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LIBRARY
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VERITAS
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LE PLURIBUS UNUM
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QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOE NAME
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9701
C37
THE LAST OF THE ILLINOIS,
AND
A SKETCH
OF THE POTTAWATOMIES.

READ BEFORE THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, DEC. 18, 1870,
BY
JOHN DEAN CATON, LL. D.
CHICAGO:
RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY, PRINTERS, 51 CLARK STREET.
1870.
·

On the evening of December 13, 1870, the Honorable JOHN D. CATON, LL. D.,
late of the Supreme Court of Illinois, read before the Chicago Historical
Society a paper entitled "The last of the Illinois, and a Sketch of the
Pottawatomies." Upon the conclusion of which, on motion of Mr. Arnold,
seconded by Jas. L. Stark, Esq., it was unanimously—
Resolved, That the thanks of the Society are tendered to the Hon. John
Dean Caton for the able and interesting paper he has read, and that he be
requested to place the same among the archives of the Society and furnish
a copy for publication.

ADDRESS.
J
OF the ancient civilizations we know but little. The
beginnings of the Egyptians, the Etrurians, the Grecians,
the Romans, and even the Milesians, are either entirely
shrouded in the dark shadows of the far distant past, or
are only lit up by the feeble rays afforded by uncertain
fables or mythical traditions. Even far beyond these, great
peoples lived, whose existence and civilization are testified to,
by broken monuments and ruined architecture, widely scattered,
especially over Arabia and some parts of Africa, while in our own
country and particularly in Yucatan, we see by their works
that nations have lived of whom we know absolutely nothing
as to whence they came or whither they have gone.
Geologists tell us of older peoples who occupied many por-
tions of our globe, whose times they have divided into differ-
ent ages, as, the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age,
because of the materials which they used in their arts, but of
their coming and their going they can tell us nothing, except
that they existed one after another and ceased to be. Whence
came the mound-builders of our own land, or those who
worked the copper mines of Lake Superior, or those whose old
inscriptions are found on the great stones of New Mexico, or
when they disappeared, none can tell; they lived, made their
record and are gone, all else is as silent and as dark as the tomb
that covers them. Yet, in all these records history is written,
dim and shadowy though it be, still it is history, and we seize

4
upon each sentence of it as upon a precious treasure, and
we ponder it and strain our eyes to find more than it really
tells, but the misty veil of antiquity hangs over it, and
finally we turn away unsatisfied.
When America was first visited by Europeans, at least those
who recorded what they saw, it was occupied by barbarous
tribes, some much more advanced than others, but still all were
barbarians. Tradition, among the more advanced, pretended
to tell how their ancestors had come from more northern
climes, till finally they settled in the milder countries of Mexico.
or Peru, where they attained a sort of semi-civilization far in
advance of the wilder nations, either to the north or south of
them, but whether their ancestors were the mound-builders or
the copper-workers, who once lived where we live, and were
driven away by fierce northern hordes, more athletic than
they, or peacefully left the land in search of a climate less
rigorous, we can never know, nor can we satisfy ourselves of
the degree of credence which we should place in their own
traditions as told by their old men to the first Europeans who
saw them and by whom their stories have been handed down
to us.
We do know, certainly, that when the Atlantic coast was
first visited by white men who have transmitted to us accounts
of what they saw, they found here tribes of Indians who sub-
sisted principally by fishing and the chase, although they
practiced agriculture to a limited extent, for they supplied the
first immigrants to New England with corn from their hidden
stores. The early explorers occasionally found the same grain
cultivated in the valley of the Mississippi, and Lewis and Clarke
procured supplies of it on the Upper Missouri. Still their
agriculture was too limited to have had much influence on the
density of population; and without the cultivated products of
the soil no country can sustain a large population of men, if


5
we except some tropic l countries where spontaneous fruits are
in perpetual season, and even there the aboriginal population
was found to be very sparse as compared with countries where
agriculture furnishes the principal sustenance to man.
From the changes which had recently taken place among the
original inhabitants of this country, when they were first dis-
covered, as told by their old men, and also from the changes
which occurred after their discovery, but before the extermi-
nating influence of civilization bore upon them, we may safely
assume that national and even tribal formations had been
quite recent, yet recent as they no doubt were, we know almost
nothing of them. While we know that some nations become
totally extinct by reason of aboriginal warfare alone, we cannot
point to a single instance of the birth and growth of any
native tribe unless the uniting of the remnants of several
broken tribes into one, may be so considered.
At last we are forced back to the conclusion that it is only
comparatively in modern times and of civilized communities
that history, whether written in books or among the rocks, tells
us of the origin of nations. To this we can mention one
notable exception. By divine interposition, we are told of
the beginning and of the progress, and by profane history of
the final extinction of one of the great ancient nations of the
earth. There we are told of its founder, Abraham, of its
struggles, of its triumphs and its misfortunes, of its victories
and its defeats, of its pure worship and its gross idolatry, and
of its final extinction as a nation under the Roman Empire.
Necessarily, the history of the aborigines of this country is
confined to the period since their first discovery by the educated
man, and to the few uncertain traditions told by them of their
comparatively very recent times, and most of these traditions
as handed down to us are purely of a mythological character,
and serve to teach us of the nature of the imagination or mental


6
condition of the native rather than of actual facts that had
gone before. Nor do those who have made the study of the
native American a specialty seem to have given that study the
form of connected history to any large degree, and he that
would inform himself of such history must gather it from a
thousand different sources, picking up a grain here and there,
as he can find it.
More than thirty-seven years ago, when I first became a
citizen of Chicago, I found this whole country occupied as the
hunting grounds of the Pottawatomie Indians. I soon formed
the acquaintance of many of their chiefs, and this acquaintance
ripened into a cordial friendship. I found them really intelli-
gent and possessed of much information resulting from their
careful observation of natural objects. I traveled with them
over the prairies, I hunted and I fished with them, I camped
with them in the groves, I drank with them at the native
springs, of which they were never at a loss to find one, and I
partook of their hospitality around their camp fires.
Wild scenes have always had a charm for me. I have ever
been a lover of nature, and the enjoyment of those scenes
when prairie and woodland, lake shore and river were almost
everywhere as nature made them, have left behind a pleasing
memory which sometimes makes me almost wish that I could
live over again my younger days. Since nature's handiwork
has been defaced all around us by the hand of civilized man,
I love to hie away to distant shores and the far-off mountains,
and with a few friends of tastes similar to my own, enjoy the
wild scenery among the rock-bound islands of Puget's Sound, or
the still solitude of the high Sierras. Who would have thought
at the time of which I speak that he who then here enjoyed the
charms which nature throws over all her works, would ever seek
the far-off scenes of the Pacific slopes in which to indulge his
favorite reveries? There are some who hear me now, who


