Department of War at Washington. Judge Hall early became identified with our State, and aided its material and intellectual progress with all the warmth of his ardent nature. His pen was busy in praise of its climate, its soil, and its capabilities; and prompt and trenchent in defence of the sterling traits of its pioneer people, by whose successors he ought to be remembered. The writer has collated this note, mainly from the above volumes, in his library with such other scraps of information as he could gather elsewhere. The biographical sketch in the American Cyclopedia, to which the writer is likewise indebted, is in error as to the date of publication of the "Letters from the West", as well, also, in alleging the existence of a "uniform edition of Judge Hall's works"; and is defective in that it omits his "Sketches of the West" (the two volumes possessing more historical value than any of the others), and makes no mention of "The Illinois Monthly Magazine" and its continuation, which, with the "Letters from the West", are measurably the fountains of them all.
His writings, except, perhaps, "The Romance of Western History", and a reprint of "The Legends of the West", by Robert Clarke & Co. of Cincinnati, in 1871 and 1874, respectively, are long since out of print. Many of them are quite rare, and appear only at long intervals in the catalogues of dealers in "Americana".
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By HIRAM W. BECKWITH, Danville, ILL.
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The Illinois and Indiana Indians.
The Illinois.
The several Indian tribes, which from time to time occupied parts of Illinois, so far as we have written accounts of them, were the Miamis, Illinois, Winnebagos, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos, Pottawatomies, and, at short intervals, the Winnebagoes and Shawnees. They, with the exception of the Winnebagoes, who were of the Dakota or Sioux stock, were classed among the Algonquin-Lenape nations on account of the similarity of their dialects and to distinguish them from the Iroquois tribes on the east, the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and others south of the Ohio River, and the Dakotas west of the Mississippi. The different tribes living in Illinois will be referred to in the order of priority of time in which written accounts refer to their respective names.
The Illinois Indians were composed of five subdivisions: Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Tamaroas, Peorias, and Metchigamis, the last being a foreign tribe residing west of the Mississippi River, who being reduced to small numbers by wars with their neighbors, abandoned their former hunting-grounds and became incorporated with the Illinois. The first historical mention of this tribe is found in the "Jesuit Relations for the year 1670-1," prepared by Father Claude Dablon, from the letters of priests stationed at LaPointe on the southwest of Lake Superior.
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prior to 1670, the French had a trading-post, to which the Indians came for many miles, to barter their peltries for knives, hatchets, kettles, guns, ammunition, clothes, paints, trinkets, and other articles of European manufacture; and as the Indians that first came to LaPointe from the south called themselves Illinois, the French called them ever afterward by this name. Father Dablon states in the "Relations for the year 1670": "As we have given the name of Ottawas to all the savages of these countries, although of different nations, because the first who have appeared among the French were Ottawas, so also it is with the name Illinois, very numerous, and dwelling toward the south, because the first who came to the Pointe of the Holy Ghost for commerce, called themselves Illinois." In the Jesuit Relations and in the writings of other French authors, the name Illinois is variously spelled as "Illi-mouek", "Ill-i-no-u-es", "Ill-i-ne-wek", "Allini-wek", and "Lin-i-wek". The terminations oues, wek, ois, and ouek were almost identical in pronunciation. Lewis Evans, the great geographer in colonial days, spelled the name Will-i-nis. Major Thomas Forsyth, for many years trader and Indian-agent in the Illinois Territory, and stationed at the then French village of Peoria, says the "Illinois confederation call themselves Linni-wek, and by others they were called Min-ne-way." Father James Marquette, who, with Louis Joliet, came up the Illinois River in 1673, and Father Louis Hennepin, who descended the same stream, in 1679, and both coming in direct contact with the natives dwelling upon the borders of its waters, giving them opportunities of knowing whereof they wrote, in their journals of their respective voyages spell the name Illinois.101
perfect and accomplished man." Originally the word Illinewek, or Linnewek, had only a general meaning, and was a word used boastingly by other tribes of the great Algonquin family when speaking of themselves. The Delawares, considered the oldest branch of this family, called themselves "‘Lenno-Lenape’, which," says Albert Gallatin, in his synopsis of Indians tribes of North America, "means original or ’unmixed men‘ perhaps, originally, ‘manly men’." In the Delaware language Lenno means a man and Nape means a male. Again, the tribes that occupied the country about the southern extremity of Hudson Bay, and who belonged to this same family of aboriginals, says Dr. Robertson: "call themselves, as many other Indian tribes do, ‘men’, ‘E-ith-in-yook’, or ‘In-ir-i-wrik’, prefixing occasionally the name of their especial tribes. Thus the true name of the ‘Mon-so-nies’ or Swamp Indians who inhabited Moose River is ‘Mon-so-a-Eith-yu-yook’, or ‘Moose-deer-men’." Later, and, as it were by the uniform concurrence of nearly all writers, when referring to the original occupants of this country, the name Ill-i-mouek, Ill-i-ne-wek, Len-i-wek, and Ill-i-ni was applied only to the Illinois Confederation.From the earliest accounts we have, the principal stream of this State was called "The River of the Illinois"; and a wide region of country, lying north of the mouth of the Ohio and upon both sides of the Mississippi, was called "The Country of the Illinois", and "The Illinois". These designations appear in the records and official letters under the administrations and ownership of this region under both the French and Spanish Governments. For example, letters, deeds, and other official documents bore date at "Kaskaskia of the Illinois", "St. Louis of the Illinois", "Chicago of the Illinois", "Vincennes of the Illinois", etc.
While the Revolutionary war was in progress, Gen. Geo. Rogers Clark of Virginia (though a resident of Kentucky, which was then a county of that colony) wrested the territory, now embraced within the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, from the British Government. Afterward and in the spring of 1779, Col. John Todd, commissioned by Virginia as its lieutenant, went to Vincennes and Kaskaskia and organized Gen. Clark's conquest into a county of Virginia, to which was given the name of "Illinois County". Later this domain became the property, by cession of the several states claiming interest, of the United States. On the 4th of July, 1801, the Act of Congress for the division of the Northwest Territory went into effect, by the terms of which all that part lying to the westward of the west boundary line of the State of Ohio was constituted a separate territory, under name of "Indiana Territory", and so remained
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until when by Act of Congress, February 3, 1809, all that part of it lying west of the Wabash River, and a line drawn due north from Vincennes to the British possessions, was organized into a separate territory, to be called the "Illinois Territory". Still later, October 5, 1818, was passed an Act for the admission of the Illinois Territory as a state into the Federal Union, to be designated as the "State of Illinois". Such, agreeably to approved authorities, is the origin of the word Illinois; and such are the various uses it has served. ( A great State perpetuates the name, in memory of a populous and powerful race of redmen, once living in its borders, but now utterly perished from the earth.)From all accounts, it seems the Illinois Confederation claimed the extensive county bounded on the east by the ridge that divides the waters flowing into the Illinois from the streams that drain into the Wabash, between the headwaters of Saline Creek and a point as far north on the Illinois as the Desplaines, reaching still northward to the debatable ground between themselves, the Winnebagoes, the Sacs and Foxes, and the Kickapoos; and extending westward of the Mississippi. Their favorite and most populous villages were upon the Illinois and its two principal branches, the Desplaines and the Kankakee.
The area of the original country of the Illinois was soon reduced by continuous wars with their neighbors. The Sioux (Da-ko-ta) pressed them from the west; the Sacs and Foxes and Kickapoos, confederates, encroached upon their territory from the north; while war parties of the fierce Iroquois, coming from the east, rapidly decimated their numbers. These destructive influences were doing their fatal work, and the power of the Illinois was waning when they first came in contact with the French. Their sufferings rendered them pliable to the voice of the missionary; and, in their weakness, they hailed with delight the coming of the Frenchmen, with his promise of protection assured with gifts of guns and powder. The Illinois drew so kindly to the priests, the coureurs des bois, and soldiers that the friendship between the two races never abated; and when, in the order of events, the sons of France had departed from Illinois, the love of the natives for the departed Gaul was handed down as a precious memory to their children.
The military establishments at Detroit, Mich., and at Starved Rock, Ill.,
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and stayed the calamity that was to befall the Illinois. We give a condensed account of some of these campaigns of the Iroquois into the Illinois country, as embraced in extracts which are taken from a Memoir on Western Indians, by M. DuChesneau, Intendent of Canada, and successor to Jean Tallon, dated at Quebec, September 13, 1681: "To convey a correct idea," says this French officer, "of the present state of all those Indian nations it is necessary to explain the cause of the cruel war waged by the Iroquois for these three years past against the Illinois. The former are great warriors, can not remain idle, and pretend to subject all other nations to themselves, and never want a pretext for commencing hostilities. The following is their assumed excuse for the present war: going about twenty years ago to attack the Foxes, they met the Illinois, and killed a considerable number of them. This continued during the succeeding years, and finally having destroyed a great many, they forced them to abandon their country and seek refuge in very distant parts. The Iroquois, having got rid of the Illinois, took no more trouble with them, but went to war against another nation called the ‘An-dostagues,’ [the Eries or Cats, so-called, and who were entirely destroyed by the Iroquois]. Pending this war, the Illinois returned to their country, and the Iroquois complained that they had killed forty of their people while on their way to hunt beaver in the Illinois country. To obtain satisfaction, the Iroquois resolved to make war upon them. Their true motive, however, was to gratify the British at ‘Ma-nat-te’ [New York] and ‘Orange’ Albany], of whom they are too near neighbors, and who, by means of presents, engaged the Iroquois in this expedition, the object of which was to force the Illinois to bring their beaver to them, so that they may go and trade it afterward to the British; also to intimidate the other Indians, and constrain them to do the same thing.104
"The improper conduct of Sieur de LaSalle, governor of Ft. Frontenac, has contributed considerably to cause the latter to adopt this proceeding; for after he had obtained permission to discover the great river Mississippi, and had, as he alleged, the grant of the [country of the] Illinois, he no longer observed any terms with the Iroquois, and avowed that he would convey arms and ammunition to the Illinois, and would die assisting them." We break the thread of Chesneau's official letter to say to the reader that it must be remembered that LaSalle was not exempt from the attacks of that jealousy and envy which is inspired in the souls of little men toward those who plan and execute great undertakings. We see this spirit manifested in this letter. La Salle could not have done otherwise than supply fire-arms to the Illinois Indians; they were his friends and the owners of the country, the trade of which he had opened up at great hardship and expense to himself.
Proceeding with Chesneau's letter: "The Iroquois despatched in the month of April, of last year, an army consisting of between five and six hundred men, who approached an Illinois village [near the present site of Utica, LaSalle Co., Ill.], where Sieur Henry de Tonty, LaSalle's principal officer, happened to be with some Frenchmen and two Recollect Fathers [the catholic priests, Fathers Gabriel Ribourde and Zenobe Membre, whom the Iroquois left unharmed]. One of these, a most holy man [Father Ribourde] has since been killed by the Indians. But they would listen to no terms of peace proposed to them by Tonty, who was slightly wounded at the beginning of the attack; the Illinois, having fled a hundred leagues, were pursued by the Iroquois, who killed and captured as many as twelve hundred of them, including women and children, having lost only thirty men.
The building of Fort St. Louis upon the heights of Starved Rock by LaSalle, in 1682, gave confidence to the Illinois and
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their scattered remnants who had again returned to their favorite village. They were followed by bands of Weas, Pi-an-ke-shas, and Mi-am-ies, near kinsmen of the Illinois, and by the Shawnees and other tribes of remoter affinity; and soon a cordon of populous towns arose about the fort. The military forces of these villages at the colony of LaSalle, in 1684, was estimated at three thousand six hundred and eighty fighting men, the Illinois furnishing more than one-third of this number. Thus were the Iroquois barred out of the country of the Illinois, who, for a season, enjoyed a respite from their old enemies. The abandonment of Fort St. Louis as a military post, in 1702, was followed by a dispersion of the tribes and fragments of tribes, except at the Illinois village, where a straggling population retained possession. The Kaskaskias learning, in the year 1700, that France was making a military establishment and colony near the mouth of the Mississippi, started thither. They were intercepted on the way, and persuaded to halt above the mouth of the Ohio, and soon thereafter made themselves a permanent home on the banks of a stream which since then has borne their name, the Kaskaskia.The Iroquois came no more, having war enough on their hands nearer home; but the Illinois were constantly harrassed by other enemies, the Sacs and Foxes, the Kickapoos, and the Pottawatomies. Their villages at Starved Rock and at Peoria Lake were besieged by the Foxes in 1722, and a detachment of a hundred men, commanded by Chevalier de Artaguiette and Sieur de Tisné, was sent from Fort Chartres to their assistance. The Foxes having lost more than a hundred of their men, abandoned the siege before the reinforcements arrived. "This success [says Charlevoix, the great French historian] did not, however, prevent the Illinois, although they had lost only twenty men, with some women and children, from leaving the Rock and Pim-i-toey [Peoria Lake] where they were kept in constant alarm, and to proceeding to unite with those of their brethren [the Kaskaskias] who had settled upon the Mississippi. This was a stroke of grace for most of them, the small number of missionaries preventing their supplying so many towns scattered far apart; but, on the other side, as there was nothing to check the raids of the Foxes along the Illinois River, communication between Louisiana and New France [Canada] became much less practicable."
The next fifteen years show a further decline in their numbers. In an enumeration of the Indian tribes connected with the Government of Canada, prepared in the year 1736, the name, location, and number of fighting-men of the Illinois are set down as follows: "Mitchigamias, near Fort Chartres, two hundred and
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fifty; Kaskaskies, six leagues below, one hundred; Peorias, and the Rock, fifty; the Cahokias and Tamarois, two hundred;" making a total of six hundred warriors. The killing of Pontiac, some thirty years later, at Cahokia, whither he had retired after the failure of his bold efforts to rescue the country from the British, was laid upon the Illinois, a charge which, whether true or false, hastened their destruction. In an official letter to the secretary of war, of date March 22, 1814, Gen. Wm. H. Harrison says, "When I was first appointed governor of the Indiana Territory [May, 1800], these once powerful tribes were reduced to about thirty warriors, of whom twenty-five were Kaskaskias, four Peorias, and a single Mitchigamian. A furious war between them and the Sacs and Kickapoos reduced them to that miserable remnant which had taken refuge among the white people in the towns of Kaskaskia and St. Genieve." Since 1800, by successive treaties, they ceded their lands to the United States, and were removed to reservations, lying southwest of Kansas City, where, in 1872, they had dwindled to forty persons--men, women, and children, all told.Thus have wasted away the original occupants of the larger part of Illinois, and portions of Iowa and Missouri. In their single village near Starved Rock, says Father Membré, who was there in 1680, "there were seven or eight thousand souls;" and, in 1684, their warriors were set down at twelve hundred. In the days of their power, they nearly exterminated the Win-ne-ba-goes. Their war-parties penetrated the towns of the Iroquois in the valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee. They took the Mitchigamies under their protection, giving them security against enemies with whom they were unable to contend. They assisted the French in their wars against the Cherokees and the Chickasaws; and in the bitter struggle between the American colonies and the mother country on the one side, and Canada and France on the other, the Illinois tribes gave bountifully of their braves, who fought heroicly and to the last in the loosing cause of their Father O-ni-to [the king], across the great water.
This people who had dominated over surrounding tribes, claiming for themselves the name of Mini or Linneway, to distinguish their superior manhood, have disappeared from the earth; another race, representing a higher civilization, occupy their former domains; and, already, even the origin of their name and the places of their villages have become the subjects of antiquarian research.
