History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 3

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 821

USA > Michigan > Van Buren County > History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 3
USA > Michigan > Berrien County > History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 3

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

The force of La Salle now consisted of thirty-three per- sons, including himself, the Mohican hunter, and the priests, and on the morning of the 3d of December this force was mustered ready for departure. The fort on the bank of the river had been completed, and a space around it cleared of trees to give unobstructed play for musketry. The work itself-named by the commander " Fort Miami"-was left without a garrison,* but it stood ready to give shelter to the advancing force if it should be compelled to retreat before hostile Indians.

The party embarked in eight canoes, struck out into the icy current of the St. Joseph, and paddled briskly up the stream along its marshy shores. After a time they entered a more rolling and wooded country, and at length came to an abrupt turn in the river,-at the site of the city of South Bend,-in the vicinity of which they knew was the eastern end of the portage over which they were to cross to the stream called, in Indian, Teankakeek (Kankakee), one of the head-waters of the Illinois. The Indian hunter had previously gone on shore for game, and in his absence there were none of the party sufficiently skilled in the mys- teries of the forest to discover where the portage trail struck the river. The result was that they passed the proper place without detecting it. La Salle then went on shore to find the hunter, but he himself became lost in the mazes of the forest and the blinding snow-storm, and remained through the night. In the mean time the hunter had returned, the trail was discovered, and the party encamped for the night near the river. On the following day they crossed the portage,-some five or six miles in length,- carrying their canoes, baggage, and implements. Arriving at the head-waters of the Kankakee, they embarked, and floated

down that stream and the Illinois River until they came to an Indian village containing four hundred and sixty lodges, but which was entirely deserted. They helped themselves to corn from the Indian caches and resumed their way, passing by the site of the city of Peoria. A short distance below, they found a village of eighty lodges, inhabited by Indians of the Illinois tribe, who received the party well at first, but soon began to grow cold and suspicious. La Salle erected a defensive work of logs near this place, and called it Fort Crèvecœur (Broken Heart), which indi- cates that he was then in deep despondency, caused by the doubtful attitude of the Indians, the desertion of a part of his men, and the almost certainty of the loss of the " Griffin," on whose safe return so much of the success of his project depended. Under these circumstances he determined to return to Canada for needful assistance; but meantime he commenced the building of a vessel of about the same size as the lost " Griffin," with which, in the future, he expected to explore the course of the Mississippi.

Leaving Tonty in command at Fort Crevecoeur with about fifteen men, La Salle, accompanied by his Indian hunter and four of his French followers, commenced his return journey on the 2d of March, 1680, and worked slowly back along the ice-bound streams, over a part of the same route by which they came, but struck Lake Michigan at its head, and passed thence along the shore to the mouth of the St. Joseph and Fort Miami, which he reached on the 24th of March. Here he found the two men-Cha- pelle and Le Blanc-whom he had sent out in the preced- ing December to look for the " Griffin." Their report having extinguished his last lingering hope of her safety, he ordered the two men to join Tonty at Fort Crevecoeur and pre- pared to move eastward with his party across the Michigan peninsula. The incidents of this stage of their journey- which was unquestionably the first ever made by white men through the wilderness of Southern Michigan from lake to lake-are thus narrated by Parkman :

" They were detained till noon of the 25th in making a raft to cross the St. Joseph. Then they resumed their march, and as they forced their way through the brambly thickets their clothes were torn, and their faces so covered with blood 'that,' says the journal, t ' they could hardly know each other.' Game was very scarce, and they grew faint with hunger. In two or three days they reached a happier region. They shot deer, bears, and turkeys in the forest, and fared sumptuously. But the reports of their guns fell on hostile ears. . . . On the evening of the 28th, as they lay around their fire under the shelter of a forest by the border of a prairie, the man on guard shouted an alarm. They sprang to their feet, and each, with gun in hand, took his stand behind a tree, while yells and howlings filled the surrounding darkness. A band of Indians were upon them, but, seeing them prepared, the cowardly assail- ants did not wait to exchange a shot.

" They crossed great meadows overgrown with rank grass, and set it on fire to hide the traces of their passage. La Salle bethought him of a device to keep their skulking

* Tuttle, in his "History of Michigan" (page 105), says that ten men were left to garrison the fort, but this is clearly disproved by Parkman, as are also a number of other statements found in the same work in reference to the operations of La Salle and Allouez on the St. Joseph.

