When the trader had prescribed for the child, and Black Partridge was about to return to his home, he told his friend of the proposal he had made to Mrs. Lee to become his wife, and the manner in which it had been received.
M. Du Pin entertained some fear that the chief's honorable resolution to allow the lady herself to decide whether or not to accept his addresses might not hold out, and at once entered into a negotiation for her ransom. So effectually were the good feelings of Black Partridge wrought upon that he consented to bring his fair prisoner to Chicago immediately, that she might be restored to her friends.
Whether the kind trader had at the outset any other feeling in the matter than sympathy and brotherly kindness, we cannot say; we only know that in course of time Mrs. Lee became Madame Du Pin, and that the worthy couple lived together in great happiness for many years after.
The fate of Nau-non-gee, a chief of the Calumet village, deserves to be recorded.
During the battle of August 15, the principal object of his attack was one Sergeant Hays, a man from whom he had accepted many kindnesses.
After Hays had received a ball through the body, this Indian ran up to tomahawk him, when the sergeant, summoning his remaining strength, pierced him through the body with his bayonet. The two fell together. Other Indians running up soon dispatched Hays, and not until then was his bayonet extracted from the body of his adversary.
After the battle the wounded chief was carried to his village on the Calumet, where he survived for several days. Finding his end approaching, he called together his young men, and enjoined them, in the most solemn manner, to regard the safety of their prisoners after his death, and out of respect to his memory to take the lives of none of them; for he himself fully deserved his fate at the hands of the man whose kindness he had so ill requited.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This narrative related by two of the survivors, Mrs. John Kinzie and Mrs. Helm, to Mrs. Juliette A. Kinzie, is taken from "Waubun." It was first published in pamphlet form in 1836; was transferred, with little variation, to Brown's "History of Illinois," and to a work called "Western Annals." Major Richardson likewise made it the basis of his two tales, "Hardscrabble," and "Wau-nan-gee."
[2] Burns' house stood near the spot where the Agency Building, or "Cobweb Castle," was afterwards erected, at the foot of North State Street.