USA > Illinois > Chapters from Illinois history > Part 22
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23
293
294
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
several days, and only suffered to proceed at the will of a petty officer of another nation. Such was the situation during the American Revolution, after Spain had been induced by France in 1779 to take part in the war against Great Britain. She soon made herself mistress of the English posts at Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Mobile, and on these conquests based a claim to the region east of the Mississippi, at least as far as the River Ohio, and at the period now in question was preparing to strengthen her pretensions and to include in them what we know as the Northwest.
The Spanish capital of what was afterwards known as Upper Louisiana was the little village of St. Louis, founded as a trading post by the French in 1764. The Spaniards enclosed it with a stockade and some stone fortifications, by reason of the attack made upon the place in 1780 by the English and Indians from Michilli- mackinac.3 Its governor in the year of grace 1781 was Don Francesco Cruvat, Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel of Infantry, Captain in the Regiment of Louisiana, Com- mander and Lieutenant-Governor of the western part and districts of the Illinois, for His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. And in the month of January of that year, under Don Francesco's auspices, and from his garri- son, went forth the expedition whose fortunes we are to follow. It was the second day of the month when the dwellers on the few streets near the river bank which comprised the village of St. Louis might have been seen flocking to the long stone house, constructed by Pierre Laclede, the founder of the place, and then the official residence of the Spanish lieutenant-governor. They came together to witness the departure of a force which all perhaps felt to be charged with an important mission,
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 295
though few knew its object. On the wide stone steps which led up from the street to the main floor of the government house, we may suppose that the Governor himself had taken his stand to give his last instructions and farewells to the chiefs of the expedition. There was Don Eugenio Pourré, the commander, ranking as Captain in the Spanish line, the one man perhaps, besides the Governor who knew the real purpose of the undertaking; near him was Don Carlos Tayon, the second in com- mand, and a lieutenant in the royal service, perchance talking with a very important member of the party, Don Luis Chevalier, "a man well versed in the language of the Indians." And a little apart, regarding the white men with stolid indifference, were two sachems of the red race, whose names, as nearly as the Spanish account has preserved them, were Eleturno and Naquigen.5 The latter is probably identical with Nakioun, a chief of the Ottawa tribe bordering on Lake Michigan, with whom George Rogers Clark held negotiations after his capture of Kaskaskia.6 "Great Chiefs," they are called in the old chronicle, and great perhaps in some respects they were. At all events the journey on which they were going and for which they were specially selected required a combination of nerve, endurance and skill which amounted to greatness.
In the snow of the village street, in front of the gov- ernment building, were drawn up the little band whose leaders we have mentioned. There were sixty-five mili- tia men, of whom thirty are said to have been Spaniards,7 and the remainder probably of French birth or descent, but all of them sworn subjects of the Spanish sovereign, and fired with zeal to strike a blow against the nation now a foe of both France and Spain. Here and there
296
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
among them might have been a grizzled veteran who had fought for the King of Spain in other countries, and had come to this new land with Reilly, the subjugator of New Orleans, or as one of the bodyguard of Don Francesco, or one of his predecessors. Lounging near them were their allies, a band of sixty Indians, said to have been gathered from several tribes, the names of some of which have not fared kindly in the contemporary accounts. The "Sotus," for instance, are perhaps the Sioux, or the Sauks. It is possible that the "Otaguos" are the Out- agamis or Foxes, or they may be the Ottawas. But there is something more familiar about the "Putuamis," as the Spaniard hath it, and we can hardly go wrong in identi- fying them with our old acquaintances the Pottawatta- mies, who doubtless, even then, by diligent attention to the principal business of their lives, were earning for themselves the same regard in which their memory is still held in Illinois. But the Governor and the com- mander have exchanged their last words and parting salutes, the signal is given, and the long line moving in Indian file, winds down the bank, and across the frozen surface of the mighty river, and disappears in the forests of the Illinois shore.
