USA > Indiana > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, together with historic notes on the Wabash Valley; gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic sources > Part 15
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CHAPTER XV.
THE POTTAWATOMIES.
WHEN the Jesuits were extending their missions westward of Quebec they found a tribe of Indians, called Ottawas, living upon a river of Canada, to which the name of Ottawa was given. After the dispersion of the Hurons by the Iroquois, in 1649, the Ottawas, to the number of one thousand, joined five hundred of the discom- fited Hurons, and with them retired to the southwestern shore of Lake Superior .* The fugitives were followed by the missionaries, who established among them the Mission of the Holy Ghost, at La Pointe, already mentioned. Shortly after the establishment of the mission the Jesuits made an enumeration of the western Algonquin tribes, in which all are mentioned except the Ojibbeways and Pian- keshaws. The nation which dwelt south of the mission, classified as speaking the pure Algonquin, is uniformly called Ottawas, and the Ojibbeways, by whom they were surrounded, were never once noticed by that name. Hence it is certain that at that early day the Jesuits considered the Ottawas and Ojibbeways as one people. +
In close consanguinity with the Ottawas and Ojibbeways were the Pottawatomies, between whom there was only a slight dialectical difference in language, while the manners and customs prevailing in the three tribes were almost identical .; This view was again re- asserted by Mr. Gallatin : "Although it must be admitted that the Algonquins, the Ojibbeways, the Ottawas and the Pottawatomies speak different dialects, these are so nearly allied that they may be considered rather as dialects of the same, than as distinct languages."§
This conclusion of Mr. Gallatin was arrived at after a scientific and analytical comparison of the languages of the tribes mentioned.
In confirmation of the above statement we have the speeches of three Indian chiefs at Chicago in the month of August, 1821. Dur- ing the progress of the treaty, Keewaygooshkum, a chief of the first authority among the Ottawas, stated that "the Chippewas, the Pot-
* Jesuit Relations for 1666.
t Albert Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, p. 27.
# Jesuit Relations.
§ Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, p. 29.
137
138
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
tawatomies and the Ottawas were originally one nation. We sepa- rated from each other near Michilimackinac. We were related by the ties of blood, language and interest, but in the course of a long time these things have been forgotten," etc.
At the conclusion of this speech, Mich-el, an aged chief of the Chippewas, said : "My Brethren, -I am about to speak a few words. I know you expect it. Be silent, therefore, that the words of an old man may be heard.
"My Brethren, -You have heard the man who has just spoken. We are all descended from the same stock, -the Pottawatomies, the Chippeways and the Ottawas. We consider ourselves as one. Why should we not always act in concert ?"
Metea, the most powerful of the Pottawatomie chieftains, in his speech made this statement :
"Brothers, Chippeways and Ottawas, -we consider ourselves as one people, which you know, as also our father* here, who has trav- eled over our country."
Mr. Schoolcraft, in commenting on the above statements, re- marks : "This testimony of a common origin derives additional weight from the general resemblance of these tribes in person, man- ners, customs and dress, but above all by their having one council- fire and speaking one language. Still there are obvious characteris- tics which will induce an observer, after a general acquaintance, to pronounce the Pottawatomies tall, fierce, haughty; the Ottawas short, thick-set, good-natured, industrious ; the Chippeways warlike, daring, etc. But the general lineaments, or, to borrow a phrase from natural history, the suite features, are identical.+
The first mention that we have of the Pottawatomies is in the Jesuit Relations for the years 1639-40. They are then mentioned as dwelling beyond the River St. Lawrence, and to the north of the great lake of the Hurons. At this period it is very likely that the Pottawatomies had their homes both north of Lake Huron and south of it, in the northern part of the present State of Michigan. Twenty-six or seven years after this date the country of the Potta- watomies is described as being "about the Lake of the Ilimouek."+ They were mentioned as being "a warlike people, hunters and fish- ers. Their country is very good for Indian corn, of which they plant fields, and to which they willingly retire to avoid the famine that is too common in these quarters. They are in the highest de- gree idolaters, attached to ridiculous fables and devoted to polygamy.
* Lewis Cass. + Schoolcraft's Central Mississippi Valley, pp. 357, 360, 368.
# Lake Michigan.
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THE POTTAWATOMIES.
