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 16

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 16

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144

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

circumstance that they resided farther to the west; "as those nations which reside to the west of others are deemed more ancient."*

The Pottawatomies were unswerving in their adherence to the French, when the latter had possession of the boundless Northwest. In 1712, when a large force of Mascoutins and Foxes besieged De- troit, they were conspicuous for their fidelity. They rallied the other tribes to the assistance of the French, and notified the besieged garrison to hold out against their enemies until their arrival. Mak- is-abie, the war chief of the Pottawatomies, sent word through Mr. de Vincennes, "just arrived from the Miami country, that he would soon be at Detroit with six hundred of his warriors to aid the French and eat those miserable nations who had troubled all the country." The commandant, M. du Buisson, was gratified when he ascended a bastion, and looking toward the forest saw the army of the nations issuing from it; the Pottawatomies, the Illinois, the Missouris, the Ottawas, the Sacs and the Menominees were there, armed and painted in all the glory of war. Detroit never saw such a collection. "My Father," says the chief to the commandant, "I speak to you on · the part of all the nations, your children who are before you. What. you did last year in drawing their flesh from the fire, which the Ou- tagamies (Foxes) were about to roast and eat, demands we should bring you our bodies to make you the master of them. We do not fear death, whenever it is necessary to die for you. We have only to request that you pray the father of all nations to have pity on our women and our children, in case we lose our lives for you. We beg you throw a blade of grass upon our bones to protect them from the flies. You see, my father, that we have left our villages, our women and children to hasten to join you. Have pity on us ; give us some- thing to eat and a little tobacco to smoke. We have come a long ways and are destitute of everything. Give us powder and balls to fight with you."

Makisabie, the Pottawatomie, said to the Foxes and Mascoutines: " Wicked nations that you are, you hope to frighten us by all the red color which you exhibit in your village. Learn that if the earth is covered with blood, it will be with yours. You talk to us of the English, they are the cause of your destruction, because you have listened to their bad council. . .. The English, who are cowards, only defend themselves by killing men by that wicked strong drink, which has caused so many men to die after drinking it. Thus we shall see what will happen to you for listening to them." +

* Long's Expedition to the Sources of the St. Peter's River, vol. 1, pp. 91, 92, 93. + The extracts we have quoted are taken from the official report of Du Buisson.

145

WARS AGAINST THE WHITES.

The Pottawatomies sustained their alliance with the French con- tinuously to the time of the overthrow of their power in the north- west. They thien aided their kinsman, Pontiac, in his attempt to recover the same territory from the British. They fought on the side of the British against the Americans throughout the war of the revolution, and their war parties made destructive and frequent raids upon the line of pioneer settlements in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. In the war of 1812 they were again ranged on the side of the British, with their bloody hands lifted alike against the men, women and children of "the States."

In the programme of Pontiac's war the capture of Post St. Joseph, on the St. Joseph's river of Lake Michigan, was assigned to the Pottawatomies, which was effected as will be hereafter narrated.

It was also the Pottawatomies who perpetrated the massacre at Chicago on the 15th day of August, 1812. Bands of this tribe, from their villages on the St. Joseph, the Kankakee and the Illinois rivers, whose numbers were augmented by the appearance of Metea with his warriors, from their village westward of Fort Wayne, fell upon the forces of Captain Heald, and the defenseless women and chil- dren retreating with him after the surrender of Fort Dearborn, and murdered or made prisoners of them all. Metea was a conspicuous leader in this horrible affair. *

Robert Dixon, the British trader sent out among the Indians during the war of 1812 to raise recruits for Proctor and Tecumseh, gathered in the neighborhood of Chicago, which after the massacre was his place of general rendezvous, nearly one thousand warriors of as wild and cruel savages as ever disgraced the human race. They were the most worthless and abandoned desperadoes whom Dixon had been enabled to collect from among all the tribes he had visited. These accomplices of the British were to be let loose upon the re- mote settlements under the leadership of the Pottawatomie chief, Mai-pock, or Mai-po, a monster in human form, who distinguished himself with a girdle sewed full of human scalps, which he wore around his waist, and strings of bear's claws and bills of owls and hawks around his ankles, worn as trophies of his power in arms and as a terror to his enemies. +

relating to the siege of Detroit. The manuscript copy of it was obtained from the archives at Paris, by Gen. Cass, when minister to France, and is published at length in volume III of the History of Wisconsin, compiled by the direction of the legislature of that state by William R. Smith, President of the State Historical Society ; a work of very great value, not only to the State of Wisconsin but to the entire Northwest, for the amount of reliable historical information it contains.