7
remember the lake beach with its conical sandhills covered over
by the evergreen juniper whose fragrance loaded with a rich
aroma the soft breeze as it quietly crept in from the rippling
waters of the lake.
That old lake shore, fashioned as God had made it by his
winds and waves for ten thousand years before, had more charms
for me, than since the defacing hand of man has builded there
broad avenues and great marble palaces, which are as far
beneath the works of nature's Architect, as man himself is
beneath Him who made all things well.
I thought that then a romantic place fit for the mating of native
lovers, in which to say soft words, and I felt assured that it was
so thought by them when once I was called upon to unite in
wedlock there a happy pair, whose ambition it was to conform
to the white man's mode in that solemn rite, and, as the
dusky bride explained, that it might last forever.
As might have been anticipated, neither history nor tradition
pretends to go back to the origin of any of the native tribes
who occupied this land when first explored by civilized man.
At that time the country where we live was principally
occupied by the Illinois Indians who were an important people,
who ranged from the Wabash to the Mississippi, and from the
Ohio even to Lake Superior, although there were a great many
other tribes occupying the same territory. Their chief location
was in Northern Illinois. Here was their home, and their
great metropolis was where Utica now stands, in La Salle
county. There then stood the largest city ever built by north-
ern natives. It was a delightful place in the bosom of a beautiful
valley, and the city occupied all the intervening space between
the river and the bluff, nearly a mile in extent. Their great
cemeteries there testify to the populousness of the place, even
were the testimony of the first discoverers wanting. If we do
not know of the beginning of any native nation, we are credi-



8
bly told of the extinction of this great people, and that too
within a century after they were found so populous and so
prosperous by the enterprising explorers.
Soon after their discovery by La Salle, the great Iroquois
confederation, whose battle fields were strewn with their vic-
tims almost from the Atlantic coast to the Wabash, and from
the Great Lakes, and even north of them, to the Alleghanies
and the Ohio, finally extended their enterprises to the Illinois.
With a great slaughter they defeated this hitherto invincible
people, laid waste their great city, and scattered them in
broken bands over their wide domain. From this terrible
blow they never recovered. For a century later they struggled
with waning fortunes against northern encroachments, till
finally they were exterminated by the Pottawatomies and the
Ottawas, at Starved Rock, the Fort St. Louis of La Salle,
which overlooks the site of their great city and the scene of
their first great defeat and slaughter by the conquering Iroquois,
as I shall presently relate. There still stands this high isolated
rock as it has stood for thousands of years gone by, the swift
current of the river bathing its feet on one side, its summit
overlooking the broad valley and the many wood-clad islands
many miles above and below it, fit monument to the great
departed who had, during many long years of peace and
security, looked upon its impregnable heights as a secure
refuge in case of disaster. Alas! if it was secure against the
approach of human hands, gaunt famine could scale its
ascents and do its deadly work. There is and ever will be a
charm about the place, both from its own romantic surround-
ings and the melancholy story of the bloody scenes it has
looked down upon. While the visitor stands upon its native
battlements, silently pondering what has been told him,
insensibly his imagination carries him back to ages long ago,
and he thinks he hears the wail of woe, oft and oftentimes
for

