Chapter VII: Contemporaneous Reports

HARDLY any one institution existing four score years ago, shows so wondrous a change as does the American newspaper. The steamboat, railroad, telegraph, telephone, power-press and other mechanical aids to the spreading of news have all been invented and perfected within that time, while gas and electric light have aided in the prompt reproduction of intelligence, and penny-postage in its dissemination. So that which was then an infant--say rather an embryo--is now a giant.

The very first published narrative of the massacre which is now at hand is the following account, very short and full of errors, taken from the Buffalo Gazette (date not given) and published in Niles' Weekly Register of October 3, 1812.[AG]

[AG] This paper, published in Baltimore, was the best general chronicle of events reported by correspondents or appearing in the few and meager outlying journals of the day.

_Fall of Fort Dearborn, at Chicago._--Yesterday afternoon the Queen
Charlotte arrived at Fort Erie, seven days from Detroit. A flag of
truce soon landed, at Buffalo Creek, Major Atwater and Lieut. J.
L. Eastman, who gave the following account of the fall of Fort
Dearborn: On the first of September a Pottowatomie chief arrived at
Detroit and stated that about the middle of August Captain Wells,
from Fort Wayne [an interpreter], arrived at Fort Dearborn to advise
the commandant of that fort to evacuate it and retreat. In the mean
time a large body of Indians of different nations had collected
and menaced the garrison. A council was held with the Indians, in
which it was agreed that the party in the garrison should be spared
on condition that all property in the fort should be given up. The
Americans marched out but were fired upon and nearly all killed.
There were about fifty men in the fort beside women and children, and
probably not more than ten or twelve taken prisoners. Captain Wells
and Heald [the commandant] were killed.

This brief report interests us in various ways. Detroit was in the British hands, and the Queen Charlotte a British ship, for Perry's victory had not yet been won. Major Atwater and Lieut. Eastman, here liberated by the British under flag of truce, were probably part of the army surrendered by General Hull on August 16, and paroled; these officers having remained in Detroit for some unexplained reason--perhaps because they were citizens of that city, as Atwater is an old Detroit name. (It has been given to a street there.) The Queen Charlotte was one of the ships captured by Perry on Sept. 10, 1813, and was sunk in Put-in-Bay, and twenty years later she was raised, repaired and put again in commission, this time as a trading-vessel, and it was on her that John Dean Caton, later Chief Justice of Illinois, and now (1893) an honored resident of Chicago, took passage at Buffalo with his bride, in 1834, and came to the land which was to be their home for sixty years.[AH]

[AH] Mrs. Caton died in 1892.

Regarding the rest of the fugitives we have very scanty reports. The next item we find is an utterly wild, false and fanciful statement of Mrs. Helm's vicissitudes, contradicting in every particular her own narrative, as given in Wau-Bun.

[From Niles' Weekly Register, Saturday, April 13, 1813.]

_Savage Barbarity._--Mrs. Helm, the wife of Lieutenant Helm, who
escaped from the butchery of Chicauga by the assistance of a
humane Indian, has arrived at this place [Buffaloe]. The account
of her sufferings during three months' slavery among the Indians
and three months' imprisonment among their allies, would make a
most interesting volume. One circumstance alone will I mention.
During five days after she was taken prisoner she had not the least
sustenance, and was compelled to drag a canoe (barefooted and wading
along the stream) in which there were some squaws, and when she
demanded food, some flesh of her murdered countrymen and a piece of
Col. Wells' heart was offered her.

She knows the fact that Col. Proctor, the British commander at
Maiden, bought the scalps of our murdered garrison of Chicauga, and
thanks to her noble spirit, she boldly charged him with his infamy in
his own house.

She knows further, from the tribe with whom she was a prisoner, and
who were the perpetrators of those murders, that they intended to
remain true, but that they received orders from the British to cut
off our garrison, whom they were to escort.

Oh, spirits of the murdered Americans! can ye not rouse your
countrymen, your friends, your relations, to take ample vengeance on
those worse than savage bloodhounds?

An Officer.

March 18th, 1813.

