USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > Michigan City > History of Michigan City, Indiana > Part 3
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
We come now to the final measuring of swords that determined whether the language and civilization of the city to arise at the mouth of Trail creek should be French or English. The lilies of France were urged gradually eastward until there was a line of French forts from Presq'Isle to DuQuesne, under the very shadow of the mountains which held the English back, and the English were seeking in every way to oppose the advance and to break through the moun- tain range into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. In this effort George Washing- ton first appears in history. Between the two nations the Indians were drawn first one way and then another, and then back again, in a sadly confusing manner ; but one of them expressed the situation very clearly when he said to an Englishman : "You and the French are like the two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces between you." The Iroquois and other eastern
tribes gave their sympathies largely to the British, while those of the west in- clined toward the French, and the emis- saries of both nations were constantly passing among all of them with gifts and seductive promises. A clandestine trade, also, was carried on with the English through the upper New York and Ohio river routes, in spite of the utmost vigil- ance of the French. Some of the Ohio Miamis were seduced by British adher- ents among the Hurons and captured the blockhouse where Fort Wayne is now, but they were prevented from car- rying into effect their threats against Detroit and Fort St. Joseph. This was about 1745, and within five years the English influence had reached the Wabash Indians and was disaffecting the La- Porte county Pottawattomies, who never quite overcame the liking they acquired at that time for the representatives of King George. In the next five years the redcoats were driven back and Brad- dock's defeat served to fix the loyalty of the redskins to the French, for the time being. The long-smouldering flames of war now burst violently forth, to be sub- dued by Wolfe's victory at Quebec in 1759. Through the French and Indian war Fort St. Joseph sat at the crossing of the old Sac trail and the St. Joseph river, an outpost of the garrison at De- troit, holding the key to the western route. The post at Chicago had been abandoned fifty years. A dozen men, surrounded by thousands of Indians who were always to be suspected. upheld the fleur de lis and maintained the sovereign- ty of France in the territory adjacent to the southeast shores of the lake, until one day in 1760 there came a messenger telling of the capitulation at Montreal and directing the evacuation of the post. In the battle of Quebec the colossal French power in America received a fatal stroke and one of its results was to give an English name to the Riviere du
20
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY.
Chemin. The definitive treaty of peace was executed at Paris February 10, 1763, completing the surrender and transfer of the whole of Canada to Great Britain.
The ancient Indian highway down the valley of Trail creek, which for nearly a century had been worn deep by the feet of traders, soldiers and priests and had resounded with the songs of coureurs de bois, voyageurs and engages, all speak- ing the soft language of France, knew them no more. The period was the most romantic and poetic this portion of the country has ever known. It kindles the imagination to think of standing on ground pressed by the feet of such glori- ous and heroic adventurers as LaSalle and Tonty, such zealous and self-sacri- ficing ministers of heaven as Marquette and Allouez, such rollicking wild men as Perrot and La Taupine ; but most pic-
turesque, most romantic, most poetic of all who in the old French days came to the foot of Hoosier Slide were the hardy, agile, fearless, careless bushrangers call- ed coureurs de bois-rovers of the forest -whose vagabond journeys took them to every nook and cranny of the wilder- ness in their ceaseless quest for furs. Inured to incredible toils, approximating the savage in habit, piercing the thick woods and threading devious streams, on foot or in birchen canoes, they made the forests echo with their joyous chan- sons as they pursued their way, and at night fall, --
"Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer and the bison, Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the quivering firelight Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped up in their blankets."
CHAPTER TWO.
The Approach of the Flag.
The accession of the British was far from satisfactory to the redskins and those of LaPorte county and vicinity continued to find plenty to interest them at the little fort on the St. Joseph. In the first step of the new occupancy trouble was encountered, for when Major Robert Rogers came west to take pos- session of the posts in the fall of 1760, after the Montreal capitulation, he was halted near the western end of Lake Erie by no less a personage than Pontiac. "What business have the English soldiers here," sternly demanded the distinguish- ed Ottawa chief, "and how do they dare to enter my territory without my per- mission?" The officer was crafty and prudent and replied that he had no design against the red men but had come to re- move the French, whose lies had been the means of preventing mutual friend- ship and commerce between the tribes and the English. The little army, which was the first body of British soldiery that ever entered this western region, was permitted to pass and to occupy Detroit and the other posts tributary thereto. If Pontiac's asseverations that he and his people were friendly to the new lords of the land were not mere pretensions his amiability soon began to change un- der the influence of secret agents of the French and because of the sullen and domineering temper of the English themselves, for it was not long until he was reporting to an Indian council that the Great Spirit had appeared to a Del- aware chief and said :- "Why do you
suffer these dogs in red clothing to enter your country and take the land I gave you? Drive them from it, and then, when you are in distress, I will help you." At the same time Pontiac exhib- ited a war belt and said that it had been sent to him by the French king in Paris, who had ordered him to drive the red- coats out and make ready for the return of the French.
