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Again the Count d'Aranda was very urgent that Mr. Jay should mark on his map some line or other to the eastward of the Mississippi to which they could agree; but Jay told him frankly that he was bound by the Mis- sissippi, and had no authority to cede any territories east of it to His Catholic Majesty. They had thus, as Mr. Jay says, "clearly discovered the views of Spain, and that they were utterly inadmissible." 21 It was not long before he was satisfied that France and Spain were acting together, and wished to induce the American ministers
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308 CHAPTERS FROM ILLINOIS HISTORY
to agree on western limits as a preliminary to negotiation with Great Britain, and to leave the country west of such limits to be adjusted between the French and Spanish ambassadors and the Court of London. The conduct of the representatives of the two countries convinced him that France and Spain intended either to secure the western country to themselves or yield it to Great Britain for an equivalent elsewhere. He divined the essence of the secret arrangement between France and Spain which secured the latter's entry into the war, which was, as Bancroft says, "that Spain was to be left free to exact from the United States the renunciation of every part of the basin of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, of the nav- igation of the Mississippi, and all the land between that river and the Alleghenies." It was a trying moment for our representatives when it became clear to them that our allies were plotting to despoil us; but they were equal to the occasion; and by a master stroke, disregarding their instructions, which directed them to consult the French Court throughout, they entered into the secret negotiation with Great Britain which ended in the Treaty of Ver- sailles in 1783. Well was it for this fair land of ours that its destinies were in the hands of Jay and Franklin and Adams. Counselors less wise or less firm than they might have yielded to the claims of Spain, certainly when supported by France; and the whole Northwestern Ter- ritory might have become Spanish soil, and the Ohio the western boundary of the United States of America. Spain in her treaty with England did not obtain the cov- eted prize of Gibraltar, which the English ministers were inclined to yield to her, but the stubbornness of old George III prevented. He had lost the colonies and lost the Floridas, lost his troops and lost his ships, but he
MARCH OF SPANIARDS ACROSS ILLINOIS 309
drew the line at the Rock of Gibraltar, and that he would not lose. The Spaniards were forced to content them- selves with the Floridas and Minorca, and they restored the Bahamas, which they had taken during the war. The Spanish minister, in 1784, notified our government that Spain did not recognize the right of Great Britain and the United States to settle boundaries of the country she had conquered before the treaty of peace. The recognition by Great Britain of the boundaries insisted upon by the American commissioners practically settled that question, and France acquiesced at once. The Span- ish King, however, could not forgive his minister, Count d'Aranda, who, having full powers to negotiate, renounced in the name of his Sovereign his demands for Gibraltar and accepted the two Floridas, and the count was disgraced. But Spain did not abandon her alleged title to the western country, and she continued to claim both banks of the Mississippi, and to plot for the secession of some of the western States, until the treaty of 1795 put an end to her pretensions in that quarter. Spanish grants of land within what is now the State of Illinois, four in one county alone, show how determinedly the Court of Madrid clung to this region, and attempted to exercise sovereignty over it to the last.22
The policy and aims of Spain during the Revolution, and the use which was made of the expedition to St. Jo- seph in support of the same, make it reasonably certain that the march of the Spaniards across Illinois was inspired and directed from Madrid, and for a weighty purpose. No official accounts exist in print, but it is believed that in the archives of the Government of Spain evidence upon the point is still preserved, which may one day be given to the world. The Spanish records kept at
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St. Louis, which probably contained much relating to the subject, were all removed in 1804, when the cession from Spain to France, and from France to the United States, took place. They were shipped to New Orleans, and to Cuba, and were supposed for a time to have been lost in the Gulf of Mexico. In later years a portion of them were discovered in a forlorn condition in an old ware- house in Havana, and it is said that these have since been sent to Spain. The information relating to this march is but meager, and must be gleaned from short and scat- tered notices in many works. It is remarkable that it is not even spoken of in a single history of Michigan, gen- eral or local, although the Fort of St. Joseph was situated within the limits of that State. It is alluded to in one history of Indiana,23 and in one history of Illinois, 24 although the latter gives the wrong date, and both dismiss it with brief mention, as of a matter unimportant.
