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 17
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* Extract from M. Du Boisson's official report to the Marquis De Vaudreuil, gov- ernor-general of New France, of the siege of Detroit, dated June 15, 1712. This val- uable paper is published entire 'in vol. 3 of Wm. R. Smith's History of Wisconsin, a work that contains many important documents not otherwise accessible to the gen- eral public. Indeed, the publications of the Historical Society of Wisconsin, of which Judge Smith's two volumes are the beginning, are the repository of a fund of infor- mation of great utility, not only to the people of that state, but to the entire North- west.
+ Rock River-Assin-Sepe-was also called Kickapoo River, and so laid down on a map of La Salle's discoveries.
# Narrative Journal, vol. 1, p. 287.
§ Vol. 2, p. 199.
"The Fox River of the Illinois is called by the Indians Pish-ta-ko. It is the same mentioned by Charlevoix under the name of Pisticoui, and which flows as he,
156
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
Prior to 1718 the Mascoutins and Kickapoos had villages upon the banks of Rock River, Illinois. "Both these tribes together do not amount to two hundred men. They are a clever people and brave warriors. Their language and manners strongly resemble those of the Foxes. They are the same stock. They catch deer by chasing them, and even at this day make considerable use of bows and arrows."* On a French map, issued in 1712, a village of Mas- contins is located near the forks of the north and south branches of Chicago River.
From references given, it is apparent that this people, like the Miamis and Pottawatomies, were progressing south and eastward. This movement was probably on account of the fierce Sioux, whose encroaching wars from the northwest were pressing them in this direction. Even before this date the Foxes, with Mascoutins and Kickapoos, were meditating a migration to the Wabash as a place of security from the Sioux. This threatened exodus alarmed the French, who feared that the migrating tribes would be in a position on the Wabash to effect a junction with the Iroquois and English, which would be exceedingly detrimental to the French interests in the northwest. From an official document relative to the "occurrences in Canada, sent from Quebec to France in 1695, the Department at Paris is informed that the Sioux, who have mustered some two or three thousand warriors for the purpose, would come in large num- bers to seize their village. This has caused the outagamies to quit their country and disperse themselves for a season, and afterward return and save their harvest. They are then to retire toward the river Wabash to form a settlement, so much the more permanent, as they will be removed from the incursions of the Sioux, and in a position to effect a junction easily with the Iroquois and the English without the French being able to prevent it. Should this project be realized, it is very apparent that the Mascoutins and Kickapoos will be of the party, and that the three tribes, forming a new village of fourteen or fifteen hundred men, would experience no difficulty in considerably increasing it by attracting other nations thither, which would be of most pernicious consequence."+ That the Mascoutins, at least, did go soon after this date toward the lower Wabash is con-
says, through the country of the Mascoutins." Long's Second Expedition, vol. 1, p. 176. The Algonquin word Pish-tah-te-koosh, according to Edwin James' vocabulary, means an antelope. The Pottawatomies, from whom Major Long's party obtained the word Pish-ta-ko, may have used it to designate the same animal, judging from the similarity of the two words.
* Memoir prepared in 1718 on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Missis- sippi: Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 889.
+ Paris Documents, vol. 9, p. 619.
157
OF THE NAME MASCOUTINS.
clusively shown by the fact of their presence about Juchereau's trading post, which was erected near the mouth of the Ohio in the year 1700.
It is doubtful if either the Foxes or the Kickapoos followed the Mascoutins to the Wabash country, and it is evident that the Mas- contins who survived the epidemic that broke out among them at Juchereau's post on the Ohio soon returned to the north. The French effected a conciliation with the Sioux, and for a number of years subsequent to 1705 we find the Mascoutins back again among the Foxes and Kickapoos upon their old hunting grounds in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
The Kickapoos entered the plot of the Mascoutins to capture the post of Detroit in 1712, and the latter had repaired to the neighbor- hood of Detroit, and were awaiting the arrival of the Kickapoos to execute their purposes, when they were attacked by the confedera- tion of Indians who were friendly toward the French and had hast- ened to the relief of the garrison."
The Mascoutins were called "Machkoutench,"+ "Machkouteng," " Maskouteins " and "Masquitens," by French writers. The Eng- lish called them "Masquattimes,"# "Musquitons," § "Mascou- tins,"| and "Musquitos," a corruption used by the American colo- nial traders, and "Meadows," the English synonym for the French word "prairie.""
