History of Iroquois County, together with Historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources, Part 13

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co.
Number of Pages: 1180

USA > Illinois > Iroquois County > History of Iroquois County, together with Historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources > Part 13

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The fort at Le Rocher (the rock) was constructed on its summit in 1682, and enclosed with a palisade. It was subsequently granted to Tonti and Forest.+ It was abandoned as a military post in the year 1702; and when Charlevoix went down the Illinois in 1721 lie passed the Rock, and said of it: "This is the point of a very high terrace stretching the space of two hundred paces, and bending or winding with the course of the river. This rock is steep on all sides, and at a distance one would take it for a fortress. Some remains of a palisado are still to be seen on it, the Illinois having formerly cast up an en- trencliment here, which might be easily repaired in case of any inter- ruption of the enemy."}

The abandonment of Fort St. Louis in 1702 was followed soon after by a dispersion of the tribes and remnants of tribes thiat La Salle and Tonti liad gathered about it, except the straggling village of the Illinois.

* Memoir of the Sieur de la Salle, reporting to Monseigneur de Seingelay the dis- coveries made by him under the order of His Majesty. Historical Collections of Louisiana, Part I, p. 42.

+ Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 494.

# Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 200.

117

DECLINE OF THE ILLINOIS.

The Iroquois came no more subsequent to 1721, having war enough on their hands nearer home; but the Illinois were constantly harassed by other enemies; the Sacs, Foxes, Kickapoos and Pottawatomies. In 1722 their villages at the Rock and on Peoria Lake were besieged by the Foxes, and a detachment of a hundred men under Chevalier de Artaguette and Sieur de Tisné were sent to their assistance. Forty of these French soldiers, with four hundred Indians, marched by land to Peoria Lake. However, before the reinforcements reached their des- tination they learned. that the Foxes had retreated with a loss of more than a hundred and twenty of their men. "This success did not, however, prevent the Illinois, although they had only lost twenty men, with some women and children, from leaving the Rock and Pimiteony, where they were kept in constant alarm, and proceeding to unite with those of their brethren who had settled on the Mississippi; this was a stroke of grace for most of them, the small number of missionaries preventing their supplying so many towns scattered far apart ; but on the other side, as there was nothing to check the raids of the Foxes along the Illinois River, communication between Louisiana and New France became inuch less practicable."*

The fatal dissolution of the Illinois still proceeded, and their ancient homes and hunting grounds were appropriated by the more vigorous Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos. The killing of Pontiac at Cahokia, whither he had retired after the failure of his effort to rescue the country from the English, was laid upon the Illinois, a charge which, whether true or false, hastened the climax of their destruction.

General Harrison stated that "the Illinois confederacy was com- posed of five tribes : the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorians, Michiganians and the Temarois, speaking the Miami language, and no doubt branches of that nation. When I was first appointed Governor of the Indiana Territory (May, 1800), these once powerful tribes were re- duced to about thirty warriors, of whom twenty-five were Kaskaskias, four Peorians, and a single Michiganian. There was an individual lately alive at St. Louis who saw the enumeration made of them by the Jesuits in 1745, making the number of their warriors four thou- sand. A furious war between them and the Sacs and Kickapoos reduced them to that miserable remnant which had taken refuge amongst the white people in the towns of Kaskaskia and St. Genieve."+

* History of New France, vol. 6, p. 71.

+ Official letter of Gen. Harrison to Hon. John Armstrong, Secretary of War, dated at Cincinnati, March 22, 1814: contained in Captain M'Afee's "History of the Late War in the Western Country."

118

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

By successive treaties their lands in Illinois were ceded to the United States, and they were removed west of the Missouri. In 1872 they had dwindled to forty souls-men, women and children all told.

Thus have wasted away the original occupants of the larger part of Illinois and portions of Iowa and Missouri. In 1684 their single vil- lage at La Salle's colony, could muster twelve hundred warriors. In the days of their strength they nearly exterminated the Winnebagoes, and their war parties penetrated the towns of the Iroquois in the valleys of the Mohawk and Genesee. They took the Metchigamis under their protection, giving them security against enemies with whom the latter could not contend. This people who had dominated over the surround- ing tribes, claiming for themselves the name Illini or Linneway, to rep- resent their superior manhood, have disappeared from the earthi ; another race, representing a higher civilization, occupy their ancient domains, and already, even the origin of their name and the location of their cities have become the subjects of speculation.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MIAMIS-THE MIAMI, PIANKESHAW, AND WEA BANDS.