And yet it has seemed not altogether a waste of time to recall it from the forgotten past, and bring it into view once more. If only for the romance and picturesqueness of that daring winter journey, it might have a claim to have its story told. Then, too, it gives one of the early touches of life to the broad plains of the West. These had lain there for countless years, which concern us not at all, since no record of man in connection with them in these ages exists. But as soon as the forms of one of these pioneer bands appear upon their surface the prairies are humanized, and our interest in them begins. As a part of the early history of what is now a great State, the passing and repassing over its borders of these warriors bearing the flag of Spain deserves to be chron- icled. And as an illustration of that crafty diplomacy which sought to control both the Old World and the
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New, it may repay study. How little did those light- hearted soldiers and their red allies know that they were but the pawns in the great game whereof the players were at Paris and Madrid! But above all, when we con- sider how much was staked upon this expedition, and by what a narrow chance the policy of which it was the con- summation failed of changing perhaps the whole future of the Northwest, there may appear to be reason suffi- cient for the permanent remembrance of The March of the Spaniards across Illinois.
NOTES
The Far West, vol. I, p. 78.
2 Ellicott's Journal, p. 31.
3 The Far West, vol. I, p. 123.
+O. W. Collet in Magazine of Western History. vol. II, p. 321.
5 Madrid Gazette, March 12, 1782.
6 Butler's Kentucky, p. 75.
7 Calendar Virginia State Papers, vol. I, p. 465.
8 Madrid Gazette, March 12, 1782.
9 Conspiracy of Pontiac, vol. I, p. 274.
10 Ibid., vol. I, p. 274, n.
11 Illinois in the Revolution, ante.
12 Parkman's Pontiac, vol. I, pp. 59, 273; Reynold's Illinois, p. 68.
13 Charlevoix Journal, vol. II, pp. 94, 184.
14 H. W. Beckwith, Danville, Illinois.
15 Michigan Pioneers' Collection, vol. I, p. 122.
16 American State Papers, Public Lands, vol. V, pp. 779, 780.
17 Spark's Diplomatic Correspondence, vol. VIII, p. 76.
18 Works of Franklin (Spark's), vol. IX, p. 128.
19 Spark's Diplomatic Correspondence, vol. VIII, P 98. 20 Ibid., p. 150.
21 Pitkin's History of the U. S., vol. II, chap. 15.
22 Letters of W. H. Green, Cairo, Ill., Nov. 12, Dec. 12, 1885.
23 Dillon's Indiana, ed. 1843, p. 190.
24 Reynold's Illinois, p. 101.
NOTE .- For other mention of the Spanish expedition, see Annals of the West, 1846, Cincinnati ed.
Pirtle's Introduction to Clark's Campaign in the Ills., pp. 3, 4 Secret Journals of Congress, vol. II.
312
THE CHICAGO MASSACRE
Early in August, in the year of grace 1812, there had come through the forest and across the prairie to the lonely Fort Dearborn an Indian runner, like a clansman with the fiery cross, bearing the news of battle and disaster. War with Great Britain had been declared in June, Mackinac had fallen into the hands of the enemy in July, and with these alarming tidings the red messenger brought an order from the commanding general at Detroit contemplating the abandonment of this frontier post. Concerning the terms of his order authorities have differed. Captain Heald, who received it, speaks of it as a peremptory command to evacuate the fort. Others with good means of knowledge say that the dispatch directed him to vacate the fort if practicable. But Gen- eral Hull, who sent the order, settles this question in a report to the War Department, which has recently come to light. Writing under date of July 29, 1812, he says:
"I shall immediately send an express to Fort Dearborn with orders to evacuate that post and retreat to this place (Detroit) or Fort Wayne, provided it can be effected with a greater prospect of safety than to remain. Captain Heald is a judicious officer, and I shall confide much to his discretion."
