Chicago Magazine, March, 1857
Part 1.—Antecedent
We have undertaken the task of writing the History of Chicago. This history must be, in the main, a narrative of events which have transpired within the memory of the present generation. It will be the history of one of the most remarkable facts in the growth of communities, which our nation, perhaps the world, furnishes. It will be a history without antiquity, and will therefore require no searching into the records and delving into the mysteries of by-gone and nearly forgotten times. The past is only shadowed forth upon its pages—a back ground of a living picture of the works of living men. We havenien among us whom we shall consult for the purpose of making up the material of this history, who have seen all that there is of Chicago, from the first rude huts, to its present princely palaces There are men among us, whose energy is helping to-day to swell that tide of business which is the astonishment of every new beholder; who trafficked with the Indians when they were the chief customers of the Chicago trader; who afterwards supplied the first white settlers with the common necessaries of life,-having progressed with Chicago, and grown with its growth, from the insignificant demands of a border village, to the magnitude and the commerce of a great city. We have men, too, who suggested the first ideas of progress and improvement, in the infancy of the city, which have, from their magnitude, become the wonder of all the world; and their mature energy is now pushing on those plans of improvement farther and farther in the career of success. From the recollection and experience of men like these we shall be able to draw resources for making up the history of Chicago, portraying it as it has been, and as it now is.
But though the History of Chicago, as a place and City, must date within the memory of men now living, it has nevertheless an antecedent history, which has a peculiar inte-rest, as the foreshadowing events of a future greatness, of which they were the germ. The men whose personal identity is merged in the growth of Chicago, must he tolerated in the frailty of cherishing the highest regard for the minutest details of its past. But they are not alone the people who have a lively interest in all these details. As this city has become more widely known, from its commercial character, and its commanding and central position in a wide expanse of country, which has changed with marvelous rapidity from an uncultivated state to the condition of a populous region,—a desire must be everywhere present to learn the story of its progress, at every step, from its earliest days, onward.
In laying out before us our task, to make our sketch complete, we propose to trace the wandering steps of the native Indian upon this soil, and to note also the first impressions of the civilized white race, as devoted missionaries “to save the souls of men,” or as traders, seeking their own good through gain. This is the antecedent history, which will be valued for its own sake, as well as the proper basis for a complete history of our enterprising city. While it is confessed that our citizens are not admirers of relics, and are emphatically men of the present, yet they feel more than a common interest in all the remembrances that encircle the enthusiastic Jesuit missionary in his wanderings here to and fro, and in his efforts to plant in this region the first germs of civilization and Christianity. They love also to cherish the recollection of the Indians, as the original occupants of this soil; and in all that they were, and in all that they did, they feel a deep interest. They contrast in their own minds the change which a few brief years have made, since the Indians built their wigwams on the prairies where our streets now run, and the princely homes of our people rise in their stead; for it seems that the echo of their measured footsteps, and the sound of their paddles in our river and lake, have but just died away. And never a year passes over now, but some of the remnants of the tribes who wandered here but a generation ago, come back to visit what was once the home of their childhood; and they go about our streets with heedless step, followed by the eyes of the curious, indifferently noting our land-marks of progress, much as if one were seeking among the cities of the dead the graves of his ancestors.
In the execution of our task, we propose then to speak of the Antecedents of Chicago, which will relate to the times when the Indians were the lords of its soil, and the time when the French voyageurs and missionaries traveled our prairies and on our brief river, and when they essayed to teach the natives Christianity and its duties, civilization and its arts. This will include a recital of the events which preceded the occupation of Chicago by permanent settlers. We shall then proced to the work of portraying Chicago As It Was, when the settlement was first commenced, when population increased, when improvements began to be made, when it assumed the position of an important city; and thus continue a panorama of its wonderful progress. And our task will be completed, when, in contrast with what it has been from time to time, we shall have drawn a faithful picture of Chicago As It Is, gilded with all its bright promises of the future.
At the period in the history of the discovery and settiement of this continent, when the English were taking possession of the Atlantic coast, from Massachusetts Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the Puritans monopolizing the rock-bound coast of New England; and when the Spanish were establishing their claims and settlements on the coast of Florida, through the Gulf of Mexico, and in Central America, -the French were extending their colonies up the valley of the St. Lawrence, and pushing their discoveries into the heart of North America by the great Lakes, and over the valley of the Mississippi. The English colonies had made but little progress inland, and had only founded settlements at several points along the course of the largest rivers of the eastern coast; when French zeal for the propagation of the Catholic faith, and French enterprise in exploration and discovery, and in enlargement of empire, had made them familiar with the great central lakes, and the great rivers which drain the interior of the continent. Niagara had not been reached by the Dutch explorers, over the land covered by their own grants, ere the French had discovered the Falls of St. Anthony, given it a name after one of their own patron saints, and jotted it down on their rude maps. The English had hardly reached the fishing stations of the Connecticut and the Merrimac, in their line of continual progress, when the French were sailing on the waters of Lake Superior, and regaling themselves with its delicious whitefish and trout. And while Eliot was preaching his first sermons to the Narragansetts, seven miles from Boston, the Jesuit missionaries were indoctrinating the Ottawas and Chippewas at the Falls of Lake Superior. During the same period, the Spanish had possession of the coast of Florida, and had already founded empires in the West Indies and Mexico. But English colonization seemed not so rapid and diffuse, and contended against more vigorous obstacles in nature, yet had in it more of the elements of strength and ultimate prosperity-and proved in the end the adage, that the race is not always to the swift. This view of facts teaches us, that though this section of country is now more than of anything else the off-shoot of the Puritan ideas, and we are accustomed to trace all our beginnings in national existence, and all our good things in the constitution of society to this original stock, yet here, in the very first things of our history we are out of the Puritan jurisdiction. The first explorers of Lake Michigan, the first white men to pitch their tents on the Chicago prairie, and to haul up their boats upon our river banks and lake shore, were the French Jesuit missionaries and fur trade adventurers. And this they were doing while New England colonies were being planted, while Cotton Mather was persecuting witches and Quakers in Boston, and teaching the true elements of popular civil government, and William Penn was inculcating his peace principles upon the Delaware Indians.