THE people known to us as the Miamis formerly dwelt beyond the Mississippi, and, according to their own traditions, came originally from the Pacific. "If what I have heard asserted in several places be true, the Illinois and Miamis came from the banks of a very distant sea to the westward. It would seem that their first stand, after they made their first descent into this country, was at Moingona .* At least it is certain that one of their tribes bears that name. The rest are known under the name of Peorias, Tamaroas, Caoquias and Kaskaskias."

The migration of the Miamis from the west of the Mississippi, eastward through Wisconsin and northern Illinois, around the south- ern end of Lake Michigan to Detroit, and thence up the Maumee and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the mass of records handed down to us from the missionaries, travelers and officers connected with the French. Speaking of the mixed village of Maskoutens, situated on Fox River, Wisconsin, at the time of his visit there in 1670, Father Claude Dablon says the village of the Fire-nation "is joined in the circle of the same barriers to another people, named Oumiami, which is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters.t It is beyond this great river ¿ that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Fire-nation to form here a transplanted colony."

From the quotations made there remains little doubt that the Mi- amis were originally a branch of the great Illinois nation. This theory is confirmed by writers of our own time, among whom we may men- tion General William H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official connection with the several bands of the Miamis and Illinois gave him

* Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 227. Moingona, from undoubted authorities, was a name given to the Des Moines River; and we find on the original map, drawn by Marquette. the village of the Moingona placed on the Des Moines above a village of the Peorias on the same stream.

+ Father Dablon is here describing the same village referred to by Father Mar- quette in that part of his Journal which we have copied on page 44.

# The Mississippi, of which the missionary had been speaking in the paragraph preceding that which we quote.

119

120

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

the opportunities, of which he availed himself, to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. "Although the language, manners and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they derived their origin from the same source with the Miamis, the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi."" The assertion of General Har- rison that the tribal relation between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken at the time of the discovery of the Upper Mississippi valley by the French is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities. In the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and other enemies, we have no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen. After the separation, on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them.

Father Dablon, in the narrative from which we have quoted, + gives a detailed account of the civility of the Miamis at Mascouten, and the formality and court routine with which their great chief was surrounded. "The chief of the Miamis, whose name was Tetin- choua, was surrounded by the most notable people of the village, who, assuming the rôle of courtiers, with civil posture full of defer- ence, and keeping always a respectful silence, magnified the great- ness of their king. The chief and his routine gave Father Dablon every mark of their most distinguished esteem. The physiognomy of the chief was as mild and as attractive as any one could wish to see ; and while his reputation as a warrior was great, his features bore a softness which charmed all those who beheld him."

Nicholas Perrot, with Sieur de St. Lussin, dispatched by Talon, the intendant, to visit the westward nations, with whom the French had intercourse, and invite them to a council to be held the follow- ing spring at the Sault Ste. Marie, was at this Miami village shortly after the visit of Dablon. Perrot was treated with great consider- ation by the Miamis. Tatinchoua " sent out a detachment to meet the French agent and receive him in military style. The detach- ment advanced in battle array, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, were uttering war cries from time to time. The Pottawatomies who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, prepared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put him- self at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge.

* Memoirs of General Harrison, by Moses Dawson, p. 62.

+ Relations, 1670, 1671.

121

OF THE NAME MIAMI.

" But the Miamis wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pottawat- omies were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signals for a kind of combat. The Miamis fired a volley from their guns, which were only loaded with powder, and the Pottawatomies returned it in the same way; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tom- ahawks. Peace was then made; the Miamis presented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his chief escort into the town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him mag- nificently after the custom of the country, and gave him the diver- sion of a game of ball."* The Miami chief never spoke to his subjects, but imparted his orders through some of his officers. On account of his advanced age he was dissuaded from attending the council to be held at Ste. Marie, between the French and the Indians; however, he deputized the Pottawatomies to act in his name.