9
repeated, and then again the song of revelry and joy sung by
those departed long before the white man saw it. The ances-
tors of my ancient friends were responsible for the last sad
catastrophe.
The Pottawatomies were a tribe of the great Algonquin
.confederation, whose power was so severely felt by the British
forces when at war with France, in the middle of the last cen-
tury, though we do not know the story of their individual
prowess in that sanguinary warfare.
When Fathers Allones and Doblon first visited Green Bay,
and there established a mission, just two hundred years ago,
they found the Pottawatomies established on those verdant
shores, and this is the first mention I can find of them in his-
tory. That was then their settled home, though they roamed,
far away, for they were in the habit of extending their visits
to the shores of Lake Superior. In 1671 they are mentioned
as met with at La Point, on that Lake, by the missionary
fathers, not as residents, but as visitors. At that time they
were not known south of the lakes, for when Joliet and Mar-
quette returned from their discovery of the Mississippi, by way
of the Illinois River, in 1674, they met none of the Pottawato-
mies here.
In 1675, Marquette, no doubt by invitation of the Illinois.
Indians, whom he had met the year before on his return with
La Salle from the Mississippi, came from Green Bay to estab-
lish a Mission here. In this journey he was attended by a
party of Illinois Indians, and also by a band of the Pottawat-
omies. So far as we know, these were the first of the tribe
who ever saw the country south of Lake Michigan. They
coasted the west side of the lake in open boats or canoes, [in
the latter part of the season, when the lake is boisterous and
forbidding. It was a perilous and fatiguing voyage of four
months duration, and sorely tried the endurance of the zealous
Uorm
10
missionary. They at last reached Chicago, just as winter was
closing in, and proceeded up the South Branch of the river to
where Bridgeport now stands, and there built a hut, in which
the missionary wintered. After the lonely and tedious winter
was passed, he proceeded down the Illinois River to the great
city of the Illinois, below Starved Rock, and there established
the first Mission ever founded in the Illinois country, and
named it Kaskaskia.
How soon after this the Pottawatomies left their old home
on Green Bay, and sought more hospitable regions further
south, we are not informed; nor can we tell whether the emi-
gration was gradual, or if they broke up all together, but as we
find them in their southern homes in different bands, the prob-
abilities are that they left in parties. A portion settled on the
Saginaw Bay, in Michigan, who were subsequently known as
the Pottawatomies of Saginaw, or of Huron. Others descended
as far as Detroit, and settled in that neighborhood. Others
found their way to the St. Joseph River, on the east side of
Lake Michigan; and others, it may be presumed, came directly
to Northern Illinois, though it is possible they spread from
Michigan into Illinois. The precise date of these several
migrations we cannot give, but Cragon and Bouquet found them,
in the middle of the last century, occupying the country about
Detroit and Fort St. Joseph; and we find no account of them.
within the last hundred years and more at Green Bay. From
these explorers we get the first intimation of their numbers,
and yet this is of the most unsatisfactory kind. They set them
down at three hundred and fifty; and Dodge, a quarter of a
century later, places them at four hundred and fifty, while
Hutchins places them at a still lower number than the first.
Upon these numbers we can place but little reliance; at best
it could have been but imperfect estimates, including no doubt
only those bands whom they met at Fort St. Joseph and
Mou
11
}
Detroit, without taking into account those at Saginaw or in
Illinois. We may safely assume, also, that these figures are
designed only to express the number of their warriors, for Sir
William Johnson, who assembled the Algonquin confederation
at Niagara in 1763, informs us, that of the nineteen hundred
and thirty warriors there assembled, four hundred and fifty
were Pottawatomies, or, according to the old orthography
Pouteotamies. With them and their associate warriors, General
Bradstreet there concluded a treaty which pacified all the
Indian tribes bordering the upper lakes, who had hitherto been
such inveterate enemies to the British Government and the Eng-
lish immigrant. A reasonably conciliatory course with them
since, and a moderate share of good faith towards them, have ena-
bled the Canadas to live with those who resided on the north
shores, in amity in times of peace, and depend upon them as
allies in time of war. The number of warriors representing the
Pottawatomies at the Algonquin convocation at Niagara, shows
that the whole tribe must have been largely in excess of the
numbers given by Bouquet and others, and their report so
nearly approximates to the number of warriors at Niagara, as to
convince us at once that they spoke only of their able-bodied
men. Nor is it very probable that all the warriors which the
several bands of that tribe could furnish, made the long jour-
ney to Niagara to attend the council. The fact that the Potta-
watomies furnished nearly one-fourth of the representatives in
that council of the whole Algonquin confederation, should
convince us of the commanding importance of this tribe in that
powerful association of the Indians, and so were they the
last, south of the lakes, as we shall see, to yield up their place
to the irresistible advance of civilization.
The fraternal relations existing between the Pottawatomies
and the Ottawas, were of the most harmonious character.
They lived together almost as one people, and were joint
12
owners of their hunting grounds. Their relations were quite as
intimate and friendly as among different bands of the same tribe.
Nor were the Chippewas scarcely more strangers to the Potta-
watomies and the Ottawas than the latter were to each other.
They too claimed an interest in the lands occupied, to a cer-
tain extent by all jointly, so that all three tribes joined in the
first treaty for the sale of their lands ever made to the United
States.
Chicago was ever an important point in the estimation of
the Pottawatomies and their associates, and here was the coun-
cil held which resulted in that first treaty in 1821, when the
three tribes named ceded to the United States five millions of
acres in Michigan.
Since their emigration from the north, a sort of distinction
had grown up among the different bands of the Pottawatomies,
arising from their several locations, which seem to have
stamped upon their tenants distinct characteristics. Those
occupying the forest lands of Michigan and Indiana, were called
by themselves and by the traders the Indians of the Woods,
while those who roamed these great grassy plains were called
the Prairie Indians.
The former were much more susceptible to the influence of
civilization than the latter. They devoted themselves, in a
very appreciable degree, to agriculture, and so supplemented
the fruits of the chase very largely in their support. They
welcomed the missionary among them with a warm cordiality.
They listened to his teachings, and meekly submitted to his
admonitions. They learned by heart the story of our cruci-
fied Redeemer, and with trembling voices recounted to each
other the sufferings of the cross. They bent the knee and
bowed the head reverently in prayer, and raised their melodi-
ous voices in sacred songs taught them by the holy fathers.
They received the sprinklings with holy waters, and partook
13
of the consecrated elements, believing devoutly in their saving
grace. They went to the confessional with downcast looks,
and with deep contrition told the story of their sins, and with
a radiant joy received the absolution, which in their estimation
blotted them out forever. Here indeed was a bright field of
promise to those devoted missionaries, who deeply felt that to
save one heathen soul from the awful doom which they
believed awaited all those who died without the bosom of the
church, was a rich reward for a whole life of pinching priva-
tion and of severe suffering: and their great ambition was to
gather as many redeemed souls as possible to their account,
each of which should appear as a bright jewel in the crown
which awaited them in that future state to which we are all so
rapidly hastening.
It was very different, however, with the Prairie Indians.
They despised the cultivation of the soil as too mean even for
their women and children, and deemed the captures of the chase
as the only fit food for a valorous people. The corn which grew
like grass from the earth which they trod beneath their feet, was
not proper meat to feed their greatness. Nor did they open
their ears to the lessons of love and religion tendered them by
those who came among them and sought to do them good. If
they tolerated their presence they did not receive them with
the cordiality evinced by their more eastern brethren. If they
listened to their sermons in respectful silence they did not receive
the truths they taught, with eager gladness. Even if they
believed for the moment what they were told, it made no per-
manent impression on their thoughts and actions. If they
understood something of the principles of the Christian relig-
ion which were told them, they listened to it as a sort of
theory which might be well adapted to the white man's condi-
tion, but was not fitted for them, nor they for it. They
enjoyed the wild roving life of the prairie, and in common
1!!
14
with almost all other native Americans, were vain of their
prowess and manhood, both in war and in the chase. They did
not settle down for a great length of time in a given place, but
roamed across the broad prairies, from one grove or belt of
timber to another, either in single families or in small bands,
packing their few effects, their children and infirm on their little
Indian ponies. They always traveled in Indian file upon well
beaten trails, connecting, by the most direct routes, prominent
points and trading posts. These native highways served as
guides to our early settlers, who followed them with as much
confidence as we now do the roads laid out and worked by
civilized man.
Northern Illinois was more particularly the possession of
the Pottawatomies, but, as before stated, I have sought in
vain for some satisfactory data to fix the time when they first
settled here. They undoubtedly came in by degrees, and by
degrees established themselves, encroaching at first upon the
Illinois tribe, advancing more and more, sometimes by good-
natured tolerance, and sometimes by actual violence. I have
the means of approximating the time when they came into
exclusive possession here. That occurred upon the total
extinction of the Illinois, which must have been sometime
between 1766 and 1770. Méachelle, the oldest Pottawatomie
chief, when I became acquainted with them, thirty-seven years
ago, associated his earliest recollection with their occupancy of
the country. His recollection extended back to that great
event in Indian history, the siege of Starved Rock and the
final extinction of the Illinois tribe of Indians, which left his
people the sole possessors of the land. He was present at the
siege and the final catastrophe, and although a boy at the time,
the terrible event made such an impression on his young mind,
that it ever remained fresh and vivid. I am indebted to Mr.
William Hickling for assisting my memory on a point so
important.
:
15
The death of Pontiac, the great Ottawa chief, occurred in
1766. He was the idol of his own people, and was beloved
and obeyed scarcely less by the Pottawatomies. They believed
that the Illinois Indians were at least accessory to his murder,
and so held them responsible, and consequently the Ottawas
and Pottawatomies united all their forces in an attack upon
those whose deadly enemies they had now become. I am not
satisfied that their previous relations had been those of cordial
friendship, but if the peace had not been broken by open war
there was that bad blood existing between them which must
have arisen between those who were making and those who
were suffering encroachments.
The Illinois Indians never fully recovered from the great
calamity, which they had suffered a century before at the
hands of the Iroquois. By that their spirit and their courage
seemed broken, and they submitted to encroachments, from the
north by their more enterprising neighbors, with an ill grace,
no doubt, but without protecting their rights by force of arms,
as they would have done in former times, and sought to revenge
themselves upon those upon
upon whom they looked as their actual
enemies in an underhand and treacherous way.
In the war thus waged by the allies against the Illinois,
the latter suffered disaster after disaster till the sole remnants of
that once proud nation, whose name had been mentioned with
respect from Lake Superior to the mouth of the Ohio, and from
the Mississippi to the Wabash, now found sufficient space upon
the half acre of ground which crowns the summit of Starved
Rock. As its sides are perpendicular, except on the south
where it may be ascended with difficulty by a sort of natural
stairway, where some of the steps are a yard high and but a
w inches wide, and not more than two can ascend abreast,
ʼn men could repel ten thousand with the means of warfare
en at their command. The allies made no attempt to take

