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 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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117 | Part 118 | Part 119 | Part 120
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.s 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.
¡ l'ide, p. 104.
# 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 Wabash 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 with 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 songht 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.
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 women 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 the 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 informed 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 yon. 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.
DEC'U DANVILLE.
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 French 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 Miamis, 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, Tjnghsaghrondie, " 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 them 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) the 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.
9
.
130
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
The French 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 beuten 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 me 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- gerons, 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 Sienr 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 cansed 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 might 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." +
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.