This is manifestly written to "fire the patriotic heart" of the country to rally to the defence of "Buffaloe," a frontier town in deadly fear of its Canadian neighbors, in sight beyond the Niagara River. Mrs. Helm herself must have learned with surprise that while she, with the rest of the Kinzie family, was hospitably entertained at "Parc-aux-vaches," on the St. Joseph, she was suffering "three months' slavery among the Indians;" and later, while living in Detroit, she was enduring "three months' imprisonment among their allies," the English. Also that during the five days after the massacre, when she tells us she was, with much discomfort and more alarm, living in the Kinzie mansion with her relatives, she was really dragging a canoe, barefooted, wading along the stream, deprived of all sustenance except the flesh of her murdered countrymen, especially poor Wells's carved-up and bleeding heart--which, by the way, she had only heard of; never seen! Such things serve very well to prove to us that, as creators of imaginative fiction, newspaper correspondents of those days were equal even to those of our own.

More absurd, if possible, is a letter printed in Niles' Register of May 8, 1813, purporting to have been written by one Walter Jordan, a non-commissioned officer of regulars, stationed at Fort Wayne, to his wife, in Alleghany County, dated Fort Wayne, October 19, 1812. In the first place, it is most unlikely that any such white man should have been in Captain Wells's company and remained unmentioned. We hear of nobody as arriving but Captain Wells and his thirty Miami Indians. In our day, it is true, a captain would be likely to be accompanied by an orderly; but Wells had been brought up in too stern a school to be provided with such an attendant. Then, too, the narrative bristles with absurdities. The story is as follows:

I take my pen to inform you that I am well, after a long and perilous
journey through the Indian country. Capt. Wells, myself, and an
hundred friendly Indians, left Fort Wayne on the 1st of August to
escort Captain Heald from Fort Chicauga, as he was in danger of
being captured by the British. Orders had been given to abandon the
fort and retreat to Fort Wayne, a distance of 150 miles. We reached
Chicauga on the 10th of August, and on the 15th prepared for an
immediate march, burning all that we could not fetch with us. On the
15th at 8 o'clock we commenced our march with our small force, which
consisted of Captain Wells, myself, one hundred Confute Indians,
Captain Heald's one hundred men, ten women, twenty children--in all
232. We had marched half a mile when we were attacked by 600 Kickapoo
and Wynbago Indians. In the moment of trial our Confute savages
joined the savage enemy. Our contest lasted fifteen minutes, when
every man, woman and child was killed except fifteen. Thanks be to
God, I was one of those who escaped. First they shot the feather off
my cap, next the epaulet off my shoulder, and then the handle from
the sword; I then surrendered to four savage rascals. The Confute
chief, taking me by the hand and speaking English, said: "Jordan, I
know you. You gave me tobacco at Fort Wayne. We won't kill you, but
come and see what we will do to your captain." So, leading me to
where Wells lay, they cut off his head and put it on a long pole,
while another took out his heart and divided it up among the chiefs
and ate it up raw. Then they scalped the slain and stripped the
prisoners, and gathered in a ring with us fifteen poor wretches in
the middle. They had nearly fallen out about the divide, but my old
chief, the White Racoon, holding me fast, they made the divide and
departed to their towns. They tied me hard and fast that night, and
placed a guard over me. I lay down and slept soundly until morning,
for I was tired. In the morning they untied me and set me parching
corn, at which I worked attentively until night. They said that if I
would stay, and not run away they would make a chief of me; but if I
would attempt to run away they would catch me and burn me alive. I
answered them with a fine story in order to gain their confidence,
and finally made my escape from them on the 19th of August, and
took one of the best horses to carry me, being seven days in the
wilderness. I was joyfully received at Wayne on the 26th. On the
28th day they attacked the fort and blockaded us until the 16th of
September, when we were relieved by General Harrison.

