Mr. Kinzie had volunteered to accompany the troops in their march, and had entrusted his family to the care of some friendly Indians, who had promised to convey them in a boat around the head of Lake Michigan to a point[AF] on the St. Joseph’s river; there to be joined by the troops, should the prosecution of their march be permitted them.
[AF] The spot now called Bertrand, then known as Parc aux Vaches, from its having been a pasture ground to an old French fort in the neighborhood.
Early in the morning Mr. Kinzie received a message from To-pee-nee-bee, a chief of the St. Joseph’s band, informing him that mischief was intended by the Pottowattamies who had engaged to escort the detachment; and urging him to relinquish his design of accompanying the troops by land, promising him that the boat containing himself and family should be permitted to pass in safety to St. Joseph’s.
Mr. Kinzie declined according to this proposal, as he believed that his presence might operate as a restraint upon the fury of the savages, so warmly were the greater part of them attached to himself and his family.
The party in the boat consisted of Mrs. Kinzie and her four younger children, their nurse Grutte,[AG] a clerk of Mr. Kinzie’s, two servants and the boatmen, besides the two Indians who acted as their protectors. The boat started, but had scarcely reached the mouth of the river, which, it will be recollected was here half a mile below the fort, when another messenger from To-pee-nee-bee arrived to detain them where they were.
[AG] Afterwards Mrs. Jean Baptiste Beaubien.
In breathless expectation sat the wife and mother. She was a woman of uncommon energy and strength of character, yet her heart died within her as she folded her arms around her helpless infants, and gazed upon the march of her husband and eldest child to certain destruction.
As the troops left the fort, the band struck up the Dead March. On they came in military array, but with solemn mien. Captain Wells took the lead at the head of his little band of Miamis. He had blackened his face before leaving the garrison, in token of his impending fate. They took their route along the lake shore. When they reached a point where commenced a range of sand-hills intervening between the prairie and the beach, the escort of Pottowattamies, in number about five hundred, kept the level of the prairie, instead of continuing along the beach with the Americans and Miamis.
They had marched perhaps a mile and a half, when Captain Wells, who had kept somewhat in advance with his Miamis, came riding furiously back.
“They are about to attack us,” shouted he; “form, instantly, and charge upon them.”