* Hall and McKenney's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, vol. 2, pp. 59, 60.

t McAfee's History of the Late War, pp. 297, 298. 10

146

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Their manners, like their dialect, were rough and barbarous as compared with other Algonquin tribes. They were not the civil, modest people, an exceptional and christianized band of whom the Jesuits before quoted drew a flattering description.

"It is a fact that for many years the current of emigration as to the tribes east of the Mississippi has been from the north to the south. This was owing to two causes : the diminution of those animals from which the Indians derive their support, and the pressure of the two great tribes, - the Ojibbeways and the Sioux,-to the north and west. So long ago as 1795, at the treaty of Greenville, the Potta- watomies notified the Miamis that they intended to settle upon the Wabash. They made no pretensions to the country, and the only excuse for the intended aggression was that they were tired of eating fish and wanted meat."* And come they did. They bore down upon their less populous neighbors, the Miamis, and occupied a large portion of their territory, impudently and by sheer force of numbers, rather than by force of arms. They established numerous villages upon the north and west bank of the Wabash and its tributaries flowing in from that side of the stream above the Vermilion. They, with the Sacs, Foxes and Kickapoos, drove the Illinois into the vil- lages about Kaskaskia, and portioned the conquested territory among themselves. By other tribes they were called squatters, who justly claimed that the Pottawatomies never had any land of their own, and were mere intruders upon the prior rights of others. They were foremost at all treaties where lands were to be ceded, and were clam- orous for a lion's share of presents and annuities, particularly where these last were the price given for the sale of others' lands rather than their own. + Between the years 1789 and 1837 the Pottawato- mies, by themselves, or in connection with other tribes, made no less than thirty-eight treaties with the United States, all of which,- excepting two or three which were treaties of peace only, -were for cessions of lands claimed wholly by the Pottawatomies, or in com- mon with other tribes. These cessions embraced territory extending from the Mississippi eastward to Cleveland, Ohio, and reaching over the entire valleys of the Illinois, the Wabash, the Maumee and their tributaries. +

They also had villages upon the Kankakee and Illinois rivers. Among them we name Minemaung, or Yellow Head, situated a

* Official letter to the Secretary of War, dated March 22, 1814.

+ Schoolcraft's Central Mississippi Valley, p. 358.

# Treaties between the United States and the several Indian tribes, from 1778 to 1837: Washington, D.C., 1837.

147

THEIR VILLAGES.

few miles north of Momence, at a point of timber still known as Yellow Head Point ; She-mar-gar, or the Soldier's Village, at the mouth of Soldier Creek, that runs through Kankakee City, and the village of "Little Rock " or Shaw-waw-nas-see, at the mouth of Rock Creek, a few miles below Kankakee City .* Besides these, the Pot- tawatomies had villages farther down the Illinois, particularly the great town of Como, Gumo, or Gumbo as the pioneers called it, at the upper end of Peoria Lake. They had other towns on the Milwaukee River, Wisconsin. On the St. Joseph, near Niles, was the village of To-pen-ne-bee, the great hereditary chief of the Pottawatomie nation ; higher up, near the present village of White Pigeon, was situated Wap-pe-me-me's, or White Pigeon's town. Westward of Fort Wayne, Indiana, nine miles, was Mus-kwa-wa-sepe-otan, "the town of old Red Wood creek," where resided the band of the distinguished war- rior and orator of the Pottawatomies, Metea, whose name in their language signifies kiss me.

