USA > Indiana > LaPorte County > Michigan City > History of Michigan City, Indiana > Part 4
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This noble statute gave to Michigan City in after years the system of public schools now enjoyed, the exemption from negro slavery and from taxation for the support of religious institutions now taken as a matter of course, and formed the basis of the earliest govern- ment. It marked out the lines along which the flag approached every part of the territory and made that victorious march of Old Glory possible. October 5, 1787, General Arthur St. Clair was appointed by the congress to be the first
governor of the Northwest Territory, with the capital at Marietta, Ohio, and there, a year later, the first territorial laws were enacted, the first court was held, and the administration of civil gov- ernment became effective. These pro- ceedings greatly stimulated immigration and the red denizens of the forests were thrust back more insistently than ever. Down the Ohio and across from Ken- tucky, up Lake Erie and over from Can- ada, came first the skirmishers and then the main body of those who were hungry for the vast and fertile vacant spaces in the Indian lands. The day of the back- woodsman was come in Indiana. The red men, inspired by their own reluc- tance to give up their hunting-grounds and incited and armed by the British on the north and the Spanish on the south, held him back, but he marched on, over the dead and scalped bodies of his neigh- bors and through the hot ashes of their frontier homes, and even the govern- ment could not restrain him from cross- ing the treaty boundary. He sneaked over the line in defiance of law and loudly demanded an army when the rightful proprietors of the soil sought to dispossess him.
After St. Clair had carved the North- west Territory into counties, of which this region was once a part of Knox and again of Wayne, Ohio was cut off as a state in 1802. The remainder of the territory became, May 7. 1800, the terri- tory of Indiana, of which William Hen- ry Harrison was appointed governor in the next year, having served as terri- torial secretary and first representative in congress. Brant's attempts to
coalesce the northwestern Indians against the Americans failed, in spite of active British support, and other sim- ilar plots encouraged by such renegades as Elliott, McKee, Simon Girty and Pat Hill met early disaster, although the In- dians were able to inflict punishment on
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the armies of Harmar and St. Clair. But ever the settlements moved west. Au- gust 20, 1794, near the present city of Fort Wayne, General Anthony Wayne, called "Mad Anthony" by his white com- rades of the army and "The Blacksnake" by the Indians, who feared him, fought victoriously in a bloody battle against the Miamis, Pottawattomies and other tribes and forced them to sue for peace. He built Fort Wayne, sent a detachment as far as the St. Joseph river to cut a road that was long called the Dragoon
the southern half of its course, ceded large tracts of land to the government and sixteen smaller tracts at points occu- pied or to be occupied for military pur- poses, including six miles square at Chi- cago, assured unhindered passage be- tween the posts through the Indian country, including the route to Chicago, made more favorable provisions for trad- ing, and established the means of ensur- ing peace. Eighteen Pottawattomies of the St. Joseph signed the document, among them being Thupenibu (Topina-
AN OLD VIEW FROM HOOSIER SLIDE
Trace, and called the reds to a council at Greenville, where the treaty known by that name was signed August 3, 1795. He operated within pistol shot of a Brit- ish fort on the Maumee commanded by General Simcoe and threatened to de- stroy that position. The great council at Greenville was in session five weeks and the treaty there concluded was of vast importance in the west. It carried the Indian boundary over into Indiana in
bee) and Sugganunk (Sogganee), who lived near Trail creek. The minutes of the council show that forty Pottawat- tomies arrived at Greenville from Lake Michigan June 17, 1795, with the ven- erable chief New Corn at their head, who announced his arrival in the following formal speech addressed to General Wayne :-
"I have come here on the good work of peace. No other motive could have
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induced me to undertake so long a jour- ney as I have now performed, in my ad- vanced age and infirm state of health, I come from Lake Michigan. I hope, after our treaty is over, you will ex- change our old medals, and supply us with General Washington's. My young men will no longer adhere to the old ones-they wish for the new. They have thrown off the British, and, hence- forth, will view the Americans as their only true friends. We come with a good heart, and hope you will supply us with provisions."