+ Manuscript " Relation des Découvertes," from which the account was translated by Parkman.

HISTORY OF BERRIEN AND VAN BUREN COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

foes at a distance. On the trunks of trees from which he had stripped the bark, he drew with charcoal the marks of an Iroquois war-party, with the usual signs for prisoners and for scalps, hoping to delude his pursuers with the belief that he and his men were a band of those dreaded warriors. Thus, over snowy prairies and half-frozen marshes, wading sometimes to their waists in mud, water, and bulrushes, they urged their way through the spongy, saturated wilder- ness. During three successive days they were aware that a party of savages was dogging their tracks. They dared not make a fire at night lest the light should betray them ; but, hanging their wet clothes on the trees, they rolled them- selves in their blankets and slept together among piles of spruce* and pine boughs. But the night of the 2d of April was excessively cold. Their clothes were hard-frozen, and they were forced to kindle a fire to thaw and dry them. Scarcely had the light begun to glimmer through the gloom of the evening when it was greeted from the distance by mingled yells, and a troop of Muscoutin war- riors rushed towards them. They were stopped by a deep stream, a hundred paces from the bivouac of the French, and La Salle went forward to meet them. No sooner did they see him and learn that he was a Frenchman than they cried that they were friends and brothers, who had mistaken him and his men for Iroquois, and, abandoning their hostile purpose, they peacefully withdrew. Thus his device to avert danger had well-nigh proved the destruction of the whole party. Two days after this adventure two of the men fell ill from fatigue and exposure, and sustained them- selves with difficulty till they reached the banks of a river, probably the Huron. Here the sick men rested; their com- panions made a canoe. There were no birch-trees and they were forced to use elm bark, which at that early season would not slip freely from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being made, they embarked in it, and for a time floated prosperously down the stream, when at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees fallen across the water. The sick men could now. walk again, and, pushing eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the Detroit." Thus was made the first exploration of the overland route between the Detroit River and the mouth of the St. Joseph,-a route which, a little more than a century and a half later, in the early days of railroad projects and schemes of public in- ternal improvement, became the subject of many a debate in the legislative halls of Michigan and very familiar to surveyors and pioneers.

The party crossed the Detroit River on a raft and trav- eled through the woods to Lake Erie, where they embarked in a canoe and paddled to Niagara. At length, after great hardship, La Salle reached Montreal, where with much difficulty he collected fresh supplies of stores and ammu- nition, and started on his return journey with a company of twenty-five men, comprising a surgeon, ship-carpenters, and other mechanics, laborers, soldiers, and voyageurs,- everything needed to finish the vessel he had left on the stocks, and to sail her down the Mississippi ... His return

route was by Lake Simcoe, Georgian Bay, and Lake Huron to Michillimackinac, and thence by the eastern shore of Lake Michigan to St. Joseph River, which he reached on the 4th of November.

On his way hither he had been apprised of the destruc- tion of Fort Miami during his absence, and now he found the report to be true. The men whom he had left at Fort Crèvecœur, on the Illinois, had deserted, stolen the goods and stores deposited there, and, proceeding thence northward on their way to Michillimackinac, had passed down the St. Joseph and leveled and burned the logs which formed Fort Miami; of which nothing now remained but the charred débris. The commander made no stay here, but pushed on in haste up the river and across the portage to the Illinois. He, however, left five men at the ruined fort, in charge of some heavy stores, to wait for his lieutenant, the Sieur de la Forest, who, with thirteen men, had for some reason been left behind at Michillimackinac, but with orders to come up without delay to the St. Joseph.

On his arrival at Fort Crevecoeur,-or rather at the place where it had once been,-La Salle found that it also had been destroyed by the mutineers. His most earnest desire now was to find Tonty, whom he had left in charge of the fort on his departure for Montreal. For this pur- pose he passed on down the Illinois to its junction with the Mississippi, beholding for the first time the broad, swift current of the Father of Waters. But, finding no signs of Tonty, he turned back in despair from the great river which had so long been the subject of his dreams, and retraced his way up the Illinois. On the 6th of Jan- uary, 1681, his party reached the mouth of the Teanka- keek, but, instead of going up that stream over the route by which they came, they took the northern branch of the river ; but, soon finding their way blocked by ice, they left their canoes and traveled through deep snow towards the St. Joseph, where they arrived after many days of excessive fatigue and hardship.