Simulating content with the British rule Pontiac all through 1762 was secret- ly organizing a powerful red confed- eracy with the purpose of crushing at one dreadful blow the power of the En- glish in the west. The great scheme was skilfully projected and cautiously matured. In erecting his unwieldy fab- ric of scarcely governable savages Pon- tiac was indefatigable, patient and per- severing, and he visited the tribes where- ever they were at home. He summoned councils and was crafty, insinuating and persuasive in his eloquent presentation of the great purpose to overthrow the rule of the scarlet coats. Because of the dan- ger of spies in the vicinity of Fort St. Joseph he called the Indians near there to meet in secluded spots, and as he jour- neyed to the villages at the end of the lake by way of Trail creek it may be that such a council was held one night on its banks. The tribes dwelling between the Kankakee and the lake united their destinies with his and entered into the alliance he proposed.
Nine tribes and parts of some others received instructions to act in May. The
22
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
plan was to make simultaneous attacks on all the forts and posts occupied by British garrisons west of Presq' Isle, on Lake Erie. This was done; May and June, 1763, were bloody months in the west. May 8 Detroit was invested. Then in rapid succession, beginning May 16 and ending June 22, nine posts were ta- ken and destroyed, in most instances with accompaniments of fiendish mas- sacre, and more than a hundred English traders located on the border, some with families, were killed and scalped. The forts at Sandusky, Ohio; St. Joseph, Michigan ; Miami and Ouiatenon, Indi- ana ; Michillimacinac, Le Boeuf, Vo- mango and Presq'Isle fell before the at- tack of Pontiac's copper-colored allies in the order named, while Forts Pitt and Niagara made successful resistance. Pot- tawattomie Indians from the Trail creek and St. Joseph regions participated in the savage rioting at Detroit, St. Joseph, Miami and Ouiatenon. But for the treachery of one of his own followers Pontiac would have taken Detroit early in May and could then have thrown his entire force upon Niagara and Pitt with a certainty of success, thus sweeping tlie country west of the mountains clear of every vestige of British authority. The besiegers were driven from before De- troit late in July and the great conspir- acy fell to pieces.
Lieutenant Schlosser, of the King's Own, commanded Fort St. Joseph and had a garrison of fourteen men. He had marched with a detachment as far as the Chicago river, by way of Trail creek, and probably conducted the first expedi- tion of English soldiers that ever passed that way. May 25, soon after he had learned of the situation at Detroit but before the comprehensive purpose of the redskins was known, a large party of Pottawattomies sent out from Pontiac's army at Detroit appeared before the stronghold on the St. Joseph, saying :
"We are come to see our relatives and wish them good morning." A cry was suddenly heard in the barracks; "in about two minutes" Schlosser was seized and eleven out of the fourteen soldiers were massacred. The fort was not greatly damaged and was shortly reoccu- pied because of its importance as the key to the Sac trail and the trail to the head of the lake through the Trail creek val- ley. Again in the following year Pontiac carried his crusade to the Indians along these trails and over into the Illinois country, telling them that if they hesitated to join him in a new effort against the English he "would consume their tribes as fire consumes the dry grass on the prairies," but it was in vain. He was murdered at Cahokia by an Indian, seek- ing revenge for which the Pottawatto- mies swept down from the lake and the tragedy of Starved Rock ensued. The French on the Illinois, hopeless of hold - ing their position, advised their red friends to join hands with the English and the Pottawattomies were willing to do so.