It was no ordinary journey which lay before them. Many marches far more famous have been of less extent and with fewer privations. Four hundred miles or more, by the route they followed, in the depth of winter, they were to toil through the snow and ice, amid forests and over prairies, to reach their destination. They were heavily laden, "each one with provisions for his own sub- sistence, and with various merchandise," says one account of this march, "which was necessary to content in case of need the barbarous nations through whom they were
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 297
obliged to cross."8 For winter was not the only foe they had to meet. More than one savage tribe, owning at least a nominal allegiance to England, lay in their path. Well was it for them that they had on their staff Don Luis Chevalier, the man well versed in the language of the Indians, who was as useful to this expedition as ever the French savants were to Napoleon's army in Egypt. By seasonable negotiations and precautions, by timely gifts, and Don Luis' successful diplomacy with the ambassadors from the dwellers in the forest and on the prairie, the commander, says the report, "prevented con- siderable bodies of Indians from opposing this expedi- tion, for it would otherwise have been difficult to have accomplished the taking of the post.8 And what and where was this post which was the goal of this strange and toilsome march? In brief, the party sought to cap- ture the English fort of St. Joseph, situated within the limits of the present State of Michigan.
In 1761, after the capitulation of Montreal, a detach- ment of the 60th British regiment, then called the Royal Americans, relieved the French troops and hoisted the English flag at this point. The post was soon to change masters again. Hardly two years had passed when the storm evoked by the mighty spirit of Pontiac burst all unexpectedly upon the young English ensign, Schlosser, and his command of fourteen men, who composed the garrison of Fort St. Joseph; and in less than two min- utes, as he declares, the fort was plundered, eleven men were killed, and the commander and three surviving sol- diers were prisoners and on their way to Detroit.9 This affair occurred eighteen years before the march which is the subject of this paper; and among the French traders then at the fort was one M. Louison Chevalie, as he is
298
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
named in a letter from an English trader whom he saved from being killed. 10 This probably is the same person whom the Spaniards call Don Luis Chevalier, the diplo- mat of this expedition, and if so his former residence at St. Joseph and acquaintance with the Indians there must have been of great service. It was a simple process in those days which transformed Monsieur Louison into Don Luis. The English were again in possession of the fort at the era of our story.
It was the headquarters of the Indian traders for the region, and had been harassed before.11 It was one of the points from which Indian bands were sent forth to harry the American settlers in the valley of the Ohio. The exact site of the fort has been somewhat difficult to ascertain. The historians, from Parkman to quaint old Governor Reynolds,12 locate it on the site of La Salle's fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph, or at the portage to the Kankakee, where South Bend, Indiana, stands. In the various accounts it skips back and forth with the celerity of a little hill, but Father Charlevoix' narrative of his visit to it in 1721,13 and the French maps of Danville, 1746, Vaugondy, 1753, Bellin and Le Rouge, 1755, and the English map of E. Bowen, 1763, make it quite cer- tain that it was on the south bank of the River St. Joseph, about one mile west of the present town of Niles, Michi- gan, and nearly on the same site occupied in this century by the Carey Mission to the Indians. And it was at this time the nearest fortification to St. Louis which flew the English flag.
This was the place which the Government of Spain, now vigorously engaged in the war against Great Brit- ain, had resolved to capture, and to this end this march across what is now the State of Illinois was made. It
-
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 299
was not undertaken, like the attempts of the Illinoisans, Brady and Meillet,11 at the season when the rivers were open, and shore and stream furnished a bountiful supply of food. Nor was it against an unsuspicious enemy, but one doubly warned, and to all expectation on the alert against another attack. Nor could these bold fellows take the most direct route to the point of attack, as pre- ceding expeditions had done, for no man might face the Grand Prairie in winter and expect to survive. For shel- ter, and for water and fuel as well, they were compelled to follow the courses of the streams and the woods which bordered them, and so they journeyed patiently north- eastward, pushing forward in the teeth of the wintry blasts which grew ever colder and more dreary. By day they plodded onward, laden with their heavy burdens, having before them only the ice-covered streams on the one hand and the straggling forests with glimpses of the vast white plains beyond, on the other. Now and then some light-hearted Frenchman from his place in the line breaks into song, or flings a cheery word to a comrade in advance, but for the most part we may imagine them silently and steadily marching on. By night around their campfires on some wooded point above the stream, the song and jest go round, and they exchange reminiscences of war and foray. And the Spaniards tell of their glori- ous capture of West Florida, but two years before, when their able leader, Calvez, compelled the English colonel at Baton Rouge to lay down his arms, and surrender that post and Natchez, and stormed Mobile and attacked Pen- sacola. And the Frenchmen speak of their fathers' deeds or their own at Braddock's defeat, or their unavailing efforts to save Fort Du Quesne or Niagara. The weather was unusually severe, and their supplies but scanty.
