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Title: The story of the Great Lakes
Author: Edward Channing
Marion Florence Lansing
Release date: December 28, 2025 [eBook #77559]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909
Credits: deaurider, Daniel Lowe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES ***
THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: Portrait of Robert Cavelier de La Salle]
THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES
BY
EDWARD CHANNING
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
AND
MARION FLORENCE LANSING
EDITOR OF THE “OPEN ROAD LIBRARY”
_WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1909.
_Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
PREFACE
For three hundred years the Great Lakes have been the centre of an
immensely varied and interesting history. They were originally the home
of savages; they were discovered and explored by Frenchmen; they became
the scene of a century-long struggle for possession by Indians of many
tribes and white men of three nations; and they have been finally
occupied and developed by Americans. In every epoch they present a rich
field for study.
No minute and exhaustive chronicle has been attempted in this volume,
but important events, with the customs and life of each period, have
been brought together and presented. Changes have come with such
rapidity that the conditions of fifty years ago seem remote to-day. In
this swift progress the heritage of the past must not be forgotten. The
picturesqueness of the early life, the courage and hardihood of the
explorers and settlers, and the tale of thrilling adventures and noble
deeds should be treasured, as should the achievements of the builders
of cities and captains and soldiers of industry of our own day.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
November, 1908.
CONTENTS
PART I
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Great Lakes 3
II. Champlain on the Great Lakes, 1615–1616 10
III. The Jesuit Mission to the Hurons, 1626–1650 25
IV. The Pageant of Saint Lusson, 1671 39
V. The Building of the _Griffon_, 1678–1679 49
VI. La Salle on the Great Lakes, 1679 61
VII. A Hapless French Governor, 1682–1684 73
PART II
THE STRUGGLE FOR POSSESSION
VIII. The Founding of Detroit, 1701 87
IX. Niagara and the Loss of Canada, 1759 101
X. The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 1763–1764 113
XI. The Adventures of a Trader, 1761–1764 135
XII. Wayne’s Indian Campaign, 1794 151
XIII. The Great Lakes in the War of 1812 165
XIV. The Conquest of Lake Erie, 1813 179
XV. General Lewis Cass and Reorganization 1813–1832 191
XVI. The Black Hawk War, 1832 201
PART III
OCCUPATION AND DEVELOPMENT
XVII. Gateways of the Great Lakes, 1600–1900 217
XVIII. The Story of a Road, 1600–1900 228
XIX. Before and after the Turnpike, 1796–1811 242
XX. The Erie Canal, 1825 251
XXI. The Great Lakes in 1840 266
XXII. The Coming of the Railroad to Lake Erie,
1836–1853 283
XXIII. Lincoln and Douglas in Chicago, 1858–1861 299
XXIV. The Great Lakes in the Civil War, 1864 317
XXV. Three Great Industries of the Lakes 330
XXVI. Shipping on the Lakes 356
XXVII. The Development of the City 374
A BRIEF LIST OF BOOKS 385
INDEX 393
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
PAGE
Huron--Erie--Ontario 12
From Lake Michigan to the Mississippi 202
Gateways of the Lakes 223
By Trail and Turnpike to Lake Erie 232
By Canal and Railroad to Lake Erie 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
La Salle _Frontispiece_
The “Soo” Canal _facing page_ 8
Niagara Falls as sketched by Hennepin ” 52
La Barre and Grangula ” 76
A View of Niagara Fort ” 104
Black Hawk ” 204
Through the Locks at Lockport ” 256
Chicago in 1831 ” 278
An Early Lake Superior Copper Mine ” 348
Iron Ore at a Lake Superior Port ” 352
The Old and the New, General Cass’s Canoe
and a Modern Freight Steamer ” 360
Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam ” 370
PART I
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION
CHAPTER I
THE GREAT LAKES
Standing in Lake Park, Chicago, beside the statue of General Logan,
the supporter of Douglas and, later, of Lincoln, one has behind
him the most marvellous city of modern times, and before him the
southwesternmost of the Great Lakes. In front, glitter the waters over
which La Salle journeyed three centuries ago. As in those days, they
respond to the play of wind and weather, now calm as a sheet of glass,
and now swept by sudden gales into turbulent waves and breakers; but
the aspect of the land is such that were La Salle to visit it he would
not recognize the spot. In place of a wilderness with an occasional
group of low-lying Indian wigwams he would see a mighty city of
buildings towering one hundred and fifty feet above the street and
reaching down from twenty-five to fifty feet below ground. In place of
a few canoes with their loads of furs and crews of savages, emerging
from the narrow mouth of the Chicago River, seven thousand freighters
and steamers with an aggregate tonnage greater than that floated in
any other port in the world touch annually at the wharves along her
splendid harbor front. These vessels and thousands of trains, running
on tracks whose mileage is more than a third of that of the whole
railway system of the United States, bring to her stockyards, her grain
elevators, and her markets the herds and flocks of the western plains,
the crops of the wheat-fields of the Northwest, and the merchandise of
Europe and of Asia.
Chicago is the greatest distributing centre of this region, but the
ports of Lake Erie handle many important industries whose traffic never
enters Lake Michigan. The copper of the upper Michigan peninsula,
the iron ore of the Wisconsin and Minnesota ranges, the coal of Ohio
and Pennsylvania, and many a minor industry have had their share in
building up the modern empire of the Great Lakes. The body of water
about which this empire has risen is made up of five lakes: Superior,
Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, which together form the greatest
inland waterway of the world. These lakes have an area of more than
half that of the Black Sea or the Caspian, while Lake Superior is
the largest body of fresh water on the globe. The four upper lakes
are so nearly level that one canal with a single lock has given them
a navigable length of over fourteen hundred miles. Lake Ontario,
however, is effectively separated from the others by Niagara Falls and
its attendant rapids. Other great inland bodies of water are directly
connected with the ocean by navigable straits. The Mediterranean Sea is
entered from the Atlantic by the Strait of Gibraltar, the Black Sea is
connected in its turn with the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles and the
Bosphorus; but Niagara closes direct navigation between the Great Lakes
and the sea.
Canals have done much in the last hundred years to alleviate the
natural inaccessibility of the lake system. Eighty-five years ago the
Erie Canal gave a water route from the eastern end of Lake Erie to
the Hudson River and thus to the Atlantic Ocean. Five years later the
Welland Canal passed round Niagara Falls and connected Lake Erie with
Lake Ontario, and a third canal soon connected Lake Erie with the Ohio
River. To-day a second era of canal building is upon us. The Welland
Canal has been widened, making it possible for boats of moderate
draught to go from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and thence by numerous
small cuts around the rapids of the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. The
Erie Canal is being enlarged, and engineers dream of a time when it
will be made sufficiently wide and deep for sea-going vessels to pass
from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Erie. The Hennepin Canal at Chicago
will open a route from Lake Michigan by the Illinois and Mississippi
rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. Each state bordering on the Great Lakes
as well as every province of the Dominion of Canada is to-day planning
extensions of this canal system.
On the lonely shores past which La Salle and later explorers voyaged
have been built villages, towns, and cities. This region is to-day the
clearing-house of the commerce of the central plain of North America.
From the western terminals of the lake routes railways pass over the
plains and mountains of the Northwest to the Pacific; from their
eastern ports stretch lines to the seaboard cities of the Atlantic.
The farms of the Northwest send yearly one hundred and fifty million
bushels of wheat, six hundred million bushels of oats, and a billion
bushels of corn to Chicago and Buffalo and thence to the eastern
states and Europe. Coming from the west, the transcontinental roads pay
tribute at Chicago and then choose between the route north of Lake Erie
via Detroit, or south via Cleveland. They unite at Buffalo and follow
the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson and then to New York or Boston; or they
pass the Alleghanies farther south and reach the coast at Philadelphia,
Baltimore, or Norfolk. In any case, by land or water, from the north
or from the west, these products come to the Great Lakes, and are
carried from their ports to the factories and markets of the East,
or to steamers bound for Europe. This combination of land and water
transportation makes the Great Lakes the keystone of American industry.
We have spoken of the four upper lakes as united commercially into one
great sea. Before Lake Superior could be entered from the others one
formidable obstacle had to be overcome. Between Lake Superior and Lake
Huron was a ledge of rocks half a mile long over which the waters ran
in swirling rapids, forming the Sault (or Rapids of) Ste. Marie. At
this point the famous “Soo” Canal has been constructed with a single
lock which is the largest and costliest in the world, though it will
soon be surpassed by those at the entrance of the Panama Canal. This
canal was built in 1855, when the presence of iron and copper deposits
in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota was first discovered. To-day
the tonnage passing yearly through it runs up into figures that are
almost beyond belief; but these figures form the best single index of
the traffic of the Great Lakes. In the seven open months of 1907 there
passed through the “Soo” one hundred million tons of freight valued
at four hundred and fifty million dollars. This tonnage is nine times
that of the Suez Canal. The mines whose discovery made necessary the
cutting of the “Soo” Canal supply a large part of this freight. Of
iron ore alone they send thirty-three million tons to the foundries
and furnaces of Pittsburg and other centres, where the raw material is
manufactured into articles of iron and steel which form the basis of
modern civilized existence. From the deposits of the upper Michigan
peninsula comes yearly one-seventh of the world’s supply of copper.
These figures give some idea of the importance of the Great Lakes in
the economic development of the United States. Three hundred years
have seen this region converted from a wilderness peopled by Indian
tribes to the uses of modern civilization. This time might well be
shortened, since at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Great
Lakes and bordering lands were still occupied by the red man and a
few small villages and trading stations of the whites. It is indeed
wonderful what changes a century has witnessed.
[Illustration: The “Soo” Canal. Copyright, 1904, by Detroit
Photographic Co. Photograph of ships in a canal taken from shore.]
CHAPTER II
CHAMPLAIN ON THE GREAT LAKES
On the 28th of July, 1615, Samuel de Champlain paddled out of the mouth
of the French River into the waters of Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake
Huron; or, as he named it from its great expanse, the “Mer Douce,” or
“Freshwater Sea.” With him was a young interpreter, Étienne Brulé,
who had been sent by Champlain when a mere lad to winter in the Huron
country, and to learn from the Indians their languages and customs. As
a member of this Huron party, in 1610, he had been the first white man
to look upon the waters of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great
Lakes. Now Champlain himself had come, journeying from Montreal with a
trading party of Indians. Some of the Indians had slipped away before
the rest of the expedition was ready, taking with them a missionary.
Father Joseph Le Caron had, therefore, made the journey a few days
before his leader, but at last Champlain had reached the marvellous sea
of Indian story, and was on the point of exploring the region of the
Great Lakes.
He found the lands bordering the lakes occupied by three groups of
Indians: the Iroquois, who were closely banded together into a league
known as the Five Nations; the Hurons, who were related to them, but
were always at war with them; and the Algonquins, who belonged to one
great family, but were now divided into many widely scattered and
independent tribes.
The Five Nations of the Iroquois were joined in a loose but effective
confederacy. Originally they had formed one great tribe, but internal
dissension had split them into five,--the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas,
Cayugas, and Senecas. Legend states that Hiawatha had counselled union
and had thus brought about the League of the Iroquois, which was the
most important Indian organization north of Mexico. The confederation
was governed by fifty sachems, ten from each nation, who made up a
grand council. Unanimity was required in all decisions, but when these
were once arrived at the tribes were obedient. The Iroquois lived in
a wide strip of country extending from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario
eastward across central New York. They called this section of country
“The Long House” from its resemblance in shape to one of their oblong
dwellings.
[Illustration: Map of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, also depicting
connecting waterways and a number of smaller lakes in the region.]
The Algonquins occupied the greater part of the country from the
St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the Mississippi, and included the
Illinois, Wisconsin, Chippewa, Ottawa, and other tribes of the lake
region. In the centre of the Algonquin country, in a narrow district
extending eastward from Georgian Bay toward Lake Ontario, lived the
Huron nation, a strong and prosperous tribe. Between them and the
Iroquois there was constant enmity, and for a time after the coming of
the whites it was by no means certain which group of Indians would come
out victorious. It was while this contest was at its height that Samuel
de Champlain came to the St. Lawrence and in 1608 founded Quebec. It
was to the Huron settlements he was journeying in the summer of 1615.
Champlain was born in southern France and had already won fame as an
explorer. He had visited the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America,
and had suggested the building of a ship canal at Panama. He had
coasted the shores of New England and had been one of the first French
colonists at the Bay of Fundy. After the founding of Quebec he had
traversed the lake which now bears his name and had journeyed far and
wide in the surrounding region. In these expeditions he had allied
himself with the Indians of the St. Lawrence and had supported them in
their battles with the Iroquois.
In the summer of 1615, yielding to the clamors of the Hurons gathered
at Montreal for their yearly traffic with the French, Champlain agreed
to accompany them on an inroad into the Iroquois country. He departed
for Quebec to make needful preparations, but when he returned after a
delay of a few days he found that the impatient Indians had set out for
their villages, taking with them Father Joseph Le Caron, a Recollect
friar who had come out with him from France that spring as a missionary
to the Indians. Champlain embarked immediately with ten natives,
Brulé, and another Frenchman on the journey to the Huron villages. He
approached Lake Huron by the hard northern route, travelling up the
Ottawa River, along the portage path to Lake Nipissing, across which
he sailed, and down the French River. Indian tribes along the way
encouraged the voyagers, telling them that the Lake of the Hurons was
at hand. At length they came out from between the banks of the river
into the waters of the lake. For more than a hundred miles they coasted
southward along its eastern shores, working their way in and out among
countless islands, till they reached the lower end of Georgian Bay.
There they landed and proceeded by a well-beaten trail into the heart
of the Huron country.
From the moment when he entered the first Huron village Champlain
recognized that this was an Indian community different from any that
he had heretofore seen. He had come upon one of the most remarkable
savage settlements on the continent. The people lived in permanent
villages protected by palisades of crossed and intersecting trunks of
trees. Not only was the land naturally fertile, but in the clearings
between the stretches of heavy forests were cultivated fields of maize
and pumpkins, and gay patches of sunflowers from the seeds of which the
Indians made oil for their hair. To Champlain coming from the roving
Algonquins of the St. Lawrence and the barren country along the Ottawa,
where the Indian population lived by hunting and fishing, the social
advancement of this group of tribes seemed very great.
The Hurons welcomed him with eager hospitality and took him from
village to village, entertaining him with lavish feasting and
celebration, for he was the champion who was to lead them to victory
against their hated foe the Iroquois. At the principal Huron village
Carhagouha, a settlement of two hundred bark lodges enclosed in a
palisade thirty-five feet high, Champlain found Father Le Caron.
The priest had feared that his leader would not follow the Hurons, or
that if he did he would be captured by the Iroquois. When he looked up
one morning and saw Champlain standing in the doorway of his dwelling
his joy knew no bounds. He showed him the bark wigwam which the
Indians, to prove the joy that they felt at his coming, were building
for him. They had offered at first to lodge him in one of their common
cabins, but Father Le Caron had remonstrated with them, representing
that “to negotiate with God affairs so important, involving the
salvation of their whole nation,” he needed a place where he could
be alone, far from the tumult of their families. So they had brought
poles and bark and erected this lodge at the edge of the forest. Here
he had raised an altar, and here on the 12th of August was celebrated
the first mass ever held in the country of the Hurons. Curious Indians
crowded about as the priest stood before his rude altar and led the
devotions of the kneeling band of Frenchmen with Champlain at their
head. For the first time the solemn chant of the “Te Deum Laudamus”
rang out on the listening air, and a volley of muskets proclaimed
the planting of a cross outside the priest’s lodge. The symbol of
Christianity had been raised in the country of the heathen!
Before they set out on the war-path the Huron chiefs insisted on a
weary succession of feastings and dancings, rejoicing in their serene
conviction of victory to come. Champlain spent the time going from
village to village, gratifying his insatiable curiosity over everything
which he saw. At last the savage war-party was ready to set out. They
crossed Lake Simcoe and paddled, making the necessary portages, down
the chain of intervening lakes to the river Trent, which flowed into
Lake Ontario. The country through which the long line of canoes passed
was singularly beautiful. Champlain found it hard to believe that
the groves of walnut trees, whose branches were twined with hanging
grapevines, had not been set out by the hand of man to form a beautiful
artistic picture. The party stopped once and encamped for a grand
deer-hunt, and then proceeded on its way, well-stocked with provisions
for the first days in the enemies’ country. Out upon Lake Ontario the
frail canoes ventured, and crossed it in safety, landing on the eastern
side of the lake, thirty miles or so from Oswego.
Now a change came over the warriors. Silently they hid their canoes
in the woods, and with stealthy and rapid steps they filed in silence
through the borders of this hostile country. For four days they
marched inland through the forest, crossing the Oneida River at the
western end of the lake, and on the 9th of October some of their scouts
brought in a captured fishing party of eleven Iroquois, men, women,
and children. A Huron chief took possession of the prisoners and began
to torture them, cutting off a finger of one of the women. Champlain
met this method of celebration with angry protest, declaring that it
was not the act of a warrior to treat helpless women with cruelty. The
chief agreed, since it was displeasing to Champlain, to do nothing more
to the women, but added that he would do to the men what he pleased. It
was a curious position in which Champlain had placed himself, aiding
one group of savages against another, nor did he find it to his liking.
The next day the war-party came out into a clearing in the forest,
from which they could see the Iroquois fort. A number of Iroquois were
gathering corn and pumpkins in the adjoining fields. With a rush the
impetuous young Hurons who were in advance screamed their war-cry and
fell upon them. The Iroquois seized their arms and defended themselves
with such success that their assailants began to fall back. Only the
timely aid of Champlain and the Frenchmen with their terrifying
muskets saved the invaders from defeat.
Champlain saw that this irregular way of fighting, each person
according to his whim, would result in utter ruin. The Hurons withdrew
into the forest to encamp for the night, and there he addressed them
angrily, showing them their foolishness and instructing them in the
best methods of war. He found the Iroquois village to be far more
strongly defended than any that he had seen among the Indians. Four
rows of palisades, made of trees thirty feet high, supported a kind of
gallery, which was provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire and
piled high with a goodly supply of stones to hurl at the enemy. This
was a stronghold that could not be captured by the haphazard methods of
the Hurons. Champlain set the Indians to work the next morning building
a wooden tower, high enough to overlook the palisades and large enough
to shelter four or five marksmen. In four hours the work was done, and
two hundred of the strongest warriors dragged it forward to a position
from which the musketeers could pour a deadly fire into the crowded
galleries. The rank and file of the Hurons were meanwhile equipped
with huge wooden shields to protect themselves against the arrows and
stones of the enemy. As the deadly bullets fell among them the Iroquois
rushed headlong from the gallery, and the result of the battle would
have been very different had the Hurons followed out Champlain’s
well-conceived plans; but they were ungovernable. With reckless fury
they threw away their shields, and yelling their war-cry so shrilly
that no command could be heard, they poured out into the open field,
discharging their own arrows but exposing themselves meanwhile to a
rain of stones and arrows from the Iroquois. One Huron, bolder than
the rest, ran forward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others
followed him with the dry wood which they had gathered for the purpose.
But they set the fire on the leeward side of the fort, where the wind
was against it, and torrents of water poured down from above soon put
it out. In vain Champlain shouted commands and made every effort to
restore order. He soon decided that his shouting would only “burst his
own head” and have no effect on any one else. So he and his Frenchmen
set to work picking the Iroquois off the rampart with their shots.
After three hours of this kind of fighting the Hurons fell back.
Only eighteen men had been wounded, but among them were two chiefs and
Champlain himself. He had received one arrow in the knee and another in
the leg. He urged the Indians to renew the attack, but they refused.
From extreme overconfidence the warriors had passed to the deepest
discouragement. The next day a violent wind offered them an opportunity
to set fire to the fort, but the Hurons sat silent in their camp. For
five days they waited to see if the five hundred allies which Brulé and
twelve Hurons had started a month ago to fetch would appear. During
this time they ventured out occasionally for imprudent skirmishes,
each time running back under the cover of the French musket fire, amid
taunts from the Iroquois on the palisade that the Hurons had very
little courage to require French assistance. Then they hastily began
to retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois
harassed the flanks and rear of the company. The wounded, Champlain
among them, were packed in rude baskets made on the spot, and bound on
the backs of stout warriors. Champlain gives a vivid picture of the
suffering he endured, while he was thus “bundled in a heap, and doubled
and strapped together in such a fashion that it was as impossible to
move as for an infant in swaddling-clothes.” The torment from the
cramped position and constant jolting was so much worse than even the
pain of his wound that as soon as he could possibly bear his weight on
his leg he got out of “this prison.”
Snow and hail overtook the party on their dismal march to the lake.
They were relieved to find their hidden canoes safe, and embarked once
more on Lake Ontario. In his vain efforts to get the Indians to renew
the attack after their first defeat, Champlain had come to see that he
had lost some of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied
that his presence would ensure victory. Now they saw him wounded, and
by Indian weapons. Their superstitious reverence for the “man with the
iron breast” was weakened. Here on the shores of Lake Ontario he was to
experience a very practical consequence of his loss of prestige. The
Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec; but each warrior found a
reason why he should not be able to lend his canoe for the journey. The
chiefs who had made the promises had little control over their men,
and Champlain found that he must winter with the natives. The great
war-party broke up. Some went to hunt deer and bears, others to trap
beavers, others to fish in the frozen lakes and streams, and still
others returned to their villages. One of the chiefs offered Champlain
the shelter of his cabin, which he was glad to accept, and he settled
down to get what comfort and information he could from his forced visit.
Fifty pages of Champlain’s minute and wonderfully illustrated account
testify to the fact that he was not idle during the winter months. He
records many interesting customs of his Indian hosts. He watched their
deer-hunts, visited their villages and those of neighboring tribes,
was umpire in their disputes, and at last turned his face homeward in
the early spring. With him went Darontal, his Huron host. At Quebec
Champlain was welcomed as one risen from the dead, for the Indians had
long since brought in word that he had been killed. A solemn service
was held, and all united in rendering thanks to God for protecting the
travellers in their many perils and dangers. Upon this service and the
various acts of welcome Darontal gazed in bewildered astonishment.
Champlain showed him all the marvellous details of civilization. With
the usual Indian stolidity he observed everything carefully and calmly;
but at last his wonder broke down his reserve. Before he departed he
told Champlain that he should never die contented until he had told
his friends of the French way of living and seen them adopt it. With
valuable presents and a warm invitation to come again with some of his
friends, Darontal paddled back to his lodge in the woods with a story
that must have taken months in the telling.
This was Champlain’s last long trip of exploration. For the remaining
years of his life the needs of the colony at Quebec held him fast.
His writings, sold in the book-stalls of France, inspired others to
cross the seas and to continue the exploration and settlement of the
wilderness.
CHAPTER III
THE JESUIT MISSION TO THE HURONS
From 1615, when Father Joseph Le Caron celebrated the first mass among
the Hurons, for fourteen years a few intrepid priests braved the
difficulties of savage life, and endeavored at various times to set up
missions in the populous Huron villages south of Georgian Bay. They
suffered almost incredible hardships, and in 1629 Jean Brébeuf was the
only one who was left in the region. He was recalled to Quebec, but
five years later, a year before Champlain’s death, he set out with
two Jesuit companions to found, in the villages where Champlain had
wintered eighteen years before, the greatest Jesuit mission in the
history of New France.
No man in the annals of Church history has shown greater personal
heroism than Father Jean Brébeuf. He was tall and strong, well fitted
to withstand the hardships of his chosen calling and to impress the
Indians with his power. The square cap and surplice which he donned
when he assembled them for instruction, in order, as he naïvely writes,
to “give more majesty” to his appearance, were never less needed.
With natural dignity he combined the power of a life consecrated with
the utmost fervor to God and his Church. Never during long years of
service did he waver in his devotion nor shrink from anything that lay
before him in his work. From his reports sent home to his superiors
it is evident that he made a deep impression on the Indians. In these
detailed accounts of his experiences and of the savages among whom he
worked we get a clear idea of the man. We see him on the long canoe
journeys, sharing in the labor of paddling and portages, till even he,
who already knew, as he says, “a little what it is to be fatigued,”
was so weary that his body could do no more. But he tells us how at
these very times his soul experienced a deep peace such as it had never
known before. In the most matter-of-fact way he accepts and records the
continual hardships, never complaining of his lot, but writing with
rare modesty because his whole attention is centred on the work instead
of on himself. From his vivid pictures we learn, however, the truth
of one of his casual statements. “Truly,” he says, “to come here much
strength and patience are needed; and he who thinks of coming here for
any other than God will have made a sad mistake.”
In 1634 Father Brébeuf and his companions started on the northern
journey by the Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing to the Huron country.
They accompanied a party of Hurons who were returning from their
annual summer trading visit to Quebec. This nine-hundred-mile trip
took thirty days. Brébeuf kept count and found that they carried their
canoes thirty-five times on portages one, two, and even three leagues
long, covering the distance three and four times to transport even
their small amount of baggage, and that they dragged the canoes through
rapids at least fifty times, plunging into the icy water and cutting
their feet on the rocky bottom. At night they slept on the bare earth
or on hard rocks, stung by clouds of mosquitoes. Their only food was a
small portion of Indian corn coarsely broken between two stones, which,
though better than fasting, was regarded by the Jesuits as “no great
treat.” Yet, denying themselves the ordinary necessaries of life, these
priests transported the precious vessels for the mass over all this
weary way.
The other Jesuits suffered even more than Brébeuf. Their goods were
stolen; they were separated from the rest of the Huron party, and
deserted midway in the journey. It was weeks before the worn-out
travellers rejoined their superior in the Huron village. After a few
experiences like this in reaching the mission these wise priests
composed a set of instructions to the brethren who should follow them
on this Ottawa route. This code of behavior is highly characteristic of
the methods of the French Jesuits. In every detail,--from not keeping
the Indians waiting when they were ready to embark and not asking too
many questions, to being careful that in the canoe the brim of the
priest’s hat did not annoy those who sat nearest him,--these Jesuit
fathers aimed “not to be troublesome, even to a single Indian,” and to
“love them like brothers with whom you are to spend the rest of your
life.” In this spirit lay the success of all French effort among these
savage peoples.
At length Brébeuf landed on the southern shores of Georgian Bay,
only to be deserted at the last moment by his Huron guides and left
standing in the midst of his baggage on the lonely shore. He knew the
place well, for he had lived three years in a neighboring village.
This settlement had, however, been destroyed and its inhabitants had
built their huts on another spot several miles away. Brébeuf hid his
goods in the woods and set out alone by one of the gloomy forest paths,
which brought him, to his great relief, to the new village. At sight of
him some one cried out, “Why, there is Echom come again,” and at once
every one ran out to salute and welcome him, calling, “What, Echom,
my nephew, my brother, my cousin, hast thou then come again?” His
goods were fetched from the shore, and Brébeuf was established in the
house of a leading chief. As soon as his brother priests had arrived
the Indians set about building a house for the Jesuits. Bad crops and
famine had afflicted the people of late, and they rejoiced doubly at
the coming of Brébeuf, feeling sure that now the crops would no longer
fail. They wished, therefore, to provide for his staying in their
village instead of that of their neighbors.
The house which the missionaries had built for them was a constant
wonder to the Indians. It was thirty-six feet long and twenty wide, and
looked from the outside like any Huron bark house. But within, the
“black-robes” had made innovations which were the marvel of all their
visitors. They divided the house into three apartments, separated by
wooden doors such as the natives had never seen. The first room served
as antechamber and storm door to keep out the cold. The second was that
in which they lived. It was at once kitchen, carpenter shop, place for
grinding wheat, dining room, parlor, and bedroom. Beneath high wooden
platforms, on which they placed their chests of goods, the missionaries
slept on sheets of bark or beds of boughs covered with rush mats, with
skins and their clothing for covering. The third part was their little
chapel where they set up their altar, pictures, and sacred vessels, and
celebrated mass every day.
The house itself attracted scores of visitors, but when the clock and
the mill were set going the astonishment of the Indians knew no bounds.
No guest came who did not beg to be allowed to turn the mill, and as
for the clock, they sat in expectant silence by the hour, waiting
for it to strike. They all thought it some living thing, and when
it began to strike they would look about to make sure that all the
“black-robes” were there and that no one was hidden to shake it. They
named it “Captain of the Day,” and inquired for it as they would for
a person, wishing to know what its food was and how many times it had
spoken that day. The first time they heard it they asked what it said,
and the clever Jesuits told them two things. “When he strikes twelve
times, he says, ‘Come, put on the kettle.’” This speech they remembered
particularly well, for their own scanty meals were usually in the
morning and evening, and they were very glad during the day to take
a share of the Fathers’ repast. “But when he strikes four times, he
says, ‘Go out, go away, that we may close the door,’” the Jesuits told
their guests, and immediately they rose and went out, leaving the weary
Fathers free from the constant noise and chatter.
The missionaries gathered the Indians for instruction on every possible
occasion, teaching the children their prayers in Huron rhymes and
preaching and explaining the faith to their elders. The converts, save
those baptized on the point of death or in some fear of deadly peril,
were few, but the worthy Fathers persisted and won the gratitude of the
people by their help in time of famine and their kindly ministrations
to the sick. Other Jesuits joined them and founded additional missions
in neighboring villages. The Indians never understood these mysterious
white men, but regarded them with superstition, holding them answerable
for bad weather, famine, and the like, and on the other hand honoring
them when all was prosperous. The medicine men and sorcerers were
constantly against them, and in 1637 Father Isaac Jogues, one of the
leading Jesuits, heard the rumor that the white men were reported to
have bewitched the nation and must therefore be cut off. The assembly
of Huron chiefs met, and the Jesuit fathers addressed them as usual
on their unfailing topic, the joys of heaven and the fires of hell,
the latter being always the only part of the instruction that seemed
to make any impression on the stolid audience. For the time being the
Fathers escaped; but they were still in great peril. Brébeuf wrote a
letter of farewell to his superior at Quebec, and no Jesuit left the
house without the expectation of having a tomahawk crash into his head
before he returned. The unflinching courage of the Fathers won the
Indian respect. The Jesuits even went so far as to give, according to
the usual Indian custom for one on the point of death, a farewell
feast to all the savages, an act which was regarded as a declaration
that they knew their peril and faced it boldly. From that time forth
their supporters rose in defence of them. For the moment the danger was
averted and the Jesuits walked abroad once more. From now on, however,
their persecution as sorcerers continued at intervals in different
places, rising now and then to a storm of superstitious frenzy.
During the next five years the Jesuits extended their missions
among the Hurons till almost every town had resident priests. They
established on the shores of the river Wye a central station, which by
1648 had grown into a prosperous community with buildings which would
accommodate sixty persons. Pioneers went out to neighboring nations.
Brébeuf and a companion journeyed to the Neutral Nation which lived
north of Lake Erie and west and south of Lake Ontario, but were met
with strong opposition stirred up by the superstitious Hurons, who
conceived that it would be an easy and safe method of getting rid of
the priests to have their neighbors kill them. The two escaped after
great hardship and danger. Isaac Jogues and Charles Garnier went with
attendants to the Tobacco Nation, which lived two days’ journey
distant to the southwest, but were as rudely repulsed. Jogues was a
young man of indomitable will to whom hard tasks seem always to have
been assigned because of his complete self-surrender and consequent
power. To him fell, nevertheless, in the autumn of 1641 the pleasant
duty of visiting a tribe in the far west who had invited the priests to
come to them. At Lake Nipissing in September the Jesuits met certain
savages called Ojibways, who urged the “black-gowns” to visit them in
their homes, and gave directions for the journey. In accordance with
this invitation Jogues and Raymbault, with a small Huron escort, set
sail on Lake Huron and after a voyage of seventeen days reached the
rapids where dwelt their friends at the location of the modern Sault
Ste. Marie. Here they found about two thousand savages who welcomed
them cordially and looked and listened with awe as the priests
celebrated mass and explained their doctrines. They invited the Fathers
to take up their abode with them, saying that they would “embrace them
like brothers and profit by their words,” but the Jesuits could not be
spared from their other work. Jogues listened with interest to tales
of a great lake beyond the Sault, which it took nine days to cross, and
of a great river beyond, where dwelt mighty nations, “who,” the Fathers
reported to Paris, “have never known Europeans or heard of God.” They
could not stay, but sailed away, naming the place of their sojourn Ste.
Marie after the mission from which they came. They were not the first
white men to visit this strait. Nicolet, a voyager and trader, had
travelled with Brébeuf in 1634 as far as the Huron mission and had then
pushed on alone to the foot of these rapids and thence along the shores
of Lake Michigan, greeted everywhere by crowds of wondering savages.
It was left, however, to these pioneer missionaries to give to this
important waterway the name which it still bears.
Jogues returned to the Huron mission and wintered there, starting
in the spring of 1642 for Quebec with the Huron traders to bring
supplies to the mission, which was in a state of destitution. As he
was returning up the St. Lawrence River he and his companion, Goupil,
were captured by the Iroquois, who led them to the Mohawk towns. There
most of the Hurons of the party were killed, and Jogues and his white
companion were tortured and terribly mutilated. Goupil lost his life
in the Iroquois camp, but Jogues was finally rescued by Dutch allies of
the Mohawks and sent to Europe. From there he returned to New France
and was tortured and killed by the Iroquois in 1646.
Isaac Jogues was the first Jesuit to fall in the progress of that
warfare which was to bring to a tragic end the Jesuit mission to the
Hurons by wiping out the towns in which the missionaries labored. The
journey from Quebec to the Huron country was now fraught with peril
from the marauding bands of Iroquois warriors. Two years after the
first capture of Jogues an expedition led by Brébeuf relieved the needs
of the missionaries by bringing supplies. That same year another Jesuit
on his way to the mission was taken by the Iroquois, but in 1645 a
temporary peace rekindled the hopes of the Fathers. Three years later
the warfare broke out with renewed fury, and it soon became evident
that the Huron nation was doomed. Large bands of Hurons, deserting
their towns, fled into the interior. The Jesuits aided those who
remained to defend their homes, but town after town was taken and one
after another Jesuit fell into the hands of the Iroquois and suffered
martyrdom with cruel tortures. The story of the tragic death of Jean
Brébeuf, the founder of the mission, is one of wonderful strength and
endurance amid most revolting tortures. The few remaining Jesuits
withdrew with the terrified Indian survivors to an island in Lake
Huron, which they were able for a time to defend, but the Iroquois
lay in an ambuscade and captured the fugitives whenever they went
ashore. At the earnest entreaty of the chiefs of the doomed nation the
Jesuits gathered the remnant of their people and abandoned with them
the desolated country which had been for thirty-five years the seat of
missionary labors. Sadly they proceeded on the long journey to Quebec,
passing everywhere deserted villages which had been partially destroyed
by fire. Once they were attacked by the Iroquois, but at length reached
Quebec in safety. The Iroquois had driven the Hurons from their
homes to perish by famine and pestilence until the whole nation was
practically wiped out, and the most important field of Jesuit missions
was turned into a solitude and a desolation. The future for French
missions looked dark indeed, and for a time western exploration was
also abandoned.
Within four years hope of better success in converting the heathen
appeared in an unexpected spot. The crafty Iroquois, attacked by their
southern neighbors, sent overtures of peace to Quebec and invited to
their villages the once hated Jesuit priests. Father Le Moyne was the
first to respond, and others followed, eager to convert this savage
people. The first mission was brought to a speedy end by the uprising
of the Iroquois against the remaining Hurons and their former white
allies in 1658, but by 1665 the government of New France was strong
enough to mete out deserved punishment to the marauding parties of
Iroquois warriors, and by 1668 a mission was established in each of the
Five Nations.
CHAPTER IV
THE PAGEANT OF SAINT LUSSON
With the destruction of the Huron missions western exploration ceased
for a few years. In 1660 Father Ménard passed through the Sault Ste.
Marie and spent a winter ministering to the Indians on the southern
shore of Lake Superior. In the following summer he set out on an inland
journey from the lake and was never heard from again. In the same year,
however, two fur-traders, Radisson and Groseilliers, coasted along the
shore of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and were followed by many
Jesuit missionaries whose names have become famous. Two principal
mission stations were established, one at Sault Ste. Marie, the other
at La Pointe at the western end of Lake Superior. At these places
missionaries and traders heard many tales of a great river to the south
and of rich copper deposits in the lake region, which in turn led to
more exploring expeditions.
At Sault Ste. Marie, in 1671, there was a picturesque ceremony when
Daumont de Saint Lusson, agent of Louis XIV, took possession of the
interior of North America in the name of his king. For months the
French and the Indians had been preparing for this pageant. Messages
had been sent to all the Indian tribes living within one hundred
leagues of Ste. Marie, urging them to attend, and Nicholas Perrot, a
Canadian voyager and interpreter, had visited many of the tribes in
person to make sure of their coming. With a large Indian following,
he paddled up the Strait of Mackinac from Lake Michigan and landed at
the foot of the rapids. Saint Lusson was already there with fifteen
men. The French leaders were housed at the mission station, while
the savages made themselves comfortable in temporary lodges erected
along the stretch of shore and in the fields. Gradually tribe after
tribe from the north and the west arrived, and on the 14th of June,
when fourteen tribes or their representatives had come, Saint Lusson
announced that the ceremony would take place.
The Frenchmen, led by Saint Lusson, assembled in the village, and
crowds of curious Indians gathered about the small group of white
men. The French soldiers had brought out their gayest uniforms and
had polished their swords and muskets till they shone in the sunlight.
Coureurs de bois--runners of the woods--and other Indian traders
stood about in their rough picturesque costumes. At the head of the
line walked four Jesuits arrayed in the impressive vestments of the
priesthood. The names of these four men stand to-day as they signed
them at the foot of the instrument which records this act of taking
possession. They were a group of priests noteworthy in the history of
the lakes. At one end stood Father Claude Dablon, the Superior of the
Missions of the Lakes; next him came Gabriel Druilletes, a veteran
missionary, whose experience with the Indians exceeded probably that
of any Frenchman in Canada, and who had been sent by the government
years before on a mission to the English colonists on the Atlantic to
invite their coöperation against the Iroquois. Father Claude Allouez
had followed Father Ménard in the Lake Superior country and founded the
La Pointe Mission, and Father Louis André was establishing a station
among the Ottawas at Manitoulin Island. Father Allouez had been obliged
to leave the young Jesuit missionary Marquette in charge at La Pointe.
Had he been with his brother priests, the circle of famous names would
have been complete.
Led by these four men, the line of Frenchmen--a motley company of
soldiers, priests, explorers, and traders--marched up the hill to a
height which had been selected because it overlooked the surrounding
country. On either side of the column and behind it hovered the vast
throng of dusky Indians. As the Frenchmen halted and grouped themselves
about a huge cross of wood that lay on the ground, the Indians fell
into position behind them and stood silent, waiting to see what the
“white faces” would do. When all was quiet, Father Dablon, as Superior
of the Lake Missions, stepped forward and blessed the cross with all
the ceremonies of the Church. At a sign from Saint Lusson the holy
wood was lifted, and as the foot of the standard fell into the opening
prepared for it, the Frenchmen sang with all their hearts the ancient
hymn of their church:--
“The royal banners forward go,
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow:
* * * *
Fulfilled is all that David told,
In true prophetic song of old;
How God the heathen’s King should be,
For God is reigning from the tree.”
As they looked from the mighty cross to the horde of assembled savages
the Frenchmen felt that to-day as never before these words were
fulfilled. The uncomprehending Indians, who gazed at the pageant with
wondering delight in its pomp, little knew how the minds of these
white men were filled with the vision of a time, of which this was the
forerunner, when these red-skinned savages should be followers of the
heavenly King of the French and the obedient retainers of their earthly
monarch.
Beside the cross was erected a cedar pole to which was nailed a metal
plate engraved with the royal arms of France. As this was being raised
the Frenchmen chanted the twentieth Psalm, “In the name of our God
we will set up our banners,” and one of the Jesuits, even “in that
far-away corner of the earth,” as the record says, offered a prayer for
the French king in whose name all this was being done. Thus side by
side the standards of the two monarchs were raised in the wilderness,
and Saint Lusson, stepping forward amid an expectant hush, with
a sword in one hand and a sod of earth in the other, took formal
possession of the soil with these words:--
“In the name of the most high and redoubtable sovereign, Louis the
Fourteenth, Christian King of France and Navarre, I now take possession
of all these lakes, straits, rivers, islands, and regions lying
adjacent thereto, whether as yet visited by my subjects or unvisited,
in all their length and breadth, stretching to the sea at the north and
at the west, or on the opposite side extending to the South Sea. And I
declare to all the people inhabiting this wide country that they now
become vassals of His Majesty, and bound to obey his laws and follow
his customs. He will protect them against all enemies. In his name I
declare to all other princes and sovereigns and potentates of whatever
rank,--and I warn their subjects,--that they are denied forever seizing
upon or settling within the limits set by these seas; except it be the
pleasure of His Most Christian Majesty, and of him who shall govern
in his behalf; and this on pain of incurring his resentment and the
efforts of his arms. Long live the King!”
As the last words fell from his lips the Frenchmen responded with a
loud shout, “Vive le Roi! Long live the King!”; guns were fired, and
the Indians shouted and yelped with delight. “The astonishment and
delight of those people,” says the chronicler, knew no bounds, “for
they had never seen anything of the kind.” If words and the planting
of symbols could do it, the king of France had taken possession of
the continent of North America, extending his dominion to the shores
of seas of which he had no knowledge. But the dream of the French was
not fulfilled. To-day a rival people, which then occupied only a small
strip of the Atlantic seaboard, has swept away almost every trace of
the empire thus proclaimed.
In order to impress upon the Indians more clearly the meaning of this
august ceremony, Father Claude Allouez had been appointed to set
forth the glory of the monarch to whom they were that day submitting
themselves. He had spent many hours listening to flowery Indian
harangues, and was familiar with the style of speech which suited their
comprehension and met with their approval. What the Indians gathered
from his curious address we do not know. After reading the part of it
which has been preserved we cannot wonder that, as the record tells,
“they had no words with which to express their thoughts.”
As soon as the wild uproar of shouts and musketry was hushed Father
Allouez stepped forward on a slight eminence and began his speech.
With a few words he dismissed the usual subject of his priestly
discourses, the cross and its significance, and turned to the other
post on which, as he explained to them, were fastened the armorial
bearings of the great “Captain of France.” To him all the captains
whom they had seen were mere children, or little herbs which one
tramples underfoot as compared to a great tree. Even Onontio,--the
governor of New France,--whose name was a daily terror to that mighty
nation, the Iroquois, was but one of ten thousand captains who lived
beyond the seas. When this great captain said, “I am going to war,”
all obeyed him. Those ten thousand captains raised companies of a
hundred warriors each, disposing them according to his orders, on sea
or land. Those who were needed at sea embarked on great ships which
held four or five hundred or even a thousand men, while their Indian
canoes held only four or five, or at best ten or twelve. Thus did this
king with his vast numbers of followers prepare for war, and when he
came to attacking the enemy he was more terrible than thunder, and the
earth trembled beneath him, while air and sea were set on fire by the
discharge of his cannon. He had been seen in the midst of his warriors
covered with the blood of his enemies whom he killed in such numbers
that he set flowing rivers of blood. But all this was now long past.
No one dared to make war on him; all nations had submitted to him and
begged humbly for peace.
In this warlike guise Father Allouez presented Louis XIV till the
Indian admiration was fully aroused and all were “astonished to hear
that there was any man on earth so great and rich and powerful.”
The day closed with a “fine bonfire,” lighted toward evening, around
which the Frenchmen sang the “Te Deum,” thanking God on behalf
of “those poor peoples,” who did not know enough to do it for
themselves,--that they were the subjects of so great and powerful a
monarch. The Indians departed to their homes, traders and coureurs
de bois disappeared into the forests, the Jesuits returned to their
self-sacrificing life of ministry, and adventurous French pioneers set
out across lake and wood to explore and claim the vast wilderness thus
appropriated by France. The pageant of Saint Lusson was over, and Sault
Ste. Marie relapsed into its usual life; but thus early in the history
of the Great Lakes this place had been singled out as a strategic spot.
CHAPTER V
THE BUILDING OF THE _GRIFFON_
The next noteworthy event in the story of the Great Lakes is the
building and the launching of the _Griffon_, and the voyage of La Salle
from the Niagara River to the southern end of Lake Michigan. Robert
Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, or La Salle as he is usually called, came
to Canada in 1666, when he was three or four and thirty years of age.
Outwardly cold and reserved, he was inwardly consumed with a burning
desire for adventure. After his arrival, he set to work to study the
Indian languages, in which he soon became proficient; and it was his
delight to invite Indians to his cabin, and to draw from them tales
of the far-off regions in which they dwelt, and especially of those
wonderful rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi, by the exploration
of which he hoped to provide a new passage to China and Japan. An
exploring trip which he took in 1669 gave him the practical experience
which was later to be of value. La Salle was a man of strong prejudices
and personal dislikes, who took little pains to overcome the jealousy
of those who were envious of him; but he gained one strong friend and
patron, Count Frontenac, the governor of New France, who recognized a
kindred spirit in this bold, enterprising young man.
To a person of La Salle’s disposition, the lands to the south of the
Great Lakes offered alluring prospects of immediate gain. Instead of
the barren soil, gloomy forests, and harsh climate of the lower St.
Lawrence Valley, this new country was largely open and abundantly
supplied with meadows, brooks, and rivers. The soil was so fertile that
everything which could be produced in France could be easily raised,
and there was an abundance of fish, game, and venison. Colonists would
find it easy to supply their own needs, and could engage in profitable
cattle raising, for flocks and herds could be left out all winter. La
Salle also reported that there was a species of native wild cattle,
called the buffalo, whose wool was better than that of any sheep in
France. He sought Louis XIV, king of France, and asked permission to
found colonies and to conduct the fur trade and explorations on the
regions bordering on the Great Lakes. The French king did not wish to
found new colonies, for those already in existence had proved very
expensive, but he was willing that La Salle should “labor at the
discovery of the western parts of New France,” provided that he pay
all the expenses of the enterprise himself, and bring the matter to a
conclusion within five years. With this permission and such money as
he could raise, La Salle returned to New France, and in the autumn of
1678 set out to put his plans into execution. Detailed and interesting
reports of his voyage on the waters of the Great Lakes have been
preserved in the entertaining account of the journey which was written
by Father Louis Hennepin, an adventurous missionary who delighted in
telling stories about himself and his doings. He was also something of
a prophet in foreseeing the time when there would be an “inconceivable
commerce” on the Great Lakes, and their shores would be lined with the
shops and dwellings of the whites.