Discouraged by the failure of Ponti- ac's conspiracy many tribes, including the Potawattomies, sued for peace with the English and in the summer of 1764 a treaty was negotiated on terms favor- able to the whites, one condition provid- ing for the erection and maintaining of forts in the Indian country. In April following another treaty was made with the western tribes, in which an effort was made to establish a boundary beyond which there should be no English settle- ment, the line proposed by the Indians being that along the Ohio and Susque- hanna rivers. In October, 1768, the im- portant treaty of Fort Stanwix was ar- ranged, fixing the Indian boundary more specifically on the Alleghany and Susque- hanna river line. This treaty is especial- ly interesting locally because in it there was granted to the English certain lands
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
23
in Pennsylvania which were, Nov. 3. 1768, deeded to a company of traders and named Indiana, the first use of that name. On this treaty the title to Ken- tucky, western Virginia and western Pennsylvania largely rests.
For two-thirds of a century, until Mich- igan City was mapped and inhabited, the whites steadily, irresistibly, and often by the practice of fraud and force, surg- ed westward in an ever-increasing tide,
after, were required to have licenses which entitled them to protection. Even before the Revolution the land compa- nies were greedy for the soil and did not cease their begging for grants. Among the foremost land speculators of that time was Washington, whose campaigns and explorations in the west had given him a high opinion of the richness of the country and who engaged in correspon- dence with European parties with refer-
L BEC
MARQUETTE
M
FRENCH
NO
RTH
CH
RIVER
p
NEW CANAL
/GREEN DAY
NVDIHDIW
HURO
8
1
TORC!
ON
T
ARIO
Z
N
BUFFALO
DETROIT
ERIE
Y
0
R
I
1.
2
.
TOLEDO
MICHIGAN City
PROPOSEO
CANAL
CLEVELAND
H
1
TOLEDO-MICHIGAN CITY CANAL
driving the Fort Stanwix line mile by mile to Lake Michigan, while the red men resisted with slowly waning strength. The borders ran with blood and glowed with flame, but the inexora- ble movement was scarcely checked. Far out in the forests of the Wabash. Mau- mee and St. Joseph of the lake garrisons were kept at the posts established by the French and about these posts the traffic of the traders was carried on with much enterprise. The English traders, like the French before them and the Americans
ence to the colonization of about 33.000 acres patented to him for his services in the French and Indian war. "Indeed." says James H. Perkins in his "Annals of the West." "had not the Revolutionary war been just then on the eve of break- ing out. Washington would, in all prob- ability, have become the leading settler of the west, and all our history, perhaps, have been changed."
The war came, and though the battle fields were in the east the echoes of the struggle were heard even on the banks of
LAKE
SUPERIO
0
U
CAULT DE STE MARIE
WISCO
GEORGIAN
BAY
CONSI A -
0
LAKE
MILWAUKEE)
LAKE
CHICAGO
LOAKE
24
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
Trail creek. At first the colonies attemp- ted to keep the Indians out of the con- test, but the British sought persistently to enlist their sympathies and their tom- ahawks and the congress decided to take the advice of Washington and employ the savages in active warfare. The com- mander-in-chief was authorized to ac- cept the red men in his armies, to use them as he pleased and to offer them re- wards for prisoners. The British went further and offered rewards for scalps, fixing a higher prize for them than for prisoners. Many of the western tribes, including our Pottawattomies, espoused the cause of King George and traveled far to fight his battles. To influence these alliances civilian and military agents of the British were constantly in motion on all the trails and, with Fort St. Joseph as headquarters in these parts, some of them passed around the end of the lake through the site of Michigan City, among them, doubtless, the infamous renegades Simon Girty and Col. McKee. No American was knowingly permitted to penetrate thus far into the interior. Go- ing forth from this region to fight and returning again to recuperate, the cop- per-colored warriors of the lake tribes had many tales to tell of their prowess in battle and probably many stories were re- lated in the Pottawattomie wigwams on or near our creek.
