History of Vermilion 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 11

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164

USA > Illinois > Vermilion County > History of Vermilion 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 11

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Dr. Beck, while collecting material for his "Gazetteer of Illinois and Missouri," in 1820, visited the ruins of old Fort Chartes. At that time enough remained to show the size and strength of this remarkable fortification. Trees over two feet in diameter were growing within its walls. The ruin is in a dense forest, hidden in a tangle of under- growth, furnishing a sad memento of the efforts and blasted hopes of La Belle France to colonize "Les Illinois."

* The articles of surrender are given at length in the Faris Documents, vol. 10, pp. 1161 to 1166.

CHAPTER XII.

SURRENDER OF LOUISIANA BY THE INDIES COMPANY-EARLY ROUTES.

IN 1731 the company of the Indies surrendered to France, Louisiana, with its forts, colonies and plantations, and from this period forward to the time of the conquest by Great Britain and the Anglo-American colonies, Louisiana was governed through officers appointed by the crown.

We have shown how, when and where colonies were permanently established by the French in Canada, about Kaskaskia, and in Lower Louisiana. It is not within the scope of our inquiries to follow these settlements of the French in their subsequent development, but rather now to show how the establishments of the French along the lakes and near the gulf communicated with each other, and the routes of travel by which they were connected.

The convenient way between Quebec and the several villages in the vicinity of Kaskaskia was around the lakes and down the Illinois River, either by way of the St. Joseph River and the Kankakee port- age or through Chicago Creek and the Des Plaines. The long winters and severe climate on the St. Lawrence made it desirable for many people to abandon Canada for the more genial latitudes of southern Illinois, and the still warmer regions of Louisiana, where snows were unknown and flowers grew the year round. It only required the pro- tection of a fort or other military safeguards to induce the Canadians to change their homes from Canada to more favorable localities sonthward.

The most feasible route between Canada and the Lower Mississippi settlements was by the Ohio River. This communication, however, was effectually barred against the French. The Iroquois Indians, from the time of Champlain, were allies, first of the Dutch and then of the English, and the implacable enemies of the French. The upper waters of the Ohio were within the acknowledged territory of the Iroquois. whose possessions extended westward of New York and Pennsylvania well toward the Scioto. The Ohio below Pittsburgh was, also, in the debatable ground of the Miamis northward, and Chickasaws south- ward. These nations were warring upon each other continually, and

THE MAUMEE AND WABASH ROUTE.

the country for many miles beyond either bank of the Ohio was infested with war parties of the contending tribes .*

There were no Indian villages near the Ohio River at the period concerning which we now write. Subsequent to this the Shawnees and Delawares, previously subdued by the Iroquois, were permitted by the latter to establish their towns near the confluence of the Scioto, Mus- kingum and other streams. The valley of the Ohio was within the confines of the " dark and bloody ground." Were a voyager to see smoke ascending above the forest line he would know it was from the camp fire of an enemy, and to be a place of danger. It would indi- cate the presence of a hunting or war party. If they had been suc- cessful they would celebrate the event by the destruction of whoever would commit himself to their hands, and if unfortunate in the chase or on the war path, disappointment would give a sharper edge to their cruelty. +

The next and more reliable route was that afforded by the Maumee and Wabash, laying within the territory of tribes friendly to the French. The importance of this route was noticed by La Salle, in his letter to Count Frontenac, in 1683, before quoted. La Salle says: "There is a river at the extremity of Lake Erie,# within ten leagues of the strait (Detroit River), which will very much shorten the way to the Illinois, it being navigable for canoes to within two leagues of their river."§ As early as 1699, Mons. De Iberville conducted a colony of Canadians from Quebec to Louisiana, by way of the Maumee and Wa- bash. "These were followed by other families, under the leadership of M. Du Tessenet. Emigrants came by land, first ascending the St. Lawrence to Lake Erie, then ascending a river emptying into that lake to the portage of Des Miamis ; their effects being thence transported to the river Miamis, where pirogues, constructed out of a single tree, and large enough to contain thirty persons, were built, with which the voyage down the Mississippi was prosecuted." | This memoir corre- sponds remarkably well with the claim of Little Turtle, in his speech to Gen. Wayne, concerning the antiquity of the title, in his tribe, to the portage of the Wabash at Fort Wayne. It also illustrates the fact that among the first French settlers in lower Louisiana were

* A Miami chief said that his nation had no tradition of " a time when they were not at war with the Chickasaws."