The derivation of the name has been a subject of discussion. Father Marquette, with some others, following the example of the Hurons, rendered it "fire-nation," while Fathers Allouez and Char- levoix, with recent American authors, claim that the word signifies a prairie, or "a land bare of trees," such as that which this people inhabit .** The name is doubtless derived from mus-kor-tence,tt or mus-ko-tia, a prairie, a derivative from skoutay or scote, the word for fire. ## "The Mascos or Mascoutins were, by the French traders of a more recent day, called gens des prairies, and lived and hunted on the great prairies between the Wabash and Illinois Rivers."§§ That
* History of New France, vol. 5, p. 257.
+ Fathers Claude Allouez and Marquette.
# George Croghan's Narrative Journal.
$ Minutes of the treaty at Greenville in 1795.
Samuel R. Brown's Western Gazetteer.
T It was some years after the conquest of the northwest from the French before the name "prairie " became naturalized, as it were, into the English language.
** Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 1, p. 287. Father Allouez, in the Jesuit Re- lations between the years 1670 and 1671.
++ Note of Callaghan: Paris Documents, vol. 10.
## Tanner, Gallatin, Mackenzie and Johnson's vocabularies of Algonquin words.
§§ Manuscript account of this and other tribes, by Major Forsyth, quoted by Drake, in his Life of Black Hawk.
158
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
the word Muskotia is synonymous with, and has the same meaning as, the word prairie, is further confirmed by the fact that the Indians prefixed it to the names of those animals and plants found exclu- sively on the prairies .*
Were the Kickapoos and Mascontins separate tribes, or were they one and the same? These queries have elicited the attention of scholars well versed in the history of the North American Indians, among whom might be named Schoolcraft, Gallatin and Shea. Sufficient references have been given in this chapter to show that, by the French, the Kickapoos and Mascoutins were regarded as dis- tinct tribes. If necessary, additional extracts to the same purport could be produced from numerous French documents down to the close of the French colonial war, in 1763, all bearing uniform testi- mony upon this point.
The theory has been advanced that the Mascontins and Kickapoos were bands of one tribe, first known to the French by the former name, and subsequently to the English by the latter, under which name alone they figure in our later annals.+ This supposition is at variance with English and American authorities. It was a war party of Kickapoos and Mascoutins, from their contiguous villages near Fort Ouitanon, on the Wabash, who captured George Croghan, the English plenipotentiary, below the mouth of that river in 1765.# Sir William Johnson, the English colonial agent on Indian affairs, in the classified list of Indians within his department, prepared in 1763, enumerates both the Kickapoos and Mascoutins, locating them "in the neighborhood of the fort at Wawiaghta, and about the Wabash River."§ Captain Imlay, "commissioner for laying out lands in the back settlements,"-as the territory west of the Alleghanies was terined at that period,-in his list of westward Indians, classifies the Kickapoos (under the name of Vermilions) and the Muscatines, lo- cating these two tribes between the Wabash and Illinois Rivers. This was in 1792.| The distinction between these two tribes was main- tained still later, and down to a period subsequent to the year 1816. At that time the Mascoutins were residing on the west bank of the Wabash, between Vincennes and the Tippecanoe River, while their old neighbors, the Kickapoos, were living a short distance above
* For example, mus-ko-tia-chit-ta-mo, prairie squirrel; mus-ko-ti-pe-neeg, prairie potatoes. Edwin James' Catalogue of Plants and Animals found in the country of the Ojibbeways. See further references on page 35.
+ The Indian Tribes of Wisconsin: Historical Collections of that State, vol. 3, p. 130. + Vide his Narrative Journal.
§ Colonial History of New York, vol. 7: London Documents, p. 583. Imlay's America, third edtion, London, 1797, p. 290.
159
KICKAPOOS AND MASCOUTINS ONE PEOPLE.
them in several large villages. At this date the Kickapoos could raise four hundred warriors .* From the authors cited, - and other references to the same effect would be produced but for want of space, -it is evident that the English and the Americans, equally with the French, regarded the Kickapoos and Mascoutins as separate bands or subdivisions of a tribe.
