USA > Indiana > Knox County > Vincennes > History of Old Vincennes and Knox County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 13
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"Such was the condition of affairs at Detroit on the 8th of May, 1763, when Pontiac proposed to hold a council with Major Gladwyn, saying to that officer that 'the Indians desired to take their new father, the king of England, by the hand.' " Gladwyn having assented, it was agreed that the council should be held on the following day. "Pontiac's object in mak- ing this apparently friendly overture," says Dillon, "was to gain admit- tance into the fort at the head of a number of warriors who had been armed with rifles which had been made so short that they could be con- cealed under the blankets of those who carried them. At a peculiar signal, which was to be given by the chief, these Indians were to massacre all the officers in the fort, and then open the gates to admit the other Indians, who were to rush in and complete the destruction of the garrison." But the warning of an Indian woman, whom Major Gladwyn had employed to make for him a pair of elk-skin slippers, balked the red skins in their game. +"Pontiac and his warriors, having repaired to the fort, were ad- mitted without hesitation and were conducted to the place assigned for the meeting, where Gladwyn and his staff were prepared to meet them. Per- ceiving at the gate that there was unusual activity among the troops, and noticing that the garrison was under arms, the guards doubled, and the
* Dillion, History of Indiana, pp. 83, 84.
+ Dillon.
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officers armed with swords and pistols, Pontiac inquired of the British commander what was the cause of this unusual appearance. He was answered that it was proper to keep the young men to their duty, lest they should become idle and ignorant. The business of the council then com- menced, and Pontiac proceeded to address Mayor Gladwyn. His speech was bold and menacing, and his manner and gesticulations vehement, and they became more so as he approached the critical moment. When he was on the point of making the preconcerted signal, the drums at the door of the council-house suddenly rolled the charge, the guards levelled their pieces, and the British officers drew their swords from their scabbords. Pontiac was a brave man ; but this unexpected and decisive proof that his plot was discovered, disconcerted him, and he failed to give his party the signal of attack. Major Gladwyn immediately approached the chief, and drawing aside his blanket, discovered the shortened rifle; and then, after stating his knowlede of the plan, and reproaching him for his treachery, ordered him from the fort."
Much crest-fallen at the failure of his murderous plan, Pontiac and his braves immediately withdrew from the fort, and, upon gaining the outside, opened fire upon the garrison. They subsequently visited a near-by cabin where lived an English woman and her two sons, whom they murdered ; and, afterwards repairing to Hog Island, where a discharged sargeant resided with his family, massacred him and all members of the household except one. For several days succeeding these occurrences the Indians made several attempts to carry the fort by storm. While the method of at- tack at close range was abandoned at the end of the fifth day, the red skins nevertheless maintained the siege through the months of May, June, July and August, compelling the British garrison to subsist during the major portion of the time on half rations. Fort Pitt during this same period was besieged by the warriors from the Shawnee and Delaware tribes, prin- cipally, aided hy a score of red warriors from other confederations, while the other followers of Pontiac, from the northern lakes to the Mississippi, were making war on English soldiers and colonists, on land and water. But the support that Pontiac had expected to receive from the French was not forthcoming, which had a tendency to discourage his followers as well as himself. The British authorities were placing their best fighters in the field, and increasing the number of their troops, in a determined effort to subdue the Indians, among whom the Shawnees, Delawares, Wy- andots, Ottawas, Chippewas and other Indian tribes were the most for- midable fighters. The spectacle of General Bradstreet at the head of three thousand men, who came into the field in 1764 with orders to annihilate the savages along the borders of lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan, had a salutary effect on the hostile Indians, for it was while the general and his forces were en route from Niagara to Detroit that he was accosted by quite a number of chiefs, representing nearly all of the tribes of the northwest- ern country, who expressed a strong desire to sign treaties of peace,
