The morning was very warm and the perspiration was pouring from them. Their countenances had assumed an expression of all the worst passions—fierce anger, terrible hate, dire revenge, remorseless cruelty—all were expressed in their terrible features. Their tomahawks and clubs were thrown and brandished in every direction, and with every step and every gesture they uttered the most frightful yells. The dance consisted of leaps and spasmodic steps, now forward, now back or sidewise, the whole body distorted into every imaginable position, most generally stooping forward with the head and face thrown up, the back arched down, first one foot thrown forward and withdrawn and the other similarly thrust out, frequently squatting quite to the ground, and all with a movement almost as quick as lightning. The yells and screams they uttered were broken up and multiplied and rendered all the more hideous by a rapid clapping of the mouth with the palm of the hand. When the head of the column reached the hotel, while they looked up at the windows at the "Chemo-ko-man squaws," it seemed as if we had a picture of hell itself before us, and a carnival of the damned spirits there confined. They paused in their progress, for extra exploits, in front of John T. Semple's house, near the northwest corner of Lake and Franklin Streets, and then again in front of the Tremont, on the northwest corner of Take and Dearborn Streets, where the appearance of ladies again in the window again inspired them with new life and energy. Thence they proceeded down to Fort Dearborn, where we will take a final leave of my old friends, with more good wishes for their final welfare than I really dare hope will be realized.
The Indians were conveyed to the lands selected for them, (and accepted by a deputation sent by them in advance of the treaty) in Clay County, Missouri, opposite Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Missourians were hostile to their new, strange neighbors, and two years later they were again moved, this time to a reservation in Iowa, near Council Bluffs. Once more the fate of the poor waif, "Move on, move on," was theirs, and then they halted in Kansas for many years. Their present condition has been already sketched.
Judge Caton is an ardent, devoted friend of the Indians. He knew many of them personally, they having been his faithful companions—by night and day, in summer and winter—in hunting, which was the passion of his early years. Yet here, we observe, he says sadly, that his wishes for their welfare go beyond any confident hope he can feel.
[APPENDIX K.]
THE BRONZE MEMORIAL GROUP.
History places the scene of the Massacre adjacent to the shore of Lake Michigan, between the present 16th and 20th Streets. The Memorial Group, now (1893) newly erected, stands at the eastern extremity of 18th Street, overlooking the lake (nothing intervening save the right of way of the Illinois Central Railway); and is therefore in the midst of the battle-field.
I think it well here to put in evidence unanswerable testimony as to the identity of the spot selected for the group with the place where the short and fatal struggle took place. Regarding it, Munsell's history observes:
The attack, the charge, the subsequent advance, etc., seem all to point to about the spot where is now Eighteenth Street; and to the Massacre tree, a tall cottonwood, still standing when these lines are penned (1892), though dead since about five years ago.