While this was so, the language, manners and customs of the two tribes were not only similar, but the two tribes were almost invaria- bly found occupying continguous villages, and hunting in company with each other over the same country. "The Kickapoos are neigh- bors of the Mascoutins, and it seems that these two tribes have always been united in interests."+ There is no instance recorded where they were ever arrayed against each other, nor of a time when they took opposite sides in any alliance with other tribes. Another noticeable fact is that, with but one exception, the Mascoutins were never known as such in any treaty with the United States, while the Kickapoos were parties to many. We have seen that the former were occupying the Wabash country in common with the latter as far back, at least, as 1765, when they captured Croghan, until 1816; and in all of the treaties for the extinguishment of the title of the several Indian tribes bordering on the Wabash and its tributaries, the Mascoutins are nowhere alluded to. while the Kickapoos are prominent parties to many treaties at which extensive tracts of coun- try were ceded. No man living, in his time, was better informed than Gen. Harrison,-who conducted these several treaties on behalf of the United States, -of the relations and distinctions, however trifling, that may have existed among the numerous Indian tribes with whom, in a long course of official capacity, he came in contact, either with the pen, around the friendly council-fire, or with the up- lifted sword upon the field of hostile encounter. In all his volumi- nous correspondence during the years when the northwest was com- mitted to his charge the General makes no mention of the Mascoutins
* Western Gazetteer, by Samuel R. Brown, p. 71. This work of Mr. Brown's is exceedingly valuable for the amount of reliable information it affords not obtainable from any other source. He was with Gen. Harrison in the campaigns of the war of 1812. In the preface to his Gazetteer he says: "Business and curiosity have made the writer acquainted with a large portion of the western country never before described. Where personal knowledge was wanting I have availed myself of the correspondence of many of the most intelligent gentlemen in the west." At the time Mr.Brown was compil- ing material for his Gazetteer, "the Harrison Purchase was being run out into townships and sections," and Mr. Brown came in contact with the surveyors doing the work, and derived much information from them. The book is carefully prepared, covering a topographical description of the country embraced, its towns, rivers, counties, popula- tion, Indian tribes, etc., and altogether is one of the most authentic and useful books relative to "the west," which was attracting the attention of emigrants at the time of its publication.
t Charlevoix' History of New France.
.
160
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
by that name, but often refers to "the Kickapoos of the prairies," to distinguish them from other bands of the same tribe who occupied villages in the timbered portions of the Wabash and its tributaries. *
At a subsequent treaty of peace and friendship, concluded on the 27th of September, 1815, between Governor Ninian Edwards, of Illinois Territory, and the chiefs, warriors, etc., of the Kickapoo nation, Wash-e-own, who at the treaty of Vincennes signed as a Mas- coutin, was a party to it, and in this instance signed as a Kickapoo. No Mascoutins by that name appear in the record of the treaty. +
The preceding facts, negative and direct, admit of the following inferences : that there were two subdivisions of the same nation, known first to the French, then to the English, and more recently to the Americans, the one under the name of Kickapoos and the other as Mascoutines; that they spoke the same language and ob- served the same customs; that they were living near each other, and always had a community of interest in their wars, alliances and migrations ; and that since the United States have held dominion over the territory of the northwest the Kickapoos and Mascoutines have considered themselves as one and the same people, whose tri- bal relations were so nearly identical that, in all official transactions with the federal government, they were recognized only as Kicka- poos. And is it not apparent, after all, that there was only a nom- inal distinction between these two tribes, or, rather, families of the same tribe? Were not the Mascoutins bands of the Kickapoos who dwelt exclusively on the prairies ? It seems, from authorities cited, that this question admits of but one answer.
The destruction that followed the attempt of the Mascoutins to capture Detroit was, perhaps, one of the most remorseless in which white men took a part of which we have an account in the annals of Indian warfare. As before stated, the Muscotins in 1712 laid siege to the Fort, hearing of which the Pottawatomies, with other tribes friendly to the French, collected in a large force for their assistance.
* The only treaty which the Mascoutins, as such, were parties to was the one concluded at Vincennes on the 27th of September, 1792, between the several Wabash tribes and Gen. Rufus Putnam, on behalf of the United States. Two Mascoutins signed this treaty, viz, Waush-eown and At-schat-schaw. Three Kickapoo chiefs also signed the parchment, viz, Me-an-ach-kah, Ma-en-a-pah and Mash-a-ras-a, the Black Elk, and, what is singular, this last person, although a Kickapoo, signs himself to the treaty as "The Chief of The Meadows." This treaty was only one of peace and friend- ship. The text of the treaty is found in the American State Papers, Indian Affairs, . vol. 1, p. 388; in Judge Dillon's History of Indiana, edition of 1859, pp. 293, 294, and in the Western Annals, Pittsburg edition, pp. 605, 606. The names of the tribes and of the individual chiefs who participated in it are not given in any of the works cited. They only appear in the copy on file at the War Department and in the original manu- script journal of Gen. Putnam. The author is indebted to Dr. Israel W. Andrews, president of Marietta College, for transcripts from Gen. Putnam's journal.
t Treaties with the Indian Tribes, Washington edition, p. 172.
