History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 5

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875

USA > Illinois > Cook County > History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time > Part 5

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Marquette continued sick in his cabin through the winter of 1674-75. Toward spring, through the special interposition of the Blessed Virgin, as he believed, his sickness abated, and before March he was able to leave his cabin and observe the peculiarities of the country. In the latter part of March the Desplaines River broke up and flooded the prairie which formed the portage. Ile describes the situation thus :

" The north wind having prevented the thaw till the 25th of March, it began with a southerly wind. The next day game began to appear ; we killed thirty wild pigeons, which I found better than

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EARLY EXPLORATIONS.

those below (Quebec), but smaller, both young and old. On the 2Bih the ice broke, and choked above us, On the 29th, the water was so high that we had barely time to uncabin in hasle, put our things on trees, and try to find a place to sleep on some hillock, the water gaining on us all night ; but having frozen a little, and having fallen, as we were near our luggage, the dyke burst, and ice went down ; and as the waters are again ascending already, we are going to embark to continue our roule."

The " portage," where Marquette passed the winter of 1674-75, and which he says, in his letter to Dablon, is the same he crossed with Joliet, eighteen months be- fore, is described in a letter written by LaSalle to Fron- tenac, which was published by Margry, in one of his volumes, and republished in the Magazine of American History. Joliet visited LaSalle at Fort Frontenac, on his return to Canada from his Mississippi voyage, in the spring of 1674, and at that time, it is presumed, told LaSalle of the Checagou portage. LaSalle visited the same place in January, 1682, and was detained there several days by the snow. Joliet had affirmed, in a communication to the authorities in Canada, that it would be possible to go from Lake Erie to the Missis- sippi " in boats," and, " by a very good navigation." saying that "there would be but one canal to make, by cutting half a league of prairie to pass from the Lake of the Illinois into St. Louis River," which empties into the Mississippi." LaSalle, on examining the place in 1682, did not believe the scheme practicable. He speaks disdainfully of Joliet's " proposed ditch," and says he " should not have made any mention of this communi- cation " the canal spoken of), " if Joliet had not pro- posed it without regard to its difficulties." He thus de. scribes the portage mentioned by Joliet, which he calls the " Portage of Checagon ":

" This is an isthmus of land at 41 degrees, 50 minutes north latitude, at the west of the Islinois Lake,t which is reached by a channel; formed by the junction of several rivulets or meadow dlitches. It is navigable for about two leagues to the edge of the prairie, a quarter of a mile westward. There is a little lake, cli- vided by a causeway, made by the beavers, about a league and a half long, from which runs a stream, which, after winding about a half league through the rushes, empties into the river Checagou. # and thence into that of the Illinois. This lake | is filled by heavy summer rains. or spring freshels, and discharges also into the chia,mel which leads io the lake of the Islinois, the level of which is seven feet lower than the prairie on which the lake is. The river of Checagou does the same thing in the spring when its channel is full. It empties a part of its waters by this little lake into that of the Islinois ( Lake Michigan), and at this season, Joliet says, forms in the summer time a little channel for a quarter of a league from this lake to the basin which leads to that of the Isli- nois, by which vessels can enter the Checagou and descend to the sea.

Marquette remained at the portage described above until the 30th of March, when, as he relates, in the pas- sage quoted from his journal, the south wind had caused a thaw, the breaking up of the ice in the Desplaines, and the flooding of the prairie portage. On the 30th, taking advantage of the high water, he had embarked . probably un Mud Lake) and had proceeded nine miles on his journey hy the 31st, and arrived at about the place where he and Joliet were obliged to leave their canoes and commence the portage in the fall of 1673, when the water was low. St. Cosine, who passed to the Missis- sippi by the portage of Checagou in October, 1699, gives a similar account of the comparative length of the port- age in spring and fall-nine miles in the fall and less than a mile in the spring. He says.

· The Illinois, including the Desplaines.

+ Lake Michigan.

: Our Chicago River. The Desplaines or north branch of the Illinois, was the Checagou River of the early writers, and is so laid down on their maps. Later, both the Desplaines and Chicago were called the "Checagou. i Desplaines,

Mud Lake. Ti is mentioned by nearly all the early writers who visited the locality simply as the "little lake."