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The Miamis.
THE people known to us as the Miamis formerly lived beyond the Mississippi. Their migration from thence eastward through Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, around the southern bend of Lake Michigan to Detroit, thence up the Maumee, and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio, as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the writings of officers, missionaries, and travelers connected with the French. Referring to the mixed village of Mascoutins and others upon Fox River, near its mouth, in Wisconsin, Father Claude Dablon, who was there in 1670, says the village "is joined in the circle of the same barriers of another people named Ou-rm-a-mi, which is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters." "It is beyond this great river [the Mississippi, of which the father had been speaking in the paragraph preceding that quoted] that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Five Nations [Mascoutins, or Kickapoos] to form here a transplanted colony."
From these quotations, there remains little doubt but that the Miamis were a branch of the great Ill-i-ni. This theory is not only declared by all French authorities, but is sustained by many British and American writers, among the latter of whom may be named Gen. Wm. H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official relations with the Northwestern Indians, especially the several sub-divisions of the Miami and Illinois tribes, gave him opportunities of which he availed himself to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. He says, "Although the language, manners, and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they derive their origin from the same source with the Miamis; the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi." This assertion of Gen. Harrison that the tribal relations between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken prior to the exploration of the Mississippi Valley is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities, and is illustrated in the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos, and other enemies, in which there is no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen; on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them.
The Miami confederation was subdivided into four principal bands, since known under the name of Miamis, Eel-Rivers, Weas,
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and Piankeshaws French writers, and some of the colonial traders, have given names of two or three other subdivisions of the bands named; their identity, however, can not be clearly traced, and they figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis that it is not necessary to specify their obsolete names. The Miamis, proper, have by different writers been called "Ou-mi-a-mi", "Ou-mi-am-wek", "Mau-mees", "Au-mi-am-i" (which has been contracted to Au-mi and to "O-mee"), and "Min-e-am-i". The Weas, whose name more properly is "We-we-hah", is called "8y-a-ta-nous", "Oui-at-a-nons", and "Ou-i-as" by the French, and in whose orthography the "8y" and "Ou" are equivalent in sound nearly to the letter of the English W. The British and colonial officers and traders spelled the word "Oui-ca-ta-non", "Way-ough-ta-nies", "Waw i-ach-tens ", and "We-hahs". The name Piankeshaws, in early accounts, figure as "Pou-an-ke-ki-as", "Pe-an-gui-chias", "Pi-an-gui-shaws", "Py-an-ke-shaws", and "Pi-an-qui-shaws". The Miami tribes were known to the Iroquois of New York as the Twigh-twees, a name generally used by the British as well as by the American colonists when referring to any of the Miami tribes.In the year 1684, at LaSalle's Colony, at Starved Rock, the Miamis had populous villages, where the Miamis, proper, counted thirteen hundred warriors, the Weas five hundred, and the Piankeshaw band one hundred and fifty. At a later day, 1718, the Weas had a village "at Chicago, but, being afraid of the canoe-people [the Chippeways and Pottawatomies], left it, and passing around the head of Lake Michigan to be nearer their brethren farther to the east." Father Charlevoix, writing from this vicinity, in 1721, says: "Fifty years ago, the Miamis [i. e. the Wea band] were settled on the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, in a place called Chicago, from the name of a small river which runs into the lake, the source of which is not far distant from that of the river of the Illinois [meaning the Desplaines, which is the name by which it was often called in French authorities]. They are at present divided into three villages, one of which stands on River St. Joseph, the second on another river [the Maumee] which bears their name and runs into Lake Erie, and a third upon the River Ouabache, which empties its waters into the Mississippi. The last are better known by the appellation of Ouyatanons." In 1694, the governor of New France, in a conference with the Western Indians, requested the Miamis of the Pe-pe-ko-kia band who resided upon the Maramek [Kalamazoo River, in Michigan] to remove and join their tribe located on the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan; the governor giving it as his reason that he wished the
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several Miami bands to unite, "so as to be able to execute with greater facility the commands which he might issue." At that time the Iroquois were making war upon Canada, and the French were trying to induce the western tribes to take up the tomahawk in their behalf. The Miamis promised to comply with the governor's wishes; and "late in August, 1696, they started to join their brethren on the St. Joseph. On their way they were attacked by the Sioux, and lost several men. The Miamis of the St. Joseph learning this hostility, resolved to avenge their slaughter. They pursued the Sioux to their own country, and found them entrenched in a fort with some Frenchmen of the class known as coureurs des hois [bush-lopers.] They nevertheless attacked them repeatedly, but were repulsed and were compelled to retire after losing several of their braves. On their way home, meeting other Frenchmen carrying arms and ammunition to the Sioux, they seized all they had, but did them no harm."The Miamis were greatly enraged, with the French for supplying the Sioux with fire-arms. It took all the address of Gov. Frontenac to persuade them from joining the Iroquois. Indeed, they seized Nicolas Perrot, the French trader, who had been commissioned to lead the Maramek band to the River St. Joseph, and would have burned him alive had it not been for the intercession of the Foxes in his behalf. This was the beginning of an alienation of kindly feeling of the Miamis toward the French, which was never restored; and from this period, the movements of the tribe were observed by the French with jealous suspicion.
The country of the Miamis extended west to the watershed between the Illinois and Wabash Rivers, which separated their possessions from those of their brethren, the Illinois. On the north were the Pottawatomies, who were slowly but persistently pushing their line southward through Wisconsin and around the west shore of Lake Michigan, as we shall see when coming to treat of them in a subsequent chapter.
Unlike the Illinois, the Miamis held their own until placed on an equal footing with tribes eastward of them, by obtaining possession of fire-arms. Their superior numbers and bravery enabled them to extend the limits of their hunting-grounds eastward into Ohio, far within the territory claimed by the Iroquois, and says Gov. Harrison, they "were the undoubted proprietors of all that beautiful country watered by the Wabash and its tributaries, and there remains as little doubt that their claim extended as far east as the Scioto." With implements of civilized warfare in their hands, they maintained their tribal integrity and independence; and they traded with and fought against the French, British, and
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Americans by turns, as their interests or passions inclined; and made peace with or declared war against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice moved them. More than once they compelled the arrogant Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies that protection which they themselves had failed to secure by their own prowess. Bold, independent, and flushed with success; the Miamis afforded a poor field for missionary work, and the Jesuit Relations and pastoral letters of the French priesthood have less to say of the Miamis than of any other westward tribe, the Kickapoos alone excepted. Referring to their military powers, Gen. Harrison says of them that, "saving the ten years preceding the Treaty of Greenville [1795], the Miamis alone could have brought more than three thousand wariors in the field: that they composed a body of the finest light troops in the world, and had they been under an efficient system of discipline, or possessed enterprise equal to their valor, the settlement of the country would have been attended with much more difficulty than was encountered in accomplishing it and their final subjugation would have for years been delayed. But constant wars with our frontier had deprived them of many of their warriors, the ravages of the small-pox, however, was the principal cause of the great decrease in their numbers."It was only the Piankeshaw band of the Miamis, however, that occupied portions of Illinois subsequent to the dispersion of La Salle's colony about Starved Rock. The principal villages of the latter were upon the Vermilion River, and at and in the vicinity of Vincennes, Ind.
Their territory extended eastward to the Ohio River and westward to the ridge that divides the waters flowing respectively into the Kaskaskia and the Wabash. They were found by French officers in populous towns upon the Vermilion as early as 1718; later, they pushed the degenerating Illinois bands to the vicinity of Kaskaskia and neighboring villages, and hunted and dominated over the territory to the Mississippi, as high up, nearly, as the mouth of the Illinois.
After the conquest of the Northwest Territory by the colonies and the mother country, and the subsequent overthrow of Pontiac, the British Government sent out George Croghan to obtain the consent of the Indians to the occupation of Kaskaskia and other forts erected by the French in the western country. Croghan was captured by a war-party of Kickapoos, near the mouth of the Wabash, and taken prisoner to Vincennes; from thence he came overland, following the Great Trail leading to Detroit, through the prairies, along the crest of the dividing ridge before named,
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crossing the Vermilion River west of Danville. He describes that part of the hunting-ground of the Piankeshaws between Vincennes and the Vermilion of the Wabash. That the reader may know how the Illinois country appeared to an eye-witness in 1765; who wrote down his observations at the time, we quote the following extracts from Col. Croghan's daily journal, of June 18th to the 22d, inclusive:"We traveled through a prodigious large meadow [prairie] called the Piankeshaw's hunting-ground. Here is no wood to be seen, and the country appears like an ocean. The ground is exceedingly rich and partially overgrown with wild hemp. The land is well watered and full of buffalo, deer, bears, and all kinds of wild game. * * * We passed through some very large meadows, part of which belongs to the Piankeshaws on the Vermilion River. The country and soil were much the same as that we traveled over for these three days past. Wild hemp grows here in abundance. Game is very plenty. At any time, in a half an hour, we could kill as much as we wanted.
Next to the Illinois, the Piankeshaws were the most peacefully inclined toward the whites. Early intermarriages of their daughters with French traders, at Vincennes, and elsewhere, and with whom this tribe lived on terms of social equality, begat a generation that united them all in a common interest. It was, therefore, that General Clark, in his conquest of the Illinois country, found little trouble in transferring this friendliness of the Piankeshaws at Vincennes and the Vermilion towns to the American cause, the same as he had previously done at Kaskaskia and the neighboring mixed French and Indian villages upon the Mississippi. The Piankeshaws, barring individual exceptions, took no part in those bloody wars against the whites that followed the Revolutionary struggle. It was not they, but war-parties of the Kickapoos, Pottawatomies, and other northwestern tribes that terrorized over
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the white settlements, crystalizing along the Ohio, the Wabash, and their tributaries, and in southwestern Illinois. In the retaliatory raids of the Americans into the Indian territory, the innocent Piankeshaws often suffered avenging blows that should have fallen upon the guilty ones. The pioneer, burning with a sense of his wrongs, only considered that all redskins were Indians, and, without stopping to inquire whether they were of a friendly tribe or not, remorselessly slew upon sight any one of them whom he discovered. This state of affairs grew so bad that the Piankeshaws appealed to the Government, and General Washington issued his proclamation, especially forbidding the Piankeshaws from being harmed by the white people.The capital of the Miami tribe, from earliest times, was at Ft. Wayne. As far back as the year 1700 they were there, and shortly before had assisted Canadians in making the "Portage" — the land carriage from the St. Marys across to Little River, a tributary of the Wabash. The near proximity of the headwaters of the Maumee, flowing eastwardly into Lake Erie, and Little River and the Wabash, flowing westward and south into the Mississippi, gave great importance to this Portage, making it the key to and giving it control of the communication between the vast area of country lying upon either side. The Miamis well knew this, and held possession until forced, at last, to yield it to the United States, in 1795, by the terms of the treaty at Greenville. At that treaty, Little Turtle, the great orator of the Miamis, protesting against its surrender, said: "Elder brother [meaning Gen. Wayne], when our forefathers saw the French and the English at the Miami village [as Ft. Wayne was then known], that glorious gate which your younger brothers [the Miamis] had the happiness to own, and through which all the good words of our chiefs had to pass [that is, messages between the several tribes], from north to south, and east to west, the French and the English never told us they wished to purchase our lands from us." "The next place you pointed out to us was the Little River, and said you wanted two miles square at that place. This is a request that our fathers, the French or British, never made of us; it was always ours. This carrying place has heretofore proved, in a great degree, the subsistence of your brothers. That place has brought us, in the course of one day, the amount of twelve hundred dollars. Let us both own this place, and enjoy in common the advantages it affords." Gen. Wayne was inexorable; and, by the terms of the treaty, a piece of land six miles square, near the confluence of the Rivers St. Marys and St. Joseph, at Ft. Wayne, and a piece two miles square at the confluence of Little River with the Wabash, was ceded to the United States.
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The Miamis at Ft. Wayne were regarded as the senior band of the tribe, from their superior intelligence and numbers; and to whom the other bands, except the Piankeshaws, at a later day, deferred in all matters of peace or war or affairs affecting the common interests of the tribe. The other branches of the great Miami family had extensive villages and cultivated fields on the Mississineway, near and above Peru, Indiana; along Eel River, near Logansport and above; upon the Wea plains, below Lafayette; upon Sugar Creek; and upon the beautiful prairie strip in the neighborhood of Terre Haute.
Subsequent to the Treaty of Greenville, their demoralization was rapid in its progress and terrible in its consequences. So much so, that when the Baptist missionary, the Rev. Isaac McCoy, was among them between the years 1817 and 1822, and drawing his conclusions from his own observation, he declared that the Miamis were not a warlike people. At the villages on Sugar Creek, Eel River, and the Mississineway, and particularly at Ft. Wayne, it was a continuous round of drunken debauchery whenever whisky could be obtained, of which men, women, and children partook alike; and life was often sacrificed in personal broils, or by exposure of the debauchees to the inclemency of the weather.
By treaties, entered into at various times from 1795 to 1845, the Miamis ceded their lands in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and removed west of the Mississippi; going in villages or by detachments from time to time. In 1838, at a single cession, they sold the U. S. Government 177,000 acres of land in Indiana, which was only a fragment of their former possessions, still retaining large tracts. Thus they alienated their heritage piece by piece to make room for the incoming white population, while they gradually disappeared from the valleys of the Wabash and Maumee. Few of them clung to their reservations, adapted themselves to the ways of the Americans, and their descendants are now to be met with in or about the cities that have sprung up in the localities named. The money received from the sales of their lands proved a calamity, as the proceeds were wasted for whisky.
The last of the Miamis to go westward was the Mississineway band. This remnant, comprising in all about 350 persons, in charge of Christmas Dazney,
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them had farm houses and had made considerable progress in agriculture, in the fall of 1846, going to Cincinnati. Here they were placed on a steamboat, taken down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and Missouri, and landed, late in the season, at Westport, near Kansas City. Ragged men and nearly naked women and115
children, forming a motley group, were huddled upon the shore of a strange land, without food or friends to relieve their wants and exposed to the bitter December winds that blew from the chilly plains of Kansas.From Westport the Mississineways were conducted to a place near the present village of Lewisburg, Kansas, in the county since named Miami. They suffered greatly and nearly one-third of their number died the first year. Mrs. Mary Babtiste Peoria, then wife of Christmas Dazney, the agent having these unfortunate people in charge, and who accompanied her husband in this work, stated to the writer "that strong men would actually cry when they thought about their old homes in Indiana, to which many of them would make journeys bare-footed, begging their way and submitting to the imprecations hurled upon them from the door of the white man as they asked for a crust of bread. I saw fathers and mothers give their little children away to others of the tribe for adoption, and then singing their funeral songs and joining in the solemn dance of death. Afterward go calmly away from the assemblage, never again to be seen alive."
In 1670, the Jesuit father, Claude Dablon, introduces to our notice the Miamis at the village of Maskoutench; where, as we have already shown, the chief was surrounded by his officers of state in all the routine of barbaric display, to whom the natives of other tribes paid the greatest deference. Advancing eastward, in the rear line of their valorous warriors, the Miamis pushed their villages through Illinois into Michigan and Indiana, and as far into Ohio as the river still bearing their name. Coming in collision with the French, the British, and the Americans; reduced by constant wars; and decimated, more than all, by vices contracted by intercourse with a superior race, whose virtues they failed to emulate, they make a westward turn; and having in the progress of time described the round of a most singular journey, we at last behold the miserable remnant on the same side of the Mississippi from whence their warlike progenitors had come nearly two centuries before.
