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 14

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 14

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The disadvantage under which the Miamis labored, in encounters with their enemies, before they obtained fire-arms, was often over- come by the exercise of their cunning and bravery. "In the year 1680 the Miamis and Illinois were hunting on the St. Joseph River. A party of four hundred Iroquois surprised them and killed thirty or forty of their hunters and captured three hundred of their women and children. After the victors had rested awhile they prepared to return to their homes by easy journeys, as they had reason to believe that they could reach their own villages before the defeated enemy would have time to rally and give notice of their disaster to those of their nation who were hunting in remoter places. But they were deceived ; for the Illinois and Miamis rallied to the number of two hundred, and resolved to die fighting rather than suffer their women and children to be carried away. In the meantime, because they

127

DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS.

were not equal to their enemies in equipment of arms or numbers, they contrived a notable stratagem.

After the Miamis had duly considered in what way they would at- tack the Iroquois, they decided to follow them, keeping a small dis- tance in the rear. until it should rain. The heavens seemed to favor their plan, for, after awhile it began to rain, and rained continually the whole day from morning until night. When the rain began to fall the Miamis quickened their march and passed by the Iroquois, and took a position two leagues in advance, where they lay in an am- buscade, hidden by the tall grass, in the middle of a prairie, which , the Iroquois had to cross in order to reach the woods beyond, where they designed to kindle fires and encamp for the night. The Illi- nois and Miamis, lying at full length in the grass on either side of the trail, waited until the Iroquois were in their midst, when they shot off their arrows, and then attacked vigorously with their clubs. The Iroquois endeavored to use their fire-arms, but finding them of no service because the rain had dampened and spoiled the priming, threw them upon the ground, and undertook to defend themselves with their clubs. In the use of the latter weapon the Iroquois were no match for their more dexterous and nimble enemies. They were forced to yield the contest, and retreated, fighting until night came on. They lost one hundred and eighty of their warriors.

The fight lasted about an hour, and would have continued through the night, were it not that the Miamis and Illinois feared that their women and children (left in the rear and bound) would be exposed to some surprise in the dark. The victors rejoined their woinen and children, and possessed themselves of the fire-arms of their enemies. The Miamis and Illinois then returned to their own country, without taking one Iroquois for fear of weakening themselves. *

Failing in their first efforts to withdraw the Miamis from the French, and secure their fur trade to the merchants at Albany and New York, the English sent their allies, the Iroquois, against them. A series of encounters between the two tribes was the result, in

* This account is taken from La Hontan, vol. 2, pp. 63, 64 and 65. The facts con- cerning the engagement, as given by La Hontan, may be relied upon as substantially correct, for they were written only a few years after the event. La Hontan, as appears from the date of his letters which comprise the principal part of his volumes, was in this country from November, 1683, to 1689, and it was during this time that he was collecting the information contained in his works. The place where this engagement between the Miamis and Illinois against the Iroquois occurred, is a matter of doubt. Some late commentators claim that it was upon the Maumee. La Hontan says that the engagement was "near the river Oumamis." When he wrote, the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan was called the river Oumamis, and on the map accompanying La Hon- tan's volume it is so-called, while the Maumee, though laid down on the map, is designated by no name whatever. It would, therefore, appear that when La Hontan mentioned the Miami River he referred to the St. Joseph.

128

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

which the blood of both was profusely shed, to further the purposes of a purely commercial transaction.

In these engagements the Senecas- a tribe of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, residing to the west of the other tribes of the confed- eracy, and, in consequence, being nearest to the Miamis, and more directly exposed to their fury-were nearly destroyed at the out- set. The Miamis followed up their success and drove tlie Senecas behind the palisades that inclosed their villages. For three years the war was carried on with a bitterness only known to exasperated savages.

When at last the Iroquois saw they could no longer defend them- selves against the Miamis, they appeared in council before the Gov- ernor of New York, and, pittyingly, claimed protection from him, who, to say the least, had remained silent and permitted his own people to precipitate this calamity upon them.