" We started from Chicago on the 29th, and put up for the night about two leagues off. in the little river which is then lost in the prairies. The next day we began the portage, which is about three leagues long when the water is low, and only a quar- ter of a league in the spring, for you embark on a little lake that empties into a branch" of the river of the Illinois ; but when the waters are low you have to make a portage to that branch."

Marquette, as the waters were certainly high when he started, must have emharked on this little lake " going up " to the Desplaines, "without finding any portage," as the waters of that river through the lake spoken_of, were now rushing down to the Lake of Michigan.t The distance of "half an arpent "t which they were obliged to drag their canoes, might have been from the high ground where they slept on the night of the zgth to the place where they embarked on Mud Lake.

After having passed nine miles from the point where he embarked, being then in the Desplaines, he says : " Here we (Joliet and himself) began our portage more than eighteen months ago." He was now in what he justly called an " outlet " of the Illinois, for the Desplaines was such in the spring until much later than Marquette's time. He evidently knew also of the other branch of the Illinois-the Teakikig of the Jesuits-by which he could reach the St. Joseph and the lake-and by which " outlet," as he calls it, he probably returned to Mackinac.

Marquette was eleven days on his way to Kaskas. kia village, arriving on the 8th of April. He was re- ceived by the Indians "like an angel from heaven." After preparing the minds of the chiefs for what he wished to accomplish, he called a grand council of the nation in the beautiful prairie near the town.| Five hundred chiefs and old men, and fifteen hundred youths assembled, besides a great crowd of women and chil- dren. He explained the object of his visit, preached to them and said mass. Three days later, on Easter Sun- day, the Indians again assembled on the prairie, when Marquette again said mass before them, "took posses- sion of that land in the name of Jesus Christ, and gave this mission the name of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin."

His illness not permitting him to remain among the Illinois, he soon left them to return to Michilimackinac, promising to come again to the Illinois, or send another to take his place. So much had he attached these sim- ple Indians to himself, that a large number of the tribe escorted him nearly a hundred miles on his return jour- ney, or nearly to the point at which he wished to strike Lake Michigan on his return to his mission, down the eastern shore of the lake. Sick and weary when he embarked, his strength rapidly failed as his journey was continued, and on the 19th of May he felt that death was near As he reached the mouth of a small river. he requested his companions to land, and there in a hut of bark, which they built for him, the good missionary ‹lied that night. They dug a grave on the bank of the river, and leaving him resting there, made their way to the Mission of St. Ignace. In the winter of 1676, the hones of Marquette were taken from the grave, by a party of Kiskakin Indians, carefully placed in a box of birch bark, and carried to St. Ignace, where they were buried, with solemn ceremonies, beneath the floor of the mission.

Doubtless the site of Chicago had been visited hy

· The Desplaines,

+ In the spring flood of 1840 the waters of the Desplaines were turned into Mud Lake, and thence into the Chicago River, causing a terrific flood.

; A "woodland arpent," in France, contained an area of t, to8 square yards -- a little more than an English acre. The expression means that they dragged over a small patch of ground, half an arpent ; equivalent to about an English half- acre of ground.

§ Kankakee.

The town was near I'tica, in LaSalle County.

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HISTORY OF EARLY CHICAGO.

Canadian voyageurs, and it may be that the more lawless courier, De Bois, had also passed to the interior by this route before Marquette and Joliet returned from their expedition to the Mississippi, in the fall of 1673, and for the first time gave to the world a written account of the route from the Illinois River to Lake Michigan by way of the Chicago portage .*

It has been related,t too, that Nicholas Perrot, in the year 1671, left Sault Ste. Marie and visited " at Chi- cago," ""Tetenchoua," the principal chief of the Miamis,

. Prof. A. D. Hager, after lung and car ful study, has arrived at a con. clusion in regard to the return route of Joliet and Marquette and the locality where Marquette subsequently spent the winter of 1674-71. essentially different from that commonly received. His views un the sabjert are given at length, in succeeding pages of this work. The writers of this IIntury have followed the accepted theory of Shen. Parkman and other acknowledged authorities on early Northwestern American history. They, Imweyer, acknowledge, by the inser- tion of Mr. Hager's article, both the merits of his argument, and their apprecia- tion of the value of his new theory concertung the early settlement of the Northwest