Here they found the Sieur de la Forest with his eighteen men, including the five who had been left by La Salle in charge of the stores. They had heard nothing of the lost Tonty, but during the absence of the commander they had rebuilt the fort, and around it on the plateaut they had

t This old fort-afterwards strengthened or rebuilt by the French government-is supposed to have stood near the edge of the bluff, on or a little north of the spot where now stands the St. Charles Hotel, in the village of St. Joseph. It is said that when the first settlers came here, a half century ago, they found at that place a large open space, which had evidently been cleared by the hand of man. There is little doubt that this was the clearing commenced by La Salle when he built the fort, and extended by his men in the winter of 1680-81.

In recent years, when, in the prosecution of village improvements, a part of this plateau was graded down, a number of human skele- tons were discovered buried here. It is said that on some of these the hair was found in a good state of preservation, and that in one or two instances there were decayed remnants of what appeared to have been silken robes, indicating, as was believed, that the wearers had been priests ; also, that there were found "silver brooches," which appeared to have been worn on the person, and seemed to show that the wearer was of considerable rank and consequence. But an examination of the old account books of William Burnett, the trader, who located on the St. Joseph about 1785 (as will be mentioned here- after), explains this " silver-brooch" question, and divests it of all its imaginary significance, for in the invoices of that trader's stock the

# This seems to be an error, as no spruce is found in the region through which they passed. It was probably tamarack, which they mistook for spruce.

DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS.

cleared a considerable area of ground for planting in the following spring. Besides this, they had constructed a saw- pit, and had already sawed out (by hand) the timber and planking for a new vessel. This was, unquestionably, the first project for the building of vessels ever commenced on the St. Joseph, or within the limits of the counties of Berrien and Van Buren, as it was also probably the first attempt of the kind made at any point on Lake Michigan.

The winter of 1680-81 was spent by La Salle at his headquarters, Fort Miami. " Here," says Parkman, " he might have brooded on the redoubled ruin that had befallen him,-the desponding friends, the exulting foes, the wasted energies, the crushing load of debt, the stormy past, the black and lowering future. But his mind was of a differ- ent temper. He had no thought but to grapple with ad- versity, and out of the fragments of his ruin to rear the fabric of a triumphant success."

The banks of the St. Joseph at that time presented a new scene, and a strange one for this wilderness. Here, domiciled within the log inclosure of the fort, were La Salle and La Forest, with a company of twenty-five French- men and the Indian hunter who had followed the com- mander's fortunes so long and faithfully. The clearing, the piles of freshly-sawed planks and ship-timber, and the presence of so numerous a company of white men, must have given the place a decided appearance of civilization. And, as a background and contrast to the picture, there were seen near the fort the bark wigwams of a band of Eastern Indians, who were, says Parkman, "exiles from their homes and strangers in this Western world ; a band of refugees, chiefly Abenakis and Mohicans, driven from their native seats, who had roamed into these distant wilds and were wintering in the friendly neighborhood of the French."

The Shawanoes, living in the valley of the Ohio, had heard of the presence of the French on the St. Joseph in the winter of 1680-81, and in the following spring a chief of that tribe came to Fort Miami to ask their protection against the fearful Iroquois, of whose attack they stood in constant dread. Their chief promised to come to the fort in the following autumn with all his band, which num- bered two hundred warriors. No account is found of his subsequent appearance on the St. Joseph, but the Shawa- noes did afterwards join the Indian settlements under pro- tection of the French in Illinois.