Up to this time the French missionaries and the fur traders had gained
the interior by way of the Ottawa River, or the Toronto, and Georgian
Bay. La Salle decided to build a sailing-vessel on the shore of Lake
Erie, in which he could transport his men to the stations he intended
to establish, and also carry his trading goods to the Indians, and
bring back the furs which he obtained in exchange for them. He already
had a fortified post at Fort Frontenac on the northeastern shore of
Lake Ontario; but he could not build his ship at this point, because
the natives told him that formidable cataracts interrupted the
navigation between Lakes Ontario and Erie. He sent an advance company
to establish a station at the head of Lake Ontario, and to seek a
convenient site on Lake Erie for the construction of the ship. With
this expedition went Father Hennepin, whose graphic account of what he
saw and of what he experienced is one of the most interesting in the
annals of American exploration. The voyagers reached the mouth of the
Niagara River in safety. When the current became too strong for them
to go farther in their canoe, they landed and pushed forward through
the snow. As they made their way along the edge of the river, they
heard more and more clearly the roar of falling waters; and, at length,
there burst upon their sight the falls of Niagara, or the “Thunder
of Waters,” as the Indians called it,--that “vast and prodigious
cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing
manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel, those
of Italy and Switzerland being but sorry patterns.” Hennepin describes
this wonderful cataract as made up of two great cross-streams of
water and two falls with an island between, and declares that when
this “prodigious quantity” of water comes to fall, there is a din and
a noise more deafening than the loudest thunder; the rebound of the
waters was so great that a cloud arose from the foam and hung over the
abyss, even when the sun was at its height. He could not say enough
of this “most beautiful, and at the same time most frightful cascade”
which he saw for the first time on this December day in 1678.[1]
[1] Lake Ontario is 326 ft. lower than Lake Erie and about 30 miles
distant. For 18 miles the Niagara River flows peacefully along, then
suddenly the channel narrows and the waters rush down 53 ft. in half
a mile, and then drop over a cliff 160 ft. in two separate falls, one
600 and the other 200 ft. wide. Seven thousand tons of water are thus
discharged every second into a narrow gorge whose nearly perpendicular
walls rise 200 ft. on either side. Down its steep slope the imprisoned
waters dash in a succession of boiling rapids, white with foam, forming
in one loop of the channel a curious whirlpool. Issuing from this gorge
at Lewiston, the river flows tranquilly on to Lake Ontario.
[Illustration: Niagara Falls as sketched by Hennepin. The Falls are
seen from the Canadian side of the river, the viewer facing roughly
southeast. The American Falls are to the left, the Canadian Falls to
the right.]
While Hennepin and his party were exploring the Niagara, La Motte,
the leader of the expedition, had selected a site for a fortified
house about two leagues above the mouth of the river and not far from
the present town of Lewiston. He set his laborers to work, but their
task was hard, because the frozen ground had to be thawed with boiling
water before it was possible to drive down stakes for a palisade. As
the carpenters labored at their tasks, distrustful and jealous Indians
from a neighboring Seneca village of the Iroquois loitered about,
watching them with sullen looks, and intimated in a way that could
not be disregarded their unwillingness to allow the work to go on.
And well they might! Niagara was the key to the four upper lakes from
which the Iroquois fur trade could be controlled, and this fort was
being built expressly to hold in check those vigorous tribes, and put
an end to their trade with the English and the Dutch in the furs which
they obtained from the Indians of the western territory. La Salle had
realized that difficulty would probably arise, and had instructed La
Motte to go to the great village of the Senecas and endeavor to gain
their consent to the French plans for building the fort and the ship.
This La Motte now decided to do. After five days’ journey through the
snowy forests, he and his companions reached the town which was beyond
the Genesee and southeast of Rochester, not far from the present town
of Victor, New York. The weary travellers were conducted to the wigwam
of the principal chief, where women and children flocked to gaze upon
the whites. An old man, according to custom, went through the village
announcing their arrival, and younger savages washed their feet and
then rubbed them with bear’s grease.
The next afternoon, La Motte was summoned to confer with forty-two
old men who made up the Indian council. These chiefs, clad in robes
of beaver, wolf, or black squirrel, squatted upon the ground; but,
writes Hennepin, “the senators of Venice do not appear with a graver
countenance and perhaps do not speak with more majesty and solidity
than these ancient Iroquois.” La Motte’s interpreter harangued the
assembly, stating that the French wished to build a great wooden
canoe and to erect a fort on the banks of the Niagara River. He
endeavored to convince the natives that this enterprise would be for
their advantage, as it would enable the French to sell them goods at
lower prices than the Dutch and English traders. He enforced every
reason with wampum belts, and gifts of axes, knives, coats, and
scarlet cloth,--for the best arguments in the world were not listened
to by the Indians unless accompanied by presents. The shrewd, savage
politicians received the gifts, but were not convinced. Their replies
were general and evasive and gave no satisfaction. When the council
was over, they proceeded to torture an Indian prisoner, and La Motte
with his men left the camp in disgust to go back and await the arrival
of La Salle from Fort Frontenac. La Salle and Tonty, his ever faithful
friend and follower, with men and supplies for the expedition arrived
at the Seneca town not long after the departure of La Motte and his
men. La Salle succeeded in “so dexterously gaining their affection”
that the Indians consented to permit him to carry arms and ammunition
by the Niagara portage, to build a vessel above the cataract, and
to establish a fortified warehouse at the mouth of the river. Armed
with this permission, he proceeded to the encampment of La Motte. The
rejoicing at this success was short lived, for a few days later report
came that a vessel which La Salle had left at the mouth of the Genesee
River had been ship-wrecked on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Of
all the equipment for his enterprise with which this vessel was laden,
only the anchors and cables for the new ship were saved; but La Salle
with his unvarying fortitude went on with the work as if nothing had
happened.
La Salle selected a spot on the banks of the Niagara River above the
falls at the mouth of what is now called Cayuga Creek, where the
water was quiet, being sheltered by an island from the current of the
river--a little village near that spot still bears his name. Hither the
little company of thirty men, heavily laden with tools and provisions,
journeyed laboriously through the snow on one of the last days of
January, 1679. Two Mohegan hunters, who were with the party, set about
making bark wigwams for the men and a chapel for Father Hennepin, who
had travelled the twelve miles with his portable altar lashed to his
back. The ship carpenters went to work at once, and in four days the
keel of the vessel was ready. La Salle invited Father Hennepin to drive
the first bolt, “but the modesty of my religious profession,” he says,
“compelled me to decline this honor.” So La Salle himself drove the
first nail in the ship.
Fortunately the majority of the Iroquois warriors had gone on the
war-path beyond Lake Erie; but although those who had remained at home
were less insolent because of the absence of the rest, yet they did
not fail to visit the shipyard frequently, loitering sullenly about
and exhibiting their displeasure. One of them, pretending to be drunk,
attacked the blacksmith, and tried to kill him; but the blacksmith
vigorously defended himself with a red-hot bar of iron. This, together
with the severity of the reprimand administered by Father Hennepin, who
always represents himself as indispensable on every occasion, induced
the savages to depart for the moment. The work went rapidly on, and
as the great “wooden canoe” began to show its proportions the Indians
became more and more alarmed. A few days later a squaw told the French
that they meant to burn the vessel on the stocks, and had not a very
close watch been kept they would undoubtedly have done so.
These frequent alarms, the steady cold, and the shortage of supplies
owing to the loss of La Salle’s vessel and the enmity of the Iroquois,
who refused to sell them food, discouraged the shipbuilders. They would
certainly have deserted had not La Salle and Hennepin taken great pains
to reassure and cheer them on. Toward spring La Salle set out on foot
for Fort Frontenac to procure food and supplies and to attend to his
personal affairs. His presence was needed there because his enemies
had persuaded his creditors that the undertaking was a rash one, and
had instigated them to seize all his goods, although Fort Frontenac
alone was more than sufficient to pay his debts. During La Salle’s
absence from Niagara one of the workmen endeavored to stir up the
others to desert. “This bad man,” announces Hennepin, “would infallibly
have perverted our carpenters, had not I confirmed them in their good
resolution by the exhortations I made them after divine service.”
The Mohegan hunters brought in deer and other game, warmer weather
arrived, and cheerfulness once more prevailed. The shipbuilders went
on with their work more briskly, and in the early spring of 1679,
before La Salle returned, the vessel was ready to be launched. Father
Hennepin blessed the ship and christened it the _Griffon_, for on the
prow La Salle had placed a roughly carved figure of this mythical
monster, taken from the coat of arms of Count Frontenac. The assembled
company sang a hymn of praise; three cannon were fired; and amid loud
acclamations from both French and Indians, the _Griffon_ glided into
the Niagara River. All haste had been made to get her afloat, even
before she was entirely completed, to save her from the plots of the
Indians, who were determined to burn her. But the men did not wait for
her to be finished to put her to use. They immediately quitted their
bark wigwams, swung their hammocks under her decks, and that very
night, rejoicing in their security from the Indians, all slept soundly
on board the ship.
The Iroquois warriors, returning from a hunting trip, were mightily
surprised to see the vessel afloat, and shouted, “Otkon! Otkon!” which
means “most penetrating wits,” to the triumphant Frenchmen. For they
could not understand how in so short a time the white men could build
so large a canoe,--although the craft was of only about forty-five
tons. With her five cannon she was to the savages a wonderful moving
fortress, and inspired in them a wholesome fear and admiration for the
French.
CHAPTER VI
LA SALLE ON THE GREAT LAKES
In the summer of 1679, La Salle returned from Fort Frontenac to Niagara
to find the _Griffon_ finished and ready for her first voyage. By the
completion of this vessel his enterprise was fairly launched. Behind
him at Montreal were enemies and creditors; before him stretched the
waters of the Great Lakes, and beyond was the unexplored wilderness.
The men had been unable to sail the _Griffon_ up the Niagara River to
the mouth of Lake Erie because of the strong adverse current. Now, with
the help of a strong wind and with tow-ropes in the most difficult
places, La Salle brought the vessel through the turbulent water to the
calm outlet of the lake. There the crew celebrated their safe passage
with religious services and cannonading and then set sail on the
unknown waters.
To deter his men from the voyage, La Salle’s enemies had declared that
the lake was full of rocks and sands. For the first day and night,
therefore, the men kept their sounding-lines busy, but navigation
proved to be easy. On the fourth day after leaving Niagara, they
reached the mouth of that wide river called by the French “The
Strait,”--Détroit. Here the current was so strong that they came to
anchor to wait for a favorable breeze. Soon a brisk wind arose and the
_Griffon_ ploughed her way through the rapids between Grosse Isle and
the mainland, pioneer of the mighty vessels which to-day make that
strait one of the great commercial highways of the world. On both
sides stretched fine open fields dotted with fruit trees, and walnut
and chestnut groves, and beyond in the distance were lofty forests.
All were “so well-disposed,” says Hennepin, “that one would think
Nature alone without the help of art could not have made so charming
a prospect.” Flocks of turkeys and swans circled about, and from the
deck of the ship herds of deer could be seen roaming the meadows. The
_Griffon_ was soon well stocked with meat, and the returning hunters
united in heaping praises on this beautiful spot where fruit and game
of every kind abounded, and where even the bears were not so savage
as in other places. Hennepin urged La Salle to make a settlement on
this “charming strait,” but La Salle coldly reminded him of the great
passion which he had professed a few months before for the discovery of
a new country, and the priest was silenced. Amid the later hardships of
the journey all must have looked longingly back to this time of ease
and plenty at the strait of Detroit.
On the 12th of August, the _Griffon_ passed by the site of the present
city of Detroit. Had they come here ten years before, the explorers
would have found on the bank of the river a large stone, rudely
fashioned in the likeness of a human figure and bedaubed with paint,
which the Indians worshipped as a manito, or god. But in 1670 French
priests, making the first recorded passage through the strait, had come
upon this image, and “full of hatred for this false deity,” had fallen
upon it with their axes, breaking it in pieces and casting it into the
water. Beyond Detroit the river widened into a beautiful little sheet
of water. As it was St. Claire’s day, Hennepin’s proposal that the name
of the founder of his order be given to this lake was carried out, and
it received its present name.
When the _Griffon_ had crossed the lake, the men saw before them
wide marshes through which the swift-moving river had many a winding
channel. They had come to the St. Clair Flats, a fan-shaped delta of
seven channels, on which has been built to-day a popular summer resort.
They set to work sounding one passage after another, only to find them
shallow and almost barred with shoals. But at last they came upon an
excellent channel about a league broad, with no sands and a depth
everywhere of from three to eight fathoms of water through which the
vessel sailed easily toward Lake Huron. At the mouth of the river,
however, they were forced to drop anchor and remain for several days.
A north wind had been blowing, driving the water of the three upper
lakes into the strait. This had increased so much the usual force of
the current that it was as violent as that of the Niagara, and entirely
impassable for a vessel like the _Griffon_. Even when the wind turned
southerly, La Salle could make no headway against this current until he
sent ashore a dozen men who hauled and towed the vessel along the beach
for half an hour, dragging her out of the narrow mouth of the channel
into the wave-tossed waters of the lake. Once more all returned
“thanks to the Almighty for their happy navigation,” and set sail on
the 23rd of August on Lake Huron.
The favoring winds soon died down, and La Salle lay becalmed for two
days among the islands of Thunder Bay. Starting from there at noon on
his way northward, he was caught in a furious westerly gale. For hours
the little vessel tossed and drifted over the raging waters of the
lake, lying at the mercy of wind and wave. Even La Salle gave up hope
and told his men to prepare for death. All fell on their knees except
the pilot, who devoted the time instead to cursing and swearing against
his employer for having brought him there to perish in a “nasty lake,
and lose the glory he had acquired by long and happy navigations on
the ocean.” But Pilot Lucas and his brave commander were not destined
to perish in that storm. Hennepin vowed an altar to St. Anthony of
Padua, prudently agreeing to set it up in Louisiana if they should
reach there. The storm-clouds rolled away, the waters grew quiet, and
the sun shone out on the wooded cliffs of the islands of Bois Blanc
and Mackinac, and the dense forests of Michigan. The vessel anchored
behind the point of St. Ignace, in the harbor of Michilimackinac,
the settlement which was at once the centre of Jesuit missions and of
Indian traders.
The sound of the _Griffon’s_ cannon brought out a varied throng from
the wigwams and cabins on shore. Shouting Indians gazed with wonder
at this huge wooden canoe; lawless French traders, swarthy from long
years in the wilderness, to whom the distance of this trading post
from civilization was its strongest recommendation, lounged idly out
of their cabins, gazing with resentment at this invader of their trade
and country; while black-robed Jesuit priests hurried to the shore
to welcome the newcomers. Indians, traders, and Jesuits united in a
show of welcome to La Salle as he landed, finely dressed and wearing a
scarlet cloak bordered with broad gold lace. All marched to the little
bark chapel in the Ottawa village, and united with the voyagers in
hearing mass and giving thanks for their safe passage.
At this settlement La Salle found four of fifteen men whom he had sent
ahead the autumn before to buy furs, and to go to the tribes along the
Illinois River, making preparations for his coming. Most of these men
had been enticed from his service, and had wasted the goods given them
to exchange for furs, using them for their own personal gain. Troubled
over his affairs in Canada La Salle had meant to return from this point
to Montreal, leaving Tonty to conduct his party to the Illinois River.
But he soon felt the hostile spirit at the trading post, and realized
that his presence was necessary to keep his men from being drawn away.
Even the swarms of Indians who hovered in their canoes about the vessel
regarded it with wonder and jealousy rather than friendliness, and La
Salle feared that the Illinois tribes would be tampered with by his
enemies.
He determined to push on at once, and embarked early in September. The
vessel proceeded across Lake Michigan, called by the French and Indians
Lake Illinois from the name of the tribes who inhabited its southern
shores, and cast anchor at the entrance of Green Bay. Here matters
took a turn for the better. As the vessel lay tossing about behind
a point of the bay, an Indian chief came out in his canoe to greet
the Frenchmen. When he learned that La Salle was a friend of Count
Frontenac and bore his commission, the Indian told him of his own warm
friendship for Frontenac, for whom he would gladly lay down his life,
and welcomed La Salle with the greatest cordiality. He reported, too,
the presence of Frenchmen near by, and La Salle found the faithful
remnant of his advance party waiting with a cargo of furs which they
had collected. Eager to satisfy his clamorous creditors, he determined
to send back the _Griffon_, in charge of the pilot and five men, with
this load of furs. On the 18th of September, the _Griffon_ fired a
parting shot and started for Niagara, to return as soon as she had
discharged her cargo; and La Salle, with Hennepin and fourteen others,
embarked in four canoes for the south.
The canoes had hardly started when a sudden September storm swept
across the lake. The waves washed into the heavily laden canoes,
darkness fell, and it was only by constant shouting that the men kept
their boats together and got to shore. For four days the storm raged
with unabated fury. As La Salle and his men waited from day to day
in their cheerless encampment, living on pumpkins and Indian corn
presented them by the friendly Indian chief and the meat of a single,
porcupine brought in by a hunter, the thought of the _Griffon_ haunted
them. Their worst fears proved afterward to have been fulfilled; she
was never heard of again. With her sank the cargo which was to have
restored La Salle’s credit in Montreal; and with her, too, perished the
high hopes that had been set upon this first vessel on the upper lakes.
Although La Salle feared the worst, he did not turn back. As soon as
the lake grew calm the four canoes set out again, coasting southward
along the shore of Wisconsin. But the elements were against them.
Storm after storm drove them ashore, where they spent wretched days
and nights among the rocks and bushes, crouched around driftwood fires
with nothing to shelter them from snow and rain but their blankets. As
they went southward, steep, high bluffs ran so close to the lake that
it was hard to find a landing-place. Yet the violence of the wind was
so great that they were compelled at evening to drag their canoes to
the top of the bluffs in order not to leave them exposed all night to
the waves which would have dashed them to pieces. In the morning, in
order to reëmbark, two men had to go into the water to the waist and
hold a canoe upright until it was loaded, pushing it out or drawing
it back as the waves advanced or retreated. Food gave out and the men
paddled from morning till night with nothing to eat but a daily handful
of Indian corn and hawthorn berries which they picked on shore and
devoured so ravenously that they made them ill. Exhaustion and famine
stared them in the face, but relief was in sight.
One morning as the men were paddling along near the site of Milwaukee,
they saw upon the shore a cloud of ravens and eagles hovering over
something. They hastened on land and found the body of a deer which had
been killed by a wolf. This was the beginning of better things. As the
little fleet advanced toward the south, they found the country ever
fairer and the weather more temperate. There was an abundance of game,
of which there had hitherto been an exceptional lack. They passed the
Chicago River and circled the end of the lake, landing at the mouth of
the St. Joseph. Here La Salle waited for Tonty to join them, employing
the time in building a fort. On the third of December the party sailed
up the river, bound for the villages of the Illinois. On a later trip
in 1682 La Salle reached the Illinois settlements by a shorter route,
crossing from his fort to the river Chicago, and journeying from its
waters into a northern branch of the Illinois River.
In four months La Salle had traversed the length of Lake Erie, had
passed through the strait of Detroit, up Lake Huron, through the
Straits of Mackinac, and down Lake Michigan; from the sites of Buffalo
and Cleveland he had sailed past Detroit and Milwaukee even to Chicago,
and had then journeyed inland to the Illinois River. He had lost his
vessel and her crew, as well as all his furs; he had met with hostility
from French and Indian alike; he had been deserted by most of his
advance party, and had held his own crew only by his presence and the
dominating force of his personality; he had suffered endless hardships
and privations: but nothing had shaken his purpose. In later years he
followed the Illinois and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and
led a colony to the limits of the present state of Texas, where he
was murdered by one of his men. In history, La Salle stands out as
a man whose courage and persevering fortitude in the face of almost
insuperable obstacles mark him as one of the greatest explorers the
world has ever known. We do well to join with Hennepin in saying,
“Those who shall be so happy as to inhabit that noble country cannot
but remember with gratitude those who discovered the way by venturing
to sail upon unknown lakes.”
CHAPTER VII
A HAPLESS FRENCH GOVERNOR
Like all strong men Frontenac made many enemies. He was recalled in
1682, and General La Barre, a man of about sixty, was sent out in his
place. La Barre had made a good record in the West Indies, but was
entirely unable to handle the difficult problems which met him in New
France. In an evil hour for the French, the Iroquois had conquered
the southern neighbors with whom they had long waged wars that had
occupied much of their time and strength. Now, they were free to turn
on the Indian allies of Canada of whose commercial gains through the
fur trade with the French they had long been envious. Frontenac before
his departure had found the Iroquois unusually arrogant and unruly,
although they had come to regard him as the greatest of all “Onontios,”
as they named the governors of New France. The Dutch and the English
had meanwhile made more or less successful advances to the Iroquois,
who now fully realized their own importance from the efforts of both
French and English to gain their support.
For two years La Barre struggled on, entangling rather than helping
the situation. At length an Iroquois chief was murdered in a village
of French Indians, and the crisis came. In the early spring of 1684,
French canoes were plundered by the Senecas and La Barre felt that he
must assert his power, or the Indians would lose their respect for the
French. After making great preparations, he started with his soldiers
and frontiersmen for the Seneca country by way of the St. Lawrence to
Fort Frontenac and thence across Lake Ontario. The opposing current
of the river was so strong that frequently the men could make no
progress by paddling, but were obliged to tow the canoes or push them
along with poles. Every few miles were rapids around which the canoes
were transported and through which the flatboats were pulled with
the greatest effort. The mosquitoes were “insufferably troublesome,”
hovering over the men in such clouds that they could hardly see their
way,--so one of the soldiers wrote. At Fort Frontenac, the men fell
ill of a malarial fever which killed many and disabled more. La Barre
repented more than once of entering upon an expedition that he now saw
would be disastrous.
Whatever his former warlike purposes, La Barre was now eager for peace.
He sent Le Moyne, a veteran interpreter whom the Iroquois called the
“Partridge,” to the Onondagas asking them to meet him on the southern
side of the lake, twenty miles or so north of Oswego. Le Moyne
returned in a few days with the famous Onondaga chief, “Big Mouth”; in
French this is “La Grande Gueule,” which the soldiers shortened into
“Grangula.” Big Mouth had recently been conferring with the English,
whose arbitrary demands had offended his pride; he was now in a haughty
mood that boded ill for the French.
The Indian chief was accompanied by a train of thirty young warriors.
As soon as he disembarked, General La Barre sent him a present of bread
and wine, and thirty salmon-trouts. At the same time he gave him to
understand that he was pleased at his arrival, and would be glad to
have an interview with him after he had rested himself. To conceal
from Big Mouth the weakness of the French forces Le Moyne represented
to him that the most of the soldiers had been left behind at Fort
Frontenac, and that the troops which he saw were the general’s guards;
but one of the Iroquois knew a little of the French tongue. Strolling
noiselessly about the tents by night he overheard the talk of the
soldiers and learned the true state of affairs.
It was two days after his arrival before Big Mouth gave notice to La
Barre that he was ready for an interview. The council was held on an
open spot between the two encampments. From the picture drawn by one
of the French soldiers we see the arrangement. La Barre was seated in
state in an armchair with his Jesuit interpreter beside him and the
French officers ranged on his right and left. The two lines of French
soldiers formed two more sides of the square. Opposite La Barre sat the
Indians with Big Mouth, their spokesman, in front, and between them in
the centre of the square was placed the great Calumet or Pipe of Peace.
The stem of this huge pipe was about four feet long, and the body or
bowl about eight inches high. The bowl was of handsome red stone, well
polished, and the stem of a strong reed or cane, trimmed with yellow,
white, and green feathers. In shape it resembled a huge hammer more
than anything else. The Indians used these calumets for negotiations
as we use a flag of truce, holding them peculiarly sacred. To violate
the rights of this venerable pipe was regarded among them as a flaming
crime that would draw down mischief upon their nations. About this
calumet were piled the wampum belts to be presented by the speakers.
[Illustration: Map of La Barre and Grangula]
La Barre opened the council, speaking boldly and with apparent
assurance. He made no allusion to his original purpose of making war
on the Senecas, but announced that the king, his master, had sent him
there with a guard to meet the principal chiefs of the Five Nations at
an appointed council fire. The Five Nations had made infractions upon
the peace concluded between them and the French. Should Big Mouth be
willing, as their representative, to make reparation and offer promises
for the future, the great French monarch desired that La Barre and Big
Mouth should smoke together the calumet of peace.
La Barre recounted the three offences of the Iroquois. They had robbed
and ill-used French traders; for this he demanded reparation. They had
brought the English to the lakes which belonged to the French, thus
diverting trade from the latter; this he would forget, provided it did
not happen again. They had attacked the Illinois, and still held many
in captivity. “These people are my master’s children,” said La Barre,
“and must therefore cease to be your slaves.” They must be sent home at
once. He enforced each statement with a wampum belt, and ended every
request with an announcement, as bold as though he had the whole French
army at his back, that should these demands not be complied with, he
“had express orders to declare war,” even going so far once as to say,
“in case of your refusal, war is positively proclaimed.” He would
gladly leave them in peace, should they prove “religious observers of
the treaties,” but if not he added, concluding with a statement which
he knew to be false, he would be obliged to join the governor of New
York, who had orders from his king to assist La Barre in burning the
five villages and cutting off the Iroquois.
While La Barre’s interpreter translated this speech, Grangula sat
silent and attentive, gazing steadily at the bowl of his pipe. After
the harangue was finished he rose and walked round inside the square
made by the French and savages, five or six times. Then he returned
to his place, and drawing himself to his full height began to speak.
“Onontio, I honor you,” he said, “and all the warriors that accompany
me do the same. Your interpreter has made an end of his discourse, and
now I come to begin mine. My voice glides to your ear, pray listen to
my words.”
He thought that the French captain must have started out from Quebec
with some strange idea that the Five Nations had been wiped out by fire
or flood. Nothing else, he implied, could make him set out against so
powerful a federation with such an army. The Indian chief ironically
assured the French general of the continued prosperity of the Five
Nations, congratulating him that he brought the calumet of peace,
rather than the bloody axe that had been so often dyed with the blood
of the French. Then he spoke out boldly and directly, telling La Barre
that he knew better than to believe the Frenchman’s pretence that he
did not have any other purpose in approaching the lake than to smoke
the pipe of peace with the Onondagas. He saw plainly that the Onontio
meant to “knock them on the head,” if the French arms had not been so
much weakened. The French soldiers were to be congratulated that the
Great Spirit had visited them with sickness, for only thus had their
lives been saved from Indian massacre. Even the women and old men and
children would have attacked the French camp without fear, had not
Akouessan (Le Moyne) appeared at the Onondaga village announcing that
he was an ambassador of peace, not of war.
With this bold and telling introduction, in which he revealed to the
French his full comprehension of their weakness and of their deceit,
Big Mouth proceeded to consider the accusations of La Barre. The
pillage of French traders he justified on the ground that they were
carrying arms to the Illinois, and for this he flatly refused to give
satisfaction, declaring insultingly that even the old men of his tribe
had long ceased to fear the French. They had conducted the English
to the lakes to traffic with French allies, just as the Algonquins
conducted the French to the Five Nations to trade with them. Moreover,
he claimed that they had a perfect right to do as they pleased in
this matter. “We are born free-men,” he declared proudly, “and have
no dependence either upon the Onontio [governor of Canada], or the
Corlaer [governor of New York]. We have power to go where we please,
to conduct whoever we will to the places we resort to, and to buy and
sell where we think fit.” If the French chose they might make slaves
of their allies, robbing them of the liberty of entertaining any other
Indians, but the Five Nations would brook no such interference. The
Iroquois attacked the Illinois because they invaded their territory,
hunting beavers on their lands. Big Mouth met the reproof of La Barre
with a bold stroke in return. He declared that in defending their
own lands against the Illinois they had done less than the English
and French, who without any right, had usurped the grounds they now
possessed, dislodging from them several nations in order to make way
for the building of their cities, villages, and forts.
Big Mouth closed his address with a warning. A year ago the hatchet
had been buried in the presence of Count Frontenac at his fort, and
the tree of peace had been planted. It was then stipulated that this
fort should be used as a place of retreat for traders, and not a refuge
for soldiers. Big Mouth warned the French to take care lest so great a
number of soldiers as he now saw before him “stifle and choke the tree
of peace,” and hinder it from shading both countries with its leaves.
The Iroquois were ready to dance under its branches the dance of peace,
and never dig up the hatchet to cut it down, unless the governors of
Canada and New York, jointly or separately, should invade the country
given by the Great Spirit to their ancestors. The Indian orator
presented two wampum belts and sat down.
As soon as he had done, Le Moyne and the Jesuits interpreted his
answer to La Barre, who thereupon retired to his tent and stormed and
blustered till somebody came and represented to him that good manners
were not to be expected from an Iroquois. It was little wonder that
La Barre raged. The Indian chief had seen through his artifices,
had yielded to none of his demands, and had contrived to assert the
complete independence of his own tribes and their contempt for the
French.
Big Mouth entertained some of the French officers at a feast, which
he opened for them by dancing an Indian dance. There was another
council in the afternoon, and the terms of peace were settled upon in
the evening. These terms were in the usual form of Indian treaties.
A “word” of the Iroquois was answered by a “word” of the French
accepting it, and all disputed points were taken up in a series of such
“words.”
The Iroquois offered to the French a beverage devoid of bitterness to
purify whatever inconvenience they had experienced on their voyage,
and to dispel whatever bad air they had breathed between Montreal
and this council fire,--a beverage of which the malarial French were
certainly in dire need. They reminded the French of the deep ditch dug
the year before, into which all unkind things that might occur were to
be cast, and requested the French to throw into it the Seneca robbery,
to which the French agreed. Again the tree of peace was set up, each
side solemnly adjuring the other to sustain and strengthen it. The
French agreed to depart at once, and then,--and not till then,--did the
Iroquois consent to renew the former treaty, “dispelling all the clouds
that had obscured the Sun from their sight.”
Thus ended the grand expedition of La Barre. No real satisfaction had
been gained by the French, but a weak truce had been made, and the
Iroquois had taken the opportunity to assert boldly their independence
of French and English alike, whom they treated as invaders of their
rightful possessions.
Big Mouth and his men returned to their homes, and the French set out
for Montreal. The few healthy men that remained manned the General’s
canoes and took charge of the flat-bottomed boats in which the soldiers
were carried. Of the dangers attendant on shooting the rapids in these
boats one of the soldiers draws a vivid picture, declaring that he and
his companions wished themselves back in the canoes that had brought
them up, when they shot down such precipices of water as had never been
heard of before. The main current wound its way in and out past eddies
and rocks, dashing along as fast as a cannon ball, and the men steered
as well as they could along this zigzag course, knowing that a false
stroke of the oar would send them upon the rocks. But in spite of the
discomfort and the danger, this soldier confesses from the safe shelter
of Montreal that, though the risk was very great, “yet, by way of
compensation one had the satisfaction of running a great way in a very
short time.” And he closes with a word of sympathy for La Barre. “All
the world blames our General for his bad success.... The people here
are busy in wafting to court a thousand calumnies against him.... But
after all the poor man could do no more than he did.”
PART II
THE STRUGGLE FOR POSSESSION
CHAPTER VIII
THE FOUNDING OF DETROIT
After the failure which has been recounted in the preceding chapter,
La Barre was recalled to France, and a new governor, Denonville, sent
over to take his place. He had not much greater success and was in
turn replaced by Count Frontenac, who returned to the scene of his
former labors. This was in 1689, when England and France were at war.
For the remaining nine years of his life Frontenac devoted all his
energies to defending New France against the English and the Iroquois
and to holding what the French had already gained on the Great Lakes.
In November, 1698, in his seventy-eighth year, he died, and was deeply
mourned as a strong governor and beloved leader. He had come out to New
France in 1672, and during his long term of service he had used his
power and influence not only to build up the settlements on the St.
Lawrence, but also to plant on the shores of the Great Lakes and the
rivers beyond a line of French forts and trading posts. He had gathered
about him a group of young men who shared his enthusiasm for expansion
and were eager to carry on his work. Five years before his death,
Frontenac had sent one of his men, Cadillac, to the Straits of Mackinac
to hold that centre of the fur trade.
Cadillac was a rough, forceful soldier who was summary in his methods
and short in his speech. He was well suited to the command of a
frontier post and did good work in keeping the lake Indians from
alliance with the enemies of the French. He did not, however, get
on well with the missionaries at Michilimackinac. They resented his
presence and his influence with the Indians, for whose conversion to
Christianity they were earnestly laboring. Cadillac soon came to see
that Detroit and not Mackinac was the key to the interior. Whoever held
the narrow channel connecting Lake Erie and Lake Huron would control
the fur trade of the whole lake region. He hastened to Quebec to gain
support for his scheme of erecting a fort and trading station on the
Detroit River. There he was stoutly opposed by the Jesuits, who foresaw
that the carrying out of his project would mean the ruin of their
mission, which could not compete commercially with the new station, and
that the extension of trade would bring the vices of civilization to
the natives. Nothing daunted, Cadillac went over the seas to France,
gained the favor of the colonial minister, and returned to Canada with
permission to found his colony. He reached Detroit with a band of one
hundred colonists and soldiers on the 24th of July, 1701.
Cadillac had done well in choosing Detroit as the situation for the
first permanent colony on the lakes. In the century that was past the
Great Lakes had been discovered and explored; the eighteenth century
was to witness their occupation and the contest for the possession of
this rich country. In this long strife, first France and England, and
then England and the American colonies, were to come to blows, while
always on these shores unceasing warfare would be waged between the
advancing white man and the retreating red man. In the opening years
of the new century Cadillac was taking the first step in permanent
occupation of the country, planting his settlement on a site so
important that a wise English leader was at that very time urging upon
the New York assembly its colonization by the English. So long as Lake
Erie and Lake Ontario had been avoided by the French, the northern
Ottawa River-Georgian Bay route had been the highway of travel and
trade. The easier southern route was now open to the French, but it was
even more convenient and accessible to their English rivals. The French
were brought face to face with the problem of how to hold the trade
of the upper lakes from the English. In the solution of this problem
Detroit would be the key.
There rushes through the strait of Detroit more water than through any
other river in the world, save only the Niagara and the St. Lawrence.
Through this channel, whose average width is a mile and whose length
is only twenty-seven miles, pour in a steady, even current, unbroken
by rapids or eddies, and with a speed of over two miles an hour, the
waters of three lakes, Superior, Michigan, and Huron, and of the
hundreds of streams that feed them. This little river is the natural
outlet for eighty-two thousand square miles of lake surface and one
hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles of land. Down the swift
current floated in those early days scores of canoes paddled by
silent Indians and swarthy coureurs de bois, bearing to the markets at
Montreal, Quebec, and Albany loads of beaver, mink, and otter furs of
immense value. They were the forerunners of a tonnage passing through
that strait which to-day exceeds that of the Thames and London.
Cadillac and his soldiers and settlers, fifty each, had paddled,
pushed, and carried their canoes, heavily laden with provisions, tools,
ammunition, and supplies, all the way from Montreal. As they gazed on
the beautiful site of their future homes, their weariness passed away.
With shouts of joy they drew their canoes to the bank and unpacked
their heavy loads for the last time.
No exploring party had ever passed through the Detroit River without
longing to stop. To appreciate the charm and wealth of that spot, one
must read the vivid descriptions which were written by men of that
time. Such an enthusiast was Cadillac. Two months after his arrival,
he wrote home the following, which would do credit to a promoter’s
prospectus of the present day.
“The business of war being so different from that of writing,” he said,
“I have not the ability to make a portrait of a country so worthy of
a better pen than mine; but since you have directed me to render
an account of it, I will do so.” He described the river and then
continued: “Its borders are so many vast prairies, and the freshness
of the beautiful waters keeps the banks always green. The prairies are
bordered by long and broad rows of fruit trees which have never felt
the hand of the vigilant gardener. Here also orchards, young and old,
soften and bend their branches, under the weight and quantity of their
fruit, towards the mother earth which has produced them. It is in this
land, so fertile, that the ambitious vine, which has never wept under
the knife of the vine-dresser, builds a thick roof with its large
leaves and heavy clusters, weighing down the top of the tree which
receives it, and often stifling it with its embrace.
“Under these broad walks one sees assembled by hundred the timid deer
and fawn, also the squirrel bounding in his eagerness to collect the
apples and plums with which the earth is covered. Here the cautious
turkey calls and conducts her numerous brood to gather the grapes, and
here also their mates come to fill their large and gluttonous crops.
Golden pheasants, the quail, the partridge, woodcock, and numerous
doves swarm in the woods and cover the country, which is dotted and
broken with thickets and high forests of full-grown trees.... There
are ten species of forest trees, among them are the walnut, white
oak, red oak, the ash, the pine, whitewood and cotton-wood; straight
as arrows, without knots, and almost without branches, except at the
very top, and of prodigious size.... The fish here are nourished and
bathed by living water of crystal clearness, and their great abundance
renders them none the less delicious. Swans are so numerous that one
would take for lilies the reeds in which they are crowded together. The
gabbling goose, the duck, the widgeon [a kind of duck], and the bustard
are so abundant that to give an idea of their numbers I must use the
expression of a savage whom I asked before arriving if there was much
game. ‘So much,’ he said, ‘that they draw up in lines to let the boats
pass through.’... In a word, the climate is temperate, and the air
purified through the day and night by a gentle breeze. The skies are
always serene and spread sweet and fresh influence which makes one
enjoy a tranquil sleep.”
Cadillac landed at the narrowest part of the river, where the city
now stands, and began to build the little village which was to
survive without a break the conflicts of the coming century. In this
wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and savages, the first
thought must be for defence; only when that was provided, could the
settlers turn to plans for their own shelter from wind and weather.
On the first rise of ground back from the river, along the line of
the present Jefferson Avenue, Cadillac marked out a space of a little
less than an acre, with a width of about two city blocks and a depth
of one, which was to be enclosed by a palisade. Small trees were hewn
in the forest and fashioned into sharply pointed pickets which were
driven into the ground as closely as possible, thus forming a solid
fence ten or twelve feet high. At the four corners were bastions of
stout oak pickets from which the soldiers could shoot along the line of
the palisade. Inside the stockade, Cadillac laid out a street twelve
feet wide, and assigned small lots to the settlers and soldiers. The
settlers bought theirs outright, but Cadillac retained the ownership of
the others.
Fifty hours after their landing, on the day sacred to St. Anne, they
began the foundation of a chapel on the very spot where St. Anne’s
church stands to-day. In a month the chapel was completed by a rude
cross placed over the door, and a bell summoned the colonists to daily
prayers. When the storehouse and magazine for ammunition were also
finished the people set to work on their own log huts. Trees were cut
in the forest, and the rough-hewn logs were hauled to the spot. There
a framework was set up, the logs were fitted into it, and the cracks
were filled with mortar and mud. Last of all the top was covered with
a roof of birch bark, or was thatched with grass. Land outside the
stockade was assigned for agriculture, each soldier having a half acre
for cultivation, and the civilians larger tracts. That very year wheat
was sown for the next summer. With remarkable speed the settlement
sprang up in the wilderness, and before the end of August took on an
appearance of stability and permanence.
Cadillac now summoned the Indians to council and urged them to build
settlements in the vicinity. He was wise enough to see that if a
sufficient number of friendly Indians located near by, traders would
come to buy their furs, the colony could rely on greater numbers in
case of attack, and the scanty three months’ supply of provisions
brought from Montreal could be eked out by food bought from Indian
hunters. Three large villages sprang up, and within eight months the
population of the strait was some six thousand people, whites and
Indians.
Hitherto there had been on the Great Lakes nothing looking to family
life or permanent residence, but in the spring of 1702, Madame Cadillac
and Madame Tonty, wife of the captain of the garrison, started in open
canoes, manned by Indians and Canadians, on the seven-hundred-mile
journey from Montreal to Detroit. At a season when storms were likely
to be frequent these two women braved the hardships of the trip, going
up the rapids of the St. Lawrence, across Lake Ontario and around
Niagara, and up Lake Erie to the strait. With her Madame Cadillac
brought her little boy, Jacques, six years of age; her oldest son was
already with his father. These were the first white women to come to
the Great Lakes. They were soon followed by the wives and families of
other settlers. By 1708 the settlement had grown so fast that houses
were built outside the stockade, as the twenty-nine huts within the
enclosure were not sufficient to accommodate the people.
The little colony suffered the usual troubles of frontier life,
but managed to survive them. In 1703 several of the buildings were
destroyed by a fire set by the Indians. For the first few years the
colony was managed by a company, but in 1705 Cadillac succeeded in
getting full control and ruled there with as absolute sway as had any
feudal chief in his turreted castle. He owned the public buildings and
defences and he alone could grant lots for settlement. From him alone
could the people obtain their liquor, and to prevent excessive drinking
by the Indians and traders he restricted the amount sold to each person
at one time and charged a high price for it. To him also all must
come for permits to carry on their different trades and occupations.
For every privilege the people must pay, and right bitterly did they
complain of their commandant to his enemies, though when he walked
along the narrow street, firm and erect, in soldierly costume and with
clanking sword, every hat was doffed. Doubtless some of his charges
were exorbitant, but the money was turned back into the improvement
of the colony, as, for instance, to build a public windmill where the
people could pay to have their corn ground. The blacksmith complained
that he had to pay six hundred francs a year and two casks of ale for
the privilege of blacksmithing, besides having to keep all Cadillac’s
horses shod. The latter task could not have been very arduous, for
until 1706 there were no horses in the settlement, and of the three
that Cadillac bought in that year only one, named Colin, was alive in
1711.
In 1710 Cadillac was ordered to go to Louisiana to govern the colony
there, and his connection with Detroit and the Great Lakes was brought
to an abrupt end. The settlement which he handed over to his successor
was fairly prosperous. In the following winter, however, while the men
of the neighboring Indian tribes were away at their hunting-grounds,
a thousand or more hostile Indians of the Fox-Wisconsin river tribes
descended upon the region and prepared to settle there. The colonists
were powerless to prevent them, but waited anxiously for the return
of the hunting-parties. In May they came, and under the leadership
of the French finally drove off the enemy after a hard and bloody
siege in which many lives were lost. For the next ten years the
colony was so weak that its abandonment was contemplated. Successive
governors mismanaged its internal affairs, demanding tolls and fees so
exorbitant that traders refused to come there. Cadillac’s demands had
been for the advancement of the colony; these men used their power to
enrich themselves.
In 1720 and 1721, financial distress in France sent many a ruined
Frenchman to Detroit, so that in 1722 the population was again two
hundred, as it had been at the time of its founder’s departure. For the
next thirty years the story of Detroit was uneventful. The settlement
increased gradually in numbers and strength. Of its hardships we may
best judge by the large mortality of children in those years. By the
middle of the century we find the authorities in Canada so eager to
have the colonies on the Great Lakes strong and permanent, that the
following inducements are offered in a proclamation posted, by order of
the governor-general, in all the parishes of Canada:--
“Every man who will go to settle in Detroit shall receive gratuitously,
one spade, one axe, one ploughshare, one large and one small wagon. We
will make an advance of other two tools to be paid for in two years
only. He will be given a cow, ... also a sow. Seed will be advanced
the first year, to be returned at the third harvest. The women and
children will be supported for one year. Those will be deprived of the
liberality of the King who shall give themselves up to trade in place
of agriculture.”
In this way men with families were encouraged to make France strong in
her western outposts. Within a year one hundred persons responded, and
an official census shows a population at Detroit of nearly five hundred
persons, of whom thirty-three were women over fifteen, and ninety-five
girls under that age. This represents no mere floating population of
traders and adventurers. The property returns of the inhabitants show
them to have been an agricultural people who made the most of the rich
land on which they lived. In the census they reported one hundred and
sixty horses in place of the one of forty years before, and six hundred
and eighty-two cattle. The fertility of the strait of Detroit seemed to
inspire even the roving Canadian, usually so restless and adventurous,
with a desire to plant and develop a home.
CHAPTER IX
NIAGARA AND THE LOSS OF CANADA
The importance of Niagara in trade and warfare was early recognized by
both the French and the English as well as by the Iroquois. La Salle
and Denonville, in their desire to monopolize the Indian trade, had
built fortified storehouses on the shore of the river, but both had
been destroyed by the Iroquois. By the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the English began to make serious inroads on the fur trade of
the interior, and the French became more anxious than ever to secure a
permanent foothold at Niagara. For twenty-five years French and English
orators harangued at Indian councils, begging for permission to build
forts or trading houses at that point; governors wrote home for the
necessary funds to purchase the Indians’ consent; and rival traders
watched every camp on the river with suspicion. At length French
diplomacy won the day. In 1720, Joncaire, with the help of Charles
Le Moyne, Chevalier de Longueuil, gained from the Indians a reluctant
consent to the building of a bark house at Niagara. He made the most
of this permission, and on the site of Lewiston built a large house,
forty feet wide and thirty long, which could accommodate fifty traders.
This he surrounded with a high fence or palisade and named the Magazin
Royal. In their turn the English built a similar, though smaller, house
at Oswego (1722), from which the Indians could go by portage by the
Oswego River to Lake Oneida, and, gaining the Mohawk, could paddle
their fur-laden canoes to Albany.
In their first permission to the French, the Iroquois had carefully
stipulated that the house to be built at Niagara should be of bark, for
they had learned the danger of stone forts. Now, Le Moyne told them
that he could not keep his skins dry in a bark house, and wrung from
them an unwilling consent to the erection of a stone house, provided it
be “no stone fort.” The authorities at once wrote to the king, asking
for money to defray the expense of building a house of solid masonry.
De Léry, the king’s chief engineer, who had come out to fortify Quebec
and Montreal, was directed to proceed to Niagara, and to build this
trading house. He decided not to put it near Joncaire’s station, which
was seven miles up the river, where the rapids made further navigation
impossible, but to place it at the outlet of the river into Lake
Ontario. On the eastern bank of the Niagara, near its mouth, he began
the erection of the stone structure which stands to-day as the oldest
part of the government buildings at Fort Niagara. It took two summers
in time and thirty thousand livres in money to build. When completed,
the house of stone possessed four bastions erected with a massiveness
of construction that makes it strong after nearly two hundred years
have passed away. Charles Le Moyne, who had gained the Indians’ consent
to the building of this stone house, was put in command and held it
for many years. The first Charles Le Moyne came to Canada in 1654,
and for a century his sons and grandsons played most important parts
in the building up of the French power in the New World. Two of his
sons led the attack on Schenectady, and later founded Louisiana; a
third son fell in the defence of Quebec against Sir William Phips in
1690, and another in the struggle with the English for Hudson’s Bay.
The second Charles Le Moyne accompanied La Barre and Denonville on
their expeditions against the Iroquois, and the third established this
fortified post at Niagara.