One is uncertain whether to rate this as a yarn made by some penny-a-liner out of such scraps as might be picked up from common rumor and the tales of returned stragglers of the thirty Indians who ran away when the attack began, or the lying story of a fellow who was really of the party, and one of the leaders, not in the fight, but in the flight. His enumeration of "one hundred Confute Indians," (no tribe of that name being known to history) in place of the band of thirty Miamis, his estimate of Captain Heald's "one hundred men, ten women and twenty children," his march of "half a mile," his statement that all were killed except fifteen, which would make the loss of life over two hundred, in place of Captain Heald's estimate of fifty-two, all tend to force the conclusion that there was no Walter Jordan in the matter. The latter part of the story, representing himself as heroically losing feather, epaulet and sword-hilt to the rascally savages, who still refrained from inflicting bodily injury on him, his then being kindly but firmly led to the place where poor Wells, in the presence of his niece, was waiting to have his head cut off and set up on a pole, and his heart cut out and divided among the chiefs, etc., tends to the belief that Walter Jordan was present, ran away, saved himself, reached Fort Wayne and devised this cock-and-bull story to explain his long absence, his personal safety and his possession of a horse which did not belong to him. Another hypothesis is that he started from Fort Wayne with Wells, deserted on the road, hung around until he got the story as told by the Indian fugitives, and (finding that his captain was dead) put a bold face on the matter and came in, bringing a horse he had been lucky enough to "capture" when its owner was not looking.

The next item is dated more than a year later; a year during which the wretched captives seem to have suffered miseries indescribable. The story bears the stamp of truth so far as the escaped fugitives knew it:

[From Niles' Weekly Register, 4th June, 1814.]

Chicago.--Among the persons who have recently arrived at this place,
says the Plattsburg [N. Y.] paper of the 21st ultimo, from Quebec,
are: James Van Horn, Dyson Dyer, Joseph Knowles, Joseph Bowen, Paul
Grummond, Nathan Edson, Elias Mills, James Corbin, Phelim Corbin,
of the First Regiment of U. S. Infantry, who survived the massacre
at Fort Dearborn, or Chicago, on the 15th August, 1812. It will be
recollected that the commandant at Fort Chicago, Captain Heald, was
ordered by General Hull to evacuate the fort and proceed with his
command to Detroit; that having proceeded about a mile and a half,
the troops were attacked by a body of Indians, to whom they were
compelled to capitulate.

Captain Heald, in his report of this affair, dated October 23d, 1812,
says: "Our strength was fifty-four regulars and twelve militia, out
of which twenty-six regulars and all the militia, with two women and
twelve children, were killed in the action.

"Lieut. Linai T. Helm, with twenty-five non-commissioned officers
and privates, and eleven women and children, were prisoners when
we separated." Lieut. Helm was ransomed. Of the twenty-five
non-commissioned officers and privates, and the eleven women and
children, the nine persons above mentioned are believed to be the
only survivors. They state that the prisoners who were not put
to death on the march were taken to the Fox River, in the Indian
territory, where they were distributed among the Indians as servants.
Those who survived remained in this situation about nine months,
during which time they were allowed scarcely a sufficiency of
sustenance to support nature, and were then brought to Fort Chicago,
where they were purchased by a French trader, agreeable to the
directions of General Proctor, and sent to Amherstburg, and from
thence to Quebec, where they arrived November 8th, 1813.

John Neads, who was one of the prisoners, formerly of Virginia, died
among the Indians between the 15th and 20th of January, 1813.

Hugh Logan, an Irishman, was tomahawked and put to death, be not
being able to walk from excessive fatigue.

August Mott, a German, was killed in the same manner for the like
reason.

A man by the name of Nelson was frozen to death while a captive with
the Indians. He was formerly from Maryland.

A child of Mrs. Neads, the wife of John Neads, was tied to a tree to
prevent its following and crying after its mother for victuals. Mrs..
Neads perished from hunger and cold.

The officers who were killed on the 15th of August had their heads
cut off and their hearts taken out and boiled in the presence of the
prisoners. Eleven children were massacred and scalped in one wagon.

Mrs. Corbin, wife of Phelim Corbin, in an advanced stage of
pregnancy, was tomahawked, scalped, cut open, and had the child taken
out and its head cut off.