The Wea and Piankeshaw band had preceded the Mississineway to the westward; they too had become reduced to about two hundred and fifty persons. They, with the Miamis and remaining fragments of the Kaskaskias, the latter containing under that name what yet remained of the several subdivisions of the old Illini confederacy, were collected by Baptiste Peoria and consolidated under the title of The Confederated Tribes.
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confederation sold out their reservations in Miami County, Kansas, and retired to a tract of reduced dimensions within the Indian117
Territory. Since this last change of location, in 1867, they have made but little progress toward a higher civilization. Those that remain of the once numerous Illini and Miami tribes are now reduced to less than two hundred persons, and for the most part are a listless, idle people, possessing none of the spirit that had inspired the breasts of their ancestors.The Kickapoos.
THE Kickapoos and Mascoutins are treated here as but one tribe, for the difference between them was only nominal at best. The name is found written in French authorities as "Kic-a-poux", "Kick-a-pous", "Kik-a-poux", "Kik-a-bou", "Quick-a-pous", and "Kick-a-pous". Some authors claim the name to have been derived from the Algonquin word Nee-gig [the otter, or the spirit of an otter]. Prof Henry R. Schoolcraft, a recognized authority on the ethnology of the northwestern tribes, alluding to the Kickapoos, says, they are "an erratic race, who, under various names, in connection with the Sacs and Foxes, have, in good keeping with one of their many names, which is said, by one interpretation, to mean ‘Rabbits-Ghost’ [Wahboos, with little variation in dialect, being the word for rabbit], skipped over half the continent, to the manifest discomfort of both German and American philologists and ethnographers, who, in searching for the so-called ‘Mascontens’, have followed, so far as their results are concerned, an ignis fatuus".
This tribe has been long connected with the history of the Northwest, in which they acquired great notoriety, as well for the wars in which they were engaged with other tribes, as for their persistent hostility to the white race throughout a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years. They are first noticed by the French explorer, Samuel Champlain, who, in 1612, discovered the "Mascoutins residing near the place called Sak-in-am", — or, rather, Sac-e-nong, meaning, in Chippeway, the country of the Sacs, which, at this time, comprised that part of the State of Michigan, lying between the head of Lake Erie and Saginaw Bay, on Lake Huron. In 1669-70, as seen in an extract from Father Allouez, quoted in the chapter relating to the Miamis, the Kickapoos and Mascoutins were found in connection with the Miamis, near the mouth of Fox River, Wisconsin. In the same letter, Father Allouez says that "four leagues from this
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mixed village are the Kickabou, who speak the same language with the Mascoutench".This people were not pliant material in the hands of the missionaries. In fact, they appear to have acquired early notoriety in history by seizing Father Gabriel Ribourde as he was walking near the banks of the Illinois River, absorbed in religious meditation, and whom they "carried away, and broke his head", as Henry de Tonti quaintly expresses it, in referring to this ruthless murder. Again, in 1728, as Father Ignatius Guignas, compelled to abandon his mission among the Sioux, on account of a victory which the Foxes had obtained over the French, was attempting to reach the Illinois, he, too, fell into the hands of the Kickapoos and Mascoutens, and for five months was held a captive, and constantly exposed to death. During this time he was condemned to be burned, and was only saved through the kindly intervention of an old man in the tribe, who adopted him as a son. While a prisoner, his brother missionaries of the Illinois relieved his necessities by sending timely supplies, which Father
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Guignas used to gain over the good will of his captors. Having induced them to make peace, he was taken to one of the Illinois missions, where he was suffered to remain or parole until Nov., 1729, when his captors returned and took him back to their own country; since which it seems nothing has ever been heard of him.The Kickapoos early incurred the displeasure of the French by depredations south of Detroit. In 1712, a band of them, living in a village near the mouth of the Maumee River, in company with about thirty Mascoutens, were about to make war upon the French Post at Detroit. They took prisoner one Langlois, a messenger, on his return from the Miami country, whither he was bringing many letters from the Jesuit fathers of the several Illinois villages, as well, also, despatches from Louisiana. The mauraders destroyed the letters and despatches, which gave much uneasiness to M. Du Boisson, commandant at Detroit. As a result of this act, a canoe, laden with Kickapoos on their way to the villages near Detroit, was captured by the Hurons and Ottawas, residing near by, and who were allies of the French. Among the slain was the principal Kickapoo chief, whose head, with three others of the same tribe, were brought to Du Boisson, who informs us "that the Hurons and Ottawas committed this act for the alleged reason, that the previous winter the Kickapoos had taken some of the Hurons and Iroquois prisoners, and also because they had considered the Kickapoo chief a "true Outtagamis"; that is, they regarded him as one of the Fox nation.
From the village of Machkoutench, on Fox River, Wis., the Kickapoos seemed to have passed to the south, extending their right flank in the direction of Rock River, and their left toward the southern trend of Lake Michigan. Prior to 1718, they had villages on Rock River and in the vicinity of Chicago. Indeed, Rock River appears as Kickapoo River on cotemporaneous French maps.
In 1712, the Mascoutins entered the plot formed for the capture of the post of Detroit; their associates repaired to the neighborhood, and, whereas they were awaiting the arrival of the Kickapoos, they were attacked by a confederation of Indians, who were friendly to the French and had hastened to the relief of the garrison. The destruction that followed this attempt against Detroit, was, perhaps, one of the most remorseless, in which white men took a part, of which we have an account in the annals of Indian warfare. The French and Indian forces, after protracted efforts, compelled the enemy to abandon their position and flee to Presque Isle, opposite Hog Island, near
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Lake St. Clair, some distance above the fort. Here they held out for four days; their women and children, in the meantime, actually starving, numbers of whom were dying every day from hunger. Messengers were sent to the French commander, begging for quarter, and offering to surrender at discretion, only craving that the remaining survivors might be spared the horrors of a general massacre. Perpetual servitude as the slaves of victors; anything rather than a wholesale destruction. The Indian allies of the French would listen to no terms. "At the end of fourth day", says the French commander, "after fighting with much courage, and not being able to resist further the Muscotins surrendered at discretion to our people, who gave them no quarter. Our Indians lost sixty men, killed and wounded. The enemy lost a thousand souls — men, women, and children. All our allies returned to our fort [at Detroit] with their slaves [captives], and their amusement was to shoot four or five of them every day. The Hurons did not spare a single one of theirs".From references given, it is apparent that this people, like the Miamis and Pottawatomies, were progressing south and eastward. This movement was probably caused by the Sioux, whose fierce warriors were pressing them from the northwest. As early as 1695, the Foxes, with the Kickapoos and Mascoutins, were, meditating a migration toward the Wabash as a place of security. From an official document sent from Quebec, relating to the occurrences in Canada during that year, the department at Paris is advised "that the Sioux, who have mustered some two thousand warriors for the purpose, would come in large numbers and seize their village. This has caused the Outagamies to quit their country and disperse themselves for a season, and afterward to return and save their harvest. They are then to retire toward the Wabash and form a settlement so much the more permanent, as they will be removed from the incursions of the Sioux, and in a position to easily effect a junction with the Iroquois and English, without the French being able to present it. Should this project be realized, it is very apparent that the Mascotins and the Kickapoos will be of the party, and that the three tribes, forming a new village of fourteen or fifteen hundred men, would experience no difficulty in considerably increasing it by attracting other nations thither, which would be of most pernicious consequences". That the Mascoutins, at least, did go soon after this toward the lower Wabash, is shown by the fact of their presence about Juchereau's trading-post, which erected near the mouth of the Ohio, in the year 1700. It is questionable, however, if either the Foxes or Kickapoos followed the Muscoutins
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to the Wabash country, and it is evident that the Mascoutins, who survived the epidemic that broke out among them while at Juchereau's post, returned to the north. The French having effected a conciliation with the Sioux, we find that, for a number of years subsequent to 1705, the Mascoutins were again back among their affinities, the Foxes and Kickapoos upon their common hunting grounds in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Later, and by progressive approaches the Kickapoos worked further southward, and established themselves in the territory lying between the Illinois and Wabash Rivers, and south of the Kankakee. This migration was not accomplished without opposition and blood shed in punishing the Piankeshaws east and south to the Wabash, and the Illinois tribes south and west upon the lower waters of the Kaskaskia. We are without authentic data as to the period of the time" when this conquest was consumated. At the treaty, concluded at Edwardsville, Ill., July 30, 1819, between Augusta Chouteau and Benjamin Stephenson, commissioners on the part of the United States, and the principal chiefs and warriers of the Kickapoo tribe, the latter ceded the following lands, residue of their domain until then undisposed of, viz.: "Beginning on the Wabash, at the upper point of their cession made by the second Article of their Treaty at Vincennes, on the 9th day of December, 1809;122
boundaries of the cessions heretofore made by the said Kickapoo tribe of Indians,123
that their remaining neutral is all that is to be expected from them and the Kickapoos." Later, and after the northwest territory had been lost to France and ceded to Great Britain as the fruit of the French colonial war, and after the failure of the Indian confederation under Pontiac to reconquer the same territory, Sir William Johnson, having in charge the Indian affairs of the western nations, sent his deputy, George Croghan, to the Illinois to pacify the Indians "to soften their antipathy to the English, to expose the falsehood of the French, to distribute presents, and prepare a way for the passage of troops"124
being in dread of a large party of Indians, which they suspected were coming after me. Our course was through a thick woody country, crossing a great many swamps, morrasses, and beaver ponds."125
by the Sacs and Foxes, and Pottawatomies, who made a common cause of warfare upon the Illinois tribes. "Tradition (says the Pioneer Historian of Illinois, the Rev. John M. Peck) tells us of many a hard fought battle between the original owners of the country and these intruders. Battle Ground Creek is well-known on the road from Kaskaskia to Shawneetown, twenty five miles from the former place, where the Kaskaskias and their allies were dreadfully slaughtered by the united forces of the Kickapoos and Pottawatomies."Within the limits of the territory defined by the treaty at Edwardsville in 1819, the Kickapoos, for generations before that time, had many villages. The principal of these were Kickapogo-oui, on the west bank of the Wabash, near Hudsonville, Crawford Co., Ill., and known, in the early days of the Northwest Territory, as Musquiton [Mascoutine]; another on both sides of the Vermilion River, at its confluence with the Wabash. This last village was destroyed by Maj. John F. Hamtramck, in Oct., 1790, whose military forces moved up the river from Vincennes to create a diversion in favor of Gen. Harmer, then leading the main attack against the Miami town at Fort Wayne and other Indian villages in that vicinity. Higher up the Vermilion were other Kickapoo towns, particularly the one some four miles west of Danville, and near the mouth of the Middle Fork. The remains of one of the most extensive burial-grounds in the Wabash Valley, still attest the magnitude of this once populous Indian city; and, although the village site has been in cultivation for over fifty years, every recurring year the ploughshare turns up flint arrow-points, stone-axes, gun-flints, gun-locks, knives, silver brooches, or other mementoes of its former inhabitants. These people were greatly attached to the country watered by the Vermilion and its tributaries; and Gov. Harrison found a difficult task to reconcile them to ceding it away. In his letter to the secretary of war, of Dec. 10, 1809, referring to his efforts to induce the Kickapoos to part with it, the governor says he "was extremely anxious that the extinguishment of title should extend as high up as the Vermilion River, but it was objected to because
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it would include a Kickapoo village. This small tract of about twenty miles squareThe Kickapoos had other villages on the Embarras, some miles west of Charlestown, and still others about the headwaters of the Kaskaskia. During the period when the territory west of the Mississippi belonged to Spain, her subjects residing at St. Louis "carried on a considerable trade among the Indians eastward of the Mississippi, particularly the Kickapoos near the headwaters of the Kaskaskia."
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by Gen. Chas. Scott, in the month of May, 1791, destroyed the Kickapoo town near Oui-a-ta-non [referred to in connection with the capture of Croghan]. In the month of August of the same year, a second expedition, lead by Gen. Jas. Wilkinson, left Kentucky on a similar mission. In the instructions given by Gov. St. Clair (then the executive head of the military as well as of the civil affairs of the Northwest Territory) to Gen. Wilkinson, we find the following: "Should the success attend you at L'Anguile,The people of Kentucky were not the only sufferers from depredations of this tribe. From their towns near the Wabash, the Kickapoo war parties lurked upon the skirts of the settlements on the American Bottom from Kaskaskia to Cahokia, bent, on the murder or capture of any unprotected person that fell in their way, excepting alone those of French blood, who, with their property, were, with rare exceptions, exempt from molestation. So strong was the regard of the Kickapoos, in common with all other Algonquin tribes, for the Frenchman.
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Mr. Peck's historical sketch of the early American settlements in Illinois, before quoted, is largely taken up with narrations of the killing and capture of white settlers in the neighborhoods named, and the destruction or the plunder of their property We summarize a few paragraphs from his address, by way of illustration.
"The Kickapoos were numerous and warlike, and had their principal towns on the Illinois and the Vermilion of the Wabash. They were the most formidable and dangerous neighbors to the whites, and, for a number of years, kept the settlements [on the American Bottom] in continual alarm. The address then takes up a narration of yearly events from 1783 to 1795, showing the sufferings and dangers to which the white population was exposed on account of Indian depredations, inflicted in the main by Kickapoos.
