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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
A TAY, LINDE AMA TILDEN YOUN ATSHAS L
A. J. Naturmano
HISTORICAL REVIEW
OF
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
AND SELECTED BIOGRAPHY
A. N. WATERMAN, A. B., LL. D. EDITOR AND AUTHOR OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
VOLUME I
ILLUSTRATED
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK
1908
PUBLIC 206294B
ASTOR, LEY'S AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS 1849
R
PREFACE
The three volumes which are herewith presented to the public under the title of "Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County, and Selected Biography." represent the results of the labors which have been bestowed upon this undertaking since the plan was orig- inally announced.
In addition to the "Historical Review," the prospectus announced the publication of a collection of individual biographies of citizens whose attainments and positions give them a distinction that is acknowledged without question.
The reader will find that this original plan has been broadened with the progress of the work. Special articles are published on the Chicago of today, and the scope of the entire work has been so enlarged that the volumes might afford a commentary on the history of this community that can be found in no other publication.
The high character of form and content, maintained throughout the work, is in accordance with the original plan and is befitting the general subject here treated. The mechanical features of the publi- cation leave nothing to be desired. The volumes are bound in durable covers of rich material, the engraving and typographical work are high class, and the quality of excellence has been emphasized in every phase of preparation.
THE PUBLISHERS.
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
H Consideration of the Influences That have Made Chicago, and the Promise as to Its future
BY A. N. WATERMAN
So far as is known, Jean Nicollet, a native of Cherbourg, France. was the first white man who sailed or looked upon the waters of Lake Michigan. Nicollet had been some twenty years NICOLLET. in Canada, during the greater portion of which he had lived with the Indians and become thor- oughly habituated to their mode of life. Rumors of a strange peo- ple without hair or beard who came from the West to trade at a large village located upon the banks of Fox river in Wisconsin, had reached the French authorities in Canada, and thither, in 1634, Nicol- let, who had for a time been an interpreter at Three Rivers, was sent as an ambassador with instructions to learn the character of the people "without hair or beard who came from the West," and the route by which they had voyaged to the large village upon the banks of the Fox. The Canadian authorities thought the beardless traders to be Chinese or Japanese, and Nicollet carried with him a ceremo- nial robe of damask silk embroidered with birds and flowers. Leav- ing Three Rivers, Canada, in July, 1634, that or the succeeding year he passed across the northern waters of Lake Michigan and down Green Bay to the mouth of Fox river, which he ascended to the portage between it and the Wisconsin, from whence he may have gone down to the Mississippi. He seems to have visited the Pottawato- mies and the Illinois Indians, and to have made a treaty with the Winnebagoes.
Vol. I-1.
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
The Jesuits, whose zeal and courage as missionaries have never been exceeded, in 1660 founded a mission at Keeweenaw Bay on Lake Superior, but Chicago is not known to have been reached by any of the indefatigable order or any white man until the coming of Mar- quette in 1674. The fur traders of Montreal were equally energetic, but far less scrupulous and actuated by different motives in their ex- plorations and dealings with the Indians. Many agents of the trad- ers adopted the life and habits of the Indians-lived with them in their wigwams, journied, fished, hunted and intermarried with them. Known as "Coureurs des bois", they were in most instances the first white men who looked upon the lakes, rivers, plains and forests of this great region. They found here a situation such as will never again be presented to the gaze of man-a most fertile domain equal- ing in extent half of Europe, without cultivation and unoccupied save by a few thousand savages. That before the coming of Marquette, some of these traders and adventurers, for whom the unexplored and the unknown had the attraction which in all ages it has possessed, may have wandered to, reposed or laid down to die upon virgin soil now occupied by the city of Chicago, is not only possible, but prob- able.
No complete history of any man or any region has been or will be written. The mystery of the past, the uncertainty of the future. and the incomprehensibility of the present are ever with us.