In a hundred and forty years, more or less, the French had made
wonderful progress in opening up the interior of North America to
exploration and trade; they had founded settlements at the extremities
of their dominion on the St. Lawrence and the lower Mississippi, and
had connected these by a chain of forts on the Great Lakes and the
northern tributaries of the Mississippi; but they had established only
one strong colony in the interior, the settlement at Detroit. As the
middle of the eighteenth century approached, they awoke to the need of
making good their claim to the Ohio Valley, building a line of forts at
Presque Isle on Lake Erie, Le Bœuf, Venango, and Duquesne, on the route
from that lake to the Ohio River. They also strengthened themselves
by erecting a fort on the southern shore of Lake Erie at Sandusky,
about halfway between Cleveland and Detroit. The energy of the French
was in part due to the exhibition of an intention of the English to
enter the great interior basin; but the French activity aroused the
English, and in 1754 the final contest for the control of the continent
began in the western wilderness of Virginia and Pennsylvania. With
the war elsewhere, this book has nothing to do; the campaigns for the
capture of Duquesne, Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Montreal,
all took place far away from the shores of the Great Lakes; but it was
the success of the English in these other fields that determined the
fate of the interior. From the beginning the importance of Niagara had
been recognized by both combatants, but the strength of its position
deferred an attack upon it for several years. In 1758 the English
captured Fort Frontenac, and the next summer made a determined attack
on Niagara.
[Illustration: A View of Niagara Fort, _taken by Sir William Johnson_,
on the 25th of July 1759. _Drawn on the Spot in 1758._]
The fort at Niagara was now commanded by a French officer and engineer,
Captain Pouchot; he had strengthened and enlarged the fortifications
and had a garrison of six hundred men well supplied with food and
ammunition. The English general, Prideaux, marched with a force of
twenty-three hundred men from Oswego and laid siege to the fort. The
English engineers opened the trenches so near the fort that they were
obliged to withdraw and build a second series. When the artillery
was placed in position and opened fire, one of the first shells to be
discharged burst prematurely, and a fragment striking General Prideaux
on the head, killed him instantly. Sir William Johnson took command in
his place and carried on the siege effectively.
In two or three weeks the French garrison was reduced to the last
extremity. The walls and defences were riddled with shot and broken
through; more than a hundred of the defenders were killed or seriously
wounded, and all were worn out with the strain of the constant defence
day and night. Captain Pouchot still held out, for ever since the
siege began he had been watching for expected assistance from the
western posts. An army of thirteen hundred French and Indians had been
gathered from the stations of the Illinois River and from Detroit,
Michilimackinac, Le Bœuf, and Venango, to defend the Ohio Valley. As
soon as Pouchot heard that the English were coming to attack Niagara
he had sent a summons to the leaders of this force to come to his aid,
and now he was daily and hourly expecting their arrival, together with
the garrison of Fort Duquesne, which had abandoned that place on the
approach of an English army under General Forbes.
The western reënforcement was even now coming up Lake Erie under the
leadership of two French generals. It was an oddly assorted force,
such as no other time or place could have produced. A company of
well-drilled colonial militia paddled their boats beside the canoes of
a war-party of Indians who had been induced by traders to come from
their distant homes to take part in the white men’s strife. Hardly less
savage than the Indian warriors were the western traders and coureurs
de bois, who had lived so long in Indian wigwams that they had adopted
the dress, the war-paint, and the customs of their neighbors. All the
members of this mixed company were alike, however, in one thing,--they
were skilled in the warfare of the woods.
From Lake Erie the fleet paddled past the site of Buffalo and down the
swift-moving Niagara River around Grand Island, and, on the morning
of July 24, 1759, the soldiers and Indians landed at the head of the
portage path, a mile and a half above the falls. Here the French found
the ruins of their Fort of the Portage, of Fort Little Niagara, a
trading station which had been fortified in 1750. Joncaire, a son
of the Joncaire who built the first trading house on the river, had
occupied this post till recently, but had burned it at the approach of
the British. The army made its way up over the rough seven-mile portage
path and down over the rocks to the old French trading house. From here
they proceeded cautiously along the bank of the river.
Sir William Johnson had meanwhile been informed by scouts of the
approach of the expected French reënforcement. He divided his
twenty-three hundred men into three bodies,--one to guard the boats
on Lake Ontario, one to hold the trenches, and the third to cut off
the advance of the southern army. For this last company he picked the
provincial light infantry, two companies of grenadiers, and a hundred
and fifty men of the Forty-sixth Regiment. They were commanded by
Colonel Massey, under whose orders they threw up, about a mile and a
half up the river from the fort, a rough breastwork of felled trees
behind which they could stand and pour shot into the ranks of the
advancing enemy. The Iroquois warriors who had come with Johnson were
placed along the flanks of the English. They had recently shown signs
of disaffection, and when the French army came in sight they opened a
parley with the Indian allies of the French. This did not last long,
for they could come to no agreement, and without further delay the
savages threw themselves into the fight with wild war-whoops.
The French made a gallant fight, but were fatally hampered by their
unprotected position. For half an hour they made sallies, retreating
each time after heavy losses, but led back for another assault by
those who survived of their heroic officers. At last their ranks were
completely broken, and they fled along the shore to regain the portage
road around the falls and escape to their boats. For five miles the
English pursued them through the woods, capturing and bringing back as
many as they could overtake. The bravery of the French officers and
the desperate efforts that they made to check the retreat are shown
by the fact that nearly all of them were either killed or captured.
Their followers hastened back to their boats and retreated across Lake
Erie, burning, on their way, Presque Isle, Le Bœuf, and Venango, and
journeying to the safe and distant fort of Detroit.
On the morning of July 24th, Captain Pouchot, shut up in the fort at
Niagara, heard the sound of distant firing and began to watch for
his allies. Through the open spaces of the forest, he could see in
the far distance, moving forms and groups of men meeting and parting.
The English had evidently gone out to attack the advancing army; the
cannonading from the trenches which had sounded for so long in the ears
of the garrison had ceased, and the trenches seemed deserted. Captain
Pouchot called for volunteers to sally forth from the fort and destroy
the English works; but as soon as they appeared the English soldiers
stationed there by Johnson sprang up from their hiding places behind
the works and forced the French to retreat into their fortification.
At last the sound of distant firing stopped and the smoke of guns
ceased to rise from the scene of the conflict. The garrison waited hour
after hour in anxious suspense. About two o’clock in the afternoon a
friendly Indian slipped through the lines and told of the utter rout
of the relieving force. Captain Pouchot refused to believe him, but
at four o’clock, after a sharp cannonade from the English had been
answered by a similar discharge from the besieged garrison, a trumpet
was sounded in the English trenches, and an officer approached the
fort with a demand for its surrender. He presented also a paper with
the names of the captive French officers. Captain Pouchot still refused
to admit to the enemy his belief in the disaster, and sent an officer
of his own to see the prisoners. His worst fears were confirmed when
the officer returned with the report that under a shelter of boughs
near Johnson’s tent were sixteen officers, some of them severely
wounded.
All hope for the French was gone, and Captain Pouchot could only
endeavor to arrange for his garrison honorable terms of surrender.
Such terms the English, recognizing the gallant conduct of their
enemies, were glad to grant. The French were accorded all the honors of
prisoners of war, although they must be sent under guard to New York.
Pouchot asked and was granted a special stipulation that they should be
protected from their Indian enemies, who might take this occasion to
revenge themselves for the massacre at Fort William Henry three years
before. He signed the articles of surrender and delivered over to the
English the fort with ten officers and four hundred and eighty-six men,
besides women and children.
The surrender of Niagara broke the line of communication between
Montreal and the interior. In the next year, 1760, the Marquis de
Vaudreuil signed articles of capitulation by which Canada and all its
dependencies passed into the hands of the English, and French supremacy
on the Great Lakes was ended. It remained only for the conquerors to
take possession of the other French posts on the Great Lakes.
CHAPTER X
THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC
On the thirteenth day of September, 1760, five days after the surrender
of Montreal, Major Robert Rogers, the most energetic Indian fighter
of the time, set out from Montreal with two hundred of his “Rangers,”
whose exploits in war had made his name famous, for the lakes. He was
to take possession of Detroit and the other lake forts for England.
Reaching Niagara on the first day of October, they crossed by portage
to the site of the modern Buffalo and skirted the southern shore of
Lake Erie, encamping nightly on its margin and taking every precaution
by day to keep the boats from losing sight of one another on the rough,
stormy waters. One night on the Cuyahoga River, near where the present
city of Cleveland now stands, a party of Indians entered the camp and
announced themselves to be ambassadors from Pontiac, “the king and lord
of that country,” who requested them to halt until he himself should
arrive. In a few hours the great sachem stalked into camp. He was of
medium height, with an active, muscular figure, and a stern face. His
first words were an imperious demand as to Major Rogers’ business. “How
dare you,” said he, “enter my country without my leave?” “I do not come
with any design against you or your people,” replied Rogers, “but to
remove out of your country the French, who have been an obstacle in our
way to mutual peace and commerce.” The Indian who greeted Rogers so
haughtily was the principal chief of the Ottawa and Ojibway tribes, a
man to whom all the nations of the Illinois country deferred and whose
name was held in respect even by the distant Algonquins of the St.
Lawrence. Rogers told him of his present mission, taking occasion to
dwell on the total defeat of the French in Canada, and gave him several
belts of wampum in token of his friendly intent. These Pontiac accepted
with dignity, but without any sign of unbending. He announced that he
stood in the path the English travelled in until the next morning,
and proffered a string of wampum to intimate that they must not march
farther without his leave. He inquired whether the party was in need
of anything he or his warriors could supply, and then withdrew.
The English kept a double force on guard all night, but in the morning
Pontiac came with his attendant chiefs and declared that he had made
peace with Rogers and his detachment, and that they might therefore
pass through his country unmolested and expel the French garrison from
Detroit. He was inclined, he said, to live peaceably with the English
while they used him as he deserved, but if they treated him with
neglect, he should shut up the way and exclude them from his domains.
The pipe of peace was passed around the council fire and smoked by
officers and chiefs alike.
As Rogers and his men proceeded on their way, they found the march made
easy by the powerful influence of Pontiac, who dissuaded a war-party
of Detroit Indians from attacking them, furnished guides and welcome
supplies of venison, turkeys, and parched corn. He even sent word ahead
to the Indians within the limits of the fort that he was a friend of
the English, making it impossible for the French commander to get any
help from them. In the rôle of guide, counsellor, and patronizing
friend of the newly arrived strangers, this remarkable savage comes
for the first time into prominence in history. Three years later he
was to make of what would have been without his leadership a series
of spasmodic and scattering raids a formidable and sustained Indian
uprising of the most serious kind.
Rogers took Detroit, sent the French commander and his garrison down
to Niagara, disarmed the Canadian militia, and received the oath
of allegiance from all the inhabitants; and in a few hours Detroit
was, in name at least, an English town. Within a year all the posts
on the lakes came into English possession; but the English were
far from gaining the hearty support of either the French-Canadian
inhabitants,--who were naturally not pleased at this change of
hands,--or even of the Indian tribes, who liked the French.
The French had always had unusual success in dealing with the Indians.
They were friendly with them, tolerant of their presence, and generous
with their gifts, without any insulting show of patronage. The previous
reputation of the English was bad among the Indians. They resented
their austere manners, their steady seizure of forest lands for
agriculture, and their ill-concealed contempt for the red man. This bad
name had been somewhat obscured in these recent years by the excellent
prices paid by the English for furs, and their lavish gifts to gain
Indian support; but it was now confirmed at every post along the whole
frontier.
When the two rival nations were using the Indians as allies, both had
treated them with respect and endeavored to gain their friendship.
Now the Indians began to realize that this friendship was no longer
considered valuable, but that the English were insolently seizing more
and more of their domain with the apparent intention of driving them
out. Their chiefs were no longer treated with respect as they hung
about the white men’s forts. Owing to a sudden policy of retrenchment
the gifts, too, were cut down or withheld altogether, until the savages
really suffered from want of supplies which the wise Frenchmen had seen
the necessity of providing for them. The customary amount of powder
was denied them, and the Indians feared lest their independence was
threatened. The English fur trade was in lawless hands, and the traders
abused and outraged the Indians while they cheated them out of their
lawful dues. The discontent of the natives was encouraged and fostered
by the French traders and settlers, who told their sullen audiences
incredible tales of the further evil purposes of the English, and
spread far and wide a rumor that the armies of the French were even now
advancing up the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers to drive out these
pretenders.
Suddenly, in May, 1763, the Indians uprose. With characteristic
secrecy and stealth the tribes had exchanged wampum belts, spreading
the summons to war and signifying in return acquiescence in the plan,
with hardly a suspicion on the part of their indifferent English
neighbors. Occasionally in the last month a story was brought in
that roused the anxiety of those who were wise in the ways of the
Indians, but these were laughed to scorn. Looking backward, one
marvels both at the secrecy with which the uprising was planned, and
at the serene confidence of the scanty garrisons stationed at these
isolated and dangerous outposts. From contemporary accounts it appears
that at Presque Isle there were twenty-seven men; at Michilimackinac
thirty-five men with their officers; at the foot of Lake Michigan, on
the St. Joseph’s River, fifteen, and at Fort Miami ten, while the
other posts were held by mere handfuls of soldiers; Detroit was the
only station that was suitably manned.
In their dealings with white men, the Indians had never before been
banded together under a single leader. The tribes were restless and
jealous of one another, but Pontiac restrained and humored them.
He made his plans so well, and they were carried out so secretly
and energetically, that within ten weeks of the time when the first
blow was struck, not a single post remained in British hands west of
Niagara, save only the fort of Detroit, where he himself conducted the
siege in person.
The garrison at Detroit was commanded by Major Gladwin, a young British
officer, who had taken an active part in the war with the French,
and had been at Detroit for nearly a year. He had eight officers and
one hundred and twenty men in his command; and besides the Canadian
residents, whose white cottages lined either bank of the river, there
were about forty fur traders at the settlement. The original stockade
had been several times enlarged since Cadillac’s day, once recently
during the three years of English occupation. It contained about a
hundred small houses, a well-built group of barracks, a council house,
and a church. Three rows of pickets, twenty-five feet high, with large
gateways surmounted by blockhouses for observation and defence, had
taken the place of the original twelve-foot fence. Within each gateway,
which was closed at sunset, was a small wicket, through which one
person could enter at a time. This was kept open until nine o’clock.
The fort was protected by three small cannon, one carrying three-pound
balls, the other two six-pounders; but these guns were badly mounted
and better calculated to terrify the Indians than to render much actual
assistance. Far more effective were the two small vessels, the _Beaver_
and the _Gladwin_, which lay anchored in the stream.
At a council on the 27th of April, 1763, Pontiac inflamed the minds
of his hearers by reporting a vision vouchsafed to him by the Great
Spirit, who asked him why the Indians suffered these English,--“these
dogs dressed in red,”--to dwell among them. The first step of his plan,
as he unfolded it to his warriors, was to spy out the land. On May-day,
1760, forty men of the Ottawa tribe, purporting to have returned from
their winter hunting-grounds, went to the fort and asked permission
to dance the calumet dance before the English officers. They were
admitted, and while thirty of them danced, the remaining ten strolled
about and noted every detail of the defence, all retiring at the close
without rousing any suspicion in the minds of their hosts.
Four days later one of the leading French settlers brought in word that
his wife, while purchasing supplies in the Ottawa village, had found
the warriors filing off the ends of their gun-barrels so as to make
them only about a yard long, probably with some treacherous intent of
concealing them more easily. The next day Major Gladwin was informed of
the plot for the destruction of his garrison on the morrow. Two stories
are told of the source of this information,--one that an Indian girl to
whom he had been kind made it known to him, and another that a friendly
young warrior told him. We would like to believe the former, which
tells of the reluctance of the beautiful girl to depart after she had
done her errand of delivering a pair of embroidered moccasins ordered
by Major Gladwin, and of her confession to him, when he pressed her for
the reason of her sad manner, that danger threatened him and his men.
Gladwin hardly believed the story, but made all preparations to thwart
the plans of Pontiac if occasion offered.
The next morning the guards in the blockhouse saw Pontiac and sixty
men land from their canoes and walk in Indian file up the river road
towards the gateway of the stockade. They were admitted and escorted
to the council chamber, where Major Gladwin and his principal officers
were awaiting them. It is said that even the iron composure of Pontiac
was shaken and that he gave a momentary start when he saw drawn up on
either side of the gateway and standing about in watchful groups in the
streets the armed soldiers of the garrison. The officers, too, were in
full uniform with their swords at their sides and a brace of pistols in
their belts. Before he was seated Pontiac asked, “Why do I see so many
of my father’s young men standing in the street with their guns?” “To
keep them in good discipline and exercise them,” replied Major Gladwin,
through his interpreter.
When the Indians were seated on the skins prepared for them, Pontiac
began his address. Holding in his hand the wampum belt which had been
agreed upon as the signal for attack, he spoke of the friendship of
the Indians for the English. Once, it is said, he raised it as if to
give the signal, but Gladwin signed with his hand and the soldiers
without the open door made a clattering with their arms. Pontiac
trembled and gave the belt in the usual way instead of in the manner
agreed upon in the council.
Gladwin replied that the Indians should have the friendship of the
English just so long as they kept the peace, but not one moment longer.
Some writers say that he drew aside the blanket of the chief nearest
to him and showed hidden in its folds a shortened gun. At any rate,
the English found out that every chief was armed, and knew that they
had narrowly escaped a frightful massacre. The Indians were awed by
the sharp rebuke of Gladwin into departing quietly. For two days they
attempted to parley with the English and gain admittance by deceit; but
Gladwin was firm that not more than sixty might enter the fort at one
time, and on the 9th of May Pontiac threw aside his mask of pretended
friendship. Hostilities were begun by the Indians murdering an old
English sergeant who lived on a neighboring island.
The Indians moved their camp to the same side of the river as the
fort, establishing themselves just above the line of the French houses.
One more attempt was made for peace, when two brave English officers,
Captain Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall, insisted upon risking their
lives in the Indian camp to see if they could persuade the savages to
desist from war. Both were detained by the Indians in spite of the
previous promises of Pontiac. Lieutenant McDougall later made his
escape, but Captain Campbell was murdered by the natives in an outburst
of anger. The blockade of Detroit was begun, and many months were to
pass before a white man could venture in daylight to step outside the
little wicket or to show his head at a port-hole or window without fear
of Indian bullets. For weeks every one from Major Gladwin down to the
lowest soldier was on the watch night and day, no man lying down to
sleep except in his clothes and with his gun beside him. The garrison
began to suffer for food and would have been forced to withdraw from
the fort and escape down the lake, had not a few friendly Canadians
smuggled in supplies. The Indians, too, whose method of warfare is that
of sudden attack rather than of protracted siege, had not sufficient
food, but began to make raids on the Canadian families, who, though
taking no part in the struggle, were in general indifferent to the
English. At a time like this the remarkable gifts of Pontiac came out.
With a foresight and method most unusual in a savage he established
a base of supplies, undertook a systematic levy on those who had
provisions, and gave out a regular amount each day to every Indian.
On the 29th of May, after the blockade had been going on for three
weeks, the long-expected boats from Niagara, which had been summoned by
Major Gladwin in the first days of the siege, were seen rounding the
wooded point below the fort, the red flag of England flying at their
sterns. All was rejoicing within the fort until, as the boats came
nearer, the English saw that they were occupied and guided by Indians.
Three Englishmen who escaped to the fort brought a mournful tale of
a night attack and seizure of the boats at the mouth of the Detroit
River, and also of the destruction of Sandusky and Presque Isle. This
was the first of many reports that were to come during that month of
similar successful attacks, until the little garrison at Detroit was
the only one left on the upper lakes. The remaining Englishmen of the
rescuing party were massacred that night in the Indian camp.
Towards the end of June Pontiac sent another summons to surrender,
saying that nine hundred Indians from the north were on their way
to join him. Major Gladwin refused to consider terms till Captain
Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall were returned to him, and once
more hostilities were resumed. On the 30th of June the _Gladwin_,
which about the middle of May had eluded the Indians and slipped down
the river to Niagara, succeeded in making her way up the river and
landing at the fort a force of fifty men, together with much-needed
provisions and ammunition. She brought the news that peace had
been formally concluded between England and France. While many of
the French-Canadians refused to admit the truth of this report and
continued to romance to the Indians about large French armies that were
approaching, forty settlers accepted their new position as English
subjects and took service under Gladwin. Through them the English
officers were kept even better informed of what went on without the
fort than before, but always throughout the blockade there seem to have
been daily reports from some source of what happened in the Indian
camp, as well as frequent sorties from the fort.
During the month of July the efforts of the Indians were directed
particularly against the two armed vessels, which had not only afforded
defence to the fort and brought men and supplies, but had begun to
make trips up the river to a point opposite the Indian camp, from
which they could pour shot into the wigwams. One night the attention
of the watchful sentries was attracted by a mass of flames shooting
up into the sky in the general direction of the Indian camp. Their
first thought was that the village was on fire, but the mass of flame
seemed to be moving and to come nearer. A huge fire-float, made of four
bateaux[2] filled with fagots, birch bark, and tar, appeared on the
water, drifting down to set fire to the schooners anchored opposite the
fort. The vessels were anchored by two cables, and as the blazing raft
approached, they slipped one cable and swung to the other side of the
river while the raft floated harmlessly by, lighting up the fort and
the dark shores till it burned itself down to the water’s edge.
[2] _Bateau_, the French word for boat, usually applied to a
flat-bottomed boat with pointed ends.
The next event of the blockade came at the end of that month. On the
29th of July the garrison heard firing down the river. They waited
anxiously, wondering what new disaster was to fall upon them, for
similar sounds had often been followed by the arrival of a single
survivor from some abandoned fort with a tale of Indian butchery.
Half an hour later the sentries called to their officers to come
quickly, for the whole surface of the water was covered with boats. In
breathless suspense the weary garrison waited to see if the story of
two months before was to be repeated and dusky forms were to appear
crouching in captured English vessels; but they were reassured by the
salute of an English gun. In an hour two hundred and sixty men had
landed at the little wharf and been welcomed with cheers and shouts.
Captain Dalyell had been sent from Niagara with companies from two
regiments and with twenty of Rogers’ Rangers, commanded by Major Rogers
himself, to put an end to the siege.
The newcomers were eager to sally forth and meet the Indians. Gladwin,
who had been made wary by long months of experience with Pontiac,
strenuously opposed Dalyell’s plan of a night attack, and only gave his
consent when the latter threatened to leave Detroit unless some such
bold stroke was permitted. About two o’clock in the morning, on the
thirty-first day of July, two hundred and fifty men marched in three
detachments up the bank of the river, past the French cottages, to a
little stream a mile and a half above the fort. Treacherous Canadians,
who had in some way learned of the plan, had warned the Indians, and as
the advance guard passed across the bridge which spanned the stream,
the Indians dashed down from the heights above and poured volleys of
musketry into the English ranks. The soldiers recoiled for a moment;
then they pushed on over the bridge, but the savages vanished yelling
into the darkness beyond. For a time the English pressed on, shot at
from every side; but flesh and blood could not stand against this
invisible enemy. The remaining troops endeavored to retreat in orderly
fashion, but were soon under heavy fire again from a rear ambuscade of
Indians. Major Rogers gained entrance to a house on the road and from
its windows commanded the road with his guns and covered the retreat.
The two bateaux which had followed the party up the river were loaded
with the dead and wounded. Slowly the English made their way back
under constant fire, and by eight o’clock the survivors gained the
shelter of the fort. Of the two hundred and fifty who had gone out six
hours before, one hundred and fifty-nine had been killed or wounded,
and Captain Dalyell himself had lost his life. The victory of Bloody
Run, as the stream was ever afterwards called, restored the confidence
of Pontiac and brought many accessions to his side; but in spite of
this disaster Major Gladwin, with his reënforced garrison of over two
hundred able-bodied men, was confident of ultimate success.
The schooner _Gladwin_ made her way again to Niagara and returned
early in September with a welcome load of forty-seven barrels of flour
and one hundred barrels of pork, but with a tale of Indian attack and
the loss of six of her crew of twelve. Other attempts from Niagara to
relieve the garrison were unsuccessful, but Pontiac received in October
a heavy blow in a letter from the French commander at Fort Chartres in
the Illinois country, saying that not only could he offer Pontiac no
help but he was now at peace with the English and wished the Indians
to follow his example. This message had its effect. Pontiac had had
great hopes of French assistance. With these hopes dashed he knew he
could not hold out much longer; already his warriors were wearying of
the attack and deserting him. He sent a letter to Gladwin asking for
peace and agreeing to forget the “bad things that had happened,” if
the Englishman would do the same. Gladwin replied that he would grant
a truce while he sent Pontiac’s message to his general, who alone had
power to grant pardon.
As it was then late in the season, it was deemed best to leave matters
in this condition until spring, as it held the Indians in a wholesome
state of uncertainty. Within a few days the encampments in the vicinity
of Detroit were abandoned. After a confinement of five long months the
inhabitants of the town could venture outside the stockade without
dread of Indian bullets.
A report was sent to General Amherst, the commander of the British
army, and during the winter plans were made to relieve Detroit and
bring peace to the lake region. A military expedition was to be sent
in the spring to force the tribes into submission; and in the meantime
Sir William Johnson, the superintendent of Indian affairs, despatched
messages to all the tribes, warning them of the coming expedition and
urging those who were ready to make peace to come, while there was yet
time, to a grand council fire at Niagara.
From the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, from Lake Superior and
eastern New York, the friendly tribes came up in July to Niagara. When
Johnson stepped ashore from the boat which brought him from Oswego, he
saw dotting the fields the wigwams of more than a thousand Indians, and
in a few days the number was doubled. Councils were held at which the
representatives of the tribes promised their friendship to the English,
agreed to restore the forts, to cede lands, and in so far as their own
nations were concerned to guarantee safe navigation on the lakes. This
convention was the most remarkable assemblage of Indians that had ever
gathered on the shores of the Great Lakes.
While the council was in progress Colonel Bradstreet arrived at Niagara
with his troops, and when it was over he proceeded up Lake Erie to
Detroit, for Pontiac and his tribes had not come to the conference, and
Detroit was still in danger. During the winter the Indians had left the
town in peace, but in the spring warriors had returned to encamp on
the strait and had made occasional attacks. In August, 1764, fifteen
months from the time when Pontiac and his sixty chiefs sat in Gladwin’s
council chamber, the English army under General Bradstreet came to
relieve the weary garrison. Pontiac sent a message of defiance to the
English chief, but he sent it from the safe distance of a village on
the Maumee River, forty or fifty miles away, in what is now the state
of Ohio.
Fresh troops were put in place of the worn-out veterans of the siege;
such Indians as remained in the vicinity came in and offered their
allegiance to the English; and Gladwin, weary of fighting the Indians,
started down Lake Erie on his way to England. Now that his defence of
Detroit was honorably ended, he was glad to resign his commission.
Lesser posts had fallen, but Detroit had been saved, and with it the
upper lakes.
Pontiac spent the next two years among the western tribes of the
Illinois region. In the summer of 1766 he went to Oswego, and as
official representative of the tribes of the West offered to Sir
William Johnson his friendship and theirs. His conspiracy had failed
and he returned sadly to his home in the Illinois villages. For two
years little is known of him, but in April, 1769, his name became
once more the watchword of bloodshed and slaughter. From tribe to
tribe runners carried the news that he had been murdered in an Indian
village, and the nations rose in their wrath to avenge the death of
their great chieftain. The Illinois nation, to which the assassin
belonged, was almost wiped out, and internal feuds sprang up between
the tribes till all the Indians of the southern lake region were
involved, and the death of Pontiac was avenged among his people by a
period of universal tribal war.
_Chronology of the Ending of French Rule_
1759. Capture of Quebec and Niagara.
1760. Capture of Montreal and surrender of Canada.
Taking possession of Detroit.
1763. Pontiac’s attack, and the fall of the other posts of the
western lakes.
Treaty of Peace.
1764. Sir William Johnson’s conference at Niagara.
Bradstreet’s expedition up Lake Erie, and the close of
the blockade of Detroit.
CHAPTER XI
THE ADVENTURES OF A TRADER
A fur trader by the name of Alexander Henry was the first Englishman
to reach Mackinac after the fall of New France. His story of his
adventures gives a graphic picture of the course of events on the
upper lakes during the years when the siege of Detroit and the Indian
uprising under Pontiac left the northern forts isolated and unprotected.
Henry reached Fort Mackinac in September, 1761. For the latter part
of his journey from Montreal he had adopted the disguise of a French
trader, for the Indians stopped every party to inquire whether any
Englishman was coming to the lakes. As soon as his nationality became
known at Mackinac he was warned by the Canadians that he should lose no
time in making his escape to Detroit, as the Indians would not tolerate
the presence of an Englishman. Henry suspected that the Canadians had
fostered this spirit to retain control of the fur trade, and were
exaggerating the dangers of his position in the hope of frightening
him away. Still, it did not add to his comfort to hear that a party
of Indians was coming to pay him a visit. As he sat in his house one
afternoon the door opened and an Indian chief, six feet tall, walked
quietly in. Behind him were sixty more, each with a tomahawk in one
hand and a scalping knife in the other. In absolute silence they
stalked into the room in single file, seated themselves, at a sign from
their leader, on the floor, and began to smoke their pipes. In the long
pause that followed Henry had time to study his formidable visitors.
Their faces were painted with charcoal mixed with grease, and their
bodies, bare to the waist, were decorated with white clay plastered
on in various patterns. Some had feathers thrust through their noses;
others had them stuck into their hair. Unless their purpose was
friendly these warriors would not be safe guests for a single trader to
entertain. After a long time the chief began to address him. He told
him that because of his bravery in venturing into this country alone he
might stay among them, in spite of his being an Englishman, the hated
enemy of their father, the king of France. The august assembly ended
with a request that the young men be allowed to taste his “English
milk,” meaning rum, and the trader was assured of his safety at
Mackinac.
That week a detachment of English troops arrived from the lower lakes,
and the trader’s protection was ensured. Henry fitted out expeditions
to go into the interior to buy furs of the more remote Indian tribes,
and prepared to spend the winter at the fort. During these months at
Mackinac and the succeeding winter which he spent at Sault Ste. Marie
he was much interested in the fisheries. In both these straits the
whitefish were very abundant. At Sault Ste. Marie in the late autumn
there was such a run of fish that two men would go out in a canoe, one
paddling and the other handling a scoop-net on the end of a ten-foot
pole, and would return in two hours with a catch of five hundred
whitefish, each weighing from six to fifteen pounds. The steersman
would guide the canoe in and out between the sharp rocks and rushing
rapids; the fisherman would dip his net and throw in a pile of fish;
and before long the canoe would be loaded down to the water’s edge.
During the winter the fish were cured by drying them in smoke, and
packed for transportation to the nearest frontier posts, and even for
the markets of the St. Lawrence.
In May, 1763, when Henry returned to Mackinac, he found that the
traders, who were gathering there, brought rumors of Indian hostility.
These reports were disregarded by the officers of the garrison, who
with their force of soldiers and their fort could not believe there
was any cause for alarm. Henry himself received a warning. The year
before, he had won the friendship of one of the Chippewa Indians, named
Wawatam, who had surprised him one day by bringing his whole family to
the trader’s house, offering a present of skins, sugar, and dried meat,
and declaring his wish of adopting him into his family as a brother.
Henry had accepted the honor and thought no more of the incident until
now, in the spring of 1763, his Indian brother came to his house in
a very sober mood, and begged him to go back to the Sault the next
morning with himself and his family. He further inquired whether the
commandant of the fort had not heard bad news, saying that he himself
had been frequently disturbed by “the noise of evil birds.” He hinted
that there were many more Indians about the fort than the English had
seen. Henry paid little attention to the Indian’s words, but the
next morning he returned with his wife and once more entreated the
trader to go with him. Henry was not sufficiently familiar with the
Chippewa language to follow all his figurative and elaborate speech,
and unfortunately turned a deaf ear to his plea. After long effort the
chief went sadly away. He had warned Henry that all the Indians were
coming in a body one day soon to demand liquor of the commandant, and
that before they became intoxicated he had better be gone. Henry kept
careful watch, but except that a great many Indians came in the next
day to purchase tomahawks, he saw nothing unusual. The next day, the
4th of June, was the king’s birthday, and from this time on we will let
Henry tell his own story.
“The morning was sultry. A Chippewa came to tell me that his nation was
going to play at baggatiway (called by the Canadians “la crosse”) with
the Sacs, another Indian nation. He invited me to witness the sport,
adding that the commandant was to be there, and would bet on the side
of the Chippewas. In consequence of this information, I went to the
commandant and expostulated with him a little, representing that the
Indians might possibly have some sinister end in view; but he only
smiled at my suspicions.
“I did not go myself to see the match, which was now to be played
without the fort, because, there being a canoe prepared to depart on
the following day for Montreal, I employed myself in writing letters to
my friends; and even when a fellow-trader, Mr. Tracy, happened to call
upon me, saying that another canoe had just arrived from Detroit, and
proposing that I should go with him to the beach to inquire the news,
it so happened that I still remained to finish my letters, promising to
follow Mr. Tracy in the course of a few minutes. Mr. Tracy had not gone
more than twenty paces from my door, when I heard an Indian war-cry,
and a noise of general confusion.
“Going instantly to my window, I saw a crowd of Indians, within the
fort, furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they found.
I had, in the room in which I was, a fowling-piece, loaded with shot.
This I immediately seized, and held it for a few minutes, waiting to
hear the drum beat to arms. In this dreadful interval, I saw several of
my countrymen fall.”
At length, realizing that there was no hope of a call to arms, and
that one person could do nothing against four hundred Indians, Henry
decided to seek shelter for himself. He saw that many of the Canadian
inhabitants of the fort were calmly looking on, neither helping nor
hindering the Indians, and conceived the hope that he might be safe
in one of their houses. He climbed the low fence that separated his
house from that of Mr. Langlade, his next neighbor, and found the whole
family at the windows, gazing at the scene of blood before them. Henry
begged Mr. Langlade to put him in some place of safety, but he paid no
attention. “This,” says Henry, “was a moment for despair; but the next
an Indian woman, a slave of Mr. Langlade’s, beckoned to me to follow
her. She brought me to a door, which she opened, desiring me to enter,
and telling me that it led to the garret, where I must go and conceal
myself.” The woman locked the door after him, and from his hiding-place
he looked out on the horrible scenes that were passing without. Soon
every one who could be found had been massacred, and there was a
general cry, “All is finished.” At the same instant Indians entered
the house and asked Mr. Langlade whether there were any Englishmen in
the house. The Canadian replied that he did not know of any,--for
the Indian woman had kept her secret,--but that they might hunt for
themselves. They were delayed in their search by a hunt for the key
of the garret door, and in those few moments Henry hid himself under
a pile of birchbark vessels. Four Indians came up with Mr. Langlade,
walked round the dark garret so near to the fugitive that they might
have touched him, told how many they had killed and how many scalps
they had taken, and went off again, locking the door after them.
Exhausted by suspense Henry fell asleep, and was awakened in the
evening by Mrs. Langlade, who came up to the garret and was much
surprised to find him there. She gave him a little water to drink
and told him she hoped he would escape. The next morning the Indians
returned, and discovered the trader’s hiding-place. An Indian walked
into the garret and seized him with one hand by the collar of his coat,
while in the other he brandished a large carving-knife as if he meant
to plunge it into him. For some seconds the Indian looked into Henry’s
eyes, and then dropped his arm, saying, “I won’t kill you!” He added
that he had once lost a brother, and that he would call his prisoner
after him. He was going to take him to his cabin, but Henry begged Mr.
Langlade to request that he be allowed to stay in the garret, as the
Indians were so intoxicated that no Englishman would be safe among
them. Once more the trader settled himself in the garret to await his
fate, but in an hour an Indian came, purporting to be from his new
master, and led him outside the fort among the bushes, where he tried
to murder him. Henry managed to escape and ran with all speed to the
fort, where he found his master, who gave him protection. The next
morning three other Englishmen who had escaped massacre were brought
to Mr. Langlade’s house. From them Henry learned that the game of “la
crosse” had been a device to get as many Englishmen as possible outside
the walls. It had been agreed that a ball should be tossed as if by
accident over the pickets of the fort, and that it should be instantly
followed by all engaged in the game. When a sufficient number were
inside they could seize the fort. Twenty Englishmen had survived the
massacre. They consulted together to see whether there was any hope of
their regaining possession of the station, but were forced to decide
that without the help of the Canadian inhabitants, who could not be
counted upon, it was impossible.
The next day the prisoners went through a strange experience. They
were put into canoes and told that they were to be taken to the Castor
Islands in Lake Michigan, but a thick fog came up and their guards
thought it safer to keep near shore and paddled towards an Ottawa
village. Every half hour the Indians gave their war-whoops, one for
every prisoner in the canoe, in order to notify all other Indians of
the number of prisoners they were taking. At the Ottawa village they
were greeted by an Ottawa chief, who made signs to them to land. When
they came within a few hundred yards of the shore warriors rushed
into the water, dragged the prisoners from the canoes, and carried
them ashore. The English thought that their last moments had come,
but the Ottawas hastened to assure them that they were their friends.
The Ottawas were indignant because they had not been consulted by the
Chippewas about destroying the English. Therefore they had rescued
the prisoners from the Chippewas, who were taking them to the Castor
Islands to kill them. Before long the bewildered prisoners were
returning to Mackinac in the canoes of the Ottawas, and were marched by
their new masters into the midst of the astonished Chippewas.
While their captives slept the two nations held a long conference, and
the Ottawas were unfortunately persuaded to relinquish their grievance
and return the prisoners to their former conquerors. The prospect for
the Englishmen was now dark indeed, and several of them were to lose
their lives that day; but as preparations were being made for the
slaughter, Wawatam, Henry’s adopted brother, walked into the council.
By presents he bought the trader,--all the Indians recognizing his
right to do so,--and took him away with him into the interior. There
Henry spent the winter hunting with the Indians. He was often in danger
from hostile tribes who brought tales of the siege of Detroit and
summons from Pontiac to help in the war, but his position in the family
of Wawatam protected him, and in the spring of 1764 he returned with a
party of Canadian traders to Sault Ste. Marie.
While Henry was at the Sault a canoe arrived one day from Niagara. A
council was assembled to meet the strangers and receive their message.
They proved to be the ambassadors of Sir William Johnson, who warned
the tribes of the great English army that was coming, and advised them
to hasten to Niagara to make peace. Such a weighty matter could not be
settled by mere human knowledge and wisdom; so the Indians made solemn
preparations to consult their guiding spirit, the “Great Turtle.”
They built a large wigwam, within which they placed a small moose-skin
tent for the use of the priest. At nightfall the whole village
assembled in the wigwam. Several fires had been kindled near the
tent, and their flames lighted up the expectant faces of this strange
assemblage. The priest entered the tent, and as the skins fell over him
many voices were heard. Some were barking like dogs, some howled like
wolves, and others sobbed as if in pain. After a time these frightful
sounds died away, and a perfect silence followed. Then a voice not
heard before seemed to show the arrival of a new character in the tent.
Henry describes this as “a low feeble voice, resembling the cry of a
young puppy.” When it was heard the Indians clapped their hands for
joy, for now the chief spirit, the “Turtle,” the spirit that never
lied, had come to them. The others had been evil and lying voices. For
half an hour sounds of conversation were heard from the tent, and then
the priest spoke, saying that the “Great Turtle” was come and would
answer such questions as should be asked. The chief of the village
desired the priest to inquire whether the English were preparing to
make war on the Indians, and whether there were at Fort Niagara large
numbers of English troops. When the priest put these questions the tent
began to shake violently, and soon a voice announced that the “Turtle”
had departed.
A quarter of an hour elapsed in silence, and then the voice of
the “Turtle” was heard again. After it had talked for some time
in a language unintelligible to the audience, the priest gave an
interpretation of what it had said. The spirit had, during its short
absence, crossed Lake Huron, been to Fort Niagara, and thence to
Montreal. At Fort Niagara he had seen no great number of soldiers, but
on the St. Lawrence he had found the river covered with boats, and the
boats filled with soldiers, “in number like the leaves of the trees,”
and these were coming to make war on the Indians. The chief had a third
question to ask, and the spirit, “without a fresh journey to Niagara,”
gave an immediate and most satisfactory answer. “If,” said the chief,
“the Indians visit Sir William Johnson, will they be received as
friends?” “Sir William Johnson,” said the spirit, “will fill their
canoes with presents; with blankets, kettles, guns, gunpowder and shot,
and large barrels of rum, such as the stoutest of the Indians will not
be able to lift; and every man will return in safety to his family.”
“At this,” writes Henry, “the transport was universal; and amid the
clapping of hands, a hundred voices exclaimed, ‘I will go, too! I will
go, too!’”
On the 10th of June, Henry embarked with the Indian deputation of
sixteen men, leaving the scene of his long captivity. The party went
down Georgian Bay, across the country where the great Huron missions
had been built to Lake Simcoe, and out past the site of Toronto to
Lake Ontario. There they built canoes to take the place of those they
had left on Georgian Bay, completing two large boats in two days. They
spent their last night encamped four miles from Fort Niagara. In the
morning the Indians feared to start lest they should be going into a
trap set by the English. Henry assured them of a friendly welcome,
and at length, after painting themselves in their gayest colors to
show their peaceable intent, and singing the song which they used on
going into danger, they embarked. “A few minutes after,” says Henry, “I
crossed to the fort; and here I was received by Sir William Johnson, in
a manner for which I have ever been gratefully attached to his person
and memory.”
The Indians joined in the great council, and Henry conferred with
General Bradstreet, who with three thousand men was preparing to go
up Lake Erie and raise the siege of Detroit. Bradstreet informed him
that it was his plan when he reached Detroit to send a body of troops
to Mackinac, and that they should assist the trader to recover his
property there, should he care to accompany them. Henry was given
command of a corps of Indians of the upper lakes, ninety-six in number,
who were to proceed with the army. Among them were the sixteen men
with whom he had come to Niagara. Henry comments on the reversal of
conditions which made him their leader, he “whose best hope it had very
lately been, to live through their forbearance.” Most of the Indians
promptly deserted, not caring to march against their own nation at
Detroit, but Henry went on with Bradstreet and landed at Detroit on
the 8th of August. He proceeded up Lake Huron with two companies of
troops and three hundred Canadian volunteers to Mackinac, where peace
was concluded with the Indians and the fort was reoccupied by English
soldiers.
CHAPTER XII
WAYNE’S INDIAN CAMPAIGN
With the turn of a single page of history and the passage of a single
decade of time, during this century of struggle for possession, the
actors in the drama change, or if the same actors remain, a new set of
circumstances makes them play a new part amid the old scenes. Like the
bits of glass in a kaleidoscope they are shaken up and come out in new
combinations, and with them our ideas and sympathies are shaken up and
must be readjusted.
We have followed the fortunes of the little English garrisons at
Detroit and Mackinac in their struggles against a horde of savages,
and have breathed a sigh of relief when a strong British army came to
the rescue and England once more resumed possession of her lake posts.
We return to Detroit in twelve years to find General Hamilton, the
British commander of the French-English town, reading with scorn the
announcement in a stray copy of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_ of July,
1776, that a new American nation has been formed and a Declaration of
Independence has been adopted. Within two years Daniel Boone, the hero
pioneer, is brought to Detroit a British prisoner, taken by Indians in
their raid on Kentucky, and before he has made his escape from prison,
Hamilton is chanting the war-song and dancing the war-dance at a grand
council of Indians. To them he is offering his congratulations on the
success of their raids into the southern states of the newly formed
Union, on the number of prisoners they have taken, and especially
on the far greater number of scalps they have brought. The War of
the Revolution has begun, and with it a period of bloodshed in the
Northwest.
While the main bodies of troops were being marshalled and the decisive
battles were being fought in the south and the east, the British
carried on upon the western frontier an incessant Indian warfare. This
border campaign was marked by a horrible series of bloody raids and
massacres, many of which were planned at Niagara and Detroit. Niagara,
wrested in the past from the Indians and the French, became at this
time a place of refuge for the loyalists of New York, “a nest of
Tories,” and a centre of British influence so strong that an American
leader could make no more telling expression of his dread of the
threatened loss of a southern point of vantage than to say that it must
be saved, for if taken by the British it would become “another Niagara.”
From Detroit, Hamilton set out in the summer of 1778 with a force of
one hundred and seventy-five men to oust from Kaskaskia and Vincennes
the American “rebel,” George Rogers Clark, who had taken these British
strongholds. But instead of returning to Detroit triumphant, Hamilton
was taken by that same young rebel and started on a twelve-hundred-mile
journey to a Virginia prison. Even after this it seemed to the
Americans that plans and conspiracies came out from Detroit as fast as
prisoners and scalps went into the British prison there. There were
many schemes to take the fort, but all were abandoned because of its
inaccessibility.
When the negotiators met at Paris, in 1782, to arrange terms of peace
between Great Britain and the American colonies or states, it was
difficult to decide what should be done with the Great Lakes. At first
it was suggested that the boundary line between the United States
and Canada should be so drawn as to give the territory south of the
Ottawa River and Lake Superior to the United States, as far west as the
Mississippi. At another time it was proposed that all of the land north
of the Ohio and west of the Alleghanies should continue to be English.
Finally it was arranged that the Great Lakes, with the exception of
Michigan, should form the boundary line between the United States and
Canada in that part of the world. This arrangement gave to the United
States the posts at Detroit, Mackinac, and other points on the lakes;
but the English would not surrender them, justifying their not doing
so on the ground that the Americans had broken the treaty in other
respects. As long as the British retained the posts in the Northwest,
the Indians of that region looked to them for support and were inclined
to take up an attitude of hostility to the government of the United
States and to colonists, who now came into the Ohio Valley in great
numbers. Treaties were made with them, but these the Indians failed
to keep, and there ensued a period of confusion and bloodshed on the
frontier. Into the details of this petty warfare it is not worth our
while to enter.
At first the British seemed anxious to preserve peace for the sake of
the fur trade, but as time went on and relations between England and
the United States became more strained, the English lent undisguised
assistance to the Indians. It was inevitable that there should be
constant strife between the rough, encroaching frontiersman who
overstepped the original boundaries and the jealous, suspicious Indian
who met all wrongs by treachery and violence. The record of the years
shows a succession of efforts for peace by the United States government
and a series of councils, treaties, ruptures, and hostilities on the
part of the Indians.
A formal government had been organized in the Northwest by the
Ordinance of 1787, which created the great Northwest Territory,
out of which were later formed the five states of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. By 1789 and 1790 the United States
government began to realize that it had to deal in this region with no
petty skirmishes with scattered tribes, but with a widespread Indian
uprising. Raids and counter-raids must be abandoned, and war with
organized armies and carefully planned campaigns must be waged against
the lawless hordes of savages who were breaking faith with the white
man and murdering whom they pleased.
An expedition under the leadership of General Harmar, sent north in
1790 from Fort Washington (Cincinnati), met defeat at the hands of the
Indians at the present Fort Wayne. A similar expedition, commanded
a year later by General St. Clair, was routed on a battle-ground in
central Ohio, and the whole frontier was terrorized. Matters had now
become serious. Armies of regulars had been defeated by these savage
masters of the art of treacherous warfare, and the Indians were
becoming more and more aggressive in their elation at their victories,
while the British were becoming more and more open in their support of
the lake tribes.
