USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. I > Part 50
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Geology has revealed the history of many of the physical changes which are apparent on the face of nature in its present adaptation to our wants, and of these changes observation, even unaided by science, shows how the recent finishing up of great geological changes has been completed. That Lake Michigan has been receding for several centuries does not admit of a doubt when one carefully notes the topography of its southwestern water shed. The rapids of the Illinois river at Marsailles once bore the same relation to the great lakes on the west that Niagara Falls now bears on the east. The evidence of this is found in the valley which once constituted the gently sloping banks of a western outlet of the lakes. This must have been when the face of the lake was thirty or more feet higher
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Delta of the Desplaines River.
than its present level. At that time the Desplaines river must have emptied into the lake, and as the latter receded its waval action, by obstructing its mouth, as it subsequently did the mouth of the Chicago river, turned it into the Illinois valley. Even as late as 1849, during a great flood, the swollen waters of the Desplaines found their old channel to the lake through the Chicago river, carrying shipping and bridges along in its irresist- ible career. How much more Lake Michigan may recede depends on the friable nature of the rock at Niagara Falls and the bed of the Detroit river, which as yet seems to be inflexible enough to give many cen- turies, lease of the present height of the lake before it can recede sufficiently to leave Chicago as an inland city. Till then she may drink of the brimming cup which the economy of nature has brought to her lips, and if, by the wisdom and justice of our country's laws, our government stands and continues to dispense an even measure of justice to all its subjects till the evolu- tions of nature shall have changed the location of our large cities, we shall present a spectacle never before recorded in the world's history.
The solution of this problem belongs to the future. It will not follow the mandates of our dogmas or the whims of speculation, but a thousand years hence the merits of Oriental, Grecian and Christian civilization will be compared with each other by transcendental philosophy, which is always parsimonious in its praise and lavish in its censure; meantime we shall wag along, each one doing all he can to contribute his mite to make up the sum total of the grandeur of his own age as far as the promotion of his own interest can do it; and the verdict of time will. be pronounced in favor of that civilization whose policy the most largely turns. private enterprise into, and secures private interests in channels not antagonistic to, but in harmony with the public good. Let us convince our posterity that Chris- tian civilization can win in this sublime rivalry, even if it extends into Oriental fields in the Philippine archi- pelago, as now proposed by leading American states- men, the result of which new policy will be shown in
583
Eli B. Williams.
the future. Let us return to Chicago, which we left where Mr. Carpenter found it.
Mr. Eli B. Williams may be regarded as next in chronological order of the living witnesses of early Chi- cago. He was a native of Connecticut, and with his wife arrived at Chicago, April 14, 1833. From Detroit they came in their own private carriage across the country through Ypsilanti and Niles, coming to the shore of the lake at the residence of Mr. Biella, who with his family were spoken of in the previous chapter. From this place they followed the immediate shore of the lake to Chicago, ferrying over the Calumet at Mr. Man's ferry, arriving at the place the next day in the afternoon. Leaving the fort at their right, they bent their course across the open prairie toward the fork of the river. Here they found a log tavern kept by Mark Beaubien. Several Indians were lounging around the door, in the listless manner peculiar to their race, which was not calculated to assure a lady from Connecticut with con- fidence, and Mr. Williams, at the suggestion of his wife, drove across the river on a floating log bridge, to a tavern kept by Charles H. Taylor. Here they stopped several days to take observations, after which Mr. Williams decided to settle in Chicago, under an impres- sion that a late appropriation which congress had made to improve the river and harbor, together with the canal when finished, would insure a respectable sized town, where the religious and educational institutions of his native state might be reproduced.
The entire white population of Chicago did not then exceed 200 persons, but there was a much larger Indian population, which, though transient, served to swell the volume of trade, and Mr. Williams concluded to open a store at once. His place of business was on South Water street, east of Geo. W. Dole's. This he built, making the frame from green timber, cut from the forests on the North Side, hewn to a snap line with a broad ax in the old-fashioned way. The weather boarding came from St. Joseph, which then furnished Chicago her lumber as much as it does now her peaches. The flooring came from a saw mill which had just been
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Cook County Organized.
built by the enterprising Mr. Naper, at Naperville, who must be recorded as one of the pioneers in the lumber trade to Chicago.