The written history of Chicago begins with the record kept by Father Marquette, who, with Louis Joliet, starting from Montreal and following the course of the Great Lakes, in the MARQUETTE. spring of 1673, arrived at the head of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Thence up Fox river and from it by a short portage to the Wisconsin, they sailed down the last-named to the Mississippi, which they reached June 17, 1673. Turning south- ward they voyaged upon the great river for more than a week, when, perceiving on the west bank an Indian trail, they disembarked and followed it until they came in sight of three villages. The Indians treated them kindly and gave them a feast of four courses. The next day six hundred of the natives accompanied them back to the Mis- sissippi. Continuing their voyage down the "Father of Waters," passing the Illinois, the Missouri and the Ohio, they reached the Ar- kansaw, where they were again entertained and warned by the In-
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
dians against going farther down the river. Upon the 17th day of July they began the tedious task of return, rowing all day against the swift current, and sleeping at night upon the low and unwhole some shore or in their canoes anchored upon the river. Reaching the Illinois they entered its mouth-Marquette rightly conjecturing that its ascent could be more easily made and thus the lake of the Illinois (Michigan) more quickly reached. Near the present site of the city of Utica they came to an Indian village then called Kaskaskla, con- sisting of seventy-four lodges, whence they were escorted by a band of young Indians to Lake Michigan and, proceeding northward, at the end of September arrived at Green Bay.
October 25, 1674, Marquette with two Frenchmen, Pierre and Jacques, left the mission at Green Bay, intending to go again, as he had promised, to the village of the Kaskaskias. Sailing southward along the west shore of Lake Michigan, about the first of December, they arrived at the Chicago river. Here they seem to have remained until about December 12th. The good father, in the journal he kept, says: "During our stay at the mouth of the river, Pierre and Jacques killed three buffaloes and four deer. * * They con- tented themselves with killing three or four turkeys out of many which came around our cabin." At this time they seem to have been "cabined" about five miles up the river and near where the street now known as Ashland avenue crosses the west fork of the Chicago river. Of this he says: "Being cabined near the portage five miles up the river, we resolved to winter there, *
* being too much encum- bered and my disability not allowing me to fatigue myself too much." At this time there seem to have been two Frenchmen, LaToupine and another who styled himself a surgeon, forty-five miles from where Marquette and his companions had built their cabin. These French- men sent to the voyagers corn and buffalo meat, and in every way en- deavored to be helpful to the black-robed priest. Marquette says : "One may say they have done and said all that could be expected of them: the surgeon having stayed here to perform his devotions." It is evident the "staying" by the surgeon "to perform his devotions," gave Marquette greater joy than the food which the Frenchmen be- stowed. March 23rd Marquette writes: "The Holy Virgin Im- maculate has taken such care of us during our hibernation that we have not been in want of provisions, having still a great bag of grain
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
left, some meat and some grease (lard and tallow mixed), we have also lived very easily, my illness not having prevented me from say- ing the Holy Mass every day ; we have not kept Lent except Fridays and Saturdays."
The foregoing appears to us to be in accordance with the prepon- derance of the evidence. There are those who contend that Father Marquette at no time went up the Chicago river and never made the portage from it to the DesPlaines and thence reached the Illinois; that upon his return from his voyage down the Mississippi he visited a large Indian village near Utica and was by the Illinois Indians guided to the south end of Lake Michigan; that the succeeding year he en- tered the Calumet river and ascended it for a distance of some five miles. However this may be, the first written report we have of the condition of any portion of the territory now occupied by the city of Chicago is by the pen of Father Marquette.
At the time he visited these shores and for more than a century afterwards, the Chicago river near to a place now known as the « southern end of Pine street, turned from its easterly course and ran southward to the present line of Madison street, whence it proceeded to Lake Michigan. North of the Chicago river, the land in the vi- cinity of the lake was then to a considerable extent covered with tim- ber, while to the west of the river there was a good deal of marsh. For nearly a hundred years after the visit of Marquette and the voy- ages to this region of Joliet, LaSalle, Tonti and other distinguished Frenchmen, the country around Lake Michigan, as well as the terri- tory stretching westward to the Pacific, was as unsettled and its few inhabitants as uncivilized as when Marquette first looked upon these shores. Many things contributed to this: First, there was here no demand for lands to till, no push of settlers eager for homes. Most important, perhaps, was the discovery that the Mississippi, instead of turning to the west and emptying into the Gulf of California, contin- ued its southern course and found an outlet in the Gulf of Mexico, thus affording a water communication with Europe, uninterrupted by the ice of a Canadian winter. This known, the Montreal traders had either of two routes to the Father of Waters-the first discov- ered, by way of Green Bay, the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi; the second, a portage from Lake Erie to the Wabash, down it to the Ohio and thence to the mighty, mysterious stream,
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
that, coming from the unknown northwest, seemed by the finger of God designed to hold together the Canadian forests, the fertile west- ern prairies and the warm lands of the south, for the use of the sub- jects of His Christian Majesty, the King of France.