Needing a leader who could drive back the Indians, President Washington
turned to a soldier who had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary
War for hard fighting and daring bravery. Major General Anthony Wayne
had so often snatched success in the face of almost certain defeat
that he had earned for himself the nickname “Mad Anthony.” He was the
grandson of a Pennsylvanian pioneer and had had hard schooling from
his Indian-fighting grandfather and father in the methods of frontier
warfare. Above all else he gloried in difficulty and danger.
In April, 1792, Washington appointed General Wayne to the command of
the army and sent him to the Ohio to drill his men. Wayne found there
the remnant of St. Clair’s force, to which were being constantly
added hundreds of raw recruits enlisted under new legislation for the
campaign by Congress. The one stipulation that Wayne had made when he
took command was that he be allowed to wait to fight until his ranks
were full and his men thoroughly trained. He knew that he had to deal
with the same kind of men who had failed St. Clair. He attributed
this failure to poor organization and lack of military discipline. He
knew, too, that he had the added difficulty of meeting the paralyzing
discouragement caused by previous defeats and well-remembered scenes of
horror. Patiently and deliberately he went to work, and new recruits
arriving in the summer and autumn found themselves living in a camp
where an army was being taught with all speed the essentials of
warfare. By spring Wayne had twenty-five hundred soldiers who were
eager for the campaign and worthy of their commander.
Congress was reluctant to begin war and kept Wayne waiting all through
the summer of 1793, while it made fruitless negotiations with the
Indians. The tribes finally demanded that the Ohio River should be the
boundary of American advance, and to this the government could not
agree. In October Wayne was given permission to open his campaign, but
with cautions that on no account was he to run any risks of defeat.
He moved his men from Fort Washington to a point eighty miles north,
which he fortified as a winter camp and named Greenville in honor of
his former comrade at arms, Captain Nathanael Greene. Here he spent
the winter, sending a large detachment of his men north to build on
St. Clair’s fatal battle-ground a fort which was prophetically named
Fort Recovery. Several skirmishes with the Indians took place at
Greenville during the winter, and in the early summer a large war-party
made an unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery. On the 27th of July,
1794, General Wayne started with his “legion” of troops, more than two
thousand men, for the Miami towns of northern Ohio.
The march of the American army was watched with wonder and admiration
by the Indians, who reported to the British that the soldiers went
twice as far in a day as St. Clair’s had done, that Wayne kept scouts
out in every direction, and that he was always ready for attack and
guarded carefully against ambush by day or surprise by night. At the
junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, where the line of hostile
Indian villages began, Wayne built a strong log stockade which he
christened with the characteristic name of Fort Defiance, a name
perpetuated to this day. Warned of his approach, the Indians had fled,
leaving their homes and their rich fields of corn and vegetables, in
which the soldiers revelled after their hard march and short rations.
From Fort Defiance Wayne sent a final offer of peace to the Indians,
declaring that he would restore to them their lands and villages and
preserve their women and children from famine should they agree to
a lasting peace. The Indians returned an evasive answer, and Wayne
advanced against them. From scouts he learned that the natives were
encamped near the British fort on the Maumee River a few miles west of
the present city of Toledo. There were between fifteen hundred and
two thousand warriors in all, with seventy rangers from Detroit,--the
latter company being made up of French, English, and other refugees.
On the 20th of August Wayne met the Indians at a spot some six miles
down the river, known as the Fallen Timbers because there a whirlwind
had overturned the forest and left the trees piled across one another
in rows. Wayne’s army numbered about three thousand men, two-thirds
of whom were regulars, and one-third mounted volunteers from Kentucky
led by General Scott. At the front of the line was a small force of
mounted volunteers, and back of them were the carefully placed lines of
infantry and cavalry. The Indians were secreted as usual in the woods
and tall grass and behind the piles of trees. From their shelter they
poured a murderous fire into the ranks of the army, but the volunteers
pressed on. The front line of infantry rushed up and dislodged the
savages from their covert, the cavalry dashed over the rough ground
and the piles of logs, and the Indians fled before the second line of
soldiers could even come up to the battle-field. Of this engagement
one of the men wrote that there was not “a sufficiency of the enemy
for the Legion to play upon.” The entire action lasted less than forty
minutes, and not a third of Wayne’s force took part in it. The army
pursued the fugitives two miles to the shelter of the British fort, and
then burned everything near by. Thirty-three Americans were killed and
one hundred wounded in this engagement, which closed a forty years’
warfare with the Indians in as many minutes. Wayne’s carefully drilled
troops had won the most decisive victory ever gained over the Indians
of the Northwest.
General Wayne completed his conquest by marching back to Fort Recovery,
and thence westward to the Miami towns at the junction of St. Mary’s
and St. Joseph’s rivers, the scene of Harmar’s disaster. The Indians
dared offer no resistance, but fled before his triumphant army. Along
his route he burned their villages, and at the meeting-place of the
rivers he built the fort which was to perpetuate his name to the
present day, Fort Wayne. Then he returned to Greenville for the winter.
Meanwhile the anger of the Indians had been stirred by the inaction of
their British allies, who had urged them on to war but had furnished
no troops from Detroit. A new respect had been called forth for the
Americans. All the winter Wayne received at Greenville delegations from
various Indian tribes, and in the summer of 1795 a formal treaty was
signed, in which Wayne, representing the United States, made peace with
all the western tribes. Eleven hundred and thirty Indians assembled,
making a full representation from all tribes previously hostile.
Gathered about the council-fire and supplied with a pile of wampum
strings, the chiefs and the American general conferred day after day
as the various groups of Indians arrived during the months of June and
July. The record of their speeches is eighty pages long and carries
one back to the days when Champlain and Frontenac conferred with their
Indian children and received their repentant promises of good behavior
in the future; but now Wayne was addressed by the chiefs as “Elder
Brother,” and he called them always his younger brothers.
By the treaty of Greenville the Indians ceded to the United States
all of what is now southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, various
reservations about the forts of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and those
which Wayne had built, a six-mile tract at Chicago, and a large grant
of land near the Falls of the Ohio. The government, in its turn,
agreed to the Indian title to the remaining country, and promised
to pay the tribes large annuities. Both sides were to return all
prisoners. Wayne, by his skill at warfare, had brought to the borders
a peace that lasted for fifteen years, when new conditions brought new
difficulties.
While Wayne was fighting for the supremacy of the United States in
the Northwest, John Jay was representing the government in London in
negotiations for a treaty which should settle disputed points between
the two nations, providing, among other things, for the settlement by a
commission of any ambiguities in the boundaries and for the surrender
of the lake posts to the Americans. In 1796 this treaty was ratified
by Congress, and American officers were sent to take command of the
various posts. With appropriate ceremonies the English flag was lowered
and the American Stars and Stripes were raised at each of the posts
whose history we have followed under French and later under English
control. General Wayne was sent by a grateful Congress to conduct the
final transfer of the forts. After a twelve-hundred-mile journey he
arrived at Detroit, where he was received with great honor by Indians,
English, French, and Americans. Leaving there in November for Presque
Isle, he was taken with his old enemy, the gout, and died at that
place. His remains were later removed by his son to Philadelphia, but a
log-house, patterned after the one which Wayne himself built there in
1790, marks to-day the place of his grave at the present city of Erie,
Pennsylvania.
It is worthy of note that the month before General Wayne started for
Detroit to conclude the ceremonies of taking possession of that post,
Moses Cleveland, with a party of Connecticut pioneers, set out to found
on the shores of Lake Erie the city which bears his name,--the advance
guard of an army of occupation which the stipulations of the treaty of
Greenville and Wayne’s intimidation of the Indians made possible.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT LAKES IN THE WAR OF 1812
From the surrender of the northwest posts and the founding of Cleveland
to the year 1812, there is little to note in the history of the Great
Lakes. The forts were gradually strengthened, the fur trade was
continued, and a few settlements were made on the southern shores of
Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Travel and transportation between the
Atlantic seaboard and the Great Lakes were so difficult that few
settlers found their way into the lake region, and there was no market
for such agricultural products as were raised. In the same period the
Ohio Valley was fast filling up, and settlers were pushing westward and
northward from the Ohio River into central Ohio and Indiana. The ever
increasing pressure on the Indians of that region aroused their fears
and resentment, and made them listen to the plans of an able chieftain,
Tecumseh, who banded them together in a strong league for resistance
to the whites. The natives looked for aid to the British in Canada,
but how far these had gone in encouraging the Indians is unknown. In
1811 matters became so serious that General William Henry Harrison,
Governor of Indiana Territory, marched against the Indians and defeated
them in the battle of Tippecanoe. When the War of 1812 began, Tecumseh
and many of his allies joined the British.
The opening of the war found the lake frontier of the United States
exposed and almost unprotected. At Fort Wayne there were eighty-five
soldiers, at Fort Harrison (Terre Haute) fifty, at Fort Dearborn
(Chicago) fifty-three, at Fort Mackinac eighty-eight, and at Detroit
one hundred and twenty. The last-named post claimed early attention,
because of its great importance, and also because of its exposed
situation. Its loss to the United States would mean the loss of the
upper lakes, at least temporarily. The problem was a difficult one
because the United States had no war vessels on the lakes to secure
communication between Detroit and the settlements on the southeastern
shore of Lake Erie. William Hull, Governor of Michigan Territory, fully
recognized the importance of a naval force, but he was obliged to do
what he could to defend Detroit without one. In the spring of 1812,
with three regiments of Ohio militia, a troop of Ohio dragoons, and
a regiment of United States infantry,--in all about sixteen hundred
men,--he set out from the settlements in Ohio to march overland to
reënforce this important post. The route lay through the wilderness,
much of the way over swampy grounds, but the soldiers cut roads and
advanced with a rapidity that amazed the British. At Frenchtown, on the
River Raisin, forty miles below Detroit, Hull received word that war
had been declared. Before this he had sent a schooner to Detroit with
supplies and a letter to the commandant apprising him of his coming.
This vessel was seized by the British soldiers stationed at Malden, on
the Canadian side of the Detroit River, and some distance below the
American town.
On the 5th of July, 1812, Hull reached Detroit. Besides its small
garrison, the town contained about eight hundred inhabitants. It was
defensible from Indian attacks, but was within gunshot of the British
side of the Detroit River, was insufficiently supplied with provisions
and ammunition for a siege, and was liable to be completely cut off
from communication with the United States should the British gain
command of Lake Erie and the road along the river to the south. At
once, Hull seized the town of Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issued
a proclamation to the inhabitants of Canada which brought many of
them over to the American side, but an expedition which was to have
reënforced him from Niagara came to naught.
On the British side in the spring of 1812, affairs seemed even more
gloomy, but the difficulties were overcome by the capability and
courage of one man, Brigadier General Isaac Brock, who exercised entire
command in upper Canada. He had at his disposal barely two thousand
men, who were hundreds of miles from their supplies and scattered
through several posts. When war seemed imminent, Brock fitted out
armed vessels on Lake Erie and strengthened the defences of Malden.
The moment war was declared, he directed a subordinate to seize the
American post at Michilimackinac and himself hurried with all available
men to the Detroit River.
Day after day the American army waited at Sandwich before striking a
decisive blow at the British in their fort at Malden. General Hull
had, indeed, good reason for fear of failure, for although he had more
men than the British, the English army had in its fortification a base
of attack, and in its fleet a pronounced advantage. With ineffective
sallies into the neighboring country and prolonged councils of war the
days wore on, and the officers as well as the rank and file of the army
became more and more disheartened. They had crossed the river July
12. They finally set August 8 for the attack on Malden; but meanwhile
word came that British reënforcements were on their way to the fort,
and that a party of Indians under Tecumseh had captured the American
supplies and mail-bags coming from Ohio. Prisoners of war from Fort
Mackinac arrived at the American camp, announcing that their fort had
been surrendered and that a horde of Indians were coming from the
Northwest to attack Detroit in the rear. With the British garrison at
Malden increased, Detroit threatened by the Indians, and the line of
communication between the American army and headquarters in danger,
Hull saw nothing to do but to recross the river; and on the night of
the day when he had planned to attack the British fort he withdrew with
his force to Detroit.
Meanwhile General Brock reached Malden, held a council of war at which
Tecumseh with his following of a thousand Indians was present, and
sent to General Hull a summons to surrender. Hull refused to yield
and started messengers to recall an expedition of three hundred and
fifty men which he had despatched under two Ohio colonels, MacArthur
and Lewis Cass, to the River Raisin to rescue the necessary supplies
for the army. As soon as Hull’s reply was received two British vessels
moved up the river to Sandwich, where their guns could cover the
American fort. During the night Tecumseh and six hundred Indians
crossed to the American side of the river and established themselves
in the woods at a point where they could intercept the returning
Ohio colonels with their force. On the morning of August 16, General
Brock crossed the river with seven hundred soldiers. The British
commander had intended to take up a position and force Hull to attack
him, but after he reached the American bank of the river, he learned
from Tecumseh that the Ohio detachment was only a few miles away.
Fearing lest he be surrounded if he delay, Brock determined to make an
immediate attack.
Within his tent General Hull sat debating what to do. Should he
admit to his officers and men his desire to surrender at once, their
undisguised scorn at his previous delays would perhaps turn to open
mutiny; yet he felt sure that the fort must ultimately be taken, and
he dreaded the loss of life and possible Indian massacre should he
hold out. The British column began to advance. Every soldier expected
that the heavy American guns which were pointed toward them would be
lighted and discharged into their midst; instead, an American was
seen advancing from the fort with a white flag. Within an hour, and
without the firing of a single shot, the surprised British troops
found themselves in possession of Detroit. Hull included in the terms
of capitulation not only the troops within the fort but the Ohio
detachment now advancing up the river, so that General Brock gained
at least twenty-five hundred prisoners of war. The mortification
of the country at the whole course of the war vented itself after
this surrender upon General Hull, who was really the victim of poor
management of the army and lack of support at headquarters. He might
have been forced to give up Detroit within a few weeks unless he was
reënforced, but he could have kept Brock from returning to harry
Niagara in nine days.
Detroit was surrendered on the morning of August 16. On the same day
and at the same hour Fort Dearborn at Chicago was being burned by an
Indian war-party, after the members of its garrison had been massacred.
Two weeks earlier Hull had sent an order to Captain Heald, commander of
the fort, to evacuate it if practicable. The Indian runner reached Fort
Dearborn on August 9 with this message and with the news of the fall
of Fort Mackinac, the receipt of which had been the occasion of Hull’s
decision in regard to Chicago.
It had taken the Indian messenger a suspiciously long time to make
the journey, and as Indians from a distance began to gather about the
fort it was surmised that he had in some way learned the contents
of the message, and in particular the clause which directed that
Captain Heald deliver up to the Indians all the public property of the
garrison, and had told the news along the way. Accounts differ as to
what Captain Heald promised to the Indians. According to the story of
Mr. Kinzie, a trader in the fort, Captain Heald held a council with
them, at which he agreed to divide among them the public property at
the fort on condition that they should furnish him with a friendly
escort. Unfortunately the two things that the Indians most wanted were
ammunition and liquor. These the white men considered it an act of
madness to put into their hands, and under cover of night knocked in
the heads of the barrels and poured the whiskey into the river, threw
powder, bags of shot, and cartridges into the river, and breaking to
pieces the muskets and pistols they could not take with them, dropped
them into a well. An unknown writer, who was present at the time,
distinctly states that Heald objected to this act and argued that it
was a bad thing to lie to an Indian. The watchful Indians found out
what had been done, and from that time on the older chiefs were unable
to restrain the anger of their young men. So many Indians had gathered
that the officers became convinced that the tribes had been notified by
the messenger from Detroit as he made his trip of the distribution of
gifts that was to take place. The supply of blankets, paints, calicoes,
and trinkets that were given out did not satisfy the warriors.
On the evening of the 13th of August the garrison was cheered by the
arrival from Fort Wayne of Captain William Wells, a famous Indian
fighter and uncle of Mrs. Heald, the commander’s wife. This man had
had a most romantic life. Born in Kentucky, he had been stolen when
a boy of twelve by the Indians and adopted by a chief of the Miamis,
whose daughter he had married. He had grown up with the Indians and
fought their battles with them as a matter of course, taking part in
the engagements with General Harmar and General St. Clair. Discovered
by his Kentucky kindred and convinced that he was brother of Captain
Samuel Wells, he had been persuaded after a time to return to his own
people. He had bidden his Indian father-in-law a dramatic farewell,
telling him that in the past they had been friends, but henceforth
they must be enemies; but as a matter of fact he had always kept in
friendly relation with his former chief and had on one occasion saved
his family from being taken prisoners. He had been one of Wayne’s most
valuable scouts, and had since occupied the position of Indian agent,
first at Chicago and now at Fort Wayne, where he was living with his
Indian wife. Hearing of the probable evacuation of Fort Dearborn he had
marched thither with all haste, bringing a party of thirty friendly
Miamis in the hope that he could be of assistance to his friends and
especially to his favorite niece, Mrs. Heald.
On the morning of the 15th of August, at nine o’clock, the soldiers
left the fort for their journey of two hundred and eighty miles to
Detroit. Without a sign of ill-feeling the Indians bade them good-by,
and the little party started along the lake shore. Captain Wells with
half his Miamis, all mounted on Indian ponies, led the line. The
soldiers of the garrison with the wagons, in which sat the twelve women
and twenty children, followed directly behind them, and the remainder
of the friendly Miamis brought up the rear. The escort of five hundred
furnished by the neighboring tribes kept abreast of the troops until
they reached the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the fort. There
they struck out suddenly into the prairie and disappeared, hurrying
forward to prepare an ambuscade.
The little company had proceeded about a mile and a half when Captain
Wells was seen to turn and ride back, swinging his hat in a circle
above his head, which, in the sign language of the frontier, meant:
“We are surrounded by Indians.” As he came nearer he shouted, “We are
surrounded. March up on the sand ridges.” All at once, in the language
of Mrs. Heald, who left a graphic report, they saw “Indians’ heads
sticking up and down again here and there, like turtles out of water.”
As the member of the party most experienced in Indian warfare, Captain
Wells was immediately put in command. He led the men in a charge up the
bank, and with a volley of shot they broke the line of the Indians. A
second time they charged, and again the Indians drew back. But though
they were beaten in front, they poured in from all sides, captured
the horses and baggage, and began to kill the women and children. For
fifteen or twenty minutes the fight went on. Captain Wells was here,
there, and everywhere. With two pistols and a gun, which he kept
reloading with lightning rapidity, he sighted and brought down the
warriors in the midst of their wanton work.
Wounded himself and isolated on a mound with a remnant of his men,
Captain Heald saw that there was no hope but to surrender. The Indians
made signs for him to approach them, and he offered to surrender in the
hope of sparing further bloodshed. His own wife was slightly wounded,
and Mrs. Helm, the wife of his lieutenant, had only been saved from
being tomahawked by the friendly chief, Black Partridge, who seized
her from the grasp of her captor, and took her to the water, where he
made feint to drown her, but kept her head out until the fight was
over. After the surrender Captain Wells rode up, desperately wounded,
to send farewell messages to his wife, and was killed on the instant by
a group of Indians, who mangled his body horribly. Of the ninety-three
in the party but thirty-six were still living. Of the sixty-six
fighting men forty-three had been killed, and only seven women and six
children survived. Some of the prisoners made their escape, finding
their way to safety through a series of hairbreadth adventures; some
died in captivity, and others were exchanged at intervals during the
next two years. On the spot where the massacre took place,--then out
in open prairie, now at the foot of Eighteenth Street in the city of
Chicago,--there stands a noble monument to the Fort Dearborn garrison.
With Fort Dearborn and Fort Mackinac abandoned, the last American
defences on the western lakes were gone. The boundary line of the
United States became the Wabash and Maumee rivers, and the surrender
of Detroit made it doubtful whether even that line could be maintained.
The hold of the United States on the Great Lakes in August, 1812,
looked very uncertain.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONQUEST OF LAKE ERIE
The year 1813 began with another disaster for the United States. After
the surrender of Detroit, Governor William Henry Harrison, of the
Indiana Territory, placed himself at the head of a popular movement
to retrieve the defeat at any cost and to recover Detroit. It was
winter before he succeeded in getting an army within reach of the lake
coast. For months the three divisions of his force of ten thousand
men struggled through the swampy lands of Ohio, where the movement of
troops and of necessary provisions was rendered well-nigh impossible
by the heavy rains. On the 15th of January two Frenchmen had entered
the camp of the advance division of the army, which under command of
General Winchester was establishing itself at a point on the Maumee
River twenty miles inland from Lake Erie. They urged the troops to
occupy Frenchtown, a village on the American shore of Lake Erie
but within British lines. This town on the River Raisin was held by
Canadians and Indians, and its loss, if taken by the Americans, would
be a serious blow to the British. Six hundred and fifty men, the flower
of the Kentucky regiments, started under the command of Colonel Lewis
for the attack. After considerable losses the Americans seized the
town. General Winchester hastened to their support with three hundred
more men, making a total American force at the River Raisin of eight or
nine hundred men.
General Proctor, Brock’s successor at Fort Malden, had under his
command over two thousand soldiers. On the morning of January 22,
1813, he crossed the lake on the ice with a force of six hundred men
and from six to eight hundred Indians and attacked the Americans in
the ill-fortified village. When the hard-fought engagement was ended
four hundred Americans were missing, either killed during the battle
by the British or scalped by the Indians in the horrible massacre
that followed the defeat. Only after the ammunition had given out
and retreat had been proved impossible because of the deep snow and
the position of the enemy, did the last of the gallant Kentuckians
surrender. “Remember the River Raisin” became the watchword of a
desperate people, and operations on the Great Lakes were suspended
until Commodore Perry was ready with his navy to retrieve these defeats
and turn the tide of American fortune.
Oliver Hazard Perry had been brought up in the naval service. His
father was a gallant seaman who had fought in the Revolution and
been on the sea ever since. When Oliver was ready he was appointed
midshipman on his father’s ship, and had seen since that day service
in the West Indies, in the Tripolitan war, and off the Atlantic coast.
At the beginning of the War of 1812 he was put in charge of a flotilla
of gun-boats stationed at Newport, but he had petitioned to be removed
from this retirement and placed in active service, preferably on the
lakes. He was summoned in the winter of 1813 to take charge of the
construction of vessels on Lake Erie. He found the lake fleet divided.
At the Black Rock Navy Yard on the Niagara River lay several vessels,
unable to get out past the British fleet and the overlooking British
forts. At Erie, Pennsylvania, two brigs, a schooner, and a gun-boat
were being built. It was for Perry to unite the two sections of the
fleet, to provide them with a crew of able seamen, and to force the
British fleet into decisive action.
An American victory on the Niagara River on the 27th of May set free
the vessels at Black Rock. Perry was on hand to superintend their
laborious removal from the navy-yard. Oxen and men worked day after day
dragging the vessels against the heavy current of the river into Lake
Erie. Once on the waters of the lake the American ships under Perry’s
command evaded the British cruisers which were sailing back and forth
between Niagara and Erie, with the sole purpose of intercepting them,
and reached the latter port in safety. For two months the fleet lay
in that harbor while Perry strained every nerve to get the vessels
into shape and secure sailors to man them. We get a little idea of his
difficulties by the fact that between the last of May and the first of
August he cut down his requirements in the number of seamen to one-half
his original estimate. On the sixth day of August all preparations were
completed and the fleet sailed out on Lake Erie.
Commodore Perry was twenty-eight years old; his antagonist, Barclay,
was thirty-two. Barclay had met as many difficulties as Perry in
getting his fleet ready, and especially in securing provisions for his
men. The American squadron had, moreover, cut off communication between
Fort Malden and its source of supplies. So in September, even though
his best vessel, the _Detroit_, had to be launched unfinished from
the stocks, Barclay saw no choice but to fight at once. Early on the
morning of September 9, the British fleet sailed to meet the American
squadron, which was anchored at the mouth of the Sandusky River.
Barclay had six vessels with sixty-three guns, and probably about four
hundred and fifty men. Perry had nine vessels with fifty-four guns, and
about the same number of available men. His guns, however, were much
heavier, and his vessels larger.
At daybreak of September 10, Perry’s lookout discovered the approaching
British fleet; the American ships at once weighed anchor, in twelve
minutes they were under sail and standing toward the enemy. The wind
was light and the lake calm, so that both sides found difficulty in
getting into position, but by noon they were drawn up for battle.
The British vessels were in a single column, the American in a
somewhat more irregular formation, and each vessel opposed one of
its own tonnage and build in the enemy’s fleet. Barclay commanded the
_Detroit_, a ship of four hundred and ninety tons carrying nineteen
guns, and opposite him was Perry’s flagship, the _Lawrence_, with
twenty guns. At a quarter before twelve the British opened fire, and
the Americans replied.
Finding the British fire at long range very destructive, especially
to his own vessel, Perry set more sail and passed the word by hail of
trumpet for the whole line to close up and advance nearer the enemy.
For two hours the fleets manœuvred in this position, the _Lawrence_
within two hundred and fifty yards of the _Detroit_ and both vessels
pouring a heavy fire into each other. A second vessel, the _Queen
Charlotte_, came to the support of Barclay, and Perry’s flagship, after
sustaining the action for over two hours, was seriously disabled.
Every gun was rendered useless, the greater part of the crew killed or
wounded, and the rigging shot away. At 2.30 the English commander saw
the _Lawrence_ drop from her position and a small boat pass from her
to the _Niagara_, a vessel under command of Lieutenant Elliot, which
had been at some distance from the main engagement and was at this
time comparatively fresh. As Barclay wrote in his official report,
“The American commodore, seeing that as yet the day was against him,
made a noble and, alas! too successful an effort to regain it; for he
bore up [in the _Niagara_] and supported by his small vessels, passed
within pistol-shot and took a raking position on our bow.” Up to this
time the result of the action had been in doubt. For some reason the
portion of the fleet under Elliot had pursued an independent course,
and Perry with the vessels nearest him had been too hard pressed. A
bitter dispute as to the cause of this condition was waged by Elliot’s
friends in the ensuing years after the close of the war. Whatever the
reason, it was evident to all that the American force was not in its
most effective position because so many of the vessels were fighting
at long range instead of at close. When Elliot came up near enough to
the disabled flagship to allow Perry to go on board, the advantage
was for the first time on the American side. Perry was able to bear
down on the _Detroit_ and pour into her volleys of shot so that, with
American vessels on every side aiding in the attack, she soon became
completely disabled. The topmasts and rigging were cut away, the hull
was shattered, and the vessel became unmanageable. Within half an hour
the British commander was forced to strike his flag and surrender.
It had been a desperate alternative for Commodore Perry to venture
into a small boat and transfer his flag from one ship to another. By
his personal action in thus rushing his own vessel in at the crisis
and exposing himself to a fusillade from the enemy for several minutes
before he could make any reply to it, Perry had won the battle for
the Americans. He determined to receive the surrender on his original
flagship, the _Lawrence_, at whose peak had been flying throughout the
battle the words spoken a few months before by the hero for whom the
vessel was named, the dying commander of the _Chesapeake_, “Don’t give
up the ship.” Perry returned to the ship and the English officers came
to him there. Each presented his sword, and in reply Perry bowed and
requested that their side-arms be retained by the officers. The deck
of the _Lawrence_ was covered with dead and wounded. On both sides
the battle had been very hard-fought, and the loss of life, both of
officers and men, was very heavy. Out of one hundred and three men
on the _Lawrence_ twenty-two had been killed and sixty-one wounded.
On both the flagships every officer save Perry was killed or wounded,
even Barclay being seriously injured, and the loss on these vessels was
probably four-fifths of the men disabled or killed. When the ceremony
of surrender was over, Perry tore off the back of an old letter, and
using his hat for a writing-desk, wrote to General Harrison, stationed
with reënforcements on the Sandusky River: “We have met the enemy, and
they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.”
Perry’s victory was immediately followed up both by himself and by
General Harrison. Within a week the remnant of the fleet was ready
to convey land forces to Malden, where they disembarked on the 27th
of September. The timidity and incompetence of the British general,
Proctor, gave the Americans a great advantage. To the utter scorn of
Tecumseh and his Indians, who were supporting the British, General
Proctor evacuated Malden, Detroit, and Sandwich without a stroke in
their defence, and retired along the road to Lake Ontario even before
the Americans landed. With such a start Harrison thought that the
English with their thousand horses would be out of his reach, but he
prepared to follow them. This Proctor seems not to have included in the
range of possibilities.
By easy marches the British proceeded to Chatham, fifty miles from
Sandwich on the River Thames. Here Proctor halted the army while
he himself went on to the Moravian town twenty-six miles beyond.
The American army appeared, and the British tried to follow their
commander to Chatham. The organization of the whole army was by this
time completely demoralized. They had, however, no choice but to turn
and fight, as the younger officers and soldiers had long desired. The
British were so stationed as to give the advantage of position to
their opponents; and the American force was strengthened by a mounted
regiment commanded by Richard Johnson, who had won a great reputation
for himself and his men in previous battles on the frontier. The
Americans lost only fifteen men in the engagement, with thirty wounded.
The British list of dead and wounded was also short, but nearly five
hundred were taken prisoners, and their supply of provisions and
ammunition fell into the hands of the Americans. Only two hundred
of this whole division of the British army returned to report at
headquarters a month later. The Indian warrior, Tecumseh, was killed
in this battle, and with his death the remote prospect of an Indian
confederacy was gone. After these two victories the western Indians
fell away from their alliance with the British and took no active part
in the war.
The last year of the war, the year 1814, was marked by constant
and active operations on Lake Ontario and about Niagara. The naval
movements were not particularly effective on the American side, nor did
they win great results. The possession of the Niagara River was sharply
contested, and the American troops distinguished themselves by their
bravery at the battles of Chippewa Creek and Lundy’s Lane. Cut off from
any other lake position, the British could concentrate their forces
at this point and throw the Americans on the defensive. These battles
concerned, nevertheless, only a small portion of the Great Lakes, which
were again the northern boundary of the United States. By Perry’s
victory on Lake Erie, the subsequent recovery of the Detroit River, and
the defeat of the British army at the Thames, Lake Erie and the whole
Northwest were saved to the United States. The close of the war by the
treaty of Ghent in the winter of 1814 brought to the lake frontier a
well-earned and a lasting peace.
CHAPTER XV
GENERAL LEWIS CASS AND REORGANIZATION
A period of conflict always leaves behind it changed and unsettled
conditions. Between the close of a war and the final readjustment of
affairs leading up to a settled and permanent life, there must be a
time of reorganization. Into this period of reconstruction the western
territory about the Great Lakes passed at the close of the War of
1812. Since the Ordinance of 1787 the Northwest Territory had been
subdivided. Ohio had become a state in 1802, and the region west of it
had all been included in a territory under the general name of Indiana,
of which section William Henry Harrison was the first governor. From
Indiana, in its turn, Michigan was set off in 1805, with William Hull
as its first governor. On Hull’s retirement from public life, after
the surrender of Detroit, Colonel Lewis Cass was appointed governor of
Michigan Territory. As the man who had most influence on the Northwest
during these years of reconstruction, Governor Cass deserves detailed
notice.
Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1782, Lewis Cass was the son of a
soldier of the Revolution. During his son’s boyhood Major Cass, the
father, was with Anthony Wayne or in command of Fort Hamilton, and
after the peace of Greenville he brought his family, as did so many
of the soldiers, to the rich country through which he had marched in
war time. The young man divided his time between Marietta, where he
began the study of law, and the frontier, where his father was hewing
a home and making a living out of the wilderness. Under the state
constitution of Ohio the first certificate of admission to the bar was
given in 1802 to Lewis Cass. In the school of the county court the
young lawyer gained a first-hand knowledge of the practice of the law
and an understanding of the people of the frontier and how to deal
with them, both of which served him well in his governorship. Even
before he reached the proper age of eligibility he was sent to the Ohio
legislature, and at the outbreak of the War of 1812 he was given a
colonel’s commission.
Cass was one of the three Ohio colonels who served with Hull in
the ill-starred Detroit expedition. Indeed, he led one of the few
successful minor charges of that campaign. To his great indignation
he was included by his general in that surrender, although he was not
at the fort. For some months he was prisoner of war on parole. As
soon as he was released he joined Harrison, under whom he did such
efficient service that Harrison left him after the battle of the Thames
in command of Detroit and the northwest frontier. The President soon
appointed Cass governor of Michigan Territory, which then included only
the lower peninsula of the present state, but to which the territory
that is now Wisconsin was added in 1818 under the name of the Huron
District.
Indiana became a state two years after the close of the war, but as
governor of Michigan Territory and superintendent of Indian affairs
General Cass had control of all Indian posts in the Northwest, as
well as of the whole of Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois.
Illinois became a state in 1818, but at that time the only recognized
settlements were in the southern portion of the territory, and the
region about Chicago was practically left to the care of General Cass.
The management of this vast territory presented many difficulties.
The governor’s immediate residence, Detroit, was four-fifths Canadian,
and of this population a large proportion was French. It was only
fifty years since Major Gladwin had taken possession of a Detroit that
was wholly French, and when the Americans took command in 1796 they
had found a large predominance of French-Canadians. These settlers
were in the best of times poor farmers, and in war times they had
stopped all attempts to cultivate the land. Governor Cass found among
them the most absolute ignorance of the rudimentary principles of
farming that he had ever encountered. They used one piece of ground,
without the least attempt to fertilize, until it was exhausted, and
then proceeded to another. As these settlers of Detroit were typical
of the more scattered inhabitants of the region, and as the Indians
were almost entirely dependent on the gifts and supplies of the ruling
people, Cass found himself confronted by the problem of how to feed
a starving territory. For its immediate need he sought and obtained
government bounties for the people. For the remedy of the condition
he did everything in his power to stimulate settlement, urging the
government to survey the land and allot portions for sale. In this
he was hindered by the false reports of the first surveyors, who for
some reason represented the whole of Michigan as so swampy, barren, or
otherwise unfit for cultivation that there could be no incentive to
immediate settlement. This, be it remembered, was said of Michigan,
whose rich bottom-lands, fertile prairies, and timber tracts were
soon to be so productive and whose orchards were to become among the
greatest fruit producers of the states. Cass did everything in his
power to counteract these statements and to further immigration.
Occupation of the land by thrifty settlers would solve the difficulties
by making the inhabitants independent as they became capable of
producing what they needed, and would also lessen their isolation by
creating lines of communication with the East. In these efforts he
was successful. A public sale of lands was held in 1818, and by 1820
the population had nearly doubled since before the war. The opening
of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought in a period of rapid immigration in
which Cass began to see the fulfilment of his hopes. The population
jumped from nine thousand in 1820 to thirty-two thousand in 1830.
This came just before he was called to the position of Secretary of
War at Washington. During his period of national service he had the
satisfaction of seeing his territory flooded with newcomers, till in
1837 it entered the Union as a state with one hundred and seventy-five
thousand inhabitants. It was due to the statesmanship of its governor
that Michigan Territory was so well-ordered and well-developed a
region and was therefore so soon ready for statehood. He educated the
original settlers to self-government, organized courts and legislative
assemblies and guided their policies, and furthered the cause of public
education. During the eighteen years of his governorship he devoted
himself to such service with a zeal that won immediate results.
In his double position as governor and superintendent of Indian
affairs, Cass did much else for the western lake region. Even after the
cessation of hostilities, he found the British attitude hostile and
aggravating. This showed itself in two ways. The British were inclined
to ignore the rights of the United States citizens and to interfere
with their liberty when the proximity of the two nations brought up any
disputed question; they also stirred the Indians to hostility. Governor
Cass stood out boldly, insisting that the United States must be
treated according to the customs of international law between two equal
powers. In time the British came to realize that they were dealing
with a nation, not with a detached and feeble territory. Governor Cass
could not handle so openly the British instigation of the Indians to
hostility toward the United States and its western settlers. There was
no law to prevent the distribution of sixty tons of presents among the
Indians who gathered at Malden from the American as well as from the
Canadian side of the river. The British did not realize that the time
had come for them to give up their guardianship of all Indian tribes
who did not live within their lawful jurisdiction.
In the conduct of Indian affairs Governor Cass showed himself skilled
as no leader had been since the days of the wise French explorers.
The Indians had never forgotten the French missionaries. “Seven
generations,” said a Chippewa chief, “have passed since the Frenchmen
came to these falls (Sault Ste. Marie), but we have not forgotten
them. Just, very just, were they to us.” This spirit of fairness now
returned in Governor Cass, who combined with it an insight into Indian
character, a patience that enabled him to deal with the savages, and
an energy which made him go to endless trouble to arrange matters with
them. The work of this wonderful man held off raids and massacres,--if
not open and continued war,--which would have retarded settlement in
this exposed wilderness for many years. If the white men were to occupy
the greater part of the country, agreements must be made and kept with
the Indians. Cass recognized this as his cardinal principle, and began
to act on it even before the close of the war. He first made treaties
with the Indians near Detroit. From this centre the circle widened
until it included the whole of his vast territory and parts of more
settled regions. At St. Mary’s in Ohio, at Saginaw in Michigan, and at
Chicago in Illinois, he concluded treaties which brought to the United
States vast stretches of valuable territory.
With the permission of the government Cass organized an expedition
to go into the remote sections of its northwestern possessions,
investigate their resources, and come into friendly relations with the
Indians. Of this picturesque and important expedition made by twenty
Americans into the then unknown Lake Superior country Mr. Schoolcraft,
one of his scientific companions, has left us a full account. In every
transaction the figure of Cass stands out strong and forceful. At
Sault Ste. Marie he wanted to obtain a piece of ground which through
old British and French treaties the Indians had previously admitted
to belong to the white men. Adorned with British medals the Indians
greeted him with an independence of word and gesture that soon became
open rudeness and impudence. Retiring from the council the chiefs ran
up the British flag on their lodge and cleared the room in preparation
for battle. Governor Cass, with a single interpreter, walked into the
Indian camp, tore down the British flag, and faced the astonished
savages. The Americans were studious, he said, to render justice and
promote peace with the Indians, but the flag was the distinguishing
token of national power, and two could not fly over the same spot. The
Indians were forbidden to raise any flag but the American, and if they
should the United States would put strong feet on their necks and crush
them to earth. With these words he turned and walked out of the lodge
with the British flag in his hand. In a few hours the Indians signed
the treaty, and the expedition proceeded on its way.
At the request of Cass mineralogists and geologists had been sent with
him, and they made such discoveries as he had expected of copper and
other minerals. So valuable were they that the attention of the whole
United States was turned toward this rich region. Part of the company,
led by Cass, returned by way of Chicago, a village of only ten or
twelve houses outside the limits of a well-garrisoned fort, but with a
location in what seemed to Cass “the most fertile and beautiful country
that could be imagined.”
Six years later Cass was back on Lake Superior making on the site of
Duluth important treaties with the tribes of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In all these treaties with the Indians he insisted on three points. The
chiefs should understand fully what they were doing; just remuneration
should be made by the Americans; and the promises made should be
faithfully observed on both sides. The flag that he carried into the
lake region remained during his administration the symbol of justice
and honor, and won the respect of all.
CHAPTER XVI
THE BLACK HAWK WAR
The settlement of northern Illinois and Wisconsin by American colonists
brought on in 1832 the last serious Indian outbreak in the lake region.
The white men had been pushing the Indians farther and farther west. On
the banks of the Mississippi the red men turned and made a desperate
attempt to keep possession of the lands which held the homes and the
graves of their ancestors.
Between Rock River in Illinois and the Wisconsin River there lay on
the eastern bank of the Mississippi a region which had been known to
the white men ever since the visit of Nicholas Perrot in 1690 because
of its extensive deposits of lead. Mines had been worked there by the
Indians and Frenchmen for two centuries and had yielded a considerable
output, which had been bought by French-Canadian traders and in later
years by the British. The United States concluded in 1804 a treaty
with the Sauk and Fox Indians, who occupied this country, by which they
ceded to the Americans the territory east of the Mississippi River from
the mouth of the Illinois at the south to the mouth of the Wisconsin at
the north. It had been agreed that so long as the lands remained the
public property of the United States the Indians might live and hunt
there, but when they were bought by settlers the Indians must move.
[Illustration: Map: “From Lake Michigan to the Mississippi”]
American mining settlements sprang up after the close of the War
of 1812, and by 1827 an established coach road, known as Kellogg’s
Trail, ran from Peoria one hundred and twenty miles north to Galena,
which was in the heart of the mining country. Along this road were
occasional groups of cabins, while on either side trails ran off into
the wilderness which would have led the traveller who followed them to
solitary homesteads and well-ordered farms. In a rich and fertile tract
at the mouth of Rock River stood the chief village of the Sauks. It was
one of the largest and most prosperous Indian towns on the continent,
with more than five hundred families, and was besides the principal
cemetery of the nation. Squatters seized the Indian fields, built their
huts on their clearings, and stole their harvests. Until the lands
were formally sold the Indians had a right there, and their complaints
were just. In 1828, however, the site of the village was sold, and the
tribes were given notice to leave. Keokuk, the chief of the Sauks,
crossed the Mississippi with the majority of the tribe and counselled
the rest to yield peaceably. A considerable number of the Indians
remained in the settlement, living on the high bluff which has since
been known as Black Hawk’s Watch Tower, and cultivating the few fields
which remained to them.
Black Hawk was one of the Indians who did not share Keokuk’s
submissive temper of mind. He was a warrior about sixty years of age,
who seems always to have been a restless and discontented member of
the tribe. He was a tall, spare man, with pinched features, high
cheek-bones, and a prominent Roman nose. His black eyes were piercing;
he had practically no eyebrows, and his hair had been plucked out save
for a single scalp-lock, in which on occasions was fastened a bunch
of eagle feathers. He was a striking figure, and his history bore out
in interest his appearance. He had begun his warlike career in early
youth. Before he was fifteen he had won in his tribe the rank of a
brave, and at that age the scalping of an enemy had gained him the
coveted right to paint, to wear feathers, and to dance the war-dance.
Since that time he had been involved in every tribal skirmish that had
taken place, and he had played a prominent part in the white men’s wars.
[Illustration: Portrait of Black Hawk, shown wearing several necklaces
as well as numerous earrings which are in both ears.]
In the unsettled period before the War of 1812, Black Hawk had gathered
about him a group of two hundred young warriors, who won for themselves
in the war the name of the “British Band,” from their support of the
British troops. He had fought at the battle of Frenchtown on the
River Raisin, at the battle of the Thames under Tecumseh, and after
the latter’s death he returned to Illinois and carried on there a
border warfare which was only ended by his signing at St. Louis in
1816 a treaty of peace. Since that time he had made the Rock River
village his headquarters, and when the white men began to take up his
lands, his smouldering hatred of the Americans blazed out. Returning
with a band of warriors from the winter hunting season of 1831, he
was warned off his land. He refused to cross the Mississippi River,
and appealed to the Indians to defend the graves of their ancestors.
In spite of Keokuk’s remonstrances the best young men of the Sauk and
Fox tribes flocked to his standard, and his threats excited such alarm
among the settlers that Governor Reynolds of Illinois issued a call for
volunteers to assist the regular troops in guarding the frontier. There
was a prompt response, and when the troops reached Black Hawk’s village
the Indians withdrew during the night to the west side of the river
and signed a treaty never to return to their former homes without the
express permission of the United States authorities.
Black Hawk did not abide by this treaty. During the winter of 1832 he
recruited a large force, and in the spring he crossed the Mississippi
at a point just south of his former village, and began a march up the
Rock River Valley. This invasion of the state by a hostile band of
savages excited great alarm along the frontier. The settlers came in
from their lonely farms and built about the larger villages stockades
and defences. A call for volunteers was issued, and the enthusiastic
response was a surprise, even to the governor who summoned them.
One of the first to enlist was Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois citizen of
two years’ standing. He had come with his family in his seventh year
from Kentucky to Indiana and thence in 1830 to the newer settlements
of Illinois. He was twenty-three years old, and was a tall, sturdy
backwoodsman, who was to prove himself in the wrestling matches that
were the soldiers’ pastime, the strongest man but one in the whole
army. He was at once chosen captain of his company, an honor which
brought him more gratification than most of his greater successes. The
volunteers were organized into four regiments, and started to follow
Black Hawk up the Rock River. The command of four hundred regulars
was given to Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterwards President of the
United States; and during the months of this war there served in the
army Robert Anderson, the defender of Sumter, Winfield Scott, Albert
Sidney Johnston, the Confederate hero, and Jefferson Davis. It was a
distinguished group of men who responded in their youth to the call of
their country.
The marching was difficult. There were no roads or bridges, only marshy
trails and streams swollen into torrents by the spring thaws. But the
hardy backwoodsmen were used to such conditions. They marched steadily
on, and when they had gone some ninety miles up Rock River to Dixon’s
Ferry halted to await the arrival of General Atkinson with the regular
troops and the loads of provisions. They found there two battalions of
horsemen, under the command of Majors Stillman and Bailey, which had
been gathered in the upper country. They had had no long march to weary
them, but were impatient to get a chance at the enemy. They set off as
scouts on a dark, threatening morning in May, with orders to coerce
what Indians they met into submission. “I thought,” says the governor
in his memoirs, “they might discover the enemy.” And they did.
Black Hawk had been urging the tribes of the Rock River region to
join him, but had received so little encouragement that he was almost
prepared to make peace with the advancing army. He was now a little
way up the river with a party of forty or fifty warriors, a body-guard
selected from his eight hundred men, who were encamped seven miles
beyond. As the chief sat at supper on the evening of the 14th of May,
he was told that a small party of white horsemen was making camp near
by. The creek on whose banks the Americans had halted was lined with
tall willows, which made a good protection for the camp. The vanguard
of the two brigades had stopped, tied their horses to the trees, and
begun to build fires for supper when three Indians appeared on a height
nearly a mile away. It afterwards proved that these Indians were
messengers from Black Hawk and were bearing a white flag of truce.
The scouts at sight of the Indians rushed out and seized them. Black
Hawk and his men, watching at a distance, saw their men captured and
prepared hastily to meet and attack the whites. The squads of soldiers
who had started in the chase were scattered without any regular order
along half a mile of the valley. When the foremost of the pursuers
came upon Black Hawk and his men hidden behind a growth of brush, the
savages dashed out upon them with wild war-whoops. The soldiers thought
that eight hundred Indians were behind their leader, and scattered in
every direction. Their officers tried to rally them, but the force
was disorganized. The men leaped on their horses and rode away. The
Indians, astonished at this sudden development, feared that they were
being led into an ambush; but they pursued the white men, killing those
whom they overtook. At one or two places companies of soldiers turned
and made a gallant fight, but most of them escaped on their swift
horses. By twos and threes they straggled into the camp at Dixon’s
Ferry, twenty-five miles away, with a story of defeat that spread a
panic over the whole frontier. The army marched next day to the scene
of the surprise; but Black Hawk and his men were gone, and it was not
thought wise to pursue them farther north without a better supply of
provisions. The unexpected and easy victory had encouraged Black Hawk
and had brought many Indians of other tribes to his side.
