Who may have been these mysterious persons whose white faces for generations haunted the lakes and the plains? They appeared at Kaskaskia, their canoes glided mysteriously along the Mississippi, and they were often seen at the hunting-camps of the North. They sought the French and the English as soon as these races began to make settlements, and they seemed to be strangely familiar with English tones, sounds, and words.
Jasper loved to look out from his cabin on the blue lake, and to dream of the old scenes of the Prussian war, of Körner, Von Weber, of Pestalozzi, and his friend Froebel, and contrast them with the rude new life around him. The past was there, but the future was here, and here was his work for the future. It is not what a man has that makes him happy, but what he is; not his present state, but the horizon of the future around him that imparts glow to life, and Jasper was at peace with himself in the sense of doing his duty. Heaven to him was bright with the smile of God, and he longed no more for the rose-gardens of Marienthal or the castles of the Rhine.
The appearance of the white Indian filled the mind of Waubeno with pride and hope.
"We will be happy now," he said. "You will be happy now; nothing happens to them who see the white Indian; all goes well. I know that you are good within, else he would not come; only they whose beings within are good see the white Indian, and he brings bright suns and moons and calumets of peace, and so the days go on forever. I now know that you speak true. And Waubeno has seen him; he will do well; he has seen the white crow among the black crows, and he will do well. Happy moons await Waubeno."
The lake was glorious in these midsummer days. The prairie roses hung from the old trees in the groves, and the air rang with the joyful notes of the lark and plover. Indians came to the fort and went away. Pottawattomies encamped near the place and visited the agency, and white traders occasionally appeared here from Malden and Fort Wayne.
But these were uneventful days of Fort Dearborn. The stories of Mrs. John Kinzie are among the most interesting memories of these days of general silence and monotony. The old Kinzie house was situated where is now the junction of Pine and North Water Streets. The grounds sloped toward the banks of the river. It had a broad piazza looking south, and before it lay a green lawn shaded by Lombardy poplars and a cottonwood tree. Across the river rose Fort Dearborn, amid groves of locust trees, the national flag blooming, as it were, above it.
The cottonwood tree in the yard was planted by John Kinzie, and lived until Chicago became a great city, in Long John Wentworth's day.
The old residents of Chicago will ever recall the beauty of the outlook from the south piazza. At the dull period of the agency, only an Indian canoe, perhaps from Mackinaw, disturbed the peace of the river.
It was on this piazza that on a June morning was heard the chorus of Moore's Canadian Boat Song on the Chicago River, and here General Lewis Cass presently appeared. The great men of the New West often gathered here after that. Here the best stories of the lake used to be told by voyagers, and Mark Beaubien, we may well suppose, often played his violin.
The scene of the lake and river from the place was changed by moonlight into romance.