Turning to the latest muster-roll of the force, dated 1810, we identify among these survivors the names of Dyson Dyer, Nathan Edson, Paul Grummow, James Van Home, James Corbin and Phelim Corbin. Among the perished, August Mott, John Neads and Hugh Logan. To this sad list must be added four still more pitiable victims--the wife and unborn child of Phelim Corbin, and the unhappy Mrs. Neads, to whom death must have been welcome after seeing her little one "tied to a tree to keep it from following her and crying for victuals."

Mrs. John Kinzie, in a sketch of the life of her husband (Chic. Hist. Society, July 11, 1877. Fergus' Hist. Series No. 10) says:

In 1816 the Kinzie family returned to their desolated home in
Chicago. The bones of the murdered soldiers, who had fallen four
years before, were still lying unburied where they had fallen. The
troops who rebuilt the fort collected and interred these remains.
The coffins which contained them were deposited near the bank of the
river, which then had its outlet about at the foot of Madison Street.
The cutting through the sand-bar for the harbor caused the lake to
encroach and wash away the earth, exposing the long range of coffins
and their contents, which were afterward cared for and reinterred by
the civil authorities.

There is good reason to believe that Mrs. Kinzie was mistaken in thinking that the coffins exposed on the lake shore by the action of the waves, contained the bodies of those who perished in the massacre. The fort burying-ground certainly was at the place indicated, and the exposed coffins doubtless contained the bodies of those buried in that ground; but that does not include the massacre victims. Mr. Fernando Jones believes them to have been buried at where Seventeenth Street, extended, would cross Prairie Avenue.

A letter on the matter (kindly furnished me while these pages are in preparation) reads as follows:

Upon my arrival in Chicago, in the spring of 1835, being fifteen
years of age, I became acquainted with a number of Indian and
half-breed boys, as well as older persons, and visited many times
the location of the Indian massacre of 1812. The spot was pointed
out by some who were children at the time, and by others who had
been informed by their parents. The burial-place where the victims
were interred was quite distinct at that time. There was a mound in
the prairie southwest of the massacre-ground, that was pointed out
as the grave of the vidette, or soldier in advance of the retreating
garrison.

The tradition was that the soldier ran west into the prairie,
thinking to hide in the tall grass, but was pursued and killed and
scalped and his body afterward buried by friendly half breeds.

In the summer of 1836 a number of youngsters, accompanied by some
young Indians and half-breeds, proceeded to examine the lonely
hillock in the plains. The turf still preserved the shape of a
grave. There were in the party as I remember, besides myself, Pierre
Laframbois, Alex Beaubien, Charles Cleaver, J. Louis Hooker and
John C. Haines. After digging about three feet into the ground we
unearthed a skeleton surrounded by bits of woolen cloth, pieces of
leather, brass military buttons and buckles and a brass plate with U.
S. upon it. We became convinced that this was undeniably the grave
of the traditional vidette, and reverently returned the remains into
the grave where they had lain for a quarter of a century, and where
I suppose they still remain. The spot was about a block south of
the Calumet Club-House, near the S. E. corner of Indiana Ave. and
Twenty-first Street. I kept watch of the place until streets were
laid out and the property improved, having resided near it for over
twenty-five years.

Fernando Jones.

No remains of any coffin were found, a fact which would indicate a battle-field burial; but on the other hand, it seems most improbable that the Indians would have left belt-plate, buttons and cloth on any of their victims.

* * * * *

The Indian Problem is solved at last, and by the Indians' own and only means for the solution of problems--the cutting of the knot. It has been a long struggle, marked by wrong on both sides and by shame on ours--theirs was not capable of shame. They had many friends and only one formidable enemy--themselves.

The Americans met them with the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other. They declined the branch and defied the sword. The English offered them gifts in both hands, and they took all that was offered, rendering in exchange services disgraceful to the more civilized party to the contract. The French offered them love, and won theirs in return. While other whites held aloof, the gay Frenchman fraternized with them, became one with them, shared their lives and their pursuits, won their religious allegiance--nay, more; in a gentler and more irresistible way prevailed over them, for he formed with their women alliances which furnished the inferior race a hybrid, partly like themselves, but superior, and able and willing to be their leaders against the more grasping, less loving Americans. These hybrids have, in many cases, continued the race on its enlightened side, and there are not wanting among ourselves splendid specimens of manhood and womanhood, whose fine figures, flashing eyes, and strong, grave faces, proclaim the proud possession of the blood of the only really "first citizens" of our democratic republic.