We have seen them here* to the number of three hundred men, all capable of bearing arms. Of all the people that I have associated with in these countries, they are the most docile and the most affectionate toward the French. Their wives and daughters are more reserved than those of other nations. They have a species of civility among them, and make it apparent to strangers, which is very rare among our barbarians."+
In 1670 the Pottawatomies had collected at the islands at the mouth of Green Bay which have taken their name from this tribe. Father Claude Dablon, in a letter concerning the mission of St. Francis Xavier, which was located on Green Bay, in speaking of this tribe, remarks that " the Pouteouatami, the Ousaki, and those of the Forks, also dwell here, but as strangers, the fear of the Iro- quois having driven them from their lands, which are between the Lake of the Hurons and that of the Illinois."#
In 1721, says Charlevoix, "the Poutewatamies possessed only one of the small islands at the mouth of Green Bay, but had two other villages, one on the St. Joseph and the other at the Nar- rows."§
Driven out of the peninsula between lakes Huron and Michigan, the Pottawatomies took up their abode on the Bay de Noquet, and other islands near the entrance of Green Bay. From these islands they advanced southward along the west shore of Lake Michigan. Extracts taken from Hennepin's Narrative of La Salle's Voyage mention the fact that the year previous to La Salle's coming west- ward (1678), he had sent out a party of traders in advance, who had bartered successfully with the Pottawatomies upon the islands named, and who were anxiously waiting for La Salle at the time of his arrival in the Griffin. Hennepin further states that La Salle's party bartered with the Pottawatomies at the villages they passed on the voyage southward.
From this time forward the Pottawatomies steadily moved south- ward. When La Salle reached the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan there were no Pottawatomies in that vicinity. Shortly after this date, however, they had a village on the south bank of this stream, near the present city of Niles, Michigan. `On the northern bank was a village of Miamis. The Mission of St. Joseph was here established and in successful operation prior to 1711, from which fact, with other incidental circumstances, it has been inferred that
* La Pointe.
t Jesuit Relations, 1666-7.
# Jesuit Relations, 1670-71.
§ Detroit.
.
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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
the Pottawatomies, as well as the mission, were on the St. Joseph as early as the year 1700 .*
Father Charlevoix fixes the location of both the mission and the military post as being at the same place beyond a doubt. "It was eight days yesterday since I arrived at this post, where we have a mission, and where there is a commandant with a small garrison. The commandant's house, which is a very sorry one, is called the fort, from its being surrounded by an indifferent palisado, which is pretty near the case in all the rest, except Forts Chambly and Cata- rocony, which are real fortresses. We have here two villages of Indians, one of Miamis and the other of Pottawatomies, both of them mostly Christians ; but as they have been for a long time with- out any pastors, the missionary who has lately been sent them will have no small difficulty in bringing them back to the exercise of their religion." +
The authorities for locating the old mission and fort of St. Joseph near Niles are Charlevoix, Prof. Keating and the Rev. Isaac Mc- Coy. Commenting on the remains of the old villages upon the St. Joseph River at the time Long's expedition passed that way, in 1823, the compiler states that "the prairies, woodland and river were rendered more picturesque by the ruins of Strawberry, Rum and St. Joseph's villages, formerly the residence of the Indians or of the first French settlers. It was curious to trace the difference in the remains of the habitations of the red and white man in the midst of this distant solitude. While the untenanted cabin of the
* Some confusion has arisen from a confounding of the Mission of St. Joseph and Fort St. Joseph with the Fort Miamis. The two were distinct, some miles apart, and erected at different dates. It is plain, from the accounts given by Hennepin, Membre and La Hontan, that Fort Miamis was located on Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the St. Joseph. It is equally clear that the Mission of St. Joseph and Fort St. Joseph were some miles up the St. Joseph River, and a few miles below the "portage of the Kankakee " at South Bend. Father Charlevoix, in his letter of the 16th of August, 1721,- after having in a previous letter referred to his reaching the St. Joseph and going up it toward the fort,-says: "We afterward sailed up twenty leagues before we reached the fort." Vol. 2, p. 94. Again, in a subsequent letter (p. 184): " I de- parted yesterday from the Fort of the River St. Joseph and sailed up that river about six leagues. I went ashore on the right and walked a league and a quarter, first along the water side and afterward across a field in an immense meadow, entirely covered with copses of wood." And in the next paragraph, on the same page, follows his description of the sources of the Kankakee, quoted in this work on page 77. Here, then, we have the position of Fort St. Joseph and the mission of that name and the two villages of the Pottawatomies and the Miamis, on the St. Joseph River, six leagues below South Bend. In Dr. Shea's Catholic Missions, page 423, it is stated that "La Salle, on his way to the Mississippi, had built a temporary fort on the St. Joseph, not far from the portage leading to the The-a-ki-ke"; and Mr. Charles R. Brown, in his Missions, Forts and Trading Posts of the Northwest, p. 14, says that "Fort Miamis, built at the mouth of the St. Joseph's River by La Salle, was afterward called St. Joseph, to distinguish it from (Fort) Miamis, on the Maumee." In this instance neither of these writers follow the text of established authorities.
t Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, pp. 93, 94.
141
ST. JOSEPH.
Indian presented in its neighborhood but the remains of an old cornfield overgrown with weeds, the rude hut of the Frenchman was surrounded with vines, and with the remains of his former garden- ing exertions. The asparagus, the pea vine and the woodbine still grow about it, as though in defiance of the revolutions which have dispersed those who planted them here. The very names of the villages mark the difference between their former tenants. Those of the Indians were designated by the name of the fruit which grew abundantly on the spot or of the object which they coveted most, while the French missionary has placed his village under the patron- age of the tutelar saint in whom he reposed his utmost confidence."*
The asparagus, the pea-vine and the woodbine preserved the identity of the spot against the encroachments of the returning for- ests until 1822, when Isaac McCoy established among the Pottawat- omies the Baptist mission called Carey, out of respect for the Rev. Mr. Carey, a missionary of the same church in Hindostan. "It is said that the Pottawatomies themselves selected this spot for Carey's mission, it being the site of their old village. This must have been very populous, as the remains of corn-hills are very visible at this time, and are said to extend over a thousand acres. The village was finally abandoned about fifty years ago (1773), but there are a few of the oldest of the nation who still recollect the sites of their respective huts. They are said to frequently visit the establishment and to trace with deep feeling a spot which is endeared to them." +
On a cold winter night in 1833 a traveler was ferried over the St. Joseph at the then straggling village of Niles. "Ascending the bank, a beautiful plain with a clump of trees here and there upon its surface opened to his view. The establishment of Carey's mission, a long, low, white building, could be distinguished afar off faintly in the moonlight, while several winter lodges of the Pottawatomies were plainly visible over the plain." #
Concerning the Pottawatomie village near Detroit, and also some of the customs peculiar to the tribe, we have the following account. It was written in 1718 : §
"The fort of Detroit is south of the river. The village of the Pottawatomies adjoins the fort ; they lodge partly under Apaquois, |
* Long's Second Expedition, vol. 1, pp. 147, 148.
+ Long's Second Expedition, vol. 1, p. 153, McCoy's History of Baptist Indian Mis- sions.
* Hoffman's Winter in the West, vol. 1, p. 225.
§ Memoir on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Mississippi. Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 887.
| Apaquois, matting made of flags or rushes; from apee, a leaf, and wigquoiam, a hut. They cover their huts with mats made of rushes platted. Carver's Travels.