In 1831 the county of Cook had been organized, in- cluding within its area the present counties of Dupage, Lake, McHenry, Will and Iroquois, receiving its name from Daniel P. Cook, a member of congress from southern Illinois. Samuel Miller, Gholson Kercheval and James Walker were sworn into office as county commissioners, March 8, 1831, by John S. C. Hogan, justice; William See was clerk, and Archibald Clybourn treasurer, Jedediah Wooley was county surveyor. Three election districts were organized, one at Chicago, one on the Dupage river and one on Hickory creek.
It was not until two years later that the town of Chi- cago took any action toward organizing, when, under general statute law, they held an election for this pur- pose, August 10, 1833, and incorporated the embryo town. Only twenty-eight votes were cast, which was but a feeble constituency with which to start a metrop- olis. P. J. V. Owen, Geo. W. Dole, Mederd Beaubien, John Miller and E. S. Kimberly were elected as trust- ees. A log jail was built on the public square, where the court house has since been erected. An estray pen was also built at an expense of $12.
The next year Mr. Williams was elected president of the council board of trustees. Entering upon the re- sponsibility of his office, he found many difficulties in his path. There were various public improvements necessary to be made to keep pace with the progress of such public works as had been projected at government expense, such as the Illinois and Michigan canal and building the north pier, and opening a straight channel for the mouth of the river through the sand bar around which it had formerly formed a circuitous delta. *
* From Mr. Ezekiel Morrison, who came to Chicago soon after the arrival of Mr. Williams in 1833, the following has been learned relative to the opening of the mouth of the river directly to the lake. In 1833 work was commenced at cutting through the sand bar to straighten the Chicago river. It was done under the direction of Major Handy, who had charge of the government work. Cribs were made, filled with stone and sunk across the main channel of the river to turn its course across the sand bar directly into the lake, as it now runs. The next year, as
585
The First Steam Engine.
Clark street was then the principal highway from north to south. During excessive rains it was impass- able, in its low places, and it was the first pressing want of the town to make a ditch on each side of it. The treasury was empty, and a loan to accomplish this end was necessary. By dint of much importunity, Mr. Williams succeeded in negotiating one for $60 with Messrs. Strahan & Scott, by becoming personally re- sponsible for its payment. The amount was faithfully applied to the purpose for which it was intended, and thus the public credit and improvement of Chicago began, which have since been witnessed up to this date (1880) by him who inaugurated them.
Besides the honorable record of Mr. Williams in Chi- cago, an increased interest gathers around his recollec- tions, from the following incident: At Toland, Conn., in his father's house, John Buel Fitch planned and built the first steam engine ever made. He, with his assist- ants, worked secretly in the basement of the house, and continued their labors till the engine was in practi- cal working order; the first of its kind which was des- tined to revolutionize the transporting as well as the manufacturing interests of the world, and control the destinies of nations. While at work on it, says Mr. Williams, the screeching of files, the clink of hammers, and hissing of steam, which was heard outside, excited the superstition of the age, till witchcraft was suspected,
good fortune would have it, the Desplaines overflowed the country in- tervening and caused an unusual flow of water through the Chicago river. Only a slight opening was made in the sand bar, and the accumu- lated waters did the rest. A steamboat came through the opening thus made the same spring (1834). The north pier was then commenced to secure the advantage thus gained. Four hundred feet was made the first year, and its progress continued from year to year to its present dimensions. Immediately after the channel was pierced through, the wind commenced drifting sand from the north bank into the river, and cribs had to be set into the bank to prevent the filling up of the channel. The action of the waves was also a constant source of annoyance, and threatened to destroy the utility of the work already done, till the north pier was extended a sufficient distance into the lake to reach water so deep that the sand could not be moved around it by surface agitation. To extend this pier sufficiently to accomplish this has been, and is still, a work perhaps not completed, but destined yet to engage the attention of the Chicago board of public works. Meantime the waval action is constantly making accretions north of the pier. It has already made a belt of land half a mile into the lake, and the process is still going on.