This confederacy called themselves "Miamis," and by this name were known to the surrounding tribes. The name was not bestowed upon them by the French, as some have assumed from its resem- blance to Mon-ami, because they were the friends of the latter. . When Hennepin was captured on the Mississippi by a war party of the Sioux, these savages, with their painted faces rendered more hideous by the devilish contortions of their features, cried out in angry voices, " 'Mia-hama ! Mia-hama !' and we made signs with our oars upon the sand, that the Miamis, their enemies, of whom they were in search, had passed the river upon their flight to join the Illinois."+

"The confederacy which obtained the general appellation of Miamis, from the superior numbers of the individual tribe to whom that name more properly belonged," were subdivided into three principal tribes or bands, namely, the Miamis proper, Weas and Piankeshaws. French writers have given names to two or three other subdivisions or families of the three principal bands, whose identity has never been clearly traced, and who figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis, that it is not necessary here to specify their obsolete names. The different ways of writing

* History of New France, vol. 3, pp. 166, 167. Father Charlevoix improperly locates this village, where Perrot was received, at "Chicago, at the lower end of Lake Michigan, where the Miamis then were," page 166, above quoted. The Miamis were not then at Chicago. The reception of Perrot was at the mixed village on Fox River, Wisconsin, as stated in the text. The error of Charlevoix, as to the location of this village, has been pointed out by Dr. Shea, in a note on page 166, in the "History of New France," and also by Francis Parkman, in a note on page 40 of his " Discovery of the Great West."

+ Hennepin, p. 187.

122

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Miamis are : Oumiamwek,* Oumamis, + Maumees,; Au-Miami § (contracted to Au-Mi and Omee) and Mine-ami. |

The French called the Weas Ouiatenons, Syatanons, Ouyatanons and Ouias; the English and Colonial traders spelled the word, Ouicatanon, f Way-ough-ta nies, ** Wawiachtens, ++ and Wehalis. ++

For the Piankeshaws, or Pou-an-ke-ki-as, as they were called in the earliest accounts, we have Peanguichias, Pian-gui-shaws, Pyan- ke-shas and Pianquishas.

The Miami tribes were known to the Iroquois, or Five Nations of New York, as the Twight-wees, a name generally adopted by the British, as well as by the American colonists. Of this name there are various corruptions in pronunciation and spelling, examples of which we have in "Twich-twichs," "Twick-twicks," "Twis-twicks," "Twigh-twees," and "Twick-tovies." The insertion of these many names, applied to one people, would seem a tedious superfluity, were it otherwise possible to retain the identity of the tribes to which these different appellations have been given by the French, British and American officers, traders and writers. It will save the reader much perplexity in pursuing a history of the Miamis if it is borne in mind that all these several names refer to the Miami nation or to . one or the other of its respective bands.

Besides the colony mentioned by Dablon and Charlevoix, on the Fox River of Wisconsin, Hennepin informs us of a village of Miamis south and west of Peoria Lake at the time he was at the latter place in 1679, and it was probably this village whose inhabit- ants the Sioux were seeking. St. Cosmie, in 1699, mentions the " village of the 'Peanzichias-Miamis, who formerly dwelt on the

of the Mississippi, and who had come some years previous and settled ' on the Illinois River, a few miles below the confluence of the Des Plaines." §§

The Miamis were within the territory of La Salle's colony, of which Starved Rock was the center, and counted thirteen hundred warriors. The Weas and Piankeshaws were also there, the former having five hundred warriors and the Piankeshaw band one hundred and fifty. This was prior to 1687. ||| At a later day the Weas " were at Chicago, but being afraid of the canoe people, left it." Sieur de Courtmanche, sent westward in 1701 to negotiate with the tribes in that part of New France, was at "Chicago, where he found some

* Marquette. ¡ La Hontan. # Gen. Harrison. § Gen. Harmar. } Lewis Evans.

T George Croghan's Narrative Journal. Croghan's List of Indian Tribes. John Heckwelder, a Moravian Missionary. ## Catlin's Indian Tribes.

St. Cosmie's Journal in " Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi," p. 58. Parkman's Discovery of the Great West, note on p. 290.

Memoir on the Indian tribes, prepared in 1718: Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 890.

123

AT WAR WITH THE SIOUX.