On the first of March, 1681, while the face of the coun- try was yet covered by the snows of winter, the command- ant set out with La Forest and nineteen men (leaving the remainder at Fort Miami), bound on another mission to the Illinois, to induce the Indians to make peace among the

item of "silver brooches" occurs oftener than any other, excepting only the item of " spirits." And not only are they mentioned fre- quently, but in great numbers; as many as one thousand of the large size and eleven hundred of the second size being sent at one time by one of Burnett's agents (Baptiste Lalime) when he left St. Joseph on a trading trip to the Kankakee; so that these " silver" trinkets must have been nearly as plenty among the Indians of this region (during Burnett's time) as leaves are supposed to have been in Vallombrosa. The cost of the " silver brooch" appears from Burnett's books to have been about twenty cents, though this may have been the cost price. There is nothing very strange, then, about their being found with Indian skeletons.

several tribes, and to settle at Fort Crèvecoeur under French protection. The St. Joseph River at that time was cov- ered with ice, so that La Salle and his party were compelled to make the journey across the country on foot. They traveled on snow-shoes, dragging their canoes after them, for use upon the breaking up of the ice, which occurred soon afterwards. They reached the Illinois country, accom- plished the object of the mission, and returned to Fort Miami, but without La Forest, he having been dispatched to Michillimackinac to communicate with Tonty, who had at last been heard from at that place.

Later in the spring, La Salle, with ten men in canoes, ascended the St. Joseph and crossed the portage to the great village of the Miamis, with whom his business was similar to that on which he had visited the Illinois. Meet- ing with the same success with the former as he had with the latter tribe, he again returned by way of the St. Jo- seph to the fort. He had now made the necessary arrange- ments for safe passage through the Indian country, and for assistance by the tribes on his projected journey to the mouth of the Mississippi, but before commencing that arduous undertaking he must go to Montreal to procure means, material, and men for the expedition. For this purpose he set out with a party in canoes, leaving the fort in the latter part of May, 1681. They passed down the east coast of Lake Michigan to Michillimackinac, and thence along the shores of Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and On- tario to the St. Lawrence, and reached Montreal in safety.

The necessary men and material were collected, and La Salle again traversed the same weary way on his return, reaching his base of operations at the mouth of the St. Joseph River late in November, and having paddled more than two thousand miles in canoes since his departure from the place, six months before. With him returned his brave lieutenant, Tonty, who had been found at Michilli- mackinac after his weary and perilous wanderings among the savages of Illinois and Wisconsin. The presence of this one trusty companion was more highly prized by the commander than would have been an accession of fifty men to the strength of his force.

During a stay of about a month at the fort, all prepara- tions for the great journey to the Mississippi were com- pleted, and on the 21st of December a part of the expedi- tion, led by Tonty and accompanied by the Recollet father Membre, embarked in six canoes upon the waters of the wintry lake and skirted the frozen shores around its south- ern curve. La Salle, with the remainder of the party,* fol- lowed by the same route a few days later, and joined them at the mouth of the Chicago River. There they constructed sledges, and loaded the canoes and stores upon them (for the streams were frozen over), and, hauling these, they crossed the portage and passed down the valleys of the Desplaines and Illinois Rivers to the foot of Peoria Lake, where, find- ing the river open, they launched the canocs and embarked. They passed swiftly down the Illinois, and on the 6th of February reached its junction with the Mississippi. " Here, for the time, their progress was stopped, for the river was full of floating ice. The Indians, too, had lagged behind,

# The expedition was composed of twenty-three Frenchmen and a number of the Eastern Indians who had been living near Fort Miami.

HISTORY OF BERRIEN AND VAN BUREN COUNTIES, MICHIGAN.

but within a week all had arrived, the navigation was once more free, and they resumed their course." In their way down the great river they met several hitherto unknown tribes of Indians and encountered many strange adventures, but they accomplished the object for which the commander had so long labored. On the 9th of April, 1682, in full sight of the blue expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, La Salle reared a cross and a column inscribed with the name of the French sovereign, and took possession for him of the valley of the river and a contiguous country of indefinite extent, which he named Louisiana.

The expedition returned up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers to Peoria Lake, and about the 1st of September, in the same year, La Salle again descended the St. Joseph River, on his way to Quebec, from whence it was his inten- tion to proceed to France and report his discovery to the prime minister. But on his arrival at Michillimackinac he received intelligence which changed his plans and caused him to return to the Illinois by way of Fort Miami. The journey was made late in the autumn of 1682; and this was the last visit ever made here by the great explorer who planned and directed the first occupation by white men of the valley of the St. Joseph. On his return from the Illi- nois, in the fall of 1683, he took the route by way of the Chicago portage, descended to Quebec, and soon after sailed for France. He never again visited the northern portion of America, but he afterwards, on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico (originated and commanded by him), landed in Texas, and was murdered there in 1687, as has already been mentioned.

