Alarming reports of Indian hostility and depredations came to Chicago during the winter of 1812. Early in March Captain Heald received news from a Frenchman at Milwaukee of hostilities committed by the Winnebagoes on the Mississippi.[567] On April 6 a band of marauders who were believed to belong to the same tribe made a descent upon Chicago.[568] Shortly before sunset eleven Indians appeared at the farm of Russell and Lee some three or four miles from the fort up the South Branch. Lee is said to have settled at Chicago about the year 1805, having received the contract to supply the garrison with provisions.[569] He lived with his family a short distance southwest of the fort, and carried on his farming operations at the place on the South Branch which was later known as Hardscrabble. Russell was evidently the partner of Lee, but aside from this fact nothing is known about him. The farm was under the immediate superintendence of an American named Liberty White, who had lived at Chicago for some time.[570] At the time of the descent of the marauding war party there were three other persons, in addition to White, at the farmhouse, a soldier of the garrison named John Kelso,[571] a boy whose name no one has taken the trouble to record, and a Canadian Frenchman, John B. Cardin, who had but recently come to Chicago.
[567] American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I, 806.
[568] Short reports of the attack by Matthew Irwin and by Captain Heald are printed in Wentworth, Early Chicago, 49-50. Longer and more valuable accounts are contained in the letters of Heald and John La Lime to Captain William Wells, dated April 15 and 13 respectively, printed in the Louisiana Gazette for May 30, 1812. I have made use of the copies of these letters made by Lyman C. Draper, in the Draper Collection, S, Vol. XXVI. The best known account is Mrs. Kinzie's narrative in Wau Bun, 155-60, but its statements require verification.
[569] Statement of William R. Head in his Annals of Chicago, MS owned by his widow. I have not been able to verify it.
[570] Wau Bun, 157. That his first name was Liberty is stated by Heald. That he had lived at Chicago for some time is evident from the occurrence of his name in Kinzie's account books.
[571] La Lime's letter to Wells, as printed in the Louisiana Gazette, May 30, 1812, gives the name of John Kelson. From the similarity of names I infer that the man was John Kelso, a private in Heald's company.
Soon after the arrival of the visitors Kelso and the boy, not liking the aspect of affairs, "cleared out" for the fort. White and Cardin, less apprehensive of a hostile disposition on the part of the Indians, remained and were shortly murdered. The former was "shockingly butchered." He was tomahawked and scalped, his face was mutilated and his throat cut from ear to ear, and he received two balls through his body and ten knife stabs in his breast and hip. It was with reason that Heald declared him to be "the most horrible object I ever beheld in my life." Cardin was shot through the neck and scalped, but his body was not otherwise mutilated. It was Heald's belief that the Indians "spared him a little" out of consideration for his nationality.
Following the murder of White and Cardin, the garrison and the civilian residents of Chicago endured for some time what may fairly be described as a state of siege.[572] The murderers were supposed to belong to the Winnebago tribe, but the efforts of the commander to learn from the neighboring Indians whether the supposition was correct were in vain. Accordingly he forbade the Indians to come to the place until he should learn to what nation the murderers belonged. Kinzie moved his family into the fort, and all of the other residents of the place outside the garrison fortified themselves in the house formerly occupied by Jouett, the Indian agent. Those able to bear arms, fifteen in all, were organized by Heald into a militia company and furnished with arms and ammunition from the garrison store.[573] Parties of savages lurked around, and the whites were forced to keep close to the fort to avoid the danger of losing their scalps. A few days after the murders three of the militia, two half-breeds and a Frenchman, deserted, thus reducing the membership of the company to twelve, the number present at the time of the massacre. The deserters were believed to have gone in the direction of "Millewakii," taking ten or a dozen horses with them.
[572] The narrative at this point is based on the letters of La Lime and Heald to Captain Wells, April 13 and 15, 1812.
[573] Letter of Heald to Captain Wells, April 15, 1812; letter of Sergeant William Griffith to Heald, June 13, 1820, Draper Collection, U, VIII, 88.