[599] Including Burns, who was wounded in the action and killed by a squaw about an hour afterward.
Following the surrender came the customary scenes of savage cruelty. The friendly Indians could answer only for the prisoners in their possession. Some of the wounded were tortured to death, and it is not improbable that some of the prisoners were burned at the stake. The more detailed story of their fate, along with that of the other survivors of the battle, is reserved for the following chapter. For the remainder of the day and the ensuing night the victors surfeited themselves with the plunder and the torture. The following day the plundering of the fort and the distribution of the prisoners were completed, the buildings were fired, and the bands set out for their several villages. The corpses on the lake shore, bloody and mutilated, were left to the buzzards and the wolves, and over Chicago silence and desolation reigned supreme. In March, 1813, Robert Dickson passed through Chicago on a mission to rouse the northwestern tribes against the Americans. He reported[600] that there were two brass cannon, one dismounted, the other on wheels but in the river. The powder magazine was in a good state of preservation and the houses outside the fort were well constructed. He urged the Indians not to destroy them, as the British would have occasion to use them if they should find it necessary to establish a garrison here.
[600] Michigan Pioneer Collections, XV, 262.
CHAPTER XI
THE FATE OF THE SURVIVORS
Twenty-nine soldiers, seven women, and six children remained alive at the close of the battle among the sand dunes to face the horrors of captivity among the Indians. These figures do not include Kinzie, the trader, and the members of his family, who were regarded as neutrals and were not included by the Indians in the number of their prisoners. Concerning the fate of some of the survivors we have full information, but of others not even the names can be given with certainty, and of their fate we can speak only in general terms.
The student of the Fort Dearborn massacre finds himself hampered by a notable dearth of official records. This is due in part to the destruction, at the time of the massacre itself, of such as existed at Chicago; to an even greater extent, perhaps, to the destruction of the records of the War Department at the time of the looting of the Capital by the British in 1814. Finally, by a departmental ruling promulgated in 1897, The historical investigator has in recent years been denied the cold comfort of access to such fragmentary records as do in fact exist in the files of the War Department.[601] For such official documents as have been available for this study, therefore, the writer is indebted to other sources. Some of them were copied by earlier investigators in the field, before the War Department files were sealed to the student, and have been printed in various places. Others have been found in manuscripts or in printed works existing outside the government archives.
[601] This prohibition was removed in 1912, too late, however, to be of any advantage to the author in the preparation of this work. For this reason the statements made have been allowed to stand unchanged.
The last existing muster-roll of the Fort Dearborn garrison prior to the massacre has hitherto been supposed to be that for December, 1810.[602] However, the Heald papers belonging to the Wisconsin State Historical Society include the muster-roll for the period ending May 31, 1812.[603] It shows a garrison strength of fifty-five men, which was probably the number present at the time of the massacre. No list of those slain in the massacre has ever been made, nor is there any comprehensive account of the names and fate of the survivors. The attempt to construct one[604] from the various fragmentary sources of information in existence has proved more successful than could perhaps have been reasonably anticipated. Yet it reveals certain discrepancies which cannot be harmonized until additional sources of information shall be uncovered. This is not surprising in view of the confusion attendant upon the massacre, and the scattering far and wide of the survivors following it. The passage of time and the absence of records make it impossible at this date to check up the errors and fill in the gaps in our information. The hardships endured or the adventures encountered by those whose experiences have been recorded may have been no greater or more noteworthy than by those whose fate is now buried in oblivion. Yet the historian must deal with the information he can obtain, and this chapter of necessity concerns itself largely with a comparatively small number of the survivors whose story has been preserved.
[602] Printed in Wentworth, Early Chicago, 88.
[603] The muster-roll is printed for the first time as Appendix VIII.