+ Charlevoix.

who " never moved without a guard of forty warriors, who kept watch, night and day, about his cabin." The object of this visit of Perrot was to induce this power- ful chief to enter into an alliance with the French. Fathers Allouez and Dablon met this same " Teten- choua," with three thousand braves, at a Mascoutin vil- lage in Wisconsin, in 1674-the Miamis and the Mas- coutins having joined against their common enemy, the Sioux.

On the death of Marquette, Father Claude Allouez was appointed to the Illinois mission, to which he made several visits : the first in the spring of 1677, when he was met by an Illinois chief and eighty Indians at the mouth of the Chicago River, and conducted by them to the Illinois village. The second was made in 1678, when he remained until 1680. He again visited Chi- cago in 1684, with Durantaye, and it was probably at this time that the fort was built at Chicago by the latter.

EARLY CHICAGO, AND THE NORTHWEST. BY ALBERT D. HAGER.

In the interest of historical truth, the writer pre- pared a paper which he read before the Chicago His- torical Society, in June, 1880.

In that paper he attempted to show, among other things, that Father Marquette was not the first white man who visited the present site of Chicago, and that the Miami Indians never made this site their home, as has been usually asserted by those who have written concerning carly Chicago.

Additional testimony from the early explorers of the Northwest, in connection with carly maps, corrobor- ated by official documents, will be liere presented to confirm the foregoing propositions and also to contro- vert what the writer believes to be other erroneous state- ments concerning Marquette and Joliet and the history of the Northwest.

Nearly every writer, who alludes to early Chicago. intimates that Marquette was the first white man who navigated the Chicago River, and some assert that he built a log cabin and was its " first civilized settler."

In none of Marquette's writings, nor on either of his maps, does he use the word Chicago. Charlevoix, a Jesuit priest, who visited the Northwest in 1721, was the first writer to couple the names of Marquette and Chicago. He says : "On arriving at Chicagou, on Lake Michigan, they separated. Father Marquette remained among the Miamis, and Joliet went to Quebec. The missionary was well received by the great chief of the Miamis. He took up his abode in the chief town of these Indians, and spent the last years of his life in announcing Jesus Christ to them.

These statements were made from hearsay testi- mony. He had not seen the manuscript journals of Marquette. They were at that time in the Jesuit Col- lege at Quebec.t The very modest and apparently truthful records made in those journals by Marquette, disprove every statement quoted from the writings of Charlevoix, as will appear farther on. Joliet's journal and map, made for the Government of France, were lost, by the upsetting of his canoe in the rapids of the St. Lawrence, just before reaching Montreal. Mar- quette had died at the age of thirty-eight. His journal,

. Shea's Charlevoix, vol. 3. pp, e8t-z.

t Discovery and Exploration of the Missimippi Valley. p. 77.

or a copy of it, and a map of the trip he made with Joliet, were sent to France, but the Government took no official action in relation to them. New explorations were made not long after Marquette's death. Those belonging to the order of Recollet missionaries were " chosen almost always as chaplains to the troops and forts, and were to be found at every French post. ** They were " the fashionable confessors, and were sta- tioned at trading points, In this way they became involved in disputes, and, favored by and favoring Fron- tenac, found themselves arrayed, in a manner, against the rest of the clergy. A general charge, made about that time, seems to have been, that the Jesuits had really made no discoveries, and no progress in converting the natives."t The Recollets were more " liberal " than the Jesuits, A jealousy, and at times, it would seem, an animosity, existed between them and the Jesuits. What purported to be a published narrative of Marquette, by M. Thevenot, in Paris, 1681, was " derided, called. a fable, or narrative of a pretended voyage," etc.t

In most, if not all the narratives made during the forty years subsequent to Marquette's death, his name is not mentioned except by Jesuits. Joliet is but occa- sionally alluded to. Father Douay, a Recollet mission- ary who accompanied LaSalle in 1687, says:

" It was at this place (Cape St. Anthony) only, and not further, that the Sieur Joliet descended in 1673. They were taken, with their whole party, in the Manso- pela. These Indians having told them that they would be killed if they went any farther, they turned back, not having descended lower than thirty or forty leagues below the mouth of the Illinois River. I had brought with me the printed book of this pretended discovery, and I remarked all along my route that there was not a word of truth in it."s

A copy of this " printed book " is in the library of the Chicago Historical Society. It is entitled, " Receuil de Voyages" in which there is a map of the Mississippi Valley. The map is wonderfully accurate, considering the circumstances under which it was made. It has been suggested by some well informed historians, that the map was not made by Marquette, but was the one which Joliet drew from memory, and sent to the French Government after he lost his originals. This seemed

* Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley. p. Ba.

t Ibid, p &4,

* Ibid, p. 76.

§ Ibid, pp. 222-3.

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THEVENOT'S MAP. 1673.

Thévenot's map (1673), as originally drawn, bore the title " Map of the New Discovery that the Jesuit Fathers made in the year 1672, and continued by Father Jacques Marquette, of the same Society, accompanied by several Frenchmen in the year t673," ete. It was first published in 1681, by Thévenot, in his Recueil de voyages, in connection with Marquette's Diomertes dans l'Amérique Septentrionale. The names of the Illinois and other Indian villages west of the Mississippi generally correspond with those laid down on Marquette's map, but the Kaskaskia village on the Illinois River, which Marquette mentions, is not represented here. The frequent mention of mines-iron, copper, coal, etc -with the names Iac de Michigami, Puans, Pewarea, and notably the word Blood Stones, which also appears on Joliet's map of 1674, Indicate that the above was made from his descriptions, or by himself, although errors in the map seem to refute such a supposition.

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HISTORY OF EARLY CHICAGO.

quite plausible. It is quite unlike the map found with Marquette's manuscript, a fac-simile of which was first published by Mr. Shea, in 1852. The workmanship and skill in drawing, exhibited in the former, is much super- ior to that of the latter. The circumstances under which they were drawn were probably very different. Marquette was at the mission of St. Francis, near Green Bay, thirteen months after making the first trip before he commenced the second. He had ample time to make a finishedl map. The one copied by Mr. Shea, evidently was, like his journal, unfinished, aud made during his journey.

The recent aliscovery of the original map of Joliet, which Frontenac sent to the French Government, a fac- simile of which may be seen in this book, settles the long vexed question, and reflects upon Marquette the honor of being the author of the first published map of the upper Mississippi Valley -the one here re-produced. Mr. Jared Sparks regarded the map in Thevenot's book as genuine, whether it were made by Joliet or Marquette, and says : " It is valuable as confirming the genuineness of the narrative. It was impossible to construct it without having seen the principal objects delineated."*

It was not till about fifty years ago that the genuine. ness of the narrative of Marquette, published by Theve- not, was established, except as above suggested. In the Hotel Dieu, at Quebec, thirty-seven pages of mann- script were found, essentially the same as the published narrative. By comparing these with the parish records made by Marquette, at Boucherville, in 1668, their au- thorship was established. With these manuscripts there were twenty-three pages more of manuscript and a map in the same hand-writing, that gave an unfinished account of Marquette's last trip to the Illinois. Mr. Shea published the latter in 1852. They will again be refer- red to.

Father Marquette was a good, unselfish, truthful, modest man. " He relates what occurs and describes what he sees, without embellishment or display. He writes as a scholar, and as a man of careful observation and practical sense. There is no tendency to exaggerate nor to magnify the difficulties he had to encounter, or the importance of this discovery."t He had what might seem a morbid desire to suffer privations and endure hardships, and says he " esteemed no happiness greater than that of losing his life for the glory of Him who made all."t He wished " to die in a wretched cabin amid the forests, destitute of all human aid."$ He was born in France, and came to this country in 1668. The Most Rev. Alexander T'ache, the Archbishop of Manitoba, and a great-grandson of Joliet, the discoverer, kindly sent the writer a photographic copy of the first entry made by Marquette in this country, in the Boucherville, Canada, Parish Records, May 20, 1668. It is now in the library of the Chicago Historical Society.