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which were promptly executed and concluded immediately upon Brad- street's arrival at Detroit. Pontiac, however, would not consent to become a party to any of these pacific negotiations. Disappointed in not receiv- ing the proffered aid from the French and brought to a full realization of the superiority of British arms over Indian, and humiliated by the treachery of his own people, he withdrew from the scenes that witnessed the con- ception and failure of his grand conspiracy, to take up his abode in the Illinois country, where, in 1767, he was felled by the hand of an assassin .*
It was not until October, 1765, that Fort Chartres passed into British hands and the Illinois country came under British control.t After Major Loftus and Captain Pittman had vainly attempted to reach the fort from New Orleans, and Capt. Morris had been baffled in an effort to gain the same point by the Maumee, Lieutenant Fraser was permitted to pass down the Ohio uninterrupted, on a mission of conciliation, but on reaching the fort, and remaining for a very brief season, was content to escape with his life down the Mississippi, by effecting a disguise. Captain Croghan, who followed Fraser, a month or two later, down the Ohio, had smooth sailing until he struck the Wabash country, where he was captured by a band of Kickapoos and carried a prisoner to Quiatenon. The Weas, however, treated him with consideration and allowed him much freedom. Several days after his capture Maisonville came to Weatown, bearing a message from St. Ange, in which the latter invited Croghan to come to Fort Char- tres. This message, together with assurances from Maisonville, led to Croghan's position being changed from a captive to a guest. He was al- lowed to depart the next day down the Wabash, when he met Pontiac, with a big band of warriors, headed for Quiatenon. After assuring the great chief that the English cession of French posts did not mean the sale of the Indians' lands, Pontiac, (having already been apprised by his lieutenants at New Orleans that the French would not aid the Indians, in a fight against the English) pretended to become fully reconciled to the exchange
* A tradition that has come all the way down from generation to generation was often told by the Indians as follows: The great chief, Pontiac, in destroying bands of Indians opposing his confederation, captured mostly women and children who were sold by his agents to the resident French at the different posts, receiving in exchange guns, powder, lead, flints, tomahawks and blankets. He was killed by an assassin in the woods where East St. Louis now stands, because several years before one of his bands of warriors had captured the women and children of a hunting party of Illinois Indians while they were drying meats and fish on the shores of Lake Michigan, and Pontiac ordered all of them sold into slavery except a beautiful woman who was the wife of the chief of the hunting party, whom he took for his wife. While making a visit to St. Ange, at the village of St. Louis, hunted up some of her kindred and assisted them in murdering Pontiac. The hold this great chief had on the people of his confederation was so firm that when they learned of his murder they brought on a war of extermination and before it was over the Illinois Indians were nearly all killed. The beautiful woman who caused his death was re- captured and burned at the stake. Cochrum, A Pioncer History of Indiana, p. 23. + Dunn, Indiana, American Commonwealth Series, p. 75.
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of Great Fathers,* and, accompanied by Croghan, proceeded to Post Quia- tenon, where, in council, he denounced the French for having deceived him and his people and declared that henceforth he would wage war neither against the British or British interests. This promise was faithfully kept, and the remaining days of the great warrior, who voluntarily cast aside the robes of a chieftain, were devoted to the humble occupation of fishing and hunting.
Croghan's mission in the Wabash and Illinois country, as has already been stated in a previous chapter, was for the purpose of conciliating the Indians. It was not intended that he was to take charge at Fort Char- tres. Loftus, Pittman, Morris and Fraser, respectively, had been delegated to receive the fort from St. Ange, but it remained for Captain Sterling of the Forty-second Highlanders ("Black Watch") to relieve the man, who had distinguished himself as the second commandant at Post Ouabache, of his thankless job. Sterling's first official document to the inhabitants was in the form of a proclamation, entinciating an order which emanated in December, 1764, from the celebrated General Gage, to whom reference has hitherto been made, and set forth that liberty of conscience, and the ftill enjoyment of personal and property rights would be accorded to all the inhabitants. The people were allowed to go and come at will, but all of them were required to swear allegiance to Great Britain. In less than four months after assuming command of Fort Chartrest Sterling died,
* J. P. Dunn, Indiana, American Commonwealth Series.