142
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
which are made of mat-grass. The women do all the work. The men belonging to that nation are well clothed, like our domiciliated Indians at Montreal. Their entire occupation is hunting and dress ; they make use of a great deal of vermilion, and in winter wear buffalo robes richly painted, and in summer either blue or red cloth. They play a good deal at La Crosse in summer, twenty or more on each side. Their bat is a sort of a little racket, and the ball with which they play is made of very heavy wood, somewhat larger than the balls used at tennis. When playing they are entirely naked, except a breech cloth and moccasins on their feet. Their body is completely painted with all sorts of colors. Some, with white clay, trace white lace on their bodies, as if on all the seams of a coat, and at a distance it would be apt to be taken for silver lace. They play very deep and often. The bets sometimes amount to more than eight hundred livres. They set up two poles, and commence the game from the center; one party propels the ball from one side and the others from the opposite, and whichever reaches the goal wins. This is fine recreation and worth seeing. They often play village against village, the Poux* against the Ottawas or Hurons, and lay heavy stakes. Sometimes Frenchmen join in the game with them. The women cultivate Indian corn, beans, peas, squashes and melons, which come up very fine. The women and girls dance at night ; adorn themselves considerably, grease their hair, put on a white shift, paint their cheeks with vermilion, and wear whatever wampum they possess, and are very tidy in their way. They dance to the sound of the drum and sisiquoi, which is a sort of gourd con- taining some grains of shot. Four or five young men sing and beat time with the drum and sisiquoi, and the women keep time and do not lose a step. It is very entertaining, and lasts almost the entire night. The old men often dance the Medicine.+ They resemble a set of demons ; and all this takes place during the night. The young men often dance in a circle and strike posts. It is then they recount their achievements and dance, at the same time, the war dance ; and whenever they act thus they are highly ornamented. It is altogether very curious. They often perform these things for tobacco. When they go hunting, which is every fall, they carry their apaquois with them, to hut under at night. Everybody follows,
* The Pottawatomies were sometimes known by the contraction Poux. La Hontan uses this name, and erroneously confounds them with the Puans or Winnebagoes. In giving the coat-of-arms of the Pottawatomies, representing a dog crouched in the grass, he says: "They were called Puants." Vol. 2, p. 84. + Medicine dance.
143
ORIGIN OF POTTAWATOMIE.
men, women and children. They winter in the forest and return in the spring."
The Pottawatomies swarmed from their prolific hives about the islands of Mackinaw, and spread themselves over portions of Wis- consin, and eastward to their ancient homes in Michigan. At a later day they extended themselves upon the territory of the ancient Illinois, covering a large portion of the state. From the St. Joseph River and Detroit their bands moved southward over that part of Indiana north and west of the Wabash, and thence down that stream. They were a populous horde of hardy children of the forests, of great stamina, and their constitutions were hardened by the rigorous climate of the northern lakes.
Among the old French writers the orthography of the word Pottawatomies varied to suit the taste of the writer. We give some of the forms : Poutouatimi, * Pouteotatamis, + Poutouatamies, ¿ Pou- tewatamis,§ Pautawattamies, Puttewatamies, Pottowottamies and Pottawattamies. " The tribe was divided into four clans, the Golden Carp, the Frog, the Crab, and the Tortoise." The nation was not like the Illinois and Miamis, divided into separate tribes, but the different bands would separate or unite according to the scarcity or abundance of game.
The word Pottawatomie signifies, in their own language, we are making a fire, for the origin of which they have the following tradi- tion : " It is said that a Miami, having wandered out from his cabin, met three Indians whose language was unintelligible to him; by signs and motions he invited them to follow him to his cabin, where they were hospitably entertained, and where they remained until after dark. During the night two of the strange Indians stole from the hut, while their comrade and host were asleep; they took a few embers from the cabin, and, placing these near the door of the hut, they made a fire, which, being afterward seen by the Miami and remaining guest, was understood to imply a council fire in token of peace between the two nations. From this circumstance the Miami called them in his language Wa-ho-na-ha, or the fire-makers, which, being translated into the language of the three guests, produced the term by which their nation has ever since been distinguished."
After this the Miamis termed the Pottawatomies their younger brothers ; but afterward, in a council, this was changed, from the
* Jesuit Relations. § Charlevoix. + Father Membre. | Paris Documents.
#Joutel's Journal.
T Enumeration of the Indian tribes, the Warriors and Armorial Bearings of each Nation, made in 1736. Published in Documentary History of New York.