Among the most notable captures was that of Wm. Biggs, in 1788. On the morning of March 28 of that year, while he, in company with young John Vallis, was going from Bellefountaine to Kahokia, they were surprised by a war party of sixteen Kickapoo Indians. Vallis was wounded in the thigh, and, being mounted on a fine horse, was soon beyond reach of the flying balls, and made his escape only to die, however, of his wounds. Four bullets were shot into Biggs' horse; and the animal became so frantic with pain, and frightened, more than all, with the yells of the savages, that it became unmanageable; Biggs' "gun was thrown from his shoulder, and twisted out of his hands"; in trying to recover his gun, and being incumbered "with a large bag of beaver fur, which prevented him from recovering his saddle, which had neither ‘girth or crupper’, it turned and fell off of the horse, and Biggs ‘fell with it’." The rider held on to the horse's mane, and was soon upon his feet, making ineffectual attempts to remount, as his terrified horse dragged him along for some "twenty or thirty yards", when his "hold broke, and he fell on his hands and knees, and stumbled along four or five steps before he could recover himself." "By the time I got fairly on my feet", continues the narrator, "the Indians were about eight or ten yards off me. I saw there was no other way to make my escape but by fast running, and I was determined to try it, and had but little hopes at first of being able to escape, I ran about one hundred yards before I looked back — I thought almost every step I could feel the scalping-knife cutting my scalp off. I found that I was gaining ground on them, I felt encouraged, and ran about three hundred yards further, and looking back, saw that I had gained about one hundred yards, and considered myself
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quite out of danger." Biggs' hopes, however, were not well grounded. The morning was cold, and before setting out from home on his journey, he had clothed himself in a heavy undercoat, over which was a greatcoat, securely tied about the waist with a large, well-worn silk handkerchief, tied, in the hurry of the moment, in a double hard knot. Anticipating a long race, he endeavored to divest himself of all surplus garments; the knotted handkerchief would not untie; he pulled his arms out of the sleeves of his greatcoat, which, trailing on the ground, would "wrap around his legs and throw him down", so that he "made no headway at running". His pursuers, seeing his predicament, renewed the chase with more vigor, and soon overtook and secured him. His captor, says Biggs, "took the handle of his tomahawk, and rubbed it on my shoulder and down my arm, which was a token that he would not kill me, and that I was his prisoner."At the risk of "traveling further out of the record" of the general scope of this chapter, we quote a few more extracts from Mr. Biggs' Narrative, as they admirably illustrate some of the caprices and traits of Indian character. At the first evening's encampment, and the Indians having finished their eating, one of them sat, "with his back against a tree, with his knife between his legs. I, says Biggs, was sitting facing him with my feet nearly touching his. He began to inquire of me what nation I belonged to. I was determined to pretend that I was ignorant and could not understand him. I did not wish them to know that I could speak some Indian languages, and understood them better than I could speak. He first asked me, in Indian, if I was Mat-to-cush (that is, in Indian, a Frenchman); I told him no. He then asked me if I was a Sag-e-nash (an Englishman); I told him no. He again asked if I was a She-mol-sea (that is, a long knife or Virginian); I told him no. He then asked me if I was a Bostonely
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when I spoke, and looked very bold. The, other Indians all set up such a ha! ha! and laughter, that it made him look very foolish, and he sat still and became quite sulky."The Kickapoos took their prisoner across the prairies of Illinois, reaching their village on the west bank of the Wabash, near old Fort Weaoatanon (which, at the time of this occurrence, was merely a trading-post), on the tenth day of his capture. Remaining several weeks with the Kickapoos and at the trading-post, Mr. Biggs effected his release through the kindly interference of the traders at the latter place, prominent among whom was an Englishman, Mr. McCauslin, and Mr. Bazedone, a Spaniard, with whom Biggs "had an acquaintance in the Illinois country", and who paid the Indians in trade an equivalent of $260 for his ransom, for which sum Biggs "gave his note, payable in the Illinois country." Later, he passed down the Wabash and the Ohio, and up the Mississippi, in a pirogue or large canoe, and safely reached his family.
Mr. Biggs was greatly liked by his captors and their kinsmen, who complimented for his bravery, his fleetness of foot, his shapely limbs, long and beautiful hair, and handsome physique. They adopted him into their tribe, giving him the name of Moh-cos-se-a, after the name of a chief who had been killed by the whites the year before. After which he "was to be considered one of that Kickapoo family, in place of their [slain] father." He was also offered, in marriage, a handsome Indian girl, a relation of the same family, who, encouraged by her parents, exhausted her arts, in a manner of becoming modesty, to win his consent; Mr. Biggs protesting that he was already a married man, the father of three children, whose mother was his wife, and that it was against the laws of his country for a man to have more than one wife at a time. This Indian girl had prepared his first regular meal after his arrival at the Wabash. Says Biggs, "it was hominy, beat in a mortar, as white as snow, and handsome as I ever saw, and very well cooked. She fried some dried meat, pounded very fine in a mortar, in oil, and sprinkled it with sugar. She prepared a very good bed for me, with bear-skins and blankets." She brought him "hot water in a tin cup, and shaving soap, and more clean water in a basin", and a cloth to wipe his hands and face after the process of shaving was done with. "She then told me to sit down on a bench. I did so. She got two very good combs — a coarse and a fine one. It was then the fashion to wear long hair. Mine was very long and thick, and much tangled and matted — I traveled without any hat or anything else on my head, and that was the tenth day it had not
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been combed. She combed out my hair very tenderly, and then took the fine one and combed and looked my head nearly one hour. She went to a trunk and got a ribbon, and greased my hair very nicely. The old chief [father of the girl, as we learn elsewhere] gave me a fine regimental blue cloth coat, faced with yellow buff cloth; the son-in-law gave me a very good beaver Mackinaw hat. These they had taken from some officers they had killed. Then the widow squaw took me into her cabin and gave me a new ruffled shirt and a very good blanket." All these he put on, and, at the request of the donors, he walked the floor to their delight. The girl followed him to the abode of the widowed and orphaned family to whom he had been given, and which was in another neighborhood, where she took her place at his cabin door, silently waiting, in the hope he would relent and invite her in. "She stood by my door for sometime after dark — I did not know when she went away. She stayed two days and three nights before she returned home. I never spoke to her while she was there. She was a very handsome girl, about 18 years of age, a beautiful full figure, and handsomely featured, and very white for a squaw. She was almost as white as dark complexioned women generally are; and her father and mother were very white skinned Indians."To resume. In the desperate plans of Tecumthe, the Kickapoos took an active part. This tribe caught the infection at an early day of those troubles; and in 1806, Gov. Harrison sent Capt. Wm. Prince to the Vermilion towns with a speech addressed to all the warriors and chiefs of the Kickapoo tribe; giving Capt. Prince further instructions to proceed to the villages of the prairie
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bands, if, after having delivered the speech at the Vermilion towns, he discovered there would be no danger to himself in proceeding beyond. The speech, which was full of good words and precautionary advice, had little effect; and "shortly after the mission of Capt. Prince, the Prophet found means to bring the whole of the Kickapoos entirely under his influence." [Vide Memoirs of Gen. Harrison. We produce extracts of Gov. Harrison's "talk", referred to, to show the style of such addresses. Gen. Harrison, being an adept in this kind of literature, could suit such papers to the occasion, and draft them within the range and to the understanding of the people for whom they were intended, better, perhaps, than any other agent the Government ever had in the troublesome field of Indian diplomacy. "Wm. H. Harrison, Gov., etc., Supt. of Indian affairs, etc., etc., to his children, the chiefs and warriors of the Kickapoo tribe." My children: I lately sent you a message by one of your warriors, but I have not yet received an answer. The head chief of the We-as has, however, been with me, and has assured me that you still keep hold of the chain of friendship, which has bound you to your father since the treaty made with Gen. Wayne [referring to the Treaty of Greenville, of 1795]."My children, this information have given me great pleasure, because I had heard that you had suffered bad thoughts to get possession of your minds.
"My children, what is it you wish for? Have I not often told you that you should inform me of all your grievances, and that you should never apply to your father in vain.
"My children: Be wise, do not follow the advise of those who would lead you to destruction; what is it they would persuade you to? — to make war upon your fathers, the Seventeen Fires? [The United States, then seventeen in number.] — What injury has your father done you? — If he has done any, why do you not complain to him and ask redress? — Will he turn a deaf ear to your complaints? He has always listened to you, and will listen to you still; you will certainly not raise your arm against him.
"My children, you have a number of young warriors, but when compared to the warriors of the United States, you know they are but as a handful. My children, can you count the leaves on the trees, or the grains of sand in the river banks? So numerous are the warriors of the Seventeen Fires.
"My children, it would grieve your father to let loose his warriors upon his red children; nor will he do it, unless you compel him; he had rather that they would stay at home and make corn for their women and children; but he is not afraid to make war; he knows that they are brave.
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"My children, he has men armed with all kinds of weapons; those who live on the big waters [the sea coast] and in the big towns, understand the use of muskets and bayonets [of which last the Indians had become very much afraid since their disastrous encounter with Gen, Wayne in the engagement on the Maumee, in 1794, where the bayonet was used with terrible effect], and those who live on this side the mountains [the Alleghanies] use the same arms that you do [long range rifles].
"My children: The Great Spirit has taught your fathers to make all the arms and ammunition which they use; but you do not understand this art; if you should go to war with your fathers, who would supply you with those things? The British can not; we have driven them beyond the lakes, and they can not send a trader to you without our permission.
"My children, open your eyes to your true interest; your father wishes you to be happy. If you wish to have your minds set at ease, come and speak to him. My children, the young man [Capt. Prince] who carries this is my friend, and he will speak to you in my name; listen to him as if I were to address you, and treat him with kindness and hospitality."
The Kickapoos fought in great numbers and with frenzied courage at the battle of Tippecanoe. They early sided with the British in the war that was declared between that power and the United States the following June; and sent out many war parties, that kept the settlements in Indiana and Illinois in constant peril; while other warriors of their tribe participated in almost every battle fought during this war along the western frontier.
As a military people, the Kickapoos were inferior to the Miamis, Delawares, and Shawnees, in movements requiring large bodies of men; but they were preeminent in predatory warfare. Small parties, consisting of from five to twenty or more, were the usual number comprising their war parties. These would push out hundreds of miles from their villages, and swoop down upon a feeble settlement, or an isolated pioneer cabin, and burn the property, kill the cattle, steal the horses, capture the women and children, and be off again before an alarm could be given.
While the Pottawatomies and other tribes, in alliance with the British, laid siege to Ft. Wayne, the Kickapoos, assisted by the Winnebagoes, were assigned to the capture of Ft. Harrison.
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They nearly succeeded, and would have taken it but for the most heroic and determined defence, that gave its commander, Capt. Zachary Taylor, a national renown.The plan of the attack was matured by the Kickapoo war chief, Pa-koi-shee-can
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rounds on the opposite side of the block-house, passed within a few feet of the place where the fire was about to be lighted. All being in readiness, and the sentinels at the further side of the enclosure, Pa-koi-shee-can struck a fire with his flint, and thrust it within, and threw his blanket quickly over the opening, to prevent the blaze from flashing outside, alarming the garrison before the building was well on fire. When assured that the fire was well under way, he fell back and gave the signal, when the attack was immediately begun by the Indians at the opposite extremity of the fort with great fury. The lower block-house burned down in spite of all the efforts of the garrison to prevent it; and, for a while, the Indians were exultant, feeling assured of a complete victory. Capt. Taylor constructed a barricade with material taken from another building; and, by the time the block-house had consumed, the Indians, to their great disappointment, discovered a new line of defence, closing the breach through which they had expected to effect an entrance. [The Indian account of the attack on Ft. Harrison, as above given, was first published in 1879, in the writer's "Historic Notes", etc. It is in harmony with official reports, except that the latter, for want of information on the part of those who wrote them, contain nothing as to plans of the Indians, nor how the block-house was fired. The account given in the text was narrated to the writer by Mrs. Mary A. Baptiste, as it was told to her by Pa-koi-shee-can himself. This lady, with Christmas Dagney, her first husband, were at Ft. Harrison in 1821, where the latter was assisting in the disbursement of annuities to the Indians then assembled there to receive them. The business and spree that followed, occupied two or three days. Pa-koi-shee-can was present with some of his people, to receive their share of the annuities; and the old chief, having leisure, edified Mr. Dagney and his wife with a minute account of his attempt to take the fort, pointing out the positions and movements of himself and his warriors. As he related the story, he warmed up, and indulged in a great deal of pantomime, which gave force to, as it heightened the effect of, the narration. The particulars are given substantially as Mrs. Baptiste repeated them to the writer. She had never read an account of the engagement.]We find no instance in which the Kickapoos were allied with either the French or the British, in any of the intrigues or wars for the control of the fur trade, or the acquisition of disputed territory, in the Northwest. They did not mix or mingle their blood with French or other white people; and, as compared in this regard with other tribes, in the voluminous treaties with the Federal Government, there is a singular absence of land reservations
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in favor of half-breed Kickapoos. Unlike, the Illinois, the Miamis, and other tribes living upon the lines of the early commerce of the country, or whose villages were marts of the fur trade, the Kickapoos kept at a distance, and escaped the demoralization which this trade, and a contact with its unscrupulous, emissaries, inflicted upon the tribes coming within their baneful influence.With the close of the war of 1812, the Kickapoos ceased their hostilities toward the whites, and a few years later, disposed of the residue of their lands in Illinois and Indiana, and, with the exception of a few bands, emigrated west of the Mississippi. Gov. Reynolds says of them, "They disliked the United States so much, that they decided when they left Illinois, that they would not reside within the limits of our Government, but would settle in Texas."
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the prairie Indians, and have no fear of meeting those people in battle, providing the odds are not more than six to one against them."The Kickapoos of the Vermilion, comprising the bands of Mac-ca-naw, or Mash-e-naw (The Elk-Horn), Ka-an-a-kuck, and Pa-kbi-shee-can, were the last to emigrate. They lingered in Illinois upon the waters of the Embarrass, the Vermilion, and its northwest tributaries, until 1832 and 1833; when they joined a body of their people upon a reservation set apart for their use west of Fort Leavenworth, and within the limits of Brown and Jackson Counties, Kansas, where the survivors and the descendants of those who have died now reside upon their farms. Their good conduct, comfortable homes, and well-cultivated fields, attest their steady progress in the ways of civilized life. The wild bands have always been troublesome along the southwestern borders; every now and then their depredations form the subject of some item of current newspaper notices. For years the Government failed in its efforts to induce these bands to remove to some place within the Indian Territory, where they might be restrained from annoying the border settlements of Texas and New Mexico. Some years ago, a part of the semi-civilized Kickapoos in Kansas, preferring their old, wild life, left their reservations, and joined the bands to the Southwest. After years' wanderings in quest of plunder, they were persuaded to return, and in 1875, settled in the Indian Territory, and supplied with the necessary implements and provisions, to enable them to go to work and earn an honest living. In this effort toward reform, they are now making commendable progress.
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The Winnebagos.
In "The Jesuit Relations", for the years 1653 to 1670, inclusive, this tribe are alluded to under various names, as Ouimbegouc, Ouimpegouec, and Ouinibegoutz — the French "Ou" being nearly synonymous in the sound of its pronunciation with the English letter W, — and was a name given them by the Algonquins, with whom the meaning was Fetid, translated by the French as Puants. The Algonquin tribes called the Winnebagoes, say the missionary fathers, by this name because the latter came from the westward ocean, or salt water, which the Indians designated as the "Fetid Water".
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of that State. Still, the territorial claims of the contestants was not finally settled until 1825, when, after a nearly continuous warfare of almost two centuries with the Illinois or their successors, it was agreed at a treaty, held at Prairie du Chien, between the United States, the Winnebagoes, the Sacs and Foxes, the Pottawatomies, and other attending tribes, that "the Winnebago country should be bounded as follows: Southeasterly, by Rock River, from its source near the Winnebago Lake [in Central-eastern Wisconsin], to the Winnebago Village, about forty miles above its mouth," etc., etc.; [near the mouth of the Peck-a-ton-o-kea, Jo Daviess Co., Ill.] A map will indicate what portion of Illinois this boundary describes.As compared with the Algonquin tribes, history records but few complaints against the Winnebagoes in the predatory warfare upon the white settlements. The bravery of their warriors is fully attested, however, in the several engagements with the forces of Gov. St. Clair and Gen. Wayne, in which they fought with conspicuous courage. The whole tribe were fairly carried by Tecumthe and his brother, the Prophet, and gave hearty support to all the nefarious schemes of these agitators. Naw-kaw, the principle chief of their nation, and Hoo-tshoop-kaw, of lesser note, were two of Tecumthe's personal attendants, and followed him in all his extended missions of proselytism among the nations of the Mississippi Valley. In the war of 1812, these two Winnebagoes were members of the sacred band, that guarded Tecumthe's person; they were near him when he fell, with mortal wounds, at the battle of the Thames, and assisted in bearing his dead body from the field to a place of secure interment
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At the engagement at Tippecanoe, the conduct of the Winnebago braves was a matter of especial mention. We quote from Gen. Harrison's Memoirs: "A Winnebago chief approached the exterior [camp] fire of Capt. Barton's company, where the lines had been considerably drawn in, and pushing up the brands to make a light, squatted down to peck his [gun] flint, or to do something with his gun. He was, however, immediately fired at from Capt. Cook's company, which was not more than twenty yards from him, and fell dead into the fire. One of the men asked the captain's permission to go and scalp him; and, as no attack had been made on that part of the line for some time, he was allowed to go. The Yankee, however, being inexperienced in the business, it took him some time to effect it; he was fired at, and returned to his company with the scalp in his hand, indeed, but with a ball through his body, which caused his death in a few hours after. In the course of the battle, the Indian was taken off, without being observed by Captain Cook, and conveyed to the [Prophet's] town, where his body was found and known by its having been scalped and much burned. The body had been taken away without Capt. Cook's perceiving it, and is an instance of the care with which the Indians remove the dead bodies of their friends in action. At Tippecanoe, they rushed up to the bayonets of our men, and in one instance, related by Capt. Snelling, an Indian adroitly put the bayonet of a soldier aside, and clove his head with a war-club — an instrument on which there is fixed a triangular piece of iron, broad enough to project several inches from the wood." "Their conduct on this occasion, so different from what it usually is, was attributed to a confidence of success, with which their Prophet had inspired them, and to the distinguished bravery of the Winnebago warriors."