t After it was rebuilt, in 1756, and until the cruel waves of the mighty Missis- sippi rent asunder its massive foundations, Fort Chartres was considered the most formidable fortification in all the western country; and for this reason a description of the fortress by John B. Dillion, the "father of Indiana history," can not prove amiss. "Fort Chartres," says Mr. Dillon, "was in shape an irregular quadrangle, with four bastions. The sides of the exterior polygon were about four hundred and ninety feet in extent. The walls, which were of stone, and plastered over, were two feet two inches thick, and fifteen feet high, with loop-holes at regular distances, and two port-holes for cannon in each face, and two in the flanks of each bastion. There were two sally-ports; and within the wall was a banquette raised three feet for the men to stand upon, when they fired through the loop-holes. The buildings within the fort were the commandant's and commissary's houses, the magazine of stores, the guardhouse, and two lines of barracks. Within the gorge of one of the bastions was a prison with four dungeons. In the gorges of the other three bastions was the powder magazine, the bake-house, and some smaller buildings. The com- mandant's house was ninety-six feet long and thirty feet deep, containing a dining room, a parlor, a bed chamber, a kitchen, five closets, for servants, and a cellar. The commissary's house was built in a line with this edifice, and its proportions and dis- tribution of apartments were the same. Opposite these were the storehouse and guardhouse, each ninety feet long by twenty-four feet deep. The former contained two large storerooms, with vaulted cellars under the whole, a large room, a bed chamber, and a closet for the keeper. The guardhouse contained officers' and soldiers' guard rooms, a chapel, a hed chamber, and a closet for the chaplain, and an artillery storeroom. The lines of the barracks, two in number, were never completely finished. They consisted of two rooms in each line for officers, and three for soldiers. The rooms
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and his immediate successors, all of whose official careers were brief. were Major Farmer, Colonel Edward Cole and Colonel Reed. In September, 1768, Lieutenant-Colonel John Wilkins, of the Royal Irish regiment, as- sumed command, "and two months later," says Mr. Dunn,t "he issued a proclamation for the government of the country, and established a court of common law, the first that existed west of the Alleghenies. It con- sisted of seven judges, and dealt out English justice at monthly terms until the British Parliament restored the civil law to its French-Canadian subjects in 1774. It was during his command, on a gloomy spring night in 1772. that the Mississippi made its last wild leap at the old fort, and swept away the southern curtain and bastions. The troops vacated the place as speedily as possible, and soon afterwards built Fort Gage, on the bluffs near Kaskaskia, which was headquarters during the remainder of the British occupation. Fort Chartres was never reoccupied. Its walls formed a convenient quarry for the people of the neighborhood, who car- ried them off stone by stone until now there remain only broken mound lines, to show its extent. The old magazine alone remains intact, and solitary lifts its bramble-covered arch amid the modern features of the farmyard into which the place has been converted; but its solid masonry aids one to imagine something of the structure of the ancient capital of Illinois and Indiana."
At the period now being considered (1765) the white settlement at Vincennes comprised probably an hundred families, while the French population at Fort Quiatenon, on the Wabash, did not exceed twenty fam- ilies, and at the village of the Twightwees. at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers, less than a dozen adobe homes were occupied by white settlers. "These three small colonies were, at that time," says Dillon, "the only white settlements in all the large territory which now lies within the boundaries of the State of Indiana." And, according to the same author, "the aggregate number of French families within the limits of the northwestern territory (comprising the settlements about Detroit, those near the river Wabash, and the colony in the neighborhood of Fort Chartres) did not, probably, exceed six hundred. At Detroit, and in the neighborhood of that place, there were about three hundred and fifty French families. The remainder of the French population resided at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Prairie du Rocher, and in the vicinity of those villages."
The sparse population at these several posts, which had settlements very early in the eighteenth century, and the absence of any settlements over a vast arca of the northwest territory, were due to the adoption of Eng-
were twenty-two feet square with passages between them. All the buildings were of solid masonry. The ruins of this fort may still be seen, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, about twenty-five miles above the river Kaskaskia, in the State of Illinois."
+ J. P. Dunn, Indiano, American Commonwealth Series, pp. 76, 77.
