USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 2
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Whoever desires may now see at the corner of Prairie avenue and Eighteenth street a beautiful bronze monument erected by the late George M. Pullman to mark the spot where less than a hundred years ago five hundred Indians nearly annihilated the entire white population of Chicago.
Notwithstanding the promise to spare the lives of the remnant
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that surrendered, the Indians put to death every wounded prisoner save Captain and Mrs. Heald, Lieutenant Ilelm and Mrs. Helm. The American army suffered at the hands of the British and their Indian allies two defeats at substantially the same time, Detroit having been surrendered by General Hull upon the day Fort Dearborn was burned. The attack has been attributed to the failure to turn over to the Indians the ammunition and whisky at the fort. That an agreement to do this was made seems incredible, and that upon con sultation it was determined not to put into the possession of the sav - ages ammunition with which to kill whatever and whomever they might see fit, or whiskey, under the influence of which they were likely to become infuriated demons, was a wise resolution. . As a rule, the Indians who occasionally came to the fort were not tin- friendly to the garrison or the traders. They coveted whiskey, guus, ammunition, colored cloths, blankets, shining trinkets and whatever aroused their curiosity. But for the long-continued influence of British emissaries, they would have been no more dangerous than an equal number of Europeans living without the restraint of law.
The Indians were a flesh-eating people, and flesh eaters have a natural desire to kill. They loved excitement, noise, revelry, the chase. The young men were vehement, full of passion, vigorous. ready for anything that gave full play to their love for fighting, that offered an opportunity to scream, strike, subdue and triumph over a fallen foe or an innocent animal. Whether Captain Heald, in the abandonment of the fort, or in the disposition of his little force, took the wisest course, it is impossible to say. Nothing is easier than, after the event, to point out mistakes made before. Most military historians are able to show how Napoleon could have won all the battles he lost.
In July, 1816, after the termination of the war with Great Brit- ain, Captain Bradley arrived at Chicago with two companies of in- fantry, and built upon the site of the destroyed, a new Fort Dearborn, which was occupied by United States soldiers until 1823. "the fron tier" having been, by advancing settlements, pushed back to the Mis- sissippi, the keeping of an armed force at Chicago was thought to be no longer necessary. The new fort having been completed, the re- mains of the victims of the massacre are said to have been gathered and buried. Exposed as the corpses of the unburied dead for four
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years had been, a prey for wolves and other carnivorae, how much that could be identified as human relics, the snow and ice of winter, the drifting sands of summer, torrential rains and furious storms had left, no one knows. But what does it matter how the corse be shat- tered, ground to powder, buried in the sea, or scattered by the winds of heaven, when the soul that alone lifted it above the fate of com- mon clay, has forever passed out of its clasp. There was an hour when to the little band that stood between the sand and the lake, these two companies of infantrymen would have seemed messengers from heaven. The agony of that hour passed and four years there- after not all the hosts that shook the earth at Austerlitz and Water- loo could restore to life, heal a wound or stay a pang of the unburied dead who perished in that fateful hour.
The fort in the fall of 1828 again received a garrison which re- mained until the spring of 1831 ; and, in the terror consequent upon the Black Hawk war, frightened settlers sought safety within its walls. In June, 1832, a garrison was placed in the fort and it re- mained, an occupied military post of the United States until Decem- ber, 1836, when it ceased to be held by any portion of the army.
Inserted in the northeast corner of the warehouse opposite the south end of Rush street bridge, is a tablet marking the spot where the old block house stood.
In 1818 Illinois became one of the United States. In the division of the state into counties, Chicago became a part of Pike county, and John Kinzie was recommended for justice of the peace of the county. By December, 1823, Chicago had been placed in Fulton county. January 13, 1825, Peoria county, including Chicago, was set apart- from Fulton. In 1831 Cook county was organized and placed in the fifth judicial circuit.