Thus on this continent was sustained the rivalry of the three great nations of Europe in possessing the lands of the native Indian. The commerce with the East Indies, which had been successfully carried on by the English and the Dutch, excited also the avarice of other nations, stimulating them to compete for the trade in that direction which had been monopolized by the former. One of the great impulses which had led the French to extend their discoveries into the far West was, therefore, the same as that which led Columbus to undertake his first voyage of discovery, namely, a shorter passage to the East Indies. The French were the first to gain a knowledge of the great Lakes, as their enterprise had first possessed their outlet, the St. Lawrence. Vague rumors, through intercourse with the natives, had given them some indefinite knowledge of a great river, far in the West; and through these lakes and this great unknown river they anxiously expected to find a navigable water course across the continent, which would open a shorter route to the trade of China and the Indies which might be monopolized by themselves. So strongly had this conviction fastened itself upon their minds, that many names given to their oldest towns were borrowed from those of China. In pursuit of this phantom, as well as by the zeal to extend the true faith by the Jesuits, was Lake Superior, to its farthest extremity, made known to the French, before Lake Michigan was explored south of Green Bay.
Another motive which governed the French in pushing their explorations in the West, was the desire for extension of empire in the New World. Louis XIV. was on the throne of France, the king who had sought the glory of hi; nation by the extension of power, and gained among his subjects the sobriquet of the “Grande Monarque.” While flattering his subjects at home with the incipient Napoleonic ideas of supreme jurisdiction in Europe, his admirers and satellites in the New World sought his special favor by like schemes of French supremacy and empire on the Western continent. By a right, recognized by the law of nations, the discovery of a river gave to the discoverer the right of jurisdictien to the territory drained by that river and its branches. There-fore, by this law, the discovery of the Mississippi from its head waters, by their explorations from the North-West to its mouth, the French claimed and maintained possession of the Father of Waters, and the immense valley watered by the thousand streams flow. ing into it. For the promotion of this plan of extension of empire, as we shall see farther along in this brief sketch, a line of military posts and settlements, interspersed with mission stations, was established from Quebec, along the shores of the lakes, along the course of the upper rivers of the Mississippi, and extending to the mouth of that river, encircling all the colonies of the English upon the Atlantic shore. Soon this scheme of colonial extension excited the jealousy and suspicion of other colonies, as well as national antipathies, involving colonists and Indian tribes in a prolonged border warfare, continuing at intervals for a century; until finally settled by the complete extinction of the French title to all the territory in Canada and the North West, east of the Mississippi, and its annexation to the British possessions;—a turn in the tide of affairs in the New World, which shaped its ends evidently for the ushering in of the glorious destiny upon which it has more recently entered.
The various Indian tribes in the days of the French were, of course, the real occupants and owners of the soil. The number of French settlers seattered over this wide region, was comparatively few; and the number mustered into the military service was barely enough to keep up the establishment of forts; while the strength relied upon for defense, as well as the support of settlements, was borrowed from alliance with the natives; and the attaches to the Jesuits missions made up but a fair show of the native population. All these classes readily mingled and amalgamated with the Indian race, so that in time they lost in a great measure their own identity, and formed another distinct class, designated at the present time as the half-breeds. It was probably in consequence of this ready assimilation, that the French settlements lost their national characteristics sooner than those of the English. The latter have ever stood out well-defined, national and peculiar, the genuine offspring of European society, while the French have either been absorbed in the native, or merged into a type different from the original stock. The same process of fading out seemed to have followed the propagation of their religious ideas by the French teachers of theology, in their application to the unmixed native race, for in shaping them to accommodate the lower tastes of the savage, they took on so much of the Indian, that the Indian predominated, and but little was left of the doctrines and practices inculcated by the earnest missionaries. On the contrary, the half-breeds seem to have been the best receivers of both the faith and civi. lization, taught by those missionaries.
We shall better understand the history of these times and the times which followed, by a geographical location of the Indian tribes. Those inhabiting this region, designated by names with which they are familiarly known at this day—were the Ottawas, in the northern part of the peninsula of Michigan, the Miamis, in southern Michigan and Indiana, lying around the head of Lake Michigan, and including for their northern point of pos-session, the territory embracing the present locality of Chicago. These were the Indians the French found here, and with whom father Marquette labored; probably having at this very point, a mission station. This tribe extended around the Lake; and at St. Joseph, as is well known, was another Indian town and Jesuit mission. After the time of the first French visits, the Pottawatomies crowded back the Miamis, and they became the Indians of Chicago. In after intercourse with the traders, up to the time of the massacre in 1812, the Pottawatomies were the native population, and were the parties to the treaty with Wayne in 1795, by which a tract of land six miles square, at the mouth of Chicago river, was ceded to the United States-the first extinction of Indian title to the land on which Chicago is built. The Illinois, the tribe from which the State has taken its name, who seem to have been a race of a higher order than the average, (the term Illinois, being translated, means emphatically men, or men of men,) and of whom frequent. mention is made in the accounts of the Jesuits,—occupied all the territory of Illinois west of the Wabash, to a line running north-east from the Mississippi, near the mouth of the Des Moines, through the town of Ottawa, to the lake shore. Above this line were the Pottawatomies, the Sauks and Foxes, and other wandering tribes. The Winnebagoes occupied that part of what is now Wisconsin, lying along the Lake shore, including Lake Winnebago. The Menominees occupied the territory still further north, around Green Bay, and between it and Lake Superior. The Chippewas were on the south shore of Superior, west of the Menominees. The Sioux were a great and powerful tribe, of the Dahcota race, which roamed the country west and south-west of Lake Superior, in the present Territory of Minnesota.
