"What, Waubeno?"
"You say that right is might, Parable?"
"Yes."
"When I find a single white man who defends an Indian to his own hurt because it is right, I will promise. I have known many white men who defended the Indian because they thought that it was good for them to do it—good for their pockets, good for their church, good for their souls in another world—but never one to his own harm, because it was right; listen, Parable—never one to his own harm because it was right. When I meet one—such a one—I will promise you what you ask. Parable, my folks did right because it was right."
"Waubeno, I once knew a boy who defended a turtle to his own harm, because it was right. The boys laughed at him, but his soul was true to the turtle."
"I would like to meet that boy," Waubeno said. "He and I would be brothers. But I have never seen such a boy, Parable. I have never seen any man who had the worth of my own father, and, till I do, I shall hold to my vow to him! God heard that vow, and he shall see that I prove true to a man who died for the truth!"
The two came in sight of blue Lake Michigan, where the old Jesuit explorer had had a vision of a great city; and where Point au Sable, the San Domingo negro, for a time settled, hoping to be made an Indian king. Here he found the hospitable roofs of John Kinzie, the pioneer of Chicago, the Romulus of the great mid-continent city, where storehouses abounded with peltries and furs.
John Kinzie (the father of the famous John H. Kinzie) was a grand pioneer, like the Pilgrim Fathers of the elder day. He dealt honestly with the Indians, and won the hearts of the several tribes. He settled in Chicago in 1804, at which time a block-house was built by the Government as a frontier house or garrison. This frontier house stood near the present Rush Street Bridge. Mr. Kinzie's house stood on the north side of the Chicago River, opposite the fort. The storm-beaten block-house was to be seen in Chicago as late as 1857, and the place of Mr. Kinzie's home will ever be held as sacred ground. The frontier house was known as Fort Dearborn. A little settlement grew around the fort and the hospitable doors of Mr. Kinzie, until in 1830 it numbered twelve houses. Twelve houses in Chicago in 1830! Pass the bridge of sixty years, and lo! the rival city of the Western world, with its more than a million people—more than fulfilling the old missionary's dream!
For twenty years John Kinzie was the only white man not connected with the garrison and trading-post who lived in northern Illinois. He was a witness of the Indian massacre of the troops in 1812, when he himself was driven from his home by the lake.
He saw another and different scene in August, 1821—a scene worthy of a poet or painter—the Great Treaty, in which the Indian chiefs gave up most of their empire east of the Mississippi. There came to this decisive convocation the plumes of the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawattamies. General Cass was there, and the old Indian agents. The chiefs brought with them their great warriors, their wives and children. There the prairie Indians made their last stand but one against the march of emigration to the Mississippi.