The only disturbances with which this people seem to have been connected, subsequent to the war of 1812, was that of the so-called Winnebago War [or scare] of 1827. Several acts of reciprocal hostility had been committed between individual Winnebagoes and whites along the upper Mississippi, which soon defected the whole tribe, and, for a while, threatened the peace of the entire northwestern frontier. Gov. Reynolds, in his "My Own Times", gives the following account of the cause that provoked the breach of the peace: "About the last of July,
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1827,142
the Indians attempted to board the boat, Jack would knock them back into the river as fast as they approached. The boat got fast on the ground, and the whites seemed doomed, but with great exertion, courage, and hard fighting, the Indians were repelled. The savages killed several white men and wounded many more, leaving barely enough to navigate the boat. It is said that Jack had four Indian scalps, which he took from the same number of Indians that he killed himself. In the battle the squaws escaped to their husbands, and, no doubt, the whites did not try to prevent it. Thus commenced, and thus ended the bloodshed of the Winnebago War."The effusion of blood would not have ended here, but for the prompt measures taken by Gen. Lewis Cass to prevent it. The latter, with Col. Thos. L. McKenney, as commissioners on behalf of the United States, were at Butte des Morts
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river in boats as far as the portage at Fort Winnebago,While these events were taking place on the Mississippi and in Wisconsin, then a part of the Territory of Michigan, matters were by no means quiet in northern Illinois. The inhabitants at Fort Dearborn, alarmed at the quite apparent unfriendly demeanor of the Indians frequenting that Post, and from which the United States military forces had been withdrawn, dispatched messengers to the Pottawatomie village of Big-Foot, at Geneva Lake, to learn the purposes of the Winnebagoes, and ascertain if Big-Foot's band intended joining them. The report brought back was not favorable, and the excited citizens, at the suggestion of Gurdon S. Hubbard, looked toward the Wabash for assistance. Accordingly, Mr. Hubbard, leaving Chicago about four o'clock in the evening, following an Indian trail, a distance of a hundred and twenty-seven miles, through an uninhabited country, reaching the settlements two miles south of Danville in the early afternoon of the next day. Within the next twenty-four hours, the Vermilion-County Battalion, as the inhabitants capable of bearing arms
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were called, were assembled at Butler's Point, the then county seat; and a volunteer force of fifty men organized; and on the next day — having dispersed, in the meantime, to their homes to cook up five-days' rations — were on their way to Fort Dearborn, where they and Mr. Hubbard arrived on the seventh day after his departure. Several days later, word was received of the success of Gen. Cass' movements, and the termination of hostilities.In the so-called Black-Hawk War, in Illinois and Wisconsin in 1832, "it was feared", say Judge Jas. Hall and Col. Thos. L. McKenney, in their History of the Indian Tribes of North America, "that the Winnebagoes, inhabiting the country immediately north of the hostile Indians, would unite with them, and, forming a powerful combination, would devastate the defenseless before our Government could adopt measures for its relief. The opportunity was a tempting one to a savage tribe naturally disposed to war, and always prepared for its most sudden exigencies; and many of the Winnebagoes were eager to rush into the contest. But the policy of Naw-caw was decidedly pacific, and his conduct was consistent with his judgment and his professions. To keep his followers from temptation, as well as to place them under the eye of an agent of our Government, he encamped with them near the agency, under the charge of Mr. [John H.] Kinzie, expressing on all occasions his disapprobation of the war, and his determination to avoid all connection with those engaged in it. The Indian tribes are often divided into parties, having their respective leaders, who alone can control their partisans in times of excitement. So among the Winnebagoes; a few restless and unprincipled individuals, giving loose to their propensity for blood and plunder by joining the war parties, while the great body of the tribe remained at peace, under the influence of their venerable chief."
Immediately on the close of the Black-Hawk War, by a treaty concluded Sept. 15, 1832, at Ft. Armstrong, at Rock Island, Ill., the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all of their lands lying south and east of the Wisconsin River and the Fox River of Green Bay; and, by a subsequent treaty concluded Nov.1, 1837, they parted with the residue of their lands lying east of the Mississippi. By the terms of this last treaty, they were to remove beyond the river named within eight months thereafter, an engagement they did not comply with until some three years
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after. After being unceremoniously changed about from one reservation to another, by the United States Government, with little regard for its solemn stipulations, to suit caprices and avarice of the ever-encroaching white immigration, we find the Winnebagoes, in 1865, settled (let us trust permanently) on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, where the superintendent of Indian affairs, in his report for that year, says of them: "This tribe is characterized by frugality, thrift, and industry to an extent unequaled by any other tribe of Indians in the Northwest. Loyal to the Government, and peaceful toward their neighbors, they are entitled to the fostering care of the General Government." It seems that the shifting of them about for a number of preceding years had been their means of education and religious instruction; for, in December, 1864, we find they addressed the President as follows: "It is our sincere desire to have again established among us such schools as we see in operation among your Omaha children. Father, as soon as you find a permanent home for us, will you not do this for us? And, father, as we would like our children taught the Christian religion as before, we would like our schools placed under the care of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. And last, father, to show you our sincerity, we desire to have set apart for its establishment, erection, and support, all of our school funds, and whatever more is necessary."Again; the Government agent, in his report for 1866, says, concerning the Winnebagoes: "There has returned to the tribe, within the few past weeks, about one hundred soldiers, who have served, with credit to themselves and to their tribe, in defence of their county. I consider the Winnebagoes one of the best tribes of Indians in the country, and, with proper treatment, they will soon become a self-sustaining, prosperous people." In 1863, their fighting men were estimated at three hundred and sixty. The census report of their numbers in 1865 gave them nineteen hundred, omitting those still remaining in Wisconsin. "They are a vigorous, athletic race, and received from the Sioux the name of O-ton-ka, which is said to mean ‘the large and strong people’."
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The Foxes called themselves Mosk-wah-ha-kee, a name compounded from the two words in their language, Mosk-wah [red] and Ha-kee [earth], Red Earths, or, they of the Red Earth. Their totem or armorial device was a fox,
We first hear of the Foxes on the north shore of Lake Ontario, engaged in an unnatural alliance with the Iroquois in the exterminating war then being waged by the latter upon the Hurons; and, "by attempting to keep terms with both parties, pleased neither. They soon drew upon themselves the enmity of their kindred tribes, and the execrations of the French, who heaped upon them and their vacillating policy every term of reproach. And later they were driven from old Toronto through the straits of Niagara to Detroit."
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when the two tribes again met, this time upon the waters of Fox River, Wisconsin, and united in a bond of fellowship that was never after broken.Ousakis; Sakys; Sauks; O-sauk-ies; Ou-sa-ki-uek [the uek giving the plural number to the noun]; O-sau-kee; and, by custom of modern writers, abbreviated to Sacs, are the appellations by which this people were known. The name seems to have originated with the tribe, and to have been derived from two words in their tongue, viz.: Os-sa-wah [yellow] and Ha-kee [earth or land]; which is to say, the Yellow Earths, or they of the Yellow Land. French writers have very little to say of the Sacs — and for the matter of that, the Foxes, too — prior to the time when they effected a lodgment in Wisconsin.
The great chief, Black Hawk, distinguished alike as a warrior and a historian, well learned in the traditions of his tribe, in his autobiography gives the following early account of his people:
"I was", says Black Hawk, "born at the Sac village, on Rock River, in the year 1767, and am now in my 67th year. My great-grandfather, Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder (according to the tradition given me by my father, Py-e-oa), was born in the vicinity of Montreal, where the Great Spirit first placed the Sac nation, and inspired him with a belief that, at the end of four years, he would see a white man [alluding to the coming of the French] who would be to him a father." * * * "After a long time, the British overpowered the French (the two nations being at war), drove them away from Quebec, and took possession of it themselves.
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still pursued them, and drove them to different places on the lake, until they made a village near Green Bay, on what is now called Sac River, having derived its name from this circumstance. Here they held a council with the Foxes, and a national treaty of friendship and alliance was concluded upon. The Foxes abandoned their village and joined the Sacs. This arrangement being mutually obligatory upon both parties, as neither was sufficiently strong to meet their enemies with any hope of success, they soon became as one band or nation of people."On their way up the lakes, the Sacs remained in Northeastern Michigan a sufficient time to give their name to Saginaw Bay, as the word is now spelled; the orthography of early French writers being Sac-e-nong [the place of the Sacs]; Sak-i-nau; Sag-i-nau, in all which its derivation is more nearly preserved. They could not, however, have occupied that vicinity long enough to make it "the principal seat of their power", as affirmed by Judge James Hall and Col. Thos. L. McKinney, in their "History of the Indian Tribes of North America"; elsewise French authorities would contain a more extended mention of them in this connection.
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The years 1669-1670 bring the Fox and Sac fairly within the range of reliable historical mention, although they had been referred to, two years before, in definite terms in the "Jesuit Relations" of 1666 and 1667. Father Claude Allouez, who had already, early in December, 1666, established a mission at the mixed village of Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Foxes and Sacs, near the site of the present city of Green Bay, calling it "The Mission of St. Francis Xavier", for the reason that he said his first mass there on the festival day of that saint.
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St. Francis; in passing we saw clouds of swans, bustards, and ducks; the savages take them in nets at the head of the bay where they catch as many as fifty in a night; this game in the autumn seek the wild-rice that the wind has shaken off in the month of September. The seventeenth, we went up the River St. Francis, which is two and sometimes three arpents wide."The nineteenth, our sailors ascended the [second] rapids, by using poles, for two leagues. I went by land as far as the other portage, which they call Ou-ko-ci-ti-ming, which is to say, the highway. We observed this day the eclipse of the sun predicted by the astrologers, which lasted from mid-day until two o'clock. The third, or near it, of the body of the sun appeared eclipsed; the other two-thirds formed a crescent. We arrived in the evening at the entrance of the Lake of the Puants [Lake Winnebago], which we have called Lake Francis; it is about twelve leagues long and four wide; it is situated from northeast to southwest, and abounds in fish; but is uninhabited on account of the Nad-oue-cis [Sioux] who are here dreaded.
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was on Sunday, I said mass, after having navigated five or six leagues in the lake; after which we arrived in a river that comes from a lake [Pahwaikan Lake] of wild-rice, into which we came, and at the foot of which we found the river [Fox] which leads, on the one side, to the Outagamis, and on the other, the stream [Wolf River] that leads to the Machkoutenck [Mascoutins]. We entered the former, which comes from a lake where we saw two wild turkeys perched on a tree, male and female, exactly like, in size, color, and cry, those of France. The bustards, ducks, swans, and geese are of great numbers in all these lakes and rivers, attracted thither by the wild-rice, which is their food. There is also to be found here large and small deer, bears, and beavers in sufficient numbers. The twenty-fourth, after many turns and windings in the different lakes and rivers,"This nation is renowned for being numerous. They have more than four hundred men bearing arms. The number of women and children is greater on account of polygamy which exists among them — each man having commonly four wives, some of them six, and others as high as ten. * * * These savages have retreated to these parts to escape the Iroquois; they are settled in an excellent country; the soil, which is here black, yields them Indian-corn in abundance. In the winter, they live by the chase; about the end of it they return to their cabins, and there live on Indian-corn, which they had put in cache [the name of pits prepared in the ground for that purpose] in autumn, and which they season with fish. They have a fort in the midst of their forest, where their cabins of thick bark are, to resist all kinds of attacks. In traveling they lodge themselves with mats. They are at war with the Nadiouecious, their neighbors.
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do not make use of canoes; for this reason they do not make war upon the Iroquois, although they are often killed by them. They are very much disparaged, and reputed by other nations as penurious, avaricious, thievish, and quarrelsome. They have a small idea of the French since two traders in beaver-skins have appeared among them. If they had conducted themselves there as they ought, I would have had less trouble to give these poor people other ideas of the French nation, whom they began to esteem since I explained to them the principal and only motive which brought me among them."The Foxes and Sacs had no more than secured a firm lodgment in their fortified villages in Wisconsin, until we find their marauding parties stirring up mischief in every direction. One of these, October 28, 1679, struck LaSalle, who, on his voyage of exploration of the Mississippi, had navigated the western shore of Lake Michigan, and, reaching its southern extremity, was compelled, by stress of weather, to land his canoes upon the sand-hills not a great way east of South-Chicago. LaSalle, seeing a footprint, enjoined his men to be on their guard and to make no noise. Says Father Hennepin (who is the historian of this expedition — from the time of its organization at Fort Frontenac, as Toronto, Canada, was then called, in the fall of 1678, until the time of its abandonment at the foot of Peoria Lake, Illinois, early in January, 1680: "All of our men obeyed for a time, but one of them, perceiving a bear, could not restrain himself from firing his gun at the animal, which, being killed, rolled from top to bottom of the mountain [as he calls the sand-hill] to the very foot of our cabins. The report of the gun discovered to us one hundred and twenty-five Indians of the nation of the Outonagamies, living near the extremity of the Bay of the Puants, and who were cabined in our vicinity." That LaSalle, to guard against surprises, placed a sentinel over his upturned canoes, under which he had sheltered his goods against the rain.