Finally, the renowned Kesis, or the sun, the old friend of Gen- eral Hamtrauck and the Americans, in a speech to General Wayne at the treaty of Greenville in 1795, said that his village "was a day's walk below the Wea towns on the Wabash," referring, doubtless, to the mixed Pottawatomie and Kickapoo town which stood on the site of the old Shelby farm, on the north bank of the Vermilion, a short distance above its mouth. +

The positions of several of the principal Pottawatomie villages have been given for the purpose of showing the area of country over which this people extended themselves. As late as 1823 their hunting grounds appeared to have been "bounded on the north by the St. Joseph (which on the east side of Lake Michigan separated them from the Ottawas) and the Milwacke, # which, on the west side of the lake, divided them from the Menomonees. They spread to the south along the Illinois River about two hundred miles; to the west

* The location of these three villages of Pottawatomies is fixed by the surveys of reservations to Mine-maung, Shemargar and Shaw-waw-nas-see respectively, secured to them by the second article of a treaty concluded at Camp Tippecanoe, near Logans- port, Indiana, on the 20th of October, 1832, between the United States and the chiefs and head men of the Pottawatomie tribe of Indians of the prairie and of the Kanka- kee. The reservations were surveyed in the presence of the Indians concerned and General Tipton, agent on the part of the United States, in the month of May, 1834, by Major Dan W. Beckwith, surveyor. The reservations were so surveyed as to include the several villages we have named, as appears from the manuscript volumes of the surveys in possession of the author.

+ Journal of the Proceedings at the Treaty of Greenville: American State Papers on Indian Affairs, vol. 1, p. 580. The author has authorities and manuscripts from which the location of Kesis' band at the mouth of the Vermilion may be quite confi- dently affirmed.

# Milwaukee.

148

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

their grounds extended as far as Rock River, and the Mequin or Spoon River of the Illinois ; to the east they probably seldom passed beyond the Wabash."* After the Kickapoos and Pottawatomies had established themselves in the valley of the Wabash, it was mutually agreed between them and the Miamis that the river should be the dividing line,-the Pottawatomies and Kickapoos to occupy the west, and the Miamis to remain undisturbed on the east or south side of the stream. It was a hard bargain for the Miamis, who were unable to maintain their rights. +

The Pottawatomies were among the last to leave their possessions in Illinois and Indiana, and it was the people of this tribe with whom the first settlers came principally in contact. Their hostility ceased at the close of the war of 1812. After this their intercourse with the whites was uniformly friendly, and they bore the many im- positions and petty grievances which were put upon them by not a few of their unprincipled and unfeeling white neighbors with a for- bearance that should have excited public sympathy.

The Pottawatomies owned extensive tracts of land on the Wabash, between the mouth of Pine Creek, in Warren county, and the Fort Wayne portage, which had been reserved to them by the terms of their several treaties with the United States. They held like claims. upon the Tippecanoe and other westward tributaries of the Wabash, and elsewhere in northwestern Indiana, eastern Illinois and southern. Michigan. These reservations are now covered by some of the finest farms in the states named. The treaties by which such reser- vations were granted generally contained a clause that debarred the owner from alienating them without having first secured the sanction of the President of the United States. This restriction was de- signed to prevent unprincipled persons from overreaching the Indian, who, at best, had only a vague idea of the fee simple title to, and value of, real estate. It afforded little security, however, against the wiles of the unscrupulous, and whenever the Indian could be in- duced by the arts of his "White Brother" to put his name to an instrument, the purport of which, in many instances, he did not at. all understand as forever conveying away his possessions, the ratify- ing signature of the President followed as a matter of department routine. The greater part of the Pottawatomie reservations was retroceded to the United States in exchange either for annuities or for lands west of the Mississippi, and the title disposed of in this way.

* Long's Second Expedition, vol. 1, p. 171.

t The writer was informed of this agreement by Mary Baptiste.

149

THE EXODUS.

