USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > Michigan City > History of Michigan City, Indiana > Part 2
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of finding the water passage to that country through northern America and in 1669 he set out to accomplish the dis- covery, led by the reports of Indians concerning the "great water" which he then supposed would lead him to the Gulf of California. Other explorers similarly inspired penetrated the wilds of the re- gions west and south of the great lakes. They failed in their original purpose, but they found a land of such noble promise as to captivate the imagination and cause them to drop all other plans for the single plan of securing it for France and filling it with colonists.
To LaSalle's imaginative insight the colonial possibilities of the great central valley appealed quickly and powerfully and he prepared himself to undertake the task of adding to his king's dominions a territory of tremendous area and value. Spain vaguely claimed the entire con- tinent by reason of her early discoveries, beginning with that of Columbus, and she more specifically claimed the Miss - issippi valley because of her discovery of the mouth and lower portion of that stream. England declared her right of sovereignty as based upon her discover- ies along the Atlantic coast, evidenced by her early colonial charters reading from sea to sea. France had some indefinite claims, but she did not rest upon those ; she proceeded with aggressive enterprise to reduce the land itself to possession, according to plans originating with La- Salle and by him put into effect. Thence- forward New France, meaning all of North America west of the Alleghanies but more especially that portion of it watered by the Mississippi and its tribu- taries, was a paramount issue in Euro- pean politics until the Americans then- selves settled it by the Revolution. The French occupation of the valley has been likened to a great wedge, a flying wedge such as football enthusiasts know about, whose point was aimed at the mouth of
the great river, whose eastern side was intended to hold the English east of the mountains and sweep the Spanish out of Florida, and whose western side was cal- culated to grasp the uncertain regions beyond the Mississippi. That the French government failed weakly to follow up the movement of this wedge of LaSalle's should not in any measure detract from the genius of the man who conceived it and had the courage and imagination to apply it. Great in hope and not dejected by inconceivable disappointments, he was assassinated in the wilds of Texas by one of his own followers before his work was done, and there was none to take it up. He died in 1687 and his place of burial, if indeed he was buried, has never been found.
Whoever was the first Caucasian to reach the mouth of Trail creek, LaSalle led the way and provided the reason for the journey. Whoever he was, and whether he journeyed along the red man's path by the slender stream, or made his way over the wave-washed beach, or floated upon the bosom of the majestic lake, he gazed upon a scene that could not be duplicated elsewhere on earth. Stretching away to the west as far as his vision could reach he saw the swelling waters of the glorious inland sea. Looking landward his eyes could pierce the hardwood forest growth just enough to discern the forbidding marsh- es lying close up against the remarkable barriers of pure sand that held the waters back from the low land on the east. And where the sluggish little brook, with many a sinuous curve, reluctantly ap- proached the end of its brief course, there was a level floor of yellow sand, half a mile in extent between two guardian peaks, over which it discharged itself by narrow and shallow channels whose openings were changed at the caprice of every freshet. Whether this first of Eu- ropeans came in spring, with its opales-
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cent waters, its gleaming sands and its vernal greens, or in summer, with its azure sky and lake, its deeper greens on land and its great glowing dunes, or in the fall, when the foliage riots in burning colors and the golden masses of sand face an infinite vista of sapphire sky and sea, or even in winter, for there is a beauty in the bleakness of glistening snow and heaving ice fringed by the evergreen banks of the pines, he saw the rough beauty of an untamed wilderness, but a beauty peculiar to the spot.
And yet, however the artist might linger enraptured with the varying charms of the scene, there was nothing to induce a settlement. To the utilitarian view there appeared but a whirling bed of sand, backed by miasmic swamps and exposed to sweeping winds from the lake, and the insignificant streamlet with its restricted mouth gave no suggestion of harbor possibilities. Trail creek, though its graceful windings and willow fringes were pleasing features in the landscape, was not useful to canoemen, for it was too short, it led to no portage and its mouth was obstructed by a bar that prevented the passage of even the lightest birch shallop of the hunter and trapper. The Indians knew the spot as a favorable place for hiding from their enemies or secluding their families while on the warpath, or as a good place for fishing in the season. There is no evi- dence that they ever maintained a vil- lage there, no aboriginal remains have been found in the immediate vicinity, and the most that can now be said about it as the site of any sort of settlement prior to the date of the present city is that in one of the reports of the state geologist there is a map showing all known Indian villages in the state and on this map there appears the name A-ber-cronk at the mouth of the creek. The authority for introducing this peculiar name, which seems not to be Indian at all, is now un-
known. Considering the courses of the old trails and the favorable conditions for camping it is not unlikely that the place was a favorite ground for that purpose from the earliest times. The only way we may now learn of the conditions of life that prevailed on the Riviere du Chemin during the French and English periods is to investigate the history of the nearest historic regions, the St. Jo- seph and Chicago rivers, which are very intimately related.