16
the fort by storm, but closely besieged it on every side. On
the north or river side, the upper rock overhangs the water
somewhat, and tradition tells us how the confederates placed
themselves in canoes under the shelving rock and cut the
thongs of the besieged when they lowered their vessels to
obtain water from the river, and so reduced them by thirst, but
Méachelle, so far as I know, never mentioned this as one of the
means resorted to by the confederates to reduce their enemies,
nor from an examination of the ground do I think this probable,
but they depended upon a lack of provisions, which we can read-
ily appreciate must soon occur to a savage people, who rarely
anticipate the future in storing up supplies. No improvident
people could have subsisted long in such a place. How long
they did hold out Méachelle did not and probably could not
tell us; but at last the time came when the unfortunate rem-
nant could hold out no longer. They awaited but a favorable
opportunity to attempt their escape. This was at last afforded
by a dark and stormy night, when led by their few remaining
warriors, all stole in profound silence down the steep and
narrow declivity to be met by a solid wall of their enemies
surrounding the point where alone a sortie could be made,
and which had been confidently expected. The horrid scene
that ensued can be better imagined than described. No quarter
was asked or given. For a time the howlings of the
tempest were drowned by the yells of the combatants and the
shrieks of the victims.
Desperation lends strength to even enfeebled arms, but
no efforts of valor could resist the overwhelming numbers,
actuated by the direst hate. The braves fell one by one,
fighting like very fiends, and terribly did they revenge them-
selves upon their enemies. The few women and children
whom famine had left but enfeebled skeletons, fell easy victin
to the war-clubs of the terrible savages, who deemed it as mu