"You say you will support us against all your kings and our enemies ; we will then forbear keeping any more correspondence with the French of Canada if the great King of England will de- fend our people from the Twichtwicks and other nations over whom the French have an influence and have encouraged to destroy an abundance of our people, even since the peace between the two crowns," etc. *

The governor declined sending troops to protect the Iroquois against their enemies, but informned them : "You must be sensible that the Dowaganhaes, Twichtwicks, etc., and other remote Indians, are vastly more numerous than you Five Nations, and that, by their continued warring upon you, they will, in a few years, totally de- stroy you. I should, therefore, think it prudence and good policy in you to try all possible means to fix a trade and correspondence with all those nations, by which means you would reconcile them to your- selves, and with my assistance, I am in hopes that, in a short time, they might be united with us in the covenant chain, and then you might, at all times, without hazard, go hunting into their country, which, I understand, is much the best for beaver. I wish you would try to bring some of them to speak to me, and perhaps I might pre- vail upon them to come and live amongst you. I should think my- self obliged to reward you for such a piece of service as I tender your good advantage, and will always use my best endeavor to pre- serve you from all your enemies."

# Speech of an Iroquois chief at a conference held at Albany, August 26, 1700, be- tween Richard, Earl of Belmont, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of His Maj- esty's provinces of New York, etc., and the sachems of the Five Nations. New York Colonial Documents, vol. 4, p. 729.

129

TRADE WITH THE ENGLISH.

The conference continued several days, during which the Iroquois stated their grievances in numerous speeches, to which the governor graciously replied, using vague terms and making no promises, after the manner of the extract from his speech above quoted, but placed great stress on the value of the fur trade to the English, and enjoining his brothers, the Iroquois, to bring all their peltries to Albany ; to maintain their old alliance with the English, offensive and defensive, and have no intercourse whatever, of a friendly na- ture, with the rascally Frencli of Canada.

The Iroquois declined to follow the advice of the governor, deeming it of little credit to their courage to sue for peace. In the meantime the governor sent emissaries out among the Miamis, with an invitation to open a trade with the English. The messengers were captured by the commandant at Detroit, and sent, as prisoners, to Canada. However, the Miamiis, in July, 1702, sent, through the sachems of the Five Nations, a message to the governor at Albany, advising him that many of the Miamis, with another nation, had removed to, and were then living at, Tjughsaghrondie,“ near by the fort which the French had built the previous summer; that they had been informed that one of their chiefs, who had visited Albany two years before, had been kindly treated, and that they had now come forward to inquire into the trade of Albany, and see if goods could not be purchased there cheaper than elsewhere, and that they had intended to go to Canada with their beaver and peltries, but that they ventured to Albany to inquire if goods could not be secured on better terms. The governor replied that he was extremely pleased to speak with the Miamis about the establishment of a lasting friend- ship and trade, and in token of his sincere intentions presented his guests with guns, powder, hats, strouds, tobacco and pipes, and sent to their brethren at Detroit, waumpum, pipes, shells, nose and ear jewels, looking-glasses, fans, children's toys, and such other light articles as his guests could conveniently carry ; and, finally, assured thiem that the Miamis might come freely to Albany, where they would be treated kindly, and receive, in exchange for their peltries, everything as cheap as any other Indians in covenant of friendship with the English. +

During the same year (1702) tlie Miamis and Senecas settled their quarrels, exchanged prisoners, and established a peace between themselves.+

* The Iroquois name for the Straits of Detroit.

+ Proceedings of a conference between the parties mentioned above. New York Colonial Documents, vol. 4, pp. 979 to 981.

