USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 24
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On the 5th of October, 1787, Major-Gen. Arthur St. Clair was appointed Governor of the Northwest Terri- tory, who was instructed to do this as rapidly as con- sistent with the peace.
The new territorial government was to go into operation on the Ist of the succeeding February, 1788. Emigration was rapidly coming into the country, in flat boats down the Ohio river, and settling on lands already surveyed at Marietta, and further down on lands known by the name of Symes' Purchase.
Soon after the settlement had been made at Marietta, Major Benjamin Sites, with about twenty men, landed in November, 1788, at the mouth of the Little Miami river, within the limits of a tract of 10,000 acres, pur-
FORT WASHINGTON (CINCINNATI), 1788.
266
Settlement of Cincinnati.
chased by Major Sites from Judge Symes. Here they constructed a log fort, and laid out the town of Col- umbia.
The next month, on the 24th, Mathias Denman and Robert Patterson, with twelve or fifteen men, landed at the mouth of the Licking river, just below, and pro- jected the town of Cincinnati. Losanteville was the first name given to the place, which had been manu- factured (says Judge Burnet in his notes, page 47) "by a pedantic foreigner, whose name fortunately has been forgotten."
It was formed, he said, from the words Le-os-ante- ville, which he rendered "The Village opposite the Mouth." The name was not long retained, but by whose authority it was changed, is not known. Late in the ensuing autumn, which was in 1789, the town was surveyed by Colonel Ludlow. In February of the same year a third town was commenced on the same tract of land, at North Bend, just below Cincinnati. This was done by Judge Symes himself, the original purchaser of the tract. A few months later, a town was laid out and named Symes, but the place soon became known only as North Bend, and was destined to gain more notoriety as the residence of William Henry Harrison, than by its success as a city.
As might be supposed, a feeling of rivalry existed between the three towns started, each of which put forth its best efforts to attract the emigration that was rapidly coming into the country, and for a time neither seemed to eclipse the others in any substantial advan- tages over the other two.
At this juncture a celebrated charmer came to Cin- cinnati, and her influence turned the scales in its favor. The story runs as follows:
Major Doughty, a man no more invulnerable to the tender passion than other majors, was ordered by General Harmar to go down the Ohio, and erect a fort for the protection of the rapidly increasing population of the three villages. With this intent, he landed at the Bend, and soon formed the acquaintance of a fas- cinating woman, who was the wife of one of the settlers
CINCINNATI IN 18IO.
268
Fort Washington Built.
at the place. To avoid his clandestine attentions to his wife, the husband changed his residence to Cincin- nati; but this only served to convince the Major that Cincinnati instead of North Bend was the most propi- tious place for the fort, and he promptly went thither and built a block house, despite the remonstrances of Symes himself. *
The settlers at the Bend soon deserted the place in favor of Cincinnati, partly to put themselves under the protection of the block house, in case of an Indian out- break, and partly through a conviction that it gave better promise of future progress.
Fort Washington, a more substantial work of defense, was soon afterward built at the place.
During the early years of western settlement, the Ohio river was the only highway by which the country was reached. Flat boats, known by the special name of arks, with all the appurtenances of cooking and sleep- ing, were built on the upper tributaries of the Ohio river, and from ten to twenty families would embark in a single one for the West. Down the Ohio they floated, whither fortune and the current would carry them, landing at last in some propitious cove in the river that looked inviting. Here the ark is moored, and in it they still make their home, till log cabins can be erected on shore. This done, the temporary community breaks up, each family setting up for themselves, and the new settlement is begun.
New Design, four miles south of Bellefontaine, in Monroe county, Illinois, was settled in this way by some Virginians in 1781. From the germ planted here, grew to maturity, by constant accessions from Virginia, and later from Kentucky, the settlements of southern Illinois, with their habits and sentiments firmly ingrained into their minds, which they inherited from Virginia.
While the borders of the Ohio river were first being settled, the posts of Detroit, Michilimackinac, Green Bay, St. Joseph, Sandusky, Niagara and Oswego, were scarcely thought of by the Americans. The British
* Burnet's Notes, pp. 53 and 54.