It does not appear that after the final departure of La Salle the river St. Joseph and the fort on its bank were ever used by the French for the purposes which he had had in view,-that is, as a port for vessels coming from Lake Erie and a base of supply for military and trading posts on the Illinois. In fact, very little is known of events which occurred during the next succeeding eighty years in the St. Joseph valley, or in any part of the territory to which this volume has especial reference.

CHAPTER II. . THE MIAMI OCCUPATION.

The Miamis in the St. Joseph Valley-Forays of the Iroquois-La Salle's Council and Treaty with the Miamis-Removal of the Miamis and Eastern Indians to the Illinois River-The " Debatable Ground"-Antecedents of the Miamis-Their Return to the St. Joseph Valley-Attack and Massacre of the Miamis by the Sioux -The Mission of St. Joseph established among the Miamis-In- dian Plot to Exterminate the Miami Tribe-Their final Removal from the St. Joseph Valley.

THE history of the savage tribes who, prior to the be- ginning of the eighteenth century, inhabited the region which now includes the counties of Berrien and Van Buren, is veiled in almost complete obscurity, and nearly the same is true of the Indian occupancy of the same territory dur- ing a succeeding period of more than sixty years. The earliest event, the record of which throws any light on the

subject, was the discovery, in or about 1675, of the St. Jo- seph River and its designation by the French as the " River of the Miamis," on account of its course being through the country which was then peopled by that tribe. There is nothing, however, in the old narratives to show that the discoverers found them in any great numbers in the St. Jo- seph valley, nor is any mention made, in the accounts of La Salle's numerous journeyings up and down this river in the years 1679 to 1682, of his finding their settlements at any point on the stream below the portage. Their principal village was at the southwestern end of this portage, at the head of the Teankakeek (Kankakee) River, to which place, in 1681, La Salle went up from Fort Miami to hold grand council with the chiefs of the tribe. But, although they were chiefly located farther to the southward, and their principal village was outside the valley of the St. Joseph, it is evident that they regarded that valley and the contiguous country as a part of their domain, and held it as such, though not to the complete exclusion of other tribes.

The Iroquois, or Five Nations, though living far away to the east, within the present State of New York, had hitherto been the terror and scourge of the Western Indians, and had rendered their country almost uninhabitable by reason of their destructive and bloody incursions. The territory of the Miamis, however, had for a time been an exception, because that tribe had been allied with the East- ern enemy in their forays against the Illinois. It was doubtless the intention of the Iroquois, after having used the Miamis to conquer the Illinois and other tribes, to turn upon these, their allies, and exterminate them also. Indi- cations of their perfidy had already become apparent. In 1680 a party of Iroquois, in returning from an expedition against one of the Illinois tribes, had met and slaughtered a band of Miamis, " and had not only refused satisfaction, but intrenched themselves in three rude forts of trees and brush wood in the heart of the Miami country." The Miamis were of course terrified at this threatening demonstration on the part of the fierce Iroquois, whom they, in common with the other tribes, believed to be as invincible as they were sanguinary.

It was while this state of affairs existed, that La Salle seized upon the opportunity to meet the Miamis in council at their village, as before mentioned. The object which he had in view was to induce them to make peace with the Illinois nation, and to place themselves under the protection of the French, on the Illinois River, where he proposed to establish a strong central post, to congregate around it a large number of tribes friendly to the French, and to band them all in a defensive alliance against the irruptions of the dreaded Five Nations. When he came to the Miamis' village, on the occasion of the council, he found there " a band of Iroquois warriors, who had been for some time in the place, and who, as he was told, had demeaned them- selves with the insolence of conquerors." He met these warriors with a menacing arrogance which eclipsed their own, and so completely browbeat and cowed them by his threats that they stole away from the village under cover of night.

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History of Berrien and Van Buren counties, Michigan. With biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 3

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co. Number of Pages: 821

Author: D.W. Ensign & Co. pub; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Johnson, Crisfield
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, D. W. Ensign & Co.
Number of Pages: 821