[358] Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9, 1803.
[359] Barry Transcript.
[360] This document is preserved in the Draper Collection, Forsyth Papers, I, Doc. No. I.
[361] Wilson, Chicago from 1803 to 1812.
But for a single exception, all the reports concerning La Lime's character which have come to light are highly creditable to him. His few remaining letters show him to have been a man of some education. The esteem in which Jouett held him is shown by his naming a son after him.[362] Doctor Smith, who was living with him in the winter of 1803-4, described him as "a very decent man and a good companion."[363]
[362] Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, 108.
[363] Letter of Dr. William Smith to James May, December 9, 1803.
In the summer of 1812, a few weeks before the massacre. La Lime was stabbed to death by Kinzie in a personal encounter just outside the entrance to Fort Dearborn. Unless new sources of information shall come to light, the responsibility for this affray will never be determined. La Lime's side of the story has not been preserved, except in the form of unreliable verbal tradition, which pictures Kinzie in the light of aggressor and murderer.[364] The Kinzie family tradition represents that La Lime, insanely jealous over Kinzie's success as a trader, treacherously attacked him, armed with a pistol and dirk, and was stabbed to death by Kinzie in self-defense.[365] Practically all writers on Chicago history hitherto have accepted this version,[366] but it is as little worthy of credence as the contrary one. The interest in the killing of La Lime must, in the nature of things, have soon given place to the general anxiety over the situation produced by the hovering war cloud which was now about to burst. Within four months came the massacre,[367] as the result of which over half of the inmates of the frontier settlement were slain and the remainder scattered far and wide. But few of them ever returned to Chicago, and these, like Rip Van Winkle, drifted back after the passage of years, as to a new world. That the fate of La Lime should be obliterated by the horrors and confusion of a three years' war was only natural. When in a later generation interest in his fate was revived only the version of it originating with the relatives and friends of the slayer gained the public ear, and this, for obvious reasons, put the onus of the affray on the slain. The fact of La Lime's death at the hands of Kinzie is clear; the responsibility for it cannot, in the light of existing information, be determined.
[364] Head Papers. Head was acquainted with various pioneer Chicagoans, and his statements purport to be drawn from such sources. His methods of work were such, however, that but little confidence can be had in his statements.
[365] The details of the affair vary, naturally, in the different accounts. For the Kinzie family tradition see Eleanor Kinzie Gordon, John Kinzie, the "Father of Chicago," 8-9; letter of Gurdon S. Hubbard, in Wentworth, Early Chicago, Fergus Historical Series, No. 16, 83; Mrs. Porthier's narrative in Andreas, History of Chicago, I, 105. Hubbard procured his information from the members of Kinzie's family. Mrs. Porthier, who in old age claimed to have been an eye-witness of the killing of La Lime, was an inmate of the Kinzie household for several years following 1816.