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Not-withstanding these precautions, thirty of these Foxes, under the dark cover of a rainy night, sneaked along on their bellies, one behind the other, making, as it were, a chain from their comrades stationed at a safe distance to the canoes, from which they passed their stolen plunder backward from hand to hand. The negligent sentinel finally aroused the camp to arms; which stopped further depletion of the canoes. The rogues, finding themselves, discovered, their spokesman called out that "he was a friend." In answer he was told "that it was an unseasonable hour, and that people did not come in that way by night except to steal or kill those who were not on their guard. He replied that, in truth, the shot that had been fired had made his countrymen all think that it was a party of Iroquois, their enemies, as the other Indians, their neighbors, did not use such firearms, and that they had accordingly advanced with the intent of killing them; but having discovered that they were Frenchmen, whom they regarded as their brethren, the impatience which they felt to see them had prevented their waiting for daylight to visit us and to smoke in our calumet with us, which is the ordinary complement of these Indians and the greatest mark of affection." Nothing short of LaSalle's skilful, prompt, and daring measures would have saved his party from wholesale robbery and total destruction. Feigning assurance of the Foxes' friendly intentions, until morning, when, with pistol in hand, he seized one of their braves, and — through another whom he captured and released — notified the band that he would kill him unless restitution of the stolen property was made. The Foxes would have complied on the spot, but for the dilemma they found themselves in from the circumstance that among the property taken was the coat of LaSalle's attendant, which they, in making a fair division of the spoils, had torn in pieces and cut off the buttons. Therefore they resolved to rescue their comrade at the hazard of a fight. They advanced in full force upon the camp of LaSalle, who boldly went out to meet them, his men having blankets half rolled about their left arms as a shield against their enemies' arrows. The savages wavered; and having no stomach for an encounter upon a fair held in the glare of daylight, a parley ensued. They agreed to give back all except the coat, and to pay for that.The bad name of the Foxes among their neighbors clung to them in later times; and Judge James Hall, drawing his conclusions from sources reviewed while preparing his volumes on the North American Indians, fitly characterizes them as "always [the] restless and discontented Ishmaelites of the lakes; their hand against every man, and every man's hand against them." Of all
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the Western Algonquin tribes they alone (and their immediate kinsman, the kickapoos) were the solitary exception, in their irreconcilable enmity toward the French, who — barring the single instance during a brief interval of the French Colonial War, where twenty Foxes and thirty-three Sacs, influenced, probably, out of motives of plunder, or a personal regard for the Canadian traders who recruited them, assisted in the capture of Forts George and William Henry — had no permanent peace and never any alliance with them. The fur trade with tribes along the upper Mississippi had no more than been fairly established, until the Foxes effectually blockaded its passage through their country by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, by far the most feasible route, and compelled the coureurs de bois to take the more circuitous and difficult one around the south and western shore of Lake Superior.We have seen from official documents referred to in the chapter on the Kickapoos
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his tribe, addresses the intendant thus: "What shall I say to my father? I have come all naked to see him; I can give no assistance; the Sioux ties my arms; I kill him because he began; father, be not angry with me for doing so. I have come here only to hear you and execute your will." To which Count Frontenac replies: "Fox! I now speak to you. Your young men have no sense. You have a bad heart, and mine was beginning to be worse disposed than yours, had you not come to hear my word and do my will. I had resolved to send M. de la Motte [Cadillac] with a party of my young men on a visit to your village; and that would have been unfortunate, for, no doubt, your women and children would have been frightened by them. * * * I am not willing you should return home naked, as you would have probably done if you had not come to see me. * * * Here are some guns, powder, and ball that I give you, Make good use of them; not in killing your allies; not in killing buffalo or deer; but in killing the Iroquois, who is in much greater want of powder and iron [meaning guns, hatchets, knives, and other implements manufactured from this metal]. Remember, it is war alone that causes true men to be distinguished; and that it is owing to war that I, this day, know you by your name. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see the face of a warrior. Here is what I give you, and you can now depart as soon as you please." After the presents had been distributed, Frontenac added: "No more powder and iron will be conveyed to the Sioux; and if my young men i.e.,, subordinates, traders] carry any thither, I will punish them severely."The Fox and Sacs were blamed as being the principals who induced British traders to come up the lakes; and their hatred was the more inflamed toward the French because the latter, in 1701, erected a permanent garrison on the Detroit River in order,
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among other reasons, to shut those traders out. For several years after, their busy marauding bands infested the coast line of northern Ohio and eastern Michigan, from the Maunee to Lake Huron; intercepting the postal-route communication with "the Illinois country;" plundering French traders; and harassing the French settlement, then crystallizing about the fort at Detroit. Affairs went on at this rate for ten or eleven years, until 1712, when the Foxes and their brethren, the Kickapoos and emboldened Mascoutins, by the war between England and France, massed their warriors for the purpose of capturing Detroit and driving the French out of the country. And they would have succeeded but for the timely arrival of Indian allies, who hastened to the succor of the beleaguered garrison. What terrible retribution befell the aggressors in this attack is shown in that part of the French commander's report already quoted. Father Charlevoix, in his "History of New France",157
Iroquois, with whom they had formed an alliance but who did not seem to help them, at least openly, all the nations in commerce with us suffered greatly from their hostilities; and there was reason to fear that, unless a remedy was promptly applied, most of them would make terms with these Indians to our detriment. This induced the Marquis de Vaudreuil [governor-general of New France] to propose to the neighboring tribes that they should join him in exterminating the common enemy. All consented, and the general raised a party of Frenchmen, assigning the command to Louvigny, who was then the king's lieutenant at Quebec. Many Indians joined this commandant on the route, and he soon found himself at the head of eight hundred men, firmly resolved not to lay down their arms as long as an Outagamie was left in Canada. All supposed that tribe on the brink of utter destruction; and the tribe itself judged so too, when it saw the storm gathering against it, and they only thought of selling their lives as dearly as possible."We here leave off Charlevoix's account, and quote from M. de Louvigny's official report of the action, which, for the first time, appears printed in a late Volume of the "Wisconsin Historical Collections".
On reaching the principal fortified town of the Foxes — a stronghold on Fox River, Wisconsin, and located, according to Judge Wm. H. Smith of that State, at Butte des Morts, or hill of the dead — a theory, too, that is supported by several traditions of the Foxes themselves; and, says Louvigny, "after three days of open trenches, sustained by a continuous fire of fusileers, with two pieces of cannon and a grenade mortar, they were reduced to ask for peace, although they had five hundred warriors in the fort, who fired briskly, and more than three thousand women; they also expected shortly a reinforcement of three hundred men. But the promptness with which my officers pushed forward the trenches that I had opened at only seventy yards from the fort, made the enemy fear, the third night, that they would be taken. As I was now only twenty-four yards from their fort, my aim was to reach their triple-oak stakes by a ditch of a foot and a-half in the rear. Perceiving very well that my balls had not the effect I anticipated, I decided to take the place at the first outset, and to explode two mines under their curtains. The boxes being in place for this purpose, I did not listen to the enemies first proposition. They having made a second one, I submitted it to my allies, who consented to it on the conditions: that the Foxes and their allies would make peace with all Indians who are submissive to the king, and with whom the French are
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engaged in trade. That they would return to me all the French prisoners that they have, and those captured during the war from all our allies (all which was complied with immediately). That they would take slaves from distant nations and deliver them to our allies to replace their dead. That they would hunt to pay the expenses of this war. And, as a security for keeping their word, they were required to deliver me six of their chiefs, or children of chiefs, as hostages, until the entire execution of our treaty; which they did, and I took them with me to Quebec."Having already occupied more space than is allotted to the Fox and Sacs, we forbear further quotations from authorities and copies of official manuscripts at hand to show the troublesome relations between them and the French colonies for the following fifty years; but from these sources of information we summarize the statement that the Foxes and Sacs were far from being either subdued or exterminated; that, in 1718, they had gained a firm footing upon Rock River, Illinois; and four years later, without yielding their hold of the territory conquered in Wisconsin, they and the Kickapoos and Mascoutins had driven the last remnants of the Illinois tribes south beyond the Illinois, leaving nothing to check their raids along that river, and rendering communication between the lower Mississippi settlements and those of Canada almost impracticable. Black Hawk says the Sacs and Foxes "were driven, by the combined forces of their enemies, to the Wisconsin. They remained there some time, until a party of their young men (who had descended Rock River to its mouth) returned and made a favorable report of the country; when they all descended Rock River,
It may be inquired how the Foxes and Sacs repaired the incessant drain on their numbers caused by their constant wars east, west, and south against neighboring tribes, who always had the moral support and often the direct assistance of the French. Their polygamous practices would aid only in a degree; while the real explanation will be found in their custom — borrowed, perhaps, from their friends, the Iroquois — of adopting their prisoners of war, and incorporating them into their tribe, instead of killing
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or making women [slaves] of them, as was the general rule among other Indians.Having taken no hand in the border wars that began westward of the Alleghanys with the near close of the Revolutionary War, and ended with Gen. Wayne's victory over the confederated tribes at Maumee rapids in 1794, the Sacs and Foxes were not represented at the resulting treaty of Greenville the following year. Previous to this, they had subdued the Iowas, and incorporated them, in their own tribe, and extended their domain up the Des Moines River in the present State of Iowa; thence northwestwardly, says Judge Hall, "beyond Council Bluffs and into the immense prairies periodically visited by the buffalo." They claimed the country for a distance on both sides of the Mississippi from Rock River up to Prairie-du-Chien, which included all the valuable mines of lead ore in that region. The principal village of the Foxes was at Dubuque's mine, some seventy-five miles below the former place. They had another at Rock-River rapids; while, on the east bank of the Mississippi, near the foot of the island (known as Rock Island), was a village of "Foxes and Sacs, living promiscuously together; it being (says Schoolcraft, writing in 1820) one of the largest and most populous Indian villages on the continent."
From these villages the Foxes and Sacs warred upon the nations to the west, particularly the Great and Little Osages, against whom they waged a contest that would have been one of extermination had not the United States authorities, through Gov. Wm. H. Harrison, interfered and put a stop to it. In 1811, when the Indian disturbances, egged on by Tecumthe and his followers, foreshadowed the war declared by the United States against Great Britain the following year, the Foxes and Sacs sent a committee of their chiefs to Washington City to offer the services of their tribe to President Madison; and when the war had actually begun, they sent a second delegation to St. Louis, and again tendered their warriors to the Government. While these offers were politely declined, as it was decided, at that time, not
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to employ such auxiliaries, the Foxes and Sacs were sorely puzzled to comprehend how a fight should be going on without their taking a hand in it. Divided councils ensued; a majority, mainly Foxes, remained neutral, while a brigade estimated at from two to four hundred, mostly Sacs, easily seduced by the presents and promises of Robt. Dickson,The writer has neither the space nor desire now or here to narrate occurrences relating to the so-called Black-Hawk War of 1832. That war and the events that lead up to it are given by several authors, whose volumes are easily accessible to the inquiring reader.
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by the treaty made Sept. 21st, 1832, at Rock Island, ceded all their lands along the Mississippi, covering nearly the whole eastern half of Iowa and a large tract of country on the east side of that river not embraced in previous treaties; further agreeing to leave them and to quit hunting and fishing upon them after the June then next following. This treaty opened the door to a press of emigration, whose daily swelling volume quickly poured itself across the Mississippi into Iowa, and spread the newly-acquired domain with olden fields, fragrant orchards, happy cottage-homes, nestled amid shady groves, churches, and school-houses, and other evidences of the highest type of civilization. Still the hardy emigrant from the elder StatesAfter the treaty of 1842, the Mississippi bands of the Foxes and Sacs were placed on a reservation of 435,200 acres located on the Osage River; while the Missouri band was placed on the south side of Ne-ma-ha River, near the northeast corner of Kansas. They of the Kansas agency, in 1865, raised 7500 bushels of corn, and owned 1700 horses; and the estimated value of their personal effects was $71,910. By the enumeration of their
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numbers taken the same year, there were 364 men and 441 women of the Mississippi band in Kansas, and only 44 men and 51 women of the Missouri band remaining on the Nemaha. If the census taker had gone further west out upon the great plains toward the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, he would, doubtless, have found many more, engaged there in hunting and fighting, the employment of men, instead of hoeing corn, a drudgery, according to their ethics, fit only to be endured by women.Judge Hall, who enjoyed a long and extended personal acquaintance with this people, says: "The Foxes and Sacs are remarkable for the symmetry of their form and fine personal appearance. Few of the tribes resemble them in these particulars; still fewer equal their intrepidity. They are, physically and morally, among the most striking of their race. Their history abounds with daring and desperate adventures and romantic incidents far beyond the usual course of Indian exertion."
The Pottawatomies.
THIS people was one of the three subdivisions of the Ojibbeways, a numerous family of the Algonquin tribes the other two members, and of whom it is not the present purpose to write, being the Chippeways, or Ojibbeways, who retained the family name, and the Ottaways. From causes, not here necessary to name, they early became separated; and, in the progress of time, the Chippeways extended themselves westward and south of Lake Superior to the eastward sources of the Upper Mississippi River. The Ottaways spread south to Grand River, in the State of Michigan, down the western extremity of Lake Erie, and for quite a distance up the Maumee River (one of the early names by which that stream was known was the Ottaway); while the Pottawatomies advanced by way of the islands at the entrance of Green Bay to the south into the country along the west shore of Lake Michigan. That these three tribes were originally one people is evidenced, says Mr. Schoolcraft, in that one of his journals entitled, "The Central Mississippi Valley," derives additional "weight from their general resemblance in person, manners, customs, and dress, but, above all, by their having one council-fire and speaking, one language. Still there are obvious characteristics which will induce an observer, after a general acquaintance, to pronounce
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the Pottawatomies tall, fierce, haughty; the Ottaways thick-set, good-natured, industrious; the Chippeways war-like, daring, etc. But the general lineaments, or to borrow a phrase from natural history, ‘the suite features are identical.’" Confirmatory of the above statement, we have the speeches of distinguished chiefs of each of the three sub-tribes, at the treaty of Chicago, August 29th, 1821, when the question of ownership of a large domain, south of Grand River, sought to be purchased, was under discussion. Kee-way-goosh-kum, a learned man among the Ottaways, said: "The Chippeways, the Pottawatomies, and the Ottaways were originally one nation. We separated from each other near Michilimackinac. We were related by the ties of blood, language, and interest; but in the course of a long time these things have been forgotten."After which Michel, an aged chief of the Chippeways, arose and, among other things, said:
"My Brethren — you have heard the man who has just spoken. We are all descended from the same stock, the Pottawatomies and the Chippeways. We consider ourselves as one. Why should we not always act in concert?"
Metea, the orator and historian of the Pottawatomies, and a chieftain renowned for his knowledge of the traditions of his tribe, gave his assent to these declarations in this language:
"Brothers, Chippeways and Ottaways, we consider ourselves as one people, which you know, as also does our father here (alluding to Gov. Lewis Cass, the principal commissioner in the negotiations of this treaty), who has traveled over our country."
The declaration of Metea carries more weight from the fact that his tribe alone had been the occupants of by far the greater portion of the territory about to be purchased, the Chippeways, so far as is known, never having lived upon it, while the Ottaways never resided upon but a small part of it, in common with the Pottawatomies, in the vicinity of Detroit and about the head of the Maumee Bay.
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In the writings left by early French authors, the word Pottawatomies was spelled, as is the case with the names of other tribes, to suit the arbitrary tastes of the various authors. Some of the forms are Poutouatimi, Pouotatamis, Poutouamies, Poutewatamis, Pautawattamies, Pouttewatamies, Pottawattamies, and Poux. The tribe was divided into four clans: the golden-carp, the frog, the crab, and the tortoise.
Unlike the Illinois, Miamis, and several others, the Pottawatomies were not divided into separate tribes, but their different bands would separate and unite according to the abundance or scarcity of game, or the emergencies of war. The name Pottawatomie, in their own language signifies We are making a fire; and for the origin of which Joseph Barron, Gov. Harrison's Indian interpreter, related to Prof. W. H. Keating, at Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1824, this tradition: "A Miami, having wandered out from his cabin, met three Indians whose language was unintelligible to him; by signs and motions he invited them to follow him to his cabin, where they were hospitably entertained, and where they remained until dark. During the night, two of the strange Indians stole from the hut, while their comrade and the host were, asleep. They took a few embers from the cabin, and placing these near the door of the hut, they made a fire, which, being afterward seen by the Miami and his remaining guest, was understood to imply a council-fire between the two nations. From this circumstance the Miami called them, in his language, Wa-ho-na-ha, or fire-makers, which, being translated into the other language, produced the term by which the Pottawatomies have ever since been distinguished, and the pronunciation of which, as spoken by themselves, is Po-ta-wa-to-me, in their language, We are making a fire.