But even in this distant quarter more than one blow was struck against the tenure of the British and the later achievements of Clark at Vincennes were foreshadowed. Living at Cahokia there was a restless adventurer by the name of Thomas Brady, then called "Monsieur Tom" and afterwards, when he became sheriff of an Illinois county, "Tom Brady," who conceived the notion of driving the redcoats back to Canada or of robbing the post-the motive is not exactly clear-and who found sixteen similarly-minded men, chiefly French,
who were ready to follow his lead. Early in October, 1777, this little company marched up to Fort St. Joseph one night, having come by the old Sac trail, and took the stronghold by surprise. A ne- gro slave belonging in the fort was acci- dentally killed in the assault, but the gar- rison of twenty-one regular soldiers fell into captivity without harm and readily gave the parole demanded of them. The Illinois patriots, if such they were, took the stores of the garrison and a consid- erable amount of merchandise belonging to traders, burned or distributed among the Indians what they could not carry away, and wantonly set fire to the stock- ade and buildings. Then they hurried off by the Trail creek path to make their escape. The paroled soldiers hastened after them, picking up such red men as they could en route, and at the crossing of the Calumet, near its mouth, overtook the Brady party and defeated it in a hot fight. Two of the Illinoisans were kill- ed, two wounded, one escaped into the woods and twelve were carried back to the little fort as prisoners with Brady himself. They were sent to Canada, where Brady escaped, the others remain - ing in prison two years. In the next summer Paulette Meillet, or Maillet, a French trader living near the site of Pe- oria, recruited a force of three hundred French, Indians and half-breeds whom he led by the Kankakee route to the same ill-fated fort, which he captured and looted and set on fire. This party carried away supplies valued at fifty thousand dollars, after distributing a portion among the Indians of the locality to ensure a safe retreat. La Balme's fatal expedition in 1780 to Fort Miami, near the site of Fort Wayne, having the cap- ture of Detroit in view, was another at- tempt to harass the English in this sec- tion of the country.
Once again, on a midwinter day, near the end of January, 1781, the Trail creek
25
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
Pottawattomies were the wondering and profiting witnesses to an attack on Fort St. Joseph; but in this case the person- nel and the motive of the invaders differ- ed greatly from those of the former forays. This time the flaunting red cross of the stockade went down before the banners of Spain and a new sover- eignty was declared. It was a new as- sertion of Spain's ancient claim to the great central basin grounded on the first discoveries in the hemisphere, beginning with those of Columbus, and the explor- ations of De Soto in the Mississippi val- ley. Spain and England were at war. England was apparently about to lose in the American war. Treaties of peace were shortly to be made. In order to lay the grounds for a goodly share in the apportionment of the American conti- nent in the prospective treaties Spain caused Cruvat, commanding at St. Louis, to send Don Eugenio Pourre with sixty- five militiamen, about half Spanish and half French, with sixty Indians, on a midwinter march from St. Louis to Fort St. Joseph. It was the first and only time a Spanish force ever marched through Illinois, Indiana or Michigan territory. It was a desperate adventure, consider- ing the weather, the roads and the nature of the land they penetrated, and the way had to be bought from English-loving Indians, but it was achieved and the gar- rison, with whom were gathered a few traders, were wonderfully surprised and easily captured as prisoners of war. Cap- tain Pourre lowered the English ensign and raised the Spanish colors, taking possession in the name of his Most Cath- olic Majesty and including in his asser- tion of sovereignty the entire region of the middle west. E. G. Mason, who has written at length of this episode in his "Illinois Sketches," says of Charles IV, Spain's weakling king, "He was the sixth sovereign who had borne sway there, if we include in the list LaSalle and Pon-
tiac, who in truth were kinglier men than any of the others."
Resting a few days and dividing among the surrounding Indians such of the stores as he could not bear away, Don Eugenio marched back to St. Louis, carrying the British flag and leaving his own flying at the masthead over the fort. When Franklin, in Europe, heard of this exploit he was somewhat disturbed over the possible outcome, but, with the help of Jay and Adams, he was able to end the Spanish pretensions to territorial rights east of the Mississippi.
September 3, 1783, by the treaty of Paris terminating the Revolution, the valley of Trail creek and the site of Mich- igan City became legally American soil. The feeble assertions of Spanish rights were occasionally heard until the treaty of October 27, 1795, negotiated by Thomas Pinckney, gave it its quietus. Not until the close of the war of 1812 did Great Britain abandon the hope of regaining this magnificent western terri- tory. Had it not been for the success of the dare-devil expedition to Vincennes of George Rogers Clark, ("The Hannibal of the West," Dunn calls him) in the winter of 1778-9 Great Britain probably would have retained that territory by the treaty of peace. Few Americans dreamed of the golden future of the re- gion between the lakes and the Chio, and it was said in congress that a hun- dred years would elapse before it could be made available for settlement. But the borderers knew, and they never ceased to edge forward, little by little, into the Indian country. The frontier kept pushing doggedly west and the American flag was approaching the southeast shore of Lake Michigan. Twenty years after the close of the Rev- olution the stars and stripes were seen at the mouth of Trail creek.