The first knowledge we have of any white man visiting these upper Lake regions, was in 1654, when two young fur traders, from the lower Canadian settlements, smitten with the love of adventure as well as gain, joined a band of roving Indians, and in their bark canoes, followed these native wanderers five hundred leagues into the unknown West. In about two years they returned, (through the then western route to the Lakes, Ottawa river and Lake Nippissing,) accompanied by a fleet of fifty canoes, manned with five hundred natives, who were welcomed on the cliffs of St. Louis, near Montreal, by a salute of ordnance from the castle. These young men came with reports from that unknown world-of the vast Lakes of the Huron, Superior and Michigan, then seas without names-of the Indian tribes that dwelt upon their shores—of the tribes north of those Lakes, which have to this day remained excluded from intercourse with the white man—of the powerful tribe of the Sioux, who dwelt farther west—of the Foxes and Mouscatens who dwelt at the south—of the richness of this wilderness in furs and skins, and many wonders of lands and strange people. These reports were sustained by the representation of red men and their canoes, flocking the river and throng ing its shores, who had come from this far off land to solicit intercourse and commerce with the Frenchmen, and missionaries for all this boundless West to return with them. The traders, as well as the enthusiastic religionists, were eager to accept of this invitation. But the claims of the Cross seemed the stronger of the two. Old missionaries who had been in the forests of Maine, and in the wilderness of the Hurons, joined the returning convoy, with all the appurtenances of the combined enterprises of a religious establishment and a trading post; but on its return the convoy was attacked by a band of hostile Mohawks, dispersed, and sone of the old missionaries killed. Undaunted still, the two strong elements of human character-the love of gain and the love of souls-lured other adventurers westward against dangers and death. Traders soon after penetrated as far as Green Bay, and two of them passed the winter of 1652 on the banks of Lake Superior, and returned to the East the next summer, as their two adventurous predecessors had done, with an escort of three hundred Indians and sixty canoes, enriched and well laden with furs and peltry. Other missionaries were inspired with the desire to carry the cross into the wilderness. Father Rene Mesnard, from a number of aspirants, was selected. He departed immediately, without preparation, as if his Master’s business admitted of no delay; and as soon as the rude means of travel could convey him, he appeared upon the southern shore of Lake Superior-the first messenger of the true God in all that part of his creation. Here he remained eight months, when, in attempting to comply with an invitation from a wandering branch of the Hurons, who had gone still farther west, to visit them, he strayed away from his canoe men at a portage, and was never after heard of; perishing, probably, while lost and wandering in the pathless wilderness.
In August, 1665, Father Claude Allouez, the first successful missionary to the West, whose name must ever be remembered with reverence, departed from his retreat at Quebec, to his field of labor in the far West, by the route of the Ottawa river. He reached the rapids between Superior and Huron, at St. Marys, in September. Immediately advancing into the great Lake, which all the natives reverenced as a deity, he sailed by the bluffs of sand, and the “pictured rocks,” objects which attract the attention of every modern traveler in the first part of his journey up the shore of the Lake. Proceeding through the Bay of St. Theresa-Keweenaw—vainly seeking for a “mass of pure copper,” of which he had heard rumors at that early day, which more fortunate men of this generation have found—he came at length to his destination, at a village of the Chippewas, on the now Shagwanegon Bay. Here he found the Indians preparing for a war with the formidable tribe of the Sioux. In the name of his earthly king, as well as King Jesus, he commanded peace. He offered them the alliance of the French, with their friendship and commerce—promised them protection against the inroads of the Iroquois, whose warlike nature had spread terror from the seat of their power, in western New York, through all the tribes of the West; he pledged them that the common highway of communication between them and their eastern friends, along the lakes and rivers, should be kept open—swept clean of the pirates and marauding bands who invested the way for plunder or the destruction of life. He preserved the peace, and held in bonds of amity the savage communities about him. A mission was established at the Bay, where he held his principal councils. At other points on the southern shore, and at the Falls of the Straits, he would meet his new friends of the wilderness, ministering to them in spiritual things, and advising them in all temporal affairs, and assisting them in establishing trade between them and their white neighbors. Here gathered to him, from time to time, the Indians from the West, seeking his friendship and sympathy. Here came the Chippewas, pitching their tents around his chapel-abiding, for a time, and receiving instruction-and then, away to their hunts. The scattered Hurons and Ottawas sought here his protection. The Sauks and Foxes traveled here on foot, bringing their skins of deer, beaver and buffalo. From the unexplored Lake Michigan came the Winnebagoes; the Pottawatomies, and the Miamis, from the locality of Chicago, bringing him knowledge of the country from the South-and, even the peaceful and manly tribe of the Illinois, from the interior of our State, sought sympathy from this good Father ALLovEz, who would be a father to all his heathen children. From them he first heard of the great, green prairies, and the boundless fertile tracts of this beautiful part of the world. Says he, of this land described by the peaceful Illinois: “Their country is the best field for the Gospel. Had I leisure, I would hare gone to their dwellings to see with my own eyes all the good that was told me of them.” And here, too, he received the stern Sioux from the south-west of Superior, from whom he first learned the existence of the great River, the name of which he reported as “Messippi.”
Allouez here resided for two years, opening the way of further discovery, and gath-ering, at different points, little colonies of French and Indian converts. Thus preparing the way, he gave impulse to every successful enterprise of discovery and settlement, which spread the French possessions over the West. He then returned to Quebec, to urge the prosecution of his enterprises upon the attention of his religious sympathizers at the East, and secure the influence of the Government.
Other helpers had recently arrived from France; among them, Claude Dablon and James Marquette. These companions proceeded to the Sault Ste. Marie, being the falls between Lake Superior and Huron, and established there the Mission of St. Mary—a place yet well known, and remarkable as the rapids over which fall the outlet waters of Superior. This was the first permanent settlement made anywhere in the regions of the Western Lakes.
The design of discovering the Mississippi, of which rumors had been gathered from the Indians, of its magnificence, and the wonders of the country bordering upon it, was avowed by Marquette, in 1669. The West now began to assume a position of importance in the view of the French Ministry, for the reasons before set forth. Nicolas Perrot was sent out as the agent of the Government in the West. He first explored Lake Michigan as far as Chicago; he and his party being the first white men who had ever beheld this locality. Soon after this expedition, in 1671, by his invitation, there was assembled a congress of all the tribes of the North-Western Indians, at the settlement of St. Mary’s. In ceremonies impressive and appropriate to the savage mind, PER-Rot took formal possession of all the North-West, from the head waters of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, in the name of the Government he represented, and assured the natives of their being placed under the protection of the French king. The country was explored and missions and settlements established by Allouez, Dablon, Marquette, and their associates, at Manitou Islands, Mackinaw, Green Bay, at the mouth of the Fox on Lake Winnebago, at Milwaukee, and many other points.
The project of the discovery of the Mississippi was then, in 1673, entered upon in earnest by Marquette, having been joined by Joliet, a gentleman from Quebec, first heard of in connection with this expedition. His scheme had been favored by Talon, the Intendant of New France, the name by which Canada was then known.