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586
Cession of Lands.
and the whole neighborhood were beset with fear from what was going on in the mysterious basement.
John Fitch lived and died in penury and want, but through his invention the railroad and manufacturing millionaires of Europe and America grew into power, and the present magnitude of Chicago is already trace- able to the success of that experiment that from the basement of the elder Mr. Williams' house crowned the twilight of the eighteenth century with everlasting fame.
In the year 1832 the Pottawattamies of Indiana and Michigan, on the 20th of October, at Camp Tippecanoe, in Indiana, concluded a treaty with the United States, by the terms of which the country intervening between their cession of 1816, along the line of the proposed canal and the Indiana line was sold to the United States in the following terms: After making many reservations to private Indians for services rendered the state, the United States agreed to pay to the Pot- tawattamies an annuity of $15,000 for twenty years, besides an annuity of $600 to Billy Caldwell, $200 to Alexander Robinson, and $200 to Pierre Le Clerc, dur- ing their lives. Further, the sum of $28,746 was to be paid to liquidate certain private claims against the Indians, and merchandise to the amount of $45,000 was to be delivered to them on signing the treaty, and an additional amount of merchandise, to the value of $30,000, was to be delivered to them at Chicago the next year (1833).
On the 27th of October, the same year, 1832, and at the same place (Tippecanoe), the Pottawattamies of Indiana sold to the United States all the remainder of the lands which they still held as a tribe, in Michigan, south of Grand river, in Indiana, and in Illinois.
This treaty did not release the claim of the Pottawat- tamies, Chippewas and Ottawas, of Illinois, to such lands as lay north and west of the cession of 1816, along the track of the proposed canal; and it will thus be seen that almost all the northern portion of Illinois was still in undisputed Indian possession.
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Great Indian Treaty of 1833.
Appropriations to build the Illinois and Michigan canal had already been made by the state of Illinois, to whom the alternate sections of public lands for six miles on each side of the canal had been donated by the government for this purpose.
Since the Black Hawk war, which had brought the country within the knowledge of so many enterprising . young men, emigration was coming in rapidly and occu- pying the lands, although they had not yet been sur- veyed; but these moral pre-emptors did not want any better claim for an ultimate title than would result from actual possession. Speculators were also coming into Chicago with cash to make investments, and it was all- important that the Indian title to such portions of northern Illinois as the Sacs and Foxes had not already given up, should be speedily extinguished. To this end the Chippewas, the Ottawas and the Pottawat- tamies of Illinois were summoned to a great council to be held in Chicago in September, 1833. . Great prepara- tions were made for this event. Besides the interest the Indians had in it directly as to the amounts of money and goods coming to them on parting with their lands, they were the unwitting instruments by which several hundred white claimants brought charges against the government, either for property said to have been destroyed or stolen by them, or for services done the state in times of Indian disturbances as measures of safety, or for services in times of peace under govern- ment contracts.
At this time Mr. Charles J. Latrobe, an Englishman of great descriptive talent, happened to be on a tour to Chicago to see the wonders of an American frontier, and make notes of the same for publication in London. * The naiveness of his description of Chicago and the transient comers to the place, both red and white, to attend the treaty, are too fresh to be lost, and portions of them are here reproduced as a truer picture of the scene than could now be given :
We found the village on our arrival crowded to excess, and we procured with great difficulty a small apartment, comfortless and noisy from
* His book entitled "Rambler" in America, was published in London in 1835. It was dedicated to Washington Irving.
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Great Indian Treaty of 1833.
its close proximity to others, but quite as good as we could have hoped for.
