[778] Ibid., 518.
The failure of the trading-house system constitutes but one chapter in the long and sorrowful story of the almost total failure of the government of the United States to realize in practice its good intentions toward the Indians. The factory system was entered upon from motives of prudence and humanity; that it was productive of beneficial results cannot be successfully disputed; that it failed to achieve the measure of benefit to the red race and the white for which its advocates had hoped must be attributed by the student, as it was by Calhoun, "not to a want of dependence on the part of the Indians on commercial supplies but to defects in the system itself, or in its administration."[779] The fatal error arose from the timidity of the government. Instead of monopolizing the field of the Indian trade, it entered upon it as the competitor of the private trader. Since its agents could not stoop to the practices to which the latter resorted, the failure of the experiment was a foregone conclusion. Yet it did not follow from this failure that with a monopoly of the field the government would not have rendered better service to the public than did the private traders. Lacking the courage of its convictions, it permitted the failure of perhaps the most promising experiment for the amelioration of the condition of the red man upon which it has ever embarked.
[779] Ibid., 181-85.
CHAPTER XIV
WAR AND THE PLAGUE
Almost a dozen years had passed since the coming of Captain Bradley's troops to Chicago to plant again the banner of civilization on the spot where savagery had triumphed in 1812, and nearly half as many since the garrison had been withdrawn from Fort Dearborn in 1823, when the humdrum quiet of the little settlement was broken by new rumors of war. Two Indian wars and a visitation of war's twin scourge of humanity, the plague, coming in quick succession, served to relieve the monotony of life at Chicago during the next few years.
The first of the Indian outbreaks, the Winnebago War, occasioned little actual fighting, but it filled the frontier settlements with alarm, caused the movement of several hundred soldiers, many of them for hundreds of miles, and was concluded by a formal treaty between the United States and the disaffected tribes. That it was not attended by more bloodshed was due to the prompt display by the government of an overwhelming military force which awed the red man into submission.
Driven to desperation by the encroachments and aggressions of the whites, and encouraged, possibly, by the removal of the garrisons from Chicago and Prairie du Chien, the Winnebagoes in the summer of 1827 were in a mood for war. The first outbreak occurred on the upper Mississippi toward the end of June. A keelboat, returning from a trip to Fort Snelling with provisions for the garrison at Fort Crawford, was attacked by the Winnebagoes near the mouth of the Bad Axe River. On the same day a murderous assault was made upon the family of a Canadian half-breed named Gagnier, living a short distance from Prairie du Chien.[780] The nature of the immediate provocation for the attack upon the keelboat is a matter of dispute. The assault upon the family of Gagnier, however, was deliberately planned by a band of Winnebagoes, which had suffered great indignities at the hands of the whites.[781] The leaders of the band deliberated over their wrongs and resolved to enforce the native law of retaliation. The choice of the agent to commit the act fell upon Red Bird, a chief who was beloved by the Indians and respected and admired by the whites. Noted for his friendly disposition toward the whites, Red Bird undertook the commission of his band with the intention of pretending to fulfil it and reporting to his tribe that he had been unable to find a victim.
[780] On these events see Wisconsin Historical Collections, passim.
[781] Ibid., V, 201 ff.
This plan, unfortunately, miscarried. Being upbraided for his conduct and taunted as a coward, Red Bird resolved to redeem his reputation and set out for Prairie du Chien, accompanied by WeKau and a third Indian, determined to execute his commission in grim earnest. The chance presence of an old trader at the house of Mr. Lockwood, which the party first visited, caused them to refrain from committing there the intended violence.[782] Crossing the prairie they came to the house of Gagnier, about three miles from the town. Here they found the husband, his wife, a babe of eleven months, and a discharged soldier named Lipcap. The presence of the visitors at first excited no particular comment. They asked for food and Mrs. Gagnier had turned to provide it when the bloody work began. Gagnier was shot by Red Bird and Lipcap by the third Indian, while Mrs. Gagnier engaged in a struggle with WeKau in which she succeeded in wresting from him his gun. He turned and ran and she pursued him, but overcome by excitement or fear, and finding herself powerless to fire the gun, she made her way to the village and gave the alarm. Meanwhile WeKau again entered the cabin and scalped the babe, apparently executing the horrible task with deliberation in order to secure as much hair with the scalp as possible. When a posse arrived from Prairie du Chien the murderers had departed; the babe was still alive and, strangely enough, recovered from its ghastly wounds and grew to womanhood.