Late in 1673 Joliet and Marquette reached the stream called Chicagou, or some variation of that name, by the carl- ier explorers and usually identified as the present Chicago river (there is a question whether the Calumet was not meant ), and the priest went on to Green bay. Whether Joliet continued the jour- ney with him or not is uncertain, for there is some reason for thinking that he remained in that vicinity a while. When Marquette returned there the fol- lowing spring he found the place occu- pied by two French traders as their headquarters and was forced to make their cabin his home for nearly a year while he lay sick. These traders were the Surgeon and La Taupine (a nick- name meaning "the skip-jack"), the lat- ter having been present when Saint Lus- son and the rest asserted the sovereignty of France over the entire west in 1671 at Sault Ste. Marie, thinking there were but fifteen hundred leagues of naviga- tion from that place to Tartary, China and Japan; Joliet was also there and was associated with La Taupine, whose true name was Pierre Moreau. These two traders were very kind to the sick Jesuit and built one or two additional cabins for his convenience and for his two servants, Pierre and Jacques. Some families of Miami Indians were settled there in huts and they treated the whites in a very friendly manner. The priest ministered to the red men as his condi-
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
tion of health admitted and they brought him food and cared for him. Indians came long distances to see and hear the "black robe" and some of the dying were baptized at that time. The two traders ranged through all the adjacent country for many miles in the pursuit of their business. In the summer of 1679. a short time prior to LaSalle's arrival at the south end of the lake. La Taupine went to Quebec and was arrested for irregular trading. but escaped prosecu- tion. while it seems that the Surgeon joined LaSalle that same winter and went with him to the Illinois river. In all probability these men were acquainted with Trail creek. but in any case they found the Indians entirely amiable dur- ing their residence of six years in this section.
Hennepin. LaSalle's Recollet mission- ary. has left an account of the erection of the fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph. the first establishment of any kind made by Europeans near Indiana soil. The little company of Frenchmen arrived late in 1679. having skirted the south end of the lake. and were compelled to wait for the coming of Tonty. While thus waiting the fort was built. Hennepin said :-
"Just at the mouth of the river Miamis there was an eminence with a kind of a platform naturally fortified. It was pretty high, and steep, of a triangular form-defended on two sides by the river. and on the other by a deep ditch. which the fall of the waters had made. We felled the trees that were on the top of the hill: and having cleared the same from bushes for about two musket shot. we began to build a redoubt of eighty feet long and forty feet broad. with great square pieces of timber. laid one upon another : and prepared a great number of stakes, of about twenty-five feet long. to drive into the ground. to make our fort the more inaccessible on the river side. We employed the whole month of November about that work. which was very hard. though we had no other food but the bears' flesh our say-
age [LaSalle's Mohican guide] killed. These beasts are very common in that place. because of the great quantity of grapes they find there: but their flesh being too fat and luscious, our men be- gan to be weary of it. and desired leave to go a hunting to kill some wild goats [deer]. M. LaSalle denied them that liberty. which caused some murmurs among them : and it was but unwillingly that they continued their work. This. together with the approach of the winter. and the apprehension that M. LaSalle had that his vessel [the Griffin] was lost. made him feel very melancholy. though he concealed it as much as he could. We had made a cabin wherein we performed divine service every Sunday : and Father Gabriel and I. who preached alternately. took care to take such texts as were suit- able to our present circumstances, and fit to inspire us with courage. concord, and brotherly love.'
