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

From the beginning of his term as governor of Indian Territory, Harrison pursued the policy of procuring by treaties of cession the Indian lands. This policy was pressed by him, and later by other representatives of the national government in the Northwest, at every suitable opportunity. To the omnipresent land hunger of the whites the development of the agitation led by Tecumseh, and his brother, the Prophet, was primarily due. The treaties negotiated by Harrison at Fort Wayne in September, 1809, by which almost three million acres of land was conveyed to the whites, especially angered Tecumseh, who threatened to put to death the chiefs who had signed them.[865] His purpose to form an Indian Confederacy to stay the farther advances of the whites and the alienation of the lands belonging to the Indians was boldly avowed to Harrison at Vincennes in August, 1810. He viewed the policy pursued by the United States of purchasing the red man's lands as "a mighty water ready to overflow his people," and the confederacy he was forming among the tribes to prevent any individual tribe from selling without the consent of the others was the dam he was erecting to resist this mighty water.[866]

[865] Supra, p. 191.

[866] Drake, Tecumseh, 129.

Tecumseh's dam, however, proved ineffectual to accomplish its purpose. As well might he seek to turn back the waters of the Mississippi as to stay permanently the westward tide of white settlement. By treaty after treaty the red man's birthright was pared away, until he had lost possession of practically all of the old Northwest. The methods pursued in the negotiation of all these treaties were similar. They will be sufficiently illustrated in the account of the two Chicago treaties of 1821 and 1833.

About the middle of the year 1804 the Sac Indians murdered three Americans who had settled above the mouth of the Missouri River.[867] Governor Harrison journeyed to St. Louis to demand from the representatives of the tribe to which the murderers belonged satisfaction for the offense. Advantage was taken of the situation to obtain from the Sacs and Foxes a cession of lands. By a treaty concluded November 3, 1804, in return for an insignificant consideration,[868] the two tribes ceded over fifty million acres of land in Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin to the United States. The portion of the cession east of the Mississippi included all the land between that stream and the Illinois River and its tributary, the Fox, extending northward to a line drawn from the latter stream to a point on the Wisconsin, thirty-six miles above its mouth. But this magnificent cession was ultimately to cost the Americans far more than the paltry sum stipulated in the treaty. Black Hawk and others of his faction among the Sacs protested that the chiefs who made the cession had acted without the authorization or knowledge of their people,[869] and the disputes engendered over the terms of the cession furnished the principal cause of the Black Hawk War.

[867] Dawson, Harrison, 58 ff.

[868] Goods to the value of $2234.50 were given to the Indians, and the payment of an annuity of $1,000 was promised.

[869] Black Hawk, Life, 27-28.

In August, 1816, the Indian title to that portion of the Sac and Fox cession lying north of a line drawn due west from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan was revived.[870] At the same time the United States secured possession of a strip of land lying along Lake Michigan ten miles north and ten miles south of the mouth of the Chicago River, and extending thence in a general southwesterly direction to the Fox and Illinois rivers, so as to give the whites control of the route by the Chicago River and Portage to the Illinois. Control over this strip of land was desired to facilitate the building of the proposed canal. "Of all the Indian treaties ever made, this will be remembered when all others, with their obligations, are forgotten."[871] The sectional surveys of the country lying on either side of the zone included in this cession of 1816 were made at different times. The section lines were not made to meet each other, and diagonal offsets along the entire length of the Indian grant resulted. So long as the present system of land surveys endures, all sectional maps of this portion of Illinois will be disfigured by the triangular fractions which resulted from this error in the original surveys.

[870] Treaty of August 24, 1816, Treaties ... from 1778 to 1837, 197.