In the Calumet Club is preserved the identical hatchet worn by Captain Wells during the last fight, with authenticating documents furnished by James Madison Wolcott, of South Toledo, Ohio, his grandson by his wife Wa-nan-ga-peth (daughter of Me-che-kan-nah-quah or Little Turtle) through his daughter Ah-mah-qua-zah-quah ("A sweet breeze"), who married Judge James Wolcott. It is related that Wa-nan-ga-peth received the news of her husband's death from a stranger Indian who entered, told the message, laid down the hatchet in token of its truth, and departed, unknown as he came.
This narrative of the fight itself, as seen by Mrs. Heald and related to me by her son, is marked by a style of severe simplicity and good faith that seems to command confidence in the mind of the reader. There is no point in the artless story where one is compelled to pause and make a mental allowance for the bias of the narrator, for her excitement and the uncertainty such a state of mind might throw over her accuracy, or even for the errors (save those of omission) which the lapse of years might have caused. All seems natural, unforced and trustworthy. The story goes on:
In the meantime her horse, which had become excited during the tumult by the smell of blood, commenced prancing around, and an Indian took him by the bit and led him down to the corral, or Indian camp near the fort. [This was on the banks of a slough which entered the river at about where State Street bridge now stands.] Approaching them, an Indian squaw caught sight of the bright-red blanket which was girted on over Mrs. Heald's saddle, for camping purposes, and immediately attempted to take it for her own. Mrs. Heald resisted vigorously, and although one hand was entirely useless and the other badly injured, she took her switch and with it struck the squaw such hard blows that "white welts were raised on her red hide." After this exhibition of spirit, the Indian who had hold of the horse's bit again shouted, "Epeconier! Epeconier!" and it is probably this display of daring which saved Mrs. Heald's life, and perhaps her husband's also.
Rebekah Wells Heald was evidently worthy of her name. Daughter of Captain Samuel Wells, niece of Captain William Wells, wife of Captain Nathan Heald, she was a woman whom the sight of blood could not daunt, the smart of wounds weaken, or the fear of bereavement subdue. (For many hours after the battle she supposed herself a widow.) Her son Darius (her mouthpiece in this narrative) was not born until nine years after that dreadful day; and now (1893), in his seventy-third year, he shows the family form and spirit. Tall, stalwart, erect and dignified, he is a typical southern-westerner, a mighty hunter in the past and a tower of patriarchal strength in his old age.
When she was brought in, after being captured and led down among the Indians, she was stripped of her jewelry—rings, breast-pin, ear-rings and comb. She was badly wounded, and was cared for that night (the fifteenth of August) as tenderly as a sister, by two or three squaws and one French woman, who did everything in their power to relieve her. She saw nothing of her jewelry till the next morning, when a brave made his appearance and pranced around, taking great pains to shew that he was wearing her comb in his scalp-lock—a performance fraught with difficulties, as he had hardly enough hair to keep it in, and found it necessary to push it back from time to time to prevent it from falling to the ground. Poor black Cicely she never saw again[G]. She had perished with the rest. Her horse, too, was gone forever.
This horse was a thoroughbred, the same one that Mrs. Heald, as a bride, had ridden from Kentucky a year before. The Indians had always looked on it with envious eyes, and had employed all means, lawful and otherwise, to get it from the fort. Now it was theirs by conquest, and no later efforts availed to recover it. Doubtless among its new owners its fate was hard and its life short. One winter of starvation, exposure and abuse would "hang its hide on the fence," even while its wretched Indian-pony companions were living on in stubborn endurance.
It turned out afterwards that the Indians took their booty down to Peoria, to sell and "trade" for whisky, and it found its way quickly to St. Louis, where Colonel O'Fallon recognized a great deal as belonging to the Healds, and redeemed it and sent it to Colonel Samuel Wells at the Falls of the Ohio [Louisville] as a memento of his daughter and her husband, both supposed to be dead. It reached there before the Healds did, and the articles are now in possession of the family; most of them were shown by Hon. Darius Heald in Chicago, in 1892, when the before-mentioned short-hand transcript of his mother's story was made, and he and his precious relics were photographed, making a picture hereinafter presented. (See [Appendix E].)
The Indian who led Captain Heald down to the camp and claimed him as his prisoner, was a half-breed named Chandonnais. He afterward found that Mrs. Heald was still alive, and, it is supposed, ransomed her from her captor; for, on the morning of the sixteenth, he brought the husband and wife together. He seems to have connived at the escape of both, for they found the matter wonderfully easy—boat and escort at hand and all oversight withdrawn. Years afterward, in 1831, Chandonnais visited the Healds at their home, near O'Fallon, Missouri, and Darius Heald remembers his father's meeting and greeting the brave who had so nobly rescued them. It is thought that the Indians went off down the lake to have "a general frolic"—in other words, torture to death the wounded prisoners.