Part 3

The account written by Mrs. Baird in her old age is printed in the Wisconsin Historical Society's collections. She remembers distinctly the house and its surroundings. "It was a large, one-story building," she said, "with an exceptionally high attic. The front door opened into a wide hall that led through to the kitchen, which was spacious and bright, made so by the large fireplace. Four rooms opened into the hall, two on each side, and the attic contained four rooms." There was room in the house for all the members of the Kinzie family besides quite a number of servants and helpers.

The only way of crossing the river, she says, was by a wooden canoe or "dugout," which was used even by the children, who became very skillful in navigating the deep and slow-moving stream which separated the house from the fort. Besides amusing themselves in the canoe, often called a pirogue, the children found delight in running among the sand-hills along the lake shore and "tumbling down their sides."

Mrs. Baird was the daughter of a half-breed mother whose mother was a member of the Ottawa tribe of Indians. "To know we had Indian blood in our veins," she writes, "was in one respect a safeguard, in another a great risk. Each tribe was ever at enmity with the others. No one could foretell what might happen when by chance two or more tribes should meet or encamp at any one place at the same time. This, however, would be of rare occurrence. Unless on the warpath Indians keep by themselves."

John Harris Kinzie, the oldest son of John Kinzie, spent the years from his infancy to the age of nine living with his parents in the Kinzie mansion. There were no schools in the vicinity, and young John had to depend upon chance opportunities of obtaining the rudiments of an education. It is related that among the supplies consigned to John Kinzie, arriving by the "annual schooner," there was found a spelling book inside a chest of tea which the elder Kinzie gave to his son. With the aid of his father's step-brother, Robert Forsyth, then a member of Mr. Kinzie's family, young John learned his first lessons. In later years he said the odor of tea always reminded him of the spelling book he used to study in his boyhood.

The children of the Kinzie family, as well as those of the officers and soldiers at the fort who had their families with them,--as a number of them did,--were formed into classes and taught by a soldier of some education whose term of service had expired, but on account of his irregular habits the school was discontinued after some months.

A brief sketch of General Henry Dearborn, already referred to in this history, should be given in this place. The name of Dearborn is often met with among Chicago localities and institutions; and the city is honored in thus perpetuating the name and memory of a man who, though he had never visited this vicinity, held positions of responsibility and honor in the affairs of the country.

General Dearborn was a native of New Hampshire, and at the time of the establishment of Fort Dearborn was a man somewhat past fifty years of age. After passing through the best schools of the State in which he was born he studied medicine and practiced that profession for some years before the breaking out of the Revolutionary War. At an early period in that struggle he raised a company of militia and joined a regiment commanded by Colonel John Stark, who afterward became the hero of the battle of Bennington. As a captain young Dearborn took part in the battle of Bunker Hill, and at a later time was with Arnold on his unsuccessful expedition to Canada, where he was taken prisoner by the British. He was exchanged and again entered the service, and as major assisted in the capture of Burgoyne's army at the battle of Saratoga.

It is related in a recent history:

During this campaign he kept a journal, which is now preserved in the Boston Public Library. The entry made the day of the surrender is as follows:

"This day the great Mr. Burgoyne with his whole army surrendered themselves as prisoners of war with all their public stores; and after grounding their arms marched off for New England--the greatest conquest ever known."

At a later period of the war Dearborn was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel and was present at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. After this event he wrote in his journal: "Here ends my military life." He was, however, afterwards commissioned a major-general of militia by the State of Massachusetts, of which State he was a citizen. He became a member of Congress in 1801, and was appointed Secretary of War by President Jefferson. He remained in the cabinet of President Jefferson throughout the eight years of his administration.

In the War of 1812 General Dearborn was appointed senior major-general by President Madison, and rendered distinguished services on the Niagara frontier during that war. He died in Boston at the advanced age of seventy-nine years.

A portrait of General Dearborn is at the present time in the possession of the Calumet Club of Chicago, painted by Gilbert Stuart. John Wentworth once said: "One of the highest compliments paid to General Dearborn is the fact that whilst the names of so many of our streets, have been changed to gratify the whims of our aldermen, no attempt has been made to change that of Dearborn Street. Not only is this the case but the name Dearborn continues to be prefixed to institutions, enterprises, and objects which it is the desire of projectors to honor."

