"With one silent gesture of farewell," says the writer, "he turned and stepped on board the boat. No arguments or entreaties could induce him to remain at the council; but having gained the other side of the Niagara, he mounted his horse, and with his young men was soon lost in the depths of the sheltering forest."
Soon afterward the parents of Eleanor Lytle removed to Detroit and it was there when but fourteen years of age that she met and married Captain McKillip.
The writer of the narrative from which the above sketch has been derived was Mrs. Juliette A. Kinzie, the wife of John Harris Kinzie, who was the oldest child of John Kinzie and Eleanor (Lytle) McKillip Kinzie. Mrs. John H. Kinzie wrote a book, already mentioned, called Wau-Bun, which was published in 1856, in which are a number of sketches of Chicago's early settlers, and an account of the period extending over the occupation and destruction of the first Fort Dearborn. Her book is the earliest and most substantial contribution to Chicago history of the period referred to that we possess.
It is gratifying to be able to state that the granddaughter of the "little Nelly" of the narrative, who was so wonderfully restored to her own people after all those years of captivity, is Mrs. Nelly Kinzie Gordon, now residing in Savannah, Georgia. Though now nearly eighty years of age, Mrs. Gordon is in possession of all her faculties to a remarkable degree, and seems indeed to have preserved the freshness of her youth in body and mind. She takes a sympathetic and intelligent interest in all the historical writings having to do with the early history of Chicago, where she was born and where she lived many years of her life, and she is always ready to aid inquirers with advice and suggestions.
The interior arrangements of the Kinzie house were described by Mrs. Elizabeth Baird, who as a child visited the Kinzies at Chicago in company with her mother. The family of which Mrs. Baird was a member lived on the island of Mackinac and came to Chicago in a lake vessel loaded with a cargo of supplies.
The account written by Mrs. Baird in her old age is printed in the Wisconsin Historical Society's collections. She remembers distinctly the house and its surroundings. "It was a large, one-story building," she said, "with an exceptionally high attic. The front door opened into a wide hall that led through to the kitchen, which was spacious and bright, made so by the large fireplace. Four rooms opened into the hall, two on each side, and the attic contained four rooms." There was room in the house for all the members of the Kinzie family besides quite a number of servants and helpers.
The only way of crossing the river, she says, was by a wooden canoe or "dugout," which was used even by the children, who became very skillful in navigating the deep and slow-moving stream which separated the house from the fort. Besides amusing themselves in the canoe, often called a pirogue, the children found delight in running among the sand-hills along the lake shore and "tumbling down their sides."
Mrs. Baird was the daughter of a half-breed mother whose mother was a member of the Ottawa tribe of Indians. "To know we had Indian blood in our veins," she writes, "was in one respect a safeguard, in another a great risk. Each tribe was ever at enmity with the others. No one could foretell what might happen when by chance two or more tribes should meet or encamp at any one place at the same time. This, however, would be of rare occurrence. Unless on the warpath Indians keep by themselves."
MR. AND MRS. JOHN H. KINZIE