+ General William H. Harrison's Address before the Historical Society of Cin- cinnati.

# The Maumee. Meaning the Wabash.

Extract taken from a memoir, showing that the first establishments in Louisiana were at Mobile, etc., the original manuscript being among the archives in the depart- ment " De la Marine et Des Colonies," in Paris, France.

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

those who found their way thither through the "glorious gate," be- longing to the Miamis, connecting the Maumee and Wabash.

Originally, the Manmee was known to the French as the " Miami," "Oumiami," or the "River of the Miamis," from the fact that bands of this tribe of Indians had villages upon its banks. It was also called "Ottawa," or "Tawwa," which is a contraction of the word Ottawa, as families of this tribe " resided on this river from time immemorial." The Shawnee Indian name is " Ottawa-sepe," that is " Ottawa River." By the Hurons, or Wyandots, it was called "Cagh-a-ren-du-te," the "River of the Standing Rock."* Lewis Evans, whose map was pub- lished in 1755, and which is, perhaps, the first English map issued of the territory lying north and west of the Ohio River, lays down the Miami as " Mine-a-mi," a way the Pennsylvania Indian traders had of pronouncing the word Miami. In 1703, Mons. Cadillac, the French commandant at Detroit, in his application for a grant of land six leagues in breadth on either side of the Maumee, upon which he pro- posed to propagate silk-worms, refers to the river as "Grand River " + As early as 1718 it is mentioned as the " Miamis River,"# and it bore this name more generally than that of any other from 1718 to a pe- riod subsequent to the War of 1812. Capt Robert M'Afee, who was in the various campaigns up and down the Maumee during the War of 1812, and whose history of this war, published at Lexington, Ky., in 1816, gives the most authentic account of the military movements in this quarter, makes frequent mention of the river by the name of " Miami," occasionally designating it as the " Miami of the Lake."

Gen. Joseph Harmar, in his report of the military expedition con- ducted by him to Fort Wayne, in October, 1790, calls the Miami the "Omee." He says: "As there are three Miamis in the northwestern territory, all bearing the name of Miami, I shall in the future, for dis- tinction's sake, when speaking of the Miami of the Lake, call it the ' Omee,' and its towns the Omee Towns. By this name they are best known on the frontier. It is only, however, one of the many corrup- tions or contractions universally used among the French-Americans in pronouncing Indian names. 'An-Mi,' for instance, is the contraction for 'An Miami.' " §

The habit of the "Coureur de Bois " and others using the mongrel language of the border Canadians, as well, also, the custom prevailing

* "Account of the Present State of Indian Tribes, etc., Inhabiting Ohio." By John Johnson, Indian Agent, June 17, 1819. Published in vol. 1 of Archeologia Americana. + Sheldon's History of Michigan, p. 108.

# Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 886 and 891.

§ Gen. Harmar's official letter to the Secretary of War, under date of November 23, 1790, published in the American State Papers.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME MAUMEE.

among this class of persons in giving nicknames to rivers and locali- ties, has involved other observers besides Gen. Harmar in the same perplexity. Thomas Hutchins, the American geographer, and Capt. Harry Gordon visited Kaskaskia and the adjacent territory subsequent to the conquest of the northwest territory from the French, and be- came hopelessly entangled in the contractions and epithets applied to the surrounding villages on both sides of the Mississippi. Kaskaskia was abbreviated to "Au-kas," and St. Louis nicknamed " Pain Court " - Short Bread ; Carondelet was called " Vide Pouche " - Empty Pocket ; Ste. Genevieve was called " Missier" - Misery. The Kas- kaskia, after being shortened to Au-kaus, pronounced "Okau," has been further corrupted to Okaw, and at this day we have the singu- lar contradiction of the ancient Kaskaskia being called Kaskaskia near its mouth and " Okaw " at its source,

The Miamis, or bands of their tribe, had villages in order of time ; first on the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, then upon the Maumee ; after this, 1750, they, with factions of other tribes who had become disaffected toward the French, established a mixed village upon the stream now known as the Great Miami, which empties into the Ohio, and in this way the name of Miami has been transferred, successively, from the St. Jo- seph to the Miami, and from the latter to the present Miami, with which it has become permanently identified." The Miamis were, also, called the " Mau-mees,"- this manner of spelling growing out of one of the several methods of pronouncing the word Miami - and it is doubtless from this sonree that the name of Maumee is derived +