161
IDENTITY OF KICKAPOOS WITH THE MASCOUTINS.
The Muscotines, after protracted efforts, abandoned the position in which they were attacked, and fled, closely pursued, to an intrenched position on Presque Isle, opposite Hog Island, near Lake St. Clair, some distance above the fort. Here they held out for four days against the combined French and Indian forces. Their women and children were actually starving, numbers dying from hunger every day. They sent messengers to the French officer, begging for quar- ter, offering to surrender at discretion, only craving that their re- maining women and children and themselves might be spared the horror of a general massacre. The Indian allies of the French would submit to no such terms. "At the end of the fourth day, after fighting with much courage," says the French commander, "and not being able to resist further, the Muscotins surrendered at discretion to our people, who gave them no quarter. Our Indians lost sixty men, killed and wounded. The enemy lost a thousand souls -men, women and children. All our allies returned to our fort with their slaves (meaning the captives), and their amusement was to shoot four or five of them every day. The Hurons did not spare a single one of theirs."*
We find no instance in which the Kickapoos or Muscotins assisted either the French or the English in any of the intrigues or wars for the control of the fur trade, or the acquisition of disputed territory in the northwest. At the close of Pontiac's conspiracy, the Kicka- poos, whose temporary lodges were pitched on the prairie near Fort Wayne, notified Captain Morris, the English ambassador, on his way from Detroit to Fort Chartes, to take possession of "the coun- try of the Illinois"; that if the Miamis did not put him to death, they themselves would do so, should he attempt to pass their camp. t
Still later, on the 8th of June, 1765, as George Croghan, likewise an English ambassador, on his route by the Ohio River to Fort Chartes, was attacked at daybreak, at the mouth of the Wabash, by a party of eighty Kickapoo and Mascoutin warriors, who had set out from Fort Ouiatanon to intercept his passage, and killed two of his men and three Indians, and wounded Croghan himself, and all the rest of his party except two white men and one Indian. They then made all of them prisoners, and plundered them of everything they had .¿
* Official Report of M. Du Boisson on the Siege of Detroit.
+ Parkman's History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, 3d single volume edition, p. 474.
# The narrative, Journal of Col. George Croghan, "who was sent, at the peace of 1763, etc., to explore the country adjacent to the Ohio River, and to conciliate the Indian nations who had hitherto acted with the French." [Reprinted] from Feather- stonhaugh Am. Monthly Journal of Geology, Dec. 1831. Pamphlet, p. 17.
11
162
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
Having thrown such obstacles as were within their power against the French and English, the Kickapoos were ready to offer the same treatment to the Americans ; and, when Col. Rogers Clark was at Kaskaskia, in 1778, negotiating peace treaties with the west- ward Indians, his enemies found a party of young Kickapoos the willing instruments to undertake, for a reward promised, to kill him.
As a military people, the Kickapoos were inferior to the Miamis, Delawares and Shawnees in movements requiring large bodies of men, but they were preeminent in predatory warfare. Parties con- sisting of from five to twenty persons were the usual number com- prising their war parties. These small forces would push out hun- dreds of miles from their villages, and swoop down upon a feeble settlement, or an isolated pioncer cabin, and burn the property, kill the cattle, steal the horses, capture the women and children, and be off again before an alarm could be given of their approach. From such incursions of the Kickapoos the people of Kentucky suffered severely .*
A small war party of these Indians hovered upon the skirts of Gen. Harmer's army when he was conducting the campaign against the upper Wabash tribes, in 1790. They cut out a squad of ten regular soldiers of Gen. Harmer by decoying them into an ambuscade. Jackson Johonnot, the orderly sergeant in command of the regulars, gave an interesting account of their capture and the killing of his companions, after they were subjected to the severest hunger and fatigue on the march, and the running of the gauntlet on reaching the Indian villages. +
The Kickapoos were noted for their fondness of horses and their skill and daring in stealing them. They were so addicted to this practice that Joseph Brant, having been sent westward to the Maumee River in 1788, in the interest of the United States, to bring about a reconciliation with the several tribes inhabiting the Maumee and Wabash, wrote back that, in his opinion, "the Kickapoos, with the Shawnees and Miamis, were so much addicted to horse stealing that it would be difficult to break them of it, and as that kind of business was their best harvest, they would, of course, declare for war and decline giving up any of their country."#
* One of the reasons urged to induce the building of a town at the falls of the Ohio was that it would afford a means of strength against, and be an object of terror to, "our savage enemies, the Kickapoo Indians." Letter of Col. Williams, January 3, 1776, from Boonsborough, to the proprietors of the grant, found in Sketches of the West, by James Hall.