This fort was called Fort Miamis, and the river was given the same name. for the Indians found living on its banks. About a year later, when LaSalle return- ed to it. he found it in ruins. destroyed by "perfidious wretches" in his own ser- vice. Later he built the fort near Niles and called it Fort St. Joseph. which name ultimately attached to the stream and has never since been changed. A Jesuit mission was also established at the same place. and the military and relig- ious history of that spot was hardly in- terrupted for more than a hundred years.
Remains have been found to show that man inhabited this region in the Glacial or Interglacial epoch, and many thou- sands of years later came the mound- builders, who. however, left no marks of their existence nearer to Michigan City than the Kankakee river. The aborig- inals dwelling between the Chicago and St. Joseph rivers in LaSalle's time were chiefly Miamis, who were being harassed almost beyond endurance by the feroc- ious Iroquois from the east and who were shortly to be crowded seriously by the Pottawattomies from the Green bay
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district. The Iroquois, pressing west- ward along the southern shores of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, were im- placable in their hatred of the French and of the western Indians and they were powerful and warlike. As early as in 1661 they made a rapid foray clear around the south end of Lake Michigan and in subsequent years they often gath- ered scalps along the Illinois river as far as Peoria. The western Indians with whom they came in contact were afraid of them. and when LaSalle, in pursuit of his scheme of colonization. proposed an alliance of the tribes against the Iro- quois there was much to be thought about in the wigwams : sucess would be glorious, but failure would be disastrous indeed, and the French were few in num- ber to pin much faith to in such a ven- ture as that suggested. There were many tribes in southern Michigan, northern Indiana. Illinois and Wisconsin, some of whom were not of the friendliest with others to be taken into the alliance, and these tribes were all constantly moving and changing their homes. The project was as difficult as it was bold, but the Frenchman spent months visiting them in their villages and succeeded in a meas- ure in accomplishing his purpose. Part- ly by his plan, in which he had the aid of the missionaries, and partly as a result of movements that had long been taking place among the red men, a general cast- ward drift pushed the Iroquois back into New York, giving Ohio and central In- diana to the Miamis, while the Pottawat- tomies swarmed around the lake and occupied northern Indiana and southern Michigan, with the St. Joseph river as a center. Sacs and Foxes, and some other smaller tribes, lived at places in the same region on friendly terms with the Pottawattomies, and a remnant of the Mohicans, driven far to the west, seclud- ed themselves in the upper marshes of the Kankakee. At the opening of the
nineteenth century the Sacs and Foxes had retired to the west, the other tribes had found suitable hunting grounds else- where, and the Pottawattomies were in sole possession of the southern and east- ern shores of Lake Michigan. All of the American Indians were inclined to be friendly with the whites until the ag- gressions and vices of the civilized in- vaders made friendship and respect in- possible.
"We are told," said John L. Steward in "Lost Maramech." "that the natives of the new world were savages ; as reported by intruders into their country, they appear so to have been. To those who intruded. no doubt. the natives seemed tameless : if tameless meant inability to turn to our domestic ways, more savage in many respects than their own, they were indeed tameless. If it was thought by the invaders that to defend homes and kindred, to drive intruders from their hunting grounds that constituted their fields of sustenance, rendered them worthy of the name. they were savages."
The Indians became first suspicious and then hostile when they saw the whites, preaching a mystical and incom- prehensible gospel of salvation, engaged in practices that violated every principle of the red man's ethical code and at the same time defying the only real estate laws the savages knew anything about. erecting forts in their hunting grounds, claiming sovereignty over their lands and driving them slowly and irresistibly to new homes they did not want. Drunk- enness, stealing, murder for the purpose of robbery, other unknown vices, new diseases, all these were among the intro- ductions of civilization which the un- tutored savage could not understand but which he gradually adopted or acquired. The Indians loved their lands with sav- age passion and those who dwelt in the Trail creek region had special grounds for their attachment to the soil, for it was rich in all the natural resources upon which they depended for their sustent-
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ance. Bison were on the prairies, beaver were along the shaded streams, the woods had plenty of bear, deer were all about, and fish, fowl and small game abounded, besides which, in season, wild fruits grew everywhere in profusion. It was with the greatest reluctance that, within the past century, the Pottawat- tomies permitted themselves to be driven out and took up their sorrowful march toward the setting sun.
