The Story of Old Fort Dearborn

by J. Seymour Currey

After delivering up their arms, the survivors were taken back to the encampment of the Indians near the fort, and distributed among the different tribes. The number of their warriors, Heald said, was between four hundred and five hundred, mostly of the Potawatami nation, and the loss on their side was about fifteen. There were about sixty of the whites killed in the battle and the massacre which followed, but when the troops surrendered and the Indians promised that the lives of the survivors should be spared, it was found that the savages regarded the wounded as exempted from this condition. Accordingly, many of the wounded were ruthlessly tomahawked after the surrender, and in the same evening five of the soldiers were tortured to death. A number of others perished from the privations they suffered while in the hands of the Indians during the ensuing season.

The boat containing the Kinzie family and the servants accompanying them at first kept near the mouth of the river, the occupants watching the troops and the wagon train passing along the beach toward the south. They heard the discharge of the guns when the Indians attacked, and the boat's course was directed so as to approach as nearly as possible to the scene of the fighting. They saw a woman on horseback led by an Indian not far from the edge of the water.

"That is Mrs. Heald," cried Mrs. Kinzie. "That Indian will kill her. Run, Chandonnais, take the mule that is tied there and offer it to him to release her." The Indian was already attempting to take off her bonnet, with the evident intention of scalping her, and she was resisting vigorously.

The Indian paused long enough in the Struggle to listen to the offer made by Chandonnais, who added the promise of two bottles of whiskey as soon as they would reach their destination. "But," said the Indian, "she is badly wounded—she will die. Will you give me the whiskey at all events?" Chandonnais, who was well known to the Indians, promised that he would, and the bargain was concluded. Several squaws, keen for plunder, had followed the procession closely, and made an ineffectual attempt to rob Mrs. Heald of her shoes and stockings. The savage had succeeded in getting possession of her bonnet, and placed it on his own head. She was taken on board the boat, and lay moaning with pain from the wounds she had received.

As it was impossible to continue their journey under the circumstances, the boat and its passengers returned to the Kinzie house, trusting to the influence possessed by Mr. Kinzie to maintain their safety. They were joined there by Mr. Kinzie, who had escaped injury from the savages. Around them gathered a number of Indians still friendly to the Kinzie family, whose Intentions were to assist them in a renewed attempt to reach their proposed destination at St. Joseph.

Among the friendly Indians thus gathered was Black Partridge, who had rescued Mrs. Helm and had safely brought her to the Kinzie house, where she rejoined her family.

Thus were assembled the entire family of John Kinzie, except his son-in-law, Lieutenant Helm. Mrs. Heald and Mrs. Helm were both suffering from wounds. Both had been attacked by the savages while on horseback, the former having perhaps escaped death, through the ransom negotiated by Chandonnais, and the other having been rescued by Black Partridge.

John Burns, with his wife and infant child, had lived in the house west of the Kinzies', on the north bank of the river, and were with the troops at the time of the attack. It will be recalled that Mrs. Burns and her one-day-old infant had been brought to the fort for safety at the time of the Indian alarm in the previous April. Burns was killed while with the troops, but his wife and child were made captives by one of the chiefs and by him taken to his village and treated with great kindness; but his squaw wife, excited by feelings of jealousy of the favors shown to the captives, attempted to kill the child with a tomahawk thrown at it with great force. The blow narrowly missed being fatal, but it inflicted a wound the marks of which she carried through the remainder of her life. The chief prevented further attempts of the kind by removing the captives to a place of safety. Eventually the mother and child found their way back to civilization.

"Twenty-two years after this," writes the younger Mrs. Kinzie, in Wau-Bun, "as I was on a journey to Chicago in the steamer 'Uncle Sam,' a young woman, hearing my name, introduced herself to me, and raising the hair from her forehead, showed me the mark of the tomahawk which had so nearly been fatal to her."

A somewhat similar case was that of Mrs. Charles Lee, whose husband owned the farm on the South Branch where the two men were murdered by Indians in the previous April. His son, a lad of twelve years, who, with the discharged soldier, ran to the fort from the farm and gave the alarm on that occasion, was also with the troops in company with his father. Lee and his son were both killed in the battle, but Mrs. Lee and her young child were captured, and later came into the possession of Black Partridge. This "knightly rescuer of women" proved the worth of his friendship toward the whites in the case of Mrs. Lee and her child, as he had already done in the rescue of Mrs. Helm.