300 CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
"They suffered," says the account, "in so extensive a march, and so rigorous a season, the greatest inconven- ience from cold and hunger." (Some years ago, in the valley where a large Indian village once stood, a few miles west of Danville, in Illinois, three cannon balls of European manufacture were found. The place was within range of a small piece of artillery planted on the hills near by, and it has been conjectured that these balls are relics of this expedition.14 If so, these afford the only clew to its exact line of march.) Not a sign or trace of civilized habitations greeted the eyes of these bold warriors, while they crossed the whole of what is now the State of Illinois, from southwest to northeast, and journeyed on into what is now Indiana (though they knew the whole region as "the Illinois"), and passed the port- age from the Kankakee to the St. Joseph, at or near the site of the present town of South Bend. The Indian allies of the English, who must have met them in this part of the journey, were readily persuaded, by presents and promises of a share in the plunder of the fort, to regard the situation from an impartial point of view. They took the question of aiding their English friends under advisement, and kept it there until aid was need- less. The short march along the St. Joseph River was quickly made, as the hardy band rushed onward to the fruition of their hopes. The few English traders and soldiers within the stockade, relying upon the vigilance of their savage spies, were totally unprepared for the sudden dash which made them prisoners, and transferred Fort St. Joseph to the King of Spain. He was the sixth sovereign who had borne sway there, if we include in the list La Salle and Pontiac, who in truth were kinglier men than any of the others. It must be admitted that prec-
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 301
edents were in favor of this capture. Fort St. Joseph had been so uniformly taken and plundered whenever any one set out to do it, that capture had become its normal state, and seemingly the object of its existence. An officer of our army once described our stone forts on the sea shore, after the modern improvements in marine artillery, as "places to get out of as soon as the enemy opens fire." The modest little post of St. Joseph antici- pated this description, which was singularly applicable to it, by nearly a century. And, before leaving this topic, I cannot forbear to mention that in the Michigan Pioneer Collections it is stated that the United States early in this century determined to build one fort on Lake Michigan, and selected a site on the St. Joseph River. But the Indians in the vicinity, whose lands had not then been ceded to the Government, opposed its erection, and the commissioners thereupon went to Chicago and built Fort Dearborn in 1804. And, says the Michigan Pioneer, "we conclude that had the fort been built at St. Joseph there would have been no Chicago." 15 This matter of a fort seems to have been peculiarly disastrous to the St. Joseph country. When it had one it constantly invited capture, and caused the inhabitants to spend more or less of their lives as prisoners of war; and, when it did not have one, it thereby lost the opportunity of becoming the commercial metropolis of the Northwest. I know of no tract of land in all this section which has been so sin- gularly unfortunate as the St. Joseph region! But to return to our Spaniards. Don Eugenio Pourré took pos- session, in the name of his King, of St. Joseph and its dependencies, and of the River of the Illinois. He low- ered the English flag, and raised in its place the standard of His Most Catholic Majesty, which was there displayed
302
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
during the whole time of his stay. His men plundered the fort, with system and dispatch, giving the greater part of the provisions and goods to their own Indians and to those who lived at St. Joseph, "as had been offered them," says the Spanish account, "in case they did not oppose the troops," and destroying the remainder, with the magazine and storehouses. They remained but a few days for rest and refreshment, and then commenced their homeward route, which was accomplished without inci- dent. Don Eugenio took the English flag, and delivered it on his arrival at St. Louis to Don Francesco Cruvat, in testimony of the successful execution of his orders; and with this ceremony the adventurous march concluded. We hear nothing more of Don Eugenio Pourré, but it appears from the American State Papers relative to Pub- lic Lands, that his second in command, Don Charles Tayon, who it is stated "had rendered important services to the Spanish Government from the year 1770, and was second in command at the siege of St. Joseph, which he contributed to take," afterwards received a commission for his merits, and was commandant of St. Charles of Missouri, from the year 1792 to the year 1804, and that a tract of land was granted to him in 1800 by Don Charles Dehault Delassus, Spanish Governor of Upper Louisiana. 16