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land's colonial policy, subsequent to the treaty of 1763, which discouraged, rather than encouraged, colonization west of the Alleghenies, the British throne having forbidden all his subjects "from making any purchases, or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands, beyond the sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic ocean from the west or northwest;" "and, at the suggestion of the English board of trade and plantations," says Dillon, "the British government took measures to confine the English settlements in America, 'to such a distance from the sea coast as that those settlements should be within the reach of the trade and commerce of Great Britain.' * In pursuing this policy the gov- ernment neglected the propositions of various individuals who proposed to establish English colonies in the west." The commander-in-chief of the king's forces in North America, in a letter, written in 1769, to the Earl of Hillsborough, who was the presiding officer of the British colonial de- partment, "conceived it altogether inconsistent with sound policy to in- crease the settlements northwest of the Ohio river to respectable provinces." The royal governor of Georgia in addressing the British lords of trade, stated that the "granting of large bodies of land in the back parts of any of his majesty's northern colonies" appeared to him "in a very serious and alarming light, and may be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences, for, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of people from Great Britain, and they will soon be- come a kind of separate and independent people, who will set up for them- selves ; that they will soon have manufactories of their own; and in pro- cess of time they will become formidable enough to oppose his majesty's authority."
In consequence of this opposition to colonization the village of Pitts- burgh in 1770 boasted of only twenty or thirty log houses, and Fort Pitt was garrisoned by only two companies of Royal Irish, commanded by Captain Edmondson.t
By an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1774, the boundaries of the province of Quebec were extended so as to include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. By this act the French inhabitants were allowed the free exercise of religious rights, and the Roman Catholic clergy the same rights provided in the capitulation at the time of the surrender of the province, and, in addition to these privileges, the French inhabitants of the province of Quebec, by said act, had restored to them their antiquated laws in civil cases, which provided for trial without jury. But, in Sep- tember of the same year, at a convention held at Falmouth, in the province of Massachusetts, the English assembly passed an act which declared that "the very extraordinary and alarming act for establishing the Roman
* Dillon quoting from Report of the Board of Trade and Plantations to the Lords of the Privy Council.
+ Dillon, Historical Notes.
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Catholic religion and French laws in Canada may introduce the French and Indians in our frontier .towns, we recommend that every town and in- dividual in this country should be provided with a proper stock of military stores, according to our province law; and that some patriotic military officer be chosen in each town to exercise their military companies and make them perfect in the military art." The French who dwelt in American colonies, realizing the attempt of the English provinces to deprive them of privileges which had been granted to them by the British Parliament, rallied to the support of Great Britain during the earlier stages of the revolutionary war.
The policy of restricting colonization west of the Alleghenies, however, was not long maintained by Great Britain. In 1769, a year after assuming command at Fort Chartres, Colonel Wilkins granted to English traders, several tracts of land, declaring that such grants were made because "the cultivation of lands not then appropriated, was essentially necessary and useful towards the better peopling and settlement of the said country, as well as highly advantageous to his majesty's service in the raising, pro- ducing and supplying provisions for his majesty's troops, then stationed, or thereafter to be stationed, in the said country of Illinois."
In 1773 the Illinois Land Company, an organization formed at Kas- kaskia and composed of English traders, bought of Indian chiefs hailing from the Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Peoria tribes large quantities of land lying east of the Mississippi.
In 1775 Governor Dunmore ordered, by proclamation,t that all vacant land of his majesty within the colony of Virginia "be surveyed in districts and laid out in lots of from one hundred to one thousand acres," and "put up to public sale." During the same year the Wabash Land Company, of which Louis Viviat, a merchant from the Illinois country, was agent, secured at Vincennes (Post St. Vincent) from eleven Piankashaw chiefs deeds to an immense tract of land .* including parcels owned by Tabac, Montour, La Grande Couette, Onaouaijao, Tabac, Jr., La Mouche Noire, (Black Fly), Le Maringouin (Mosquito), Le Petit Castor (Little Beaver), Kiesquibichias, Gerlot, Sr., and Gerlot, Jr.