July 23, in council, he said :-
"Elder brother : Had you seen me in former days you would have beheld a great and brave chief, but now I am old and burdened with the weight of years. * * My nation consists of one thou - sand men, who live at and between De- troit and Lake Michigan. We have the Miamis for our allies, and we mutually assist each other. I am by birth a Sac; I married a Pottawattomie, and have re- sided among them. Twenty-three chiefs of that nation are inferior to me in com- mand .*
This self-appreciative savage made one further speech, August 8, which is quoted for the information it contains as well as for the glimpse of character :
"The Great Spirit has made me a great chief and endowed me with great powers. The heavens and earth are my heart, the rising sun my mouth, and, thus favored, I propagate my own species. I know the people who have made and violated former treaties. I am too honorable and brave a man to be guilty of such conduct. I love and fear the Great Spirit. He now hears what I sav. I dare not tell a lie. Now, my friend, the great Wind (meaning Wayne), do not deceive us in the man- ner that the French, the British, and the Spanish have heretofore done ; they have made us promises which they never ful- filled ; they have proved to us how little they have ever had our happiness at heart ; and we have severely suffered, for placing our dependence on so faithless a people."
The influence gained over the savages under this treaty was such that the En-
glish did not think it profitable to hold the western posts longer and they were. surrendered in the following summer. The rapid approach of civilization to the southeast shore of Lake Michigan fol- lowing Wayne's victory and treaty brought into increased use several later trails leading to the mouth of Trail creek. One of these was the forest and prairie path from the Ouiatenon settle- ment, now Lafayette, which gave com- munication with Vincennes ; another led from the Eel river villages and came in after years to be known as the Yellow river road ; a third was from the head of the lake by an inside route through the Calumet marshes, and the last, by con- necting the Sac trail at Bootjack with the South Bend portage and the Drag- oon Trace, made the route to Fort Wayne. The fact that these well-trav- eled ways converged at the mouth of our creek gives ample ground for the infer- ence that the spot was a center of con- siderable activity in the dealings with the Indians, but whatever record there may be of the occurrences here at that period is still sleeping under the accum- ulated dust of old archives. There was an Indian village near the junction of the Sac and Lafayette trails, near West- ville ; another near the union of the Sac and Trail creek paths, near Bootjack, called Grand Quoit ; another, probably, close to the Yellow river trail not far from Springville, and a trading post called the little fort, at the head of Fort creek, which thereby obtained its name. William Burnett, at the time of the Greenville council, had for at least ten years kept a considerable trading estab- lishment on the St. Joseph, near Niles, and de Saible was still at Chicago, though in 1796 he sold out to another negro named Le Mai. Burnett was the first American who traded regularly on Trail creek. He came into the country as an English trader in 1769 and was
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located on the St. Joseph prior to 1785. He married Kaw-kee-me, sister of To- pinabee, the great Pottawattomie chief of this district whose son of the same name was in LaPorte county when the first white settlers came. When Canada was lost to the British Burnett was also lost, for he then became a good Ameri- can and so remained until his death about the close of the war of 1812, throughout which his loyalty was unshaken. De Saible, "a handsome negro, well educated and settled at Eschikagou; but much in the French interest," as Colonel DePeys- ter said of him in 1779, was a refugee from San Domingo in the stormy times of the eighteenth century, who drifted to the lake and tried, but without success, to secure his adoption and election as chief in the Pottawattomie tribe. He traded as far as to the St. Joseph for seventeen years, then moved to Peoria to die. One who knew him said he was a large man, that he had a commission for some office, that "he was a trader, pretty wealthy, and drank freely." Bertrand, for whom a town in Berrien county, Michigan, is named, and John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago," were doing business on the St. Joseph and through this region in 1803.