A reign of terror followed Stillman’s defeat. Scalping parties
organized by Black Hawk covered the frontier, making raids on the
exposed northern settlements. Many on both sides lost their lives,
for small parties of American settlers made gallant defences in their
scattered villages and held the Indians back. Three weeks from the time
of the first attack a new army of volunteers, four thousand strong,
took the field. They marched to Dixon’s Ferry and then plunged into the
wilderness, taking every precaution as they proceeded into the enemy’s
country to guard against surprise. On the 30th of June they crossed the
Illinois border near the present city of Beloit, Wisconsin, and came
upon abandoned camps and other signs of the retreating Indians.
The progress through the wilderness of Wisconsin was slow and
difficult. Day after day the troops pushed on, wading up to their
armpits in mud and water, or hewing away the trees and underbrush that
barred their course. After three weeks they came up with the last of
the fugitives. Passing through a forest where stands to-day the city
of Madison, they came to the shores of the Wisconsin River, and there
they fought the battle of Wisconsin Heights. The loss of life among the
Indians was heavy; among the Americans, light. During the night after
the battle, the startled soldiers sitting in their camp heard from
the direction of the Indian encampment a loud, clear voice speaking
in an unknown tongue. They feared that some chief was directing his
men to descend upon the camp and make a night attack. After a time,
however, the voice ceased and nothing more was thought of the incident.
It proved afterwards that this was the voice of an orator sent by
Black Hawk to beg for peace. He had used the Winnebago tongue, and
as the members of that tribe had left the camp that very day, no one
understood him. Thus the second attempt of Black Hawk to make peace
failed.
From this time on the story of the campaign is a tale of relentless
pursuit and slaughter of the fugitives. Black Hawk and his starving
war-party reached the banks of the Mississippi, but an American steamer
prevented their crossing in safety. The troops came upon them at a
point called Bad Axe, and for three hours the bloody conflict raged.
The white men lost only seventeen men killed, and twelve wounded. At
least one hundred and fifty Indians were killed in the battle and
as many more men, women, and children were drowned or shot down in
their attempts to escape. Nearly a thousand Indians had crossed the
Mississippi at Rock River, two hundred miles below. Barely one hundred
and fifty regained the western bank at Bad Axe.
General Winfield Scott brought home the remaining troops, who were
attacked by cholera on the journey and suffered great losses. The
Winnebagoes, with whom Black Hawk sought refuge, delivered him over to
the Americans, who put him under the guardianship of his former rival,
the peace-loving Keokuk. By order of the war department the fallen
warrior was taken during the time of his captivity on a tour of the
country to see in the east the strength of the white man and realize
the futility of further resistance by the Indian. On his first trip he
went to Washington, was received by President Jackson, and was taken
to Philadelphia, New York, up the Hudson, and back by way of the Great
Lakes to Rock River, where he was set free. In 1837 Keokuk, who did
not dare leave him unwatched in his absence, took him to Washington
again with a deputation of Sauk and Fox Indians, and on this trip he
went to Boston. The experiences of the savage warrior in this eastern
city take us back to the time when Champlain took his Indian host
Darontal to the little settlement at Quebec in 1616, and showed him the
civilization of the Frenchman. Nothing could portray better the change
in the relations of the white man and the red man in the two hundred
years that had come between.
The Indian delegation was received by the mayor, the aldermen, and
the common council of Boston at Faneuil Hall. The armories and the
navy-yard were visited to show the military power of Bostonians; a
levee was held at Faneuil Hall to receive the ladies who desired to
meet the warriors; and on Monday morning, October 30, 1837, they were
formally received in the Hall of the House of Representatives by
Governor Everett, attended by his staff and other officers. In flowing
and graceful language the governor welcomed the Indians on behalf of
the Commonwealth, addressing them in the Indian style of oratory. The
chiefs responded, one by one, to his words, Black Hawk in a shrill,
clear voice that attracted the attention of the audience to the famous
veteran warrior. All thanked the governor for his kind words and
shook hands with him, expressing their desire for friendship with the
white men. The party then adjourned to the Boston Common, where they
performed a series of war-dances in the presence of an immense crowd;
and in the evening they went to the Tremont Theatre to see “The Banker
of Bogota,” which was being played there. With this scene the picture
of the life of the last great Indian warrior of the lake region ends.
Black Hawk returned to his home and died the next year at the age of
seventy-one, in a reservation at Des Moines, Iowa, set apart for him
and his few remaining followers. The Indians had been humbled and
defeated.
The Black Hawk War called national attention to the western country.
The troops had explored a wilderness little known to the Americans,
and the story of their march into Wisconsin had been published in
full in the newspapers of the East. Guide-books were issued, painting
in brilliant colors the charms of the region, and a tide of westward
immigration followed the sale of public lands by the government.
Northern Illinois gained a large population, and Wisconsin was made a
territory within four years. The foundation of the lake states had been
laid; the Northwest had been Americanized.
PART III
OCCUPATION AND DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER XVII
GATEWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES
The Great Lakes are entered from the outer world by a series of
natural gateways extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the
westernmost end of Lake Superior. With a shrewd instinct the savages
selected these spots as the centres for their forest trails and as the
crossing places over which they could carry their boats from river to
lake and lake to river. At these points the French and English erected
stockades and forts around which gathered small settlements. Americans,
entering at the beginning of the nineteenth century into possession
of the country, built there the towns and cities which to-day command
the commerce of the Great Lakes. With the founding of these cities the
period of permanent occupation begins.
The French approached the Great Lakes from Quebec and Montreal. Because
of Iroquois hostility they avoided the southern route by Niagara and
along Lake Erie, and ascended instead the Ottawa River, crossed Lake
Nipissing, and passed through Georgian Bay into Lake Huron. At Sault
Ste. Marie and Mackinac they built their missions and trading posts.
Here Marquette and Joliet heard tales of the great river to the south
and the rich copper country to the west, and from these centres the
French explorers started on their expeditions into Wisconsin, Illinois,
and Indiana. Before the English had explored more than a narrow strip
of seaboard the French were travelling up the Fox-Wisconsin rivers
to the Mississippi, or by way of the Chicago and Illinois rivers to
the southern country. Returning parties often proceeded by way of the
Kankakee River to the St. Joseph, or by the Wabash and the Maumee to
Toledo on Lake Erie.
Frontenac saw the importance of occupying the strategic points on the
lakes. He himself went up the St. Lawrence River and planted on the
site of Kingston the fort that bore his name. He encouraged La Salle to
build a trading post at Niagara, and did all in his power to gain Lake
Erie and Lake Ontario for the French. Gradually the French succeeded in
making their way eastward. They occupied the strait of Detroit, and
built forts at Sandusky, Presque Isle (Erie), Niagara, Oswego, and
Toronto. The English seized these forts and planted many more. When
the Americans in their turn took possession, and Wayne’s treaty of
Greenville gave, in 1796, some assurance of safety in the region, they
sent out not only soldiers but colonists and settlers. Their story is
the tale of the beginning of our modern civilization.
In the early days of the American Revolution, Congress suggested to
the states that they should cede their claims to lands west of the
Allegheny to the central government; but many years elapsed before
the United States gained from the eastern states these cessions. Of
all the states Connecticut had the best claim; in making its cession
it reserved a triangular bit of country on the southern shore of Lake
Erie, west of Pennsylvania, which was known as the Western Reserve.
Before long a Connecticut land company bought three million acres in
this tract at forty cents an acre, and in the spring of 1796 Moses
Cleveland with fifty associates set out to plant on the shores of Lake
Erie the colony of New Connecticut. They decided to found their first
settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which was the terminus
of several trails, notably that which led to Akron, Ohio, and south to
Marietta. At this spot, on the 22d of July, 1796, they began to build
their houses, where stands to-day the city of Cleveland, and so rapid
was the growth of this region that in four years’ time there were
thirty-two settlements within the limits of the Connecticut Reserve.
Massachusetts ceded to the United States her claims to lands west of
Pennsylvania, but retained her right to lands in what is now western
New York. In 1788 she sold to a company of New Yorkers a large part of
these lands, including the Genesee Valley. At this time there was but
one white man’s cabin between Oswego and Fort Niagara. The falls of
the Genesee attracted settlers, because there they could build mills
for grinding corn and sawing lumber. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, with
three other Maryland gentlemen, purchased in 1802 one hundred acres at
this point, including the site of this mill, and laid out a village,
opening the sale of lots in 1811. He moved to his land in 1818, the
little village was named after him, and before many years became a
prosperous town.
Buffalo was founded by Joseph Ellicott, brother of the first
surveyor-general of the United States. He laid out the town on the plan
of Washington city, with broad, radiating avenues, and gave to them
Dutch names, as Vollenhoven and Schimmelpennick, calling the village
New Amsterdam. When the town was incorporated in 1810, the inhabitants
renamed it Buffalo, according to the old Indian name for the creek
which makes into the lake at this point. The prosperity of Buffalo and
Rochester, and of Oswego, which was incorporated as a village in 1828,
was assured by the building of the Erie Canal system in 1825.
In spite of her hundred years of history Detroit began life anew under
American rule. In 1805 the town caught fire, and within four hours the
old French settlement was gone. Of two hundred buildings within the
stockade, only one was left standing. The newly elected officers of
Ohio Territory reached Detroit the day after the fire to find the town
wiped out, and in a few years the American Detroit was laid out and
built up on the favorite plan of the city of Washington.
The western lakes had been the first to be approached by Frenchmen
coming from the north; they were the last to be settled by Americans
coming from the Atlantic seaboard. But when their importance came to be
recognized their cities sprang up with amazing rapidity. By the treaty
of Greenville the Indians ceded to the white men, along with other
territory, “one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the
Checagau River.” This spot had always been a centre for Indian tribes
and for fur trade. In 1821 Governor Cass bought from the Indians this
part of Illinois and the state of Michigan. Trade with the Indians
attracted a few settlers to Chicago during the next few years, and in
1833 twenty-eight electors met and chose trustees to administer public
affairs. They established a free ferry across the river, reconstructed
and strengthened the log jail, and built for twelve dollars an estray
pen for lost animals, and thus the town of Chicago began. Four years
later it became an organized municipality with a population of four
thousand. It was the centre of one of the land-booms which collapsed in
the panic of 1837, and suffered for many years thereafter a succession
of disasters. Floods swept the low ground on which the town was built,
which has since been elevated; cholera, droughts, and financial panics
came upon her but were unable to conquer. From the great fire of 1871
Chicago rose once more to justify the opportunities of her location and
to become the leading city of the Great Lakes.
[Illustration: Map: “Gateways of the lakes” showing major cities along
the shores of the five Great Lakes, including Duluth, Milwaukee,
Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, Toronto, Buffalo, Rochester, and
Kingston]
The Black Hawk War opened up in 1832 the southern part of Wisconsin.
Land along the Milwaukee River was purchased by the Indians, and in
1835 the first white owners began their homes. In the summer of 1836
there was a rush of immigration. Sixty buildings were put up in the
seven months, and more would have been erected if lumber could have
been obtained. Streets were graded, ferries established, and on July
14 the first number of the first newspaper of Milwaukee issued a call
to “all good men and true” to assemble and petition the governor to
appoint officers of law for the township. That winter seven hundred
people stayed in the town, and three years later the canal from Rock
River to Milwaukee made the town an eastern gateway for the trade of
the new territory of Wisconsin, which was at that time notably wealthy
in furs. In 1846 the town became a city.
Through the entire struggle for possession of the Great Lakes,
Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie had kept their positions as trading
centres and points for military defence. No permanent settlement
was made west of these posts for many years. Nearly two centuries
before the city of Duluth was founded, Daniel Greyselon Du Luth was
leader of an expedition organized by French merchants of Quebec and
Montreal to trade with the Indians. In the course of his dealings
with the tribes he held an important conference at the head of the
lake, where a trading post was later established on land now a part
of the city of Superior, Wisconsin, opposite the city of Duluth. This
trading station was owned by the Northwestern Fur Company, and was an
important meeting-place for white men and Indians. In 1826, on his
second western trip, Governor Lewis Cass concluded at this Minnesota
outpost a treaty with the Indians, giving to the United States the
right to explore and carry away any minerals that might be found in the
country bordering on the lake. To gain this important concession the
commissioners determined to do all they could to impress the tribes
with the power and majesty of the United States’ representatives. In
barges from which the Stars and Stripes were gayly flying, and to the
tune of “Hail Columbia,” played by a military band, the treaty-makers
sailed into the harbor amid the shouts and cheers of the Indians on the
shore. The treaty was signed, and later agreements also made on this
spot gave to the government the remainder of the country. By 1850 there
were permanent settlers at the head of the lake as well as lumbermen
all along the St. Croix River. Congress appropriated in 1854 money to
build a road to connect Lake Superior by the St. Croix Valley with the
Mississippi River. The settlers at Superior, Wisconsin, were bitter
rivals of those at Duluth. In order to be sure to get the road they
cut a road southward from Superior to meet it and bring it out on the
Wisconsin side of the St. Louis River. In this way Superior got the
start of Duluth, but the latter was incorporated in 1857, and became
before many years a prosperous city.
By the middle of the nineteenth century Duluth, the most remote
gateway of the Great Lakes, had begun its history as a town. In 1825
Henry Clay, speaking on the bill to grant lands for the building of
the Soo Canal, had mentioned these great waterways as “beyond the
furthest bounds of civilization,--if not in the moon.” Six years later
Edward Everett enunciated the principle of the future, declaring that
“intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast is
the great principle of our commercial prosperity.” The cities of the
Great Lakes--Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and
Duluth--recognized their opportunity to become the connecting links
in this inevitable chain of intercourse. Their sites were strategic,
but they had much to do to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing
commerce. Their citizens were alert and eager to fulfil these demands.
Buffalo gained her position as the terminus of the Erie Canal because
public-spirited citizens gave bonds that her harbor should be improved.
Every city spent large sums in constructing and improving her natural
facilities. The fresh needs of every new decade have been met, and
to-day the lake system is on the eve of even greater achievements.
These cities have a background of which they may well be proud,--a
background of men who, in pioneer times of hardship and poverty, were
men of prescience, of courage, and of action. To-day the six cities
have a population of nearly four million people. United by their common
bond of harborage on the Great Lakes, but situated in six states of the
Union, these cities and their smaller neighbors are taking a prominent
part in the nation. Men of vision and of energy still walk their
streets, planning and guiding their present and future. Their sites
are being beautified and improved; their social and economic problems
are being solved; and they are keeping themselves fit gateways for the
prosperous states they represent on the great inland seas of North
America.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE STORY OF A ROAD
As the Indian read in the signs of the trail--the depth of a moccasin
print or the direction of a broken twig--the story of those who had
journeyed over the path before him, so we can find in the tale of
successive kinds of roads the record of the advance of the white man
into the West. For roads the French traders used those of the original
occupants of the land,--the buffalo tracks and the Indian trails.
English-speaking settlers, coming from the Atlantic seacoast, used two
main routes. They came either by river and portage up the Ohio and its
various tributaries to Presque Isle on Lake Erie, or from Albany across
western New York to Niagara. The story of early voyages and of the
founding and life of Detroit gives a picture of French exploration and
settlement; in like manner there is written in the rapid change of the
land and water thoroughfares across New York State, from Indian trail
and river course to turnpike, canal, and railroad, the tale of the
settlement of the lake region, and of the change from a wilderness to a
thickly populated country.
As soon as the explorer landed on the southern shores of Lake Erie,
Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, he came upon buffalo roads or
“traces.” Sometimes these were narrow ditches, a foot wide and from six
inches to two feet deep, trodden down by the impact of thousands of
hoofs as herd after herd of buffaloes had stamped along in single file
behind their leaders. When the first path became too deep for comfort
because of repeated travel, the buffaloes would abandon it and begin a
second path alongside the first, and thus the frequented traces would
be gradually widened. Again an immense herd of these heavy animals
would crash through the forest, breaking in their rapid progress a
broad, deep road from one feeding-ground to another. As this route
would be followed again and again by this and other herds, it would
become level and hard as rock, so that there was great rejoicing in
pioneer settlements when the weary road-makers, struggling with log
causeways and swampy hollows, came upon a firm, solid buffalo trace.
Nor was this an uncommon experience. The line of many of these roads
is followed to-day by our railroads and canals as it was followed
in the middle period by log roads and turnpikes. The buffalo was a
good surveyor. He did not reason out why he should go in a certain
direction, but his sure instinct took him by the easiest and most
direct paths over high lands and low to the salt licks and watercourses
which were his goal. Indeed, he observed precisely the principles which
govern to-day the civil engineer. He followed the level of the valley;
he swerved around high points wherever it was possible, crossing the
ridges and watersheds at the best natural divides and gorges; and he
crossed from one side of a stream of water to the other repeatedly in
order to avoid climbing up from the level, after the fashion of our
modern loop railways.
Not so conspicuous, but more numerous, were the Indian trails. Where
their destination was the same the Indians used the buffalo roads, but
their own paths were quite distinct. These were narrow foot-paths,
usually from twelve to eighteen inches wide, through which the Indians
travelled single file. Three things were necessary for an Indian trail:
it must be secluded, hidden if possible from hostile eyes; it must
be direct; and it must be dry. Over these narrow lanes the trees and
bushes interlaced so closely that it was impossible to see more than a
rod or two ahead, and a neglected path soon became impassable. To know
which paths could be traversed at each season of the year, and where
storm, flood, or fire were likely to have had the least effect, and to
be able to follow the forkings and windings of these forest routes, was
to be skilled in the art of the woodsman and to be valuable as a guide.
Like the buffalo traces the Indian paths were often worn deep, almost
always six inches and sometimes a foot. So well-travelled was the
Indian trail of our story, the Iroquois trail across New York, that
it was called by the Jesuit fathers “The Beaten Road.” That buffalo
came as far east as the present city of Buffalo, New York, is beyond
question. Whether they penetrated farther into the interior of the
state is not known, but in every other respect this region had each
kind of road in turn. It is not only one of the main thoroughfares
of travel, but is also a typical scene of pioneer adventure and
achievement.
The main Iroquois trail led from Albany, the eastern door of the
“Long House,” to Niagara, the western door. It followed the natural
geographical route along the Mohawk Valley to Schenectady, Utica, and
Rome, where stood the great Mohawk “castles,” and turned from this
point south to Onondaga (Syracuse), the centre of the confederacy, and
westward by the heads of Lake Seneca and Canandaigua to Lewiston and
Niagara. It is unusual among Indian trails because it was notably a
peace-path. The Six Nations rarely quarrelled among themselves, but
kept up an interchange of goods and gossip that was remarkable among
savages. Runners were trained to carry summonses to councils and to
spread the news. It was said that it took only three days and three
runners to send a message from one door of the “Long House” to the
other, from Albany to Niagara, a distance of three hundred miles, each
Indian being expected to make in a day his “century run.”
[Illustration: Map: “By trail and turnpike to Lake Erie” depicting the
area between Niagara Falls and Albany]
Along the line of this trail the American pioneer built, in the twenty
years from 1785 to 1815, his log roads and turnpikes. They were crude,
rough affairs, “very grievous to the limbs,” and called forth the
maledictions of the travellers who ventured off the usual routes into
the outskirts of civilization. As the district grew more populous the
roads came gradually under state control. Commissioners and improvement
companies connected and made better the separate stretches of highway.
In 1794 the legislature passed a law, directing the state road to be
extended from Fort Schuyler (Utica) to the Genesee River, and four
years later it was voted to extend it “westward to the extremity of the
state.” This western end of the road, from the Mohawk River to Lake
Erie, was, as it happened, incorporated by the state under the name of
“The Genesee Turnpike” in 1800 before that from Albany to the Mohawk
was given formal recognition. We have thus the unusual spectacle of
a road established in the remote sections of the country before the
connecting road to the nearest city is completed. To raise money for
its construction all kinds of methods had been used, from government
appropriations to lotteries.
The method of road-building in the pioneer settlements was one that
developed throughout the colonies, as here in New York, into the
establishment of turnpike roads. At first the local governments, the
townships, or counties, built the roads. As these became inadequate,
corporations of individuals were given permission to build roads and
charge tolls for their use. The name of turnpike was given to these
private highways because at the place where toll was to be collected
there was placed a gate hung in such a way as to turn on a post. This
gate was made of a long pole and could be swung across the road to stop
carriages, animals, and people till the toll fees had been collected.
When a corporation was given a charter, the legislature prescribed the
number of toll-gates to be set up on the given length of road, and gave
the usual form for tolls. The directors were left to fill in the fees
in each case. This accepted table of tolls shows the kind of vehicles
in use in New York at this time. A one-horse two-wheeled carriage was
called a sulky, chair, or chaise. A chariot, coach, coachee, or phaeton
might be drawn by one horse, but was more commonly specified to have
two. Stage-wagons, stages, and other four-wheeled carriages drawn by
two horses had their separate fee. Just as our highway commissioners of
to-day encourage wide tires because they put less wear on the road, so
in these days there was a rule that carriages with tires twelve inches
wide should pay no tolls, nine-inch tires should exempt the vehicle
from three-quarters of the tolls, and six-inch from one-half. It was
required that the table of tolls be posted in a conspicuous place over
the gate.
In March, 1813, Nathaniel Rochester and other gentlemen were given
permission to form a turnpike company for a road from Canandaigua
to the falls of the Genesee River. As this was not a thickly
settled region the table of tolls is a simple one without elaborate
specifications as to the kinds of carriages and with only two
toll-gates, but as part of our historic road it is of special interest.
_Table of Tolls of Rochester Turnpike Company, March 31, 1813_
CENTS
For every cart, wagon, or other wheeled carriage, drawn
by 2 horses, mules, or oxen 12-1/2
And for each additional horse, mule, or ox 6
For every cart, wagon, or other two-wheeled carriage
drawn by 1 horse or mule 9
For every horse rode, led, or driven 6
For every four-wheeled pleasure carriage or wagon
drawn by 2 horses 25
And for each additional horse 6
For every sleigh or sled drawn by 1 horse, mule, or ox 6
And for every additional horse, mule, or ox 6
For every score of horses, mules, or cattle 20
And in like proportion for a greater or less number
For every score of sheep or hogs 8
And in like proportion for a greater or less number
In the next chapter the experiences of two travellers are given,
the first in 1796, the second in 1811. The two accounts of their
journeys show the wonderful transformation wrought along the line
of this highway in fifteen years. By the end of the first decade of
the nineteenth century New York State had one hundred and thirty-one
turnpikes, and our second traveller was constantly hearing discussion
of a new project to which the enterprising leaders of the state were
turning their attention. For purposes of trade the new land route had
never supplanted the old waterways. With the rapid occupation of the
region of the Great Lakes this trade was increasing at a surprising
rate, and much of it was being diverted to the English merchants of
the St. Lawrence River, because of the greater facility of the route
to Montreal over that to New York. It cost only a dollar and a half to
send a barrel of flour from Cayuga in western New York to Montreal,
while it took at least two dollars and a half to get the same barrel
from Cayuga only as far as Albany. If this were true of western New
York, it was even more true of the southern shores of the Great Lakes.
Only an artificial canal could overcome the natural obstacles to water
transportation, and this the leading men of New York were urging with
all their power. Since 1792 the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company
had been seeking systematically to improve the existing water route
by building canals around the worst obstructions to navigation, the
various falls and rapids of the Mohawk River. From the success of these
small ventures and the no less convincing evidence of the ability of
the canal to solve the whole problem, came in the minds of Gouverneur
Morris, Jesse Hawley, and others the plan to connect the Atlantic
with the lakes by an artificial waterway. To Governor De Witt Clinton
and his associates belongs the credit of working out this stupendous
undertaking. The story of its progress and achievement is too long a
tale to be summarized here, but must be reserved for another chapter.
In 1825 the Erie Canal of three hundred and sixty-three miles was
completed and opened with appropriate ceremonies.
The turnpike had followed the line of the old Iroquois trail. The
canal had followed it in certain sections but had swerved off and
gone northward along a minor Indian trail which passed over a natural
highway formed by a wide ridge from four to six miles inland from
the shores of Lake Ontario. This was what was called by the pioneers
the Ridge Road from Lewiston to Rochester. One more kind of road was
destined to cross the state, supplanting the lumbering stage-wagon
and the slow canal-boat for the purposes of travel, and even as time
went on for the carrying of freight. The first piece of railroad to be
built in New York State, and one of the oldest in the United States,
was the Mohawk and Hudson. It was chartered in 1826, the year after
the completion of the Erie Canal, and work was begun upon it in 1830.
Seventeen miles of this road, connecting Albany and Schenectady, were
opened in 1831; the remaining part from Schenectady to Utica five
years later. Horses were used when the road was put into operation,
so that it was in reality little more than a tramway, but locomotives
were soon substituted. The third engine built in the United States was
sent from the West Point Foundry Works to this little piece of road.
It was called the De Witt Clinton, and was built in 1831. It weighed
three and a half tons where now two hundred tons is not considered
especially heavy for an engine, and was fed by anthracite coal. Mr.
William H. Brown, who was one of the passengers on the first trip,
was so impressed by the appearance of this “singular-looking affair
and its equally singular-looking appendages,” that he sketched on the
back of a letter a drawing of the engine and the passenger-cars, with
correct likenesses, which he afterwards enlarged to a picture six
feet long which was cut out of black paper in silhouette fashion and
is in possession of the Connecticut Historical Society. Reproductions
of this picture give a good idea of the first locomotive and train of
passenger-cars ever run in the state of New York. The cars are those
which had been used for a year with horses on this same route.
A great crowd assembled on August 9, 1831, to see the train start. The
fortunate guests of the road climbed into their seats, the engineer
took his place on the tender, a tin horn was sounded, and the train
with its five passenger-coaches started off. The outside passengers
had no awning or roof to protect them, and as the sparks and smoke
were blown back they began to fear for their combustible straw hats
and summer garments; but no accident happened. The passengers had
hardly had time to adjust their high beavers and settle themselves
after the shock of starting, which had been with such a jerk that they
had been knocked into each other and against the low roof, when the
train stopped abruptly at the first water station on the road. Here a
halt was made and an experiment tried to avoid these unpleasant jerks.
The links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost
length, and rails, borrowed unceremoniously from a neighboring fence,
were bound to these couplings, one between each pair of cars, to hold
the coaches steady. This arrangement worked well, and in a short time
the train pulled into Schenectady, where thousands of people were lined
up to await its coming.
As in the case of the canal and the turnpike, small sections of the
railroad were built first, and finally joined into one long highway.
Eight short lines were built in New York along the line of the road to
Lake Erie and were put in operation at different times. These lines
were owned in 1842 by eleven companies. The tendency to consolidation
reduced the number to seven by 1850, and then the great era of
concentration brought them all under the New York Central management.
From the leaf-strewn path for the moccasined Indian the road of our
story has become a part of a system of seventy thousand miles of
highway which replace the turnpikes in connecting the towns of New
York State. Its turbulent streams have become the feeders for a great
artificial waterway, and an iron-railed road-bed stretches along its
route, over which flies a limited train at the rate of seventy miles
an hour. The lumbering stage-wagon has given way to the smooth-running
drawing-room car. The rivers and swamps are spanned by fine bridges.
The story of the road has been one of swift change and rapid advance.
CHAPTER XIX
BEFORE AND AFTER THE TURNPIKE
Before the nineteenth century, travellers who visited Niagara
generally went there by way of Montreal and Lake Ontario, returning
to the seacoast by Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylvania) and Pittsburg to
Philadelphia or Baltimore. Occasionally an adventurous tourist struck
out from Albany into the “Back Woods”. Such an one was Lieutenant
John Harriott, an Englishman, who visited whatever parts of the known
world he could reach and recorded his journeyings in a book with the
suggestive title,--“Struggles Through Life, Exemplified in the Various
Travels and Adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America”. In June,
1796, he set out from New York on a “tour to view the back lands”. He
chose the land route to Albany, going the one hundred and sixty miles
in a “coachee” drawn by two horses. Albany he describes as a town of
“upwards of six thousand inhabitants, collected from various parts....
It is the storehouse for the trade to and from Canada and the lakes,
therefore likely to flourish and the inhabitants to grow rich.” The
next morning he set off at half-past five and travelled forty miles by
stage through the fertile country of the German Flats, every now and
then being obliged to alight and walk for a mile or two as the wagon
floundered through a bit of swampy road, or up a steep grade.
Across wet places were bits of log causeways. These were made of trunks
of pine and oak trees laid down crossways layer upon layer, regardless
of uniformity of size or the comfort of those who might travel over
them. This kind of road was called corduroy because it resembled the
French cloth of that name. In drier places, the settlers cut down trees
on the line of the road. Six or eight oxen yoked to a plough would stir
up the soil as deeply as possible, pulling out or displacing stumps or
rocks. The cleared surface would then be smoothed over a little and
left to be worn hard by travel.
The “coachee” or stage-wagon, in which Harriott travelled over this
route, was typical of the region and was not supplanted on this road
twenty years later, although by that time more modern ones had
been put on the line between New York and Boston, and New York and
Philadelphia. The body of the coachee was rather long in proportion
to its breadth. It had four seats, each holding three passengers, who
faced towards the horses. “From the height of the seat,” writes a
traveller of the time, “it is open all round, and the roof is supported
by slender shafts rising up at the corners and sides; in wet weather
a leathern apron is let down at the sides and back, to protect the
inmates.” The wagon had no door; the passengers got in by the front,
stepping over the seats as they went backward. It was said that these
coaches had no outside seats on top, as did those in England, because
the vehicle lurched and jolted so violently that passengers sitting
on them would have been thrown off. The heavier boxes and trunks were
fastened behind, upon the frame of the carriage, but smaller articles
and the mail-bag were huddled under the seats, to the great annoyance
of the passengers, who were frequently forced “to sit with their knees
up to their mouths or with their feet insinuated between two trunks,
where they are most lovingly compressed whenever the vehicle makes a
lurch into a rut.” The body of the wagon was suspended upon two stout
leathern straps passing lengthwise under it and strongly secured before
and behind. When these straps gave way, as they sometimes did, the
driver selected a stout rail from a neighboring fence. The passengers
by united effort thrust in this substitute for a spring and the
conveyance jolted on.
At the end of his first day’s journey, Harriott found that the coach in
which he was going to proceed had been overturned and broken to pieces,
so that he was obliged to stop three days at German Flats Town. As he
continued on his way to Fort Schuyler (Utica) he found himself in a
rich country with many new settlers, but as the road steadily became
worse and worse, although, as he says, he and his fellow-travellers
“alighted safe from broken bones, [they were] most miserably bruised
from head to foot.” At Whitestown, he stayed several days watching with
interest the allotment of land to settlers and visiting the remnant of
the Six Nations, some sixteen hundred in number, all that were left of
that fierce confederacy that so long had held this region against the
white men.
From this point there was no public conveyance, and Lieutenant
Harriott bought a horse and proceeded in company with a young farmer
from Massachusetts who was making his third trip westward to conclude
a purchase of land on the Genesee River and could therefore serve as a
guide. It took the travellers three days to reach Geneva, from which
place they journeyed fifty miles to the river and thence to Niagara
Falls, seventy miles more through the wilderness following the Indian
trails. By making haste, they avoided spending more than one night in
the woods. As darkness fell, they made a bed of boughs and kept two
fires burning “as a guard against wolves and panthers.” Again gaining
the Mohawk, he went down-stream in a bateau, managed by five men, which
he hired for the trip. On his return, Harriott wrote that “except for
a view of the grand falls,” there was nothing to reward him for the
fatigue of the journey.
Fifteen years after Harriott’s visit, John Melish, the map-maker,
passed over the same route. He had come from Cleveland, Ohio, and Erie,
Pennsylvania, to the Niagara River and the town of Buffalo, which had
been laid out about five years previously, but already had five hundred
inhabitants and was rapidly growing. The buildings were mostly of
wood, painted white, but there were a number of good brick houses and a
few of stone. There were four taverns, eight stores, two schools, and a
weekly paper in this town, which Melish prophesied would become a great
settlement. Already roads were being constructed in all directions,
and the Albany turnpike had been brought to within a few miles of the
village. As he travelled along, he was surprised to find the country so
well settled. The houses were so frequent that the traveller was seldom
out of sight of one, and every few miles there was an inn. Lands were
all taken up for a mile or so on either side of the road. He constantly
met parties journeying westward and from inquiry found that a family
of seven could travel in their own wagon at the rate of twenty miles
a day, making the journey of six hundred miles from Connecticut to
Cleveland at an expense of seventy dollars. The emigrants would carry
their own provisions but would stop at the inns to feed their horses
and eat their food. In the course of one day’s journey, he met more
than twenty families thus proceeding westward.
Stage fares would have made the trip much more expensive. By law these
fares could not exceed seven cents a mile, and no fees to drivers
were expected. Stage travel was at this time made inconvenient by the
number of companies operating only on short sections of the road. Each
proprietor took up payment for his own portion of the way,--half a
dollar here, seventy-five cents there,--and turned the traveller out of
his vehicle when he came to the end of his stretch to wait with what
patience he could summon till the next stage appeared.
As Melish neared Utica, the houses along the road were so thick that
it was for a considerable way like a continuous village. Yet here as
everywhere on the route, back of the neat white houses with their green
blinds and roomy verandas, and the fertile, cultivated plots of ground
around them, the land would be covered with stumps from one to three
feet high, and the smoke of the clearing fires could often be seen in
the distance. The expense of the trip from Buffalo to Utica had been
ten dollars and ninety-one cents.
Melish had made his journey on horseback, although he met many coaches
on the way. In 1819 an Englishwoman describes a trip which she made
from Albany to Utica in one of the fifteen coaches that made the
trip daily. On her way she met the man who eighteen years previously
had carried in his coat pocket the weekly mail between the two
towns. She found the journey rough, but her companions good-humored,
intelligent, and accommodating. She recommended the stage-coach for
the traveller who wished “to see people as well as things,--to hear
intelligent remarks upon the country and its inhabitants, and to
understand the rapid changes that each year brings forth, and if he be
of an easy temper, not incommoded with trifles, not caring to take,
nor understanding to give, offence, liking the interchange of little
civilities with strangers, and pleased to make an acquaintance, though
it should be but one of an hour, with a kind-hearted fellow-creature,
and if too he can bear a few jolts,--_not_ a few,--and can suffer to
be driven sometimes too quickly over a rough road, and sometimes too
slowly over a smooth one,--then let him, by all means, fill a corner in
the post-coach or stage-wagon.... But if he be of an unsociable humour,
easily put out of his way, or as the phrase is, _a very particular
gentleman_--then he will hire or purchase his own dearborn or light
wagon and travel _solus cum solo_ with his own horse.”
This was turnpike travel in the early nineteenth century, and this was
the route over which thousands of families made their way to the lakes.
For years the tide of emigration went on until the story of western New
York was repeated in every part of the region, and the wilderness of
twenty and thirty years before became the seat of thriving towns and
cities.
CHAPTER XX
THE ERIE CANAL
Since the beginning of the century there had been more or less talk
of a canal to connect the Hudson with Lake Erie, and in 1816 the
legislature of New York voted to undertake the building of the Erie
Canal. The adoption of this plan and its success were due mainly to
De Witt Clinton, who set forth in a carefully reasoned memorial the
advantages of the proposed waterway. For years thousands of men had
been employed in the work, and many difficulties had been met and
solved. Commissioners had been appointed to determine the route which
the canal should follow and to oversee its construction. They conducted
operations in three sections, intrusting the job of digging and filling
to contractors, no contract covering any large amount of territory.
The eastern section extended along the line of the Iroquois trail up
the Mohawk Valley from Albany to Rome. On this part of the route swift
streams had to be crossed, and falls and rapids had to be passed. Where
the canal crossed creeks and streams, guard locks were built to keep
the water from rushing into the canal and overflowing it. At Little
Falls there was such a narrow space between the mountains that rocks
had to be blasted to make a bed for the canal, and a wall twenty or
thirty feet high, rising from the channel of the Mohawk River, built
to support it. Other falls on this section required aqueducts and
elaborate series of locks.
The middle section followed the line of trail and turnpike as far as
Syracuse, and then went northwards to Clyde and Montezuma. It had the
greater part of the “Long Level,” a sixty-nine-mile stretch from a
point east of Utica to Syracuse, without any locks. At Montezuma, near
the beginning of the third section, the builders came to the edge of
the Cayuga marshes, and here they erected an embankment, nearly two
miles long and so high that boats were often seventy-two feet above the
level of the swamps. At Rochester a great aqueduct was built at the
Genesee River. Between Rochester and Buffalo the canal ran for a long
distance inside the great ridge which rises south of Lake Ontario,
but at Lockport it crossed the mountains. Here was performed one of
the most difficult engineering feats of the whole construction. An
excavation was made through the three-mile ridge at an average depth of
twenty feet, and five great locks were built, each twelve feet high, so
that vessels were elevated and dropped sixty feet.
The first surveyors drove along the route of the canal five lines of
stakes. The two outer rows were sixty feet apart, indicating the space
to be cleared. Between these were two other rows forty feet apart,
which indicated the exact width of the canal, and in the middle a
single line of stakes marked the centre of the waterway. It was eight
years and four months since the surveyors had driven these stakes, amid
the mocking laughter of the inhabitants, who thought these dreamers
crazy to plant their bits of wood in swamps and forests, on rocky
ledges and in watercourses. In spite of swamp fever, which had at one
time laid low a thousand men, and in spite of rough tools and almost
insuperable obstacles, the three hundred and sixty-three miles were
at length completed. By eighty-three locks and eighteen aqueducts,
covering a descent of 568 feet from Lake Erie to the Hudson,
navigation was made open. Sections of the canal had been in use since
1819, and now, on October 26, 1825, Governor Clinton had started on the
first trip along the entire length of the waterway which had long been
familiarly known as “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”
The city of Buffalo was particularly rejoiced over this occasion
because the western terminus of the canal had long been in doubt and
had only very recently been settled in favor of that town over her
rival, the present suburb of Black Rock. Buffalo was located on the
shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Niagara River. Black Rock was
three miles down the river, and had a good open harbor, in which its
citizens had recently built a two-mile pier to protect vessels from the
waves of the lake and river. Buffalo Creek had a troublesome sand-bar
which injured its harbor, and the Black Rock settlers had built their
pier in the hope of stopping the canal at their town instead of having
it run on to Buffalo. When the canal commissioners came to decide on
the terminus, they were of the opinion that the current of the river
was too swift at Black Rock, and that the danger from ice and sunken
rocks was too great. They would bring the canal to Buffalo if that
harbor could be improved. When the public-spirited men of that place
heard that, they agreed together that if the canal was brought to
their town, they would remove the sand-bar. They clubbed together and
on their own personal notes borrowed from the state twelve thousand
dollars, a large sum in those days, with which they removed the
sand-bar and made a safe harbor.
A new canal-boat, the _Seneca Chief_, had been built of Lake Erie
cedar for the opening trip, and lay moored in the harbor at Buffalo.
On her deck were two paintings, one of the scene which was soon to be
enacted, Buffalo creek and harbor with the canal-boat moving away along
the canal, and the other representing Governor Clinton as Hercules,
dressed in Roman costume, and resting from his labors. At nine o’clock
in the morning a grand procession formed in front of the court-house
and marched to the head of the canal. Governor Clinton and his staff,
and a group of prominent New Yorkers who had been closely connected
with the furtherance of the project, went on board the _Seneca Chief_
and an address was given. Upon the boat had been placed two new kegs
containing Lake Erie water, which was to be mingled at New York with
that of the ocean. The _Seneca Chief_ was to be followed by four other
canal-boats, and a fifth craft, which was called _Noah’s Ark_. The last
contained, under the title “Products of the West,” a bear, two eagles,
two fawns, several fish, and two Indian boys,--the counterparts of the
“beasts, birds, and creeping things” of the Bible story.
As four magnificent gray horses pulled at the tow-rope of the _Seneca
Chief_ and the vessel began to move, a signal-gun was discharged, and
all along the route the cannon that had been stationed took up the
sound and passed it on till the news of the opening was carried to New
York in one hour and thirty minutes. New York responded, sending the
message back to Buffalo in the same time.
[Illustration: Through the Locks at Lockport]
At almost every town and village along the route the _Seneca Chief_ was
met with exercises, dinners, triumphal arches, and illuminations. So
steadily was the party welcomed and fêted that it took them six days
to make the journey to Albany. Two or three of the celebrations are of
especial interest. At Lockport the boat was greeted by a salute of
guns which had been captured by Perry at the battle of Lake Erie, being
discharged by a gunner who was said to have fought under Napoleon. At
Rochester a dramatic ceremony had been arranged. Rain was falling when
the guests arrived, but this did not dampen the inhabitants’ zeal. They
assembled in large numbers along the banks of the canal, headed by
eight companies of uniformed soldiers. As the boat approached the great
nine-arch stone aqueduct over the Genesee River, the _Young Lion of the
West_, stationed there “to protect the entrance,” pushed out from the
shore and a voice hailed the _Seneca Chief_.
“Who comes there?” cried the _Young Lion’s_ spokesman.
“Your brothers from the West, on the waters of the Great Lakes.”
“By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural
course?”
“By the channel of the Grand Erie Canal.”
“By whose authority, and by whom, was a work of such magnitude
accomplished?”
“By the authority and by the enterprise of patriotic people of the
state of New York.”
At this answer the _Young Lion_ gave way, guns were fired, and amid
the cheers of the great crowd the flotilla of boats, with Governor
Clinton, Lieutenant-Governor Talmadge, and other distinguished men on
deck, floated into the spacious basin at the end of the aqueduct. The
customary procession and address of welcome were followed by a grand
ball and illumination, and the flotilla, increased by the _Young Lion
of the West_ with several Rochester gentlemen on board, proceeded.
At Rome, on the 30th of October, the first sign of unfriendliness was
encountered. The inhabitants of that place were dissatisfied because
the canal did not follow the line of the old waterway laid out by the
Western Inland Locks Navigation Company, upon which the village of Rome
had been built. On the day when the group of boats left Buffalo, the
citizens of Rome had held a solemn mourning assembly, and had marched
with muffled drums from the old canal to the new, bearing with them a
barrel of water from the old which they emptied into the new. Even this
mournful occasion had been closed with an appropriate celebration and
feast at the hotel, but no warm welcome greeted the travellers on the
thirtieth. At Schenectady rain and a spirit of marked opposition met
them because it was believed that the Erie Canal would be the ruin of
the town. Hitherto it had been the terminus of the Mohawk River route
and of the western stage and wagon lines. The opening of a direct
water route to Albany would be fatal to all these interests. Only
the students of Union College broke through the general disapproval,
and did the honors of the town in the pouring rain. That afternoon,
November 2, the boats entered the last lock at Albany, and were greeted
by a welcoming salute of twenty-four cannon, followed by appropriate
ceremonies.
From Albany the canal-boats were towed down the Hudson by steamer to
New York, where great celebrations had been prepared. “Never before,”
writes an enthusiastic onlooker, “was there such a fleet collected
and so superbly decorated; and it is very possible that a display so
grand, so beautiful, and we may even add, sublime, will never again be
witnessed.”
Governor Clinton poured the Lake Erie water into the ocean, another
gentleman poured in water from several other places, and the waters of
the Atlantic and the Great Lakes were pronounced “wedded,” joined in
indissoluble union. A procession a mile and a half long, the greatest
ever formed in America at that date, marched through the streets, a
grand exhibition of fire-works was held, and a ball was given in a room
made by the joining of an amphitheatre and a circus building, forming
the largest ball-room ever used in America. All about the hall the
great names of the canal constructors were blazoned, and in the ladies’
banquet room a boat made of maple sugar, which had been presented
to Governor Clinton at Utica, floated in a vessel filled with Lake
Erie water. At the end of the celebration the committee from the West
departed for home, bearing a keg of Atlantic water, ornamented with
the arms of the city of New York and the following words in letters
of gold: “Neptune’s return to Pan. New York, 4th Nov. 1825. Water of
the Atlantic.” When the committee reached Buffalo with this gift, they
held the closing scene of the great pageant, mingling the waters of the
Atlantic with those of Lake Erie.
If words, festivities, symbolic ceremonies, and a waterway of commerce
could do it, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were united. The
importance of the outcome justified the hopes of the canal-promoters.
The canal cost nearly eleven million dollars; but the last debts
were discharged in 1836. Commerce increased greatly and was immensely
benefited, and within twelve years plans were on foot for enlarging the
canal, which were soon carried out.
Travellers soon found great pleasure in making their western journeys
by canal-boat, and the canal became a thoroughfare of travel as well
as of trade. That bright and interesting raconteur, Mrs. Anne Royall,
went west by this route in 1827–1828, and left a vivid account of
the boats and their method of locomotion. The canal she describes as
having a neat railing outside the tow-path, painted white and about
four feet high. Within this railing the route was fringed on both sides
with beautiful crimson Canadian thistles, which flourished in the
sandy gravel. Two kinds of boats passed along this waterway,--packet
boats and freight boats. The packet boats, accommodating about thirty
passengers, were fitted up with dining-rooms, separate quarters for
ladies and gentlemen, and rooms lined with berths, as was the custom in
all steamboats of that day. The fare, including board, was four cents
a mile; without board, three cents. The prices were thirty-seven and
a half cents for dinner, twenty-five for breakfast, and twelve and a
half for lodging. Mrs. Royall made her first journey from Schenectady
to Utica, a distance of eighty miles, passing through twenty-six locks,
in twenty-four hours. The boat was drawn by three stout horses, who
proceeded at a brisk trot and were relieved every ten miles by fresh
horses and a new driver. Freight boats were drawn by two horses or even
only one, and took passengers at the same rate as freight, a cent and a
half a mile.
Whenever her boat met another, and this was very often, Mrs. Royall
sat in dread of a collision, or at least a tangling of the ropes,
but each time they slipped past each other as if by magic. After
some watching she saw that the boats going west had the right of way
and proceeded as usual, while the boatman of the vessel going east
checked his horses till the rope fell for an instant very loose in
the water, and the other boat and team could slip over it. The canal
was frequently crossed by bridges, which made sitting on the upper
deck dangerous; but when they approached one of these obstructions the
helmsman called out in a loud voice, “Low bridge!” and the passengers
promptly “ducked” their heads. When the tow-path crossed the bridge
instead of going under it, the driver swung his team over so fast that
the movement of the boat was barely slackened. These boats carried the
mails, were widely advertised for traffic and travel, and were met at
every important point by stages connecting with the neighboring towns
and villages. This method of travelling was recommended by all as far
preferable to the jolting, overcrowded stage-coach.
Until 1858 the Erie Canal was the all-important transportation
route between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic. Even the coming
of the railroad did not take away its trade, and as late as 1862
the ton-mileage of canal traffic was more than double the combined
ton-mileage of the New York Central and the Erie railroads. Twenty
years later canal tolls were abolished and the canal became a free
waterway, maintained and operated by the state. Since the 1862
enlargement there has been no permanent improvement of any importance
of the canal until the present day. With the increase of railroad
traffic and the hampering effect of the conditions of forty years
ago,--even the same style of boats, and horse towage,--the canal has
not been able to keep pace with the railroad, and its traffic has
gradually fallen off, until it is to-day only two-thirds that of 1868
and less than one-tenth the freight tonnage on either the New York
Central or Erie roads.