269
St. Clair Arrives at Marietta.
still held garrisons in them; all the same as they had done during the American revolution.
On the 12th of July, 1783, soon after the definitive treaty of peace had been signed at Paris, Gen. Washington sent Baron Steuben to Canada, to confer with the Governor, for the purpose of transferring these posts to the United States, but to his surprise, he refused to deliver them up to the Americans; and the English continued to hold these posts for the present, although the act was in violation of the treaty of Paris.
From their ramparts waved the red cross of St. George, and even in these savage realms the loyalty to the English government perhaps exceeded that of the islanders themselves.
As might be supposed, the English had little con- fidence in the permanency of American institutions, and looked forward to a time when the attempt of the Americans to set up a government, on the plan of uni- versal suffrage, would result in a failure. Under this expectation the prudential British, with an eye to the beautiful as well as their pecuniary interests, lingered on the great waters of the interior, waiting to see what the future might bring forward; and from these various forts they annually distributed large amounts of goods as presents to the Indians, perhaps on the same prin- ciple that a client, in anticipation of a law suit gives retaining fees to lawyers.
These acts stirred up bad blood in the hearts of the Americans, but there was no remedy. Washington himself counseled submission to the situation for the present, and with that clear vision into the future, for which he was remarkable, looked forward to a time when the new national progress would drive the English away from the lakes.
On the 9th of July, 1788, St. Clair arrived at Marietta, and as Governor of the Northwest Territory, set the necessary machinery in motion to form a government agreeable to the principles laid down in the ordinance of 1787.
The first county was laid out with dimensions large enough to include all the settlements around Marietta,
270
Courts Established in the Northwest.
and was named Washington county. About the Ist of June, 1790, the Governor, with the Judges of the Superior Court, descended the Ohio to Cincinnati, and laid out Hamilton county. A few weeks later he, with Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Territory, proceeded to Kaskaskia, in the Illinois country, and organized St. Clair county.
Knox county, around Vincennes, was soon afterward laid out. At each of these four counties, courts were established on a model which has not been materially changed since.
The Indians beheld these innovations into their country with rueful thoughts. The United States had neither surveyed nor sold any of these lands that had not been bought and paid for through treaties with certain chiefs, but it was claimed, by the great mass of Indians, that these chiefs had no authority to sell the lands.
To enumerate the various treaties by which the first purchases were made along the Ohio river, would fill a volume with monotonous formula. They are pre- served in government archives, but are seldom referred to now.
They were the instruments by which the Indian was driven from his native soil, and having executed their mission, are filed away like writs of ejectment after having been served. In almost all cases they were signed by the Indians under a pressure from which they could not extricate themselves.
If they signed them they would get pay for their lands, which the borders of advancing civilization had rendered useless to them; while if they refused, they would nevertheless be forced back without any remuner- ation. The chiefs could plainly see this, but the great masses of red men could not. Neither could they understand how, by virtue of these instruments, the white man should come among them, cut away the forests, and whelm the fabric of savage society in ruin.
In vain the poetry, the romance or the conscience of the nation might lift up its voice in behalf of the poor Indian. There was but one way in which he could be
271
Invasion of the Indian Country.
saved, which was to beat his scalping knife into a plow- share, and till the soil; but he was as incapable of doing this as the drones in the hive of industry, in our day, are to contribute to the public weal their share of its burdens.
Having established courts at Kaskaskia and Vin- cennes, St. Clair returned to his headquarters at Cin- cinnati early in the summer of the same year, 1790. During his absence the outcropping discontent of the Indians had been made manifest by their way- laying the emigrants as they came down the Ohio in arks, and unless some means were taken to stop these attacks, this great and only highway to the West would soon be closed.
This was what the Indians aimed at in their attacks, nor had they yet learned the impossibility of the under- taking.
St. Clair now determined to invade the Indian country to punish the disturbers of the peace, and by virtue of authority vested in him by the President, he called for 1,000 militia from Virginia, * and 500 from Pennsylvania.