It is now hard to trace the Indians who departed hence in 1835, fifty-eight years ago. They are almost "lost tribes." The report for 1890 of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs, gives Pottowatomies of various descriptions scattered in many places. This same is true of the Ottawas and Chippewas.

The larger part of the Pottowatomies (known of old as the "Woods Band," in contradistinction to the "Prairie Band") have renounced tribal relations and are known as the "Citizen Band." They number scarcely two thousand souls, and occupy a tract nearly thirty miles square (575,000 acres) in Oklahoma.

The Commissioners' report says but little about them, giving more attention to the "Prairie Band," since they are still a tribe, and thus, "wards of the nation." They number only 432, and hold in common 77,357 acres in Kansas, where they are doing fairly, but are pestered with the dregs of the "Citizen Band," who fall back on the tribe like the returned prodigal--but unrepentant, and still fit company only for the husk-eating swine.

Of the "Citizen Band," Special Agent Porter says:

"The Pottowatomies are citizens of the United States, thoroughly tinctured with white blood. Nearly all of them speak English and read and write. Some of them are quite wealthy, being good farmers, with large herds of stock. Their morals are below the standard, considering their advanced state as a civilized' people."

This is not high praise; still, it gives hope for better things. Peace and industry coming first, civilization and morality will follow. The savage Indian is essentially a being of the past (notwithstanding the survival of a few wild Apaches, a few "ghost-dancers" among the Sioux, and some other exceptional bodies) and he is succeeded by the truly civilized Indian (of whom the Cherokees are a splendid example), a self-respecting, self governing, self-educating, prosperous human being; not particularly different from the frontiers-man, except by a slight and diminishing shade of color and by the possession of the best characteristics of his savage ancestors. It may perhaps be said that no race of men has ever made as much progress in five generations as have the "civilized Indians." It is only one hundred and sixty years since d'Artaguiette, Vinsenne, the Jesuit Senat, and young St. Ange, son of the French commandant in the Illinois country (Fort Chartres), were defeated in the Arkansas country and were burned at the stake by the unconquered Chickasaws, who were "amazed to see the fortitude with which white men could die." And now, in the territory adjoining Arkansas on the west, the descendants of the torturers are cultivating farms, maintaining governments, courts, schools and churches, and in short, setting an example worthy to be followed by many who have been "civilized" from the time ages back of the year 1492; when the innocent, luckless Haytians learned of the existence of the unspeakable Spaniards, in cruelty the only rivals of the North American aborigines.

* * * * *

What is the reason for the intense interest and curiosity which clusters about this story of violence and rapine, of heroism, anguish and death? Other massacres have blotted with blood the pages of American history. From Deerfield and Schenectady to the Little Bighorn, our devoted bands have perished at the hands of the American Indian; and each dark day is suffered to rest as a mere tradition, buried in the half-forgotten folk-lore of its time and place. Why does the Fort Dearborn massacre, involving only a few score souls, hold a different rank in our hearts?

It is because the footsteps of millions are passing over the spot where it all happened; steamers are churning its peaceful waters; bells and steam-whistles are rending the air that bore away the sound of gun-shots, war-whoops and dying cries; and the sculptors' art is putting into immortal bronze the memory of its incidents. Thus does it gain an _ex post facto_ importance and a posthumous fame.

Transcription of Block-House Tablet:

BLOCK HOUSE OF FORT DEARBORN

This building occupies the site of old
Fort Dearborn which extended a little
across Mich. Ave. and somewhat into the
River as it now is.

The Fort was built in 1803 & 4. Forming
our outmost defense.

By order of Gen. Hull it was evacuated Aug.
15, 1812 after its stores and provisions
had been distributed among the Indians.

Very soon after the Indians attacked and
massacred about fifty of the troops and
a number of citizens including women and
children and next day burned the Fort.

In 1816 it was re-built, but after the
Black-hawk War it went into gradual disuse and
in May 1857 when it was torn down, excepting a
single building, which stood upon this site
till the Great Fire of Oct. 9, 1871.