Greenville was followed by more than a dozen years of peace, barring an occa- sional border outrage by savages. The reservation of land for a fort at the mouth of the Chicago river, included in that treaty, was made in accordance with well considered plans formulated by the war department, in which it had been definitely decided that a garrison should be stationed at that place rather than at the old position on the St. Joseph. Au- gust 24, 1798, the trader Burnett wrote to Parker, Girard & Ogilvy at Montreal from his trading house on the St. Joseph as follows :
"In the course of last winter I wrote you that it is expected that there will be
a garrison at Chicago this summer, and from later accounts, I have reason to ex- pect that they will be over there this fall ; and should it be the case, and as I have a house there already, and a prom- ise of assistance from headquarters, I will have occasion for a good deal of liquors, and some other articles for that post. Wherefore, should there be a gar- rison at Chicago this fall, I will write for an addition of articles to my order."
This was the period, however, when Jefferson's prejudices against the army and navy were supreme and the country did not have soldiers enough to meet even the desultory Indian campaigns that had to be undertaken. After Wayne's battle on Indiana soil the army was reduced to 3,200 men, all told, and the navy was abolished until the Med- iterranean pirates forced its reorganiza- tion in a series of movements culminat- ing in a war in which the father of Charles Cathcart, one of the dominant figures in the early history of LaPorte county, figured prominently. It was not until the spring of 1803 that General Dearborn, the secretary of war, was able to find men for the projected post at the Chicago river. He then detailed Captain John Whistler for the enterprise. Cap- tain Whistler left Detroit on the schoon- er Tracy and sailed to the mouth of the St. Joseph, while his command of sixty men, led by Lieutenant James S. Swear- ingen, marched across the country and met him at that point. The captain then sent the schooner on with its load of supplies and material and made the re- mainder of the voyage with his family in canoes, the lieutenant and soldiers continuing on foot. Late in July, after a very difficult march of about two months through the wilderness, in which several of the men lost their lives, the command reached the mouth of Trail creek and encamped, the captain quite likely joining them there with his wife and two sons, George and Lieutenant
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HISTORY OF MICHIGAN CITY.
William Whistler, the latter with his young bride whom he had wedded as they were departing from Detroit. It is interesting to think that one of the two first white women to stop at the site of Michigan City was a bride. From this family came the great artist, James Mc- Neill Whistler, the son of George, who, then three years old, became a world- renowned engineer. The party went on to its destination and at 11 :45 in the forenoon of August 16 Lieutenant Swearingen drove a spade into the earth and started the work of erecting Fort Dearborn .. When the soldiers arrived there were near the mouth of the Chi- cago only four cabins, those of LeMai, the negro, Ouilmette, Pettell and an-
other, who were French halfbreeds with Indian wives, all of whom were traders in the region between there and the St. Joseph. A great many Indians had gath- ered on the shore to view with wonder the "big canoe with wings," for the Tracy was the first vessel larger than a pirogue that had navigated the south part of the lake.
This was the first body of American soldiers that had ever entered the present limits of LaPorte county, or any part of this entire region, and they bore the first American flag that was seen in this sec- tion of the west. The emblem of sover- eignty of the United States had passed through the spot where Michigan City is now seated and was planted on the western side.
CHAPTER THREE.
Preparing the Way.
The impossibility of exercising the ad- ministrative and judicial functions of government in the Northwest Territory as it was organized at the beginning of the last century led to an investigation in congress, and to a report, March 3, 1800, which said that "the immunity which offenders experience, attracts, as to an asylum, the most vile and abandoned criminals, and at the same time deters useful and virtuous persons from making settlements in such society :" and further that "this territory is exposed, as a fron- tier, to foreign nations, whose agents can find sufficient interest in exciting or fomenting insurrection and discontent, as thereby they can more easily divert a valuable trade in furs from the United States, and also have a part thereof on which they border, which feels so little the cherishing hand of their proper gov- ernment, or so little dread of its energy, as to render their attachment perfectly uncertain and ambiguous." A division of the Territory was recommended and, by act of May 7, adopted, with the fol- lowing provisions, among others :---
"That from and after the 4th day of July next, all that part of the territory of the United States, northwest of the Ohio river, which lies to the westward of a line beginning at the Ohio, opposite to the mouth of Kentucky river, and running thence to Fort Recovery, and thence north, until it shall intersect the territorial line between the United States and Canada, shall, for the purpose of temporary government, constitute a separate territory, and be called the Indi-
ana Territory. And that St. Vincennes, on the Wabash river, shall be the seat of government for the Indiana Terri- tory.'