So careful was President Washington at this time not to provoke a quarrel with the British, that he deemed it imprudent to invade the Indian country, without sending an apology to the English commander at Detroit, lest he might take offense that the Americans had dared to make war on his allies. The following is the letter which St. Clair sent him:
"'MARIETTA, 19th September, 1790.
"Sir :- As it is not improbable that an account of the military preparations going forward in this quarter of the country may reach you, and give you some uneasiness, while the object to which they are to be directed is not perfectly known to you, I am commanded by the President of the United States to give you the fullest assurances of the pacific disposition entertained toward Great Britain and all her possessions; and to inform you explicitly that the expedition about to be
* The state of Virginia then included Kentucky, in which sertle- ments had been made before the Northwest Territory was organized.
272
Explanation to the English Commander.
undertaken is not intended against the post you have the honor to command, nor any other place at present in the possession of the troops of his Britannic majesty, but is on foot with the sole design of humbling and chastising some of the savage tribes, whose depreda- tions are become intolerable, and whose cruelties have of late become an outrage, not on the people of America only, but on humanity; which I now do in the most unequivocal manner. After this candid explanation, sir, there is every reason to expect, both from your own personal character, and from the regard you have for that of your nation, that those tribes will meet with neither countenance nor assistance from any under your command, and that you will do what in your power lies, to restrain the trading people, from whose instigations, there is too good reason to believe, much of the injuries of the savages has proceeded. I have forwarded this letter by a private gentleman, in prefer- ence to that of an officer, by whom you might have expected a communication of this kind, that every suspicion of the purity of the views of the United States might be obviated."
Harmar's whole force amounted to 1,453 men, all told. On the 26th of September Col. Hardin led the advance to cut a road, but the main body did not leave Fort Washington till the 3d of October, 1790.
The objective point was the Miami village at the bend of the Maumee, where Fort Wayne now stands.
After a march of sixteen days, Col. Hardin reached the place with the advance, intending to surprise the Indians, but on entering the village he found it deserted. Their store of corn was then rated at 20, 000 bushels in the ear,* which was consigned to the flames by the invaders.
The troops were very disorderly, and despite the efforts of Gen Harmar, who soon arrived with the main body, everything like reasonable discipline was impos- sible.
After a few days the celebrated chief, Little Turtle, fell suddenly upon Col. Hardin's detachment, while
* Brice's History of Fort Wayne, p. 125.
273
Little Turtle Defeats Hardin.
some miles away from the main body, and put them to flight with heavy loss. After visiting destruction on another Indian village two miles farther south, Gen. Harmar took up his march for Fort Washington.
But ere they left the scene of operations, Little Tur- tle managed to bring on another battle with a strong detachment under Col. Hardin, and severely defeated them.
The main body were not brought into action with the Indians at all, but continued their retreat to Fort Washington, where it, with Hardin's detachment, arrived on the 4th of November, having lost 183 men killed, besides many who were wounded.
While this expedition had been in progress, Gen. Hamtramck led a force from Vincennes up the Wabash, and destroyed the Piankeshaw villages, with their stores. The loss of their corn was severely felt by the Indians, but the prestige of victory was with them, and they were much elated with the success that had attended their arms.
The Indians were emboldened, and the apprehensions of the settlements were aroused, particularly those of the Marietta colony, who were more distant from succor in case of an Indian raid than Cincinnati, as the latter was within ready reach of the Kentucky settlements, where aid could be obtained at short notice.
After Harmar's expedition, the Indians, firm in the belief that the British would make common cause with them in their war with the United States, sent a deputa- tion to Lord Dorchester, who then held command at Detroit, to learn from him the amount of support they could expect in the coming war.
Up to this time such inquiries had been answered with metaphor, uttered from the tongues of such villainous apostates of civilization as Girty, Elliot and McGee.
This notorious trio had used every means in their power to deceive the Indians into the belief that the English were ready to take up the hatchet in their behalf. Nor can it be denied that the English officers themselves had given the Indians grounds for such
274
Scott's Expedition.
expectations. Indeed, they had, according to savage rites, pledged themselves to such a policy by making the Indians presents of hatchets, painted red as blood, by which emblem the Indian is bound as solemnly as by vows, and he had no reason to look upon such a symbol as not equally binding on the part of the whites, till he learned to the contrary by experience.