There was an interpreter at the fort, John Lalime by name, who was at enmity with John Kinzie, the Indian trader. One afternoon early in the year 1812, Mr. Kinzie had occasion to be at the fort, and when the gates were about to be closed for the night he passed out to return to his home across the river. Just after his departure Lalime also passed out at the gate, and knowing the state of feeling between the two men, Lieutenant Helm, who was the officer on duty, called out to Mr. Kinzie to beware of Lalime. The latter was following the other closely and his actions were threatening.

Lieutenant Helm had married Mr. Kinzie's step-daughter, Margaret McKillip, some years before, and the relationship thus existing doubtless caused a feeling of natural anxiety on the part of the officer for Mr. Kinzie's safety. When Mr. Kinzie heard the warning shout he turned suddenly upon the man following him and at the same time saw that he was armed with a pistol in his hand and a knife in his belt. Mr. Kinzie himself was totally unprovided with weapons, but notwithstanding, he grappled with Lalime at once. In the course of the struggle which ensued the pistol was discharged, though without harm to either antagonist. Both men attempted to get possession of the knife and both were wounded by it. Mr. Kinzie, however, succeeded in inflicting a fatal thrust upon his adversary, while he himself was covered with blood as a result of the encounter. Lalime fell dead upon the ground.

This tragic affair was witnessed by the people at the fort, and by a half-breed woman who was a servant in the Kinzie family from the door of the Kinzie house. As Lalime had many friends at the fort who at first thought that Mr. Kinzie had attacked him without provocation there was a movement to take Kinzie into custody; and fearing that a squad would be sent for this purpose, he concealed himself in the woods near his house, and soon after embarked in a boat with an Indian guide for Milwaukee, where one of his trading posts was located.

An inquiry into all the circumstances of the affair was made by the officers of the garrison, and a verdict of justifiable homicide was reached. Mr. Kinzie, hearing of this, returned to his home as soon as he had sufficiently recovered from his wound to do so.

It was said by Gurdon S. Hubbard in later years that Mr. Kinzie deeply regretted the killing of Lalime, and further, that he firmly believed the deed was committed in self-defence. Lalime was an educated man and was a favorite with the military people. He was buried on the north side of the river, and for many years thereafter the grave was enclosed with a small picket fence, which was cared for by Mr. Kinzie and his family.

When Captain Nathan Heald assumed command at Fort Dearborn, in succession to Captain Whistler, he entered upon his duties with much reluctance, owing to the remoteness of the post and the loneliness of its situation. He was a much younger man than his predecessor, being at the time thirty-five years of age and unmarried, and found himself associated with officers still younger than he was. A few days after his arrival at his new post he wrote Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, commandant at Detroit, that he was not pleased with his situation and could not bear to think of staying there during the winter. "It is a good place," he wrote, "for a man who has a family, and can content himself to live remote from the civilized part of the world."

Two years previous to this time Captain William Wells had taken his niece, Rebekah Wells, daughter of his brother. Captain Samuel Wells of Louisville, Kentucky, to Fort Wayne on a visit, and while there she met Captain Heald, who was on duty at that point. In the summer following Heald's arrival at Fort Dearborn he obtained a leave of absence for the purpose of going to Louisville to be married to Rebekah Wells. The marriage followed his arrival there and was doubtless the result of the acquaintance formed at the time of the Fort Wayne visit, the first of many romantic episodes.

The journey of the newly wedded couple from the old Kentucky home to their new place of residence at Fort Dearborn was made in May, 1811, and it is interesting to learn that the whole distance was covered in six days. There were three in the party--the captain, his bride, and a little slave girl who begged to be taken along. Each had a horse to ride, and an extra horse carried the baggage; they traveled by compass.

On their arrival the garrison turned out to receive them with military honors. Rebekah was much pleased with her reception, and found everything to her liking; she liked the wild place, the wild lake, and the wild Indians, then indeed friendly enough, but soon to become fierce enemies. Everything suited her ways and disposition, "being on the wild order" herself, she said; and we can well imagine Captain Heald becoming, in his changed circumstances, quite reconciled to the situation with which he was so much displeased the year before.