St. Marie (Jean Baptiste Racine) from 1764 to 1776, while acting in the capacity of chief executive of the old post, issued many land grants,
* Dillon, Historical Notes, p. 118.
t A parcel of the land conveyed lay on both sides of the Wabash river, beginning at the mouth of River Dushee (called Riviere du Chat, or Cat river), being about fifty-two leagues distant from Post St. Vincent. Of the whole amount deeded, a tract twenty-four leagues in length and seventy leagues in width was reserved for the inhabitants of Vincennes. In the aggregate the quantity of land included in the conveyance was about thirty-seven millions, four hundred and ninety-seven thousand, six hundred acres. The War of the Revolution, coming on at a period before the Illinois and Wabash Land Companies had fully perfected their titles to unlimited quantities of land, prevented the said companies from establishing English colonies in many sections of the Northwest Territory.
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chiefly for small tracts lying within and contiguous to the village, and the original owners of the realty never knew what it was to pay taxes on their possessions. Not until three years after the British Parliament de- cided to exert British influence over the northwest territory, (which had become a part and parcel of the province of Quebec) was any attempt made by the English to change existing conditions at Vincennes. Jean Baptiste Racine, whom the French, as well as the English, had utilized as a commandant, and in whom the inhabitants of the old post, through two or three generations, had imposed explicit confidence, proved himself in the truest sense a "general utility man" of inestimable worth to the com- munity. He probably indulged his subjects too much, but withal he main- tained a discipline which more strenuous measures would have failed to produce. His constituents, with apparently no care upon their minds, no ambitions to gratify, no thoughts of the morrow, no wants which the forest or stream, or little garden, could not supply, lived in an atmosphere of blissful serenity-eking out an existence of which every passing moment went towards making the hours that filled out the days of contentment and happiness. Truly, the life of many of the natives was not the most edifying, but where is the exacting individual, cognizant of the environments by which these people were surrounded, who would say nay to those who enjoyed it ?
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRST ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COMMANDANTS AT VINCENNES.
LIEUTENANT RAMSEY'S BRIEF VISIT-LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR ABBOTT, OF DETROIT, ASSUMES CHARGE AS SUPERINTENDENT OF POST ST. VINCENNES- A KIND.AND CONSIDERATE ENGLISH OFFICER-THE OLD FORT RECHRISTENED "SACKVILLE"-ITS SITE DETERMINED AFTER YEARS OF CONTROVERSY, AND A MARKER PLACED TO DESIGNATE THE SPOT-THE LOCATION OF FORT KNOX A MOOTED QUESTION-FRUIT TREES AND VEGETABLE GARDENS FEATURES OF THE PREMISES OF EARLY INHABITANTS-"FORTS" AS DEFENSES OF SET- TLEMENTS AGAINST INDIANS BUILT IN SEVERAL SECTIONS OF KNOX COUNTY -DESCRIPTION AND LEGENDS OF BEAUTIFUL FORT KNOX.
Unheralded and unannounced, in 1776, Lieutenant Ramsey, command- ing the Forty-second Regiment of British troops, marched into Vincennes and hauled down the French Fleur de Lis that floated above the ramparts of Fort St. Ange and hoisted a British ensign bearing the red cross of St. George, tenderly placing the lily banner of France in the bands of St: Marie, and succeeded the latter as commandant. Ramsey's stay was brief and without incident, and upon his withdrawal St. Marie again resumed the official position of which he had been temporarily deprived. Immedia- tely upon his pompous, though uninterrupted, entree Ramsey changed the name of the fort-hitherto known as "St. Vincent" and "St. Ange," re- spectively-to that of "Sackville."
Lieutenant Governor Abbott, who was the real successor of St. Ange, and the first British officer to receive officially orders to take command at Post Vincennes, did not arrive here until May 19, 1777. He was accom- panied by quite a number of Canadians, acting as an escort. Mention has been made already of this man and the first impressions made upon his mind by the place and its people, which he reiterates in an official report made later, in language as follows: "Since the conquest of Canada, no person bearing his majesty's commission has been to take possession ; from this your excellency may easily imagine what anarchy reigns. I must do the inhabitants justice for the respectful reception I met with, and for the readiness in obeying the orders I thought necessary to issue. The Wabache
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