The issue soon came before Lord Dorchester in unequivocal form, and he declined the warlike proposals, greatly to the disappointment of his swarthy friends. No pretext offered for war with the United States, thanks to the prudence of Washington and Jay, by whose flexible but transcendent policy, any expecta- tions which the English might entertain of winning jurisdiction over the Northwest had vanished into a forlorn hope.
Harmar's expedition having made no impression on the Indians, another was planned, to be undertaken the next year, 1791, by General Charles Scott. It con- sisted of 800 mounted men, the flower of Kentucky bush fighters, and its destination was the Indian towns on the Wabash above Vincennes. The place was soon reached by the mounted scouts, the Indian towns de- stroyed, and about fifty prisoners taken, but no decisive action was fought.
This expedition, like Harmar's which preceded it, only served to inflame the resentment of the Indians and widen the breach between them and the whites into an impassable gulf.
Scott's raid was succeeded by another similar one under General Wilkinson, the succeeding summer. He went up the Wabash as far as Ouatanon, laying waste towns and fields as he went. Ouatanon was then a thriving village of about seventy comfortable dwellings, besides many Indian huts. It was composed of French, half breeds and Indians, and many signs of progress, such as books and pictures, were manifest in this wilder- ness post. Their fields of corn were cultivated with plows, like the English, and their horses and cows were well taken care of .*
* Am. State Papers, Vol. V. p. 121.
275
Ouatanon Destroyed.
The town was burnt and everything destroyed that the invaders could seize, whether the property of French or Indians. They all belonged to a less ambitious race than the Americans. The French and Indians had lived together here since 1733, and the hybrid offspring that rose up in the forest in consequence was essentially Indian in social matters, while the French themselves manifested no disposition to break through the toils of savage manners, customs and superstitions. Whatever may have been their standard of honor or their com- munistic propensities of equality and indisposition to eclipse each other in wealth or grandeur, these were the last qualifications that would recommend them to the favor of Americans, whose motto is Excelsior.
The defeats of the Americans at the hands of Little Turtle embarrassed our first administration, which was then put to a heavy strain to liquidate revolutionary debts, as well as to satisfy its soldiers, who had been paid in continental money, of which the following is a fac-simile:
DOLLARS
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SIX DOLLARS.
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THIS Bill entitles the Bearer to receive SIX SPANISH MILLED DOLLARS, or the Value thereof in GOLD or SILVER . according to a Resolution of CON- GRESS publishdat Phi: ladelphia Nov. 2. 1776.
IXD
CHAPTER XII.
Little Turtle-His Masterly Abilities-Privations of the Early Settlers -- St. Clair's Expedition against the Indians-His Defeat --- Its Causes ----- He Resigns -- Gen. Anthony Wayne Succeeds Him-Peace Com- missioners on the Canada Border-The Indians Claim the Ohio River as a Boundary Line between Them- selves and the Whites-The Terms Inadmissible and the Council a Failure.
Among the forest heroes whose exploits have made their history illustrious in their downfall, was a chief named Little Turtle. Gifted with the essential quali- ties which make up the model great man in civilized communities, and nearly exempt from the eccentricities peculiar to his race, his many virtues shone with untar- nished luster amidst the turmoil of the camp and the vengeful spirit of the times. He was not a chief by birth, but rose to that distinction per force of his merit, both as counselor and warrior, and at maturity he became principal chief of the Miamis, and the acknow !- edged leader of the neighboring tribes who had con- federated themselves together to beat back the white invaders of their soil.
Immediately after the raids of Harmar, Scott and Wilkinson, the forest echoed with the war-whoop from the Muskingum to the Wabash. The Miamis, Chippe- was, Delawares, Pottawattomies, Hurons and Shawanese, gathered under the banner of Little Turtle, who, with the assistance of Girty, McGee and Elliot, and his subordinate chiefs, constituted the best drilled army of Indian warriors that ever fought the white man.
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277
Intrigues with Spain.