Weas (Ouiatanons), a Miami tribe, who had sung the war-song against the Sioux and the Iroquois. He obliged them to lay down their arms and extorted from them a promise to send deputies to Montreal." *

In a letter dated in 1721, published in his "Narrative Journal," Father Charlevoix, speaking of the Miamis about the head of Lake Michigan, says: "Fifty years ago the Miamis were settled on the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, in a place called Chicagou, from the name of a small river which runs into the lake, the source of which is not far distant from that of the river of the Illinois ; they are at present divided into three villages, one of which stands on the river St. Joseph, the second on another river which bears their name and runs into Lake Erie, and the third upon the river Ouabache, which empties its waters into the Mississippi. These last are better known by the appellation of Ouyatanons." +

In 1694, Count Frontenac, in a conference with the Western In- dians, requested the Miamis of the Pepikokia band who resided on the Maramek,¿ to remove, and join the tribe which was located on the Saint Joseph, of Lake Michigan. The reason for this request, as stated by Frontenac himself, was, that he wished the different bands of the Miami confederacy to unite, "so as to be able to exe- cute with greater facility the commands which he might issue." At that time the Iroquois were at war with Canada, and the French were endeavoring to persuade the western tribes to take up the tom- ahawk in their behalf. The Miainis promised to observe the Gov- ernor's wishes and began to make preparations for the removal.§

"Late in August, 1696, they started to join their brethren settled on the St. Joseph. On their way they were attacked by the Sioux, who killed several. The Miamis of the St. Joseph, learning this hostility, resolved to avenge their slaughter. They pursued the Sioux to their own country, and found them entrenched in their fort with some Frenchmen of the class known as coureurs des bois (buslı- lopers). They nevertheless attacked them repeatedly with great res- olution, but were repulsed, and at last compelled to retire, after losing several of their braves. On their way home, meeting other Frenchmen carrying arms and ammunition to the Sioux, they seized all they had, but did them no harın." ||

The Miamis were very much enraged at the French for supplying

* History of New France, vol. 5, p. 142.

+ Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 1, p. 287.

# The Kalamazoo, of Michigan.

Paris Documents, vol. 9, pp. 624, 625.

Charlevoix' History of New France, vol. 5, p. 65.

124

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

their enemies, the Sioux, with guns and ammunition. It took all the address of Count Frontenac to prevent them from joining the Iroquois ; indeed, they seized upon the French agent and trader, Nicholas Perrot, who had been commissioned to lead the Maramek band to the St. Josephs, and would have burnt him alive had it not been for the Foxes, who interposed in his behalf .* This was the commencement of the bitter feeling of hostility with which, from that time, a part of the Miamis always regarded the French. From this period the movements of the tribe were observed by the French with jealous suspicion.

We have already shown that in 1699 the Miamis were at Fort Wayne, engaged in transferring across their portage emigrants from Canada to Louisiana, and that, within a few years after, the Weas are described as having their fort and several miles of cultivated fields on the Wea plains below La Fayette.+ From the extent and character of these improvements, it may be safely assumed that the Weas had been established here some years prior to 1718, the date of the Memoir.

When the French first discovered the Wabash, the Piankeshaws were found in possession of the land on either side of that stream, from its mouth to the Vermilion River, and no claim had ever been made to it by any other tribe until 1804, the period of a ces- sion of a part of it to the United States by the Delawares, who had obtained their title from the Piankeshaws themselves.

We have already seen that at the time of the first account we have relating to the Maumee and the Wabash, the Miamis had vil- lages and extensive improvements near Fort Wayne, on the Wea prairie below La Fayette, on the Vermilion of the Wabash, and at Vincennes. At a later day they established villages at other places, viz, near the forks of the Wabash at Huntington, on the Mississin- ewa, § on Eel River near Logansport, while near the source of this river, and westward of Fort Wayne, was the village of the "Little Turtle." Near the mouth of the Tippecanoe was a sixth village.

* Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 672.

+ Vide, p. 104.

Į Memoirs of General Harrison, pp. 61, 63.