The final emigration of the Pottawatomies from the Wabash, under charge of Col. Pepper and Gen. Tipton, of Indiana, took place in the summer of 1838. Many are yet living who witnessed the sad exodus. The late Sanford Cox has recorded his impressions of this event in the valuable little book which he published .* "Hearing that this large emigration, numbering nearly a thousand of all ages and sexes, would pass within eight or nine miles west of La Fayette, a few of us procured horses and rode over to see the retiring band, as they reluctantly wended their way toward the setting sun. It was, indeed, a mournful spectacle to see these children of the forest slowly retiring from the homes of their childhood, where were not only the graves of their loved ancestors but many endearing scenes to which their memories would ever recur as sunny spots along their pathway through the wilderness. They felt that they were bidding a last farewell to the hills, the valleys and the streams of their infancy : the more exciting hunting grounds of their advanced youth ; the stern and bloody battle-fields on which, in riper man- hood, they had received wounds, and where many of their friends and loved relatives had fallen, covered with gore and with glory. All these they were leaving behind, to be desecrated by the plowshare of the white man. As they cast mournful glances back toward these loving scenes that were rapidly fading in the distance, tears fell from the cheek of the downcast warrior, -old men trembled, matrons wept, the swarthy maiden's cheek turned pale, and sighs and half-suppressed sobs escaped from the motley groups, as they passed along, some on foot, some on horseback, and others in wagons, sad as a funeral pro- cession. I saw several of the aged warriors glancing upward to the sky as if invoking aid from the spirits of their departed sires, who were looking down upon them with pity from the clouds, or as if they were calling upon the great spirit to redress the wrongs of the red man, whose broken bow had fallen from his hand. Ever and anon one of the throng would strike off from the procession into the woods and retrace his steps back to the old encampments on the Wabash, Ell River, or the Tippecanoe, declaring that he would die there rather than be banished from his country. Thus would scores leave the main party at different points on the journey and return to their former homes ; and it was several years before they could be induced to join their countrymen west of the Mississippi."

This body, on their westward journey, passed through Danville, Illinois, where they halted several days, being in want of food. The

* Recollections of the Early Settlement of the Wabash Valley, La Fayette, Ind., 1860, pp. 154, 155.

150

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

commissary department was wretchedly supplied. The Indians begged for food at the houses of the citizens. Others, in their extremity, killed rats at the old mill on the North Fork and ate them to appease their hunger. Without tents or other shelter, many of them, with young babes in their arms, walked on foot, as there was no adequate means of conveyance for the weak, the aged or infirm. Thus the mournful procession passed across the state of Illinois.

The St. Joseph band were removed westward the same year. So strong was their attachment to southern Michigan and northern Indiana, that the Federal government invoked the aid of troops to coerce their removal. The soldiers surrounded them, and, as prison- ers of war, compelled them to leave. At South Bend, Indiana, was the village of Chichipe Outipe. The town was on a rising ground near four small lakes, and contained ten or twelve hundred christian- ized Pottawatomies. Benjamin M. Petit, the Catholic missionary in charge at Po-ke-ganns village on the St. Joseph, asked Bishop Bruté for leave to accompany the Indians, but the prelate withheld his consent, not deeming it proper to give even an implied indorsement. of the cruel act of the government. But being himself on their route, he afterward consented. The power of religion then appeared. Amid their sad march he confirmed several, while hymns and prayers, chanted in Ottawa, echoed for the last time around their lakes. Sick and well were carried off alike. After giving all his Episcopal bless- ing, Bishop Bruté proceeded with Petit to the tents of the sick, where they baptized one and confirmed another, both of whom ex- pired soon after. The march was resumed. The men, women and elder children, urged on by the soldiers in their rear, were followed with the wagons bearing the sick and dying, the mothers, little chil- dren and property. Thus they proceeded through the country, tur- bulent at that time on account of the Mormon war, to the Osage River, Missouri, where Mr. Petit confided the wretched exiles to the care of the Jesuit Father J. Hoecken. *

In the year 1846 the different bands of Pottawatomies united on the west side of the Mississippi. A general treaty was made, in which the following clause occurs : "Whereas, the various bands of the Pottawatomie Indians, known as the Chippeways, Ottawas and Pottawatomies, the Pottawatomies of the Prairie, the Pottawatomies. of the Wabash, and the Pottawatomies of Indiana, have, subsequent to the year 1820, entered into separate and distinct treaties with the

* Extract from Shea's Catholic Missions, p. 397.

151

THE POTTAWATOMIE NATION.

United States, by which they have been separated and located in different countries, and difficulties have arisen as to the proper distributions of the stipulations under various treaties, and being the same people by kindred, by feeling and by language, and having in former periods lived on and owned their lands in com- mon, and being desirous to unite in one common country and again become one people and receive their annuities and other benefits in common, and to abolish all minor distinctions of bands by which they have heretofore been divided, and are anxious to be known as the POTTAWATOMIE NATION, thereby reinstating the national character ; and whereas, the United States are also anxious to restore and concentrate said tribes to a state so desirable and necessary for the happiness of their people, as well as to enable the government to arrange and manage its intercourse with them ; now, therefore, the United States and said Indians do hereby agree that said people shall hereafter be known as a nation, to be called the POTTAWATOMIE NATION."