The decision whether to go or stay rested therefore with Captain Nathan Heald, and truly the responsibility was a heavy one. Signs of Indian hostility had not been wanting. But the evening before the day of the evacua-
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tion, the 15th of August, Black Partridge, a chief of the Pottawattamie tribe, long a friend of the whites, had entered the quarters of the commanding officer and handed to him the medal which the warrior wore in token of services to the American cause in the Indian cam- paigns of "Mad" Anthony Wayne. With dignity and with sadness the native orator said:
"Father, I come to deliver up to you the medal I wear. It was given me by the Americans, and I have long worn it in token of our mutual friendship. But our young men are resolved to imbrue their hands in the blood of the whites. I cannot restrain them, and I will not wear a token of peace while I am compelled to act as an enemy."
On that dreary day one gleam of light fell across the path of the perplexed commander. Captain William Wells arrived from Fort Wayne with a small party of friendly Miami Indians to share the fortunes of the imperiled garrison. This gallant man, destined to be the chief hero and victim of the Chicago massacre, had had a most remarkable career. Of a good Kentucky family, he was stolen when a boy of twelve by the Miami Indians and adopted by their great chief, Me-chee-kau-nah-qua, or Little Turtle, whose daughter became his wife. He fought on the side of the red men in their defeats of Gen- eral Harmar in 1790, and General St. Clair in 1791. Dis- covered by his Kentucky kindred when he had reached years of manhood, he was persuaded to ally himself with his own race, and took formal leave of his Indian com- rades, avowing henceforth his enmity to them. Joining Wayne's army, he was made captain of a company of scouts, and was a most faithful and valuable officer. When peace came with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, he devoted himself to obtaining an education, and suc-
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ceeded so well that he was appointed Indian agent and served in that capacity at Chicago as early as 1803, and later at Fort Wayne, where he was also the government interpreter and a Justice of the Peace. Here he heard of the probable evacuation of the post at Chicago, and knowing the temper of the Indians, he gathered such force as he could and made a rapid march across the country to save, or die with, his friends at Fort Dearborn, among whom the wife of Captain Heald was his own favorite niece, whose gentle influence had been most potent in winning him back from barbarism years before. It seemed almost as if he had resolved to atone for the period in which he had ignorantly antagonized his own people by a supreme effort in their behalf against the race which had so nearly made him a savage.
He came too late to effect any change in Captain Heald's plans. The abandonment was resolved upon, the stores and ammunition were in part destroyed and in part divided among the Indians, who were soon to make so base a return for these gifts. At nine o'clock on that fatal summer morning the march began from the little fort, which stood where Michigan Avenue and River Street now join, on a slight eminence around which the river wound to find its way to the lake, near the present ter- minus of Madison Street. The garrison bade farewell to the rude stockade and the log barracks and magazine and two corner blockhouses which composed the first Fort Dearborn. When this only place of safety was left behind, the straggling line stretched out along the shore of the lake, Captain Wells and a part of his Miamis in the van, half a company of regulars and a dozen militia- men, and the wagons with the women and children fol- lowing, and the remainder of the Miamis bringing up the
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rear. The escort of Pottawattamies, which that treach- erous tribe had glibly promised to Captain Heald, kept abreast of the troops until they reached the sand hills intervening between the prairie and the lake, and here the Indians disappeared behind the ridge. The whites kept on near the water to a point a mile and a half from the fort, and about where Fourteenth Street now ends, when Wells in the advance was seen to turn and ride back, swinging his hat around his head in a circle, which meant in the sign language of the frontier: "We are sur- rounded by Indians."
As soon as he came within hearing he shouted: "We are surrounded; march up on the sand ridges." And all at once, in the graphic languge of Mrs. Heald, they saw "the Indians' heads sticking up and down again, here and there, like turtles out of the water."