§ This stream empties into the Wabash near Peru, and on the opposite side of the river from that city. The word is a compound of missi, great, and assin, stone, signify- ing the river of the great or much stone. "The Mississinewa, with its pillared rocks, is full of geological as well as romantic interest. Some three miles from Peru the channel is cut through a solid wall of cherty silico-magnesian limestone. The action of the river and unequal disintegration of the rocks has carved the precipitous wall, which converts the river's course into a system of pillars, rounded buttresses, alcoves, chambers and overhanging sides." Prof. Collett's Report on the Geology of Miami county, Indiana.

125

A WARLIKE PEOPLE.

Passing below the Vermilion, the Miamis had other villages, one on Sugar creek* and another near Terre Haute. +

The country of the Miamis extended west to the watershed be- tween the Illinois and Wabash rivers, which separated their posses- sions from those of their brethren, the Illinois. On the north were the Pottawatomies, who were slowly but steadily pushing their lines southward into the territory of the Miamis. The superior numbers of the Miamis and their great valor enabled them to extend the limit of their hunting grounds eastward into Ohio, and far within the territory claimed by the Iroquois. "They were the undoubted proprietors of all that beautiful country watered by the Wabaslı and its tributaries, and there remains as little doubt that their claim ex- tended as far east as the Scioto."#

Unlike the Illinois, the Miamis held their own until they were placed upon an equal footing with the tribes eastward by obtaining possession of fire-arms. With these implements of civilized warfare they were able to maintain their tribal integrity and the independ- ence they cherished. They were not to be controlled by the French, nor did they suffer enemies from any quarter to impose upon them without prompt retaliation. They traded and fought with the French, English and Americans as their interests or passions in- clined. They made peace or declared war against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice dictated. More than once they compelled even the arrogant Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies that protection which they themselves had failed to secure by their own prowess. Bold, independent and flushed witli success, the Miamis afforded a poor field for missionary work, and the Jesuit Relations and pastoral letters of the French priesthood have less to say of the Miami confederacy than any of the other western tribes, the Kickapoos alone excepted.

The country of the Miamis was accessible, by way of the lakes, to the fur trader of Canada, and from the eastward, to the adven- turers engaged in the Indian trade from Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, either by way of the Ohio River or a commerce car- ried on overland by means of pack-horses. The English and the French alike coveted their peltries and sought their powerful alli-

* This stream was at one time called Rocky River, vide Brown's Western Gazet- teer. By the Wea Miamis it was called Pun-go-se-con-e, "Sugar tree " (creek), vide statement of Mary Ann Baptiste to the author.

+ The villages below the Vermilion and above Vincennes figure on some of the early English maps and in accounts given by traders as the lower or little Wea towns. Be- sides these, which were the principal ones, the Miamis had a village at Thorntown, and many others of lesser note on the Wabash and its tributaries.

# Official Letter of General Harrison to the Secretary of War, before quoted.

126

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

ance, therefore the Miamis were harassed with the jealousies and diplomacy of both, and if they or a part of their several tribes be- came inveigled into an alliance with the one, it involved the hostility of the other. The French government sought to use them to check the westward advance of the British colonial influence, while the latter desired their assistance to curb the French, whose ambitious schemes involved nothing less than the exclusive subjugation of the entire continent westward of the Alleghanies. In these wars between the English and the French the Miamis were constantly reduced in numbers, and whatever might have been the result to either of the former, it only ended in disaster to themselves. Some- times they divided ; again they were entirely devoted to the interest of the English and Iroquois. Then they joined the French against the British and Iroquois, and when the British ultimately obtained the mastery and secured the valley of the Mississippi,-the long sought for prize,-the Miamis entered the confederacy of Pontiac to drive them out of the country. They fought with the British, - except the Piankeshaw band,-against the colonies during the revolutionary war. After its close their young men were largely occupied in the predatory warfare waged by the several Maumee and Wabash tribes upon the frontier settlements of Ohio, Pennsyl- vania, Virginia and Kentucky. They likewise entered the con- federacy of Tecumseh, and, either openly or in secret sympathy, they were the allies of the British in the war of 1812. Their history occupies a conspicuous place in the military annals of the west, extending over a period of a century, during which time they main- tained a manly struggle to retain possession of their homes in the valleys of the Wabash and Maumee.

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History of Iroquois County, together with Historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources, Part 13

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903 Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co. Number of Pages: 1180

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Chicago : H.H. Hill and Co.
Number of Pages: 1180