A committee appointed in 1899 investigated the condition of the canal
and advised enlargement of its bed. Their recommendations were approved
by popular vote in 1903, and the enlargement is now in progress. The
new canal is to be navigable by steam-towed barges drawing ten feet of
water and having a carrying capacity of at least a thousand tons, which
is four times that of the largest boat in use on the existing canal.
The route is also to be considerably changed. River and lake channels
are to be utilized in one-half the new part of the route, carrying the
canal northward along the line of the Seneca River and Oneida Lake to
the Mohawk, and away from Syracuse and Rochester. It is interesting
to note that in making use of river and water beds the canal returns
more nearly to the route of the old Indian trail. Improved methods of
engineering will do away with several locks. At Waterford on the Hudson
five locks will take the place of the sixteen now necessary at Cohoes;
at Lockport two locks are to be substituted for five. The minimum depth
of the channel is to be twelve feet, and the locks are to be at least
three hundred and twenty-eight feet long. With all these changes it is
estimated that the trip from Buffalo to New York will be cut down from
ten days to five, and that a large amount of traffic will turn to the
canal as the cheapest and most satisfactory method of transportation.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GREAT LAKES IN 1840
The decade from 1830 to 1840 witnessed a rush of people to the country
of the Great Lakes. As pioneers had poured into New York State twenty
years before and changed the wilderness into a settled country, so
they came now by hundreds and thousands into Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,
Indiana, and Wisconsin, clearing away the forests and building
villages, towns, and cities with amazing rapidity. The common phrase
of gazetteers of that day about cities like Toledo, Michigan City,
Chicago, and Milwaukee is that in 1830–1834 this place was “dense
forest,” or “contained a solitary family,” or “was scarcely known,” but
now in 1840 it has from two to three or four thousand inhabitants, as
the case may be; and the tale might be repeated in a lesser way for all
the villages and towns of the region.
In a few years Buffalo and Cleveland changed from “remote settlements”
to the well-built, luxurious eastern gateways through which rushed
a swift and ever-increasing flood of emigrants. Mere words or even
figures can hardly convey what this movement of population meant to the
country. It was said that in 1838 five thousand people left Buffalo in
one day to go up the lakes, and the larger part of them went to stay.
In 1811 Michigan had only nine principal settlements, with a total
population of under five thousand, four-fifths of whom were French;
in 1837, when she was admitted as a state into the Union, she had a
population of over 175,000, distributed over thirty-one counties,
nearly two-thirds of whom were from New England and western New York.
Together the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin had come in 1837 to have nearly three million inhabitants.
Another picture of the rapid growth of the country is given in the
successive additions to a series of “Travellers’ Guides,” published
between 1825 and 1840 by Gideon Davison. He wrote for tourists, not
emigrants, and entitled each book “The Fashionable Tour in 1825” or
whatever the year might be. In the first edition, published in 1825,
he included in the western part of his journey only an excursion from
Albany to Niagara, and thence to Montreal and Quebec. Five years later,
in the fourth edition, a two-page description of the western lakes was
inserted, with a mention of Mackinac and Green Bay, military posts
which steamboats from Buffalo occasionally visited during the summer. A
footnote announced that steamboats left Buffalo for Detroit every other
day, stopping at Erie, Grand River, Cleveland, and Sandusky (cabin fare
$15), and a line of boats ran daily to Erie. All description of the
lakes is, however, as “the sources of the Niagara, a river inferior in
splendor to none, perhaps, in the world,” and the account is inserted
to give a more adequate idea of the vast amount of water united in this
“stupendous river.” In 1834 the notice of these steamboats which ran
every other day to Detroit in forty hours is set in contrast with the
conditions of 1811, when a passage from Buffalo to Detroit required
from five to seven days, and the traveller was liable to wait ten days
for a schooner and a fair wind. In the seventh and eighth editions,
of 1837 and 1840, even fashion had come to recognize the lakes. A
full western trip on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan is outlined, and
steamers are reported to leave Buffalo for Detroit daily in 1837 and
twice a day in 1840. Had the editions been continued for fifteen years,
a trip to Lake Superior would have been included; indeed, it began to
be taken by 1845 by some travellers.
Davison’s guide-books were the most conservative of the many
“Companions,” “Directories,” and “Gazetteers with Immigrant Guides”
published at that time. Although Davison would not send his tourist
so far, there was in all these years a rush of western travel on
the lakes. A guide-book of 1825, Davison’s first year, contains an
advertisement of the steamboat _Superior_, which ran between Buffalo
and Detroit from April to November, occupying four days each way
and landing passengers at Cleveland and the other main settlements
“unless prevented by stress of weather.” This steamboat had, besides
its principal cabin, a forward room fitted up especially for families
moving westward, where nothing but ship room and access to the kitchen
was supplied, and the fare was only seven dollars and a half, one-half
the regular cabin fare.
A landowner from Boston published in 1838 a little book, “Illinois
and the West,” which aimed to give to others contemplating land
purchases an account of those of his experiences as a western
traveller which might be of value to them. He explained the simple
method by which the government divided the new territories and states,
and sold lots to newcomers. The whole country was surveyed by five
principal meridian lines running due north and south, and intersected
by lines running east and west. Parallel in both directions to these
main lines ran lines six miles apart which divided the country into
so-called townships exactly six miles square. These townships were
mere geographical divisions and had nothing to do with the political
and social system of villages and towns. Indeed, an actual town might
happen to be in two or even three of these paper townships. At the
government land offices, of which there were ten in Illinois, were
maps on which these six-mile squares were divided in their turn into
sections a mile square, and numbered with the section as a unit. The
section was not, however, the unit of purchase, but might be cut
according to the wish of the buyer and the character of the land into
fourths, eighths, sixteenths, and even “fractions” and “excesses and
deficiencies” as proved necessary. The latter divisions were only used
when the regular system had to be interrupted by old and irregular
claims, or streams, or parts of established townships. From the agents
the emigrant could buy a sixteenth of a section, or forty acres, for
fifty dollars. As the western fever sent the first settlers farther
west, partially cultivated farms came into the market, and by 1835 the
prices of farms ranged from two to ten dollars an acre, according to
the amount of improvement of the property, and by paying the higher
prices a newcomer could avoid the first clearing of the land and the
erection of a log cabin or frame-house.
Such an opening up of country as came in this decade between 1830 and
1840 attracted many travellers to the lake region. By picturing from
their various accounts a “Grand Tour” of the lakes as it was taken
by many a person between 1837 and 1843, we can get the best idea of
the various settlements. The traveller usually came up the Erie Canal
and started from Buffalo, taking from there one of the well-appointed
steamers of from four hundred to seven hundred tons which left in
the morning and evening for Detroit. This trip would always be taken
in the summer, for during the four or five months when the lake was
closed Detroit could only be reached by a stage journey of three
hundred and seventy miles along the shore of Lake Erie. The towns of
Erie, Cleveland, and Sandusky were the main stops between Buffalo and
Detroit, but between them was a succession of villages which were just
beginning to give signs of their future importance as the terminus of
some railroad or canal. The steamer sailed along the southern edge of
the lake, keeping always in sight of land, and gave the passengers
a good view of Dunkirk, a little village which was waiting for the
completion of the New York and Erie Railroad, and of the towns of
Portland and Erie. This last-named had always been the point at which
to turn southward into Pennsylvania, and was now made all the more
important by the termination there of the Pennsylvania and Erie Canal,
which connected Lake Erie with Pittsburg. Between Erie and Cleveland,
Conneaut, Ashtabula, and Grand River were the principal settlements.
Cleveland had been incorporated as a city in 1836, and was rightly
considered one of the most attractive cities of the West. Standing on
a plain eighty feet above the surface of the lake, from the steamer’s
deck it made a beautiful picture. Above the roofs of the well-built
brick blocks and the residences in their carefully laid-out rows,
towered the white dome of the court-house, four church spires, and the
turrets of its hotels. The hotels of the city were particularly praised
by travellers. On the roofs of the two principal ones, the “American”
and the “Franklin,” were towers in which sentinels stood on watch day
and night, keeping a lookout for vessels and notifying those below
of their approach in time to send runners to the wharf to meet the
guests. The remarkable growth of the town in the last few years was
particularly attributed to its being the terminus of the Ohio and Erie
Canal, making it one of the principal routes of trade and travel from
the Ohio. Along this canal a side excursion to Cincinnati and Columbus
was often made.
From Cleveland the boat proceeded with only two stops, at Black River
and Huron, to Sandusky Bay, and steamed past the lighthouse and up the
carefully staked-out channel to the town of Sandusky, which was at
the bottom of the seven-mile inlet. This town had the fresh, bright
appearance of all the recently built settlements, with an added air
of substantiality which it owed to the abundance near by of good
building material, which had led the inhabitants to erect fine stone
residences. After a brief stop the steamer ran out of the bay and
northward across the lake to the mouth of the Detroit River, passing on
the way the islands near which Commodore Perry won his victory. At the
entrance of the strait on the Canada side was the town of Amherstburgh,
formerly known as Malden, and the scene of much fighting in the War of
1812. All the twenty miles of shore from here to Detroit were lined
with pretty villas and gardens, many of them of the old French style.
To the traveller of 1840 as to the tourist of to-day, Detroit made from
the water a most pleasing picture. For a mile along the bank of the
river and half a mile back from the water stretched regular avenues
with large white houses and green patches of gardens interspersed,
and in the centre of the city were the court-house with its dome
and turrets, the churches with their tall spires, and the blocks of
solid brick business buildings. The low-lying French buildings had
disappeared, and with them the French atmosphere of twenty years
before. Detroit had become in the last ten years a busy port and
thoroughfare for the emigrants who yearly composed one-half or even
two-thirds of the city population. Even in 1830 they were arriving
by the thousands,--ten, even fifteen thousand in a single season. In
May of that year the _Free Press_ of the city announced that besides
those arriving by land or by sailing vessels, over two thousand people
had come in that one week on the seven steamboats. In 1836 a diligent
citizen kept watch of those who came and went, and computed that, in
the twelve hours between daylight and dark, a wagon left the city for
the interior every five minutes.
The pioneers who had started out from Detroit in 1832–1834 to found
Chicago and the other towns beyond, had to go in primitive fashion by
mail-coach, by flatboats with Indian guides, by schooner, or whatever
conveyance they could get for any part of the way. For the traveller
of 1840 there were three regular and established routes by any one of
which he would be reasonably comfortable. One was by steamer through
the lakes, but this he more commonly took on his return trip. A second
was by railroad to Ypsilanti, thirty-three miles away, from which a
regular line of stages ran to St. Joseph on Lake Michigan, one hundred
and seventy miles across the state, and thence by steamer the remaining
ninety-two miles to Chicago. The stages travelled along the government
road (about twenty miles north of the present boundary of the state)
and found the whole way lined with tiny hamlets and cleared farms in
the midst of dense forests. The most common route lay just south of
this with Toledo as a starting-point. The traveller would take the
steamer down the Detroit River and along the western end of the lake
and go up the Maumee River nine miles to Toledo, a town of three or
four thousand people, destined, said the guide-book, to be a place of
much importance. As by the other route, he could go thirty-three miles
by railroad, this time to Adrian, which was as far as the road had been
built, and thence across the state through the newly occupied country
to Michigan City, Indiana, which was then the “commercial depot” for
the entire northern part of that state. This town was soon to be
benefited by a branch from Fort Wayne of the Wabash and Erie Canal,
which was then in progress and was to find its outlet at Toledo. This
route left only a trip of fifty-five miles by water to Chicago.
At Chicago the visitor stopped to wonder, as men have stopped to
wonder ever since. The splendid location of the town as a commercial
thoroughfare between the lakes and the Mississippi had made it an
easy victim to the land-boom of 1834 and 1835, and Mr. Buckingham,
visiting there in 1840, was told by persons who had been present at
the time that building lots on streets only marked out on paper had
been sold over and over again in a day, with an advance of price each
time until the evening purchaser was likely, at the very least, to
pay ten times as much as the morning buyer of the same lot. Chicago
had, however, been able to survive the succeeding panic in 1837,
which swamped for the time being several smaller towns. It was now a
prosperous trading centre of six thousand people. The town was planned
with the symmetry of all these newly built cities, and the streets
were of good width with rows of trees separating the plank sidewalks
from the main road. None of the streets were as yet paved; and indeed
many of them had still the green turf of the prairie grass in the
centre. So scarce was stone and so high was labor that a small piece of
flagstone pavement around the Lake House Hotel had cost nine hundred
dollars,--an extravagance which no one else had yet committed. On the
south side of the river were the stores, many of them built of brick,
and the main street was a busy trading mart. There were in the city
six churches, four hotels, banks, and insurance offices, and along the
water front stretched a growing line of warehouses. The fashionable
residential district was on the north side of the river, where were
avenues of large villas surrounded by gardens. Between the two parts
ran a ferry-boat, drawn across the river by a rope, and passing and
repassing every five minutes. This was maintained by subscription among
the inhabitants, and no fee was therefore charged for crossing.
[Illustration: Chicago in 1831. Chicago as seen from the water.]
Margaret Fuller spent the summer of 1843 on the lakes, and left
a charming account of her impressions. Chicago she found rather
commercial, “with no provision for the student or the idler,” but she
recognized its commanding position. “There can be no two places in the
world more completely thoroughfares,” she says, “than this place and
Buffalo.” They were to her two correspondent valves that opened and
shut all the time, as the life blood rushed from east to west and back
again. Yet, even in this business place, she saw for the first time in
her drives along the lake shore the beautiful prairie flowers of
the West. To her the most picturesque sight in all Chicago were the
lines of Hoosier wagons, in which the rough farmers who had driven
in from the country camped on the edge of the city, living on their
own supplies of provisions and seeming as they walked about the town
like foreign peasantry put down among the “active, inventive business
people” of Chicago. With the characteristically sharp contrasts of this
wonderful new land, the other sight which interested her especially was
the arrival of the great lake steamers, magnificent floating palaces
of six and eight hundred tons, which “panted in from their rapid and
marvellous journey” of a thousand miles from Buffalo. When she went
out to watch the lights of these boats as they came in at night she
heard as she walked along on one side the Hoosier dialect, on another,
cultivated French, and the very next moment the sounds of German,
Dutch, and Irish. Then as now Chicago was a cosmopolitan city.
Miss Fuller found the boats so comfortable that her trip to Milwaukee
was a “pleasure party.” The beautiful situation of this town on a
bluff eighty feet above Lake Michigan made a great impression on
all visitors. If the other towns had grown up recently and rapidly,
Milwaukee could be seen in the very process. With a population of only
two thousand people, who were erecting buildings as quickly as they
could on newly laid-out broad avenues, it had received in one week
from Buffalo three thousand emigrants on their way to the interior,
not to mention the numbers which came weekly from Chicago and Ohio.
Here, as at Chicago, Miss Fuller was delighted at the gathering of
pleasant people drawn from all over the world. The great interest of
the town was in its new arrivals. Boats came and went every day, and
crowds swarmed down to the pier to meet them. The poorer emigrants who
landed were taken to rude “shantees” in a particular part of the town,
and then walked off the next morning into the country, “the mothers
carrying the babies, and the fathers leading the little children.” She
stayed only a fortnight at Milwaukee, but she declares that had she
been rich in money she might in that time have built a house or set
herself up in business, so swiftly did matters move there.
Leaving Milwaukee Miss Fuller went by steamer, as did all lake
travellers, to Mackinac, crossing Lake Michigan and passing near the
beautiful western shores of the state of that name. All steamers
stopped at Manitoulin Island for wood. They could not carry the very
large amount of this fuel needed for their thousand-mile trips without
so lumbering the decks as to lose the necessary space for passengers
and cargo. So they must stop at this way-place and pay to the twenty
wood-cutters who lived there an exorbitant price for wood enough to
carry them the remaining one hundred miles to Mackinac. As the engines
consumed a cord and a half an hour, the decks, immediately after the
taking on of a new supply, were heavily loaded down, so that even
the windows of the staterooms were darkened until the piles began to
diminish.
Mackinac, or Mackinaw, was out of the path of emigration and had
scarcely changed in the last thirty years. Always a centre for Indian
traders and American Fur Company buyers, it was doubly picturesque
when Margaret Fuller reached there in August, 1843, for over two
thousand Indians had just come in from distant villages and made their
camps, waiting for trade and for the annual payments made them by the
government. Of the beauty of the scenery and of the interest of these
constantly arriving Indian parties Miss Fuller could not say enough.
She stayed there nearly a fortnight, and made one day an excursion
by steamer up to Sault Ste. Marie, where two Indians took her in a
canoe through the rapids. To all travellers the days on the Strait of
Mackinac were among the most pleasant of the trip, but when the steamer
came from Chicago they reluctantly bade farewell to its beauties and
sailed down the transparent waters of Lake Huron to the strait which
led into Lake St. Clair and across that lake to Detroit, and thence
back along Lake Erie, as they had come, to Buffalo.
In taking the “Grand Tour” with one of these travellers, we have gained
a picture of the beginnings of the western lake states and of the rapid
progress of the eastern ones in a time not remote and distant, but
scarcely seventy years ago. The accomplishment of so much in so short a
time well deserved the adjectives and encomiums that were bestowed upon
it by admiring travellers, who little dreamed of the vast changes that
were to take place in the century to come.
CHAPTER XXII
THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD TO LAKE ERIE
Lake Erie became in the nineteenth century the portal of the Great
Lakes. To her shores came from the east an army of immigrants pouring
into the states beyond, and from these regions, as they became
populated, came back an immense volume of produce to be carried to the
cities of the east and the south. These conditions led the citizens
of the lake shore promptly to adopt any new means of transportation.
In its day they had welcomed the turnpike and built many roads into
the interior. During the era of canal-building the people of New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana had spent hundreds of thousands of
dollars on artificial waterways. In 1840 five canals over a thousand
miles in length, not including their many branches, opened into Lake
Erie. The Welland Canal united it with Lake Ontario, the Erie with the
Hudson, while the Ohio and Erie connected Cleveland with Columbus and
the Ohio and also with the Pennsylvania Canal and thus with Pittsburg;
and from Toledo and the Maumee River the Miami Canal went south to
Cincinnati, and the Wabash and Erie west to Lafayette, Indiana. This
remarkable group of canals had been built in twenty years. No less
wonderful was the building of railroad lines in the next two decades;
and to us who are accustomed to limited trains and “flyers” the story
of the first trains is one of curious interest.
[Illustration: Map: “By Canal and Railroad to Lake Erie” showing
connecting canal and railroad paths from Lake Michigan in the west to
Lake Ontario and New York in the east]
Ohio and Michigan were progressive in the matter of building railroads.
Michigan gave a charter to the Michigan Central in 1830, and in 1832,
when there were only two hundred and twenty-nine miles of railroad in
operation in the United States, the Ohio legislature granted a charter
for the construction of a road from Sandusky to Dayton, a distance
of over one hundred and fifty miles. These early dates are rather an
exhibition of good intentions and foresight than a measure of actual
achievement, for neither road was begun until 1837 and then each was
carried but a few miles. All railroad-building about the lakes until
nearly the middle of the century was a matter of crude and small
beginnings, but it is these very beginnings which make us realize the
transformations that have taken place within less than eighty years.
The first railroad to be built in Ohio was the Kalamazoo and Erie
from Toledo, Ohio, to Adrian, Michigan. This was later bought up by
the Michigan Southern road and was the first link in the route to
Chicago, taken, as will be remembered, by our traveller of 1840. It was
thirty-three miles long and was a typical early railroad. Seven-eighths
of it was built in unbroken forest, and one-third through a densely
timbered swamp where malaria and mosquitoes made the lives of the
workmen miserable. The track was built of oak stringers, or long wooden
beams, upon which were fastened strips of iron five-eighths of an
inch thick and two and a half inches wide. These rails were supported
by wooden cross-ties placed about four feet apart and resting securely
on a heavy foundation of broken stone. The cars were built after the
fashion of the body of a stage-coach, or rather of three stage-coaches
put together, and were set on a four-wheeled truck instead of directly
on wheels, to make it possible for them to swing round on curves. The
conductor walked along an outside footboard to collect fares. These
cars opened at either end and seated about twenty-four persons, who
faced to the front. On the Toledo road a horse track was laid between
the rails, and the road was used for one year with horse power. In 1837
a locomotive was purchased and steam power was substituted.
For ten years American builders had been experimenting with types of
locomotives and had adopted a pattern which has persisted to this day
in its principles, although it has been much changed in details and
size. The fore part of the engine was placed on a four-wheeled truck
and fastened to it with a bolt, which allowed the truck to swing some
distance and thus to round sharp curves safely. The back part rested
on four connected driving wheels. An engine of this type had been
built in 1836 in Philadelphia, and was speedily adopted elsewhere. It
weighed about ten tons when water and coal tanks were loaded, and would
seem to us to-day a crude and small affair, but it was better suited
to wooden rails than a heavier engine would have been. Passengers paid
four and a half cents a mile to be carried on this Toledo railroad at a
speed of less than ten miles an hour.
The leisureliness and timidity of the first trains would seem to us
amazing, did we not remember how tiny the engine was, how unstable
the road-bed, and how loosely the cars were coupled together by bolt
and pin. Twenty years after this first road was built one of the
printed instructions to engineers was to be perfectly sure before
they pulled out of the station that they had their entire train with
them and had dropped no cars in starting. At first it was the custom
for the engineer to stop the train to collect fares, or for any other
urgent business connected with the road. It was many years before
the companies dared run night trains. The Michigan Central, which
was opened in 1837, found in the autumn of 1841 that its depots were
so loaded with barrels of flour and cords of wood that they would
not be able to get it all to Detroit before the close of navigation
on the lakes. The directors conferred together and hired teams to
transport the goods from stations near Detroit to that place. For the
long distances they had no alternative but to put one of their four
locomotives on for night service, but they considered it unsafe and
hoped that such extreme measures would not be necessary in the future.
When this road had been opened, four years before, an adventurous young
man who owned a sorrel pony announced that he was going to race the
train for the last mile before it reached Dearborn. The crowds who had
been assembled to see the first train come in were much excited over
the competition, and, needless to say, the pony won.
After the completion of these and other short roads there was a lull
in railroad-building, due to the hard times in the western country
which succeeded the panic of 1837. In 1845 and 1846 the legislatures
began once more to plan internal improvements, and a great era of
railroad-building began which continued until the opening of the Civil
War. In the history of Lake Erie 1851 stands out as the year when
three of the trunk lines were completed and their opening fittingly
celebrated. In that year the first train came into Cleveland, and with
the thought of the hundreds of trains that enter its stations daily,
let us put ourselves back into the city of 1851 and watch the first
train arrive.
The state legislature had voted to loan to the credit of the
city $200,000 for the construction of the Cleveland, Columbus,
and Cincinnati Railroad. In 1851 the road-bed of two hundred and
sixty-three miles was completed, and on the morning of February 21
was formally opened by the passage over the road of a party of four
hundred and twenty-eight persons, who took the train from Columbus
and Cincinnati to Cleveland, the “city of the Lake Shore.” The party
was made up of members of the legislature, officers of the state, the
councils of both cities, and many citizens. The road over which these
people travelled was a very different one from the Toledo road of
fourteen years before, and from the number of people accommodated it
is evident that the passenger coaches were very different, also. Iron
rails had taken the place of wooden ones, and heavier locomotives and
more comfortable cars had been built. When the excursion train reached
the city of Cleveland, thousands of citizens were lined up along the
track and about the station and the cannon of the city boomed out a
loud welcome to the incoming guests. The party had arrived late in the
day, as it was a twelve-hour journey. The next morning a procession of
Cleveland people was formed, with General Sanford as chief marshal, to
escort the guests to the public square in front of the court-house,
where the mayor received them with a speech of welcome. He was followed
by Mr. Convers, speaker of the senate, Mr. Starkweather, who spoke
for the people of Cleveland, three gentlemen from Cincinnati, and the
governor of the state, Mr. Wood, who was a Cleveland resident. Last on
the programme came Mr. Cyrus Prentiss, the president of the Cleveland
and Pittsburg Railroad, forty miles of which were also opened that day.
This road ran to Ravenna, where passengers could take the canal packet
to Beaver River, and there transfer to a steamboat for Pittsburg. Mr.
Prentiss invited the guests to take an excursion on that road. After
that trip they returned to a banquet and grand torchlight procession in
the evening.
In their pulpits on Sunday the ministers discoursed on the wonderful
event that had taken place, the arrival of the railroad, and on
Monday morning the people gathered from all the region round to see
the strange iron horse start back across the state with its load.
Just before the train pulled out of the station, one of the visiting
party sang a humorous song, describing the effect of the trip upon the
interior regions of the state. He told of the delight and astonishment
of mothers and children in their log cabins, and of wood-choppers of
the back country as they had looked up and seen this “snorting iron
horse with the long tail” race through the country. He ended his song
with praise of the governor Cleveland had given the state and of
Cleveland itself,
“The beautiful city, the forest-tree city,
The city upon the lake shore.”
The opening up of the Venango oil-district in Pennsylvania in 1858
brought to Cleveland a large refining and shipping industry, for which
it was well fitted by its advantageous position on the lake and its
railroads and vessels.
Two months later a similar occasion took place in the little village of
Dunkirk, Pennsylvania, when the New York and Erie road was completed.
This line crossed the state of New York some seventy miles south of
the Albany turnpike and New York Central route, and with its completion
the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were once more united and the occasion
was celebrated as if such an idea had never entered the minds of any
one before. President Fillmore and Daniel Webster, his Secretary of
State, with three other members of the cabinet, came on from Washington
and took the trip on the first train over the road. In New York City
and all along the way there was great excitement, and in the little
village of Dunkirk grand preparations had been going on for weeks. The
train arrived at four-thirty on the afternoon of May 15. As it rolled
into the station the church bells rang, cannon roared, and a salute of
thirteen guns was fired from the United States steamship _Michigan_,
which was stationed in the harbor. The cars passed under a canopy of
French, American, and British flags, and beyond the engine at the very
end of the track was an arch of evergreen and flowers built over an old
plough on which was printed the word “Finis.” This was the plough used
to break ground for the first ten-mile section of the road at Dunkirk
in 1838.
The distinguished visitors formed in a procession and marched about the
town, to be welcomed by the mayor before they entered the huge shed
erected for the occasion. Over the table, three hundred feet long, hung
two barbecued oxen suspended on poles. Upon the table were ten sheep
roasted whole. Bread had been baked in loaves ten feet long by two
thick, which it took two men to carry. Even the pork and beans were
in tin vessels holding fifty gallons each, and barrels of cider were
set at intervals along the side of the table. The presidential party
looked, admired, and praised--and then returned to the hotel for a
collation, leaving the sampling of these triumphs of the culinary art
to the other guests of the occasion.
From the window of the hotel the great men made speeches in the
evening, President Fillmore and Senator Douglas leading and being
followed by ex-Governor Seward and others. This group was of great
interest to the political world as having six presidential candidates
in its ranks--Fillmore, Crittenden, Douglas, Seward, Marcy, and
Webster. The last-named was to have spoken that night, but he was so
hoarse from previous efforts that he could only say a few words in
answer to the calls of the people for him, and postponed his speech
until the next night. With suitable éclat, the ocean and the lakes were
once more “forever united,” this time in very truth, by a service which
took only twenty hours in contrast to the three days of the Erie Canal.
In the words of one of the banners in the hall, “’Tis done,--’tis done,
the mighty chain that binds bright Erie to the main.”
“Bright Erie” was not yet connected as closely as the public might
naturally demand, as was shown by the famous Erie war of 1853. On all
the roads between what are to-day the great cities of the country
there ran one or at most two trains a day. Even on the New York and
Erie itself, which was one of the fastest and best equipped in the
matter of service, the mail train ran one-half the distance in one
day, and then stopped overnight at Elmira before it proceeded on its
way. These arrangements made it very necessary that the traveller
should make good connections and that the various roads should run in
harmony, for each piece was operated by a separate company. Besides
this there was another complication. The tracks of different roads
were of different gauges or widths, so that the train of one could
not by any possibility be run on another. This condition of affairs
was particularly bad at Erie, twenty miles beyond Dunkirk, where all
passengers had to leave the cars, ride across the town in omnibuses,
or walk a mile to the other station, and if connections failed, as
they often did, dine or even stay overnight in the town. This state
of affairs was satisfactory to the local hotel and baggage men and
others who gained from the opportunities offered by a large transfer
of baggage and people, but it was very annoying to travellers. The
railroad manager of the eastern road decided to alter the gauge of his
road and attempt an arrangement by which passengers could be carried
through direct to Cleveland. He began by buying up all the stock he
could of the other line. This was the pioneer attempt at a railroad
merger and resulted in one of the most bitter local wars the country
has ever known, involving every one in the region and the people of
both states in a protracted and very serious struggle. The issue was
complicated and intensified by state and railroad rivalry, but the
whole affair began because the people of Erie were unwilling to be
made a “way-station,” as they termed it, on a through route and thus
lose the commercial advantages of being a terminus for railroads and
steamboat lines.
On the morning of December 7, 1853, the citizens of Erie were summoned
by the ringing of the court-house bell. Men rushed to the centre of the
town to find that the eastern railroad company had begun work at the
state line altering their road from their four-feet-ten-inches gauge to
the six-foot width of the western railway. As the road ran for a short
distance through the street of the town the municipal authorities had
refused a permit for change, but the company had begun, nevertheless.
After listening to impassioned speechmaking from the court-house steps
till it was thoroughly roused, the crowd, led by the mayor, started for
the wooden railroad bridge. They found it guarded by employees of the
railroad, who were soon scattered by a shower of rotten eggs and other
missiles. The mob then attacked the bridge, tore up the tracks and the
timber, and returned triumphantly to the city. Two days later a similar
mob tore up the track, destroyed the bridge, and ploughed the road at
Harbor Creek, seven miles east of Erie. Mob-rule had come in earnest.
It was two months before a single train got through to any point near
these places, and it was three years before the matter was finally
adjusted. The courts and the state militia became involved. State
feeling ran high between Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York over the
question of their local gauges, and the press of the whole country
took sides in the matter. Passengers and freight had to be transferred
during the winter months, when the lake was closed, by wagon from the
stop east of Erie to the stop west of that town, a process that was
called “Crossing the Isthmus.” But still the Erie people rallied with
the watchword, “Break gauge at Erie, or have no railroad.”
Horace Greeley, going west at this time, had to ride the seven miles
across the “Isthmus” in an open sleigh through a severe storm of
wind, snow, and sleet, and after that the railroad managers and the
townspeople were continually denounced in the _New York Tribune_. “Let
Erie be avoided by all travellers,” he wrote on his return, “until
grass shall grow in her streets, and till her piemen in despair shall
move away to some other city.”
Homes of railroad officers and sympathizers were mobbed by the
“Rippers,” as the opponents of the road were called because of their
violent methods. The bridge at Harbor Creek was rebuilt by the company
four times, only to have it burned or torn down. At last when the
whole town was split into bitter factions and all united local spirit
was for the time being destroyed, the courts and legislature settled
the matter. The railroad company, having made certain concessions to
Erie interests, was allowed to change to a compromise gauge of four
feet eight and a half inches (that of the New York Central road) and
run trains through Erie on what is now a part of the Lake Shore and
Michigan Southern Railroad. The great era of consolidation which was to
create our transcontinental lines had begun.
CHAPTER XXIII
LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS IN CHICAGO
In the last years before the Civil War, Illinois became a political
storm centre to which the eyes of the whole nation were turned.
Reaching farther south than any other lake state, and bounded on the
west by the Mississippi River,--the main artery of trade and travel of
the south,--she was bound geographically and commercially to the south.
But on the other hand she reached north to Lake Michigan, a part of
the great system of inland waterways of the North. More than any other
state she presented in miniature the condition of the nation, divided
thus between north and south. Moreover her settlers, moving westward
along the lines of latitude, had come from both sections. With a
southern sentiment in those counties that were nearest to Kentucky and
Missouri, she combined in her upper counties men from New England, New
York, and Pennsylvania with the strongest northern principles. Seeing
within her own bounds the elements of the great national conflict, she
became a state whose strongest sentiment was for union, for which in
the last analysis all her best political leaders stood.
Into this state came Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Arnold Douglas when
they were young men, Lincoln from Kentucky after a stay in Indiana,
and Douglas from Vermont by way of New York State. In Illinois these
two men fought out in the decade before the Civil War the great
contest of the two national parties of the time. The campaign of 1858,
with its famous series of joint debates between them, was opened in
Chicago by speeches of Douglas and Lincoln from the balcony of the
Tremont House. In Chicago the National Republican Convention nominated
Lincoln for President on the 16th of May, 1860. To a royal welcome in
Chicago Douglas returned in the spring of 1861 after his noble and
disinterested support of his elected rival and his patriotic efforts
for the preservation of the Union. Here within a few weeks he died.
Before we pass to the story of these events in Chicago we must learn a
little more of the condition of affairs in the lake states during the
interval since the War of 1812. Of the growth of their cities and of
their great prosperity we shall speak in detail in later chapters. It
is sufficient to say that the movement of population, of wealth, and of
power into the West had become so great that the Republicans in 1860
considered Chicago the fitting place for their national convention.
Of the definite problems of the great sectional contest, the lake
states had a concrete as well as a theoretic knowledge. They were
located on the northern frontier of the United States, and they dipped
down from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty miles into the
south. Inevitably they became the scene of fugitive slave migration. In
spite of the strict laws of the United States and the bitter protests
of the South, the escaped slave found friends when he slipped over
the border into the free states, and was helped by them into Canada,
where his safety was assured. Since 1815 there had been a regularly
organized system of passing these runaways from one place to another
on the northern route, a system which so baffled and mystified the
unsuccessful masters in their search that they had given it the name of
the “Underground Railroad.” The route through Ohio was the shortest of
these lines. Only a little more than two hundred miles lay between the
slave states south of the Ohio River and freedom. Along the river were
twenty-two or twenty-three stations, and every port on Lake Erie was a
point of departure. The five principal outlets were Toledo, Sandusky,
Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Fairport, and through these stations there
was an ever increasing procession of fugitives. Within this one state
it has been calculated that there were nearly three thousand miles of
“underground road.” Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois had
their roads, converging at Erie, Detroit, Toledo, Michigan City, and
Chicago. Such was the anti-slavery sentiment on which Lincoln could
rely.
A hasty sketch of the lives of Lincoln and Douglas before their
speeches in Chicago in 1858 will show the typical western conditions
which had put them in their leading positions. Douglas was forty-five
years old, Lincoln four years older. Born in Brandon, Vermont, Stephen
Arnold Douglas was the son of a young physician, whose father was
Benajah Douglass,[3] a New York pioneer who had moved to Vermont and
there been prominent in local politics, and whose mother was Martha
Arnold, a descendant of Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island. Dr.
Douglass had married Sally Fisk, the daughter of a prosperous farmer.
He died when Stephen was very young, and the widow and children went
to live with their mother’s bachelor brother on the Fisk farm. Here
Stephen lived the life of a healthy Vermont boy until the marriage of
his uncle and the birth of a son changed his standing in the family.
When the boy began to propose going to Brandon Academy to prepare
for college, his uncle told him kindly that he could not provide for
his further education. Stephen in a fit of boyish anger left the
farm and apprenticed himself to a cabinet-maker in Middlebury. He
stayed with him for a year, delighting in the novelty of the life and
in the companionship with a group of young men with whom he could
discuss politics and eulogize his favorite hero, Andrew Jackson; but,
nevertheless, he grew weary of the humble position of apprentice. After
two years with this man and with another cabinet-maker, he gave up the
trade and returned to the home of his mother, enrolling himself at
Brandon Academy.
[3] The elder Douglass spelled his name with a double _s_.
The marriage of his sister and later of his mother started the boy
at the age of seventeen on his westward journeying. It put him into
Canandaigua, New York, where he pursued his studies at its excellent
academy for three years, and prepared for his later career by studying
law out of school in the offices of local attorneys. The western
fever was upon him, and life on one of the great channels of westward
migration induced him in the spring of 1833, against the wishes of his
relatives and friends, to start for Buffalo and the tempting world
beyond.
Douglas’s first six months in the new country were marked by hardship
and by a serious illness. Lack of funds drove him to teaching in a
little Illinois village in place of practising law as he had hoped.
Within a year, however, the penniless boy had been admitted to the
Illinois bar, by what must have been a very simple examination, and was
happily established in a law office in the court-house at Jacksonville,
Illinois. From this time on law was subordinated to his chosen pursuit,
politics, for which his ready comradeship, his acute intelligence, and
his keen ambition fitted him admirably. He filled at astonishingly
early ages several minor positions, working his way into the hearts
of the people and into the councils of the Democratic party. He was
secretary of state for Illinois at the age of twenty-seven, and in that
year was also made a district judge. At thirty he was sent as a member
of Congress to Washington. Reëlected twice he was promoted in 1847 to
the honor of senatorship, and became immediately prominent as chairman
of a leading committee. During these years he married a southern lady
and removed to Chicago, with whose commercial interests he allied
himself closely by investing in real estate, the promise of which he
was quick to see.
To Chicago and northern Illinois Douglas rendered a great service by
contending for the building of the Illinois Central Railroad through
the upper counties of the state to Chicago as a terminal. In this
measure, whose passage he secured by making a combination plan with a
southern railroad so that the proposed bill contemplated in the future
a trunk line from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and thus became
a national instead of a local measure, Senator Douglas showed himself
more than a state and party politician. There was statesmanlike genius
in a plan thus to unite the North and South industrially and socially
at a time when the tendency was to separate interests and separate
policies. His speech in Congress was one of the first to set forth the
power of the Great Lakes and the place of the Mississippi Valley in the
national well-being.
Reëlected senator for several successive periods, he became through
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he himself drafted, the advocate of
“popular sovereignty,” a phrase which he coined to take the place of
the less dignified term “squatter sovereignty,” that had previously
designated the principle that each state had a right to decide such
questions as slavery for itself. He returned to Chicago in 1854, to be
met by a mob who denounced his policy, and immediately threw himself
into an active campaign in the hostile counties of northern Illinois.
When he came back to secure his seat in the Senate for another term,
Douglas had been placed by the course of national events in an entirely
new position. Bitterly resenting the trickery which had made “popular
sovereignty” a mere name and had given the state of Kansas at the
Lecompton convention into the hands of the pro-slavery men, Douglas
stood out on the floor of the Senate against his party and declared
his opposition to the Lecompton constitution. Revolting against his
own party, he was nevertheless representing the sentiment of Illinois
and the Northwest, and he returned to Chicago in 1858 to an unequalled
popularity.
It was four years since Douglas had been in Chicago,--since the day
when he had been met by a storm of abuse and his address had been
heralded by the lowering of flags to half-mast and the tolling of bells
as for some public calamity. Now an enthusiastic delegation met him at
Michigan City and escorted him by special train to his home. As his
train entered Chicago it was greeted by the booming of cannon, and
every sign of public enthusiasm. Crowds filled the streets and banners
waved from the balconies and windows. The whole city was brilliantly
decorated; bands of music marched the streets; and in a carriage drawn
by six horses and surrounded by a military escort Senator Douglas, “The
Defender of Popular Sovereignty,” as the banners proclaimed him, drove
to the Tremont House, receiving everywhere a welcome that proclaimed
him the idol of his fellow-citizens.
The Tremont House was the finest hotel in the city. The first house
of that name had been built in 1832. It had been burned, as had
its immediate successor, and the proprietor had erected on the land
a fine brick building five stories and a half high, containing two
hundred rooms, whose extravagant cost of seventy thousand dollars
and whose magnificence the business men of Chicago had been inclined
to ridicule as entirely beyond the possible needs of the city at its
erection, but which they were now beginning to regard as an evidence of
great foresight on the part of its builder. From its balcony Douglas
delivered on the night of his arrival the first address of the campaign
for the senatorship in which, by the nomination of the Republicans,
Abraham Lincoln was to be his opponent.
While Douglas had been carrying off the honors of the Democratic party
of Illinois, Lincoln had been rising more slowly to prominence in the
ranks of the Whig and later of the newly organized Republican party.
With the events of his early life his subsequent career has made every
one familiar. He had been a practising lawyer as well as politician,
had been several times to the state legislature, and in 1846 had been
sent to Congress. Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he had done much to
organize the new Republican party in Illinois, and was recognized as
its strongest man. He was now unanimously named as “the first and only
choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.”
Yet, although known to the Republicans of the Northwest as a lawyer of
ability and a political leader, he seemed no match for the popular and
well-known senator from Washington.
With Lincoln standing behind him within the hotel, Douglas made on
the evening of the 9th of July a long address to the thousands of
people who surged in the street below the balcony. This speech was a
defence of his Lecompton attitude, and a review of his differences
with Lincoln’s propositions, as expressed in his speech accepting the
nomination, the famous “house-divided-against-itself” declaration.
Douglas was a short, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with great
alertness and animation of manner. A traveller from the East who was
staying at the hotel recorded her impressions of the two speakers.
Of Douglas, she said that in manner he combined force and unusual
grace. His head was noble, almost Websterian, his voice pleasant,
and altogether he was “a most effective popular speaker.” The next
night Lincoln spoke to a large and enthusiastic audience from the same
balcony. Because he was not so well-known the writer described him more
fully. In person tall and awkward, and in manner ungainly, his face
still had such good humor, generosity, and intellect beaming from it
that it made the eye love to linger there until one almost fancied him
good-looking. As a political speaker she found him ready, humorous,
and argumentative, with a gift at telling anecdotes with inconceivable
quaintness and effect.
The two candidates had met many times before, and had debated together
as early as 1834. Lincoln was not underrated by Douglas as a weak
opponent in the campaign. When Douglas heard of his nomination he
had said, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his
party--full of wit, facts, dates--and the best stump speaker, with his
droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd;
and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”
Immediately after the Chicago speeches the two candidates set out on
the tour of Illinois which soon became a three months’ continuation of
joint debates. As a result Douglas went back to the Senate, but he went
back a weakened man to a divided party. Two years later, while he was
being nominated for the presidency by one wing of his party, Lincoln
was being nominated for the same office by the Republicans at Chicago.
When it was decided to hold the National Republican Convention in that
city, the people set about providing a building for the occasion. At
Pittsburg in 1856 a hall for two thousand was large enough. At the
corner of Lake and Market streets the Republicans erected a huge oblong
wooden building which would hold ten thousand men, and as the event
proved it was not large enough by a third, and twenty thousand more
clamored in the streets for admittance. This structure was absolutely
bare, its walls being broken by two rows of windows, and its two front
corners surmounted by small square towers with flagstaffs. Over the
door was an arched front bearing the words “Republican Wigwam”. It cost
seven thousand dollars and its great virtue was the excellence of its
acoustic properties.
Thousands of men came to the city for the convention and the excitement
was tremendous. During the first two days of the gathering the time
was given up to framing the platform and to other business, and it was
not till the third day that the four hundred and sixty-five delegates
proceeded to balloting. The New Yorkers were jubilant in their
assurance of the success of their nominee, Mr. Seward, and had created
the same impression in many circles. As a last demonstration the Seward
men held a great parade on the morning of the third day, the 18th of
May; but by this act they lost more than they gained, for while they
were marching about with bands the Lincoln men filled up the Wigwam,
and when the Seward men arrived they had to take back seats.
When the convention was called to order, there was not an unoccupied
space a foot square in the building. The three broad doorways were
crowded, and outside tens of thousands of men thronged the streets.
The excitement was tremendous, and thunders of applause burst forth at
the names of Seward and Lincoln. When the delegates settled down to
voting, the result of the first ballot was 173-1/2 for Seward and 102
for Lincoln, the rest of the votes going to the six minor candidates.
On the next ballot the states abandoned their “favorite sons,” turning
to one or the other of the two leaders, with the result that Seward
had 184-1/2 and Lincoln 181. Two hundred and thirty-three votes were
necessary for a choice. As the delegates were preparing for the third
ballot, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Committee entered the
hall with a large crayon likeness of “Honest Old Abe,” while Judge
Davis followed, carrying on his shoulders a long, moss-covered old rail
bearing the legend, “Split by Lincoln.” The dense crowd went wild with
enthusiasm.
On the third ballot Lincoln had 231-1/2, Seward 180. One vote and a
half more were needed, and there was a moment of breathless silence
until the chairman of the Ohio delegation rose and announced the
change of four votes from Chase to Lincoln. For a moment the hall was
still, and then as every one drew a long breath of relief the sound in
the Wigwam was like the rush of a mighty wind. Then the thunders of
applause and the shouting broke loose. The man on the roof who had been
reporting the balloting to the crowds without leaned over the skylight
to find out who had been the man named. One of the tellers shouted
above the din, “Fire the salute! Abe Lincoln is nominated!” and outside
the waiting thousands took up the cry. So loud was the uproar that men
in the Wigwam could hardly hear the sound of the cannon discharged on
the roof of the building, or the answering salute of one hundred guns
fired from the roof of the Tremont House. Votes were promptly changed
over until the number for Lincoln was three hundred and fifty-four,
and then the convention adjourned. It had been one of the memorable
conventions of the nation, and had been made up of a large number of
leading men. Sixty of the delegates were later sent by their respective
states to Congress, and many of the members were made governors. A
great man had been called to lead the nation through a great crisis.
One more memorable scene in the lives of these two men took place at
the Wigwam, which had been rechristened National Hall. To Chicago
Douglas returned after war had been declared. With rare nobility and
greatness he had supported President Lincoln and the administration
in Washington, upholding Lincoln in every way that the leader of a
great party, who had polled at the last election over a million votes,
could. No leader has ever shown less personal feeling and more true
greatness than Mr. Douglas in that crisis. He sank the partisan in the
patriot and turned all his energies towards the saving of the Union.
With Lincoln’s approval and gratitude he left Washington to arouse
the sentiment of loyalty and Unionism in the critical Northwest, and
made in April, 1861, a series of addresses along his homeward route,
closing with a great plea in the Capitol at Springfield. One who had
never admired him, listening now to this speech for the support of the
government and the defence of the Union, said that he did not think it
was possible for a human being to produce a more prodigious effect with
spoken words. Southern as well as northern Illinois was ready after
this for the conflict.
As he entered Chicago Douglas was met with a remarkable demonstration.
He had come home many times, sometimes for honor and sometimes for
abuse, but never to meet the united regard and support of men of all
parties and all beliefs. In the Wigwam he made a final address, setting
forth to his hearers the situation, and announcing that the critical
time was come. “The conspiracy is now known.... There are only two
sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or
against it.” For the first time he drew the sharp distinction setting
the two sides in striking contrast, and calling the people of Illinois
to loyalty. The gentle side of his personality made him foresee with
dread the horrors of war, and he besought the people to remember that
they were a Christian nation and as such they must prosecute the war,
saving as far as possible the innocent, the women and children, from
suffering.