# New York Colonial Documents, vol. 4, p. 989.

130

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

The Frenchi were not disposed to allow a portion of the fur trade to be diverted to Albany. Peaceable means were first used to dis- suade the Miamis from trading with the English ; failing in this, forcible means were resorted to. Captain Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac marched against the Miamis and reduced them to terms .*

The Miamis were not unanimous in the choice of their friends. Some adhered to the French, while others were strongly inclined to trade with the English, of whom they could obtain a better quality of goods at cheaper rates, while at the same time they were allowed a greater price for their furs. Cadillac had hardly effected a coercive peace with the Miamis before the latter were again at Albany. "I have," writes Lord Cournbury to the Board of Trade, in a letter dated August 20, 1708,+ "been there five years endeavoring to get these nations [referring to the Miamis and another nation] to trade with our people, but the French have always dissuaded them from coming until this year, when, goods being very scarce, they came to Albany, where our people have supplied them with goods much cheaper than ever the French did, and they promise to return in the spring with a much greater number of their nations, which would be a very great advantage to this province. I did, in a letter of the 25th day of June last, inform your Lordships that three French soldiers, having deserted from the French at a place they call Le Dèstroit, came to Albany. Another deserter came from the same place, whom I examined myself, and I inclose a copy of his exam- ination, by which your Lordships will perceive how easily the French may be beaten out of Canada. The better I am acquainted with this country, and the more I inquire into matters, so much the more I am confirmed in my opinion of the facility of effecting that conquest, and by the method I then proposed."

Turning to French documents we find that Sieur de Callier de- sired the Miamis to withdraw from their several widely separated · villages and settle in a body upon the St. Joseph. At a great council of the westward tribes, held in Montreal in 1694, the French In- tendant, in a speech to the Miamis, declares that "he will not believe that the Miamis wish to obey him until they make altogether one and the same fire, either at the River St. Joseph or at some other place adjoining it. He tells them that he has got near the Iroquois, and has soldiers at Katarakoui, ¿ in the fort that had been abandoned ; that the Miamis must get near the enemy, in order to imitate him

* Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 671: note of the editor.

+ New York Colonial Documents, vol. 5, p. 65.

# At Fort Frontenac.

131

URGED TO UNITE AT ONE PLACE.

(the Intendant), and be able to strike the Iroquois the more readily. My children," continued the Intendant, "tell me that the Miamis are numerous, and able of themselves to destroy the Iroquois. Like them, all are afraid. What! do you wish to abandon your country to your enemy ? ... Have you forgotten that I waged war against him, principally on your account, alone ? Your dead are no longer visible in his country; their bodies are covered by those of the French who have perished to avenge them. I furnished you the means to avenge them, likewise. It depends only on mne to receive the Iroquois as a friend, which I will not do on account of you, who would be destroyed were I to make peace without including you in its terms."*

"I have heard," writes Governor Vaudreuil, in a letter dated the 28th of October, 1719, to the Council of Marine at Paris, "that the Miamis had resolved to remain where they were, and not go to the St. Joseph River, and that this resolution of theirs was dan- gerous, on account of the facility they would have of communicating with the English, who were incessantly distributing belts secretly among the nations, to attract them to themselves, and that Sieur Dubinson had been designed to command the post of Ouaytanons, where he should use his influence among the Miamis to induce them to go to the River St. Joseph, and in case they were not willing, that he should remain with them, to counteract the effect of those belts, which had already caused eight or ten Miami canoes to go that year to trade at Albany, and which might finally induce all of the Miami nation to follow the example."+ Finally, some twenty-five years later, as we learn from the letter of M. de Beauharnois, that this French officer, having learned that the English had established trading magazines on the Ohio, issued his orders to the command- ants among the Weas and Miamis, to drive the British off by force of arms and plunder their stores.±

Other extracts might be drawn from the voluminous reports of the military and civil officers of the French and British colonial governments respectively, to the same purport as those already quoted ; but enough has been given to illustrate the unfortunate position of the Miamis. For a period of half a century they were placed between the cutting edges of English and French pur- poses, during which there was no time when they were not threat- ened with danger of, or engaged in, actual war either with the French or the English, or with some of their several Indian allies.

* Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 625.

+ Ibid, p. 894. # Ibid, p. 1105.

