In preparing the work I have made as diligent a study of the sources as practicable, at the same time availing myself freely of the studies of others in the same field. With one exception acknowledgment of my obligations to the latter is made in the footnotes. The manuscript of a lecture by the late Professor Charles W. Mann on the Fort Dearborn massacre was put at my disposal. I have used it as far as it served my purpose without attempting to cite it in the footnotes.

In many places I have broken new ground and I can scarcely expect my work to be entirely free from error. I am particularly conscious of this in connection with chap, xiii on the Indian Trade, a subject to which a volume might well be devoted. In controversial matters I have written without fear or favor from any source. If in many cases my conclusions seem to differ from those of other writers, I can only say that the words of a recent historian with reference to history writing in the Middle Ages, "Recorded events were accepted without challenge, and the sanction of tradition guaranteed the reality of the occurrence," apply with almost equal force to much of the literature pertaining to early Chicago.

I desire to express my obligation for courtesies rendered, or facilities extended, to the Chicago Historical Society, the Wisconsin State Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, the Division of Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the War Department. I am indebted also for many favors to Miss Caroline McIlvaine, librarian, and Mr. Marius Dahl, record clerk, of the Chicago Historical Society; to Mr. C. M. Burton, of Detroit; to the descendants of Nathan Heald, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas McCluer and Mrs. Arthur McCluer, of O'Fallon, Mo., Mrs. Lillian Heald Richmond and Dr. and Mrs. Ottofy of St. Louis, and Mr. and Mrs. Wright Johnson, of Rutherford, N.J.; and to my wife and to my father-in-law, Rev. G. W. Goslin, for unwearied assistance in the preparation and revision of the manuscript. Finally I wish to record my deep obligation to Dr. Otto L. Schmidt, president of the Illinois State Historical Society, for much sympathetic advice and encouragement.

M. M. Quaife
Chicago
September, 1913

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTERPAGE
I.The Chicago Portage[1]
II.Chicago in the Seventeenth Century[21]
III.The Fox Wars: A Half-Century of Conflict[51]
IV.Chicago in the Revolution[79]
V.The Fight for the Northwest[105]
VI.The Founding of Fort Dearborn[127]
VII.Nine Years of Garrison Life[153]
VIII.The Indian Utopia[178]
IX.The Outbreak of War[195]
X.The Battle and Defeat[211]
XI.The Fate of the Survivors[232]
XII.The New Fort Dearborn[262]
XIII.The Indian Trade[285]
XIV.War and the Plague[310]
XV.The Vanishing of the Red Man[340]
Appendix I:Journal of Lieutenant James Strode Swearingen[373]
Appendix II:Sources of Information for the Fort Dearborn Massacre[378]
Appendix III:Nathan Heald's Journal[402]
Appendix IV:Captain Heald's Official Report of the Evacuation of Fort Dearborn[406]
Appendix V:Darius Heald's Narrative of the Chicago Massacre, as Told to Lyman C. Draper in 1868[409]
Appendix VI:Lieutenant Helm's Account of the Massacre[415]
Appendix VII:Letter of Judge Augustus B. Woodward to Colonel Proctor concerning the Survivors of the Chicago Massacre[422]
Appendix VIII:Muster-Roll of Captain Nathan Heald's Company of Infantry at Fort Dearborn[425]
Appendix IX:The Fated Company: A Discussion of the Names and Fate of the Whites Involved in the Fort Dearborn Massacre[428]
Bibliography[439]
Index[459]

CHAPTER I
THE CHICAGO PORTAGE

The story of Chicago properly begins with an account of the city's natural surroundings. For while her citizens have striven worthily, during the three-quarters of a century that has passed since the birth of the modern city, to achieve greatness for her, it is none the less true that Nature has dealt kindly with Chicago, and is entitled to share with them the credit for the creation of the great metropolis of the present day. If in recent years the enterprise of man rather than the generosity of Nature has seemed chiefly responsible for the growth of Chicago, in the long period which preceded the birth of the modern city such was not the case; for whatever importance Chicago then possessed was due primarily to the natural advantages of her position.

Since this volume is to tell the story of early Chicago, concluding at the point where the life of the modern city begins, it is not my purpose to dwell upon the natural advantages which today contribute to the city's prosperity. Her central location with respect to population, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of square miles of country as fair, and supporting a population as progressive, as any on the face of the globe; her contiguity to the wheat fields of the great West; her situation in the heart of the corn belt of the United States; the wealth of coal fields and iron mines and forests poured out, as it were, at her feet; her unrivaled systems of transportation by lake and by rail; how all these factors, reinforced by the daring energy of her citizens, have combined to render Chicago the industrial heart of the nation is a matter of common knowledge. That in the days before the coming of the railroad or the settler, when for hundreds of miles in every direction the wilderness, monotonous and unbroken, stretched away, inhabited only by the wild beast and the wild Indian; when only at infrequent intervals were its forest paths or waterways traversed by the fur trader or the priest, the representatives of commerce and the Cross, the two mightiest forces of the civilization before the advance of which the wilderness was to give way; that even in this far-away period Nature made of Chicago a place of importance and of concourse, the rendezvous of parties bent on peaceful and on warlike projects, is not so commonly understood.

The importance of Chicago in this early period was primarily due to the fact of her strategic location, whether for the prosecution of war or of commerce, at the head of the Great Lakes on one of the principal highways of travel between the two greatest interior waterway systems of the continent, those of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence and the Mississippi River. The two most important factors in the exploration and settlement of a country are the waterways and mountain systems—the one an assistance, the other an obstacle, to travel.[1] The early English colonists in America, settling first in Virginia and Massachusetts and gradually spreading out over the Atlantic coastal plain, were shut from the interior of the continent by the great wall presented by the Allegheny Mountains. The French, securing a foothold about the same time at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, found themselves in possession of a highway which offered ready access into the interior. The importance of the rivers and streams as highways of travel in this early period is difficult to realize today. The dense forests which spread over the eastern half of the continent were penetrated only by the narrow Indian trail or the winding river. The former was passable only on foot, and even by pack animals but with difficulty.[2] The latter, however, afforded a ready highway into the interior, and the light canoe of the Indian a conveyance admirably adapted to the exigencies of river travel. By carrying it over the portages separating the headwaters of the great river systems the early voyageurs could penetrate into the heart of the continent.