The friendly Indians spoke with alarm of the intended expedition, declaring “that the river abounded in monsters that would devour both men and canoes, that excessive heats pervaded it which would cause sure death, that the natives dwelling upon its shores were cruel and terrible, and killed all strangers who came to them.” But no such alarms could deter him. With JoLiet as his associate, and five Frenchmen as companions, and with two friendly Indians as guides, Marquette left the village of Fox River, above Green Bay and Lake Winnebago, on the 10th day of June, 1673, on this first expedition to discover the route of the Misssisippi. They carried their canoes on their backs across the narrow portage between the Fox and the Wisconsin rivers, the ridge of land that divides the waters which flow each way to distinct and distant outlets to the ocean, one to the south, the other to the north-east. The guides soon returned, intimidated by the fearful unknown into which they were about to enter. Solitarily, gloomily perhaps, with doubtful forebodings of the future, yet with determined perseverance, these few representatives of the Christianity and the civilization of the glorious age of France, pursued their journey through regions never before visited by white men. All before them was a dark unknown, associated in their minds with all the fearful creations of the human fancy, conjured up in the savage and ignorant mind; and they themselves half ready to believe in chimeras dire, of ghosts and dragons, and monsters unknown to other lands, and of a race of men more terrible than the wildest beasts.. It is hardly possible for us to realize now, the physical and moral courage necessary to sustain adventurers, stepping into the bounds of a void so dark and fathomless to their comprehension. Down the Wisconsin they sailed on—and out upon the Father of Waters, of the wonders of which, in the strange language of mystery, they had heard from the Indians, entering, as the voyagers express themselves, “the Great River with a joy that could not be expressed.” After a number of days sailing down the stream, they met with the first signs of human presence, in footprints on the sandy beach of its western shore. A foot path was discovered leading back into a beautiful prairie. Marquette and Joliet were all of the company who had courage to follow this path. The remainder were left in the canoes, to protect themselves by keeping at a safe distance from the shore. Traveling six miles back from the river over this broad prairie, they discovered an Indian village on the shore of a smaller stream. This was on the Des Moines, in the now State of Iowa, and these adventurers were the first white men who set foot on the soil of that State. They were welcomed with rejoicings by the natives, who ran to meet them with the pipe of peace, declaring themselves to be of the tribe of Illinois, saying in the words translated “we are men.” This was the tribe of whom Allouez had heard such good report, who were doubtless favorably prepossessed by their present visitors. Here they remained six day’s, communicating to them the gospel first, as preached by Marquette; afterward the knowledge of the French nation, and their being taken under the protection of its government, the subjugation by its arms of the dreaded Iroquois, their perpetual enemies, of whom they and all western tribes stood in constant fear. In turn the visitors were feasted on dog meat, hominy and fish. Thus were established relations of peace and harmony, which were ever kept up with the Illinois tribe, they being ever favorites of the French missionaries.
They proceeded on their voyage down the river, describing the towering rocks at Alton, the mouth of the Missouri river, first known to them by the Indian name of Peki-tanoni, describing its turbid current as it now appears, the same from age to age. And as they journeyed, they made note of their passage in such terms, that their progress may be traced to-day. They passed the Ohio, whose banks were sprinkied with the villages of the Shawnees. They proceeded as far south as the river Arkansas, meeting there with hostile tribes, and those who carried guns, and with tribes who spoke another language, unknown to themselves or their interpreters; and ascertaining withal that the river did not flow into the Pacific ocean, as they had possibly hoped, neither into the Gulf east of the explored coast of Florida, and therefore not yet discovered at its mouth, and must be secured to their nation by their own explorations, they concluded to turn back report their progress, and solicit the co-operation of their government. On their return, they entered the mouth of the Illinois river, ascended that stream, meeting again with the Illinois tribe, who entreated Marquette to come and reside with them. He speaks in rapturous terms of the Illinois country,—”as without paragon for the fertility of its beautiful prairies, covered with buffaloes and stags-for the loveliness of its rivers, and the abundance of wild ducks, swans,” &c. The Indians furnished the party with guides, and they returned by the river as far as possible to navigate their boats, and thence over the portage from the Des Plaines to the Chicago river, thence to the lake; a route used in those days as a line of communication between the southern rivers and northern lakes. Thence they proceeded by the lake shore to Green Bay, where they arrived by the end of September, having made this voyage of exploration in a little more than three months. Thus was first brought to the knowledge of the civilized world, the course of the Mississippi river, and the geographical character of a large portion of its fertile valley. This expedition dispelled for ever a dark cloud of ignorance and desolation which had from the creation overhung this delightful portion of the world, opening it up to the dawn of the sunlight breaking upon the New World.
Joliet returned soon after to Quebec, and announced the discovery. Talon, in a communication to his government at home, announced the fact that ” Sieur Joliet had discovered the Great River, and had proceeded within ten days’ journey of its mouth, and that he had ascertained that a voyage could be made in a barque from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico, there being only one carrying place of half a league, from Ontario to Erie. That he also supposed that up some of the large branches of the Great River from the West, a communication could be made with the California seas on the Pacific.” M. Talon also mentions that he had sent by his secretary the map which JoLIet had made, and the observations he had been able to recollect, as he had lost all his minutes and journal in the shipwreck he had suffered within sight of Montreal. He left with the missionaries at the Sault Ste. Marie copies of his journal, but we find no further mention made of his notes of the trip. Marquette’s unpretending narrative was printed in a collection of voyages published in Paris in 1681.
Marquette returned and preached the gospel to the Miamis around Chicago. An autograph map which was about this time prepared by him, giving the route of his explorations and the geography of the Lake region, as the understood, was deposited in St. Mary’s College at Montreal. It has been preserved to the present time, an interesting relie of the past. A facsimile of the main part of this map forms a part
of this page.
Marquette’s Map.
This map was evidently intended to show the route and the extent of the explorations of Marquette and Joliet. In the full sized autograph, the Mississippi is only traced as far south as the mouth of the Arkansas, the limit of their discovery. This river was named at that time River de la Conception; afterwards it was named by La Salle, Colbert, from the name of his patron, the French Minister of Finance. The route traced from the Illinois to the Lake, seems to represent a continuous stream joining the Lake at Chicago. It is probable that Marquette may have supposed that there was a connecting river between the two; for in early times, in high water, persons have been known to have passed in canoes from the South Chicago Branch, through the s lough north of the Canal, formerly known as Mud Lake, thence to the Des Plaines, and down that river to the Illinois. And it is very probable that when Marquette returned this way, it was by these high water streams. Lake Michigan was then called Lake Illinois, from the tribe in the middle part of the State, which they supposed at the time to be located on the lake. The eastern shore of Lake Michigan, as well as the southern shore of Lake Huron, were then unexplored, and their boundaries only traced by dotted lines.