17
a duty and almost as great a glory to slaughter the emaciated
women and .the helpless children as to strike down the men
who were able to make resistance with arms in their hands.
They were bent upon the utter extermination of their hated
enemies, and most successfully did they bend their savage
energies to the bloody task.
Soon the victims were stretched upon the sloping ground
south and west of the impregnable rock, their bodies lying stark
upon
the sand which had been thrown up by the prairie winds.
The wails of the feeble and the strong had ceased to fret the
night winds whose mournful sighs through the neighboring
pines sounded like a requiem. Here was enacted the fitting
finale to that work of death which had been commenced,
scarcely a mile away, a century before by the still more sav-
age and terrible Iroquois.
below, where
Still, all were not destroyed. Eleven of the most athletic
warriors, in the darkness and confusion of the fight, broke
through the besieging lines. They had marked well from their
high perch on the isolated rock, the little
their enemies had moored at least a part of their canoes, and to
these they rushed with headlong speed, unnoticed by their foes.
Into these they threw themselves, and hurried down the
rapids below. They had been trained to the use of the
paddle and the canoe, and knew well every intricacy of the
channel, so that they could safely thread it, even in the dark
and boisterous night. They knew their deadly enemies would
soon be in their wake, and that there was no safe refuge for
them short of St. Louis. They had no provisions to sustain
their waning strength, and yet it was certain death to stop by
the way. Their only hope was in pressing forward by night
and by day, without a moment's pause, scarcely looking back,
yet ever fearing that their pursuers would make their appearance
around the point they had last left behind. It was truly a race
2
18
for life. If they could reach St. Louis, they were safe; if
overtaken, there was no hope. We must leave to the imagin-
ation the details of a race where the stake was so momentous
to the contestants. As life is sweeter even than revenge, we
may safely assume that the pursued were impelled to even
greater exertions than the pursuers. Those who ran for life
won the race. They reached St. Louis before their enemies
came in sight, and told their appalling tale to the commandant of
the fort, from whom they received assurances of protection, and
were generously supplied with food, which their famished con-
dition so much required. This had barely been done when
their enemies arrived, and fiercely demanded their victims, that
no drop of blood of their hated enemies might longer circulate
in human veins. This was refused, when they retired with
impotent threats of future vengeance, which they never had
the means of executing.
After their enemies had gone, the Illinois, who never after
even claimed that name, thanked their entertainers, and, full
of sorrow, which no words can express, they slowly paddled
their way across the river, to seek new friends among the tribes
who then occupied the southern part of this State, and who
would listen with sympathy to the sad tale they had to relate.
They alone remained the broken remnant and last representa-
tives of their once great nation. Their name, even, now must
be blotted out from among the names of the aboriginal
tribes. Henceforth they must cease to be of the present, and
could only be remembered as a part of the past. This is the
last we know of the last of the Illinois. They were once a
great and a prosperous people, as advanced and as humane as
any of the aborigines around them; we do not know that a
drop of their blood now animates a human being, but their
name is perpetuated in this great State, of whose record of
the past all of us feel so proud, and of whose future the
hopes of us all are so sanguine.
19
Till the morning light revealed that the canoes were gone,
the confederates believed that their sanguinary work had been
so thoroughly done that not a living soul remained. So soon
as the escape was discovered, the pursuit was commenced, but
as we have seen, without success. The pursuers returned dis-
appointed and dejected that their enemies' scalps were not
hanging from their belts. But surely blood enough had been
spilled-vengeance should have been more than satisfied.
I have failed, no doubt, to properly render Méachelle's
account of this sad drama, for I have been obliged to use my
own language, without the inspiration awakened in him by the
memory of the scene which served as his first baptism in blood.
Who can wonder that it made a lasting impression on his
youthful mind? Still, he was not fond of relating it, nor would
he speak of it except to those who had acquired his confidence.
and intimacy. It is probably the only account to be had related
by an eye-witness, and we may presume that it is the most
authentic, and may well deserve preservation, and so may be
worthy of a place in the archives of this Society, whose proper
mission it is to gather up and bring to light whatever still
remains to be gathered from the memories of those who are fast
fading away, of scenes whose theatre was the land we live in,
and of peoples who once occupied this territory. The few
dim lights still remaining will soon be put out, and darkness
and oblivion must shroud forever all that is then unrecorded.
This great event in Indian history secured to the Pottawato-
mies all the territory then belonging to the Illinois, and the
exclusive right to which was undisputed by other tribes. It
extended their possessions to the lands of the Peorias on Peoria
lake. They occupied to the Wabash as far south as Danville
and even beyond. On the other side they occupied to the
Rock river, though their right to a strip of land on the east
side of that river was disputed by the Sac and Fox Indians who
20
ranged the prairies west of there and beyond the Mississippi.
They extended north into Wisconsin as far as Milwaukee,
though their northern boundary was never well defined, but
their friendly relations with the Chippewas prevented this from
ever becoming a source of disagreement between them. After
the extermination of the Illinois, their general condition was
that of peace, and I have learned of few incidents since worthy
of record. As before intimated they had a perpetual difficulty
with the Sacs and Foxes about the lands bordering on the east
side of Rock river, and when the braves of the contestants
met on the disputed territory they fought it out, but I have
not learned that the war was often carried beyond the con-
tested grounds, though the eastern boundary of these was
quite undefined.
As a tribe, the Pottawatomies may not have taken an active
part against the United States in the war of 1812, yet it is
certain that many of their young chiefs and braves did so.
On this subject they were extremely reticent. At one time,
when riding over the prairie south of Blue Island, in 1833,
with Billy Caldwell, when the old chief as usual was answer-
ing my questions about the past and what portion of the
country he had visited, as it seemed inadvertently, he com-
menced giving an account of an expedition of the British
from Canada across to Ohio, of which he and a number of his
warriors formed a part, but he had hardly got them landed on
our shores, when he seemed to remember that I was an Ameri-
can and that it was better not to enlighten me further on the
subject, and he broke off suddenly, nor could I by any means
prevail upon him to return to the subject.
During the Black Hawk war, as it was called, in 1832, as a
people they remained loyal to the United States, but it was with
great difficulty that many of the young men were kept from
participating in the affray with the Sacs and Foxes. But the
•
•
21
part they acted in that affair may be found in the written
history of the times.
Chicago was ever a favorite resort of the Pottawatomies.
Here they chose to hold their great councils, and here they
concluded the last treaty with our Government as they had the
first, as I have already stated, twelve years before. This last
treaty was held in 1833, and I was a daily attendant upon the
deliberations of the council. By this time the Ottawas and
the Pottawatomies had become so blended and intermixed
that they had become practically one people, and were gener-
ally designated by the latter name. I do not remember the
number of Indians in town at the time of the treaty, but the
assemblage was by no means confined to the chiefs who par-
ticipated in the deliberations. There were certainly several
thousand natives here, who were supplied with regular rations
of beef and flour by the Government, and it was manifest that
they were quite willing to protract the conference so long as
these should last. At the close of each important delibera-
tion, especially if much progress seemed to have been made, a
keg of twisted plug tobacco was rolled into the council house,
the staves cut in the middle with an ax, and the chiefs
told to help themselves. This was accompanied with a box
of white clay pipes. They helped themselves with great deco-
rum, and even some ceremony.
By this last treaty, concluded at Chicago, in 1833, the
Indians disposed of all their remaining lands to the United
States, except some specific reservations to some of their chiefs,
and agreed to remove to a limited location assigned them west
of the Missouri river. When the treaty was finally concluded
and the presents all distributed, and no more rations served
out, they gradually dispersed till only those who resided in and
about Chicago remained. For two years longer this people
continued among us, subsisting as they had done before, noth-
22
name.
ing worthy of note, so far as I know, occuring in the meantime.
In 1835, and for the last time, the whole assembled at
Chicago, to receive their annuity from the Government,
and to make their final start for their new home. I was
absent at the time of their assemblage, and have no means
of stating at what date they began to make their
appearance in the town, for now Chicago had really
begun to present an appearance which would well justify the
Here for the first time, many who had through their
whole lives been in the habit of visiting this favorite location,
when the rank grass grew waist high where the Tremont and the
Sherman houses now stand, must have been deeply impressed
with the marks of civilization vastly more extensive than any
they had ever seen before or been able to comprehend. It assured
them, and they comprehended it, that they were already strangers
in their native land. That a mightier race had come, so far
their superior that they must fade away before it. It is
emphatically true of all our American Indians, that they
cannot exist, multiply, and prosper in the light of civilization.
Here their physical vigor fails, their reproductive powers
diminish, their spirit and their very vitality dwindle out, and
no philanthropy, no kindness, no fostering care, of govern-
ment, of societies, or of individuals, can save them from an
inevitable doom. They are plainly the sick man of America;
with careful nursing and the kindest care, we may prolong
his stay among us for a few years, but he is sick of a disease
which can never be cured except by isolating him from civili-
zation, and remanding him to nature's wildness, which in truth
has more charms in many cases for even the white man, than
the refinements and the restraints of the white man's mode of
life. Our tastes for these are the results of artificial training,
and our tendency is constantly to relapse to a wilder life in
the woods and in the mountains. The bivouac of the soldier