As to whether the circuit court of Cook county was opened and the first trial before it had in September, 1831, or not until May, 1834, there is a difference of opinion as to which, owing to the great fire of 1871, neither pleader nor historian can bring the record of its first proceeding into court or before the bar of public opinion, and thus have settled the question when the circuit court of Cook county, in which causes determined and pending have reached beyond the number 286,000, was first convened and, being ready to proceed to
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business, the case of John Doe vs. Richard Roe was called and put upon trial.
Whoever takes time to look over papers and accounts relating to mercantile transactions in Chicago from 1803 to 1820 will have his attention called to the prominent part which whiskey played in the commerce of those days, as well as to the comparatively low price at which it could then be obtained; while in a letter written July 17th. 1817, complaint is made that "the best Indian corn will not command over two dollars per bushel." Was this due to a trust combination of distilleries and railroads ?
When, in 1809, the territory of Illinois was, by act of Congress, set off from Indiana, it was divided into two counties, Randolph and St. Clair; the latter comprised the northern portion of the territory. From time to time, as population increased, new counties were cre- ated, and thus the district now known as Chicago has been within one hundred years successively in the counties of St. Clair, Madison, Crawford, Clark, Pike, Fulton, Peoria and Cook.
There was not in Chicago or Cook county a voting precinct until 1823. An election was ordered to be held on the last Saturday of September, 1823, at the house of John Kinzie, to choose a major and company officers of the Seventeenth Regiment of Illinois Militia. The first election, of the actual holding of which an official record remains, appears to have been held August 7, 1826, eighty-two years ago, for the purpose of electing a governor, lieutenant-governor, and a member of Congress; thirty-five votes were cast, all for the same persons. The present political machines ought to ascertain how such unanimity was secured. There may have been other elections be- tween this and 1830; but if so, no certain account of them remains. An election seems to have been held July 24, 1830, for the election of a justice of the peace and constable, at which fifty-six votes were cast. In August, 1832, Cook county included the region now known as the counties of Will, McHenry, Dupage and Cook, and had therein three election precincts. At the first general election held after the organization of the county of Cook, for congressional, state and coun- ty officers, there were cast at the three precincts one hundred and- fourteen votes, of which the Democratic candidate for congress re- ceived ninety-four and his competitors twenty.
The county of Cook was so named in honor of Daniel P. Cook,
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who, as a representative in Congress from the state of Illinois, brought before the general government the subject of aid for a canal connect- ing the great lakes with the Mississippi; the result of which was the granting in aid thereof of more than three hundred thousand acres of land along the Illinois river to Lake Michigan, embracing a large portion of the site of the present city of Chicago.
Beyond question, the construction of the Illinois and Michigan canal, thus assured, was of great importance in the growth at Chi- cago of a great city. Not only was attention thus called to this place and the extraordinary fertility of the vast surrounding area, but the means of communication thus to be opened up through the great lakes to the Atlantic on the east and by canal and river to the gulf on the south, constituting the longest line of inland waterway transportation that mankind had ever known, fired the imagination, enlisted the enthusiasm and inspired the hearts of myriads of adven- turous spirits, for whom life had just begun, the world was all before and hope stood at the helm. It was, moreover, an age of canals.
The New York and Erie canal, first suggested by Governor Mor- ris in 1780, on the 26th of October, 1825, was made navigable from tidewater on the Hudson to Lake Erie. On that day there was telegraphed by continuous discharge of cannon along the route from Buffalo to New York City, the news that the first barge, bearing Governor Clinton and his coadjutors, had left the lake on its way to New York City. No such message had ever before been announced over such a distance in such a manner. The Erie canal opened up boundless possibilities ; it transformed immense regions, created cit- ies, made fortunes; why should not the Illinois and Michigan canal do the same? It did and was of first rank in creating the metropolis at its eastern terminus. On the 16th of April, 1848, the canal was formally opened and on the 24th a boat arrived laden with sugar, shipped from New Orleans. This was transferred to the steamer Louisiana and, by the lakes, arrived at Buffalo two weeks before the spring opening of the Erie canal had enabled a boat from New York City to reach that port.