The Chicago speech was published all over the country, and Douglas
supporters recognized that their leader had become the first of the
great company of “War Democrats,” of which General Logan and other
distinguished men were to be loyal members. In a few days he was taken
ill and died at the Tremont House. His last words were a message to
his sons to “obey the laws and support the Constitution of the United
States.” Chicago, Illinois, and the nation mourned him as a true
patriot.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE GREAT LAKES IN THE CIVIL WAR
As the northern frontier of the United States the Great Lakes, although
at some distance from the decisive battles of the Civil War, were the
scene of strong Confederate activity, especially in the last year
of the struggle. In April, 1864, Jefferson Davis sent three men to
Canada as “Special Commissioners of the Confederate Government.” They
established quarters at Montreal and Toronto, and prepared themselves
according to their written and verbal instructions to use in any way
possible the feeling of hostility to the administration, which existed
in the Northwestern states, and to organize this sentiment into
definite opposition to the further prosecution of the war. That was
where they began. The most daring Confederate leaders in Canada and the
South had dreams of a Northwestern Confederacy which should come into
being after a general uprising and should be matched by the Southern
Confederacy and an Eastern Union. There were at this time probably
one hundred escaped Confederate prisoners in Canada, as well as many
Southern men and Confederate sympathizers who had come there when,
for some reason, they were better able to serve their cause at this
distance.
Talk with Northern men who visited Canada disclosed to the
commissioners the fact that there was in all the lake states a large
body of disaffected men who did not support the administration. These
were divided into two classes: first, the members of secret societies
of a political and semi-military nature, of which the “Sons of Liberty”
was the leading organization; and secondly, a large number who were
actuated mainly by a general weariness and dissatisfaction with the
war. Especially in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois the “Sons of Liberty”
had great strength. It is difficult to find out the exact figures.
In the three states it is thought they may have had one hundred and
seventy-five thousand members. Chicago had a strong chapter of two
thousand men, which was constantly adding to its numbers. The latter
class, of those who were generally disaffected with the situation, was
strengthened by Mr. Lincoln’s call in July of 1864 for five hundred
thousand more men for the army. Indeed, it was along this line that
the secret societies did most harm. When the time for definite action
came, these men were not ready to strike a blow against the Union; but
the sentiment of the bodies was against volunteering, and by reducing
the numbers of ready volunteers they made drafting, with its attendant
discontent, necessary in these last years, after these same states had
sent out so many regiments of their best sons to serve gallantly on the
field.
The first project of the Confederates on the Canadian frontier was to
liberate all Confederate prisoners in the North, and in this purpose
their hopes centred in Chicago, for here there was a great prison with
thousands of men in confinement. Camp Douglas had been laid out in
the summer of 1861 as a camp for military instruction. It was located
on land belonging to the Douglas estate, just north of the grounds of
the first Chicago University. In this region, where stands to-day the
Douglas monument, no streets were then laid out, but the whole was
open prairie, save for the little University building erected four
years before, and one solitary residence. The camp was first used
as a military station, but in February, 1862, after the battle of
Fort Donelson, it was hastily prepared for the reception of prisoners
and eight or nine thousand Confederates were placed there. Temporary
quarters were erected to hold them, but the barracks became so crowded
that the United States regiments were obliged to encamp in tents on
the prairie. During this year Camp Douglas served as military prison
for seventeen thousand Confederate prisoners and furnished barracks
as well for eight thousand paroled Confederate troops. In 1863 it was
much improved by a thorough rebuilding which followed a season of
inclement weather, when the unsanitary and crowded conditions made
the men, already weakened by exposure and army life, a prey to all
kinds of disease. It was in the fall of this year that many dramatic
escapes were made, the prisoners taking up the floor of their barracks
and digging gradually at night and during the absences of the guards
a long tunnel large enough for one man to crawl through to the open
land beyond the camp fence. On a dark night eight or ten men would make
their way out, watching from the outer end of the tunnel to escape
between the rounds of the sentinel. During November some seventy
prisoners made their escape through a tunnel over fifty feet long, of
whom fifty were afterwards recaptured. The next year the prisoners’
barracks were raised four feet above the ground to prevent such escapes.
It was no wonder that the thoughts of the Canadian Commissioners turned
to this prison. During the year 1864, seventy-five hundred men came
to join the five thousand already there, and in spite of the large
death-rate that summer from smallpox and other contagious diseases,
this was a body of men who, if liberated, could do great things in the
Northwest.
All summer the leaders of the movement tried to get their Northern
sympathizers to move, but the “Sons of Liberty” set as the first
possible time for action the 29th of August, the date of the meeting
of the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. At this time, and
under the guise of politics, large numbers of men could be introduced
into the city without suspicion and it was hoped that the sentiment
of the convention would be one of strong disaffection to further
prosecution of the war. Captain Hines, one of the leading agents of the
Confederacy, and sixty picked men were ready to head the movement;
arms had been brought into the city, and the prisoners had been
notified to be ready; but the rank and file of the prospective army
did not materialize. The government had got wind of the project and
had sent extra troops to the city. These amounted to only a thousand
men, but the convention was not so rabid in its opposition as had been
hoped, and when it came to the moment the “Sons of Liberty” were not
ready to strike the decisive blow, and the leaders were soon convinced
that the time was not ripe. They could not count on a sufficiently
large number of Northwestern men for their support, and without them
they could do nothing.
The next step in the programme of the disappointed Commissioners was to
capture the war steamer _Michigan_, the only armed vessel on the lakes,
which was now at Sandusky, and to release the Confederate prisoners on
Johnson’s Island within that inlet. The Camp Douglas scheme had been
to march southward through Illinois to the support of the Southern
army. The present plan was to go by steamer from Sandusky to Cleveland,
capture that city, and proceed through Ohio to Virginia. The plot was
worked out to its last detail. Every signal was arranged. There were
conspirators in the city and on the island, and even on the gunboat
itself. But the plan was disclosed by a spy to the lieutenant-colonel
at Detroit, who telegraphed an instant warning to the commander of the
_Michigan_, and Cole, the leader in this part of the plan, was taken.
Mr. Beall, who was to bring men from Canada, received no word of this
misadventure, but proceeded to execute his share of the scheme. To
disarm suspicion the first of his party, a Mr. Burley, took passage on
the steamer _Philo Parsons_, a merchant vessel plying between Detroit
and Sandusky. Mr. Beall and two others embarked at Sandwich on the
Canadian side of the river, and sixteen men came on at Amherstburg.
This last party embarked in worn and ragged garments, passing as
tramps who had gone to Canada to better their fortunes, but without
success. Their only baggage was one great old-fashioned trunk tied
with ropes. After the steamer left Kelley’s Island, outside Sandusky
Bay, Beall announced to the mate in a loud voice that he hereby took
possession of the boat in the name of the Confederate States. As he
spoke his followers opened the trunk and pulled out a formidable array
of revolvers and hatchets which they brandished about. The crew and
passengers had no choice but to surrender. As the boat needed fuel
Beall had it put about and headed for Middle Bass Island, ten miles
from the Ohio shore and about the same distance from Johnson’s Island.
Here the passengers were set on shore and another steamer, the _Island
Queen_, was boarded as she came up to make her usual landing, and taken
possession of with much uproar and some shooting. Her passengers were
also landed after a time of suspense on their part, and she was towed
out into the lake, scuttled, and set adrift to sink where she might.
Beall again headed the _Philo Parsons_ for Sandusky Bay and the gunboat
_Michigan_, but when he reached the inlet there was no sign of the
signal lights and rockets which were to have guided him. It was bright
moonlight, and the conspirators could see the lights on the gunboat,
and even the outlines of her dark hulk, but all was quiet and peaceful.
Then seventeen of Beall’s men declared that they would go no farther.
No one of the expected signals had been shown; Cole had evidently
failed, and they did not mean to rush blindly into battle with a
gunboat already warned of their approach. The steamer was brought to
a stop and Beall and his assistant, Burley, urged the men on, but in
vain. The seventeen men drew up and signed a formal protest, in which
they stated that they as a crew would here express their admiration of
John Beall, both as captain and military leader, but being convinced
that the enemy was already apprised of their approach and so well
prepared that their attack could not possibly succeed, and having
already captured two boats, they declined to prosecute the enterprise
further. Beall and his two supporters had no alternative but to head
about for the Detroit River. He landed several prisoners on an island
in the river, among them the captain of the _Island Queen_, and then
went on to Sandwich on the Canadian shore. He and his men removed
everything of value from the _Philo Parsons_, bored holes in her keel
and sides, and left her to sink, while they made their escape into the
interior.
This bold attempt caused great excitement on the northern borders of
the United States and in Canada. The British government redoubled its
watchfulness, and the United States sent detectives across the lakes
to keep a close lookout on the Canadian ports. So successful was this
care that the next expedition planned by Beall within a few weeks
failed utterly. He was to start with a vessel from Canada, capture the
American steamers in Buffalo harbor, take the city if possible, and
then proceed to Cleveland and to the prisoners at Johnson’s Island. The
Confederates were so closely watched that they could not even get arms
or supplies on the boat.
September had seen these two attempts on the lakes. The next step was
the famous St. Albans raid, when Confederates descended from Canada
into Vermont, and in a half hour tried to fire the town, robbed the
banks, shot at the citizens, and were gone again, leaving consternation
in their wake. The whole frontier was aroused by this time. The
citizens of the lakes became alarmed for their business and commerce,
fearing that such attempts would paralyze trade. The convention of 1817
with Great Britain had limited the naval force on the lakes of each of
the two nations to three armed vessels, neither fleet to be increased
without six months’ notice to the other power. On October 24, four days
after the St. Albans raid, the British were notified that the United
States would now deem themselves at liberty to increase the armament
within six months if in their judgment the condition of affairs should
require it. Congress in December authorized the construction of six
revenue cutters on the lakes, but the war was fortunately drawing to a
close and no further action was taken.
The Canadian officials made up their minds that there should be no more
open raids to cast reproach on the neutrality of their government,
but the Confederates were becoming more desperate as the end of the
struggle drew near. They had not given up their hopes in Chicago,
but now set the night of election day, November 8, for an attempt on
Camp Douglas. The plan of the leaders, as they afterwards confessed,
was to attack Camp Douglas, releasing the prisoners, to seize the
polls, and stuff the boxes until the city, county, and state were for
McLellan, the Democratic candidate, and finally to “utterly sack the
city, burning and destroying every description of property, except what
they could appropriate for their own use and that of their Southern
brethren--to lay the city waste and carry off its money and stores to
Jefferson Davis’s dominions.” Colonel Sweet, commanding at Chicago,
was warned of this plan by United States detectives so early that
he was able to break up the conspiracy without open bloodshed. When,
on November 6, the city began to fill up with suspicious characters,
especially the leaders of the August gathering, and it became evident
that the Confederate sympathizers would soon outnumber the small
garrison at Camp Douglas, Colonel Sweet caused the arrest of Colonel
St. Leger Grenfell and fourteen other Confederate officers, and also
the heads of the “Sons of Liberty.” This completely broke up the
conspiracy.
Two more attempts were made by the Confederates from Canada, one to
burn New York City, and the other to wreck trains on the lake roads.
The Confederate Commissioner, Thompson, received word in December that
seven Southern generals were to be moved from Johnson’s Island to Fort
Lafayette, New York. He detailed Beall and ten others to take the
train and release them. They were to stop the train at a lonely place
between Sandusky and Buffalo by putting rails across the track, and to
secure the engineer and conductor. While Beall and a few men went to
secure the money in the express safe of the train, others were to arm
the generals and intimidate the passengers. The coaches were to be
detached, the engine derailed, and then the Confederates were to take
such money as they would need, get into sleighs, and scatter over Ohio
and Pennsylvania, while the leaders drove to Buffalo and caught the
train to Canada. The detectives discovered their plans, and Beall and
his companion were arrested while they were asleep in an eating-room
near the place of the proposed attack. When the others failed to find
their leader, they hastened to escape to Canada.
Beall was tried for this and other similar deeds, and for his capture
of the _Philo Parsons_ and the _Island Queen_, and sentenced to be
hanged for his conduct as a spy and for carrying on irregular and
guerilla warfare against the United States. The Camp Douglas leaders
were also tried by military courts. St. Leger Grenfell was sentenced
to death, but this was commuted to imprisonment for life in Florida,
from which he escaped three years later. The other leaders received
sentences of imprisonment for terms of two, three, and five years. Camp
Douglas had in 1865 nearly twelve thousand men in its barracks, but
at the close of the war these were gradually sent to their homes, the
property was sold, and the buildings torn down.
CHAPTER XXV
THREE GREAT INDUSTRIES OF THE LAKES
No part of the story of the Great Lakes is more significant than the
tale of the building up of the large enterprises that have made that
region one of the leading centres of production and consumption in
the United States and the world. The heroes of exploration and of
adventure were the forerunners of commerce, and the founders of cities
were the leaders of industry. Two of the three great industries of the
early days have persisted to the present time; all three of them have
contributed largely to exploration and occupation and deserve to be
treated somewhat in detail.
Washington Irving has well said that two leading objects of commercial
gain have given birth to wide and daring enterprise in the early
history of America. The precious metals led the Spaniard to Mexico and
Peru, while, as he puts it, the “adroit and buoyant Frenchman” and the
“cool and calculating Briton” pursued the “less splendid, but no less
lucrative traffic in the rich peltries of the north.” The pioneer fur
traders were followed only after many, many years, by what Irving has
characterized as “the slow and pausing steps of agriculture.”
Apart from the land which agriculture might in times of settled peace
make profitable, the white man found three great natural sources
of wealth. These were animals bearing fur of great value, enormous
deposits of copper and iron, and primeval forests filled with trees
suited to the uses of civilized man. Profits from these financed many
an enterprise, from the earliest voyages and the building of the
_Griffon_ to the days of the railroad and the “Soo” Canal. For two
centuries, from 1634 to 1834, the fur trade was the leading interest
and source of profit of the Great Lakes.
During Champlain’s governorship the French, through Nicolet, first
opened an active system of trade and barter with the Indians of the
lakes, and the history of French control thereafter is the history
of the fur trade. It paid the bills of many of the voyages we have
chronicled. In 1660 Radisson and Groseilliers returned to Quebec from
their Lake Superior voyage with sixty canoes loaded with furs valued at
two hundred thousand pounds, in return for which they had distributed
among the Indians kettles, graters, awls, needles, tin looking-glasses,
ivory combs, and knives. Even the official expedition of Saint Lusson
to take possession of the Northwest for France was to be paid for by
gifts to the Indians and return offerings of fur.
The fur trade of the Great Lakes supported not only those who took
up their dwelling on these shores, but the struggling settlements
of Canada as well. It kept up home interest in the support of these
colonies by the rich profit that it brought across the seas. In 1703
La Hontan wrote that Canada subsisted only on the trade of skins and
furs. The profits and the fascination of this pursuit robbed Canada of
its young men while it supplied it with money. An official reported,
in 1680, that eight hundred men out of a population of ten thousand
had vanished from sight into the wilderness, and that there was not a
family of any condition or quality that had not children, brothers,
uncles, or nephews among the traders. There came to be in the woods
a distinct class of men known as coureurs de bois, or rangers of the
forest, who had escaped from the restraints of civilized life and
reported themselves only once or twice a year at the trading posts.
The government tried to stem the rush of young men into the wilderness
by requiring licenses for trading with the Indians and limiting the
number to seventy-five a year; but the country was too large and remote
and the government too feeble to carry out any such policy. In the
end the rulers turned their attention instead to providing fortified
trading posts for these wanderers, first to afford defence against the
Indians, and more especially to concentrate and monopolize the trade,
protecting it from the rival Englishmen. These forts also made a claim
of possession in the regions which they commanded. Thus Mackinac,
Detroit, Niagara, Green Bay, Oswego, and a dozen minor posts sprang up.
Travellers of the eighteenth century were likely to meet on any one of
the lakes fleets of fifty or sixty canoes, heavily laden with beaver,
otter, mink, and marten skins, and paddled by Indians in their paint
and feathers, or by hardly less picturesque coureurs de bois in their
blanket coats, leathern moccasins and leggings, and scarlet sash and
cap. These men were no mere traders whose knowledge was limited to
prices and profits. They were experts not only in the science of the
woods but also in the arts of diplomacy. The success of the trade
depended on the maintenance of peace between the various Indian tribes
and groups of tribes; and the life of the individual trader, as well
as his earnings, depended on his own adaptability. There came in time
to be leaders to whom the most difficult negotiations with the Indians
were left. Daniel de Greyselon Du Luth, a prince among coureurs de
bois, was the chief hero of the early French period in the upper
country. In the summer of 1679 he made a tour of Minnesota, planting
with all ceremony the arms of France in the leading Indian villages,
many of which he was the first Frenchman to visit. At the end of the
summer he held on the shores of Lake Superior, near the site of the
present city of Duluth, a great Indian council of chiefs from all these
villages, and negotiated a treaty of peace. The city that bears his
name may well be proud of the fact that after ten years among the
Indians he entered a written protest, still preserved in the archives
of Canada, with his disapproval of the sale of whiskey and brandy
to the natives. These leaders were very important to the success of
the administration in Canada and were relied on and treated with all
respect. Their names were even sent across the ocean, as we see in the
laconic but warm commendation of Du Luth sent by the Governor of Canada
in his colonial report of 1710: “Captain Du Luth died this winter; he
was a very honest man.”
After the fall of New France, a time of chaos followed in the
wilderness. With the restraint of the strictly enforced code of French
rule removed, with a host of French traders in the woods who did not
yield to British control, and with an opportunity for rivalry and
ill-feeling between every two traders, Indians as well as white men
became demoralized and the profits decreased greatly. Then twenty-three
merchants of Montreal formed the Northwest Fur Company (1783) and took
into their employ two thousand French and other fur traders. They
traded with the Indians of the Northwest, with Mackinac as a centre.
A rival company soon started competition in the southern region of
Wisconsin, Illinois, and the Mississippi Valley. A careful statement
concerning the British trade was sent to the authorities in Canada
in 1790, when the possible future evacuation of the southern shores
of the lakes was beginning to be considered. By this estimate the
average produce of furs and skins amounted for ten years to two hundred
thousand pounds a year. How this was distributed among the various lake
posts is shown in the following table:--
_Statement concerning Trade at Detroit and Other Posts_
POUNDS
The whole Country & Posts below Montreal 30,000
The Grand River, the North Side of the Lakes
Ontario, Huron, & Superior 30,000
In the Country generally called the North
West 40,000
In the Countries to the Southward of the
Lakes, the Trade of which is principally
brought to the posts of Detroit and Michillimackinac,
there being very little Indian
Trade at Niagara 100,000
-------------------------------------------------------
As above £200,000
Dividing this general estimate into smaller districts, the estimate was
as follows:--
In the District of the Garrison of Detroit PACKS
The Fort of Detroit, Sagana & the South
Side of Lake Huron 1000
Miamis & Wabash Country 2000
Sandusky 400
-----------------------------------------------------------
Say 3400 packs of
Furrs estimated at 12£ each is £40,800
In the District of Michillimackinac:
On Lake Michigan PACKS
The Grand River 100
St. Josephs 300
Checago 100
Milwaki 120
La Bay or Green Bay, including the upper
ports of the Mississippi, the South Side
of Lake Superior 300
The Illinois Country 600
-------------------------------------------------------------
Say 3220 packs of
Furrs estimated at £20 each £60,400
-------------------------------------------------------------
Total of the two Districts £101,200
This estimate was sent to the colonial office to show that if the lake
posts were ceded to America, at least half if not seven-tenths of the
Indian trade would be lost.
The Americans were not ignorant of this great opportunity for trade.
When the lake posts were evacuated by the British in 1796, they
began to take a hand in the competition. The United States government
sent out agents, and John Jacob Astor found a field for his business
enterprise. In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and two
years later he bought out the Mackinaw Company and the Northwest
Company south of the boundary line. His plan to unite the Pacific
and the Great Lakes failed for the time being, and the War of 1812
interfered with his schemes; but his organization of the lake trade did
its work in turning the stream of profits southward of the border and
Americanizing Lake Superior.
The settlements built up by the fur trade were unique and amazing
when we consider their isolation in the midst of the wilderness. With
Mackinac under French rule we are somewhat familiar, having visited
it with La Salle and Saint Lusson. At Fort William, at the western
end of Lake Superior, the British merchants built an establishment
that reminds one of the feudal castles of the Old World. In 1805 the
Canadian companies awoke to the fact that the old Grand Portage,
the former gateway of the North, was on territory claimed by the
American government. They promptly demolished their old fort there,
and built Fort William, forty-five miles north of the portage. There
they established a village surrounded by a high palisade, within
which stood a big central building, a counting-house, a doctor’s
residence, stores for merchandise and depots for furs, workshops for
mechanics,--carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and canoe
builders,--boarding-houses for traders, a powder-house and guard-house,
and not the least necessary of the many buildings, a jail. Outside the
palisade was a long wharf, a ship-building yard, a cemetery, and a
considerable line of log houses and Indian wigwams.
The great feature of the settlement, however, was the central building.
This wooden edifice stood in the middle of a spacious square and had
a long balcony, five feet from the ground. In the centre, flanked
by rows of apartments, was a great dining hall, sixty feet long by
thirty wide, where two hundred agents, partners, clerks, interpreters,
guides, and visitors could dine. Across the upper end of the hall
was stretched a very large map of the Indian country, with all the
Northwest Company’s posts and routes from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay
and the Pacific,--probably the only accurate map of that region on the
continent, save for its smaller copies in the factories themselves.
Along the sides of the room were portraits of various proprietors of
the company, a bust of Simon McTavish, a pioneer member of the company
and long its head, a full-length portrait of Nelson, and a painting of
the battle of the Nile.
To this post came every spring from Montreal two of the directors of
the company, with a retinue of cooks, bakers, clerks, and attendants,
and in the great hall from the last of May to the end of August there
was always high carnival of feasting and merriment. In this room, too,
were held the parliaments of the fur trade, when with all solemnity
the Scottish chiefs regulated the affairs of the company and shrewdly
made their bargains and estimated their earnings. About them gathered a
host of traders, coming every day out of the bleak wilderness to enjoy
the good cheer of this metropolis of the Northwest and spend their
hard-earned gains in the short summer holiday; and with these came a
legion of half-breeds, Indians, and hangers-on. It was a picturesque
and motley throng. Ross Cox, visiting there in 1817, found natives of
every part of the British Isles, of France, Germany, Italy, Denmark,
Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland, and, in the capacity of servants, of
Africa, the Sandwich Islands, and Bengal. “In their features,” he says,
“all shades of the human species,--in their dress, all the varied hues
of the rainbow.”
If the paddle and moccasin of the fur trader had been the pathfinder
for the lake region, the axe of the lumberman and the pick of the miner
who followed them opened up and cleared the wilderness. The fur trader
had discovered and explored the wilderness. He was driven out by the
lumberman and miner, who spoiled his field with such speed that in a
decade or two fur trading as a leading industry was banished to more
distant regions. The newcomers made a place for their successors, the
pioneer farmers and settlers, by clearing and preparing the country.
Extensive lumbering and mining operations came only with the Americans.
For two hundred years the French and English tried to keep the western
part of the lake region a wilderness and preserve for hunting. The
French did it by instinct, for they preferred the wild, free life it
offered them; the English did it by policy. In the Parliament of Great
Britain leading legislators argued for the restriction of immigration,
so that the hunting-grounds should not be disturbed. By a royal
proclamation of 1763 the valley of the Ohio and the country about the
Great Lakes was declared closed to settlement or purchase of land
without special leave or license. A forest preserve was created, and
the northwest country was designated by the English “the habitation of
bears and beavers.” Only with the coming of the Americans was the lake
region developed, and the first signs of the approaching civilization
were the cutting down of forests and the mining of copper and iron
deposits.
Two great divisions are recognized in the forest distribution of the
United States,--the Atlantic and the Pacific. These are separated by
the great interior plains and prairies of the continent. The line of
cleavage between timber land and prairie is nowhere so defined that
it does not have inlets of prairie land in the forest region, and
stretches of wooded land in the plain, but the Mississippi River is
in general the western boundary of the Atlantic forest area, and the
states of the Great Lakes are all included in this section. Within this
eastern forest there are several belts of different kinds of woods. Two
of these are in the lake states. The northern belt, largely of white
pine mixed with red or Norway pine, stretches from New England across
New York State and northern Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and the eastern
part of Minnesota, and is broken only by Lake Erie. This tract has
been the chief source of supply for the United States. South of this
white pine belt runs a central hardwood section, where are particularly
valuable forests of hickory, maple, oak, and walnut. This section
extends from Niagara eastward into New York, and westward across the
northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As it was in the natural
line of migration both from the rivers of the south and the lakes of
the north, this central belt was cut long before the pine sections were
touched. It fell out in this way, therefore, that for three-quarters of
a century these states have been in the main agricultural, rather than
forest lands.
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have had a long history of lumber
prosperity. The first railroads of Michigan were welcomed by the
settlers as a means of transporting lumber from the logging-camps and
sawmills that were springing up all through the central part of the
state. The northern industry was taken care of by the lake vessels,
which took the lumber from the ports on the shore through the straits
of Mackinac. Lake Superior, which had long been a centre for the
shifting fur trade, was settled permanently for the first time by the
men who were brought by lumber interests. The Mackinac region, the
Saginaw and St. Croix rivers, and many smaller streams became the
scenes during the winter months of a busy and picturesque activity, and
have been associated ever since in fact and fiction with the romance
as well as the profit of the lumber industry. As Rochester in the East
had begun with a sawmill, so Duluth and Superior in the West came
into being as supply stations for the rivermen, and their prosperity
depended in 1870 so largely on the lumber traffic that the contest over
the railroads, which each place wanted on its side of the state line,
was determined by the interests and preferences of the lumber kings.
No accurate record of the entire amount of lumber produced was made in
the first decades of the industry, but in 1890 Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota were cutting more than one-third of all the lumber
supply of the United States, and to this Michigan contributed one-half
the amount credited to the three states, and one-fifth of the whole
product of the country. Four-fifths of Michigan was then reported to be
forested,--a record leading that of any other state.
As early as 1850 the Michigan lumber business was so large as to
attract attention throughout commercial centres of the country, and
it grew with the amazing rapidity of all western development. In 1854
there were in the state sixty-one sawmills with an output of 108
million feet; in 1872 there were fifteen hundred sawmills, to say
nothing of all the other activities incident on lumbering, such as
making shingles and planing. By 1881 the amount had jumped to nearly
forty million feet, and it was calculated that the output of Michigan
mills that year would have loaded a train of cars nearly twenty-five
hundred miles long.
These figures have come from the western states, but here as everywhere
else the cities and states of the lakes show their interdependence.
Buffalo, at the eastern extremity of Lake Erie, becomes one of the
leading lumber markets of the world by reason of the immense shipments
that come to it from the upper lakes. In 1907 Buffalo had one hundred
and thirty-two lumber firms, and an annual output from her yards of
over two hundred million feet of pine and over one hundred and fifty
million feet of hardwood. This product was made up of the best species
of pines, sought for by all dealers, and the hardwood embraced every
known variety of American trees.
It is beginning to be evident that this pace cannot be kept up without
exhausting the forests. In 1903 the cut from the three northern states
was not fifty million feet, a smaller cut than any year since 1878
and hardly more than half that of 1890. To the danger involved in
reckless cutting without reforesting our people and legislators have
become aroused, and these states are matching their past leadership in
output by a corresponding activity in protecting their forest areas.
Minnesota led in having an effective system of fire-wardens, and each
state is creating forestry commissions and buying up preserves. In thus
rescuing from destruction our forests no one can be too prompt or too
energetic. Less than a hundred years of occupation of the lake region
must not wipe out this industry or destroy the natural beauty and
resources of the country. The fur trade had to go before the advance of
civilization; the lumber industry must not be allowed to follow in its
wake.
The fur trade was at its height in 1820 and was seriously on the wane
by 1835; the lumber industry was of a size to be reckoned with by 1830;
in the next decade, between 1840 and 1850, the mineral industry came
into existence. The earliest explorers had known of the presence in the
Lake Superior region of large deposits of virgin copper. References are
made to these deposits in the Jesuit “Relations.” The first attempt at
mining was made in 1770 by Alexander Henry, the trader at Mackinac,
after the Indian wars were over, but he was not successful.
With the coming of the Americans, copper mining began in earnest.
Indeed, it was said by a friend, who told the story twenty years after
the conversation, that Benjamin Franklin told him that when he was
drawing the treaty of peace in Paris he had access to the journals
and charts of a corps of French engineers who had been exploring Lake
Superior, and that he drew the line through Lake Superior to include
the best and largest supply of copper in the American possessions.
“The time will come,” said Franklin, “when drawing that line will be
considered the greatest service I ever rendered my country.”
Copper and silver were the minerals whose discovery created the most
enthusiasm, and several companies were formed for their mining in the
thirties and forties after the expedition of Governor Cass. Of these at
the time of the Civil War only two were paying dividends. In 1865 the
Calumet and Hecla mines were started and began to develop that part of
the rich upper peninsula of Michigan known as Keweenaw Point. From that
time the mines have sent out yearly thousands of tons, and millions of
dollars are realized every year from them. Until 1880, when copper was
found in Montana and Arizona, Michigan was the only source of supply
in the United States, and sent out five-sixths of the nation’s whole
product. Since that time her output has trebled, but owing to the great
increase of mining in the West this tremendous tonnage of copper is
to-day only one-fourth of the total, although still a most important
factor in the contribution of the lake region to the wealth of the
country.
[Illustration: An Early Lake Superior Copper Mine]
The presence of iron ore in the Lake Superior country was hardly
suspected until after 1840. All companies were formed to mine copper,
silver, or gold. The state geologist made no mention of iron in
his first report in 1840, but in September, 1844, a party of
government surveyors running the lines of a township twelve miles west
of Marquette, noticed the deflection of their compass needle. The
party was under the leadership of Mr. Burt, the inventor of the solar
compass, and he was overjoyed to find his instrument working according
to his predictions. The deflection was so great that he summoned his
party and sent them out in all directions to search for the iron which
he was convinced must exist in large quantities in the near vicinity.
Every one of them returned in a short time with specimens of the ore.
Thus was discovered the first of the famous ranges that to-day produce
one-third of all the iron mined in the United States.
At the time of the discovery of iron deposits there were not over
fifty people in Marquette County. Expeditions were fitted out in
each succeeding year, and companies began to operate the mines. They
worked against great natural obstacles in the remote wilderness.
It is hard for us to realize how far out of the world this country
seemed at that time. When Michigan was admitted as a state in 1837,
the reception of the upper peninsula in compensation for a cession to
Ohio of the well-known Toledo tract was regarded with the greatest
dissatisfaction. The “State Gazetteer” of that year spoke of the
new possession as a wild tract of twenty thousand miles of howling
wilderness, while one of the political songs of the time told with
scorn how the people were being coerced into trading away the southern
land for “that poor frozen land of Michigan.” Within twenty years that
sentiment underwent a swift and radical change.
The first companies struggled along in the wilderness carrying their
ore to a forge on the Carp River, bringing it first by Indian trail
and then by wagon road twelve miles down to the waterside, where it
was loaded on sailing vessels by being put on wheelbarrows and rolled
up a steep plank. In 1852 the Marquette Iron Company shipped six
barrels by this laborious method to Cleveland, which was the first ever
received from Lake Superior. The first considerable shipment was one
of five thousand tons three years later. Then the great panic of 1857
stopped people for the time being from venturing their money in new
and unproved enterprises; but the Civil War created a great demand for
iron, and from that time the industry has flourished.
When transportation facilities were needed, the “Soo” Canal was built,
and at that very time Mr. Heman B. Ely began an agitation for the
building of a railroad in this region. Owing to his influence and under
his direction the Iron Mountain Road was built from Marquette to the
shore of Lake Superior, the first road in the whole northern country.
Mr. Ely was well known in other lake states, as well as being one of
the leading pioneers in the north. He had built the first telegraph
lines from Buffalo to Detroit and from Cleveland to Pittsburg, had been
president of a railroad company at Cleveland whose holdings were the
foundation of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and was director of
the Northern Pacific. He was in all his activities a leader to whom the
Great Lakes owe much. Railroads built during these years in Ohio and
Pennsylvania helped to solve the problem of iron transportation, while
the freight traffic in iron ore helped these young roads to live. The
enormous demand for iron, due to the great era of railroad building,
made furnaces spring up in the Cleveland, Mahoning, and Shenango
valleys, and the Michigan industry was fairly launched.
For a long time only the Michigan and Wisconsin ranges were worked,
but in 1875 presence of large deposits in the Vermilion Range of
Minnesota was brought by Mr. George Stone to the attention of
Charlemagne Tower, a prominent lawyer and business man of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Tower had had large experience in coal mining, both in the
examination of coal fields in Pennsylvania for his cases in the law
courts, and as an owner and manager of companies. He sent an expedition
to explore the Minnesota ranges, and becoming convinced of their wealth
proceeded at once to their development. The friends and business
associates whom he endeavored to enlist in this venture were sceptical,
so Mr. Tower had to proceed single-handed in his task.
[Illustration: Iron Ore at a Lake Superior Port. From Stereograph,
copyright, 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York. Depicting iron ore
in a series of railroad cars.]
It is little wonder that men doubted the practicability of Mr.
Tower’s schemes; it is the more worthy of admiration that he dared
to undertake them amid the almost insuperable obstacles. To plant a
mining establishment ninety miles north of Duluth and seventy miles
west in a direct line from Lake Superior in a region that had no
intermediate connections with even the outskirts of civilization
seemed an impossible task. The country was densely wooded, with
only very small streams and impassable swamps breaking the forest
stretch. Provisions, supplies, tools,--everything needed for the camp
must be taken either in midwinter over frozen ground and snow when
the temperature was usually forty degrees below zero, or in summer on
the backs of men and in Indian canoes over a most circuitous route. A
railroad must be built to carry the ore, and dock and harbor facilities
must be provided on Lake Superior. All this Charlemagne Tower undertook
at the age of seventy-three, and carried through to a wonderful
success. He built a railroad from the mines to Two Harbors on Lake
Superior; he selected Two Harbors as the best place for his docks,
roundhouses, machine-shops, and sawmills; and he opened up his mines in
the iron district.
In August, 1884, the railroad was finished and the first shipments
of ore were made. These shipments were shrewdly distributed among
manufacturers of three states leading in iron industries, Illinois,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania, instead of being sent to a single dealer. They
met with instant favor from all the companies. The quality of all the
northern ranges had been found to be very fine. The percentage of
metallic iron contained in the best red hematites shipped from the
Michigan mines had been over sixty per cent; this first shipment from
Minnesota contained sixty-eight per cent, and with its success the
future of the country was assured. The country opened up rapidly, the
railroad was carried to Duluth, and a town sprang up about the docks at
Two Harbors. In the first year 68,000 tons were shipped; three years
later the output had jumped to 400,000 tons, and Minnesota had been
transformed in four years from a non-mineral district into one of the
foremost iron markets of the United States. Fifteen hundred men were
working in its mines, and five thousand were directly or indirectly
employed by the industry. In 1887 the Mesabi Range began to be opened
up, and together the five ranges,--the Marquette, Gogebic, Menominee,
Vermilion, and Mesabi,--located in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota,
supply to-day more iron than any single country in the world.
This is the history of three of the leading industries of the Great
Lakes. In the nineteenth century there came to be many more which have
contributed much to the prosperity of the region. From the earliest
occupation by the French the Great Lakes have offered not only a
comfortable means of livelihood to the settler who came to their
shores, but also wealth to the country which possessed them.
CHAPTER XXVI
SHIPPING ON THE LAKES
Nowhere has the life of the Great Lakes developed more clearly an
individuality of its own than in its shipping. The conditions which
confronted the navigators on these great inland seas were peculiar to
their environment. The size of the lakes made types of vessel designed
for ocean use more suitable than river craft; yet the fact that they
were not one inland sea, but a succession of lakes divided by narrow
channels, differentiated them widely from the ocean both in the needs
and possibilities of their navigation. To meet these special conditions
and to suit the demands of the commerce in which they were engaged the
shipbuilders of the lakes have designed vessels which are unique and
interesting.
The French found on the Great Lakes a type of boat which was so well
adapted to the exigencies of combined lake and river travel that it
has persisted to this day. This was the birchbark canoe. But it was
not the small pleasure canoe of our modern ideas. Even the first
canoes that the Jesuit fathers found the Indians using before 1630
were large enough to transport a family of five or six with all their
baggage, their kettles, blankets, and other household goods. With the
development of the fur trade and the coming of white men in large
numbers the canoes became twenty and thirty feet long, and this style
persisted as the main water craft until well into the nineteenth
century. The merchants from Montreal went up to Fort William in a
fleet of ninety canoes, each carrying four tons’ burden and navigated
by eight or ten men, and as late as 1820 the furs of Lake Superior
were sent south by John Jacob Astor from his depot at Mackinac to
the trading post at Chicago in similar vessels. It was no uncommon
occurrence to see at Mackinac and Detroit a flotilla of fifty or
sixty canoes sweep up to the shore, the Indians paddling silently and
the _voyageurs_ singing a gay Canadian boat-song as they moved their
paddles in swift unison at the rate of forty or even sixty strokes a
minute. These men measured distances by the number of times they had
stopped on the journey to smoke, and would tell you that a place was
“three or four pipes away,” because the call had been three times given
for “pipes--pipes” by the steersman, and at the word every paddle had
been drawn in, every pipe lighted, and a few whiffs taken before the
three-minute rest was up and they started on again. Sometimes these
rests were once in every two miles, sometimes less frequently, and with
their help the men paddled from morning to night, singing as cheerily
after their forty-mile run as in the morning.
Other boats were used by the Indians and French, but not so
universally. The Indian pirogue was a canoe-shaped boat hollowed out of
one of the huge cotton-trees,--a vessel forty or fifty feet long and
holding thirty men, but too heavy to carry easily around the numerous
portages. The French introduced into the lakes in the eighteenth
century the bateau, a flat-bottomed boat with sharp-pointed ends, which
resisted the storms better than the clumsy scow barges, and was the
precursor of the present two-masted Mackinaw boat. On the canoe and
bateau sails were sometimes used, but only in very favorable weather,
and in any of these boats all but the most experienced navigators
hugged closely the shores of the stormy, wind-swept waters. To us with
our eight and ten and twelve thousand ton steel vessels, which find the
lake storms a source of dread and danger, it seems incredible that the
greater part of the navigation for three centuries was in these frail,
light canoes and bateaux.
With the story of the pioneer sailing vessel of La Salle, the sixty-ton
_Griffon_ of the seventeenth century design, with her high stern deck
and her two masts with clumsy square sails, we are already familiar.
After she was lost in 1679, sailing vessels did not again appear on
the lakes for nearly seventy-five years. Then there were two on Lake
Superior, one the property of the man who made the first attempt at
copper mining in that region. The first sailing vessels to come into
historical importance were the _Beaver_ and the _Gladwin_, which did
such efficient service at the siege of Detroit in 1763. War brought
out the need of such vessels, and a shipyard started by the English on
Navy Island in the Niagara River turned out several schooners during
the next few years. At the end of the eighteenth century, however, the
entire fleet of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan consisted of only
three schooners and six sloops, and no one dreamed of the commercial
changes to come before another century was over. Under the orders of
the English government a Mr. Collins had made in 1788 a careful survey
of the lakes and had stated that vessels on Lake Ontario might be of
sixty or even seventy-five or eighty tons, but those on the other lakes
should not exceed fifteen tons’ burden; but the ship-builders paid
little attention to his instructions.
The steamboat made its appearance on the Great Lakes in 1818 in the
shape of a side-wheeler, naïvely called the _Walk-in-the-Water_, which
was launched at Buffalo. Even a contemporary described her as a “weak
but elegant boat,” and an oil painting shows her to be a little craft
with a curious tiller at the stern, no pilot-house, a smoke stack of
six lengths of stove-pipe put together, and unboxed wheels. She was a
profitable venture while she lasted, making the trip from Buffalo to
Detroit with forty or fifty passengers, each of whom paid eighteen
dollars, but often taking thirteen days to do it. For four years she
held a monopoly on the lakes as the solitary steam-propelled craft,
and then one stormy night in October she went ashore after riding
out a furious gale. None of her passengers were lost, and there is
an old picture portraying this mournful event, “one of the greatest
misfortunes that has ever befallen us,” as a journal of the day
said. The vessel is depicted as going to pieces on the shore while
its passengers stand up straight in unruffled silk hats, pointing
apparently at spots of interest in the vicinity,--a very different
state of affairs from that told of by those who spent that fearful
night on the little vessel hoping for daylight to come before she was
knocked to pieces.
[Illustration: The Old and the New. General Cass’s Canoe and a Modern
Freight Steamer. Copyright, 1905, by Detroit Publishing Co.]
The steamboat did not disappear from the lakes, as the journal had
feared it would, but in 1827 the first steamboat reached Sault Ste.
Marie, carrying among her passengers General Winfield Scott, who came
to visit the military post there. She made no effort to pass the
barrier of the rapids, as even the little canal built by the Northwest
Company in 1790 for canoes and bateaux had been blown up in the War of
1812. The first steamboat reached Chicago in 1832, and from that time
on they began to multiply on the lakes. It was not, however, till 1845
that the need of steam navigation for working successfully the rich
copper mines south of Lake Superior made it so necessary to have some
craft not dependent on the uncertainties of the wind that the mine
owners combined and bought a little steamboat which they had hauled
laboriously over the portage on rollers, an undertaking that occupied
seven weeks.
The great need of connecting the rich Lake Superior region with the
other lakes,--urged upon the people for twenty years,--brought about in
1855 the building of the “Soo” Canal. After much discussion Congress
voted in 1852 three-quarters of a million acres of land to aid the
state of Michigan in building this canal. This was done in spite of
the opposition of many Eastern members to spending so much money on
a project for so remote a wilderness. The type and size of the canal
was fought over by engineers and statesmen, and it was finally agreed
that a lock two hundred and fifty feet long would provide amply for
any vessels that would ever navigate those waters. A young man who was
visiting at Sault Ste. Marie at the time, Mr. Charles T. Harvey, became
convinced that this was too small an estimate. Mr. Harvey was neither
an engineer nor a canal builder, but was a man with foresight. He went
before the legislature with plans, drawn under his direction by a New
York engineer, for a lock at least one hundred feet longer, and was
met with ridicule. The longest vessel on the lakes was then only one
hundred and sixty-seven feet, and the lock proposed by Harvey and the
Fairbanks Company, who were backing him, would be the largest lock in
the world. Harvey won his point, and was given charge of constructing
the canal. It was a tremendous undertaking for those days. The nearest
railroad was many hundred miles away; the steamboats were slow; it took
six weeks to get a reply to a letter mailed to New York, and agents had
to be sent to that city to get gangs of laborers from the immigrant
population. The temperature on the Sault was at thirty-five degrees
below zero much of the time during the winter months, and the men were
necessarily poorly housed and cared for. At one time an epidemic of
cholera killed ten per cent of the men, but work went on each day.
Again two thousand laborers struck, and Harvey hid all the provisions
in the woods until they returned to work, which they did in twenty-four
hours. Within two years, and at a cost of less than a million dollars,
the canal was completed. Immediately the problems of lake navigation
were entirely changed. One of the difficulties of the cautious Mr.
Collins of seventy years before, who wanted the size of boats limited
to fifteen tons, was removed in the building of a channel around the
rapids of the Sault. In fifteen years the lock was enlarged and then
later enlarged again, till in 1896 the famous eight-hundred-foot Poe
lock was built by the army engineer of that name, at the cost of
four million dollars. Mr. Harvey, at the fiftieth anniversary of the
building of his first lock, came to the celebration of the event and
heard discussion of the possible need of a lock larger than the present
one. Thus in the memory of living men there has been built up a great
commercial marine of over five thousand vessels, and by the spending
of fifty millions of dollars in deepening all the lake channels and
cutting canals, the four upper lakes have been united into one great
waterway over which passes a large proportion of the productive wealth
of the United States. Yearly one hundred million tons of freight pass
through this lock, which is twice the record of London and Liverpool
combined in their twelve-month season.
With the opening of the “Soo” Canal the old conventional type of lake
vessel began to disappear, and the designs were accommodated to the
special demands of trade and natural conditions. The sailing vessel
is coming to be a thing of the past, and the men who navigated the
turbulent waters and were caught in gales and ice-jams in their wooden
schooners rejoice in its disappearance. Since 1873 the shipyards have
built less and less of this type of ship, and in our own day the steel
vessel has come to take its place.
The canoe served its purpose for fur trade, and the schooner for
lumber; but the mineral industries of Lake Superior, and a little later
the grain crops of the West, demanded a different kind of vessel.
With the coming of steam power and the development of the “Soo” Canal
came into being the style of vessel which has been well described as
a “steel trough with a lid on it.” These vessels are built solely to
carry as much cargo as is consistent with safety. They are huge steel
freighters five and six hundred feet long, with a hold whose capacity
is from six to twelve thousand tons of iron ore or a like amount of
wheat. Astern is the machinery with a smoke stack and a row of cabins
visible above the deck, and three or four hundred feet off--the length
of a city block--is the deck-house, containing officers’ quarters with
the wheel-house and bridge. Within this house is invariably to be
found a man of rare skill and experience. To the casual observer the
narrow lake passages and the crowded, winding channels and flats of the
rivers would seem to preclude so long and unwieldy a craft, but the
lake sailor can navigate her with the string of barges which she often
has in tow through any passage with skill and ease. The bows of these
vessels are high and rounded to meet and part the heavy waves of the
frequent lake storms, and the whole shell is built with special regard
to strength, both to resist these gales and to bear the impact of the
thousands of tons of wheat and iron which are to be poured from grain
elevators and iron bins into their holds. A crew of twenty-five men
can handle one of these vessels, but they have no easy time on long
stretches between ports. They must be ever on the alert in their short,
swift trips from lake to lake.
In the short summer season the motto of lake transportation is speed,
and science has bent its energies most successfully to that end. Up
in the mines of Michigan and Minnesota a big steam-operated bucket
dips down into the earth and scoops from the hillside a load of iron
ore which it dumps into steel cars with openings at the bottom, at
a cost of five cents a ton! At the docks of Lake Superior,--and the
total length of the ore docks on the lake is well over five miles,--the
bottom of the car is turned aside and the whole load of red earth
rushes either down long chutes directly into the holds of the vessels,
or into big buildings called bins or pockets, from which it can be
poured from a great height into the vessels filling them at fifteen
or sixteen hatches simultaneously. Such records have been made as the
loading of more than ten thousand tons of iron ore into a steamer in
less than an hour and a half, and the usual time for the operation is
only three or four hours. The cost of this loading is made, by the use
of this machinery, less than three cents a ton. After the swiftest
passage that can be made the vessel reaches the ports of the lower
lakes, and there the devices for unloading are even more wonderful.