The Pottawattamies were encamped on all sides-on the wide level prairie beyond the scattered village, beneath the shelter of the low woods which chequered them, on the side of the small river, or to the leeward of the sand hills near the beach of the lake. They consisted of three principal tribes with certain adjuncts from smaller tribes. The main divisions are, the Pottawattamies of the prairie and those of the forest, and these are subdivided into distinct villages under their sev- eral chiefs.
The general government of the United States, in pursuance of the scheme of removing the whole Indian population westward of the Mis- sissippi, had empowered certain gentlemen to frame a treaty with these tribes, to settle the terms upon which the cession of their reservations in these states should be made.
A preliminary council had been held with the chiefs some days before our arrival. The principal commissioner had opened it, as we learnt, by stating that, "as their great father in Washington had heard that they wished to sell their land, he had sent commissioners to treat with them." The Indians promptly answered by their organ, "that their great father in Washington must have seen a bad bird which had told him a lie, for that far from wishing to sell their land, they wished to keep it." The commissioner, nothing daunted, replied: "That never- theless, as they had come together for a council, they must take the matter into consideration." He then explained to them promptly the wishes and intentions of their great father, and asked their opinion thereon. Thus pressed, they looked at the sky, saw a few wandering clouds, and straightway adjourned sine die, as the weather is not clear enough for so solemn a council.
However, as the treaty had been opened, provision was supplied to them by regular rations; and the same night they had had great rejoic- ings-danced the war-dance, and kept the eyes and ears of all open by running and howling about the village.
Such was the state of affairs on our arrival. Companies of old war- riors might be seen sitting smoking under every bush; arguing, palaver- ing or "pow-wowing " with great earnestness; but there seemed no possibility of bringing them to another council in a hurry.
Meanwhile the village and its occupants presented a most motley scene.
The fort contained within its palisades by far the most enlightened residents, in the little knot of officers attached to the slender garrison. The quarters here consequently were too confined to afford place of residence for the government commissioners, for whom and a crowd of dependents, a temporary set of plank huts were erected on the north side of the river. To the latter gentlemen we, as the only idle lookers on, were indebted for much friendly attention; and in the frank and hospitable treatment we received from the inhabitants of Fort Dearborn, we had a foretaste of that which we subsequently met with everywhere under like circumstances, during our autumnal wanderings over the frontier. The officers of the United States army have perhaps less opportunities of becoming refined than those of the navy. They are often, from the moment of their receiving commissions, after the ter- mination of their cadetship at West Point, and at an age when good society is of the utmost consequence to the young and ardent, exiled for long years to the posts on the northern or western frontier, far re- moved from cultivated female society, and in daily contact with the refuse of the human race. And this is their misfortune-not their fault-but wherever we have met with them, and been thrown as strangers upon their good offices, we have found them the same good friends and good company.
But I was going to give you an inventory of the contents of Chicago, when the recollection of the warm hearted intercourse we had enjoyed
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Great Indian Treaty of 1833.
with many fine fellows whom probably we shall neither see nor hear of again, drew me aside.
Next in rank to the officers and commissioners, may be noticed cer- tain storekeepers and merchants resident here; looking either to the influx of new settlers establishing themselves in the neighborhood, or those passing yet further to the westward, for custom and profit; not to forget the chance of extraordinary occasions like the present. Add to these a doctor or two, two or three lawyers, a land agent, and five or six hotel-keepers. These may be considered as stationary, and proprietors of the half a hundred clapboard houses around you.
Then for the birds of passage, exclusive of the Pottawattamies, of whom more anon-and emigrants and land speculators as numerous as the sands. You will find horse dealers and horse stealers-rogues of every description, white, black, brown and red-half breeds, quarter breeds, and men of no breed at all-dealers in pigs, poultry and potatoes -men pursuing Indian claims, some for tracts of land, others, like our friend Snipe (one of his stage coach companions on the way), for pigs which the wolves had eaten-creditors of the tribes, or of particular Indians, who know that they have no chance of getting their money, if they do not get it from the government agents-sharpers of every degree; peddlers, grog-sellers, Indian agents and Indian traders of every description, and contractors to supply the Pottawattamies with food. The little village was in an uproar from morning to night, and from night to morning; for during the hours of darkness, when the housed portion of the population of Chicago strove to obtain repose in the crowded plank edifices of the village, the Indians howled, sang, wept, yelled and whooped in their various encampments.