Regret is sometimes expressed that the Indian names of places have not been retained. In great part they have. Beginning with Ohio, nearly all of the northwestern states have Indian names. The principal rivers retain the names given to them by the natives. The French called the most easterly of the great lakes Frontenac, after the great governor of Canada; all-save Superior-of the five great inland bodies of water, have Indian names. The Indians knew noth- ing of writing or spelling; they had no rules for pronunciation. The French gradually adopted some one of the various pronunciations they heard and when they had occasion to write it out, used such let- ters as represented to them the sound of the name given. The vari- ous writers may have heard different pronunciations and may not alike have understood the spoken word. The most we know of the Indian names as spoken by them, two and three hundred years ago, is that our present pronunciation, probably, is a near approach to the name by which many of the red men knew and called the rivers, lakes and lands upon which they sailed and over which they wan- dered before the coming of the pale face.
Chicago, in the old French maps, is most frequently spelled "Che- cagou." The DesPlaines river is sometimes called the Chicago. In Gontan's map of 1703, the name is spelled "Chegakou." Upon a map of the discoveries of LaSalle, near the southwest shore of "Lac des Ilinois" is "Cheagoumenan." Colonel DePeyster, a British officer, in 1779, writing of the place, spells the name "Eschkagou." Lake Michigan is frequently put down as "Lac des Illinois," sometimes with the addition "ou Missihigamin." On a map attached to a his- tory of Canada, this lake is marked "Magnus Lacus Algonquinorum seu Lacus Foetetium." Upon a map made in 1688 Lake Michigan is marked "Lac des Illinois ou Michiganin ou Lac Dauphin."
On a map made in 1688 by Raffeix, Ontario is called "Lac On- tario ou De St. Louis," and beside it is "Lac Erie-Du Chat" ; on an- other map Ontario is called "Lac Ontario ou des Iroquois." The Indians seemed to have called the lake "Ontario" or "Skanidario" (Beautiful Lake). Lake Erie is upon one map called "Lac Erie ou
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
de Conti." Ottawas was sometimes written "Outaouacs." Joliet, when, in company with Marquette, he first saw the Mississippi, called it Buade, in honor of the family name of Governor Frontenac. Descending this to the Ohio, he found this known by the Indians as the Ouabouskigou; the Arkansas he named Bazire after a merchant of Quebec and the Illinois, the Outrelaise, in compliment to a friend of the wife of Frontenac. The river St. Lawrence was known by the Indians as Hochelage.
In 1498 on account of the discoveries made by the Cabots, Great Britain claimed the territory now occupied by Chicago. Later on this territory was claimed and settled by the French. In 1717 by decree of the Royal Council, the country now known as Illinois was placed under the government established by France for Louisiana. In 1765 the claims of Great Britain to this territory were confirmed by treaty with France and a portion of the state of Illinois thus became a part of the English colony of Virginia. In 1774 by the act of Parliament known as the Act of Quebec, the state of Illinois would have become part of the Province of Quebec, but that in 1662, under a charter granted by Charles the Second, the colony of Connecticut was given a strip of territory extending north and south substantially from the 4Ist to the 42nd degree of north latitude (this strip being the width from north to south of the colony of Connecticut), and extending from the west line of the present state of Connecticut to the Pacific ocean, so far as Great Britain had power to grant. This grant in- cluded the region now known as Chicago and extended as far north as Evanston and south to the present south line of Kankakee county.