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The first mention we find of the Pottawatomies is in the "Jesuit Relations" for the years 1639-40; where they are referred to as a tribe dwelling beyond the River St. Lawrence, and to the north of Lake Huron. Twenty-six or seven years later, in 1666, in the journal of Father Allouez, as preserved in the "Jesuit Relations", they are described as "a people whose country is about the lake of the Ill-i-mouek, a great lake that has not come to our knowledge, adjoining the lake of the Hurons and that of the Puants [Green Bay], between the east and the south."
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that remained unbroken through all the vicissitudes of good and bad fortune attendant on their exploration and attempted holding of the great Northwest) This friendship was so uniform and reliable that the Pottawatomies figure much less in official documents than the Miamies, the Foxes, or other erratic tribes with whom the French had to do. Whatever speculations might arise as to what these latter might do, no concern was had as to the Pottawatomie; he was always ready to bloody his hatchet on the enemies of his Father's children, the French, be they white Britishers, or red natives of his own race. While Nicholas Perrot was on his way from Saulte de Ste. Mary to the head of Green Bay, in 1671, engaged in notifying the several nations to meet St. Lusson, the king's deputy at the former place, and hear the king's will, and give their assent to the act of taking formal possession of the country, the Pottawatomies supplied Perott with an escort of their braves, as he passed one of their villages on the east shore of Green Bay, to ensure his safety, the route being considered dangerous on account of a threatened war between the Sioux and the Mascoutins. As Perott approached the village of the Miamis, he sent forward a troop of young men from his escort to announce his arrival. The great Miami chief, Te-tin-choua, wished to "give the envoy of the general of the French a reception that would attest his own power. He sent out a detachment to meet him, giving it orders to receive him in military style. The detachment advanced in battle order, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, uttering war-cries, from time to time. The Pouteouatamis who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, prepared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put himself at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot's took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge. But the Miamis, wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pouteouatamis were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signal for a kind of a combat. The Miamis fired a volley from their guns, which were loaded only with powder, and the Pouteouatamis returned it in the same way; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tomahawk. Peace was then made; the Miamis presented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his escort into the chief town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, and regaled him splendidly after the custom of the country."167
Prior to 1670, the Pottawatomies had collected upon the islands in Lake Michigan lying westward of the Straits of Macki-nac and on those near the entrance of Green Bay; dwelling there, as appears from a letter written that year by Father Claude DabIon from the mission of St. Francis Xavier, at Green Bay, "but as strangers, the fear of the Iroquois having driven them from their lands, which are between the Lake of the Hurons and that of the Illinois"; [i.e., the Peninsula of Michigan.]
From these islands they advanced southward between the shores of Green Bay and Lake Michigan, populating both with their villages. Father Hennepin's narrative of La Salle's voyage mentions the fact, that, the year prior to LaSalle's coming westward, 1678, he had sent out a party of traders in advance; who, having bartered successfully with the Pottawatomies at the islands named, were anxiously waiting for La Salle at the time of his arrival there in the Griffon. The same author notes the further fact that LaSalle's party, as they coasted southward, traded at another village of the same tribe, situated, probably, at She-boygan, Wisconsin, certainly not south of Milwaukee. When LaSalle reached the St. Josephs of Lake Michigan there were no Pottawatomies in that vicinity. Shortly after this time, 1678, they seem to have swarmed from their prolific hives on the islands named, and advanced southward to the head of the lake, from which, in time, they spread out like a great fan; their left extreme covering that part of the State of Michigan lying south of Grand River and a line drawn from its source to the mouth of Lake Huron; their right extending over that portion of Illinois lying north of the Kankakee and Illinois rivers, as far west as the territory claimed by the Winnebagoes and the Sacs and Foxes; while their front was pushed eastward into the country of the Miamis to the banks of the Wabash and the Maumee. Father Charlevoix who visited the localities in 1721 says, "the Pottawatomies possessed only one of the small islands at the mouth of Green Bay, but had two other villages, one on the St. Joseph
Concerning the village near Detroit, and also some of the customs of its occupants, we have the following account, taken
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from an official "Memoir, prepared in 1718, on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Mississippi: "The port of Detroit is south [west] of the river. The village of the Pottawatomies adjoins the fort; they lodge partly under apaquois"The women do all the work. The men belonging to that nation are well clothed, like our domiciliated Indians at Montreal. Their entire occupation is hunting and dress. They make use of a great deal of vermilion, and in winter wear buffalo robes richly painted, and in summer either blue or red cloth. They play a, good deal at LaCrosse
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"Their bat is a sort of a little racket,
"The women cultivate Indian-corn, beans, squashes, and melons, which come up very fine. The women and girls dance at night. They adorn themselves considerably; grease their hair, paint their faces with vermilion, put on a white chemise, wear whatever wampum they possess, and are very tidy in their way. They dance to the sound of the drum and si-si-quoi, which is a sort of gourd containing some grains of shot. Four or five young men sing and beat time with the drum and rattle, and the women keep time, and do not lose a step. It is very interesting, and lasts almost the entire night."
"The old men often dance the medicine. [The medicine or sorcerer's dance.] They resemble a set of demons; and all this takes place during the night. The young men often dance in a circle, and strike posts. It is then they recount their achievements, and dance, at the same time, the war-dance; and whenever they act thus they are highly, ornamented. It is altogether
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very curious. They often perform these things for tobacco. When they go hunting, which is every fall, they carry their apaquois with them, to hut under at night. Everybody follows — men, women, and children. They winter in the forest and return in the spring."In all the broils, growing out of the bitter competition for the fur-trade, between French and British adventurers, and in the intrigues of the respective executives of New France and the British colonies to win over the Indian tribes, or incite them to acts of hostility against the other, and in which neither the French nor the British ever once consulted the welfare of the Indians themselves, the Pottawatomies maintained an unswerving alliance with the French. When these troubles in the American provinces, with many years of accumulated grievances, at length provoked a formal declaration of hostilities between France and Great Britain, and the French Colonial War was began, the Pottawatomies fought it through to the end under the flag of their old friends. After the Northwest, with its military establishments, was turned over to the victor, they were ready to join the chief (and their own kinsman), Pontiac, in his bold attempt to capture these posts and drive the British from the country.
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from Detroit, ostensibly on a friendly visit to their kinsman living on the St. Joseph. The commandant was apprised that the fort was surrounded by hostile Indians. At this, Schlosser ran out of his apartment, and crossed the parade grounds, which were full of Canadians and Indians. He entered the barracks, and these were also crowded with disorderly and insolent savages. He called his sergeant to get the soldiers under arms; and, hurrying back again to the parade, endeavored to muster the unwilling Canadians. All at once a wild cry came from within the barracks, when the Indians in the fort rushed to the gate, where they killed the sentinel, and opened the gate for ingress to their friends without. In less than two minutes, as the officer declares, the fort was plundered, eleven men were killed, and himself, with the three survivors, made prisoners and bound fast.In the border troubles preceding the Revolutionary War; during the latter contest, and throughout the Indian difficulties that followed it, down to the close of Gen. Wayne's successful campaign against the confederated Indian tribes in 1794, war-parties of the Pottawatomies made frequent and destructive raids along the lines of the settlements in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. However, those of this tribe living upon the Wabash and in near communication with Vincennes, were much less annoying in this regard; and several of their chiefs and bands manifested an early friendship for the Americans, whom they called their brother, the Big-Knife.
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They were greatly influenced, for a while, by the schemes of Tecumthe and his brother, the Prophet, in a much less prolonged degree, however, than the Kickapoos and several of the other tribes; and a fair representation of their warriors took part in the battle of Tippecanoe.
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The official letters of the governors of the Indiana and Illinois Territories; the current news items of the day, published in the Vincennes Sun, the Missouri Gazette at St. Louis, and Niles' Weekly Register at Washington, sufficiently illustrate the threatening attitude of the Pottawatomies (along with other tribes) before and subsequent to the collision of arms at the Prophet's Town; and show that subjects of Great Britain, or from its Province of Canada, engaged in the Indian trade within our borders, were but so many busy and influential agents in supplying the Indians with munitions of war, and stirring up a discontent among them that would burst" into aggressive hostility as soon as war should be declared between the two powers. And when the war was declared, the Pottawatomies went over to the standard of Great Britain in a body. Their first blood was that of innocent victims, mingled with the slaughter of a body of brave soldiers, whose too-confiding officer, against the admonitions of those better acquainted with the treacherous ways of Indians, left the fortress and exposed his men, and the women and children under his care to their savage fury. The horrors of the massacre at Chicago, August 15, 1812, have been so often told and published in so many books, as to render their repetition wholly unnecessary here. It was Pottawatomies (assisted probably by a few Winnebagoes) who did it; and their several bands from the Illinois and Kankakee rivers; from the St. Joseph of the Lake, and the St. Joseph of the Maumee, and those of the Wabash and its tributaries were all represented in the despicable act.
Their hostility ceased with the war of 1812, after which their relations were uniformly peaceable; and they endured the many impositions and grievances put upon them by not a few of their unprincipled and unfeeling white neighbors, with a forbearance that ought to have aroused public sympathy.
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After their migration from the islands near the outflow of Green Bay southward, they seem to have multiplied with wonderful fecundity. The time of this movement is not definitely known. Their advance line had reached the St. Joseph as early, probably, as the year 1700. The same writer whose description of the Pottawatomies of the village at Detroit in 1718 we have quoted, says they came from the St. Joseph River, their former residence. They were the most populous tribe between the lakes and the Ohio, the Wabash and the Mississippi; they claimed Southeastern Wisconsin from long occupation, and crowded themselves into the ancient territory of the Miamis, "their younger brothers," in Southern Michigan and Northwestern Indiana, taking possession through sheer force of superior numbers, rather than by gage of battle. Always on friendly terms with the Kickapoos, with whom they frequently lived in mixed villages, they joined the latter and the Sacs and Foxes in the exterminating war upon the Illinois tribes, and afterward obtained their allotment of the despoiled domain. By other tribes the Pottawatomies were called "squatters", charged with never having had any lands of their own, and being mere intruders upon the prior estates of others. "They were foremost at all treaties where lands were to be ceded, clamoring for a lion's share of the presents and annuities, particularly where these last was the price paid for the sale of others' lands rather than their own."
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the mouth of Grand River and the south end of Lake Huron; and covering a large part of the valleys of the Illinois, the Wabash, the Maumee, and their tributary waters. Contemporaneous maps and government surveys display their numerous villages, and indicate their many reservations throughout this vast area of country.The Indians themselves were not blind to the ultimate result of the relentless demands of the white people for more and more of their lands. On several occasions when they confronted the agents of the general government, who had invited them to council for the purpose of buying still another part of their possessions, they protested, as best they could, against making further sales. A notable instance of this occurred at the treaty concluded Aug. 29, 1821, at Chicago, Ill., with the Pottawatomie, Ottawa, and Chippeway tribes. By this treaty the United States proposed to extinguish the Indian title to, substantially, all that country lying south of Grand River, from its source to its mouth; and east of Lake Michigan, between its southern extremity and Grand River; bounded on the south by a line drawn from the south end of the lake east, through Northern Indiana to the,
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mouth of the Au Glaze River at Defiance, Ohio, and thence north by the west boundary-line of a previous cession to the source of Grand River in Michigan. As the proceedings of this treaty fairly illustrate the manner in which such affairs are conducted, a portion of them are given here, as taken down at the time by Hon. Henry R. Schoolcraft, who was officially connected with the commission, and preserved in one of the more scarce volumes of his several narrative journals."Aug. 14, 1821. * * * On crossing the Desplaines, we found the opposite shore thronged with Indians, whose loud and obtrusive salutations caused us to make a few moments' halt. From this point we were scarcely ever out of sight of straggling parties, all proceeding to the same place. Most commonly they were mounted on horses, and apparelled in their best manner, decorated with medals, silver bands, and feathers. The gaudy and showy dresses of these troops of Indians, with the jingling caused by the striking of their ornaments, and their spirited manner of riding, created a scene as novel as it was interesting. Proceeding from all parts of a very extensive circle of country,
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like rays converging to a focus, the nearer we approached, the more compact and concentrated the body became; and we found our cavalcade rapidly augmented. Consequently, the dust, confusion, and noise increased at every by-path that intersected our way. After crossing the south-fork of the Chicago, and emerging from the forest that skirts it, nearly the whole number of those who had preceded us appeared on the extensive and level plain that stretches along the shore of the lake, while the refreshing and noble spectacle of the lake itself, with ‘vast and sullen swell’, appeared beyond. We found, on reaching the post, that between two and three thousand Indians were assembled — chiefly Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippeways. Many arrived on the following days; and provisions were daily issued by the Indian department, to about three thousand, daily, during the treaty. To accommodate the large assemblage mentioned, an open bower, provided with seats for the principal chiefs and headmen, had been put up on the green, extending along the north bank of Chicago Creek. [Near the old John Kinzie house.] This site, being at some distance from the principal encampments, and directly under the guns of the fort, ensured both safety and order for the occasion. The formalities which custom has prescribed in negotiations of this kind, occupied the first two or three days after our arrival, during which the number of Indians was constantly augmenting. It was not until the 17th that they were formally met in council, when Governor [Lewis] Cass, on behalf of the commissioners [Solomon Sibley was then the associate-commissioner], stated to them the following proposition: —"Your father [referring to the president of the United States] has observed that you possess an extensive country about the St. Joseph, which you do not cultivate nor appear to want. He has instructed us to come here for the purpose of making a purchase of a part of that land, and to pay you a liberal price for it, which we shall agree upon. The quantity of game you now kill in that part of the country is very little — almost nothing: and we can give you for it that which will be more valuable and serviceable to yourselves. We have brought with us a large amount of goods to be distributed among you; and we shall also stipulate to pay you a certain sum of money annually. It was agreed by the Treaty of St. Marys to pay you an annuity of one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, and by the Treaty of — , one thousand dollars; both of which sums of money are now here and ready to be paid to you.
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purchase of the lands on the St. Joseph, we feel willing that such reservations shall be made as may be proper. It will be many years before the country will be settled by the Americans; during all that time you will retain possession of the lands, at the same time that you are drawing your annuities for them. * * * You can take time to consider the proposition we have now made. Counsel among yourselves, and deliver your answer as soon as you can agree. Above all, let me entreat you to refrain from whisky during the treaty, that you may be able to see justice done to yourselves. * * * "Each sentence, being distinctly translated, was received with a Ho-ah! — a term that on these occasions merely indicates attention. The interjection (subjoins Mr. Schoolcraft in a foot-note), when strongly emphasized and responded by many voices, also denotes approbation — and is nearly equivalent to our "hear him!" and it is an easy matter to perceive by the manner of its enunciation whether the matter spoken excites pleasure, indifference, or disapprobation.
A short pause ensued, during which the customary presents were issued, when Me-te-a, a Pottawatomie chief from the Wabash,
"MY FATHER: — We have listened to what you have said. We will now return to our camps and consult upon it. You will hear nothing more from us at present."