23
has a charm to which he often recurs with animated pleasure.
The camp-fire of the hunter has a fascination which he who
has enjoyed it can never forget. And in our earliest childhood
we showed our natural tastes and inclinations by listening to
stories of these, with more avidity than any other. Mayne
Reid built his hopes on this juvenile taste, which he knew was
stronger than any other, when he wrote his charming stories
which have made his name so popular, yes, and so dear, too, to
the rising generation. Accounts of huntings and fishings, of liv-
ing in the woods and in the plains, or in some sweet little nook
at the foot of the mountain, down which the babbling brook
comes from the melted snows far above, and where nature
in her unbroken beauty and her sublimity reigns around in
her supreme silence, and there is no mark and no sound of
civilization near,-these have fascinations for even the white
race as well, which are entirely wanting in the most glowing
accounts of cathedrals, and palaces, and pictures, descriptions
of which fail to interest those whose tastes have not been
cultivated up to their full appreciation. If a love of nature
in her wildest moods and scenes be a relic of barbaric taste,
which civilization has failed to eradicate, then to that extent,
at least, I am a savage still.
This tendency in the white race to revert to what we may
term the natural tastes, is strongly manifested, whenever we see
one taken in infancy and brought up among savages. Almost
always he is the greatest savage of them all, notwithstanding the
hereditary influence through many generations of those culti
vated tastes and habits which distinguish the civilized man
from the savage. This observation may not be confined to the
case cited, although that is perhaps the most convincing of
this tendency to revert to the savage state. We often see cases
where men have grown to maturity in the midst of civilized
society, uniting themselves with the native tribes, and enjoy-
24
ing that life better than the former, and chosing to spend their
days with their new found friends, although it involves a sacri-
fice of all those ties which so strongly bind us to friends and
kindred and early associations. In such cases we rarely find
them practicing those arts which they had early learned, or
those habits of industry which is the distinguishing character-
istic of civilized man. It is undoubtedly true, in these latter
cases, that he who becomes a savage after puberty, has an
exceptional inclination to revert to the wild state; still the
number is so considerable as to show us that civilization has
not been so long continued as to wholly change our natures,
and that it is almost, if not entirely, artificial.
I think the facts will warrant the conclusion that this ten-
dency to reversion is much stronger in the male than the female.
In the few instances where the white female has been reared in
savage life, and has then been reclaimed, she has more readily
conformed to civilized habits, and has shown less longing for
the wild scenes among which she was reared; and when she
has been introduced to savage life after maturity, she seems
always happy to escape it. In observing this fact, however,
we ought not to forget that the harder lot of the female among
savage peoples may tend to make her more willing to escape
from what is really a state of bondage and servitude, than with
the man, who is in every sense an equal, or, from his higher
intellectual endowments, may most likely occupy a superior
position.
Reverse the state of things, and how rarely do we find the
savage ever civilized.
In the numerous instances where the
savage infant has been removed from the influences and
allurements of his ancestors, and reared entirely among us, and
taught all that civilization and Christianity could teach him,
but very few have been wholly weaned from the tastes and
inclinations which they have inherited from their savage ances-

25
tors. Some notable and brilliant exceptions are no doubt to
be met with, but they are so rare as to inspire rather our
remark and admiration than a well grounded hope that we can
ever succeed in reclaiming them as a people.
The native American is in some respects a proud and a sen-
sitive being, and is not wanting in reflective powers. When
brought in contact with civilization, he recognizes his inferiority,
and appreciates his inability ever to overcome it. He feels
that he cannot live with the stranger, except as an inferior, and,
inspired by his native pride, he would rather cease to be than
to do this. He appreciates his inevitable doom. He ceases to
hope, and then comes despair, which contributes more than all
else to hasten the result which he foresees. While all have
seen from the beginning that the aborigines melt away and die
out before the advance of civilization, in spite of the most
humane efforts to produce a different result, we may not have
appreciated all the causes which have contributed to this end.
Those which have been the most readily understood, because
the most patent, are the vices and diseases and poisonous drinks
which the white race has introduced among them from the very
first. If these were the only causes we might deem it possible,
by municipal regulations, to remove them. While this would
be a great boon which civilization undoubtedly owes to the
original owners of the soil where we are so rapidly expanding
into a great nation, I am satisfied it would not secure the great
end which philanthropy must most ardently desire. Still they
would not amalgamate with civilization, nor become civilized
as a separate people. They can only live and prosper and
multiply by continuing as their ancestors have lived, in a wild
state, roaming over large areas sparsely populated, depending
upon what they can secure of nature's raising, and when their
numbers become too great for subsistence upon such supplies,
they must become reduced by wars, disease or famine.
C
26
The views I have suggested, of the effect upon the mind
and the sensibilities of the Indian, which is produced by his
observations of advancing civilization as it intrudes upon him,
and its reflected influence upon his physical organization, I
think well illustrated and confirmed by the observations of Mr.
Sproat in his "Scenes and Studies of Savage Life." He
employed a large number of natives about his saw-mills at
Barclay Sound, on Vancouver's Island. Here the natives
were settled around him in comfortable dwellings with their
families, and worked promiscuously with the white laborers.
The strictest temperance was enforced throughout the settle-
ment, and no violence was permitted toward the natives, but
they were treated with the utmost kindness and fairness.
They were well fed, well clothed, and carefully taught. Here
they were surrounded with all the best influences of civiliza-
tion, and as few of the vices as we inay expect to find, when
the red man is brought in contact with the white.
For a time all seemed to go on well, and the experiment
promised a success. At length, however, a change became
observable, especially among the Indians who lived nearest the
white settlements. A few of the sharpest of the young natives
had become offensively European, as he calls it, but the mass
of the Indians had ceased to visit the settlement in their free,
easy and independent way, but lived listlessly in their villages,
brooding seemingly over heavy thoughts. They seemed to
have acquired a distrust, nay, almost a disgust for themselves.
At first they had looked upon mills and machinery, upon steam-
ships and upon great houses, indeed upon all the wonderful works
of the new comer, with curiosity and interest, but now, with dis-
trust, with disgust, and even with despair; the effect of this de-
spair was now manifest. They even began to abandon their old
tribal habits, practices and ceremonies. Presently, without any
apparent cause, an unusual amount of sickness was observed
3
27
among them, and the death-rate was largely increased, and so
continued during the five years that our author remained
among them. Nobody molested them. Notwithstanding all
their comforts and all the care bestowed upon them they sunk
into a gradual but sure decay.
.The light of civilization instead of warming them into new
life seemed to bring a blight upon them; they felt that they
were an inferior race. They lacked the energy, and therefore
the ability, to become and live as civilized men, and their
proud hearts were crushed at the thoughts of living with the
white race as inferiors and therefore a degraded race, and then
necessarily followed disgust and despair, and then came disease
and death.
Had they lacked that lofty pride and that love of indepen-
dence which are so marked a characteristic of our Indians, they
might have enjoyed the comforts which civilization brought
them, without mortification at the consciousness of living as
inferiors among a superior race. But no kindness, no assistance,
no proffered recognition of equality, could hide from their
view that they were and must be inferiors, while they could in
contentment brook no superiors in fact.
In several cases advanced aboriginal Indian tribes, have by act
of Congress been declared citizens and endowed with all the
rights and privileges of citizenship. Still they were conscious
of their inability to properly exercise and enjoy those rights
and privileges. They knew they could not exercise the fran-
chise side by side with the white man, with the same degree of
intelligence and judgment, and so they scorned to use it.
Perhaps it would have been better for them could they have
ignored the real distinction which existed between them and
the white race, and persuaded themselves, or been persuaded
by others, that they were the equals of any. They had too
much shrewdness to be thus blinded, and so they recognized a
..
+
28
;
truth which another disposition would have concealed from
them, and submitted to what seemed to be a fate, in a sort of
reckless, sullen silence, at least till a possible opportunity
should occur for striking a blow, though it might be an
expiring one, for what they believed existence; and if not for
existence then for revenge-if not for the future then for the
past.
Laying aside what all must recognize as palpable evils
introduced among them, as fraud, whisky, and demoraliza-
tion, there is, upon a deeper look beneath the surface, a fatal
difficulty which all the kindness and service which civilization,
philanthropy and Christianity can render them cannot over-
come.
The proud and haughty chieftain clearly sees in the coming
of the stranger, and in his proffered kindness, the unavoidable
degradation of his people from that lofty estate of proud inde-
pendence which his forefathers maintained, and that at last,
after being driven from their envied inheritance, and finding
no place of rest but in the grave itself, their final ex-
tinction from the face of the earth. It is a sad picture, and
yet it stands out before us in the light of the past as if painted
on the wall before us by the Divine finger. We may not deny
that the sacrifice is necessary to promote the greatest good to
the greatest number, but surely we may heave a sigh of sym-
pathy for the victim whose immolation is necessary to carry
out even a Divine plan. And so may we have some compas-
sion for him if in his death-throws he manifests his savage and
untamable nature. If it was his misfortune to be born a
savage, with no rights which the white man is bound to
respect, then it was his misfortune also to be born with a nature
which renders him incapable of civilization, a lofty desire for
independence, a profound detestation for everything like ser
vitude, a deep-seated sentiment of revenge, and, above all, a
I