In this connection we may note the fact that the St. Marys and the Au-glaize were named by the Shawnee Indians, as follows: The first was called by this tribe, who had several villages upon its banks, the " Co-kothe-ke-sepe," Kettle River; and the Au glaize "Cow .then-e- ke-sepe," or Fallen Timber River. These aboriginal names are given by Mr. John Johnson, in his published account of the Indian tribes before referred to.#

We will now give a derivation of the name of the Wabash, which has been the result of an examination of a number of authorities. Early French writers have spelled the word in various ways, each en- deavoring, with more or less success, to represent the name as the sev-

* The aboriginal name of the Great Miami was "Assin-erient," or Rocky River, from the word Assin, or Ussin, the Algonquin appellation for stone or stony. Lewis Evan's map of 1755.

+ In an official letter of Gen. Harrison to the Secretary of War, dated March 22, 1814, the name " Miamis " and "Maumees " are given as synonymous terms, referring to the same tribe.

# Mr. Johnson had charge of the Indian affairs in Ohio for many years, and was especially acquainted with the Shawnees and their language.

100

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

eral Algonquin tribes pronounced it. First, we have Father Marquette's orthography, "Oua-bous-kigou ;" and by later French authorities it is spelled " Abache," "Onabache," "Oubashe," "Oubache," "Oubaslı," " Oubask," "Oubache," " Wabascon," "Wabache." and "Waubache." It should be borne in mind that the French alphabet does not contain the letter W", and that the diphthong " ou" with the French has nearly the same sound as the letter W of the English alphabet. The Jesuits sometimes used a character much like the figure S. which is a Greek contraction formulated by them, to represent a peculiar guttural sound among the Indians, and which we often, though imperfectly, represent by the letter W, or Wau .*

That Wabash is an Indian name, and was early applied to the stream that now bears this name, is clearly established by Father Gravier. This missionary descended the Mississippi in the year 1700, and speak- ing of the Ohio and its tributaries, says: "Three branches are assigned to it. one that comes from the northwest (the Wabash), passing behind the country of the Oumiamis, called the St. Joseph, t which the Indians properly call the Ouabachei; the second comes from the Iroquois (whose country included the head-waters of the Ohio), and is called the Ohio : and the third, which comes from the Chaou- anona+ (Shawnees). And all of them uniting to empty into the Mis- sissippi, it is commonly called Ouabachi." §

In the variety of manner in which Wabash is spelled in the exam- ples given above, we clearly trace the Waw-bish-kau, of the Ojibe- ways; the Wabisca (pronounced Wa-bis-sa) of the modern Algon- quin ; Wau-bish of the Menominees, and Wa-bi of the ancient Algon- quins, words which with all these kindred tongues mean White.

Therefore the aboriginal of Wabash (Sepe) should be rendered White River. This theory is supported by Lewis Evans, who for many years was a trader among the Indians, inhabiting the country drained by the Wabash and its tributary waters. The extensive knowledge which he acquired in his travels westward of the Alleghanies resulted

* Shea's Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi. p. 41. foot-note. For example, we find in the Journal of Marquette, SabSkig8, for Wabash. The same man- ner of spelling is also observed in names, as written by other missionaries, where they design to represent the sound of the French "ou," or the English W.

t Probably a mistake of the copyist, and which should be the St. Jerome, a name given by the French to the Wabash, as we have seen in the extracts taken from Crozat's grant. Dr. Shea has pointed out numerous mistakes made by the copyist of the man- uscripts from which the " Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi " are composed.

The Tennessee.

§ Father Gravier's Journal in Dr. Shea's Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, pp. 120, 121.

|| The several aboriginal names for white, which we have given above, are taken from the vocabularies of Mackenzie, Dr. Ewin James and Albert Gallatin, which are regarded as standard authorities.