Marquette after this seems to have spent his labors with the Indians around the head of Lake Michigan, probably visiting occasionally his favorite Illinois, and returning to his old scene of labors about St. Mary’s. On the 18th of May, in the year 167õ, as he was passing with his boatmen on one of his trips up Lake Michigan to Mackinaw, he proposed to land at the mouth of one of the rivers on the Michigan shore, to perform mass. He went a little way apart from his men to pray. He had entertained a pre-sentiment that he should soon die, and his canoe-men remembering what he had said, as he staid longer than they supposed necessary, they sought him, and found him dead where he had been to pray. They dug a grave in the sand on the beach at the mouth of the river, and buried him there, where his body would have been exposed by the floods of the river. Charlevoix, another French traveler, visited the spot fifty years after, and found that the stream had cut through a high bluff, and left the grave of the lonely missionary undisturbed, the waters retiring, as he superstitiously affirms, in awe of the remains of the good man. This is the river Marquette, called so from his name. His body was afterwards taken up, found to be in a perfect state of preservation, and removed with all the pomp and state of the barbarian life in those times, accompanied by a large crowd of natives, and a number of hundreds of canoes, which conveyed the remains to the Mission at the Point of St. Ignace, on the main land north of the Island of Mackinaw, and there deposited them in the tomb of the Chapel.
This exploration of Marquette and Joliet, aroused a deep interest in the West among the French people in Canada, and France. It had now become a matter of national importance to extend their discoveries, and the government was willingly enlisted to further any future enterprises of the kind. At this time there dwelt near the outlet of Lake Ontario an enterprising and enthusiastic young man of noble family, who was destined to fill an important place on the theatre of Western development,—Robert de La Salle. On his descent from the upper lakes, Joliet had passed by the walls of Fort Frontenac—now Kingston-where La Salle resided, telling the news of his discoveries. La Salle was the man of all the world to be inflamed at the recital of such intelligence, and to enter with all his soul into the future which that emergency required. Already had he gained the sympathy of his government by the explorations on Lake Erie, and the persevering urgency of his views of a passage across the Continent to China and the East Indies, and the connection of the French possessions by the establishment of a line of forts from Ontario to New Orleans, and had received a grant of the fortifications and lands about Frontenac, by letters patent. He immediately repaired to France, and by his own and the influence of the Governor General of Canada, with Colbert, the Minister of Finance, he had an audience with the king. He obtained a monopoly of the traffic in skins with the Indians, and a commission for perfecting the discovery of the Mis-sissippi. On the 14th of July, 1678, he sailed from France to Quebec, with his lieutenant ToNtI, an Italian, and thirty men, destined for the explorations in the West. He arrived at fort Frontenac, his home, in the latter part of the month of September, 1678. Here he was soon after joined by Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar, of the Recollet order.
This person proved to be a man of great ambition, energetic and daring, but unprincipled, caring more for the attainment of his own great ends than the truth. He was appointed by his religious superiors to accompany La Salle, and joining him in October, participated in the preliminary arrangements for the journey. These two men, by whom the great harvest sown by Marquette, was to be reaped, were of an entirely different character from their predecessors. La Salle was a man of honor, withal a man of the world, moved by wordly ambition, the desire to make to himself a great name, and with his reputation gain wealth; and we have no evidence that he cared any thing for the desire to save souls which had actuated Allouez and Marquette. The religious character of the expedition was sustained in the person of Hennepin, as before mentioned: The ideas of the French government were unquestionably better served in these two men—and it is no wonder that their labors have made a more decided impression upon the current events of the world.
La Salle sent men forward to prepare the minds of the Indians in advance for his contemplated settlements, line of forts, and the opening of a system of trade with them in furs, &c. On the 18th of November he embarked in a vessel or canoe, of ten tons burthen, said to be the first wooden ship which sailed on Lake Ontario. He was a month in making a passage as far as Niagara Falls. He transported his stores around the Falls to an Iroquois village on Lake Eric, and established there a magazine and fort. During the winter and spring he here built a large vessel, called the Griffin, which was destined for the upper lake trade. It was the 7th of August, 1679, after many delays and misfortunes which seemed ever upon his track, before this vessel, the first that ever sailed over Erie, Huron and Lake Michigan, was ready to depart. He made a successful trip, though “troubled by dreadful storms,” seeking shelter on the 27th of August in the harbor of Michilimackinac (Mackinaw). Here he founded a fort. He proceeded to Green Ba: send her back with a cargo of this kind of merchandise for a new supply of stores and articles for traffic with the Indians. Tonti was sent to the various mission stations to gather up stragglers to fill up the expedition, for the proposed Mississippi exploration, to join him at the head of the lake. He was nearly six weeks in making the trip in canoes from Green Bay to the mouth of the St. Joseph, on the Michigan side of the Lake, arriving there the first of November. Here he built a fort. Hearing nothing from the Griffin, he started from this place, on his “glorious undertaking,” ascending the St. Joseph to its shortest portage from the upper branches of that stream to the The-au-ki-ki (the Kankakee),-making a detour completely around the head of Lake Michigan—finding a cut-off of the natural route through Chicago! He descended the Kankakee to the main channel of the Illinois, and about the last of December reached a village of the Illinois Indians, near the town of Ottawa, of about one hundred cabins, the inhabitants then being absent. Here he supplied himself with corn from their stores, and proceeded on his way. At this Indian village ToNTi afterwards built a fort, and the locality is now known as Rock Fort. This is a rocky elevation six miles south of Ottawa, being sixty or seventy feet perpendi-eular on three sides, and containing about six hundred acres surface. On the 4th of January, 1680, they entered the head of Peoria Lake, meeting with natives in large numbers. They were received hospitably, and spent some time with them. Being pleased with his intercourse with the natives, and fearing the influence of adjoining tribes in disturbing the amicable relations between them, La Salle resolved upon making a stop here, and building another fort. Thus far the expedition had been under a cloud. His own enterprising genius had alone sustained his cause. The little ship, with a rich cargo of furs in which his fortune was in-vested, was evidently lost on its return trip,—for it was never heard of afterwards. His men were getting discontented, and there were signs of mutiny and a dissolution of the corps of explorers. He built the fort, and the state of his own feelings under this pressure may be learned from the name given to that fort—Crevecœur (Broken Heart). In this desperate extremity, he did all that was in the power of man to do, to preserve his scheme from ruin. He organized the Mississippi exploration party, and appointed Hennepin to its head, who in February proceeded down the Illinois, turned up the Mississippi, and followed its course towards its source, to the Falls of St. Anthony at least, for they were rightly located and described by him, and then received the name which they have ever borne. This. party were taken captives by the Indians, and roaming through those distant wilds during the Summer, returned in the Autumn of 1680 to the mission at Green Bay.