144
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
circumstance that they resided farther to the west; "as those nations which reside to the west of others are deemed more ancient."*
The Pottawatomies were unswerving in their adherence to the French, when the latter had possession of the boundless Northwest. In 1712, when a large force of Mascoutins and Foxes besieged De- troit, they were conspicuous for their fidelity. They rallied the other tribes to the assistance of the French, and notified the besieged garrison to hold out against their enemies until their arrival. Mak- is-abie, the war chief of the Pottawatomies, sent word through Mr. de Vincennes, "just arrived from the Miami country, that he would soon be at Detroit with six hundred of his warriors to aid the French and eat those miserable nations who had troubled all the country." The commandant, M. du Buisson, was gratified when he ascended a bastion, and looking toward the forest saw the army of the nations issuing from it ; the Pottawatomies, the Illinois, the Missouris, the Ottawas, the Sacs and the Menominees were there, armed and painted in all the glory of war. Detroit never saw such a collection. "My Father," says the chief to the commandant, "I speak to you on the part of all the nations, your children who are before you. What you did last year in drawing their flesh from the fire, which the Ou- tagamies (Foxes) were about to roast and eat, demands we should bring you our bodies to make you the master of them. We do not fear death, whenever it is necessary to die for you. We have only to request that you pray the father of all nations to have pity on our women and our children, in case we lose our lives for you. We beg you throw a blade of grass upon our bones to protect them from the flies. You see, my father, that we have left our villages, our women and children to hasten to join you. Have pity on ns ; give us some- thing to eat and a little tobacco to smoke. We have come a long ways and are destitute of everything. Give us powder and balls to fight with you."
Makisabie, the Pottawatomie, said to the Foxes and Mascoutines: "Wicked nations that you are, you hope to frighten us by all the red color which you exhibit in your village. Learn that if the earth is covered with blood, it will be with yours. You talk to us of the English, they are the cause of your destruction, because you have listened to their bad council. . . . The English, who are cowards, only defend themselves by killing men by that wicked strong drink, which has caused so many men to die after drinking it. Thus we shall see what will happen to you for listening to them." +
* Long's Expedition to the Sources of the St. Peter's River, vol. 1, pp. 91, 92, 93. t The extracts we have quoted are taken from the official report of Du Buisson,
145
WARS AGAINST THE WHITES.
The Pottawatomies sustained their alliance with the French con- tinuously to the time of the overthrow of their power in the northi- west. They then aided their kinsman, Pontiac, in his attempt to recover the same territory from the British. They fought on the side of the British against the Americans throughout the war of the revolution, and their war parties made destructive and frequent raids upon the line of pioneer settlements in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. In the war of 1812 they were again ranged on the side of the British, with their bloody hands lifted alike against the men, women and children of "the States."
In the programme of Pontiac's war the capture of Post St. Joseph, on the St. Joseph's river of Lake Michigan, was assigned to the Pottawatomies, which was effected as will be hereafter narrated.
It was also the Pottawatomies who perpetrated the massacre at Chicago on the 15th day of August, 1812. Bands of this tribe, from their villages on the St. Joseph, the Kankakee and the Illinois rivers, whose numbers were augmented by the appearance of Metea with his warriors, from their village westward of Fort Wayne, fell upon the forces of Captain Heald, and the defenseless women and chil- dren retreating with him after the surrender of Fort Dearborn, and murdered or made prisoners of them all. Metea was a conspicuous leader in this horrible affair .*
Robert Dixon, the British trader sent out among the Indians during the war of 1812 to raise recruits for Proctor and Tecumseh, gathered in the neighborhood of Chicago, which after the massacre was his place of general rendezvous, nearly one thousand warriors of as wild and cruel savages as ever disgraced the human race. They were the most worthless and abandoned desperadoes whom Dixon had been enabled to collect from among all the tribes he had visited. These accomplices of the British were to be let loose upon the re- mote settlements under the leadership of the Pottawatomie chief, Mai-pock, or Mai-po, a monster in human form, who distinguished himself with a girdle sewed full of human scalps, which he wore around his waist, and strings of bear's claws and bills of owls and hawks around his ankles, worn as trophics of his power in arms and as a terror to his enemies. +
relating to the siege of Detroit. The manuscript copy of it was obtained from the archives at Paris, by Gen. Cass, when minister to France, and is published at length in volume III of the History of Wisconsin, compiled by the direction of the legislature of that state by William R. Smith, President of the State Historical Society ; a work of very great value, not only to the State of Wisconsin but to the entire Northwest, for the amount of reliable historical information it contains.
* Hall and McKenney's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, vol. 2, pp. 59, 60.
t McAfee's History of the Late War, pp. 297, 298. 10
146
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
Their manners, like their dialect, were rough and barbarous as compared with other Algonquin tribes. They were not the civil, modest people, an exceptional and christianized band of whom the Jesuits before quoted drew a flattering description.
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