In 1824 Colonel Rene Paul, of St. Louis, a very competent en- gineer, was employed with a corps of men to make a survey and esti- mate of the cost of a proposed canal connecting the Chicago river with the Illinois at LaSalle. This he did, completing the work in
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1825, estimating the cost of five routes surveyed, the highest esti- mate being $716,110, the lowest $639.946. In 1833 it was ascer- tained that the cost of the work would be $4,043,000. After further surveys, in 1836 an estimate of $8,654,000 as the cost of a canal ninety-six miles long, sixty-six feet wide at the surface, thirty-six at the bottom and six feet deep, was made, and July 4, 1836, amid im- posing ceremonies, the great work was begun. Up to 1842 the canal had cost $5.139,492.03, and was yet uncompleted. It was deter- mined that the canal should be completed upon the shallow cut, or cheap plan. A loan of $1,600,000 was effected, which was after- wards paid out of the proceeds of a special two-mill state tax. . 1 few hundred thousand dollars more were expended, and the canal, called completed, and opened as before stated. In 1852 congress ap- propriated $30,000 for the dredging of the canal channel.
In 1823, eighty-five years ago, there was levied in Fulton county, of which Chicago was then a part, the first tax upon property in the settlement, from which was realized the sum of $14.42. August 4, 1830, a plat of the town of Chicago was made and published. The population in 1833 amounted to between three and four hundred. In that year the town was incorporated and in November rules for the regulation of the ordinary affairs of the town were adopted. March 4, 1837, Chicago, by act of the legislature, became a city. The popu- lation was rapidly increasing, so that at the first city election, March 31, 1837, seven hundred and nine votes were cast, the population shown by the first city census, taken July 1, 1837, being 4.170.
Although the actual construction of the canal was not begun be- fore July, 1836, the donation of lands by Congress and the determina- tion to build, as before suggested, turned attention to Chicago and directed the western tide of emigration to this point. Coupled with this was a wild speculation in lands and town lots, which arose in 1834 and came to an end in May, 1837. In the course of the land craze, thousands of enterprising spirits were drawn hither, the adja- cent country was visited, and knowledge of the vast domain of most fertile lands in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa ready for tillage, that could be had at one dollar and a quarter an acre, set in motion a tide of individual, peaceful emigration to the garden spot of the world such as was never seen before and never will be again.
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The canal was neither projected nor built to advertise Chicago, to cause the expenditure here of large sums of money or to draw hither a great number of laborers. It was inaugurated and carried through as a commercial enterprise, the construction of an artery for trade, a link in an inland waterway upwards of three thousand miles in length. Opened in 1848, in 1854 the competition of the Rock Island Railroad compelled the trustees to reduce the moderate tolls first imposed.
In September, 1833, a so-called grand council of Indian chiefs was assembled at Chicago to consider as to a treaty to be made whereby the lands that for an unknown and unknowable time had been roamed and fought over, hunted and fished upon by tribes called by the whites Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Illinois, Winne- bagoes, Sac and Fox Indians, should forever pass away from their occupation, and they go across the Father of Waters to a country far away, which they had never seen, and as to which they knew nothing save that it was toward the sunset, where the great light is lost and from which it never comes. Thus they were told the Great Father had said and thus it must be.