La Salle, leaving a portion of his men in the best condition possible under the circumstances, at Fort Crevecour, in the month of March, with musket, pouch for powder and shot, and skins for moccasins, set out with three of his companions on foot, for Fort Frontenac, at the outlet of Lake Ontario, for the purpose of obtaining a new supply of men and means to prosecute his “glorious enterprise” to its completion. What a journey was that to be made on foot, even in this day, with civilized men covering the whole course!-then a pathless wilderness, the season, the time of snow and overflowing streams and marshes, through dark forests, through intricate thickets and tangled wildwood, with no food but such as their guns could supply, and through tribes of savage men and haunts of wild beasts, with no other protection than those guns and their own arms could afford. His route was for fifteen hundred miles along the southern shores of Lakes Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, through a tract never before traveled by white men. At home he found his worst fears realized. His vessel was lost, his agents had cheated him, and his goods had been seized by creditors. But he was not crushed. He gathered up a new supply of goods and provisions, and another company of men, and arrived at his posts again on the Illinois river, in December or January, 1681, finding them deserted. His faithful associate ToNTi had been left in command; and, according to orders, had constructed the post at Rock Fort, before mentioned, which was called St. Louis. But evil disposed Indians, of other tribes, had roused suspicion among the quiet Illinois, and the Iroquois making inroads upon them, he was at length compelled to abandon his posts, and flee to Lake Michigan for protection among the Pottawatomies and Miamis. LA SALLe was therefore again compelled to return back. He met with ToNtI at length, at Mackinaw, where, gathering up again their scattered company and a new outfit of supplies, they turned again to the south, to the final successful issue of their expedition. When all things were ready, the company, consisting of twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen Indians, and ten women and their children as followers, they started from St. Joseph, (not as before by the Kankakee,) but this time by the Chicago river, traveling on foot over the portage, conveying their baggage on sledges. The passage of this company by this route, is the occasion of the first mention ever made in history of Chicago by name. In the narrative of this trip, given at its termination, in the document called the Proces Verbal of the taking possession of the territory of Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi, when the great valley was transformed into a part of the territory of France, the following passage occurs:—” On the 27th of December, 1681, M. de La Salle departed on foot to join M. de Tonti, who had preceded him with his followers and all his equipage, forty leagues into the Miamis’ country, when the ice on the river Chekagou, in the country of the Mascoutens, had arrested his progress, and where, when the ice became stronger, they used sledges to drag the baggage, the canoes, and a wounded Frenchman, through the whole length of this river and on the Illinois, a distance of seventy leagues.”
It was about the ith of January, 1682, when they thus passed over the Chicago river, Tonti having waited here for La SaLLe and for the freezing up of the river, so that they might get their baggage through on the ice. They pursued the course directly down the Mississippi; and on the 6th of April, discovered the three passages by which this river discharges its waters into the Gulf; and on the 8th, at a dry place, at its confluence with the sea, took place the formal process of annexation, mentioned in the Proces Verbal, before alluded to.
Neither our limits nor our sphere of narrative, as the antecedent history of Chicago, will allow us to follow further the fortunes of La Salle; his romantic adventures and final assassination, in the lower Mississippi country.
We have, as briefly as possible, traced the origin and progress of the first French settlements so far as they encircled Chicago in their current of influence, or have developed the country of which this city is confessedly the center of attraction. The discoveries and primitive settlements of Allouez, Marquette, Joliet, Hennepin and La Salle, placed all the West, for a time, under the dominion of the French, in contrast with the possession of the Atlantic Colonies by the English. It was a part of the great plan of the French Government, in organizing these explorations, as we have before stated, to secure the ascendancy of their jurisdiction here, by hemming in the English colonies; to maintain possession by their chain of settlements, and to perpetuate their power by an alliance with the Indians, und by establishing military posts along the whole line of their possessions. To this end, we know that in a short time after the expeditions of La Salle, just mentioned, the plan which he began was so far carried out that there were posts on Lake Erie—at Detroit, at Mackinaw, at St. Joseph, Chicago, St. Louis, at Rock Fort, Crevecœur below Peoria, Fort Char-tres, Fort Massac on the Ohio, not far above its mouth,-also, forts on the lower Missis-sippi; and, as we have good evidence, settlements with military and mission stations, along the Illinois, at Green Bay, Milwaukee, on the shore of Lake Superior, St. Mary’s, and other places-for good authority has identified thirty-five military forts extending along this line of communication, from Fort Frontenae to New Orleans.
Soon after the expeditions of La Salle, the colonial warfares commenced, and were fed almost incessantly by the conflicts of hostile tribes, thus putting a check to the growth of settlements in the far West-and Chicago, for the period from 1681 to 1795, more than one hundred years, during the time of the French possession, and after its cession to the English, has almost perished from history. French settlements were maintained in Southern Illinois, where we have a country as old as any of the Eastern States; but Northern Illinois remained the hunting ground of the red men, the home of the Indian, till after this State, sustained by a population in the Southern portion, kept up by emigration by way of the Ohio and Southern rivers, was admitted into the Union. During this time, we only know from incidental circumstances, that in these dark days of French possession, there was a fort near the mouth of our river,-that there were Indian villages at the Calumet, and on the Des Plaines-that here were the roving grounds of the Pottawatomies-and that from the head waters of the Illinois to the Chicago River, was the common portage for the trade and transit of the goods and furs between the Indians and the traders from the Illinois River and the Lakes, and that the shipping place for these goods was from the port here at Chicago. The few white men who came here, were here not for the purpose of making settlements or the material for history, but simply as transient traders, to gain what they could in a rude traffic for furs and skins. These men, of course, had little or no use for education beyond keeping accounts, and could not be expected to leave any traces of adventure. This state of things continued till the close of the general Western Indian war, soon after the termination of the war of the Revolution. The Indians were first excited to commit depredations upon each other and upon the French or English settlers by the intrigues of the French and the English against each other, until at length the French were conquered. Not long after this occurred the war of the colonists against the English for independence-and English intrigue still stirred up this border Indian war-fare; and so embittered did it become, that after peace was declared, it broke out in a general war of the Western Indians against the United States. This war was continued till the year 1795, when, having been effectually chastised by Gen. Wayne, the chiefs of the several tribes assembled by his invitation at Greenville, Ohio, and there effected a treaty of peace, which closed the war of the West. In this treaty the Indians ceded to the United States numerous small tracts of land, where forts and trading posts were established. Among these was one described as “One piece of land, six miles square, at the mouth of Chickajo (Chicago) River, emptying into the south-west end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood.” In the same treaty, a free passage by land or water, is secured from the mouth of Chicago River to the commencement of the portage between that river and the Illinois, and down the Illinois to the Mississippi. In this treaty is contained the first land trade of this city, the first step in that order of business which distinguishes Chicago above every other city of the nation, the first link in the chain of title to the thousands upon thousands of transfers that have been made of the soil thus parted with by the Indians.
