CHAPTER VI
THE FOUNDING OF FORT DEARBORN
The strategic value of Chicago as a center of control for the region between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi had been recognized long before our government took the step of establishing a fort there. On more than one occasion during the French régime recommendations were made to the French government in favor of a fort at Chicago. As early as 1697 two Frenchmen, Louvigny and Mantet, conceived the project of making a combined trading and exploring expedition from Canada toward Mexico by way of the Mississippi River, and to this end petitioned the French minister of war for a post at Chicago to serve as an entrepôt for their enterprise.[290] The importance of Chicago in the struggle between the British and the Americans during the Revolution has already been shown. After Wayne's triumph at Fallen Timbers in August, 1794, the British officer, Simcoe, proposed to the Lords of Trade a plan for shutting American traders out of the Mississippi Valley by establishing British dèpôts along the portages leading to it, particularly at the Chicago Portage.[291] The British control of the Northwest which Simcoe was striving to perpetuate was, however, about to cease, and nothing came of his project. Wayne's appreciation of the importance of Chicago was shown by his demand in the Treaty of Greenville that the Indians cede to the United States a tract of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River, to serve as the site for a future fort.
[290] Margry, IV, 9 ff.
[291] Winsor, Westward Movement, 461.
Two facts, both of them of great importance in American history, account for the establishment of Fort Dearborn, eight years after Wayne thus acquired from the Indians the title to its site. One was Wayne's victory over the northwestern tribes, the results of which were registered in this same Treaty of Greenville; the other, the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States in 1803. Probably the first of these would alone have been sufficient to determine the establishment ere long of a fort at Chicago, but the influence of the two combined rendered delay impossible.
The victory of Wayne, by removing the menace of Indian hostilities, made possible the rapid settlement of the region northwest of the Ohio. During the next few years a veritable flood of immigration poured into this Northwest Territory, the portion nearest at hand being, as was natural, first occupied. Within five years of the Treaty of Greenville this portion of the territory was ready for statehood. In 1800, therefore. Congress provided for the separation of the Northwest Territory into two parts, and two years later the eastern section was admitted into the Union as the state of Ohio. The remaining portion became the territory of Indiana with William Henry Harrison, then a young man of twenty-seven, as governor. During the following years the line of white settlement advanced steadily, though more slowly, into the North and West. The two military posts farthest advanced in this direction were Detroit and Mackinac. Neither of these was advantageously situated for the administration of the country stretching from the upper lakes to the Mississippi.
With every passing year the necessity of exercising a firmer control over this region became greater. The settlers must be protected from Indian depredations, and the lawlessness of the traders and other frontiersmen must be curbed. One fact of great importance pertained to the British control of the Indian trade of the Northwest. The surrender of the posts in 1796 had not broken the grip of the traders on this region. Until the close of the War of 1812—and in the remoter portion of the Northwest, for some years after this—the influence of the Canadian traders over the Indians was paramount. It was impossible, therefore, for the United States to exercise an effective control over them, and a garrison to the west of Lake Michigan was needed to assist in wresting this commercial supremacy from the British traders.
The acquisition of Louisiana advanced our western boundary from the Mississippi to the crest of the Rocky Mountains. If before it had been difficult to control our westernmost frontier from Detroit and Mackinac, with this advance it became utterly impossible. New outposts must be established in order to keep pace with both the advancing boundary and the swelling wave of settlement. Chicago, still far in advance of the latter, was the logical place for the new establishment. A garrison here in the heart of the Indian country would serve to protect the settlements of Indiana and lower Illinois, would perfect the communication between the latter and the posts of Detroit and Mackinac, and constitute a convenient center of control for the region between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.[292]
[292] See on this point the letter from Mackinac, September 6, 1803, printed in Relf's Philadelphia Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, November 19, 1803.
Rumors of a purpose to establish a post at Chicago preceded by some years its actual consummation. In the winter of 1797-98 William Burnett, a French trader on the St. Joseph River, informed the Montreal house from which he obtained his supplies for the Indian trade of the expectation that a garrison would be established at Chicago the following summer.[293] What the basis for this expectation was does not appear, but evidently Burnett considered it probable, for in August, 1798, he wrote that he now had reason to expect the garrison would arrive in the fall. The shrewd trader's interest in the matter was due to the fact that, having already a house at Chicago, and "a promise of assistance from headquarters," he would have occasion for "a good deal of liquors," and some other articles, for that post. Thus rum attended the birth, and, as we shall see, was prominent at the downfall, of old Fort Dearborn.