+ Sketches of Western Adventure, by M'Lung, contains a summarized account, taken from Johonnot's original narrative, published at Keene, New Hampshire, 1816. # Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. 2, p. 278.
163
KICKAPOOS DESTROY THE ILLINOIS.
Between the years 1786 and 1796, the Kickapoo war parties, from their villages on the Wabash and Vermilion Rivers, kept the settle- ments in the vicinity of Kaskaskia in a state of continual alarm. Within the period named they killed and captured a number of men, women and children in that part of Illinois. Among their notable captures was that of William Biggs, whom they took across the prairies to their village on the west bank of the Wabash, above Attica, Indiana .*
Subsequent to the close of the Pontiac war, the Kickapoos, as- sisted by the Pottawatomies, almost annihilated the Kaskaskias at a place since called Battle Ground Creek, on the road leading from Kaskaskia to Shawneetown, and about twenty-five miles from the former place.+ The Kaskaskias were shut up in the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, and the Kickapoos became the recognized proprietors of a large portion of the territory of the Kaskaskias on the west, and the hunting grounds of the Piankeshaw-Miamis on the east, of the dividing ridge between the Illinois and Wabash Rivers. The principal Kickapoo towns were on the left bank of the Illinois, near Peoria, and on the Vermilion, of the Wabash, and at several places on the west bank of the latter stream. ;
The Kickapoos of the prairie had villages west of Charleston, Illinois, about the head-waters of the Kaskaskia and in many of the groves scattered over the prairies between the Illinois and the Wa- bash and south of the Kankakee, notable among which were their towns at Elkhart Grove, on the Mackinaw, twelve miles north of Bloomington, and at Oliver's Grove, in Livingston county, Illinois.
These people were much attached to the country along the Ver- milion River, and Gen. Harrison had great trouble in gaining their consent to cede it away. The Kickapoos valued it highly as a desirable home, and because of the minerals it was supposed to contain. In a letter, dated December 10, 1809, addressed to the
* Biggs was a tall and handsome man. He had been one of Col. Clark's soldiers, and had settled near Bellefountaine. He was well versed in the Indians' ways and their language. The Kickapoos took a great fancy to him. They adopted him into their tribe, put him through a ridiculous ceremony which transformed him into a genuine Kickapoo, after which he was offered a handsome daughter of a Kickapoo brave for a wife. He declined all these flattering temptations, however, purchased his freedom through the agency of a Spanish trader at the Kickapoo village, and returned home to his family, going down the Wabash and Ohio and up the Mississippi in a canoe. His- torical Sketch of the Early Settlements in Illinois, etc., by John M. Peck, read before the Illinois State Lyceum, August 16, 1832. In 1826, shortly before his death, Mr. Biggs published a narrative of his experience " while he was a prisoner with the Kick- apoo Indians." It was published in pamphlet form, with poor type, and on very com- mon paper, and contains twenty-three pages.
+ J. M. Peck's Historical Address.
# Reynolds' Pioneer History of Illinois, J. M. Peck's Address, and Gen. Harrison's Memoirs.
164
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
Secretary of War, by Gen. Harrison, the latter, - referring to the treaty at Fort Wayne in connection with his efforts at that treaty to induce the Kickapoos to release their title to the tract of country bounded on the east by the Wabash, on the south by the northern line of the so-called Harrison Purchase, extending from opposite the month of Raceoon Creek, northwest fifteen miles; thence to a point on the Vermilion River, twenty-five miles in a direct line from its mouth ; thence down the latter stream to its confluence, - says "he was extremely anxious that the extinguishment of title should extend as high up as the Vermilion River. This small tract [of about twenty miles square] is one of the most beautiful that can be con- ceived, and is, moreover, believed to contain a very rich copper mine. The Indians were so extremely jealous of any search being made for this mine that the traders were always cautioned not to approach the hills which were supposed to contain it."*
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