101

ORIGIN OF THE NAME WABASH.

in his publishing, in 1755, a map, accompanied with an extended de- scription of the territory it embraced. In describing the Wabash, Mr. Evans calls it by the name the Iroquois Indians had given it, viz : the "Quia-agh-tena," and says "it is called by the French Onabach, though that is truly the name of its southeastern branch." Why the White River, of Indiana, which is the principal southeastern branch of the Wabash, should have been invested with the English meaning of the word, and the aboriginal name should have been retained by the river to which it has always properly belonged, is easily explained, when we consider the ignorance and carelessness of many of the early travelers, whose writings, coming down to us, have tended to confuse rather than aid the investigations of the modern historian. The Ohio River below the confluence of the Wabash is designated as the Wabash by a majority of the early French writers, and so laid down on many of the contem- poraneous maps. This was, probably, due to the fact that the Wabash was known and used before the Ohio had been explored to its mouth. So fixed has become the habit of calling the united waters of these two streams Wabash, from their union continuously to their discharge into the Mississippi, that the custom prevailed long after a better knowledge of the geography of the country suggested the propriety of its aban- domment. Even after the French of Canada accepted the change, and treated the Ohio as the main river and the Wabash as the tributary, the French of Louisiana adhered to the old name.

We quote from M. Le Page Du Pratz' History of Louisiana : * "Let us now repass the Mississippi in order to resume a description of the lands to the east, which we quit at the river Wabash. This river is distant from the sea four hundred and sixty leagnes; it is reckoned to have four hundred leagues in length from its source to its conflu- ence with the Mississippi. It is called Wabash, though, according to the usual method, it ought to be called the Ohio, or Beautiful River,t seeing the Ohio was known under that name before its confluence was known; and as the Ohio takes its rise at a greater distance off than the three others which mix together before they empty them- selves into the Mississippi, this should make the others lose their

* The author was for sixteen years a planter of Louisiana, having gone thither from France soon after the Company of the West or Indes restored the country to the crown. He was a gentleman of superior attainments, and soon acquired a thorough knowledge of the French possessions in America. He returned to France, and in 1758 published his "History of Louisiana," with maps, which, in 1763, was translated into English. These volumes are largely devoted to the experience of the author in the cultivation of rice, indigo, sugar and other products congenial to the climate and soil of Louisiana, and to quite an extended topographical description of the whole Mississippi Valley.

t The Iroquois' name for the Ohio was " O-io," meaning beautiful, and the French retained the signification in the name of "La Belle Rivière," by which the Ohio was known to them.

102

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

names; but custom has prevailed in this respect. The first known to us which falls into the Ohio is that of the Miamis (Wabash), which takes its rise toward Lake Erie. It is by this river of the Miamis that the Canadians come to Louisiana. For this purpose they embark on the River St. Lawrence, go np this river, pass the cataracts quite to the bottom of Lake Erie, where they find a small river, on which they also go up to a place called the carriage of the Miamis, because that people come and take their effects and carry them on their backs for two leagues from thence to the banks of the river of their name which I just said empties itself into the Ohio. From thence the Canadians go down that river, enter the Wabash, and at last the Mississippi, which brings them to New Orleans, the capital of Louisiana. They reckon eighteen hundred leagues from the capital of Canada to that of Louisiana, on account of the great turns and windings they are obliged to take. The river of the Miamis is thus the first to the north which falls into the Ohio, then that of the Chaouanons to the south, and lastly, that of the Cherokee, all which together empty themselves into the Mississippi. This is what we (in Louisiana) call the Wabash, and what in Canada and New England is called the Ohio." *

A failure to recognize the fact that the Ohio below the mouth of the Wabash was, for a period of over half a century, known to the French as the Wabash, has led not a few later writers to erroneonsly locate ancient French forts and missionary stations upon the banks of the Wabash, which were in reality situated many miles below, on the Ohio.t

* On the map prefixed to Du Pratz' history, the Ohio from the Mississippi up to the confluence of the Wabash is called the " Wabash "; above this the Ohio is called Ohio, and the Wabash is called " The River of the Miamis," with villages of that tribe noted near its source. The Maumee is called the "River of the Carrying Place." The Upper Mississippi, the Illinois River and the lakes are also laid down, and, alto- gether, the map is quite accurate.