And now, what was the real object of this remarkable undertaking? It was not a mere foray for the sake of booty, since all that was captured was either destroyed or given to the Indians. Revenge for the attack upon St. Louis in the preceding year by the Mackinac trap- pers and savages, would hardly account for an expedition undertaken at such an expense, and at such a time of the year, and which, moreover, was not sent against Macki- nac. The true answer must be found in the wily schemes
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 303
of the Spanish Court, and if we change the scene to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean new light will be thrown upon it. Spain had been since June, 1779, at war with Britain, and nominally a friend of the colonies. This was not by reason of any interest in our cause, for the idea of American independence was extremely unwel- come to her, but simply for her own purposes. It is now quite certain that France agreed to sacrifice to Spain, as a condition of her declaration of war, the interests of the new republic in the fisheries and in the West. And her successes against the English on the lower Mississippi enabled her to lay the foundation of a claim which ulti- mately grew to portentous dimensions. The heart of the Spanish King was set upon the recovery of Gibraltar as a result of the war, and all of his conquests he pro- posed to surrender at its conclusion, if need be, to obtain from Great Britain the key to the Mediterranean. Nat- urally his ministers desired to make those successes as great as possible. With the aid of France they expected either to accomplish the desired exchange with England or to greatly enlarge the Spanish empire in America, regardless of the claims of the United States. At the outset they seemed to content themselves with the region known as West Florida. John Jay was our representative at Madrid, and on his first arriving there, in March, 1780, the Minister of Foreign Affairs practically conceded that the Mississippi was our boundary, north of the thirty-first parallel, or what is now the southern line of the western portion of the State of Mississippi. But a different tone soon prevailed, the atmosphere became more and more unfriendly to the United States, until it was apparent that nothing less than the entire valley of the Mississippi would satisfy the ambition of the Spaniards. Their con-
304
CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
quests of Baton Rouge and Natchez were made to serve as a basis for a title to the whole eastern side of the lower Mississippi, as far as the Ohio. They needed something more, in order that they might include in their demands what was afterwards known as the Northwest Territory, and that was soon supplied. Jay, writing to our Secre- tary for Foreign Affairs, Robert R. Livingston, from Madrid under date of April 28, 1782, says: "The Madrid Gazette of the 12th of March contains a paragraph of which you ought not to be ignorant. I shall therefore copy it verbatim and add a translation as literal as I can make it." Then follows the account of the capture of St Joseph, from which I have already quoted. And Jay adds: "When you consider the ostensible object of this expedition, the distance of it, the formalities with which the place, the country and river were taken possession of in the name of His Catholic Majesty, I am persuaded it will not be necessary for me to swell this letter with remarks that would occur to a reader of far less penetra- tion than yourself. " 17
Let me here call attention, for a moment, to the length of time required to transmit the news of this matter to Spain. We may suppose that Don Eugenio Pourré pre- sented himself at the government house in St. Louis on his return from St. Joseph, and made his formal report early in March, 1781. The news was then forwarded by bateaux, which slowly drifted down the Mississippi, and in the course of time brought the dispatches to New Orleans. Thence by the next vessel that sailed, these were forwarded to the Commandant-General of the Army of Operations at the Havana, who was also the Governor of Louisiana, and by him they were doubtless sent to Spain in the next man-of-war that crossed the ocean.