Under James the Second, an attempt was made to revoke the charter of Connecticut. To prevent this, the charter was hidden in the celebrated tree known as the "Charter Oak" of Hartford, Con- necticut.
The territory now occupied by Chicago was also during and after the Revolutionary war claimed by Virginia, on account of the capture of certain English forts in Illinois and it is said the territory was also claimed by New York on account of the victories by the Iroquois over the Illinois Indians in and about the region now known as LaSalle county.
Long after the discovery of this continent, all men in the new- found world were divided into two classes-white men and Indians;
DAVID HENRY & CO .* IMPORTED
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATION* R L
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
it was and is, therefore, quite correct to say, as the Indians did, that the first white inhabitant of Chicago was a negro, Jean Babtiste Point de Saible, described as a large man, a trader, and pretty wealthy, said to have been born in St. Domingo and to have gone from there to Peoria, living with the Indians until about the year 1779. when he came to Chicago and here built a cabin on the north bank of the river, between where it turned to the south and its mouth. He is spoken of as our first landed proprietor-his cabin appearing to have been the first house built in Chicago. After living here seventeen years, he sold his cabin to one Le Mai, a French trader, and returned to Peoria, where he died; the cabin was in 1804 purchased from Le Mai by Mr. John Kinzie.
That Chicago was included in the treaty by which Great Britain acknowledged the independence of her revolted colonies is due to George Rogers Clark, who, in 1778, went from Kentucky to Vir- ginia to obtain authority and assistance for wresting from the English, . Fort Chartres, Kaskaskia and Vincennes in Illinois. Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, made him a colonel with authority to en- list recruits, and supplied him with arms, ammunition and other nec- essaries. Over the mountains Colonel Clark marched to the Monon- gahela, whence he proceeded by boat to within a short distance of the Mississippi, where he disembarked and marched to Kaskaskia, halt- ing a few miles above the town. July 4th, 1778, he advanced upon, surprised and captured it in the evening after dark. The French town of Vincennes surrendered to one of his lieutenants shortly aft- erwards. Thus all of Illinois came for a time under the control of the revolted colonies. Colonel Hamilton, the commander of the English forces at Detroit, afterwards recaptured Vincennes, and Clark, in February, 1779, marched from Kaskaskia to capture Ham- ilton. In the evening of the 23rd, Colonel Clark marched into Vin- cennes and firing began. In the afternoon of the next day the fort in which Hamilton's force was entrenched surrendered. The posses- sion thus acquired was recognized in the treaty of peace made at the conclusion of the war and Chicago thus ceased to be British territory.
How many people know that Clark street, upon which the court house of Cook county stands, was named after George Rogers Clark ? Ought not the state of Illinois to erect a monument to the memory of
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
the heroic soldier, but for whom its soil would have remained a part of the empire of Great Britain?
In 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States her rights over the territory northwest of the Ohio river, and in 1787, by act of congress, a territorial government was created, the ordinance providing for the future division of the territory into not more than five nor less than three states. This ordinance, as affecting the destiny of Chicago, is next in importance to the capture by Colonel Clark of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, for in it was contained the provision that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory other- wise than in punishment of crimes whereof the offender shall have been duly convicted."
There may have been a fort on the Chicago river prior to 1803. Franquelin, a young French engineer in Quebec, in the seventeenth century, from sketches and reports of early explorers, made a num- ber of maps of the western territory claimed by France. One of these, said to have been prepared in 1688, has upon the southwestern border of "Lac des Illinois" (Michigan), at the mouth of a small stream coming from the northwest and emptying into the lake, a designation with the words "Fort Checagou."
An agent of the state of Pennsylvania, appointed in 1718, seems to have mentioned in his report a fort, not regularly garrisoned, at the mouth of the "River Chicagou." By the treaty of peace made at Greenville, Ohio, in August, 1795, the Indians ceded to the United States various tracts and among others "one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago river emptying into the south- west end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood."
