Suppose, awhile, his threats prove true.
My children, what becomes of you?
Your sons, your daughters and your wives,
Must they be hacked by their big knives?
Clark, soon repulsed, will ne'er return,
While your war-fire thus clear doth burn.
At Fort St. Joseph and the Post,
Go, lay in ambush for his host,
While I send round Lake Michigan
And raise the warriors to a man.
Who, on their way to get to you.
Shall take a peep at Eschikagou.[AK]
Those runagates at Milwackie
Must now perforce with you agree.
Sly Siggernaak and Naakewoin
Must with Langlade their forces join,
Or he will send them, tout au diable
As he did Baptiste Pointe de Saible.[AL]
[AK] A river and fort at the head of Lake Michigan.
[AL] A handsome negro, well educated and settled in Chicago, but much in the interest of the French.
So steps upon the stage of history the earliest non-Indian settler of Chicago; a man who built, at about the time of our Declaration of Independence, the house which was standing within the memory of hundreds of Chicagoans of 1892—the well-known "Kinzie Mansion," that faced the north bank of the river where Pine Street now ends.
Mrs. John H. Kinzie, in her delightful book, "Wau-Bun, the Early day in the North-West," calls him "Pointe au Sable," and says he was a native of San Domingo, and came from that island with a friend named Glamorgan; who had obtained large Spanish grants in or about St. Louis. She adds that Jean Baptiste sold his Chicago establishment to a French trader named Le Mai, and went back to Peoria where his friend Glamorgan was living, and died tinder his roof, presumably about 1800. From Le Mai, the property passed in 1803, to John Kinzie, the real pioneer of Chicago.
Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) was discovered and even colonized, by Columbus, in 1492. It had then some two million inhabitants, living like our first parents in Eden (Genesis I, 27), but the unspeakable cruelty of the Spaniards so depopulated the splendid and happy island, that in 1517—twenty-five years later—it was requisite to import negro slaves to carry on the mining, and to-day not one soul of the original race survives.
The French began to come in 1630, and by the treaty of Ryswick [1697] the island was divided between France and Spain. Then began the greatness of the Haytian negro, which culminated in Toussaint L'Ouverture, liberator of his race from French slavery and his land from French domain; and later, victim to Napoleon's perfidy. Under the French rule many free negroes were educated in France, very probably Baptiste Pointe de Saible among the rest. At any rate he was of the adventurous spirit which would rather be first in a new sphere than last in an old, and so, with Glamorgan, he came over to Mobile or New Orleans. Then (probably on one of John Law's "Compagnie de l'Occident" bateaux) he came up the Mississippi to Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. Louis, and at last to Peoria, on the Illinois, where he left Glamorgan, and pushed on to the Pottowatomie outposts where we find him in 1778, the object of Colonel de Peyster's admiring dislike.
Edward G. Mason, in an address before the Historical society, gives a tradition in regard to Pointe de Saible's welcome on Chicago soil, which tradition appears in "Early Western Days," a volume published by John T. Kingston, formerly a state senator of Wisconsin. It runs thus: An Indian living south of the Portage River—now called the Chicago—being out hunting, suddenly came upon a strange object, half hidden by the underbrush. It was a black face with white eyes and woolly hair! (Probably no Indian of his tribe had ever seen a negro.) After gazing at the novel sight awhile, he grunted, "Ugh! Mucketewees!" (black meat.) He captured the odd animal and carried him to the village, whither came the Indians from far and near to gaze, to wonder, and to speculate. Fortunately for Baptiste, for Chicago and for history, the consensus of opinion called it "bad meat," and so the creature's life was spared.