[622] Niles' Register, June 4, 1814.
The names of the nine men who were thus restored to their countrymen almost two years after the massacre deserve a place in our narrative. They were James Van Horn, Dyson Dyer, Joseph Noles, Joseph Bowen, Paul Grummo, Nathan Edson, Elias Mills, James Corbin, and Fielding Corbin. With the exception of Grummo, no record has been found of the further career of these men. His story, written down over four score years after the massacre, possesses considerable interest, and contains, moreover, certain details not preserved elsewhere.
In later life Grummo, or De Garmo, as he seems to have been known, settled at Maumee City, a few miles from Toledo, Ohio. Here on a small reservation in the early thirties was the gathering-place and council house of the surviving remnants of the Pottawatomie, Wyandot, and other tribes. Here, too, gathered various traders, among others Robert Forsyth, and James Wolcott, whose brother, Alexander, was Indian agent at Chicago until his death in 1830. From 1837 until about the year 1841 Charles A. Lamb, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of the story, was the nearest neighbor of Grummo at Maumee City.[623] He describes him as a tall, well-built man, who always insisted that he was a participant in the Fort Dearborn massacre.
[623] Letter of Charles A. Lamb, August 24, 1893, MS in Chicago Historical Society library.
As Lamb remembered his story, Grummo represented that he was employed as a scout in the summer of 1812, carrying dispatches between Fort Dearborn and Fort Wayne. After the battle he was adopted by a chief whose son he had killed in the contest. His new-found father took him, in company with others, in a northwesterly direction. After traveling many days, they crossed the Mississippi above the Falls of St. Anthony, the object of their journey being to induce the tribes to join them in the war against the Americans. Returning from this mission, Grummo's captors sold him to the British at Detroit, "or somewhere around there." By them he was taken to Louisburg where he was kept till the close of the war, when he found his way to New York.
Such, in brief, was Grummo's story as recorded by Lamb a half-century after he had heard it. In some respects it is perplexing, and many of its details are untrustworthy. There is no reason to question Lamb's sincerity. He frankly admits his liability to error in telling it after the lapse of so great a time. It is evident, too, that Grummo drew a long bow in relating his own experiences. This, however, is so common a characteristic of old soldiers' stories that it need occasion no particular surprise. Lamb further records that though Grummo, whose story he has related only briefly, added many things to prove his veracity, yet he was never able to secure a pension. Both General Cass and General John E. Hunt exerted their influence in his behalf, but on the records of the War Department he had been set down as a deserter, and this charge could not be disproved.
The fortunes of the officers, Heald and Helm, and their wives, may be followed with less difficulty, though even here we encounter at times perplexing contradictions. The Indians who secured possession of Captain Heald and his wife at the close of the battle belonged to different bands. Owing to the entreaties of Mrs. Heald, however, and the efforts of Chandonnai, the two were brought together.[624] On the day after the battle their captors set out with them for the St. Joseph River, coasting around the southern end of Lake Michigan in a canoe.[625] The trip consumed, according to Heald's journal, three days, although the distance is only about one hundred miles.
[624] The details as to Chandonnai's agency in the matter vary somewhat in the different accounts; it is clear that he exerted his influence, whether by purchasing Mrs. Heald from her captives or otherwise, to bring the Captain and his wife together, and that the Healds afterward regarded him in the light of a benefactor.
[625] The principal sources for the captivity of the Healds are the following: Heald's official report of the massacre (Appendix IV); his Journal (Appendix III); the Heald papers in the Draper Collection; the Darius Heald narrative of the massacre as reported, first, to Lyman C. Draper (Appendix V); and second, to Joseph Kirkland (Magazine of American History, XXVIII, 111-22). A brief account gained from Sergeant Griffith, the companion of the Healds until they reached Pittsburgh, is contained in McAfee, History of the Late War, 100-101.
Practically the only details recorded of this journey are contained in the narrative of Darius Heald to Kirkland in 1892. That these details, based on second-hand information and written down at so late a date, cannot be relied upon is obvious. Yet they are of sufficient interest to merit inclusion here. Both Heald and his wife were badly wounded, the former being shot in the thigh and through the right forearm, and the latter having a half-dozen wounds in all, no one of which, apparently, was dangerous. After the party had traveled for many hours around the end of the lake a young deer was seen, coming down to the water in a clump of bushes to get a drink. The travelers drew close to the shore and the deer was shot by an Indian. They then pitched camp and dressed the animal. Using the hide as a kneading board Mrs. Heald stirred some flour which they had brought along in a leather bag into a stiff paste which she wound around sticks and toasted over the fire. Captain Heald afterward declared that this was the best bread he ever ate.