At the building of Fort Dearborn, an Indian agency house was built for the use of United States Indian agents, and in 1805 Charles Jouett, a native of Virginia, an educated and for a time a practicing lawyer, was appointed agent. He had been for a season, under ap- pointment by President Jefferson, Indian agent at Detroit. He was a man of great muscular strength and entire integrity, who enjoyed the confidence of three presidents and was faithful to every trust re- posed in him. The government of the United States instituted the factory system of supplying the Indians with useful articles, with- holding whisky from and giving to them a fair equivalent for the furs they had to sell. In doing this the government was principally
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
actuated by motives of philanthropy and expediency. It was also moved to the course it took by a belief that the white traders made immense profits which could and should be received by the national treasury. That governments can make money by going into mercan- tile business has been for centuries and still is a cherished faith that "springs eternal in the human breast." The United States govern- ment could and did make laws designed to secure for itself a mo- nopoly of the trade; it had unlimited capital and unequaled opportu- nity for security in the carriage of goods to the red men and furs from them to the markets in the far east; but it could not and did not make the business pay expenses, not even by excluding the sal- aries of agents from the item of expense. The system, after some twenty years of trial, proved a failure.
In July, 1803, Captain John Whistler, with a company consisting, December 3, 1803, in all of 69 men, came to the mouth of the "Chi-
FORT cago river" and at a place then having no other name, in that year built "Fort Dearborn." At this DEARBORN. time there were in Chicago but four cabins; three of these were occupied by French traders with their Indian wives. Up to 1812 there was little change in the condition of this small frontier post. In that year, on the 18th of June, under long-con- tinued provocation, such that a renunciation of independence and an incorporation into the British empire would have been prefer- able to its endurance, the United States declared war against Great Britain. The British government had long been expecting the declara- tion, and its agents had been studiously ingratiating themselves with the Indians, with a view to their assistance in the impending war with the United States. The Indians had for some years been under British influence and received presents from agents of the Eng- lish authorities each year.
Reports of murders of settlers by Indians became frequent. Upon a farm near to Chicago, two members of the Lee family were mur- dered by Winnebagoes ; a son and an employe of Mr. Lee escaped by pretending to be going to feed the cattle. That night all the settlers around the fort remained within its walls. The Indians prowled about for several nights, but nothing came of this other than the loss of a few sheep. August 9, 1812, a special messenger brought orders from General Hull for Captain Heald to dispose of the public prop-
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CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
erty as he thought best, abandon the fort and march to Detroit. On the 13th Captain Wells, Indian agent at Fort Wayne, arrived with thirty friendly Miamis for the purpose of assisting Captain Heald on his march to Detroit. On the night of the 13th, all the ammuni- tion and such muskets as could not be carried were destroyed; the whisky on hand was thrown into the lake; at the same time the stores of blankets, broadcloths, paints, calicoes, etc., were distributed to the Indians in accordance with a previous agreement that they would furnish an escort of safety. ' At nine o'clock on the morning of the 15th the march began, Captain Wells, with fifteen of his friendly Miamis, leading, the other fifteen Miamis being in the rear. The women and children rode in wagons or on horse back. Mr. Kinzie marched with the soldiers. As soon as all were out of the fort, the Pottawatomies rushed in, set the fort on fire and began to shoot the cattle. The little band proceeded along the shore of the lake for about a mile and a half, some four or five hundred Indians behind a low ridge of sand to the west, accompanying the column. The women and children had reached the place where Prairie avenue and Eight- eenth street now are, when Captain "Wells perceived that an attack was about to be made; an attempt to prevent this failed, the defen- sive force was divided, the Miamis fled, and the Pottawatomies ob- tained possession of the wagons and baggage. A hand-to-hand con- flict ensued, the savages killing many of the women and children. A remnant of survivors succeeded in gaining an elevation on the prairie, to which the Indians did not follow. The Indians having made signs for Captain Heald to come forward, he did, and an agree- ment was made under which the whites surrendered upon a promise by the Indians to spare their lives. Of the number who had left the fort, only twenty-five men and eleven women and children remained; the loss of the Indians was about fifteen. Captain Heald gives the number of whites killed as thirty-eight soldiers, two women and twelve children.
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