132

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

By this continual abrasion, the peace and happiness which should have been theirs was wholly lost, and their numbers constantly reduced. They had no relief from the strife, in which only injury could result to themselves, let the issue have been what it mnight between the English and the French, until the power of the latter · was finally destroyed in 1763; and even then, after the French had given up the country, the Miamis were compelled to defend their own title to it against the arrogant claims of the English. In the effort of the combined westward tribes to wrest their country from the English, subsequent to the close of the colonial war, the Miamis took a conspicuous part. This will be noticed in a subsequent chap- ter. After the conclusion of the revolutionary war, the several Miami villages from the Vermilion River to Fort Wayne suffered severely from the attacks of the federal government under General Harmer, and the military expeditions recruited in Kentucky, and commanded by Colonels Scott and Wilkinson. Besides these dis- asters, whole villages were nearly depopulated by the ravages of small-pox. The uncontrollable thirst for whisky, acquired, through a long course of years, by contact with unscrupulous traders, reduced their numbers still more, while it degraded them to the last degree. This was their condition in 1814, when General Harrison said of them: "The Miamis will not be in our way. They are a poor, miserable, drunken set, diminishing every year. Becoming too lazy to hunt, they feel the advantage of their annuities. The fear of the other Indians has alone prevented them from selling their whole claim to the United States ; and as soon as there is peace, or when the British can no longer intrigue, they will sell."* The same authority, in his historical address at Cincinnati in 1838, on the aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, says: "At any time before the treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Miamis alone could have fur- nished more than three thousand warriors. Constant war with our frontier had deprived them of many of their braves, but the ravages of small-pox was the principal cause of the great decrease in their numbers. They composed, however, a body of the finest light troops in the world. And had they been under an efficient system of discipline, or possessed enterprise equal to their valor, the settle- ment of the country would have been attended with much greater difficulty than was encountered in accomplishing it, and their final subjugation would have been delayed for some years." +

Yet their decline, from causes assigned, was so rapid, that when

* Official letter of General Harrison to the Secretary of War, of date March 24, 1814. + P. 39 of General Harrison's address, original pamphlet edition.

133

CESSION OF THEIR LANDS.

the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, was among them from 1817 until 1822, and drawing conclusions from personal contact, declared that the Miamis were not a warlike people. There is, perhaps, in the history of the North American Indians, no instance parallel to the utter demoralization of the Miamis, nor an example of a tribe which stood so high .and had fallen so low through the practice of all the vices whichi degrade human beings. Mr. McCoy, within the period named, traveled up and down the Wabash, from Terre Haute to Fort Wayne; and at the villages near Montezuma, on Eel River, at the Mississinewa and Fort Wayne, there were continuous rounds of drunken debauchery whenever whisky could be obtained, of which men, women and children all partook, and life was often sacrificed in personal broils or by exposure of the debauchees to the inclemency of the weather .*

By treaties, entered into at various times, from 1795 to 1845, in- clusive, the Miamis ceded their lands in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and removed west of the Mississippi, going in villages or by detach- ments, from time to time. At a single cession in 1838 they sold the government 177,000 acres of land in Indiana, which was only a fragment of their former possessions, still retaining a large tract. Thus they alienated their heritage, and gradually disappeared from the valleys of the Maumee and Wabashı. A few remained on their reservations and adapted themselves to the ways of the white peo- ple, and their descendants may be occasionally met with about Peru, Wabash and Fort Wayne. The money received from sales of their lands proved to them a calamity, rather than a blessing, as it intro- duced the most demoralizing habits. It is estimated that within a period of eighteen years subsequent to the close of the war of 1812 more than five hundred of them perished in drunken broils and fights. +

The last of the Miamis to go westward were the Mississinewa band. This remnant, comprising in all three hundred and fifty per- sons, under charge of Christmas Dagney,¿ left their old home in the

* Mr. McCoy has contributed a valuable fund of original information in his History of Baptist Indian Missions, published in 1840. The volume contains six hundred and eleven pages. He mentions many instances of drunken orgies which he witnessed in the several Miami towns. We quote one of them: "An intoxicated Indian at Fort Wayne dismounted from his horse and ran up to a young Indian woman who was his sister-in-law, with a knife in his hand. She first ran around one of the company pres- ent, and then another, to avoid the murderer, but in vain. He stabbed her with his knife. She then fled from the company. He stood looking after her, and seeing she did not fall, pursued her, threw her to the earth and drove his knife into her heart, in the presence of the whole company, none of whom ventured to save the girl's life." P. 85.