St. Clair had foreseen this vengeful animosity that rankled in the hearts of the Indians, and had made preparations to meet it. The country over which he had been appointed governor was a wilderness of forest and prairie, tenanted by its native inhabitants; some of whom, under the tutelage of the French, had erected log cabins to live in instead of bark huts. The Ameri- can settlers did not number 2,000 in the entire territory. They were settled within the limits of Washington county, at the mouth of the Muskingum, and Symes' Purchase, on the Ohio, embracing Cincinnati and its vicinity. To these may be added a few Americans settled amongst the French villages of the Illinois country, and also among the settlers at Vincennes. Thriving settlements had started in Kentucky from the parent state of Virginia, and these were the main dependence of the inhabitants north of the Ohio river, in case of a sudden Indian outbreak.
The situation of the inhabitants in the entire valley of the Mississippi was complicated with untried con- ditions. England still held the entire lake country. Spain held the west bank of the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans, and was putting forth her utmost exertions to induce the people of Kentucky to secede from the United States, and to this end closed the navigation of the Mississippi, refusing to make it free to the western people, except on condition that they would cut loose from the parent stem and set up a government under the protection of Spain. To bring about this she sent intriguing emissaries to Kentucky; nor did they fail to get some encouragement. Under this double pressure, the settlers of the Northwest main- tained an unshaken confidence in their ability to struggle through all the writhings of their crooked path.
They labored incessantly at their daily toil, and were contented with the coarsest fare. Corn meal mixed with water, baked on a board turned up to the fire, was almost the only bread they had, and all they wanted. Their meat, besides what game they shot, was pork, fattened on the nuts of the forest, which they called mast. Within the territory at this time were four
278
St. Clair's Daughter.
American forts: Fort Knox, at. Vincennes, garrisoned with eighty men; Ft. Washington, at Cincinnati, with seventy-five men; Ft. Steuben, twenty-two miles above Wheeling, on the Ohio river, with sixty-one men; and Campus Martius, at Marietta, with forty-five men.
The latter place represented the blandishments of Boston, classical learning of Yale, and the patriotism of Bunker Hill. Here the first laws to govern the new territory were published; and here its first courts were established; and though Gen. St. Clair's headquarters were at Cincinnati, Marietta was by far the most con- genial place for his family to reside in. Accordingly suitable apartments were fitted up for their accommo- dation in Campus Martius. In Louisa, his oldest daughter, were united the western heroine with the refinements of Philadelphia, where she was educated. In the winter of 1790, she was often seen skating on the Muskingum river, in which exercise few of the young officers could equal her in activity. During successive years she often rode through the adjacent forests on horseback, armed with her rifle, undaunted by the dan- gers of Indian ambuscades. Her skill in the use of this weapon was sometimes turned to a good account in the wild game with which she furnished her father's table, shot by the bullet under the fatal aim of her blue eye.
Hildreth, the pioneer historian, in his rapturous praises of her surpassing beauty and grace, in his imagination substitutes a bow and arrow for her rifle, and sees her flying through the wooded heather, mounted on her high mettled steed, like Diana, the daughter of Jupiter, and goddess of hunting.
In this gifted girl was represented the type of Ameri- can genius, the transcendent images of civilization, before which all bow with loyalty and devotion. Should this power supplant the barbarism of the forest, and make it teem with joy and beauty multiplied with years? or should the inherent rights of the Indian be respected, and the country which he owned be held sacred to the chase and occupied only by the tenants of the wigwam? This was the question before the American people,
279
St. Clair Invades the Indian Country.
especially the pioneer who had crossed the Ohio, which was then looked upon by the Indians as a partition line between the whites and themselves.
On the 15th of May, 1791, Gen. St. Clair arrived at Fort Washington, which was to be the rallying point for the troops destined to invade the Indian country. By a special act of Congress, 3,000 men were to be raised for this service from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Mary- land and Virginia; but owing to the poverty of the country, as well as the long continued draft upon its sinews of war, the quota had not been filled. The rising state of Kentucky, however, came to the rescue, and sent 418 men to partially supply the deficiency. On the 17th of September the whole force was gathered at Ludlow's Station, five miles north of Fort Washington, and the march began,
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