Rebekah was much pleased with her reception, and found everything bright and cheerful. She liked the wild place, the wild lake and the wild Indians; everything suited her ways and disposition, "being on the wild order herself," she said; and all went on very pleasantly. Among other gayeties there was skating in winter up and down the frozen river, and Ensign Ronan was a famous skater. Sometimes he would take an Indian squaw by the hands, she holding her feet still, and swing her back and forth from side to side of the little stream, until he came to a place where there was a deep snowdrift on the bank, when he would (accidentally, of course) loose his grip on her hands, and she would fly off into the snowdrift and be buried clear out of sight.
In 1812 the peaceful quiet was rudely startled, then assaulted, then destroyed. The first breach of the peace was the killing by Mr. Kinzie (in self-defense) of one John Lalime, Indian interpreter at Fort Dearborn.[W] This was early in 1812. It had, however, nothing to do with the friendliness or enmity of the red-men.
[W] See [Appendix F].
The second event was of a different kind. A man named Lee.[X] who lived on the lake-shore, near the fort, had enclosed and was farming a piece of land on the northwest side of the South Branch, within the present "Lumber District," about half way between Halsted Street and Ashland avenue. It was first known as "Lee's Place," afterwards as "Hardscrabble." It was occupied by one Liberty White, with two other men and a boy, the son of Mr. Lee.
[X] This name I find sometimes spelled "Lee," and sometimes "See."
CABIN IN THE WOODS.
This spot was not far from the place where Père Marquette passed the winter of 1674-75; perhaps the very same ground. (See Munsell's History of Chicago for a copy of the good Father's journal, with parallel translation.) Mrs. John Kinzie, first in a pamphlet dated in 1836, and published in 1844, and later in Wau-Bun, gives an extremely picturesque account of the alarm, evidently taken down from the lips of those who had been present; namely her husband (then a boy), his mother, Mrs. John Kinzie, and his half-sister, Mrs. Helm.
It was the evening of the 7th of April, 1812. The children of Mrs. Kinzie were dancing before the fire to the music or their father's violin. The tea-table was spread, and they were awaiting the return of their mother, who was gone to visit a sick neighbor. [Mrs. John Burns, living at about where is now the crossing of Kinzie and State Streets, had just been delivered of a child.] Suddenly their sports were interrupted; the door was thrown open and Mrs. Kinzie rushed in pale with terror, and scarcely able to articulate.