The garrison officers' families made company for each other and the Kinzies and Jouetts; the soldiers gave protection and a thousand other services to all, and the two fifers and two drummers made music—such as it was. This rude melody was not all they had, however, for John Kinzie was a fiddler as well as a trader and a silver-smith ("Shaw-nee-aw-kee," or the "silver-smith," was his Indian name), and in the cool summer evenings, sitting on his porch, would send the sound of his instrument far and wide, over river and plain, through the dewy silence of the peaceful landscape.
They had love and marriage, birth and death, buying and selling and getting gain; and, happily, had not the gift of "second sight," to divine what lay before them; what kind of end was to come to their exile.
Mr. Wentworth's Fort Dearborn speech (Fergus' Historical Series No. 16, page 87) quotes a letter he had received from Hon. Robert Lincoln, Secretary of War under President Garfield. From it we learn that no muster-roll of the garrison at Fort Dearborn in 1811 or 1812 is on file at the War Department, but that the general returns of the army show that the fort was garrisoned from June 4, 1804, to June, 1812, by a company of the First Regiment of Infantry. In these returns the strength of the garrison, officers, musicians and privates, is given as follows: Under Captain John Whistler, June 4, 1804, 69; Dec. 31, 1806, 66; Sept. 30, 1809, 77. Under Captain Nathan Heald, Sept. 30, 1810, 67; Sept. 30, 1811, 51, and June —, 1812, 53.[U]
[U] See [Appendix B] for a muster-roll dated Dec 31, 1810 (the latest entry which gives names), wherein are shown several who appear later as victims of the massacre.
The deficiency of records in the archives of the War Department may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the British, after the so-called "battle" of Bladensburgh, took Washington and burned all the government buildings.
In 1811 Captain Nathan Heald, then in command of Fort Dearborn, went down to Kentucky, where he married Rebekah Wells daughter of Captain Samuel Wells and niece of William.[V] The newly married pair came up overland (probably following the trail marked by Mr. Jouett), bringing the wedding treasures of the bride—silver, etc., and her own personal adornments, which interesting relics, after vicissitudes strange and terrible, are now in possession of her son, Darius Heald, and, with him, are depicted elsewhere in these pages.
[V] See [Appendix E] for additional details regarding the romantic history of the Wells and Heald families.
Mrs. Heald's narrative of these events, as reported to me by her son, is as follows:
In the summer of 1811, Captain Heald, then in command of Fort Dearborn, at Chicago, got leave of absence to go down to Louisville, to get married. He went on horseback, alone, traveling by compass.
They were married, and after the wedding started north on horseback for Fort Dearborn. There were four horses—two for the bride and groom, one for the packs and blankets, and one for a little negro slave-girl named Cicely. This girl had begged so hard to be brought along that they could not refuse her request, although it was, as the Captain said, adding one more to the difficulties of making the long, lonesome, toilsome trip on horseback. They traveled by compass, as before. The horses were good ones, and not Indian ponies. Those that the Captain and his bride rode were thoroughbreds, as was the one ridden by the slave-girl, and they had also a good one to carry the pack, so that they made the trip in about a week's time; starting Thursday, and reaching Fort Dearborn on the following Wednesday night, making about fifty miles a day. Nothing of importance occurred on the bridal trip; they arrived safely, and the garrison turned out to receive them with all the honors of war, the bride being quite an addition to the little company.