From Boucherville, or Quebec, Marquette was sent to the mission on the south shore of Lake Superior. He soon returned from thence to Sault Ste. Marie, where a mission was established. This he soon left for La Pointe, on Lake Superior, and from thence back to Michilimacki- nac. In none of these missions did he seem contented, nor were his labors attended with marked success. Dur- ing his seven years' residence in this country, unfavor- able circumstances and ill health seemed to wither his hopes and defeat his good intentions. The last entry he inade in his journal after finishing his journey with Joliet, is more despondent than assuring. He says :

· Sparks's life of Marquelte. p. 295.

* Sparks's Life of Marqurite, p. 205.

: Disc. Miss Valley, p. #4.

$ Ibid., p. 60.

" Had all this voyage caused hut the salvation of a single soul, I should deem all my fatigue well repaid. And this I have reason to think. for, when I was return- ing, I passed by the Indians of Peoria ; I was three days annonneing the faith in all their cabins, after which, as we were embarking, they brought me, on the water's edge, a dying child, which I baptized a little before it expired, by an admirable Providence for the salvation of that innocent soul."*

The journals of Marquette have internal evidence of being more truthful and reliable than the writings of most of the other missionaries and explorers of the North- west. The latter abound in self-praise, exaggeration and evident misstatements. Some of the writers, as has been well said, "seem to tell the truth by accident, and fic. tion by inclination,"t

Marquette's journals and official documents, when obtainable, will therefore be used to corroborate doubt- Enl statements or establish historical facts .for this paper.

It would be a difficult task, if not impossible, to de. termine who was the first civilized explorer of the North- west and the discoverer of the Mississippi Valley. In 1541, De Soto crossed the Mississippi above the mouth of the Arkansas, and in 1543, his successor, Moscoso, sailed down the great river to the opening gulf.t

In 1639, Sieur Nicolet, after having spent ten years of his life with the Indians, visited the Winnebagoes, who then resided on and near Winnebago Lake and Fox River, Wisconsin, and " reached the waters of the Mis- sissippi."g

On a map in Jeffery's " Natural and Civil History of the French Dominions in North and South America," published in London, 1761, it is said: " The Ohio coun- try was known early to the English, and thoroughly dis- covered beyond the Mississippi by Colonel Wood, from 1654 to 1664, as also by Captain Bott, in 1670." The writer has found no contemporaneous evidence that cor- roborates these statements.

In the year 1670, Father Allonez visited the Winue- bagoes and Mascoutins, and says the Mascoutins saw upon the Mississippi River " men like the French, who were splitting trees with long knives [whip saws ?i some of whom had their house vessel ?. on the water.|

The first official action towards discovery and the establishment of the French Government over the North- west, of which there is a record, known to the writer, was in 1670. M. Talon, the Intendant of New France, in his report to the King, dateil at Quebec, September 15, 1670, says : " I have dispatched persons of reputation, who promise to penetrate farther than ever has been done : the one to the west and the northwest of Canada, and the others to the southwest and south. These adventurers are to keep journals, take possession, dis- play the King's arms, and draw up proces verbaux to serve as title."

Under date of November 2, 1671, he reports to the King as follows : " Sieur de la Salle has not returned from his journey to the southward of this country. But Sieur de Lusson is returned, after having advanced as far as five hundred leagues ** from here, and planted the cross and set np the King's arms in presence of seventeen Indian nations, assembled, on this occasion, from all parts ; all of whom voluntarily suhmitted them-

* [lisc, Miss, Valley, pp. 51-57.

+ Ilnd, p. 49.

* Ilist. Col., val z. p. 108.

6 Disc. Miss, Val. p. 20; Rrl. t6jg. p. 135.

1 lbid, p. 37; Rel. 1675-71, P. 172.

French Doe., N. Y. Col. vul. 9. P. 44.

** France had, until the introduction of the metric system, the " legal proting-league," equal to two and forty-two hundredthe English miles. (Chym- bers' Encyclopedia.)

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History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 5

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas Number of Pages: 875

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875