LaSalle passed out of Indiana history in the autumn of 1683, when he went to France to organize his expedition to the Mississippi by way of the gulf in the prosecution of which enterprise he lost his life. The young but astute Nicholas Perrot, who was an interpreter at the treaty of Sault Ste. Marie, as has been stated, in 1671, and who was appointed as a sort of Indian agent about Lake Michigan near that time, took his place among the savages to some extent until 1694 and was several times on the St. Joseph river in his efforts to keep the tribes united against the Iroquois and to counteract the designs of the English, but he left no description of the locality with which we are concerned beyond the mere mention that he saw "mountains of white sand." Allouez, who succeeded Marquette as missionary at the south of the lake, went to the St. Joseph after the Recollets were withdrawn by direction of the government and died at the mis- sion near Niles in 1690. Other priests occupied the field and cultivated it with commendable zeal, traveling indefatiga- bly throughout this region, Father Char- don being one and possibly Fathers Mar- est and D'Ablon being others who saw the Riviere du Chemin. In the summer of 1683, the British agents having with some show of success attempted to cor- rupt the Green bay Pottawattomies and other northwestern tribes, through the operations of the Iroquois, in the hope of diverting the profitable beaver trade
from French channels, officers were sent to the outlying posts to thwart the move- ment. Among those who then went out was the brave Chevalier de Baugy, of the King's Dragoons, who voyaged hur- riedly down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on his way to the support of Tonty on the Illinois. It is probable, though not at all certain, that he made a night encampment at Hoosier Slide.' At the same time Sieur de La Duran- tave, with six canoes and thirty experi- enced men, was sent to Mackinac and Green bay on the same business and in 1685 he passed down the west shore to Chicago and constructed a fort there. In 1683 LaSalle had left two men at that place in a log cabin which was sometimes referred to as a fort. Probably before 1690 a palisaded station was constructed near Chicago for the use of traveling missionaries and as early as 1698 a Jesuit mission was established there. Father Pinet was in charge.
The designs of LaSalle included a chain of garrisoned fortifications extend- ing from Montreal to the mouth of the Mississippi along a route following the lakes by way of Mackinac to the mouth of the St. Joseph, thence up that stream and down the Kankakee and Illinois, or to the Chicago and thence down the Des- Plaines and Illinois. The portages at South Bend and Chicago thus became of great importance. He strengthened Fort Frontenac and gave it that name, on Lake Ontario; threw up a blockhouse at Niagara, where a fort was built later ; established a position, which was of brief duration, at the head of the Detroit river and called it Fort St. Joseph ; util- ized the post already long occupied at Michillimacinac; built Fort Miamis at the mouth of the St. Joseph river and, soon after that was destroyed, Fort St. Joseph near Niles ; erected Forts Creve Coeur and St. Louis on the Illinois river. and located a base at Chicago. In 1686
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Du Lhut built and occupied another Fort St. Joseph near Detroit and in 1701 Cad- illác founded the present city of Detroit, naming the fort Pontchartrain. About this time a new route to the Mississippi was opened by way of the Fort Wayne portage and the Wabash and Ohio riv- ers, the Iroquois danger having been re- moved, and posts were established at ' Fort Wayne, Ouiatenon (near Lafay- ette) and Vincennes. In the beginning
take the east shore south to the St. Jo- seph and follow the Kankakee. If the traveler went from St. Joseph to the Chi- cago river he followed the coast in a frail canoe, or he marched along the sand beach close to the lapping waves, or he took the Sac trail at Niles, left it at Bootjack for the trail by the river and journeyed on the beach from the mouth of Trail creek. These routes led him through the ground now occupied by
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CENTRAL SCHOOL
of the eighteenth century, therefore, the traveler to the west had a choice of sev- eral routes. He could leave Lake Erie at the Maumee and proceed down the Wabash and Ohio ; lie could take the old Sac trail at Detroit and follow it almost as the crow flies through the present sites of Niles, LaPorte, Valparaiso and Joliet to Rockford: he could go on to Macki- nac and voyage down the west shore of Lake Michigan to Chicago and thence by the Des Plaines and Illinois; he could
Michigan City, and all were much trav- eled. Franquelin's map of 1684 indi- cates the mouth of Trail creek and his later map of 1688 delineates the stream quite accurately, though without giving it a name, and these are the earliest maps on which the creek appears. It is pre- sumed that the cartographer received his information from LaSalle.
