In consequence of this bold and manly appeal, tardy measures were instituted by Proctor which resulted in the rescue of a number of the captives. Woodward was assured that all possible measures would be taken to secure their release, and two weeks later Proctor, in reporting the correspondence to his superior, announced that the chiefs of the tribe concerned in the massacre had been informed of his desire that the captives be brought to him.[616] Weeks passed, however, and it was not until the departure of Robert Dickson for the West in February, 1813, that any active measures were taken to recover them.
[616] Proctor to Woodward, October 10, 1812, Michigan Pioneer Collections, XV, 163; Proctor to Evans, October 28, 1812, ibid., 172.
Dickson, as we have already seen,[617] had led a motley band of northwestern Indians to the assault on Mackinac in the summer of 1812. In November he proceeded to Montreal and Quebec to lay before the authorities there a plan he had conceived for securing the active co-operation of the northwestern tribes in the prosecution of the war against the Americans.[618] He proposed that large stores of supplies be sent to Chicago and Green Bay in the spring of 1813, which points were the most convenient for rendezvous. He himself, if given the necessary authority and assistance, would proceed by way of Detroit and Chicago to the Mississippi and collect the warriors at these points, whence they could be led to the seat of war around Detroit in time to participate in the operations of 1813.
[617] Supra, p. 214.
[618] For Dickson's project see Michigan Pioneer Collections, XV, 180-82, 202-4, 208-11, 316—21 et passim.
This plan was accepted by the military authorities and Dickson set out for the West. On February 15 he was at Sandwich and a month later was among the Pottawatomies of St. Joseph.[619] Here he was informed that the Fort Dearborn captives still in the hands of the Indians numbered seventeen men, four women, and several children. He at once took steps to secure them, and expressed confidence that he would succeed in getting them all. On March 22 he was at Chicago, and here penned the description of the fort to which reference has been made in a preceding chapter.[620] From this point he hastened on toward the Mississippi. Early in June he was back at Mackinac at the head of six hundred warriors, and in addition to these he reported the dispatch of eight hundred by land to Detroit.[621] That, in the face of such exertions as these achievements imply, he should have found any time to bestow on the Fort Dearborn captives, speaks well for both his energy and his humanity.
[619] Ibid., XV, 250, 258.
[620] Supra, p. 631.
[621] Michigan Pioneer Collections, XV, 321-23.
Apparently in the press of other matters Dickson neglected to report further as to his measures for the relief of the captives. In May, 1814, however, nine surviving members of the Fort Dearborn garrison arrived at Plattsburg, New York, from Quebec.[622] The story they told was that after the massacre they had been taken to the Fox River country and there distributed among the Indians as servants. In this situation they remained about nine months, when they were brought to Chicago, where they were purchased by a "French trader" acting under the instructions of General Proctor. Doubtless the "trader" was Dickson, whose arrival at Chicago, March 22, 1813, falls in the ninth month after the massacre. From Chicago the captives were sent on to Amherstberg, or Maiden, and thence to Quebec, where they arrived November 8, 1813.