Instantly a volley was showered down from the sand hills, the troops were brought into line, and charged up the bank, one man, a veteran of seventy years, falling as they ascended. Wells shouted to Heald: "Charge them!" and then led on and broke the line of the Indians, who scattered right and left. Another charge was made, in which Wells did deadly execution upon the perfidious barbarians, loading and firing two pistols and a gun in rapid succession. But the Pottawattamies, beaten in front, closed in on the flanks. The cowardly Miamis rendered no assistance, and in fifteen minutes' time the savages had possession of the baggage train and were slaying the women and children. Heald and a remnant of his command were isolated on a mound in the prairie. He had lost all his officers and half his men, was himself sorely wounded, and there was no choice but to surren- der. Such, in merest outline was the battle, and one of
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its saddest incidents was the death of Captain Wells. As he rode back from the fray, desperately wounded, he met his niece and bade her farewell, saying: "Tell my wife, if you live to see her-but I think it doubtful if a single one escapes-tell her I died at my post, doing the best I could. There are seven red devils over there that I have killed." As he spoke his horse fell, pinning him to the ground. A group of Indians approached; he took delib- erate aim and fired, killing one of them. As the others drew near, with a last effort he proudly lifted his head, saying: "Shoot away," and the fatal shot was fired.
The young wife of Lieutenant Helm, second in com- mand of the fort, was attacked by an Indian lad, who struck her on the shoulder with a tomahawk. To pre- vent him from using his weapons she seized him around the neck and strove to get possession of the scalping- knife which hung in a scabbard over his breast. In the midst of the struggle she was dragged from the grasp of her assailant by an older Indian. He bore her to the lake and plunged her into the waves; but she quickly per- ceived that his object was not to drown her, as he held her head above the water. Gazing intently at him she soon recognized, in spite of the paint with which he was disguised, the whilom friend of the whites, Black Par- tridge, who saved her from further harm and restored her to her friends. For this good deed, and others too, this noble chief should be held in kindly remembrance.
It is difficult to realize that such scenes could have taken place in the Chicago of to-day; but history and tradition alike bear witness to that bloody battlefield. From the place on the lake shore where Wells' signal halted the column over the parallel sand ridges stretching southwesterly along the prairie and through the bushy
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ravines between, the running fight continued probably as far as the present intersection of Twenty-first Street and Indiana Avenue, where one of our soldiers was slain and scalped, and still lies buried. Just over on what is now Michigan Avenue must have been the little eminence on the prairie on which Heald made his last rally, and at the eastern end of Eighteenth Street the skulking sav- ages, who had given way at the advance of our men, gathered in their rear around the few wagons which had vainly sought to keep under the cover of our line.
If the gaunt old cottonwood on the latter spot, long known as the "Massacre Tree," could speak, what a tale of horror it would tell. For tradition, strong as Holy Writ, affirms that between this tree and its neighbor the roots of which still remain beneath the pavement, the baggage wagon, containing twelve children of the white families of the fort, halted and one young savage climb- ing into it tomahawked the entire group. A little while and this sole witness of that deed of woe must pass away. But the duty of preserving the name and locality of the Chicago massacre, which has been its charge for so many years, is now transferred to a stately monument, which will faithfully perform it long after the fall of the "Mas- sacre Tree."
Captain Heald's whole party, not including the Miami detachment, when they marched out of Fort Dearborn, comprised fifty-four regulars, twelve militiamen, nine women and eighteen children-ninety-three white persons in all. Of these, twenty-six regulars and the twelve militia- men were slain in action, two women and twelve children were murdered on the field, and five regulars were bar- barously put to death, after the surrender. There remained then but thirty-six of the whole party of ninety-
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three, and of the sixty-six fighting men who met their red foemen here that day only twenty-three survived. These, with seven women and six children, were prisoners in the hands of the savages. We know of the romantic escape, by the aid of friendly Indians, of Captain and Mrs. Heald and Lieutenant and Mrs. Helm; and three of the soldiers, one of whom was Orderly Sergeant William Griffith, in less than two months after the massacre, found their way to Michigan, bringing the sad news from Fort Dearborn. Hull's surrender had placed Detroit in the hands of the enemy; but the Territorial Chief Justice, Woodward, the highest United States authority there, in a ringing letter to the British commandant, Colonel Proc- tor, under date of October 8, 1812, demanded in the name of humanity that instant means should be taken for the preservation of these unhappy captives by sending special messengers among the Indians to collect the prisoners and bring them to the nearest army post, and that orders to cooperate should be issued to the British officers on the lakes. Colonel Proctor one month before had been informed by his own people of the bloody work at Chi- cago, and had reported the same to his superior officer, Major-General Brock, but had contented himself with remarking that he had no knowledge of any attack hav- ing been intended by the Indians on Chicago, nor could they indeed be said to be within the influence of the British.