29
total inability to appreciate how it is that he has no rights
which he may call his own, and which even a superior race
should regard.
We must admit that even our boasted civilization has
its strange phases, and sometimes its manifest inconsist-
encies. We repeat the maxim that might makes right
always with reproach, and yet act upon it whenever the public
weal is supposed to require it. Perhaps the truest and the
best justification which we can plead for insisting upon taking
the lands of the aborigines whenever we wish them, using no
more force than is necessary to accomplish what we deem
necessary—whether the owner is willing to sell them or not-
is that a few useless savages, who can do no good for the world
at large, and little good even for themselves, must not stand in
the way of the march of civilization; that God made the earth
and all that is upon it for His own honor and glory, and that
both they and we are but tenants at His will; and that it is His
undoubted right, whenever in His good pleasure He sees fit, to
eject those who in His estimation do Him no honor, and replace
them by those who may contribute more to His glory, and that
thus He is working out His great scheme conceived from the
beginning of all time. I say, if we can but thus console
ourselves that in what, to the superficial observer seems to be
spoliations of the weak by the strong, we are but instruments
in the hands of the Almighty to work out His great purposes
and to execute His solemn decrees, then, indeed, we may feel that
we have washed our hands in innocency. For myself, I have
never been a very ardent believer in what is sometimes called
special missions, and merely suggest this as the most plausible
justification which I have ever been able to contrive. Still,
I do believe that my old friends did not see it exactly in that
light when they turned their backs upon Chicago, the scene of
so many of their grave councils and of their happy gatherings
30
1
-when they looked for the last time upon the ever bright waters
of the lake, and bent their slow and reluctant steps to a land
of which they knew not, and in which they would be strangers;
and yet there were old men among them who could have told
them that their fathers had with bloodier hands expelled
another nation who had occupied the land before them, and
that no doubt the title had been thus transferred many times,
the conveyance always sealed by the blood of the last owner.
At this last gathering of the tribe at Chicago the total num-
ber of souls was about five thousand. While here they were
well fed by the Government; and when they went they were
removed by the Government under the charge of the late
Captain Russell. By him they were transported to their new
home on a reservation assigned them by the Government in
Clay county, Missouri, opposite Fort Leavenworth. Almost
from the beginning a feeling of hostility was manifested
towards them by the citizens of Missouri, which finally
resulted, at the end of two years, in another removal by the
Government, when they were located in Iowa, near Council
Bluffs. Here, again, their home was of short duration, and
they were removed a third time by the Government to their
present location in Kansas, where they have remained for over
thirty years. This reservation, however, they have now sold,
and are about to remove for a fourth time within little more
than a third of a century. Their new location is in the Indian
country south and west of Kansas. How long it will be
before the pressure of advancing civilization will again push
them on in search of a new home, we cannot certainly predict.
We may safely say, however, that it cannot be very long.
We may scarcely hope that they will ever find a quiet resting
place above the earth.
In their Kansas home, the Indians of the woods have con-
tinued to manifest their greater adaptability to conform to the
V
31
habits of civilized life. They have there subsisted to a large
extent by agriculture. Some progress has been made in teach-
ing them in schools, and the influence of religion still exerts its
sway over them, or at least their religious teachers still com-
mand their attention and respect. Out of seventeen hundred
and fifty of which this band still consisted, according to the
last report which I have seen, sixteen hundred are represented
as subsisting by agriculture.
i
The prairie Indians yet remain as wild and untamable as
ever. They are still averse to the labors of the field, and
enjoy the life of indolence or else the excitement of the chase,
by which and their annuities from the Government they eke
out a scanty subsistence. The finger of fate seems to be pointed
alike at the most civilized and the most savage. Final extinc-
tion is the end of the way down which all are swiftly rushing,
and it would seem almost practicable to calculate with mathe-
matical certainty, the day when they will live only in memory
and in history.
They left Illinois thirty-five years ago with five thousand
souls. At the date of the last report they had dwindled down
to three thousand five hundred, and at this moment their num-
bers can scarcely exceed three thousand. From this each one
may calculate for himself when the last day shall have passed
—when there will be no living representative of that powerful
people who but a century ago exterminated a nation at a
single blow at Starved Rock. The last of the Pottawatomies
will then have ceased to be.
I shall close this paper with an account of the great war
dance which was performed by all the braves which could be
mustered among the five thousand Indians here assembled.
The number who joined in the dance was probably about eight
hundred. Although I cannot give the precise day, it must
32
!
have occurred about the last of August, 1835. It was the last
war dance ever performed by the natives on the ground where
now stands this great city, though how many thousands had
preceded it no one can tell. They appreciated that it was the
last on their native soil-that it was a sort of funeral ceremony
of old associations and memories, and nothing was omitted to
lend to it all the grandeur and solemnity possible. Truly I
thought it an impressive scene of which it is quite impossible
to give an adequate idea by words alone.
They assembled at the council-house, near where the Lake
House now stands, on the north side of the river. All were
entirely naked, except a strip of cloth around the loins. Their
bodies were covered all over with a great variety of brilliant
paints. On their faces, particularly, they seemed to have
exhausted their art of hideous decoration. Foreheads, cheeks,
and noses, were covered with curved stripes of red or vermilion,
which were edged with black points, and gave the appearance
of a horrid grin over the entire countenance. The long,
coarse, black hair, was gathered into scalp-locks on the tops of
their heads, and decorated with a profusion of hawk's and
eagle's feathers, some strung together so as to extend down the
back nearly to the ground. They were principally armed with
tomahawks and war clubs. They were led by what answered
for a band of music, which created what may be termed a dis-
cordant din of hideous noises produced by beating on hollow
vessels and striking sticks and clubs together. They advanced,
not with a regular march, but a continued dance. Their actual
progress was quite slow. They proceeded up and along the
bank of the river, on the north side, stopping in front of every
house they passed, where they performed some extra exploits.
They crossed the North Branch on the old bridge, which stood
near where the railroad bridge now stands, and thence pro-
ceeded south along the west side to the bridge across the South
33
Branch, which stood south of where Lake street bridge is now
located, which was nearly in front and in full view from the
parlor windows of the Sauganash hotel. At that time this
was the rival hotel to the Tremont, and stood upon the same
ground lately occupied by the great Republican wigwam where
Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the presidency-on the corner
of Lake and Market streets. It was then a fashionable board-
ing house, and quite a number of young married people had ·
rooms there. The parlor was in the second story fronting
west, from the windows of which the best view of the dance
was to be obtained, and these were filled with ladies so soon
as the dance commenced. From this point of view my own
observations were principally made. Although the din and
clatter had been heard for a considerable time, they did not
come into view from this point of observation till they had
proceeded so far west as to come on a line with the house,
which was before they had reached the North Branch bridge.
From that time on, they were in full view all the way to the
South Branch bridge, which was nearly before us, the wild
band, which was in front as they came upon the bridge,
redoubling their blows to increase the noise, closely followed
by the warriors, who had now wrought themselves into a per-
fect frenzy.
The morning was very warm, and the perspiration was pouring
from them almost in streams. Their eyes were wild and blood-
shot. Their countenances had assumed an expression of all
the worst passions which can find a place in the breast of a
savage-fierce anger, terrible hate, dire revenge, remorseless
cruelty-all were expressed in their terrible features. Their
muscles stood out in great hard knots, as if wrought to a ten-
sion which must burst them. Their tomahawks and clubs were
thrown and brandished about in every direction, with the most
3
34
terrible ferocity, and with a force and energy which could only
result from the highest excitement, and with every step and
every gesture, they uttered the most frightful yells, in every
imaginable key and note, though generally the highest and
shrillest possible. The dance, which was ever continued, con-
sisted of leaps and spasmodic steps, now forward and now back or
sideways, with the whole body distorted into every imaginable
unnatural position, most generally stooping forward, with the
head and face thrown up, the back arched down, first one foot
thrown far forward and then withdrawn, and the other similarly
thrust out, frequently squatting quite to the ground, and all
with a movement almost as quick as lightning. Their weapons
were brandished as if they would slay a thousand enemies at
every blow, while the yells and screams they uttered were
broken up and multiplied and rendered all the more hideous
by a rapid clapping of the mouth with the palm of the hand.
To see such an exhibition by a single individual would have
been sufficient to excite a sense of fear in a person not over
nervous. Eight hundred such, all under the influence of the
strongest and wildest excitement, constituting a raging sea of
dusky, painted, naked fiends, presented a spectacle absolutely
appalling.
When the head of the column had reached the front of the
hotel, leaping, dancing, gesticulating and screaming, while they
looked up at the windows with hell itself depicted on their
faces, at the "chemokoman squaws" with which they were filled,
and brandishing their weapons as if they were about to make
a real attack in deadly earnest, the rear was still on the other
side of the river, two hundred yards off; and all the interven-
ing space, including the bridge and its approaches, was covered
with this raging savagery glistening in the sun, reeking with
streamy sweat, fairly frothing at their mouths as with unaffected