Pursuant to the terms of this treaty, the Pottawatomies received $850,000, in consideration of which they released all lands owned by them within the limits of the territory of Iowa and on the Osage River in Missouri, or in any state or place whatsoever. Eighty- seven thousand dollars of the purchase money coming to them was paid, by cession from the United States, of 576,000 acres of land lying on both sides of the Kansas River. The tract embraces the finest body of land within the present state of Kansas, and Topeka, the state capital, has since been located nearly in the center of the reservation. While the territory was going through the process of organization, adventurers trespassed upon the lands of the Potta- watomies, sold them whisky, and spread demoralization among them. The squatters who intruded upon the farmer-Indians killed their stock and burned some of their habitations, all of which was borne without retaliation. Notwithstanding the old habendum clause inserted in Indian treaties (as a mere matter of form, as may be in- ferred from the little regard paid to it) that these lands should inure to Pottawatomies, "their heirs and assigns forever," the squatter sovereigns wanted them, and resorted to all the well-known methods in vogue on the border to make it unpleasant for the Indians, who were progressing with assured success from barbarism to the ways of civilized society. The usual result of dismemberment of the re- serve followed. The farmer-Indians, who so desired, had their por- tions of the reserve set off in severalty; the uncivilized members of the tribe had their proportion set off in common. These last, which

152

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

were exchanged for money, or lands farther southward, fell into the possession of a needy railroad corporation.

We gather from the several reports of the commissioners on In- dian affairs that, in 1863, the tribe numbered 2,274, inclusive of men, women and children, which was an alarming decrease since the cen- sus of 1854. The diminution was caused, probably, aside from the casualties of death, by some having returned to their former homes east of the Missouri, while many of the young and wild men of the tribe went to the buffalo grounds to enjoy the exciting and unre- strained freedom of the chase. The farmers raised 3,720 bushels of wheat, 45,000 of corn, 1,200 of oats and 1,000 tons of hay, and had 1,200 horses, 1,000 cattle and 2,000 hogs, as appears from the offi- cial report for 1863.

The Catholic school at St. Mary's enumerated an average of ninety-five boys and seventy-five girls in 1863, and in 1866 the total number was two hundred and forty scholars. Of his pupils the superintendent says : "They not only spell, read, write and cipher, but successfully master the various branches of geography, history, book-keeping, grammar, philosophy, logic, geometry and astronomy. Besides this, they are so docile, so willing to improve, that between school-hours they employ their time, with pleasure, in learning whatever handiwork may be assigned to them; and they particu- larly desire to become good farmers." The girls, in addition to their studies, are "trained to whatever is deemed useful to good housekeepers and accomplished mnothers."

The Pottawatomies attested their fidelity to the government by the volunteering of seventy-five of their young men in the "army of the Union."

In 1867, out of a population of 2,400, 1,400 elected to become citizens of the United States, under an enabling act passed by con- gress. Of those who became citizens, some did well, others soon squandered their lands and joined the wild band. There are still a few left in Michigan, while about one hundred and eighty remain in Wisconsin.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE KICKAPOOS AND MASCOUTINS.

THE Kickapoos and Mascoutins, if there was more than a nominal difference between the two tribes, are here treated of together, for reasons explained farther on in the chapter. The name of the Kick- apoos has been written by the French, "Kicapoux," "Kickapous," " Kikapoux," "Quickapous," "Rickapoos," "Kikabu." This tribe has long been connected with the northwest, and have acquired a notoriety for the wars in which they were engaged with other tribes, as well for their persistent hostility to the white race, which con- tinued uninterrupted for more than one hundred and fifty years. They were first noticed by Samuel Champlain, who, in 1612, dis- covered the "Mascoutins residing near the place called Sakinam," meaning the country of the Sacs, comprising that part of the state of Michigan bordering on Lake Huron, in the vicinity of Saginaw Bay .*

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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 16

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