It is today easy to be sentimental over the wrongs and the fate of the Indian. It was harder for our fathers to be just and kind to him than it is for us to thus treat the negro. No superior race has been just to an inferior. Man is naturally as devoid of sentiment as the savage beast out of whose loins he sprang. Such sentiment as he possesses has come through the influence of woman, who, perforce, tender to her babe, develops a tenderness toward all things. The fierce young warrior was kind neither to the dog he kicked, the mother whom he neglected, the squaw who obeyed his command, nor the enemy whom he scalped. He loved fire water, demanded whiskey, coveted powder, guns, knives; hated restraint and labor. The five thousand savages assembled at Chicago to negotiate a treaty they could not refuse to enter into, had no sentimental feeling concerning the opalescent lake, the green fields that ran thence to the Father of Waters, or the graves of their ancestors. They did not like to be disturbed, to be driven away by hostile Sioux, fierce Iroquois or the Great Father. They wished to be let alone. They called for fire water and they got it. Fur traders and others of whom they had re- ceived many things and promised much, got, for those days, a great
STATE STREET, MADISON TO WASHINGTON
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS L
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deal of money, more than a hundred thousand dollars. Altogether the United States seem to have paid to and for the Indians about eight hundred thousand dollars, of which $10,000 was equally di- vided between two semi-civilized Indians, who had long lived with the whites, $280,000 in annuities running through fourteen years ; $150,000 for the erection of mills, houses, the purchase of agricul- tural implements, etc., and $70,000 for educational purposes. The treaty was signed by the three white commissioners and over seventy Indians, each of the latter signing by a mark. That the Indians would sign the prepared treaty was, of course, inevitable; there was no other thing for them to do. Nevertheless, they were treated with a consideration precious to the savage heart. All came to the great council. Not a squaw, papoose or dog remained away ; and all feast- ed royally day after day upon the bread and meat the Great Father provided; sung, danced, raced, gambled, howled, traded and squab- bled until they were weary; and, by such persuasion, coupled with furs sold to the traders, cloths and whiskey obtained therefor, they reached the mental condition in which they could and did calmly listen to what the Great Father had to say, deliberately consider the same and freely agree thereto.
In volume I of Andreas' most excellent "History of Chicago," is a letter written by an intelligent English traveler, Charles J. Latrobe, who was present on this occasion. While it is too long to be repro- duced here, it is something which no one who wishes to understand the real character of the Indian, the whites with whom he mostly came in contact, and the dealings of the government with each, can afford to overlook.
The government would have been glad to have set off to each Indian family one hundred and sixty acres of land, built a home thereon and given therewith agricultural implements, seed and cattle ; but this was not that for which the Indian was fitted or cared. They would not have been desirable neighbors for the whites, and quar- rels between the two, leading to bloodshed, would have inevitably followed. The Indian had back of him, running through unnumbered centuries, a heritage of war, fishing, hunting and nomadic wandering. To settle down upon a quarter section, cultivate and obtain his living from it was entirely foreign to his thought. To him such a life would have been slavery, an existence of which he had no real con-
Vol. I-2.
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ception. Nor would he steadily work for wages. His wants were few-whiskey and a feast. His pleasures simple-hunting, fishing, fighting, athletic games, some dancing, much noise and a drunken carouse. To this there were exceptions, but not enough to affect the mass. Most Indians, without reflection, were thoroughly in touch with the modern teaching that opportunity for play is to be contin- uously sought, and that there is no danger of degradation in what is called recreation.
Chicago is pre-eminently a railroad city, railroads having done more to promote its growth and prosperity than any other agency. The opening for traffic of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in England in 1829 first impressed upon the English public the fact that a great transformation in the conveyance of men and merchan- dise was at hand. There is reason for thinking that the first railway in America upon which a steam locomotive proceeded along a track drawing after it loaded cars was built in South Carolina. From 1830 there was in Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York a furor for the building of railroads, and before the Illinois and Michigan canal was begun, the construction of a railroad from the lake to the Mississippi was considered. Canals were old, had existed for thousands of years; the operation of them was well understood. The contemplated channel was to be a link in a continuous waterway from New York City to the gulf, so that cargoes without shifting might be moved from New Orleans to the Atlantic ocean. A canal was therefore decided upon. By 1831 interest had been awakened and steps taken looking to the building of railroads in Illinois. The construction of a railroad to be operated in connection with the canal was discussed. Judge Sidney Breese, in 1835, wrote recommending that a railroad be built by the state extending from the junction of the proposed canal with the Illinois river to the meeting of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He estimated that its cost would be $7,000 a mile, and that allowing fifteen miles an hour as the maximum speed, a train leaving Ottawa in the morning would, upon the morn of the next day, arrive at Cairo. In 1836 a charter for a railroad from Chicago to Galena, known as the Galena and Chicago Union, was obtained. Mindful of the reliability, as propelling powers, for thousands of years, of the horse, ox, ass, reindeer, mule and dog, as well as the great and uncertain cost of the contemplated railroad, the sagacious
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incorporators obtained authority to operate the road by steam or ani mal power, and if necessary to increase the capital stock from $100, 000 to $1,000,000.