At the suggestion of the Chicago Historical
Society this tablet was erected by
Nov. 1889. W. M. Hoyt.

Among the world's great cities, Chicago should be the one most thoroughly recorded. No other that counts her denizens by the million has among them those born before her annals fairly began. No other has had such startling vicissitudes. Laid low by slaughter in her infancy and by fire in her youth, she has climbed with bounding steps, upward and onward. Toiling, enduring, laughing, prospering, exulting; she has taken each scourge as a fillip to her energy, each spur as a stimulus to her courage. Hers is the enthusiasm of youth with the strength of maturity.

The early days of Paris and London are lost in half-mythical shadow. Even if told, their incidents might fail to match in interest those which have befallen their young sister. So much the more zealously should we who love this youthful aspirant for fame, take care that the romance of her childhood shall be preserved and handed down to posterity.

The spirited figure of La Salle (given by Lambert Tree) and Martin Ryerson's Indian group, are both fine memorials of the dawn of things in the North-West. Eli Bates's matchless statue of Lincoln is devoted to a page in the history of the whole Union. Now comes Chicago's latest treasure, the magnificent group commemorating the massacre of 1812; a purely civic work, to keep in the minds of Chicago's citizens, for untold generations, the romance and reality of her struggling infancy.

Honor to the men who, in the intense pressure of the present, still have thoughts for the past and the future.

* * * * *

At the unveiling, (1881) of the Block-House Tablet (designed by the Chicago Historical Society) set by William M. Hoyt in the north wall of his warehouse, facing Rush Street Bridge from the south, Mr. Eugene Hall read some stanzas of original verse so musical, so poetic and so apt for the occasion, that I venture (with his permission) to repeat them here, as a finish to our story.

* * * * *

FORT DEARBORN,
CHICAGO,
1881.

Here, where the savage war-whoop once resounded,
Where council fires burned brightly years ago,
Where the red Indian from his covert bounded
To scalp his pale-faced foe:

Here, where grey badgers had their haunts and burrows,
Where wild wolves howled and prowled in midnight bands,
Where frontier farmers turned the virgin furrows,
Our splendid city stands.

Here, where brave men and helpless women perished,
Here, where in unknown graves their forms decay;
This marble, that their memory may be cherished,
We consecrate today.

No more the farm-boy's call, or lowing cattle.
Frighten the timid wild fowl from the slough:
The noisy trucks and wagons roll and rattle
O'er miles of pavement now.

Now are our senses startled and confounded.
By screaming whistle and by clanging bell.
Where Beaubien's merry fiddle once resounded
When summer twilight fell.

Here stood the fort with palisades about it.
With low log block-house in those early hours;
The prairie fair extended far without it.
Blooming with fragrant flowers.

About this spot the buildings quickly clustered;
The logs decayed, the palisade went down.
Here the resistless Western spirit mustered
And built this wondrous town.

Here from the trackless plain its structures started.
And one by one, in splendor rose to view.
The white ships went and came, the years departed,
And still she grandly grew.

Till one wild night, a night each man remembers.
When round her homes the red fire leaped and curled.
The sky was filled with flame and flying embers.
That swept them from the world.

Men said: "Chicago's bright career is ended!"
As by the smouldering stones they chanced to go,
While the wide world its love and pity blended,
To help us in our woe.

O where was ever human goodness greater?
Man's love for man was never more sublime.
On the eternal scroll of our Creator
'Tis written for all time.

Chicago lives, and many a lofty steeple
Looks down today upon this western plain;
The tireless hands of her unconquered people
Have reared her walls again.

Long may she live and grow in wealth and beauty,
And may her children be, in coming years,
True to their trust and faithful in their duty
As her brave pioneers.

APPENDIX.

A--John Baptiste Pointe de Saible.

B--Fort Dearborn in the War Department.

C--The Whittier Family.

D--The Kinzie Family.

E--The Wells and Heald Families.

F--The Bones of John Lalime.

G--Letters from a. H. Edwards.

H--Billy Caldwell, "The Sauganash."

I--Indian War Dance.

K--The Bronze Memorial Group.