Not many years passed after this “tract and parcel of land,” six miles square, had been ceded to the United States, ere the energetic proprietors thought it practicable to enter upon actual possession. A trade was already established with the Indians, which
needed protection; and in those regions remote from civilization, peace could not well be maintained among the tribes, without a show of that restraining force which was at command. Accordingly, in 1804, the government built the first United States fort occupying this locality. It stood nearly on the site of the fort erected in 1816, and finally demolished in the summer of 1856. It was somewhat different in its structure from its successor. It had two block houses, one on the south-east corner, the other at the north-west. On the north side was a sally-port, or subterranean passage, leading from the parade ground to the river, designed as a place of escape in an emergency, or for supplying the garrison with water in time of a siegc. The whole was enclosed by a strong palisade of wooden pickets. At the west of the fort, and fronting north on the river, was a two-story log building, covered with split oak siding, which was the United States factory, attached to the fort. On the shore of the river, between the fort and the factory, were the root houses, or cellars of the garrison. The ground adjoining the fort on the south side, was enclosed and cultivated as a garden. The fort was furnished with three pieces of light artillery. A company of United States troops, about fifty in number, many of whom were invalids, constituted the garrison. It received the name of Fort Dearborn, by which it was ever after known as long as it continued a military post. Such was the old fort previous to 1812. Through the kindness of Mrs. J. H. KiNziE, who furnished the sketch, we are enabled to present a view of this Fort as it appeared previous to that year.
This furt stood upon the slightly elevated point on the south side of the river, near the lake shore, formed by a bend in the river just before mingling its waters with those of the lake. We see by the course of the river as it now appears, where it has not been materially changed by the work of improvement in the harbor, that just before reaching the ground of the old fort, it takes a turn to the north until opposite the fort, then coursing directly cast into the lake, forms the mouth of the harbor. This latter part, from a point north of the fort directly to the lake, is a channel cut by the Engincers of the government in 1833, to make the harbor of Chicago. Previously, the channel continued in its circular course, around the elevation on which the fort stood, half surrounding it, and flowing southerly, parallel with the lake shore, for nearly half a mile, till at last it lost itself in the lake, its mouth being choked by sand bars, obstructing the entrance of the smallest class of sail vessels. On the left bank, passing up the river, was a long low strip of land, a sandy beach and drifting sand bars, which had been formed in past days by the combined action of the two currents of the lake and river, it being the barrier or dividing ridge between the two. This tongue of land, reaching far south against our present Michigan Avenue front, was an elongated appendage of the North Side, and could only be reached by crossing at some point the Chicago river. When to open the mouth of the harbor, the channel was cut through this tongue of land, and the piers were erected, the current of the lake, caused probably by the prevalent winds which had formerly turned the channel of the river south, and had piled up this sandy barrier between them, striving still to do its will, soon filled up the open space north of the pier, and at the same time rapidly swept away, the remains of this belt, and made sad encroachments on the main land, until the fine Lake Park, an endowment to the city, extending from the old fort grounds to the next section line, nearly a mile in length, had been nearly swept away. And the encroachment steadily progressed against all the plans and piling of lake shore property owners, until arrested by the heavy stone crib work of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, laid as a protection to their track on the lake shore.
This fort then occupied one of the most beautiful sites on the lake shore. It was as high as any other point, overlooking the surface of the lake; commanding as well as any other view on this flat surface could, the prairie extending to the south, the belt of timber along the South Branch and on the North Side, and the white sand hills both to the north and south, which had for ages past been the sport of the lake winds. It stood upon a flattened mound, formed by the curve of the river at its base on its three sides. On the apex of this mound-shaped elevation stood the buildings of the old fort, its two block houses on opposite corners, enclosed by palisades, and a green grassy slope extending each way, and on the north and east side down to the edge of the ever quiet waters of Chicago river.
Up to the time of the erection of this fort no white man had made here his home.
The Pottawatomie Indians had here undisputed sway. Their villages were near by. In addition to the garrison, there soon gathered here a few families of French, Canadians and half-breeds, consisting of that floating class which hang about a military post, or an Indian trading station. Whatever there was of civilized society, which has connected those days of the past in a bright chain of identity with the present, was sustained in the Kinzie family. And such was the nucleus of a community formed in the center of the North-West, but half a century ago, shut out from communication with all the world, except by the waters of the lakes, passed over but once or twice a year by a single sail vessel; or by Indian trails to other almost as isolated communities, at St. Louis, Detroit, or Fort Wayne. It was certainly a way-mark in the wilderness far in advance of civilization. They were a little world unto themselves. They pursued in an even way, the narrow routine of pioneer life, furnishing few incidents of sufficient note to fill up a page of history, from the time of the erection of this fort, till the one great incident, which blotted it out and its little surrounding community, the massacre in 1812.
The author of Waubun, remarks as the naive saying of the Indians, “the first white man who settled here was a negro.” Point-au-Sable, a native of St. Domingo, from a life of wandering, made his advent here among the Indians in 1796, as a character of some consequence. He had made the Indians believe he had been a chief among the white men and probably expected some such honor among his new friends. He made some improvements, merely driving the pre-emption stakes of civilization,-when he left in disgust or discouragement, and ended his days with Clamorgan, at Peoria, a St. Domingo negro friend, who had obtained large Spanish grants of land about St. Louis. A Frenchman by the name of Le Mai took possession of Point-au-Sable’s improvements, and commenced trading with the Indians. Le Mai’s establishment, a few years after was purchased by JoHn KiNzte, Esq., then an Indian trader in the St.. Joseph country, Michigan, who came with his family to Chicago to reside, in 1804, the year in which the fort was built. Jonn KInziE was the first permanent white resident of Chicago, the first man to establish permanent trade, and improvements, and to leave the impress of his enterprise and the marks of civilization on the first things from which Chicago has sprung. For nearly twenty years he was with the exception of the military, the only white inhabitant of Northern Illinois. If any person is entitled to the honor of being styled the Fate of Chicago, that person is unquestionably John Kinzie.