In February, 1837, a survey was made of the proposed line run- ning due west from the south end of North Dearborn street to the DesPlaines river. In June, 1837, work ceased. In 1838 work was resumed only to be, for want of funds, discontinued before the close of the year. Nearly ten years elapsed before active construction again began. In March, 1848, a contract for the building of the first thirty-two miles from Chicago was let. Locomotives were purchased and brought through the lakes by boat to Chicago. November 20th, seventy years ago, a load of wheat was carried by rail ten miles from the DesPlaines river to Chicago. How many million loads have since come across the prairies to this city, no one knows. At this time no other road had reached Chicago. The western terminus of the Michi- gan Central had been, for the time, fixed at New Buffalo, Indiana, an extension to Chicago being contemplated. The first line to reach this city from the east was the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana, now known as the Lake Shore, which was completed to Chicago Feb- ruary 20, 1852. Of all the railroads entering Chicago, the Illinois Central is the only one to which for construction in Illinois a sub- sidy was given. The United States gave to the state of Illinois a strip of land 200 feet wide from LaSalle to Cairo, for road bed, side tracks and stations of a central railroad, and in addition 2.595,000 acres of land in alternate sections lying near to the contemplated main line of the road and its branches. This grant the state in 1851 gave to the Illinois Central Railroad Company, upon the agreement of that company to pay annually seven per cent of its gross earnings to the state.
Epidemics of belief as well as epidemics of disease have occurred in all ages. In 1837 there was in Illinois a wild enthusiasm for the making of internal improvements by the state. There were then in Illinois more than thirty million acres of most fertile land, ready for the plow, waiting for cultivation. At a dollar and a quarter an acre they were a drug in the market. And why? Because of lack of fa- cilities for transportation. Upon the rich black loam of the prairies a permanently good wagon road could not be built save at an expense that rendered such an undertaking then impracticable.
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It was perceived that railroads would solve the problem. A Mace- donian cry for railroads went up. But capital was timid-it always is-"Why wait for capitalists to be convinced?" "Relief today is what we need, not twenty years hence when we may be in our graves." "In no other country can railroads be so cheaply built." "There are neither mountains to climb, rocks to pierce, nor forests to fell." "Let the state, with its unbounded credit, build the roads we need, obtain the immense revenue such roads will yield; our lands thus not only be freed from taxation, but their value increased a hun- dred fold," were arguments addressed to the people and to them appeared unanswerable.
In August, 1836, an internal improvement convention was held which devised a scheme of internal improvements at the expense of the state to be, as was stated, "commensurate with the wants of the people." The governor, at the meeting of the legislature in Janu- ary, 1837, recommended a general and uniform system of internal im- provements, in which the state might take a third or half interest, which would secure to her a lasting and abundant revenue, to be ap- plied upon the principles of the plan proposed, "until the whole coun- try shall be intersected by canals and railroads and our beautiful prairies enlivened by thousands of steam engines drawing after them lengthened trains freighted with the abundant productions of our fertile soil." On the 9th of January the committee on internal improvements, by its chairman, Edward Smith, presented a report twelve pages in length, in which among many other equally eloquent and forcible ar- guments for the object which the governor and the committee had at heart, it was said: "That it was the legislator's duty, by his example to calm the apprehensions of the timorous and meet the attacks of calculating opposers of measures which would multiply the population and wealth of the state. That the practicability of removing obstructions to the navigation of our rivers could not be doubted ; that a general system of internal improvements was then, within the policy and means of the state, demanded by the people as expressed by their highly talented representatives lately assembled in convention ; * * that the cost of building railroads by analogy with similar works in other states could be calculated with the utmost precision without previous surveys, $8,000 per mile being the estimate."
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