I loved to stroll out toward sunset across the river, and gaze upon the level horizon, stretching to the northwest over the surface of the prairie, dotted with innumerable objects far and near. Not far from the river lay many groups of tents constructed of coarse canvas, blankets and mats, and surmounted by poles, supporting meat, moccasins and rags. Their vicinity was always enlivened by various painted Indian figures, dressed in the most gaudy attire. The interior of the hovels generally displayed a confined area, perhaps covered with a few half-rotten mats or shavings, upon which men, women, children and baggage were heaped pell-mell.
Far and wide the grassy prairie teemed with figures; warriors mounted or on foot, squaws and horses. Here a race between three or four Indian ponies, each carrying a double rider, whooping and yelling like fiends. There a solitary horseman with a long spear, turbaned like an Arab, scouring along at full speed-groups of hobbled horses; Indian dogs and children, or a grave conclave of gray chiefs seated on the grass in consultation.
It was amusing to wind silently from group to group-here noting the raised knife, the sudden drunken brawl, quashed by the good natured and even playful interference of the neighbors, there a party breaking up their encampment, and falling with their little train of loaded ponies and wolfish dogs into the deep, black narrow trail running to the north. You peep into a wigwam and see a domestic feud; the chief sit- ting in dogged silence on the mat, while the women, of which there were commonly two or three in every dwelling, and who appeared every evening even more elevated with the fumes of whisky than the males, read him a lecture. From another tent a constant voice of wrangling and weeping would proceed, when suddenly an offended fair one would draw the mat aside, and taking a youth standing without by the hand, lead him apart, and sitting down on the grass, set up the most inde- scribable whine as she told her grief. Then forward comes an Indian, staggering with his chum from a debauch; he is met by his squaw, with her child dangling in a fold of her blanket behind, and the sobbing and weeping which accompanies her whining appeal to him, as she hangs to
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Great Indian Treaty of 1833.
his hand, would melt your heart, if you did not see that she was quite as tipsy as himself.
Here sitting apart and solitary, an Indian expends the exuberance of his intoxicated spirits in the most ludicrous singing and gesticulation; and there squat a circle of unruly topers indulging themselves in the most unphilosophic and excessive peals of laughter.
It is a grievous thing that government is not strong handed enough to put a stop to the shameful and scandalous sale of whisky to those poor miserable wretches. But here lie casks of it for sale under the very eye of the commissioners, met together for purposes which demand that sobriety should be maintained, were it only that no one should be able to lay at their door an accusation of unfair dealing, and of having taken advantage of the helpless Indian in a bargain, whereby the peo- ple of the United States were to be so greatly the gainers.
And such was the state of things day by day. However anxious I and others might be to exculpate the United States government from the charge of cold and selfish policy toward the remnant of the Indian tribes, and from that of resorting to unworthy and diabolical means in attaining possession of their lands-as long as it can be said with truth, that drunkenness was not guarded against, and that the means were furnished at the very time of the treaty, and under the very nose of the commissioners-how can it be expected but a stigma will attend every transaction of this kind. The sin may lie at the door of the individuals more immediately in contact with them; but for the character of the people as a nation, it should be guarded against, beyond a possibility of transgression. Who will believe that any act, however formally exe- cuted by the chiefs, is valid, as long as it is known that whisky was one of the parties to the treaty.
"But how sped the treaty?" you will ask.
Day after day passed. It was in vain that the signal gun from the fort gave notice of an assemblage of chiefs at the council fire. Reasons were always found for its delay. One day an influential chief was not in the way; another, the sky looked cloudy, and the Indian never per- forms an important business except the sky be clear. At length, on September 21, the Potawattamies resolved to meet the commissioners. We were politely invited to be present.
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