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

"Now listen to us: The Great Spirit above has appointed this day for us to meet together. I shall now deliver my sentiments to you, the Fifteen Fires. I view you lying in a gore of blood; it is me, an Indian, who has caused it. Our tomahawk yet remains in your head; the English gave it to me to place there.

"Elder Brother: I now take the tomahawk out of your head; but with so much care, that you shall not feel pain or injury. I will now tear a big tree up by the roots, and throw the hatchet into the cavity which they occupied, where the waters will wash it away where it can never be found. Now I have buried the hatchet and I expect that none of my color will ever again find it out....

"Brothers: Listen! I now wipe your body clean from all blood with this white soft linen [white wampum], and I do it with as much tenderness as I am capable of. You have appointed this house for the chiefs of the different tribes to sit in with you, and none but good words ought to be spoken in it. I swept it clean; nothing impure remains in it....

"Brother: I clear away yon hovering clouds, that we may enjoy a clear, bright day, and easily see the sun, which the Great Spirit has bestowed on us, rise and set continually"

The negotiations were at length satisfactorily concluded, and all professed themselves satisfied with Wayne's demands. The treaty recognized the American title to the lands north of the Ohio bounded by a line drawn from the mouth of the Kentucky River to Fort Recovery, thence in a general easterly direction to the Muskingum, and along this river and the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie; in addition various reservations, aside from the one at Chicago, were made, most of them for the establishment of forts, and the free passage of the rivers and portages connecting the proposed chain of forts was guaranteed. In Illinois the grant included reservations at Chicago, at Lake Peoria, and at the mouth of the Illinois, and the free use of the Chicago Harbor, River, and Portage, and the Illinois River. On the other hand the Indian title to the soil was recognized, some twenty thousand dollars worth of presents were distributed, and the payment to the Indians of annuities aggregating nine thousand five hundred dollars was promised.

The treaty brought to an end forty years of warfare in the valley of the Ohio, during which it is estimated five thousand whites were killed or captured.[288] For three years past the war had cost the government of the United States over a million dollars a year. The peace which Wayne brought to the frontier endured for fifteen years, being broken only by Tecumseh's war, which shortly merged into the greater struggle between Great Britain and the United States in 1812. By that time the in-rush of settlers and the passing away of the older generation had wrought a material change in the condition of the Northwest; so that the Treaty of Greenville may fairly be said to have endured until the conditions which called it forth had passed away.

[288] Winsor, op. cit., 494.

While Wayne was pushing his campaign against the northwestern Indians, which the British officials feared would end in their overthrow at Detroit, Washington dispatched John Jay on a diplomatic mission to England which was to result in the peaceable surrender of the northwestern posts. The differences between the two countries which had arisen from the unfulfilled treaty of 1783 had now become so serious that there was grave danger of a warlike termination. In the hope of preventing this calamity, therefore, Washington appointed Jay, in the spring of 1794, as a special envoy to England to treat of the matters in dispute.

During the summer the negotiations with the British government went slowly forward and in November a treaty was concluded. By the Americans its terms were received with bitter disgust, and there is even yet a difference of opinion among students over the question of the wisdom of Jay's conduct of the negotiations. The western Americans were especially loud in their denunciation of Jay and the treaty.[289] Yet they obtained by it the surrender of the British posts in the Northwest, a measure which constituted the logical completion of Wayne's work and was absolutely essential to the permanence of the peace so recently established on the frontier. It was stipulated that the posts should be evacuated on June 1, 1796, and Washington appropriately appointed Wayne to superintend the taking possession of them by the United States. As the appointed time drew near the British were more ready to make the surrender than were the Americans to receive it. At our own request, therefore, possession was retained until the arrival of the relieving forces at the various posts. During the summer and fall the transfers were made, the last post which was taken over by the Americans being Mackinac in October. Our boundaries in the Northwest, nominally established by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, were at last achieved in reality. The Indians had been conquered and Great Britain had retired; the Northwest was won for the United States.

[289] Roosevelt, op. cit., IV, 194-97.