Now, spurred to action by Judge Woodward's clear and forcible presentation of the case, Proctor promised to use the most effective means in his power for the speedy release from slavery of these unfortunate individuals. He committed the matter to Robert Dickson, British agent to the Indians of the western nations, who pro-
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ceeded about it leisurely enough. March 16, 1813, he wrote from St. Joseph Lake, Michigan, that there remained of the ill-fated garrison of Chicago, captives among the Indians, seventeen soldiers, four women and some children, and that he had taken the necessary steps for their redemption, and had the fullest confidence that he should succeed in getting the whole. Six days later he came to Chicago and inspected the ruined fort, where, as he says, there remained only two pieces of brass ord- nance, three-pounders -one in the river, with wheels, and the other dismounted-a powder magazine, well pre- served, and a few houses on the outside of the fort, in good condition. This desolation apparently was not relieved by the presence of a single inhabitant. Such was the appearance of Chicago in the spring following the massacre. Of these seventeen soldiers, the nine who survived their long imprisonment were ransomed by a French trader and sent to Quebec, and ultimately reached Plattsburg, New York, in the summer of 1814. Of the women two were rescued from slavery, one by the kind- ness of Black Partridge; and the other doubtless perished in captivity. Of the children, we hear again of only one. In a letter written to Major-General Proctor by Captain Bullock, the British commander at Mackinac, September 25, 1813, he says: "There is also here a boy (Peter Bell), five or six years of age, whose father and mother were killed at Chicago. The boy was purchased from the Indians by a trader and brought here last July by direc- tion of Mr. Dickson." Of the six little people who fell into the hands of the Indians this one small waif alone seems to have floated to the shore of freedom.
The Pottawattamies, after the battle and the burning of the fort, divided their booty and prisoners and scat-
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tered, some to their villages, some to join their brethren in the siege of Fort Wayne. Here they were foiled by the timely arrival of William Henry Harrison, then Gov- ernor of the Indiana Territory, with a force of Kentucky and Ohio troops, and condign punishment was inflicted upon a part at least of the Chicago murderers. A detach- ment which General Harrison assigned to this work was commanded by Colonel Samuel Wells, who must have remembered his brother's death when he destroyed the village of Five Medals, a leading Pottawattamie chief. To one of the ruthless demons who slew women and chil- dren under the branches of the cottonwood tree, such an appropriate vengeance came that it seems fitting to tell the story here. He was older than most of the band, a participant in many battles, and a deadly enemy of the whites. His scanty hair was drawn tightly upward and tied with a string, making a tuft on top of his head, and from this peculiarity he was known as Chief Shavehead. Years after the Chicago massacre he was a hunter in west- ern Michigan, and when in liquor was fond of boasting of his achievements on the warpath. On one of these occa- sions in the streets of a little village he told the fearful tale of his doings on this field with all its horrors; but among his hearers there chanced to be a soldier of the garrison of Fort Dearborn, one of the few survivors of that fatal day. As he listened he saw that frightful scene again, and was maddened by its recall. At sundown the old brave left the settlement, and silently on his trail the soldier came, "with his gun," says the account, "resting in the hollow of his left arm and the right hand clasped around the lock, with forefinger carelessly toying with the trigger." The red man and the white passed into the shade of the forest; the soldier returned alone; Chief
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Shavehead was never seen again. He had paid the pen- alty of his crime to one who could, with some fitness, exact it. Such was the fate of a chief actor in that dark scene.
Many others of the Pottawattamie tribe joined the Brit- ish forces in the field, and at the battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813, they were confronted again by Harrison and his riflemen, who then avenged the slaughter at Chi- cago upon some of its perpetrators.
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Author Title Chapters from Illinois history. Mason, Edward Gay
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Chapters from Illinois History
Edward G. Mason
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