At this moment a young Indian raised his tomahawk at me. By springing aside I avoided the blow, which was intended for my skull, but which alighted on my shoulder. I seized him around the neck, and while exerting my utmost efforts to get possession of his scalping-knife, which hung in a scabbard over his breast, I was dragged from his grasp by another and an older Indian. The latter bore me struggling and resisting toward the lake. Notwithstanding the rapidity with which I was hurried along, I recognized, as I passed them, the remains of the unfortunate surgeon. Some murderous tomahawk had stretched him upon the very spot where I had last seen him.
I was immediately plunged into the water and held there with a forcible hand, notwithstanding my resistance. I soon perceived, however, that the object of my captor was not to drown me, for he held me firmly in such a position as to place my head above water. This reassured me, and regarding him attentively I soon recognized, in spite of the paint with which he was disguised, The Black Partridge.
This picturesque narrative of the rescue of a young bride by a friendly Indian, has been justly regarded as the one romantic story connected with that dark and bloody day. It has been the chosen theme of the story-teller, the painter and the sculptor, and its portrayal in perennial bronze forms the theme of the magnificent group which has been designed and modeled by the sculptor, Carl Rohl-Smith, cast in bronze, and presented (June, 1893), with appropriate ceremonies, to the Chicago Historical Society, "in trust for the city and for posterity" as set forth by an inscription on its granite base.[E]
[E] See [Appendix K].
Mrs. Helm goes on:
When the firing had nearly subsided my preserver bore me from the water and conducted me up the sand-banks. It was a burning August morning, and walking through the sand in my drenched condition was inexpressibly painful and fatiguing. I stooped and took off my shoes to free them from the sand with which they were nearly filled, when a squaw seized and bore them off, and I was obliged to proceed without them.
When we had gained the prairie [probably at about Twelfth Street] I was met by my father [her step-father, John Kinzie], who told me that my husband was safe, but slightly wounded. They led me gently back toward the Chicago River, along the southern bank of which was the Pottowatomie encampment. At one time I was placed on a horse without a saddle, but finding the motion insupportable, I sprang off. Supported partly by my kind conductor, Black Partridge, and partly by another Indian, Pee-so-tum, who held dangling in his hand a scalp which, by the black ribbon around the queue, I recognized as that of Captain Wells, I dragged my fainting steps to one of the wigwams. The wife of Wah-bee-nee-mah, a chief from the Illinois River, was standing near, and seeing my exhausted condition, she seized a kettle, dipped up some water from the stream that flowed near [the slough that emptied into the main river at about the south end of State Street bridge], threw into it some maple sugar, and stirring it up with her hand, gave it to me to drink. This act of kindness in the midst of so many horrors touched me most sensibly, but my attention was soon diverted to other objects.
The whites had surrendered after the loss of about two-thirds their number. They had stipulated, through the interpreter, Peresh Leclerc, for the preservation of their lives and those of the remaining women and children, and for their delivery at some of the British posts, unless ransomed by traders in the Indian country. It appears that the wounded prisoners were not considered as included in the stipulation, and a horrible scene ensued on their being brought into camp. An old squaw, infuriated by the loss of friends, or excited by the sanguinary scenes around her, seemed possessed by a demoniac ferocity. She seized a stable-fork and assaulted one miserable victim who lay groaning and writhing in the agony of his wounds, aggravated by the scorching beams of the sun. With a delicacy of feeling scarcely to have been expected under such circumstances, Wah-bee-nee-mah stretched a mat across two poles, between me and the deadful scene. I was thus spared, in some degree, a view of its horrors, although I could not entirely close my ears to the cries of the sufferer.
The disgrace attaching to the British government in seeking alliance with such savages in a war against civilized beings of its own race, is elsewhere fully treated. One can only wish that those cries might have reached the women of all England, instead of falling fruitlessly on those of one poor, exhausted, helpless American girl, and of the red hell-spawn grinning and dancing with delight at the sound.
Such is the tale as first given to the world by Mrs. Kinzie in "Wau-Bun." I will now present the narrative of the same struggle, defeat, surrender and massacre as often told by Mrs. Captain Heald to her son, the Hon. Darius Heald, and by him to me. The two are not, in essentials, contradictory; each completes and rounds out the other.