1
35
rage, it seemed as if we had a picture of hell itself before us,
and a carnival of the damned spirits there confined, whose
pastimes we may suppose should present some such scenes as
this.
At this stage of the spectacle, I was interested to observe
the effect it had upon the different ladies who occupied the
windows almost within reach of the war clubs in the hands of
the excited savages just below them. Most of them had become
accustomed to the sight of the naked savages during the sev-
eral weeks they had occupied the town, and had even seen
them in the dance before, for several minor dances had been
previously performed, but this far excelled in the horrid any-
thing which they had previously witnessed. Others, however,
had but just arrived in town, and had never seen an Indian
before the last few days, and knew nothing of our wild western
Indians but what they had learned of their savage butcheries
and tortures in legends and in histories. To those most familiar
with them, the scenes seemed actually appalling, and but few
stood it through and met the fierce glare of the savage eyes
below them without shrinking. It was a place to try the
human nerves of even the stoutest, and all felt that one such
sight was enough for a lifetime. The question forced itself
on even those who had seen them most, what if they should,
in their maddened frenzy, turn this sham warfare into a real
attack? how easy it would be for them to massacre us all,
and leave not a living soul to tell the story. Some such
remark as this was often heard, and it was not strange if the
cheeks of all paled at the thought of such a possibility. How-
ever, most of them stood it bravely, and saw the sight to the
very end; but I think all felt relieved when the last had dis-
appeared around the corner as they passed down Lake street,
and only those horrid sounds which reached them told that the
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36
war dance was still progressing. They paused in their progress,
for extra exploits, in front of Dr. Temple's house, on the corner
of Lake and Franklin streets, then in front of the Exchange
Coffee House, a little further east on Lake street; and then again
in front of the Tremont, then situate on the north-west corner
of Lake and Dearborn streets, where the appearance of the ladies
in the windows again inspired them with new life and energy.
From thence they passed down to Fort Dearborn, where they
concluded their performance in the presence of the officers and
soldiers of the garrison, where we will take a final leave of my
old friends, with more good wishes for their future welfare than
I really dare hope will be realized.
Maou







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