Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835 / A study of the evolution of the northwestern frontier, together with a history of Fort Dearborn

by Milo Milton Quaife

[690] McCulloch, Early Days of Peoria and Chicago, 108.

To what extent Jean Baptiste Chandonnai made Chicago his home in the period of the second Fort Dearborn is also somewhat uncertain. It is related by Mrs. Baird that he was here in the employ of Kinzie shortly after the return of the troops, and his wife, coming to join him, was a passenger from Mackinac on the same schooner which brought Mrs. Baird and her mother to Chicago. The date of this visit is given as 1816, though it seems probable it actually occurred the following year. During the next few years Chandonnai was engaged in the fur trade in the region tributary to Chicago.[691] What the Indians received from him in exchange for their furs is perhaps sufficiently indicated by a consignment of goods sent to him from Mackinac, September 19, 1818, consisting of four barrels of whisky and six barrels of flour. Evidently the order had called for a larger quantity of fire-water, for the consignment was accompanied by the explanation that no more liquor could be promised because of its dearness and "uncommon scarcity." The next year Chandonnai betrayed the confidence reposed in him by the American Fur Company, by selling his furs to John Crafts and refusing to pay the company for the merchandise with which he had procured them.[692] The latter appealed to Kinzie to exert his influence in its behalf. That he did so with good effect seems evident from a later letter expressing gratitude for his exertions in securing the payment of a portion of the claim against Chandonnai. The writer urges a continuance of these efforts, and asks if a mortgage cannot be secured on the lands granted to Chandonnai by the Indians. What was, apparently, the sequel to this claim appeared fourteen years later in a clause of the Chicago Treaty of 1833. Among the grants of money made to individuals was the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars to Chandonnai, one thousand of which "by the particular request" of the latter was to be paid to Robert Stuart, agent of the American Fur Company.

[691] See on this point the letters of Ramsey Crooks printed in Andreas, History of Chicago, I, 94-95.

[692] Ibid., I, 95.

Perhaps the most picturesque character in the little group of civilian residents of Chicago in the decade which began with the restoration of Fort Dearborn was Jean Baptiste Beaubien. He was descended from an old Canadian family, one of whose members is said to have been a follower of La Salle. About the middle of the eighteenth century a branch of the family established itself at Detroit, where the future citizen of Chicago was born in the year 1787.[693] He early engaged in the Indian trade, and according to the custom of the time married a squaw. He is said to have had a daughter born at Chicago as early as 1805, but the details both of his early migrations and of his marriage alliances are rather hazy. In 1814 he married Josette La Framboise, who was a servant in the family of John Kinzie at the time of the massacre. How soon after this Beaubien made Chicago his permanent place of residence is not certainly known, but in 1817 he purchased a house of John Dean, the army contractor, and thenceforth continued to reside on the Fort Dearborn reservation until, in the early thirties, his attempt to gain title to it precipitated the struggle over the Beaubien Land Claim which became famous in the annals of early Chicago.

[693] Beaubien family genealogy, MS in Chicago Historical Society library.

An interesting feature of the life of Chicago and the adjoining region during the period under consideration was afforded by the periodical visits of the Illinois "brigade" of the American Fur Company. From its headquarters at Mackinac each autumn a number of trading outfits departed for the various trading posts scattered throughout the Northwest. Each brigade was composed of voyageurs organized into boat crews, the number of the latter varying with the importance of the station which constituted the destination of the brigade.[694] The goods were transported in bateaux, each manned by half a dozen men and carrying about three tons of merchandise. The Illinois brigade consisted of a dozen boats carrying, including the families of the traders, about a hundred persons.

[694] On the operations of the American Fur Company see Hubbard, Life, passim.

Each autumn for a number of years this fleet made its way from Mackinac down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and around its southern end to Chicago. From the south branch of the river the boats and goods were forced at the expense of much toil and hardship across the portage and down the Des Plaines until navigable water was reached on the Illinois River. Here the brigade broke up, small parties going to the various trading stations of the Illinois and its tributaries, and the winter was passed in bartering the goods for the furs of the Indians. With the opening of navigation in the spring the outfit reassembled and the return journey to Mackinac was begun. The boats, now laden with furs, were forced up the Illinois and the Des Plaines, the difficulty on the latter stream arising now from the excess of water, rather than from its scarcity, and the labor of stemming the raging current of the swollen stream. The remainder of the journey from Chicago, around the lake to Mackinac, was made with comparative ease.

We are indebted to the recollections of Gurdon S. Hubbard for an intimate picture of the life and activities of the traders who composed the Illinois brigade. Hubbard first visited the Illinois country as a youth of sixteen in the autumn of 1818. Approaching Chicago, the brigade spent the night at the mouth of the Little Calumet River. At dawn the party set out, in holiday attire and with flags flying, upon the last twelve miles of the lake voyage. At Douglas Grove young Hubbard landed, and climbing a tree gazed in wonder upon the first prairie he had ever beheld. In the foreground was a sea of waving grass, intermingled with a profusion of wild flowers; in the distance the groves of timber at Blue Island and along the Des Plaines River. A herd of wild deer appeared in view, while a pair of red foxes emerged from the grass within gunshot of the enraptured youth. To the northward could be seen the whitewashed walls of Fort Dearborn sparkling in the sunlight, while on the blue surface of the lake the brawny voyageurs urged onward the fleet of bateaux, their flashing oars keeping time with the music of the boat song.