The French occupancy of the great central basin as a part of Canada, under the name of New France, continued until
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY.
the treaty of Paris in 1763, when the sovereignty was transferred to Great Britain. During all that time the En- glish persisted in their efforts to win the Indians and gain a foothold. For ninety years prior to the peace of Paris the provincial seat of government for Mich- igan City, had there been such a place, was vibrating between Quebec, New Or- leans and Montreal, with intermediate authority at times at Fort Chartres and Detroit and the ultimate power at Paris. It seems more like a dream than the sober truth of history that the approval of Louis the Great, that gorgeous spend- thrift, as Parkman calls him, was a pre- requisite to the exploration of LaPorte county and to commercial intercourse with its naked denizens, and that the sensual monster Louis XV, as Jacob P. Dunn calls him in writing on this sub- ject, held in his hands the supreme pow- er over the welfare of the first settlers in this region. In 1763 the capital passed from Paris to London and there remain- ed until it crossed the Atlantic to Rich- mond at the close of the Revolution. The frequent periods of war in Europe, in which Spain declined and France came into the ascendency and the wilderness of America was always a factor, were seasons of inactivity in New France, fol- lowed when peace was declared by re- newed briskness, as after the peace of Ryswick in 1697, of Utrecht in 1713 and of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The red men knew nothing of the giant struggles in Europe over political questions, but they were always besought to enter into wars, each nation involved striving to set them on the posts and colonies of the other.
"Some minister," says Dunn, "would pen a few lines in his luxurious chambers beyond the Atlantic; a few weeks later some commandant in the depths of the American wilderness would assemble the neighboring tribes, give them some pow-
der, some blankets, and some rum, and inform them that the Great French Fa- ther, or the Great English Father, had dug up the tomahawk, and now directed them to strike it in the heads of his.ene- mies; after another interval the night would be lighted by burning wigwams or frontier cabins, and the forests would resound with the shrieks of dying wom- en and children. This would be but a beginning. Weeks might pass, or months, or years, but the day of retalia- tion would come, and the conquering tribe would see its villages destroyed, its fields laid waste, its warriors burned at the stake or boiled and eaten, its women and children slain or carried captive. And what cared the great people of Europe? Basta! A few Indians more or less amounted to nothing. There were plenty more of them."
These lively words of Indiana's most accurate historian tell the story of the Indian movements in these northwestern counties during the French and English regimes. They even explain that dread- ful and treacherous massacre by the Pot- tawattomies at Fort Dearborn in 1812. And they contain a hint as to the causes lying back of the destruction of the Foxes at old Maramech in September, 1730, the details of which affair have only recently been recovered by John F. Stew- ard and published in his thrilling story of "Lost Maramech." During two or three years the hostility of the Foxes grew more pronounced and at last, in the month named, there came an out- break that caused French forces to be hurried up from Mackinac, Detroit, Fort Chartres and Fort St. Joseph. At the last-named stronghold the Sieur de Vil- liers, supported by his son, was in com- mand and Father LePere was the mis- sionary priest. A great number of Pot- tawattomies and Sacs occupied the re- gion, reaching down to Trail creek. When Indian runners arrived telling of the Fox uprising De Villiers took fifty French soldiers and five hundred of the Indian warriors and marched to the vil-
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lage of Maramech in Illinois, near the Fox river. He left his fort August IO, but four days after receiving the infor- mation, and arrived on the 20th, follow- ed ten days later by a detachment hasten- ing along the Sac trail from Detroit. Very possibly he marched by the Trail creek trail. The Foxes endeavored to get away from their enemies and join the Iroquois, who were friends of the English, but the French thwarted them and in the fighting killed two hundred, wounded many and took a large number of prisoners, completely cowing them for years to come. It transpired during the engagement that the Sacs with de Vil- liers plotted to betray the French and to release the Foxes from the lines in which they were held. A hundred years later the Sacs and Foxes were living together in amity and they remembered the slaughter at Maramech when they em- barked upon the desperate enterprise now known as Black Hawk's war.
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