+ A noticeable instance of such a mistake will be found relative to the city of Vin- cennes. On the authority of La Harpe, and the later historian Charlevoix, the French in the year 1700, established a trading post near the mouth of the Ohio, on the site of the more modern Fort Massac, in Massac county, Ill., for the purpose of securing buffalo hides. The neighboring Mascotins, as was customary with the Indians, soon gathered about for the purpose of barter. Their numbers, as well as the expressed wish of the French traders, induced Father Merment to visit the place and engage in mission work. At the end of four or five years, in 1705, the establishment was broken up on account of a quarrel of the Indians among themselves, and which so threatened the lives of the Frenchmen that the latter fled, leaving behind their effects and 13,000 buffalo hides which they had collected. Some years later Father Marest, writing from Kaskaskia, in his letter before referred to, relates the failure of Father Merment to convert the Indians at this " post on the Wabash "; and on the authority of this letter alone, and although Father Marest only followed the prevailing style in calling the lower Ohio the Wabash, some writers. the late Judge John Law being the first, have contended that this post was on the Wabash and at Vincennes. Charlevoix says "it was at the mouth of the Wabash which discharges itself into the Mississippi." La Harpe, and also Le Suere, whose personal knowledge of the post was contemporaneous with its existence, definitely fix its position near the mouth of the Ohio. The latter gives the date of its beginning, and the former narrates an account of its trade and final abandonment. In this way an antiquity has been claimed for Vincennes to which it is not historically entitled.

103

EARLY ACCOUNT OF THE MAUMEE.

We now give a description of the Maumee and Wabash, the location of the several Indian villages, and the manners of their inhabitants, taken from a memoir prepared in 1718 by a French officer in Canada, and sent to the minister at Paris .*

"I return to the Miamis River. Its entrance from Lake Erie is very wide, and its banks on both sides, for a distance of ten leagues up, are nothing but continned swamps, abounding at all times, espe- cially in the spring, with game without end, swans, geese, ducks, cranes, etc., which drive sleep away by the noise of their eries. This river is sixty leagnes in length, very embarrassing in summer in consequence of the lowness of the water. Thirty leagues up the river is a place called La Glaise,t where buffalo are always to be found; they eat the clay and wallow in it. The Miamis are sixty leagues from Lake Erie, and number four hundred, all well formed men, and well tattooed ;; the women are numerous. They are hard working, and raise a species of maize unlike that of our Indians at Detroit. It is white, of the same size as the other, the skin much finer, and the meal much whiter. This nation is clad in deer skin, and when a woman goes with another man her husband ents off her nose and does not see her any more. They have plays and dances, wherefore they have more occupation. The women are well clothed ; but the men use scarcely any covering, and are tattooed all over the body.

" From this Miami village there is a portage of three leagues to a little and very narrow stream,§ that falls, after a course of twenty leagues, into the Ohio or Beautiful River, which discharges into the Ouabache, a fine river that falls into the Mississippi forty leagues from the Cascachias. Into the Ouabache falls also the Casquinampo, | which communicates with Carolina; but this is far off, and is always up stream.

" The River Quabache is the one on which the Ouyatanons " are settled.

"They consist of five villages, which are contiguous the one to the other. One is called Oujatanon, the other Peangnichias, ** and another

* The document is quite lengthy, covering all the principal places and Indian tribes east of the Mississippi, and showing the compiler possessed a very thorough acquaint- ance with the whole subject. It is given entire in the Paris Documents, vol. 9; that relating to the Maumee and Wabash on pages 886 to 891.

+ Defiance. Ohio.

# These villages were near the confluence of the St. Mary's and St. Joseph, and this is the first account we have of the present site of Fort Wayne.

§ Little River, that empties into the Wabash just below Huntington. " The Tennessee River.

The " Weas," whose principal villages were near the mouth of Eel River, near Logansport, and on the Wea prairie, between Attica and La Fayette.

** The ancient Piankashaw town was on the Vermilion of the Wabash, and the Miami name of the Vermilion was Piankashaw.

104

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Petitscotias, and a fourth Le Gros. The name of the last I do not recollect, but they are all Onjatanons, having the same language as the Miamis, whose brothers they are, and properly all Miamis, having the same customs and dress." The men are very numerous; fully a thousand or twelve hundred.

"They have a custom different from all other nations, which is to keep their fort extremely clean, not allowing a blade of grass to remain within it. The whole of the fort is sanded like the Tuilleries. The village is situated on a high hill, and they have over two leagues of improvement where they raise their Indian corn, pumpkins and melons. From the summit of this elevation nothing is visible to the eye but prairies full of buffaloes. Their play and dancing are inces- sant.+

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History of Vermilion 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 11

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903 Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company Number of Pages: 1164

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164