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 305
From her port, by post horses, the papers went to the capital, and finally the account was published in the Madrid Gazette of March 12, 1782, a full year after the return of the expedition.
The information reached France about the same time, and wise old Benjamin Franklin, our minister to Ver- sailles, was quick to see its meaning. He writes to Liv- ingston from Passy under date of April 12, 1782: "I see by the newspapers that the Spaniards, having taken a little post called St. Joseph, pretend to have made a conquest of the Illinois country. In what light does this proceeding appear to Congress? While they (the Span- iards) decline our proffered friendship, are they to be suffered to encroach on our bounds, and shut us up within the Appalachian Mountains? I begin to fear they have some such project." 18 The treatment of the Span- iards became exceedingly irksome to Jay, and the objects they aimed at were manifest to him. About this time he writes to Franklin: "I am pleased with your idea of pay- ing whatever we owe to Spain. Their pride, perhaps, might forbid them to receive the money. But our pride has been so hurt by the littleness of their conduct, that I would in that case be for leaving it at the gate of the palace, and quit the country. At present such a step would not be expedient, though the time will come when prudence, instead of restraining, will urge us to hold no other language or conduct to this court than that of a just, a free, and a brave people, who have nothing to fear from nor to request of them." And to Livingston he writes: "France is ready for a peace, but not Spain. The King's eyes are fixed on Gibraltar. . .. Spain ought not to expect such a price as the Mississippi for acknowledg- ing our independence. " 19 Jay could accomplish nothing
306 CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
at Madrid, and was soon transferred to Paris, there to negotiate with Franklin and Adams the treaty of peace with Great Britain. Further negotiation with Spain was also transferred to Paris, and was conducted there through Count d'Aranda, the Spanish ambassador at the Court of France. At their first conference the count asked Mr. Jay what our western boundaries were, and was informed that the boundary between us and the Span- ish dominions was a line drawn from the head of the Mis- sissippi down through the middle thereof to the thirty-first degree of north latitude. The count replied that the western country had never belonged to, or been claimed as belonging to, the colonies. That it had once belonged to France, had been ceded by her to Britain, of whose dominions it remained a distinct part, until by the conquest of West Florida and certain posts of the Missis- sippi and Illinois (alluding here to the capture of St. Joseph) it became vested in Spain.20 He kindly added that he did not mean to dispute about a few acres or miles, but wished to run the boundary line in a manner that would be convenient to the United States, though he never could admit the extent we claimed. Mr. Jay desired him to mark on the map the line he proposed, and to place it as far to the west as his instructions would possibly admit of, which he promised to do. A few days afterward the count sent his map with his proposed line marked in red ink. He ran it from a lake near the con- fines of Georgia, but east of the Flint River, to the con- fluence of the Kanawha with the Ohio, thence round the western shores of Lakes Erie and Huron, and thence round Lake Michigan to Lake Superior. That is, Spain modestly claimed the territory now comprising the States of Mississippi and Alabama, a large part of Georgia,
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 307
nearly the whole of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, por- tions of North Carolina and Virginia, a large part of Ohio, and all of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wis- consin; but did not mean to dispute about a few acres or miles! And the courtly nobleman further assured the ambassador of the young republic that he had nothing more at heart than to fix such a boundary as might be satisfactory to both parties. Mr. Jay and Dr. Franklin at once saw the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Comte de Vergennes, and pointed out the extravagance of this line, Franklin insisting as strenuously as Jay that the Mississippi was the western boundary, and they ought not by any means to part with the right to the free navigation of it. And Franklin, writing to Livingston on August 12, 1782, two days after this interview, says: "Mr. Jay will acquaint you with what passed between him and the Spanish Ambassador respecting the pro- posed treaty with Spain. I will only mention that my conjecture of that Court's design to coop us up within the Allegany mountains is now manifested. I hope Con- gress will insist on the Mississippi as the boundary, and the free navigation of the river, from which they would entirely exclude us."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.