By sucessive treaties at Fort Stanwix, October 22, 1784; Fort McIntosh, Jan-
26
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
uary 21, 1785 ; the Great Miami, January 31, 1786, and Fort Harmar, January 9, 1789, the limit between the white and red population was forced west until by the treaty last named it was established on a line running from the mouth of the Cuy- ahoga (where Cleveland is now ) south- westerly by specified streams and port- ages to the mouth of the Great Miami ( where the eastern Indiana boundary strikes the Ohio), and one after another the fertile valleys of Ohio's tributaries east of that line were subjected to the plow. The Pottawattomies and Sacs of the lake region joined in the nego- tiations at Fort Harmar and by section 14 of the treaty there concluded they \'Cre received "into the friendship and protection" of the United States and "a league of peace and amity" was estab- lished between them respectively. Win- digo, Wapaskea and Neque were the Pottawattomies who signed this docu- ment in behalf of the tribe.
In the meantime, while the disposses- sion of the Indians was going forward, the federal government was also quiet- ing its title to the same territory as against the conflicting claims of the sev- eral states whose vague western bounds seemed to include parts of it. At that time it was uncertain whether Trail creek was in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts or Virginia. As the states were held together quite loosely under the articles of confederation and either of them might cast off the lines at any time and become independent of the rest it was desired by each one that its boun- daries should be clearly defined and that its territory should be as large as pos- sible. The government, on the other hand, recognizing the western lands as a valuable source of income, desired to fix the title in itself. New York was the first to yield and by an act of 1780, con- cluded by a deed the next year, she ced- ed her western claims to the congress.
Following New York in 1780 and com- pleting the cession in 1786, Connecticut relinquished her claims, retaining the Western Reserve in Ohio. Massachusetts completed her conveyance in 1785. Vir- ginia, whose claims were regarded as the most valid, resolved in 1781 to cede to the United States all her territory north- west of the Ohio river and this resolve was made effective by a deed executed March 1, 1784, by Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Arthur Lee and Samuel Hardy, who were duly authorized for that purpose. Thus, subject only to the admitted titles of the Indians, the United States acquired undisputed sovereignty over the region which soon came to be known as the Northwest Territory, com- prising all of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin and that por- tion of Minnesota east of the Mississippi. The eastern half of Ohio was pretty well settled by Americans. A few hundred hardy American pioneers were located among the French habitans of Detroit, the forks of the Maumee (now Fort Wayne), Quiatenon (near Lafayette). Vincennes and Kaskaskia. The British still held the forts at Detroit and on the Maumee, over the protests of the federal government and in contravention of the treaty of Paris, but Fort St. Joseph seems not to have been occupied after the Spanish raid. A thin line of traders ran out from Detroit to the head of Lake Michigan. with a post at the old Fort St. Joseph, where a religious mission was maintained quite regularly, and a trading house at the Chicago river estab- lished July 4, 1779, by Baptiste Point de Saible, a San Domingan negro. Traders passed frequently along the old Sac trail and along the Trail creek path, but of soldiers there were none at this period, and of missionaries there were few.
The extension of federal jurisdiction over the territory raised at once the ne- cessity for some form of government
27
HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY
and, after a preliminary act in 1785, the great and wise ordinance for the govern- ment of the Northwest Territory was enacted July 13, 1787. Of this great charter Theodore Roosevelt, in "The Winning of the West," has said :-
"This anti-slavery compact was the most important feature of the ordinance. vet there were many other features only less important. In truth the ordinance of 1787 was so wide-reaching in its effects, was drawn in accordance with so lofty a morality and such far-seeing statesmanship, and was fraught with such weal for the nation, that it will ever rank among the foremost of American state papers, coming in that little group which includes the Declaration of Inde- pendence, the Constitution, Washing- ton's Farewell Address, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and Second Inaugural. It marked out a definite line of orderly freedom along which the new states were to advance. It laid deep the foundation for that system of wide- spread public education so characteristic of the Republic and so essential to its healthy growth. It provided that com- plete religious freedom and equality which we now accept as part of the order of nature, but which were then unknown in any important European nation. It provided for an indissoluble Union, a Union which should grow until it could relentlessly crush nullification and seces- sion ; for the states founded under it were the creatures of the nation, and were by the compact declared forever inseparable from.it."
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.