Of this immense district, bounded by Ohio, Canada, and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Harrison was appointed governor and the administrative wheels were set in motion. He was instructed, as St. Clair had been before him, to use a pacificatory policy with the Indians, but to neglect no opportunity to extin- guish the Indian titles, and he entered promptly, vigorously and with much suc- cess into the work of benevolent assimi- lation of the tribes. Settlers were invit- ed by the terms of a law of 1799, for which Harrison was responsible, permit- ting the purchase of government lands in tracts of half a section or more at two dollars per acre on long credit.
The sale of liquor to Indians and the pressure by the inhabitants of the Illi- nois country for a further division of the Territory were public questions of great moment at that time, but the leading topic was slavery. There was a deter- mined effort, commencing as early as 1796 and increasing in vigor as soon as Indiana Territory had a legislature, to accomplish the repeal of the section of the ordinance of 1787 preventing the in- troduction of slavery in the northwest, first as a whole and then in part or for a limited time. The indenture law of 1807 was an opening wedge which might have served to make Indiana a slave state for many years, but the entire issue culmin-
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ated and was settled by the repeal of that law in December, 1810, by the third gen- eral assembly ever held on Indiana soil. The repeal passed the house without difficulty, but in the council the vote was a tie and the president, James Beggs, gave the deciding vote. The late Mrs. Susan Armstrong of LaPorte wrote of this fact a few years ago, saying: "My father being president of the council gave the casting vote which made Indi- ana a free state: for which I say. God bless James Beggs!" This exhibition of filial pride was justified by the import- ance of the vote. The same James Beggs, father of Mrs. Armstrong, is memorable also because he, in a memor- ial against slavery in 1807, gave the first known expression of the theory of "squatter sovereignty," so dubbed by Calhoun when General Cass, forty years later, announced the view that slavery was a question to be settled in legisla- tures and not in congress.
In this period the administration of the District of Louisiana, then just pur- chased, was given for a year to the gov- ernor and judges of Indiana, who exer- cised jurisdiction over the region in which Michigan City now is. On Janu- ary 24, 1803, Wayne county was created out of the lands east of a north and south line through the western extreme of Lake Michigan, and north of an east and west line through the southern extreme of the same ; and by act of congress of January 1I, 1805, the same tract was cut off from Indiana and erected into a terri- tory named Michigan. Having been un- der the dominion of France, England and Spain ; having, under American sovereignty, been claimed by New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vir- ginia ; having been a part of the North- west Territory and of Indiana Territory and bound up for administrative pur- poses with Louisiana ; and having es- caped the destiny of being located in a
state bearing Jefferson's whimsical name of Metropotamia, as he proposed in 1785, the region watered by Trail creek fell within the Territory of Michigan, with the capital at Detroit, and so continued until, pursuant to the constitution of June 29, 1816, Indiana was admitted as a state by congressional resolution of December II, the same year, the state government having actually commenced on November 7.
Michigan City did not pass back into Indiana without a struggle. It had re- ceived its municipal charter before a de- cision was ultimately and definitely reached taking it out of the jurisdiction of Michigan. The question on which the matter rested arose with the framing of the ordinance of 1787, became virulent when Ohio was granted statehood in 1802, culminated in the "Toledo War" of 1835, and sank peacefully into its final sleep with a resolution of the Michi- gan legislature in 1842. The contro- versy was originally between Ohio and Michigan, whose governors fiercely pa- raded troops in a bloodless opera bouffe war on one occasion, and it involved Indi- ana, Illinois and Wisconsin in its com- plexities. It was a curious instance of the assertion of the principle of state rights at a time when the forces of na- tionalization were working among the people. Had Michigan maintained its cause the northern boundary of Indiana would today start at the southern ex- treme of the lake and run due east, through the northern parts of Chester- ton and LaPorte and the southern parts of Goshen and Angola and with Michi- gan City, South Bend, Mishawaka and Elkhart north of it in Michigan. The name our city bears, given it during the height of this boundary contest, is thus seen to be entirely appropriate.