The council being again convened on the 19th, the same Pottawatomie
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was delegated by the three tribes to deliver their reply to Gen. Cass' speech. Me-te-a arose and said: —"My Father: — We meet you here today, because we had promised it, to tell you our mind and what we have agreed among ourselves. You will listen to us with a good mind, and believe what we say. My father, you know that we first came to this country a long time ago, and sat ourselves down upon it; we met with a great many hardships and difficulties [referring to their wars with its. former occupants]. Our country was then very large; but it has dwindled away to a small spot; and you wish to purchase that! This has caused us to reflect much upon what you have told us; and we have, therefore, brought along all the chiefs and warriors, and the young men, and women, and children of our tribe, that one part may not do what the others object to; and that all may be witnesses of what is going forward.
"My Father: — You know your children. Since you first came among them,
"My Father: — A long time has passed since we first came upon our lands; and our old people have all sunk into their graves. They had sense. We are all young and foolish, and do not wish to do anything that they would not approve, were they living. We are fearful we shall offend their spirits if we sell our lands; and we are fearful we shall offend you if we dont sell them. This has caused us great perplexity of thought, because we have counselled among ourselves, and do not know how we can part with the land. My Father: — Our country was given us by the Great Spirit, who gave it to us to hunt upon; to make our cornfields upon; to live upon; and to make down our beds upon when we die. And he would never forgive us, should we now bargain it away. When you first spoke to us for lauds at St. Marys,
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it; but we told you we could spare no more. Now you ask us again! You are never satisfied!"My Father: — We have sold you a great tract of land
"My Father: — You think, perhaps, that I speak in anger; but my heart is good toward you. I speak like one of your children. I am an Indian — a red-skin, and live by hunting and fishing. My country is already too small; and I do not know how to bring up my children if I give it all away. We sold you a fine tract of land at St. Marys.
"My Father: — We have now told you what we had to say. It was determined on in council among ourselves; and what I have spoken is the voice of my nation. On this account all of our people have come here to listen to me; but do not think we have a bad opinion of you. Where should we get a bad opinion of you? We speak to you with a good heart and the feelings of a friend.
"My Father: — You are acquainted with, this piece of land — the country we live in.
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a small piece of land, and if we give it up, what will become of us? The Great Spirit, who has provided it for our use, allows us to keep it to bring up our young men and support our families. We shall incur his anger if we barter it away. If we had more land, you should get more; but our land has been wasting away ever since the white people became our neighbors, until now we have hardly enough left to cover the bones of our tribe.My Father: — You are in the midst, of your red children. What is due to us in money, we wish and will, receive it at this place.
"My Father: — We all shake hands with you.
Mr. Schoolcraft says in a note at this place: "I wish it to be distinctly understood, that in my reports of these speeches I have adhered, literally, to the spirit and form of expression of the interpreters, and have seldom ventured to change the particular phraseology. This will be apparent on perusal, and will account for the familiar cast of many of the sentences. Authenticity was deemed a paramount object, and to the attainment of this, I have sacrificed all attempt at ornament or embellishment. By this course, undoubtedly, great injustice is done to the spirit of the original; but it must be recollected that it is not the original, but the verbal interpretation that I have undertaken to preserve." The foot-notes of the writer to Me-te-a's speech, are supplied to give clearness to passages or allusions that, to the reader of today, might otherwise seem vague or lacking in force. Considered as a categorical reply to Gen. Cass' address, and as a resume of the relations of the white people toward the red man on the North American Continent, particularly the tribes in question, involving the ultimate destruction of the latter, as the inexorable result of the contact; the speech of Me-te-a, mangled as it was and shorn of its strength and imagery in rendering it into English, is logical, persuasive, pithy, and to the point; and shows that this uneducated savage, like many others of his race, possessed a capacity of mind and gifts of oratory not inferior to those of the white people.
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The Pottawatomies were among the last to close out their reservations and retire beyond the Mississippi. They were loth to give up their old homes; and for years mingled on friendly terms with the early white settlers. The final emigration from the Wabash and St. Joseph was deferred until 1838. Coercive measures were required in the removal of the bands from the latter river. The Kankakee and some of the other Illinois bands, as stated in a former foot-note, went westward some two years before.
In 1846, the scattered families of the Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippeways were united to be thereafter known as the Potta-watomie Nation. For $850,000, to be paid them by the United States, they released all claims to their several reservations in Iowa, Missouri, or in any other place whatever. In lieu of $87,000 of the above sum, they took 576,000 acres of land of the general government, situated on both sides of the Kansas River, Topeka, Kansas, being very nearly in the centre of the tract. While Kansas was going through its territorial stages, the so-called "squatter sovereigns" intruded upon these lands, sold the Pottawatomies whisky and spread a general demoralization among them. The white trespassers killed the stock of the farmer Indians, burned some of their habitations, and resorted to all the well-known methods practiced on the borders, time out of mind, to make it unpleasant for the Indians who were here struggling up successfully from barbarism to the ways of civilized society. The usual result, a dismemberment of the reservation, followed. The farmer Indians, so desiring, had their portions set off in severalty; the wilder members of the tribe had their share allotted in common. For the most part, the squatters got the lands of the first, while an alleged needy railroad corporation
From the several reports of the commissioners of Indian affairs
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for the year 1863, it appears that there was 2274 in the tribe, all told; that the farmers among them raised 3720 bushels of wheat; 45,000 of corn; 1200 of oats; and 1000 tons of hay; and that they owned 1000 cattle, 1200 horses, and 2000 hogs. The same year, there were ninety-five boys and seventy-five girls; and in 1866 a total of two hundred and forty scholars attending the Catholic school at St. Marys, a few miles north of Topeka, where they were making gratifying progress.Some seventy-five of their young warriors volunteered on the union side during the late civil war, and faithfully served "their country." There was no way of computing their numbers accurately — so many of the young and adventurous having strayed away in quest a more exciting life; — still, in 1867, out of a population of 2400, 1400 elected to become citizens of the United States under an enabling act passed by Congress. Some did well by the change; while others squandered their lands, and went away and joined the wild bands or mixed with other tribes out upon the plains. There are still a few left in Indiana and Michigan, and over a hundred in Wisconsin.
nts
Notes.
Judge Hall's reputation as a writer was already established. Beginning in 1820, many of his contributions, descriptive of the West and its people, appeared in "The Portfolio", a monthly, conducted by his Brother, John E. Hall, at Philadelphia, from which they were copied by papers in America and England, and received a wide circulation. A residence, afterward, of several years in the country described, so enlarged his opportunities that, to a number of the original articles was added much new matter, and the whole was published in 1828 in London, England, in a volume entitled "Letters from the West. Containing Sketches of Scenery, Manners, Customs, and Anecdotes connected with the First Settlements of the Western Sections of the United States ", etc.
The first number of the "Illinois Magazine" appeared for October, 1830. It run for two years. The second volume was published in part at St. Louis and part at Cincinnati; owing to the difficulty of getting material and labor at Vandalia, which, at that time, stood on the verge of a primitive population, isolated from the literary world, and not possessing even the conveniences of country-roads that were passable for more than a few months during the year. Commencing with January, 1833, Judge Hall resumed his periodical at Cincinnati under the name of "The Western Monthly Magazine; a Continuation of the Illinois Monthly Magazine", remaining with it here for three years. In 1833, he went to Cincinnati and resided there until his death, July 5, 1868. His other principal literary labors are as follows: "Legends of the West", 1832; second edition the next year; "The Soldier's Bride", 1833; "The Harp's Head, a Legend of Kentucky", 1833; "Tales of the Border", 1835; "Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the West", 1835; "Statistics of the West", etc., 1836. This last was reissued in 1838 (from the same plates, with a few pages of addenda relating to steamboat navigation), under the better title of "Notes on the Western States. Containing Descriptive Sketches of their Soil, Climate, Resources, and Scenery"; substantially the same matter appeared in 1848, under the name of "The West; its Commerce and Navigation"; "Romance of Western History", 1857; republished in 1871, by Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, O., with fine portrait of author; "The Wilderness and the War-Path", 1845; republished in London in 1846. The last two run into previous volumes, embracing much of the same matter; while the whole are largely made up of papers drawn from "The Letters from the West", "The Illinois, Monthly Magazine", and its continuation, where many of the originals may be found, or the germs can be traced from which elaborations were subsequently made. The whole, aside from their acknowledged literary merits, possess great historical value, as they present while they preserve a faithful picture of the early West.
Besides the above, in 1836, he published a life of Gov. Wm. H. Harrison, which, for perspicuity, fidelity, and elegance of diction, is the best of the many that have appeared. In 1848, he prepared a "Memoir of Thos. Posey, Major-General and Governor of Indiana", published in "Sparks' American Biographical Series". He also wrote the "History of the Indian Tribes of North America", aided by Col. Thomas L. McKenney of the Indian Department; published 1838-44 and 1858, in three large volumes, with 120 Indian portraits, taken mainly from the Indian Gallery, formerly in the Department of War at Washington. Judge Hall early became identified with our State, and aided its material and intellectual progress with all the warmth of his ardent nature. His pen was busy in praise of its climate, its soil, and its capabilities; and prompt and trenchent in defence of the sterling traits of its pioneer people, by whose successors he ought to be remembered. The writer has collated this note, mainly from the above volumes, in his library with such other scraps of information as he could gather elsewhere. The biographical sketch in the American Cyclopedia, to which the writer is likewise indebted, is in error as to the date of publication of the "Letters from the West", as well, also, in alleging the existence of a "uniform edition of Judge Hall's works"; and is defective in that it omits his "Sketches of the West" (the two volumes possessing more historical value than any of the others), and makes no mention of "The Illinois Monthly Magazine" and its continuation, which, with the "Letters from the West", are measurably the fountains of them all.
His writings, except, perhaps, "The Romance of Western History", and a reprint of "The Legends of the West", by Robert Clarke & Co. of Cincinnati, in 1871 and 1874, respectively, are long since out of print. Many of them are quite rare, and appear only at long intervals in the catalogues of dealers in "Americana".
Ambroise Dagney's wife — the only one he ever had, and the mother of Christmas Dagney and Mary Cott, was Me-chin-quam-e-sha, [The Beautiful Shade Tree], a sister of Jocco, or Jack-ke-kee-kah, [The Tall Oak], head chief of the Wea Band of Miamis, whose old and principal village was the one we have named near Terre Haute. Later, this band went higher up the Wabash to a secondary village near the mouth of Sugar Creek.
Under the instruction of Catholic teachers, the son, Christmas Dagnay received a good education. He spoke the English and French languages with great fluency, and was master of the dialects of the several Indiana and Illinois Indians. He served for many years at Fort Harrison [on the east bank of the Wabash, near and above Terre Haute], and elsewhere, as Government interpreter and Indian agent, filling these various positions of confidence and trust efficiently and honestly. Feb. 16, 1819, he was married to Mary Ann Isaacs, an educated Christian woman, of the Brothertown, N.Y. [Mohegan] Indians, whose acquaintance he had made while she was spending a few weeks on a visit at the Mission House of Rev. Isaac McCoy, then situated on Raccoon Creek, near Rosedale, Park Co., Ind. Mr. McCoy performed the marriage ceremony, as he says, "in the presence of our Indian neighbors, who were invited to attend; and we had the happiness to have twenty-three of the natives partake of a meal prepared for the occasion."
Christmas Dagney died in 1848, at Cold Water Grove, Kansas, and his widow subsequently married Baptiste Peoria, mentioned in a note further on.
Baptiste Peoria was in the service of the General Government for nearly, thirty years, in the Indian Department; and in 1867, became head chief of the consolidated Miami and Illinois tribes, and went with them to their newly-assigned reservation in the north-east part of the Indian Territory, where he died at an advanced age, Sept. 13, 1873. Some years before, he married Mrs. Mary Dagney, widow of Christmas Dagney, and to this lady is the author indebted for copies of the "Western Spirit", and the "Fort Scott Monitor" newspapers published at Paola and Ft. Scott, Kansas, respectively, containing biographical sketches and obituary notices of her late husband, from which this note has, in the main, been collated.
It may well be said that Baptiste was "The Last of the Peorias". By precept and example he spent the better portion of a busy life in persistent efforts to save the fragment of the Illinois and Miamis by encouraging them to adopt the ways of civilized life. His widow, Mary Baptiste, nee Dagney, survives, and is living in her elegant homestead at Paoli, Kansas, in comfortable circumstances.
The derivation of the name was a subject of discussion among the early French missionaries. Father Marquette, with some others who followed the Huron Indian rendition of it, says, "Maskoutens in Algonquin may mean Fire Nation", and this is the "name given them"; while Fathers Allouez and Charlevoix (whose opportunities to know were better), together with the still more recent American authors, claims that the word signifies a prairie or "a land bare of trees". The Ojebway word for prairie is "Mush-koo-da". Bands of the same tribe on the upper Mississippi, on the authority of Dr. James, call it Mus-ko-tia. Its derivative or root is Ish-koo-ta, skoutay, or scote (ethnologists differ as to its orthography), and which is the algonquin word for fire. The great plains westward of the Wabash and the lakes, was truly "a land barren of trees", kept so by the annually recurring fires that swept over through the tall grass in billows of flame and smoke; and this distinguishing feature is aptly preserved in the name the Indians gave it. Major Forsyth, long a trader at Peoria, in his manuscript account of the Indian tribes of his acquaintance, quoted by Dr. Drake in his Life of Black Hawk, says, "The Mascos or Mascoutins were, by French traders of a more recent day, called gens des prairies [men of the prairie], and lived and hunted on the great prairies between the Wabash and Illinois Rivers".
"Elder Brother, if my old chiefs were living, I would not presume to speak in this assembly, but as they are dead, I now address you in the name of the Pottawatomies, as Massas has spoken in the name of the Three Fires, of which we are one. * * * It is two years since I assisted at the treaty of Vincennes (referring to the treaty concluded at that place by Gen. Rufus Putnam, and the several Wabash River and Illinois tribes, Sept. 27th, 1792, nearly three instead of two years before the treaty at Greenville); my voice then represented the Three Fires."
More numerous and populous villages of the Pottawatomies were in Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana, on the St. Joseph, the Kalamazoo (these Indians called it Kek-a-la-ma-zoo, signifying a "boiling pot", and the several streams flowing into the Detroit River and Maumee Bay, between Detroit and Toledo. Of these may be named that of "To-pen-ne-bee", their great hereditary chief, at "Pare aux Vaches" (the cow-pen), as the Canadian- French traders facitiously nick-named the vicinity of old Fort St. Joseph;" Chip-pe-outi-pe", at South Bend; and the villages of the Five Medals and "Wap-pe-me-me" (the white pigeon), higher up the river. North and westward of the Wabash were others; "Chit-cha-kos" on the Tippecanoe, and "Chip-poy", twenty-five miles below the mouth of the latter stream. Others might be named, but enough have been given to illustrate the assertion of the text.
The blank space in Gen. Cass' address before the words "one thousand dollars", should be supplied by inserting the "Treaty of Edwardsville", Ill., Aug. 24, 1816, by which the United States, for the purpose of controlling the water communication, since improved as the "Illinois and Michigan Canal", purchased from the united Pottawatomie, Ottawa, and Chippeway tribes, "residing on the Illinois and Milwaukee rivers and their waters, and the southwestern parts of Lake Michigan", a strip of land ten miles wide on both sides of the same, and extending from the mouth of Fox River at Ottawa, Ill., easterly to the confluence of Chicago Creek with Lake Michigan.