John Kinzie was born in Quebec, Lower Canada, in the year 1763. He was the only child of his mother by a second marriage. His father died when he was but an infant.
His mother married for her third husband, a Mr. Forsyth, and removed with him and her young son, to New York city. John was educated at a school at Williamsburg, Long Island.
While quite young he left his home, without the knowledge of his moth-
er, and traveled alone to Quebec, to fulfill a long-formed determination of visiting his native place. Here he found a protector, and in his family a home for three years, before being discovered by his parents. On removing from New York to the West, by way of Quebec, they accidentally found their long lost child. He moved with them to Detroit, where he commenced at an early age his adventurous life as a pioneer in the West. His taste led him, as he grew older, to live much of his time on the frontier. He entered early into the Indian trade, and at first established trading posts at Sandusky and Maumee. About the year 1800, he had so far extended his operations, that he opened establishments in the St. Joseph’s country, the region bordering upon the river by that name, which empties into Lake Michigan from the east, nearly opposite Chicago. In this year he married Mrs. McKillip, the widow of a British officer, and this lady was the mother of JoIN H. KINzIE, Esq., our present respected citizen. His place of residence in Michigan, was at Betrand, a trading post near Niles, which was known by the term, Pare aux Vaches. In the year 1804, when the first fort was built, he removed to Chicago, to make here his home, still prosecuting the Indian trade. He was also sutler to the fort.
Mr. Kinzie made the point at Chicago, the center of an extended system of trade with the Indians. He established posts at several distant points, which he sustained from the central one here, and from which he received large stocks of furs, contributing to the stores of the general depot, until shipped off by the vessels that came here semiannually for the purpose; and keeping up the supply of goods necessary for the trade.
He had a station at Milwaukee among the Menominees; another at Rock River for the Winnebagoes, arother on the Illinois and Kankakee Rivers with the Pottawotamies, and other stations in the Sangamo country, then called Le Large, and on the head waters of the Kaskaskia, for the Kickapoos. Each of these stations had its superintendent, and corps of operators called engages; and its trains of pack horses and equipment of boats and canoes. And by means and conveyances like these, were the furs and peltries, which had accumulated at the several stations, brought to Chicago, and the goods necessary to the “balance of trade,” transported in return. Many goods were sent up the Illinois river, from as low as St Louis, gathered up from the Indians along the course of the Mississippi as well as the Illinois, and were taken across the portage between this latter river and the lake, by cattle teams. Chicago was thus made the depot of this carrying trade, which was the slow pace progress of the preceeding gene-ration; the present generation proving its right to the claim of being a fast people by its rail cars running over the same track plodded by old John Kinzie’s cattle team, driven by Ouilemette and his successors, from 1804 to 1820. The lake trade was at the same time carried on by a small sail vessel, coming in the fall and spring, bringing the season’s supply of goods and stores for the fort, and taking away the accumulated stock of furs and peltries. Such was the character and extent of the first regular business established in Chicago. At the head of this trade was John Kinzie, senior. He, without interruption, and with few incidents to change its routine, pursued his line of business from 1804, till the breaking out of hostilities with the Indians, which resulted in the massacre of 1812. By his uniformly consistent, kind and straightforward course with the Indians, he gained their confidence, and bound himself to them in strong ties of friendship, to which he was indebted for the preservation of himself and family, from the horrid fate of his white neighbors of the fort, at the time of the massacre. After the close of the war, he returned again to Chicago, and re-opened the trade with the Indians. Here he continued to reside till his death in 1828.
Mr. Kinzie’s residence was the first house built in Chicago. A part of it was the same rude structure put up by the so called first white man, the negro Jean Baptiste Point-au-Sable, about the year 1796. It was enlarged and improved by LE Mal, of whom Mr. KiNziE purchased, who further improved it, internaliy and externally, until he made it a respectable family mansion. It stood on the north side of the river, fronting the fort. Between this house and the fort, there was kept up a foot ferry, and a little boat swung in the stream awaiting the pleasure of any passenger. A foot path on each side, from the gate of the fort, or the door of the mansion, to the platforms at the water edge, from which the passenger stepped into the boat, marked the course of travel from one side to the other. This ferry occupied nearly the same crossing as the iron bridge structure now in process of erection, in the place of the Lake House Ferry. Mrs. Kinzie describes the house as a long low building, with a piazza extending along its front, a range of four or five rooms. A broad green space was inclosed between it and the river, and shaded by a row of Lombardy poplars. Two large cotton wood trees stood in the rear, one of which still remains, though seared and dry, as it died last year, a perishing land-mark of the early days. A well cultivated garden extended to the north, at the rear of the dwelling. Surrounding this “first house,” were a variety of out buildings, such as the primitive wants, and the condition of the family required, as dairy, bake-house, stables, and lodging rooms for the Frenchmen and attaches of the trading post. North of the homestead and along the lake shore, which then was considerably inland of the present shore, was a low range of sand-hills, sprinkled over with stunted cedars, pines, and dwarf-willows. This was the boyhood home of John H.Kinzie. Here he resided to the age of eight years, when the family home was broken up by the Indians, at the time of the destruction of the fort. This scenery of his early life, is now impressed upon his mind in a vivid living picture. In the language uttered by him in casual conversation upon those early times of Chicago and his own life-every feature of the old home is distinct in his recollection. The Lombardy poplars which perished long ago, and the cotton woods which were but saplings, and trees planted by his own hands, which have stood until the more recent days as mementoes of the past-the rough hewn logs which formed the walls of his home, the garden and its shrubbery, the fence paling that surrounded it, and the green lawn at the front of the house gently descending to the water of the river—the tiny boat floating idly at the foot of the walk—and as the crowning mark of this picture, stood unon the opposite shore, upon the highest part of the elevation, the old fort, the whitewashed walls of the block houses, the barracks and the palisades, glistening in the bright sun; while a gentle slope of fine green grass extended from the enclosure to the very water brink. It was a beautiful sight. Over all this rose the few pulsations of human progress as seen in an occasional stray Indian with his canoe, or pony, and pack of furs; a French Canadian loitering here and there; a soldier pacing his rounds about the fort, or idly strolling over the prairies, or hunting in the woods. There was a deep repose in all this scenery, a quietness, which it was impossible to conceive could have been superceded within half a century by one of the busiest cities in the national Union.
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