In the fifth article of the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North- west Territory provision was made for
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the division of the territory into not less than three nor more than five states and the eastern, southern and western bound- aries of what are now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were fixed, following which the ordinance proceeded :-
"Provided, however, and it is further understood and declared, that the bound- aries of these three States shall be sub- ject so far to be altered, that, if con- gress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the said terri- tory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan."
At that time the geographical knowl- edge of this region was very hazy and congress, relying on Mitchell's map of 1755, supposed that the line described would terminate eastwardly north of Lake Erie and not far below Detroit. That congress did not regard itself as irrevocably bound by the divisions of the ordinance is shown by the fact that it departed from its own lines in 1800 when Indiana Territory was set off from Ohio, for the division between Ohio and Indi- ana was formed by a line which ran from Canada due south to Fort Recovery and then angled toward the west, whereas the ordinance declared that it should run south all the way to the river, as it does now. But soon Wayne county, Ohio, was created, comprising all that part lying north of the east and west ordinance line and east of the north and south line, being now the eastern half, approximately, of the southern Michigan peninsula. By the enabling act of April 30, 1802, the first of its kind ever passed, congress authorized the inhabitants of Ohio to frame a constitution with a view to statehood, and prescribed the ordi- nance line for the boundary of the pro- posed new state. Accordingly a consti- tutional convention was called and as- sembled at Chillicothe, the then capital,
November I. While the convention was deliberating a man who had hunted and trapped many years in the Trail creek, Calumet and Kankakee regions chanced to be in Chillicothe, and he told one of the members with whom he talked that Lake Michigan extended much further south than was supposed and that the map he had seen (doubtless the same map of Mitchell's) placed its southern bend many miles north of its true posi- tion. This information caused consider- able uneasiness, for, if the hunter had stated the truth, the ordinance line would fall below Maumee bay and would cut off from Ohio a large strip of territory which was regarded as exceedingly val- table. The lands along the Maumee river and the strait up to Detroit were very rich and quite well settled and it was important for the new state to con- trol the mouth of the river. The con- vention, therefore, resolved to guard against the depression of the boundary below the mouth of the Maumee, and in adopting the limits prescribed in the en- abling act it added the following pro- viso :-
"If the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan should extend so far south that a line drawn due east from it should not intersect Lake Erie east of the Miami ( Maumee) river of the lakes, then *
* with the assent of Con- gress of the United States, the northern boundary of this state shall be estab- lished by, and extend to a line running from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan to the most northerly cape of the Miami ( Maumee) bay, thence north- east, etc."
With this proviso the constitution was adopted on November 29 and was sub- mitted to congress, which admitted the state but took no action on the proviso ; the congressional committee held that it depended on a fact not ascertained, and that it was not submitted as were other proposals of the convention, and so de-
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clined to consider it. Ohio's protecting cloak of statehood left Wayne county out in the cold, and the people protested warmly ; but the new state as it stood was for Jefferson and there was danger that by adding Wayne county it would stand in the federal column, a thing which Jefferson did not want. General St. Clair indignantly exclaimed that to win a state for Jefferson the people of Wayne county had been "bartered away like sheep in a market." Wayne county was then attached to Indiana Territory and in 1803 a new county bearing the same name was formed, comprising practically all of the present southern peninsula, but with the ordinance line for the south- ern boundary precisely as Ohio did not wish, and a line drawn due north and south through the western extreme of the lake for the western boundary. This placed the newly-established Fort Dear- born, with a large surrounding area, in Wayne county. When Michigan Terri- tory was formed in 1805 the western boundary was run through the middle of the lake, while the southern line was un- changed. The inhabitants of the origi- nal Wayne county soon saw that it was useless to seek union with Ohio in state- hood, so they joined the remainder of the new Wayne county in opposing Ohio's claims to a diagonal line under the proviso.
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