From a bridgelike crane hangs a huge scoop shaped like a clam-shell,
which dips down into the vessel’s hold and pulls out ten tons of ore
at a time, swings it to one side and drops it on a mountainous heap of
red earth. From there it is put into steel cars which, at the furnaces
of Pennsylvania, are picked off the track by an immense crane as though
they were mere children’s toys and dumped on the ore piles from which
the furnaces are fed. In the interval while the ore was being unloaded
from the hold of the vessel, coal for the return cargo has been poured
in, and in an incredibly short time the freighter is started on her
northward journey. So successfully have time and expense been minimized
by the elimination of hand labor that the freight charges of the
lakes are the wonder of the whole commercial world. Of some kinds of
freight the cost of transporting a ton from Buffalo to Duluth is only
eighty-five cents. The railroads have given up the attempt to compete
and have bought up instead the lines of steamers with which they make
connection. The recent tendency on the lakes is to consolidation of
ownership. To-day the Pittsburg Steamship Company owns a fleet of
one hundred and eight vessels, whose total length if put in one long
line would be over eight miles. These fleets are many times the size
of those owned by Americans on the ocean. Indeed, this is one of
the striking contrasts between lake and ocean traffic. A very large
proportion of lake vessels is owned by Americans, while the reverse is
true on the ocean.
Grain is handled in much the same manner as iron ore. Millions of
bushels come into the ports of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior,--to
Fort William, Duluth, West Superior, Milwaukee, Chicago, and minor
ports,--and are stored in huge fireproof buildings on the water front,
known as grain elevators. These structures are of all sizes, holding
from thirty and forty thousand bushels of wheat to a million or more.
They are equipped with machinery for scouring, cleaning, and drying
the grain, and for pouring it into the vessels. The unloading is done
either by means of an endless chain of buckets which work on a long
spout or “leg” lowered into the hatch, or by “pipes” or shafts from
the elevators into the fifteen or twenty hatches. Down these pipes
the grain rushes with a buzzing sound at the rate of one hundred and
twenty-five thousand bushels an hour. For the unloading process the
grain is drawn out by suction through similar pipes, the force supplied
by powerful engines which give a pressure of several hundred pounds
to the square inch. In 1907 grain came into the lake ports which would
have made, when converted into flour, forty-three million barrels of
flour. Reckoning that two hundred and fifty one-pound loaves can be
made from a barrel, this grain would have supplied the world with ten
billion loaves of bread.
Chicago and Buffalo, the principal gateways of entrance and exit for
grain, have large systems of elevators with a capacity of millions
of bushels, and in the winter months these are not sufficient, but
the ice-bound vessels as they wait in the harbors of Chicago and Lake
Superior become floating storage warehouses, ready to sail east with
their cargoes the moment navigation is open.
These cargo freighters, with the huge barges of similar construction
that they tow behind them in lines of two or three, are the most
characteristic vessels of the lakes. Another style of ship, of which
much was expected at the time of its invention, was the whaleback, a
long, cigar-shaped steel craft whose decks were so low that they were
constantly washed by the waves. These boats were designed, as are all
lake boats, to have the greatest possible empty space for cargo, a
condition made possible by the fact that in their short voyages they
do not need to carry large stores of coal or provisions. The whaleback
is a blunt-ended hulk with rounded gunwales, which from its appearance
and from its manner of rooting and rolling about in the waves has
gained the lake nickname of the “pig.” These vessels are unique and
picturesque, but not so successful as the usual style of freighters.
Moreover, they have reached their maximum size and cannot be improved
or enlarged without change of shape.
[Illustration: Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam. Copyright, 1902, by
Detroit Photographic Co. In the distance a grain elevator with numerous
silos. In the foreground, a logjam on the surface of the water.]
The passenger steamers of the lakes are models of comfort, built more
and more on the style, and even approximating the size of, the ocean
liners, and after them there remains only one other type of vessel
that deserves mention,--the ice-breaker. The situation of the Great
Lakes on the extreme confines of the region whose climate makes it fit
for the uses of civilized man keeps them ice-bound and closes their
commerce for five months in the year. Early in April vessel owners
begin to watch with interest the straits of Mackinac, Sault Ste. Marie,
and Detroit. When the channel at Mackinac shows water instead of ice,
navigation of the lakes has opened. Then strong ice-breakers force
their way through the floating ice with a string of vessels at their
sterns. They are powerful craft with a screw at the bow as well as at
the stern, the first to suck the water from under the ice so that the
boat climbing upon it may crush it down, breaking it and throwing it
out of the way, and the second to propel the vessel through the two
or three or even four feet of solid blue ice that have been broken in
this way. This is an American invention which has been copied in all
northern waters. Russia sent one of her foremost generals to study its
construction, and it is now in use on her frozen lakes and seas.
The tale of lake shipping is a tale that can only be begun in the
limits of a single chapter. There are the car-ferries of Detroit, by
which trains are carried across the river. These are now so crowded
that a tunnel under the river is in process of construction to relieve
the congestion. There are the stories of traffic at the “Soo” Canal,
through which for six months of the year a big steamer passes in every
fifteen minutes of the night and day, and of the Detroit River, with
a record of a vessel every thirteen minutes, and of an average of two
hundred tons of freight a minute for a season of two hundred and thirty
days. There are the ship-building yards at Cleveland, where thirty-one
steel freighters were ordered in a single winter, and more are turned
out every year. The ships of the lakes are built on the lakes, and the
shipyards are among the busiest centres of all that country. Lastly,
there is the sad tale of wrecks and loss of lives, for since the first
canoes were lost and the _Griffon_ and the _Walk-in-the-Water_ went
down, the waters have exacted their annual toll, and fishing schooners
and seven-thousand-ton freighters alike have broken in two or have
foundered and been dashed to pieces on the rocks, while of the tale of
hairbreadth escapes there is no end.
Lake shipping within the limits of its own waterways has developed in
the nineteenth century. In the twentieth is to come the connecting of
the lakes with the Atlantic by canal and river, and the story of the
twentieth century will be of vessels going direct from the ports of the
Great Lakes to the ports of the Old World. With this prophecy the tale
would seem to be complete.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY
The last sixty years of the nineteenth century witnessed on the shores
of the Great Lakes the development of the city. The towns which we
have traced through their early stages as forts, trading posts,
and villages began in 1840 to make their appearance on the census
lists with populations that could be counted in thousands instead of
hundreds. If we reckon a population of eight thousand or over as the
requisite number to raise a town to the rank of city, Buffalo with
eighteen thousand and Detroit with nine thousand inhabitants were in
1840 the only cities on the lakes. Cleveland had six thousand, and
Chicago and Milwaukee timidly entered the lists with records of less
than five thousand and two thousand respectively. In the proportionate
size of cities in the whole United States these five ranged from being
sixteenth, as was Buffalo, to being fifty-fourth, as was Chicago, and
down to Milwaukee, which was the seventy-ninth on the list. In 1906
these five cities are among the first twelve on the list, and their
joint population is three million six hundred thousand, nearly one
hundred times the total population of sixty-five years ago. Figures
express this change as well as anything can, but even figures can
hardly suggest the wonder of this unparalleled development. It makes
this last era of the life of the Great Lakes one of great and unique
interest.
Immediately after 1840 this swift growth of the city began. Within
twenty years Detroit was five times as large as in 1840, Buffalo and
Cleveland were seven times as large, while Chicago and Milwaukee had
multiplied their numbers by twenty and twenty-five. Smaller cities,
too, like Toledo had had a rapid increase in their population.
This sudden tide of immigration and of urban concentration was the
natural result of the widespread westward movement of the twenty-five
preceding years which had developed the country and created demands
for central markets, and of the rise of the great industries described
in the preceding chapters with their attendants, the railroad and
the steamboat. No communities have ever come into being for more
immediate commercial reasons than the cities of the Great Lakes,
and the immense wealth derived from their great industries has been
directly responsible for their rapid growth and succeeding prosperity.
With this story of the industrial side of the life of the lakes we
are all familiar. Each city has necessarily passed through a stage
when it spent its time and energy trying with breathless haste to
keep pace with the outside demands made upon it by commerce. Now that
stage has passed, at least in so far as this industrial side takes
precedence over everything else and stands out preëminent and alone as
the characteristic spirit of the lake city. Great fortunes have been
and are being made, and reasonable prosperity has come to thousands of
citizens. The last twenty years have seen these cities broaden their
interests, and stand out as centres of education, art, sociology,
politics, and religion, till now they are leaders as types of all-round
development, including all these and many other lines.
Each city claims and has a right to claim an individual spirit and an
achievement of its own. But to the student of the past and present of
these lake dwellers there comes the evidence of a broader unity under
whose general aims and purposes, fostered by similar conditions, the
local successes have been accomplished.
In education these cities are preëminent. They have been willing to
expend large sums on the public school systems, and have adapted high
educational principles to local needs with an independence that has
made for a departure from many old and conventional methods, but has
resulted almost always in greater efficiency. The large proportion of
foreign-born children in the public schools has created many problems
and brought the opportunity for great success in dealing with them.
Nor does state and city interest stop with the usual public school
system. Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
have strong state universities, for whose support they give lavishly;
and beside them have grown up three other great universities, Chicago
and Northwestern in Chicago, and the Western Reserve in Cleveland.
There is a widespread enthusiasm for higher education, and these
educational centres exert a great influence both as scientific
experiment stations, whose discoveries are hailed with delight by the
farmer and the mechanic, and as dominant centres of thought. The
universities and schools do not wait for the people to come within
their walls. They go out with exhibitions and instruction of all kinds.
The state legislatures have instituted systems of travelling and branch
libraries, and education is being diffused among the people.
As a natural result of high average intelligence and of industrial
conditions there has originated in the region bordering on the lakes
a political unrest which is being worked out, under the leadership of
the cities, into an encouraging independence of party spirit and a
striving for the improvement of municipal and state conditions. With
the coming of the city there have arisen problems entirely new to the
administrators, and these each city is working out in its own way.
Cleveland by government by commission, and the other cities by reform
mayors running on independent platforms, and everywhere by intelligent
open discussion of such questions as municipal ownership of street
railways, control of corporations, labor questions, and other matters
of public interest which make the party divisions based on live social
and industrial issues, not on state and national party platforms. The
region of the lower lakes is a political storm centre for the nation
as well as for the immediate locality, and conditions there are likely
to have great influence throughout the country.
Municipal improvement has long been the watchword of all parties, and
the result has been the development of splendid water fronts, the
setting apart of land for beautiful park and boulevard systems, the
provision of playgrounds for children, and the constant beautifying of
the cities. Modern architecture has had its chance here, and has proved
itself. The results have made our modern lake city the admiration of
all visitors, both from this country and from across the water.
The two periods of rapid industrial growth and of broadening
self-improvement each lake city has passed through in the last sixty
years. Into the local details of each we have not space to enter,
although each is an interesting story by itself. One city has come to
be in size and standing the second city of our nation, and in passing
briefly over the steps of her growth we can see on a large scale what
have been the conditions which have been met in a smaller way by her
neighboring cities.
With our traveller of 1840, we visited Chicago and found her a
flourishing and rapidly increasing town of nearly five thousand
inhabitants. Even then she was recognized as a centre for the region
immediately surrounding her. The radius of her influence has extended
in a way that would have seemed at that time inconceivable. Her
population has run up to over two millions, and in wealth as well she
has come to be the second great financial centre of the United States,
ranking in this as in population next to New York. She began her city
life in 1837 with $1993 in her treasury. To get money for sanitary
drainage, for paving a few streets, and purchasing two fire engines
the finance committee of the common council applied to the State Bank
of Illinois for a loan of twenty-five thousand dollars, to be paid
back within five years,--a request which the State Bank politely but
curtly declined to grant. To-day her bank clearances amount to some
seven thousand million dollars. And so we might go on with striking
and astonishing contrasts. We have come to take large statements and
superlative adjectives for granted about Chicago’s size, wealth, and
commerce. Do we realize that she is the leading lake city in the other
lines of which we have spoken?
The public school system of Chicago with its million of children
has been and is being developed along the best modern pedagogical
principles by men and women who are recognized leaders in the
educational world. As a centre for higher education the city takes high
rank. Besides its technical schools, like the Armour Institute, it has
two great universities, Chicago and Northwestern. The former began its
career when John D. Rockefeller decided to take the name and property
of the old denominational university of that name, sold at auction
under foreclosure, and to found a great institution. To this end he
set apart a large sum of money and secured as president Dr. William R.
Harper of Yale. With the remarkable growth of the university since it
opened in 1892 with seven hundred and two students, we are all familiar.
In music and art Chicago is preëminent, both for its high grade of
achievement and for the widespread diffusion of its culture among its
citizens. In 1905 Orchestra Hall was dedicated as a home for music,
and this building, one of the finest in the world, had been built by
a popular subscription, to which thousands of the middle and poorer
classes contributed their dollars. The Chicago Art Institute has an
attendance yearly of over half a million visitors, a number exceeding
that of any art museum in America, and its library is consulted
annually by fifty thousand people. Such a record is remarkable, and
such enthusiasm has produced and is producing recognized artists. In
architectural excellence the story is the same. In philanthropy and
social settlement work Hull House, under the leadership of Jane Addams,
is only the most conspicuous of many powerful agencies for good.
For the Great Lakes to have developed, in the sixty years that have
marked the growth of the big city throughout the land, five of the
twelve largest cities of the United States is a remarkable showing.
Not only have these cities become leaders industrially, politically,
and socially, but they are constantly increasing at a rapid rate in
size, volume of commerce, and most of all in plans and forecasts for
the future. From 1880 to 1890 the most rapid growth of the city was in
this region. During these ten years, while the rate of increase of the
ocean ports ranged from San Francisco’s fourteen per cent to New York’s
thirty-eight per cent, and that of the river cities from Cincinnati’s
nine per cent to St. Louis’ twenty-seven, no one of the six great
ports of the lakes fell below an increase of thirty-seven per cent,
and Chicago’s ran up to fifty-four, and Toledo’s to sixty-one. This
is a striking exhibition of the movement of population in the wake of
commercial opportunity.
In the Old World such a group of cities situated close together on
immense bodies of water would create an individual empire of great
wealth and prosperity. In the United States they are recognized as a
leading factor in our prosperity, and a centre from which not only will
great wealth and natural resources be evolved and distributed, but
great leaders, great policies, and great ideals will come forth, making
the lake region a force to be reckoned with and depended upon in the
future of the Nation.
A BRIEF LIST OF BOOKS
_General Works_
There is no important general work covering the entire field. The
best single book is Charles Moore’s _The Northwest under Three Flags,
1635–1796_. B. A. Hinsdale’s _Old Northwest_ (2 vols.) deals with this
region, but with especial emphasis on the geographical and political
phases. Francis Parkman treats of French and English occupation in his
_Series of Historical Narratives, France and England in North America_,
the nine volumes of which will be cited under their individual names.
Besides his _Narrative and Critical History of America_ in eight
volumes, Justin Winsor has three books on the history of this region:
_Cartier to Frontenac_, 1534–1700; _The Mississippi Basin_; and
_The Westward Movement_. Under this heading should be mentioned the
publications of the various historical societies of the lake states,
especially the Buffalo, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota collections.
PART I. _Discovery and Exploration, 1615–1700_
This period is taken up in Parkman’s _Pioneers of France in the New
World_, _The Jesuits in North America_, _La Salle and the Discovery of
the Great West_, and _Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV._
The seventy-three volumes of _Jesuit Relations and Allied Volumes_,
edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, are the source books for accounts of
the Jesuits. A modern book which covers this period is C. W. Colby’s
_Canadian Types of the Old Régime, 1608–1698_. E. B. O’Callaghan’s
_Documentary History of the State of New York_ (4 vols.), 1849, and
L. H. Morgan’s _League of the Iroquois_ (2 vols.), 1901, give good
accounts of the Indians, while the former has reprints of valuable maps
and documents.
The original accounts of the voyages of the explorers are as follows:
_Voyages of Samuel de Champlain_, translated by C. P. Otis, and edited
by E. F. Slafter (3 vols.) (a handy one-volume edition is that of W. L.
Grant, 1907); _Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de
La Salle from 1679 to 1681_, translated by M. B. Anderson; and Louis
Hennepin’s _A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America_ (2 vols.),
and Lahontan’s _New Voyages to North America_, both reprinted and
edited by R. G. Thwaites. C. W. Butterfield has written a _History
of Brulé’s Discoveries and Explorations_, 1610–1626. The story of
the pageant of Saint Lusson comes to us from his _Procès-Verbal_ in
the _Wisconsin Historical Collections_, xi, 26, and in Father Claude
Dablon’s account in the _Jesuit Relations_, lv, 105–115.
PART II. _The Struggle for Possession, 1700–1832_
For the struggle between France and England Parkman’s _Half Century of
Conflict_ (2 vols.), _Montcalm and Wolfe_ (2 vols.), and _Conspiracy
of Pontiac_ (2 vols.) give the best connected account. S. Farmer’s
_History of Detroit and Michigan_, A. Hulbert’s _The Niagara River_,
and other local histories of Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Niagara,
as well as chronicles of the war, contribute to this history. Mr.
C. M. Burton has published a very interesting pamphlet on _Cadillac’s
Village, or Detroit under Cadillac_, which is the result of his own
research in the records of this time. Besides Parkman’s two-volume
story of the _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, it is well to read Major
Robert Rogers’ _Journals of the Siege of Detroit_, and _Concise
Account of North America, 1765_, and also a _Diary of the Siege of
Detroit_, edited with other documents by F. B. Hough, and _The Gladwin
Manuscripts_, edited by Charles Moore. Alexander Henry tells his own
story in _Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories_,
1809.
For the period of the war between England and America, Henry Adams’
_History of the United States, 1800–1817_ (9 vols.), is the authority.
T. Roosevelt in his _The Winning of the West, 1777–1807_ (5 vols.),
gives his fifth volume to _St. Clair and Wayne_. There are three
standard works on the naval part of the war, J. Barnes’ _Naval Actions
of the War of 1812_, Roosevelt’s _The Naval War of 1812_, and A. T.
Mahan’s _Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812_ (2 vols.).
There are many contemporary accounts of the battles and defences of
the leading participants, such as _The Defence of Brigadier-General
Hull Written by Himself_, 1814. Three leading documents of the Chicago
massacre are the _Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, 1844_,
supposed to be the Kinzie account, _The Chicago Massacre in 1812_,
which is the Heald account, written at a much later date by Joseph
Kirkland, and an anonymous document in the _Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Collections_, viii, 648–652. The Black Hawk War is treated
in all histories of the time. The material about Black Hawk himself
is gathered from B. Drake’s _Life and Adventures of Black Hawk_ (7th
ed., 1846), _Life of Black Hawk, Dictated by Himself_, 1834, and S. G.
Drake’s _Book of the Indians_ (8th ed., 1841), which has also accounts
of Pontiac and Tecumseh. R. G. Thwaites’ _How George Rogers Clark
Won the Northwest_, has an essay on the Black Hawk War, as well as
other interesting essays on this period. Randall Parrish’s _Historic
Illinois_ should be mentioned in this connection as the best book of
its kind on this whole region, with a clear account of the events that
took place in Illinois and a graphic picture of pioneer conditions.
The biographies of Cass and Wayne are valuable. The two contemporary
books on Cass are W. L. G. Smith’s _The Life and Times of Lewis Cass_,
and W. T. Young’s _Life and Public Services of Lewis Cass_. A. C.
McLaughlin has written a good biography with the title, _Lewis Cass_,
for the American Statesman Series. John R. Spears is the author of a
biography of _Anthony Wayne_, 1903.
PART III. _Occupation and Development_
The bibliography of this section would include all that has come
before, and much from pamphlets, historical society publications, local
histories, and records of anniversary celebrations, which would make
too long a list of sources. There are no general works on this phase
of the life of the Great Lakes. Archer B. Hulbert’s _Historic Highways
of America_ (16 vols.) contains much that is of interest about roads
to the lakes, especially in volumes 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 14. J. F.
Rhodes’ _History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850_ (7
vols.) has in its earlier volumes valuable references and accounts of
happenings in its period. In general, however, one must turn to the
local records and state histories.
L. P. Powell has gathered and edited two volumes entitled _Historic
Towns of the Middle States_, and _Historic Towns of the Western
States_. Seven suggestive books are: Parker’s _Rochester, A Story
Historical_, and H. O’Reilly’s _Sketches of Rochester_; _The Niagara
Book_, by W. D. Howells, N. S. Shaler, and others, and F. H.
Severance’s _Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier_; Urann’s _Centennial
History of Cleveland_; W. P. Strickland’s _Old Mackinaw_, 1860; and
A. T. Andreas’ _History of Chicago_ (3 vols.).
The Buffalo Historical Collections have much material about the Erie
Canal, as has W. W. Campbell’s _Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton_.
J. L. Barton’s _Commerce of the Lakes and the Erie Canal_, William
Norris’ _Map of the Railroads and Canals in the United States and
Canada, August, 1834_, _Early Chicago Railroads, 1838_, and W. K.
Ackerman’s _Early Illinois Railroads_, in _Fergus Historical Series_,
No. 23, pp. 3–62, and a little book, _Instructions for Running
Railroads_, 1862, are all good for the years of rapid development about
the lakes. Two other books on railroads should be included: F. H.
Spearman’s _The Strategy of Great Railroads_ and Mott’s _Between Ocean
and Lakes_.
There are two contemporary lives of Stephen A. Douglas, one by J. W.
Sheahan, published in 1860 for campaign purposes, and another, _The
Life and Speeches of Stephen A. Douglas_, by a “Member of the Western
Bar.” Allen Johnson has recently brought out a valuable life of this
Illinois statesman. Nicolay and Hay’s _Abraham Lincoln, A History_ (10
vols.) is the standard work on Lincoln. J. W. Headley has written on
_Confederate Operations in Canada and New York_, giving an intimate
account of events in which he played an active part. F. J. Turner
is the authority on the fur trade, which he has described in _The
Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin_, Johns
Hopkins Studies, Vol. IX.
_Gazetteers and Travels_
In the numerous guide-books and records of travellers of the past one
hundred and twenty-five years is written most vividly the story of the
Great Lakes. Each one of those we mention contributes something to the
account of the region.
_Travels._ J. Carver’s _Travels through the Interior Parts of North
America in 1766, 1767, 1768_; I. Weld’s _Travels, 1795–1797_; J.
Harriott’s _Struggles through Life_, etc., 1796, ii, 97–149; Sutcliff’s
_Travels, 1804, 1805, 1806_; John Melish’s _Travels in the United
States in 1806 and 1807 and 1809, 1810, 1811_ (2 vols.); Schultz’
_Travels on an Inland Voyage_, 1807 and 1808; F. Hall’s _Travels in
1816 and 1817_; J. M. Duncan’s _Travels_, ii, 3–120; _Views of Society
and Manners in America, 1818–1820_, pp. 125–181; H. R. Schoolcraft’s
_Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit Northwest in 1820_, which
gives an official account of the Cass expedition; William Dalton’s
_Travels_, 1821; P. Stansbury’s _Pedestrian Tour in 1821_, giving an
account of a trip from Albany to Niagara; C. H. Wilson’s _The Wanderer
in America_, 1823; T. L. McKenney’s _Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes_,
which is very valuable; Basil Hall’s _Travels in North America in 1827
and 1828_, treating in vol. i of this region; Anne Royall’s _Black
Book_, vol. i; John Fowler’s _Journal of a Tour in the State of New
York in 1830–1831_. We come now to a set of travels which tell of
the western lakes in particular and give a picture of their towns:
_A Winter in the West, by a New Yorker_ (2 vols.), 1835; _Life on
the Lakes_, telling of a Lake Superior trip in 1836 by the author of
“Legends of a Log Cabin”; Bela Hubbard’s _Memorials of Half a Century_,
also of a voyage to Lake Superior. J. L. Peyton’s _Over the Alleghanies
and Across the Prairies_, 1848, and Captain Mackinnon’s _Atlantic and
Trans-Atlantic Sketches_, i, 141–233, give vivid pictures of lake
travel. Lillian Foster was in Chicago in 1860, and tells in _Wayside
Glimpses_, pp. 200–224, her impressions of Douglas and the political
situation. Margaret Fuller spent a _Summer on the Lakes in 1843_;
Charles Dickens went to Niagara, which he describes in his _American
Notes_, 1842, and Harriet Martineau wrote a _Retrospect of Western
Travel_ (3 vols.), 1838, in which she devotes seventy pages of the
first volume to a trip from Albany to Niagara. Two accounts of travel
in Minnesota are E. S. Seymour’s _Sketches of Minnesota_, 1850, and
C. C. Andrews’ _Minnesota and Dacotah_, 1857.
_Gazetteers and Guides_ (arranged alphabetically). S. R. Brown’s _The
Western Gazetteer_, 1817; E. Dana’s _Description of the Bounty Lands of
Illinois in 1819_, and _Geographical Sketches on the Western Country_,
1819; William Darby’s _Emigrants’ Guide to the Western and Southwestern
States and Territories_, 1818; G. M. Davison’s _The Fashionable Tour_,
with several successive editions under the title, _The Traveller’s
Guide_, 1830–1840; J. Disturnell’s _The Western Traveller_, 1844, and
_A Trip through the Lakes of North America_, 1857; T. Dwight’s _The
Northern Traveller_; A. D. Jones’ _Illinois and the West_, 1838, which
is especially good on pioneer conditions; John Melish’s _Geographical
Description of the United States_, _Information and Advice to
Emigrants_, and _Traveller’s Directory_, 1815–1826; S. A. Mitchell’s
_Illinois in 1837_; J. M. Peck’s _Gazetteer of Illinois_, _Guide for
Emigrants_, and _New Guide for Emigrants to the West_, 1831–1848;
J. C. Smith’s _The Western Tourist_, 1840, and Steele’s _Western
Guide-Books_, 1830–1840; H. Spofford’s _Pocket Guide of the State of
New York_, 1824; H. S. Tanner’s _The American Traveller_ (8th ed.,
1842); and George Temple’s _The American Tourist’s Pocket Companion_,
1812.
INDEX
Adrian, 276, 285.
Albany, 91, 102, 228, 232, 237, 242, 248, 252, 256, 259.
Allouez, Father Claude, 41;
address to Indians, 45–47.
American Fur Company, 338.
Anderson, Robert, 207.
André, Father Louis, 41.
Astor, John Jacob, 338, 357.
Barclay, Commodore,
in command of British fleet on Lake Erie, 182, 183;
defeated by Perry, 184–187.
Battles,
Niagara, 108–111;
Bloody Run, 129, 130;
Fallen Timbers, 160, 161;
Tippecanoe, 166;
River Raisin, 180, 181;
Lake Erie, 183–187;
The Thames, 188, 189;
Chippewa Creek, 189;
Lundy’s Lane, 189;
Wisconsin Heights, 210, 211;
Bad Axe, 211.
Beall, John Yates, Confederate agent on the lakes, 322–326, 328, 329.
Bibliography, 385–391.
Black Hawk,
appearance and early career, 201–203;
his war, 205–212;
his eastern trip, 212–214.
Black Rock, 181, 182, 254.
Boone, Daniel, at Detroit, 152.
Brébeuf, Father Jean,
Jesuit missionary to Hurons, 25–37;
founder of mission, 25;
life among Indians, 25–33;
killed by Iroquois, 37.
Brock, Gen. Isaac, captures Detroit for British, 168–172.
Brulé, Étienne, first white man to see Lake Huron, 10, 14.
Buffalo,
founded, 220, 221;
in 1811, 246, 247;
terminus of Erie Canal,
254–256, 260;
in 1840, 266–269;
lumber market, 345, 346;
first steamboat launched at, 360;
grain elevators, 370;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Buffalo roads, 229, 230.
Cadillac, La Mothe,
founder of Detroit, 88–98;
character, 88;
at Mackinac, 88;
at Detroit, 89–98.
Cadillac, Madame, 96.
Campbell, Capt., 124, 126.
Camp Douglas, 319–322, 326.
Canals,
Welland, 5, 283;
Hennepin, 6;
Rock River, 224;
Pennsylvania and Erie, 272, 284;
Ohio and Erie, 273, 283, 284;
Wabash and Erie, 276, 284;
Miami, 284;
Erie, _see under_ Erie;
“Soo,” _see under_ Sault Ste. Marie.
Cass, Lewis,
in War of 1812, 170;
governor of Michigan territory, 191–200;
early life, 192;
management of the territory, 193–196;
dealings with Indians, 196–200;
at Duluth, 200, 224, 225.
Champlain, Samuel de,
on Lake Huron, 10, 14;
early career, 12, 13;
among the Hurons, 14–23;
his writings, 23, 24.
Chicago,
military post, 166;
massacre at, 172–177;
under Governor Cass, 193, 198, 200;
town begun, 222, 223;
in 1840, 266, 275–279;
Lincoln and Douglas in, 299–316;
in Civil War, 318–322, 327–329;
first steamboat to, 361;
grain elevators, 369, 370;
the modern city, 379–383;
_see also_ Chicago River, _and_ Fort Dearborn.
Chicago University, 319, 381.
Cleveland,
founded, 164, 165, 219, 220;
in 1840, 272, 273;
coming of the first train, 289–291;
commerce, 291, 350, 351;
shipyards, 372, 373;
rapid growth, 374, 375, 377, 378.
Cleveland, Moses, 164, 219.
Clinton, De Witt, and the Erie Canal, 237, 238, 251, 254–260.
Confederate operations on the lakes, 317–329.
Connecticut, land cession, 219.
Conventions,
National Republican of 1860, 300, 311–314;
National Democratic of 1864, 321, 322.
Coureurs de bois, 41, 47, 107, 333, 334.
Dablon, Father Claude, 41.
Dalyell, Capt.,
at siege of Detroit, 128, 129;
killed, 130.
Davis, Jefferson,
in Black Hawk War, 207;
sends commissioners to Canada, 317.
Davison, Gideon, his Travellers’ Guides, 267–269.
Denonville, governor of New France, 87, 104.
Detroit,
founded by French, 87–100;
taken by British, 116;
blockaded by Pontiac, 118–134;
in 1776, 151–153;
an American post, 154, 163, 164;
taken by British, 166–172;
under Gov. Cass, 194, 195;
fire at, 221;
in 1840, 274, 275;
terminus of Michigan Central, 288;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Detroit River,
visited by La Salle, 62, 63;
first recorded passage of, 63;
importance of, 88–91;
beauty of, 91–93;
military operations on, 125–131, 167–170, 187, 190, 323, 325;
commerce of, 371–373.
Douglas, Stephen A., 299–316;
early career, 302–306;
debates with Lincoln, 300, 309–311;
Senator, 305, 311, 314, 315;
supporter of Lincoln, 314–316;
death, 316.
Druilletes, Gabriel, 41.
Du Luth, Daniel G., 224, 334, 335.
Duluth,
Indian trading station, 224, 225, 334;
becomes a town, 225;
commerce of, 344, 354, 369.
Dunkirk, railroad celebration at, 291–293.
Erie, Lake,
discovered and explored, 61, 63;
forts on, 104, 108, 109, 118, 125, 164;
in War of 1812, 165–168, 179–190;
settlements on, 219, 220;
roads, canals, and railroads to, 232–241, 242, 251–265, 283–297;
travel on, 268–274;
in Civil War, 322–326;
commerce of, 343, 345, 360.
Erie, Penn.,
in 1840, 268, 272;
railroad war, 294–298;
underground railroad station, 302;
_see also_ Presque Isle _under_ Forts.
Erie Canal, 5, 195, 221, 226, 237, 238, 251–265;
building of, 251–254;
ceremony of opening, 254–260;
travel on, 261–263;
enlarged, 263–265, 271, 283.
Forts,
Frontenac, 52, 61, 105, 218;
Duquesne, 104;
Le Bœuf, 104, 106, 109;
Sandusky, 104, 125, 219;
Venango, 104, 106, 291;
Presque Isle, 104, 106, 109, 118, 125, 164, 219;
Washington, 158;
Recovery, 158;
Defiance, 159;
Harrison, 166;
Dearborn, 166, 172–177;
Wayne, 166, 174, 276;
Malden, 167–170, 180, 183, 187, 188;
William, 338–341.
Franklin, Benjamin, makes Great Lakes U.S. boundary, 347.
Frenchtown,
Hull at, 167;
American defeat at, 179–181.
Frontenac,
governor of New France, 50, 59, 67;
recalled, 73;
returns, 87;
his plan to occupy Great Lakes, 87, 88;
death, 87.
Fuller, Margaret, trip to the lakes, 278–282.
Fur trade,
carried on by French and English, 39, 51, 52, 66–68, 88, 89, 101,
102, 135, 145;
leading interest on the lakes, 330–342;
under the French, 331–335;
under the British, 335–342;
under the Americans, 155, 165, 337, 338, 341, 347.
Genesee Turnpike, 233.
Georgian Bay, 10, 12, 14, 25, 28, 148, 218.
Gladwin, Major,
in command at Detroit, 119;
blockaded by Pontiac, 119–133;
saves Detroit, 133.
Grain, handled by lake ports, 6, 369, 370.
Greeley, Horace, 297.
Green Bay, 76, 333, 337.
_Griffon_, _see under_ Ships.
Groseilliers, 39.
Hamilton, Gen.,
at Detroit, 151–153;
captured by Clark, 153.
Harmar, Gen., unsuccessful expedition against Indians, 156, 161, 174.
Harriott, John, journey to Lake Erie, 242–246.
Harrison, Gen. W. H.,
at Tippecanoe, 166;
Lake Erie expedition, 179, 180;
battle of the Thames, 187–189.
Harvey, C. T., designer and builder of “Soo” Canal, 362–364.
Hawley, Jesse, and Erie Canal, 237.
Heald, Capt.,
in command at Fort Dearborn, 172–177;
escapes massacre, 176, 177.
Hennepin, Father Louis,
companion of La Salle, 51;
writes of Niagara, 52, 53;
and of the voyage, 58, 59;
names Lake St. Clair, 63.
Henry, Alexander,
adventures at Mackinac, 135–150;
copper mining, 347.
Hines, Capt., Confederate agent, 321, 322.
Hotels,
American, and Franklin, in Cleveland, 273;
Lake House, in Chicago, 277, 278;
Tremont House, in Chicago, 307, 308, 314, 316.
Hull, Gen.,
in War of 1812, 166–172;
surrenders Detroit, 171.
Huron, Lake,
discovered and explored, 10–14, 25–28, 37, 65, 71, 88, 150, 218;
travel on, 282;
commerce of, 336, 337, 360, 372.
Illinois,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
becomes a state, 193;
Black Hawk War in, 201–214;
in 1840, 266, 267, 269, 270;
in 1850–1860, 299, 300, 302, 304, 305;
in Civil War, 318.
Indiana,
part of Northwest Territory, 155, 165;
becomes a territory, 191;
becomes a state, 193;
in 1840, 266, 267;
in Civil War, 318.
Indian treaties,
with La Salle, 56;
with La Barre, 76–83;
with Le Moyne, 102;
with Johnson, 131–133, 145, 149;
with Wayne (Treaty of Greenville), 162, 164, 219, 222;
with Cass, 198–200, 224, 225;
with U. S. government, 202.
Indian tribes,
_Iroquois_ or Five Nations, location and organization, 11, 12, 232;
their relations to the French, 17–22, 36–38, 54, 60, 74–84;
at Niagara, 102, 217;
_Hurons_, location, 12–16;
at war with Iroquois, 16–23, 36, 37;
_Algonquins_, 12, 114;
_Neutral Nation_, 33;
_Ojibways_, 114;
_Ottawas_, 114, 120, 144, 145;
_Illinois_, 114, 134;
_Chippewas_, 138–145;
_Sauk_ and _Fox_, 202–214.
_For Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas_, see under
_Iroquois_.
Iroquois Trail, 231, 232, 251.
Jesuits,
missions to Hurons, 25–38;
to Iroquois, 38;
at Sault Ste. Marie, 34, 35, 39;
at La Pointe, 39, 41;
at Manitoulin Island, 41.
Jogues, Father Isaac, Jesuit missionary,
among Hurons, 32, 34;
visits and names Sault Ste. Marie, 35;
captured and killed by Iroquois, 35, 36.
Johnson, Sir William,
captures Niagara, 106–111;
Indian conferences, 131, 132, 133, 146–149.
Johnston, Albert, 207.
Joncaire, 101, 108.
La Barre, Gen. Le Febvre de, 73–84;
expedition against Iroquois, 74–84.
La Motte, companion of La Salle, 53–56.
La Pointe, 39, 41.
La Salle, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de,
early career, 49–51;
builds the _Griffon_, 56–60;
on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, 61–71.
Le Caron, Father Joseph, 10, 15, 16.
Le Moyne, Charles (1st), 103.
Le Moyne, Charles (2d), with La Barre, 75, 80, 82, 104.
Le Moyne, Charles (3d), builds Fort Niagara, 102–104.
Le Moyne, Father, 38.
Lewiston, 54, 102, 232, 238.
Lincoln, Abraham,
in Black Hawk War, 206;
debates with Douglas, 300, 302, 308–311;
nominated for presidency, 311–314.
Lockport, 253, 256, 257, 264.
Logan, Gen. John A., 3, 316.
Lumber,
forest distribution, 342, 343;
industry, 343–347.
McDougall, Lieut., at Detroit, 124, 126.
Mackinac (called Michilimackinac, Mackinaw),
trading post, 66, 67, 88, 218, 223, 224, 281;
Northwest Fur Company and American Fur Company station, 335–338,
357;
lumber region, 344;
fort at, 118, 135–150, 166, 168, 169, 177, 224, 268.
Manitoulin Island, 41, 281.
Marquette, 42, 218.
Massachusetts land cession, 220.
Melish, John, journey in western New York, 246–248.
Ménard, Father, on Lake Superior, 39.
Michigan,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
a separate territory under Cass, 191–196;
becomes a state, 196;
in 1840, 266, 267;
railroads, 284–288;
lumber trade, 343–345;
mineral wealth, 347–351.
Michigan, Lake,
discovered and explored, 35, 39, 40, 49, 67–71;
forts on, 70, 118, 119, 166, 172–178;
settlement on, 198, 200, 222, 223;
travel on, 279–281;
commerce of, 337, 357, 361, 369, 370.
Michigan City,
in 1840, 266, 276;
underground railroad station, 302.
Milwaukee,
founded, 223, 224;
in 1840, 266, 279, 280;
fur trade of, 337;
port for grain, 369;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Minerals,
copper, 4, 8, 347, 348;
iron, 4, 8, 348–354, 367–369;
lead, 201, 202.
Minnesota,
lumber trade, 343, 344, 346;
mineral wealth, 352–354.
New York,
home of Iroquois tribes, 11, 12;
Indian trails, 231, 232;
turnpikes, 232–236, 242–250;
canals, 237, 250–265;
railroads, 238–241, 291–298.
Niagara,
discovered, 52–61;
held by French, 101–105;
taken by English, 105–112;
Indian convention at, 132, 149;
in War of 1812, 181, 182, 189.
Niagara Falls,
location, 5;
seen by Hennepin, 52, 53;
description of, 53;
visited, 246.
Niagara, Fort,
built, 101–105;
captured by British, 105–113;
centre of British influence, 153.
Niagara River,
key to the lakes, 54–60;
in War of 1812, 181, 182, 189.
Nicolet, 35, 331.
Nipissing, Lake, 13, 27, 34, 218.
Northwestern Fur Company, 224, 335, 338–341.
Ohio,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
becomes a state, 191;
in 1840, 266, 267;
canals, 283, 284;
railroads, 284–291;
underground railroad, 301, 302;
in Civil War, 318.
Onondaga, _see_ Syracuse.
Ontario, Lake,
discovered and explored, 17, 22, 52, 56, 75;
forts on, 52, 61, 100–112, 189, 218;
travel on, 242;
commerce of, 336.
Ordinance of 1787, 155, 191.
Oswego,
trading post, 102, 105, 333;
Johnson at, 132, 133;
fort, 219;
village, 220, 221.
Pennsylvania,
canals, 284;
railroads, 291–297, 299, 302, 368.
Perrot, Nicholas, 201.
Perry, Oliver Hazard,
early life, 181;
in charge of Lake Erie fleet, 181–182;
battle of Lake Erie, 183–187, 190.
Pontiac,
meets Rogers, 113;
character and early career, 113–116;
blockades Detroit, 119–131;
later life and death, 133.
Pouchot, Capt., French officer at Niagara, 105;
besieged by English, 106–111;
surrenders, 111.
Prideaux, Gen., killed at Niagara, 105, 106.
Proctor, Gen. Henry,
at Malden, 180, 187;
defeated, 188, 189.
Radisson, 39.
Railroads,
Mohawk and Hudson, 238, 240;
New York Central, 241, 291, 298;
Michigan Central,
284, 287, 288;
Kalamazoo and Erie, 285, 286;
Michigan Southern, 285;
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, 288–291;
New York and Erie, 291–298;
Illinois Central, 305, 306;
Iron Mountain Road, 351;
_see also under_ Roads.
Rivers,
Chicago, 70, 218, 222;
Cuyahoga, 113, 219;
Detroit, _see under_ Detroit River;
Fox-Wisconsin, 98, 218;
Genesee, 56, 220, 233, 235, 246, 252, 257;
Illinois, 66, 71, 106;
Maumee, 133, 159, 178, 179, 218, 276, 284;
Milwaukee, 223;
Mississippi, 12, 49, 104, 154, 155, 201–203, 211, 218, 225, 299;
Mohawk, 232, 237, 246, 252, 259, 264;
Niagara, _see under_ Niagara River;
Ohio, 49, 104, 154, 158, 165, 228, 284, 302;
Oswego, 102;
Ottawa, 10, 13, 27, 51, 90, 154, 218;
Raisin, 179–181;
Rock, 201–208, 212;
Sandusky, 183, 187;
St. Croix, 225, 344;
St. Joseph’s, 70, 119, 161, 218, 275;
St. Lawrence, 12, 13, 74, 84, 96, 104, 147, 236;
Thames, 188–190;
Wabash, 177, 218;
Wisconsin, 201, 202, 210, 211, 212.
Roads,
buffalo roads, 229, 230;
Indian trails, 230–232;
turnpikes, 232–236, 247–250;
log-roads, 243;
railroads, 238–241, 283–298, 305, 344, 351, 353.
Rochester,
founded, 220;
turnpike to, 235, 236;
on Erie Canal, 252;
canal celebration at, 257, 258.
Rochester, Nathaniel, 220, 235.
Rogers, Major Robert,
meets Pontiac, 113;
at Detroit, 116, 128, 129.
Rome, 232, 258, 259.
Saginaw, 198, 344.
St. Clair, Gen., his defeat, 156–159, 174.
St. Clair, Lake, named, 63, 64.
Saint Lusson, Daumont de, his ceremony at Sault Ste. Marie, 40–48.
Sandusky,
in 1840, 268, 272, 273;
Underground Railroad station, 302;
in Civil War, 322–325, 328;
_see also under_ Forts.
Sandwich,
American army at, 168, 169;
evacuated by British, 187, 188.
Sault Ste. Marie,
discovered, 34, 35, 39;
Saint Lusson at, 39–48;
Henry at, 137, 145–148;
Cass at, 199;
Margaret Fuller at, 282;
“Soo” Canal built, 7, 8, 351, 362–365;
commerce of, 8, 364, 372.
Schenectady, 232, 238, 240, 268.
Scott, Gen. Winfield, in Black Hawk War, 207, 212.
Ships,
kinds of,
bateau, 127, 129, 358, 359;
canal boat, 255–259, 261–264;
canoe, 356–359;
pirogue, 359;
sailing vessel, 359, 360, 365;
steamboats, 268, 269, 279, 360–362, 371;
steel freighters, 365–370;
whalebacks, 370, 371;
ice-breakers, 371, 372;
_Griffon_,
first sailing vessel on the lakes, 51–69;
built by La Salle, 51–60;
on the lakes, 61–68;
lost, 69, 359, 373;
_Beaver_, at Detroit, 120, 127, 359;
_Gladwin_, at Detroit, 120, 126, 127, 130, 359;
ships in battle of Lake Erie, 183–187;
on Erie Canal, 255–259;
in Civil War, 322–326, 329;
_Walk-in-the-Water_, first steamboat on the lakes, 360, 361, 373.
Sons of Liberty, 318–322, 328.
Stage wagons, 234, 236, 243–245, 247, 248.
Superior,
Indian trading station, 224, 225;
became a town, 225;
commerce of, 344, 369.
Superior, Lake,
discovered and explored, 39, 198–200, 224;
settlement on, 225;
commerce of, 336–341, 344, 347–354, 357, 360–370.
Syracuse (Onondaga), 232, 252, 264.
Taylor, Col. Zachary, 207.
Tecumseh,
leads Indian uprising, 165, 166;
with the British, 169, 170, 187–189;
killed, 189.
Toledo,
in 1840, 266, 276;
terminus of canal and railroad, 284, 287;
rapid growth, 375, 383.
Tolls, table of, 235, 236.
Tonty, companion of La Salle, 56, 70.
Tonty, Madame, 96.
Toronto, 148, 219.
Tower, Charlemagne, opens iron mines, 352, 354.
Travel,
bibliography, 389–391;
to Lake Erie, in 1796, 242–246;
in 1811, 246–250;
on Erie Canal, 261–263;
on Great Lakes in 1840, 266–282.
Travellers,
John Harriott, 242–246;
John Melish, 246–248;
an Englishwoman, 248, 249;
Anne Royall, 261–263;
Margaret Fuller, 278–282.
Treaties,
treaty of Paris, 1782, 153, 154;
Jay’s treaty, 1796, 163;
treaty of Ghent, 1814, 190;
_see also_ Indian treaties.
Turnpikes, _see under_ Roads.
Two Harbors, 353, 354.
Underground Railroad, 301, 302.
Utica (Fort Schuyler), 232, 233, 238, 245, 248, 260, 262.
_Walk-in-the-Water_, _see under_ Ships.
Wayne, Anthony,
Indian campaign, 156–164;
makes treaty of Greenville, 162;
death, 164.
Wells, William, at Fort Dearborn massacre, 174–177.
Wigwam, Republican, 311–315.
Wisconsin,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
called Huron district, 193;
Black Hawk War in, 201, 210–212;
in 1840, 266, 267;
lumber trade, 343–346;
mineral wealth, 351, 352, 354.
Stories from American History
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Transcriber’s Note
Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have
been retained. If there were small-caps, Small capitals changed to all
capitals.
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
The transcriber was born and raised in the Great Lakes region (the
greater Cleveland area) and still lives there as of this writing.
p. 332: changed “Groseillers” to “Groseilliers” (Radisson and
Groseilliers returned to Quebec)
p. 395: changed “Groseillers” to “Groseilliers” (Groseilliers, 39.)
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