+ Vide American Cyclopædia, vol. 11, p. 490.

# His name was, also, spelled Dazney and Dagnett. He was born on the 25th of December, 1799, at the Wea village of Old Orchard Town, or We-au-ta-no, "The Risen Sun," situated two miles below Fort Harrison. His father, Ambroise Dagney,

134

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

fall of 1846, and reached Cincinnati on canal-boats in October of that year. Here they were placed upon a steamboat and taken down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and Missouri, and landed late in the season at Westport, near Kansas City. Ragged men and nearly naked women and children, forming a motley group, were huddled upon the shore, alone, with no friends to relieve their wants, and exposed to the bitter December winds that blew from the chilly plains of Kansas. In 1670 the Jesuit Father Dablon introduces the Miamis to our notice at the village of Maskoutench, where we see the chief surrounded by his officers of state in all the routine of bar- baric display, and the natives of other tribes paying his subjects tlie greatest deference. The Miamis, advancing eastward, in the rear of the line of their valorous warriors, pushed their villages into Michi- gan, Indiana, and as far as the river still bearing their name in Ohio. Coming in collision with the French, English and Americans, re- duced by constant wars, and decimated, more than all, with vices contracted by intercourse with the whites, whose virtues they failed to emulate, they make a westward turn, and having, in the progress of time, described the round of a most singular journey, we at last behold the miserable and friendless remnant on the same side of the

was a Frenchman, a native of Kaskaskia, and served during Harrison's campaign against the Indians. in 1811, in Captain Scott's company, raised at Vincennes. He- took part in the battle of Tippecanoe. His mother, Me-chin-quam-e-sha, the Beauti- ful Shade Tree, was the sister of Jocco, or Tack-ke-ke-kah, "The Tall Oak," who was chief of the Wea band living at the village named, and whose people claimed the country east of the Wabash, front the mouth of Sugar Creek to a point some dis- tance below Terre Haute. "Me-chin-quam-e-sha" died in 1822, and was buried at Fort Harrison. Christmas Dagney received a good education under the instruction of the Catholics. He spoke French and English with great fluency, and was master of the dialects of the several Wabash tribes. For many years he was government inter- preter at Fort Harrison, and subsequently Indian agent, having the superintendency of the Wabash Miamis, whom he conducted westward. On the 16th of February, 1819, he was married to "Mary Ann Isaacs," of the Brothertown Indians, who had been spending a few weeks at the mission house of Isaac McCoy, situated on Raccoon Creek,-or Pishewa, as it was called by the Indians,- a few miles above Armysburg .. The marriage was performed by Mr. McCoy "in the presence of our Indian neighbors, who were invited to attend the ceremony. And we had the happiness to have twenty- three of the natives partake of a meal prepared on the occasion." Vide page 64 in his book, before quoted. This was, doubtless, the first marriage that was celebrated after the formality of our laws within the present limits of Parke country. By the terms of the treaty at St. Mary's, concluded on the 2d of October, 1818, one section of land was reserved for the exclusive use of Mr. Dagney, and he went to Washington and selected a section that included the village of Armysburg, which at that time was the county seat, and consisted of a row of log houses formed out of sugar-tree logs and built continuously together, from which circumstance it derived the name of "String- town." As a speculation the venture was not successful, for the seat of justice was removed to Rockville, and town lots at Stringtown ceased to have even a prospective- value. Mr. Dagney's family occupied the reservation as a farm until about 1846. Mr. Dagney died in 1848, at Coldwater Grove, Kansas. Her second husband was Babtise Peoria. Mrs. Babtise Peoria had superior opportunities to acquire an extensive knowl- edge of the Wabash tribes between Vincennes and Fort Wayne, as she lived on the Wabash from 1817 until 1846. She is now living at Paola, Kansas, where the author met her in November, 1878.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 14

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