Captain Heald was a martinet in the matter of military discipline, and during the two years or more that elapsed between his arrival and the evacuation of the fort he became unpopular by reason of his strict insistence upon every detail required by the military regulations. It had become the recognized practice in isolated garrisons at lonely posts to relax somewhat the discipline usually found necessary where large numbers of troops were assembled.

But while Captain Heald was so exacting in the affairs of the post, he applied the same principles to his own conduct where the orders of his superior officers were concerned, even when conditions would have warranted independent action.

Heald would have been an ideal officer on the staff of a general where it was necessary to render instant and implicit obedience to orders, and in such a position his services would have been without doubt faithful and efficient. But when serving at a distant post, where much latitude in complying with instructions might have been permitted and justified, he failed to use the discretion that he was unquestionably entitled to exercise under such circumstances. Heald was not able to see beyond the letter of his instructions, and to the literal manner in which he construed them may be attributed in great measure the disasters that overtook the fort and its occupants.

Captain William Wells, the hero of the story we are here relating, was born about 1770, in Kentucky. His career throughout is surrounded with an atmosphere of romance. When Mr. Roosevelt was writing his _Winning of the West_, he did not fail to see the picturesque figure of Captain Wells among the pioneer scenes which he there delineates with characteristic vigor and sympathy. We commemorate his name and deeds in our street nomenclature of the present day, and the historical interest which attaches to the name of Wells Street would be worthily supplemented by the people of Chicago in the erection of a statue to his memory.

William Wells and Samuel Wells, the noted Indian fighters, were brothers living in Louisville, Kentucky, belonging to a family of early settlers in that region. When twelve years of age, William was carried off by a band of Miami Indians, whose chief, Little Turtle, adopted him in his family. With this tribe William remained some years, and when he arrived at manhood the chief gave him his daughter in marriage. He became greatly attached to the people of the tribe, and in the disastrous campaigns of Generals Harmer and St. Clair, in 1790 and 1791, when those two generals were successively defeated, he fought with his tribe against the Americans.

The Wells family learned of William's presence with the Indians and of the attachment he had formed for savage life and society, and during one of the intervals of peaceful relations they endeavored to win him back to his early home and family connection. Messages were sent to him begging him to abandon his savage life and return to his family. Referring to this period in the life of William Wells, Rebekah Wells, his niece, said: "We all wanted Uncle William, whom we called our 'Indian Uncle,' to leave the Indians who had stolen him in his boyhood, and come home and belong to his white relations. He hung back for years, and even at last when he agreed to visit them the proviso was made that he should be allowed to bring along an Indian escort with him, so that he should not be compelled to stay with them if he did not want to do so."

Accordingly he came with a company of his Indian friends, and after seeing the old places and meeting once more with his relatives, he became convinced that he ought to remain with them, though he decided first to return to his father-in-law. Little Turtle, for whom he felt a strong attachment, and acquaint him with his determination. He frankly told the chief that though he had lived happily among his tribe for many years, had fought for them in the past against the whites, the time had now come when he was going home to his relatives, thereafter to live with and fight for his own flesh and blood.

He was permitted to depart, and soon after joined the army of General Anthony Wayne, who had been sent into the Western country by President Washington to repair the disasters that had overtaken the Americans in the previous campaigns. He was made captain of a company of scouts, and performed effective service in the march of Wayne's army through the wilderness, ending with the battle of Fallen Timbers, in the fall of 1794.

Mr. Roosevelt, in the work to which we have already referred, relates some of Wells's trilling adventures while engaged in this service, among others the following:

On one of Wells's scouts he and his companions came across a family of Indians in a canoe by the river bank. The white woodrangers were as ruthless as their red foes, sparing neither sex nor age; and the scouts were cocking their rifles when Wells recognized the Indians as being the family into which he had been adopted, and by which he had been treated as a son and brother. Springing forward he swore immediate death to the first man who fired; and then told his companions who the Indians were. The scouts at once dropped their weapons, shook hands with the Miamis, and sent them off unharmed.

After the campaign had terminated in the utter defeat of the tribes, Captain Wells was joined by his Indian wife and children. Wells settled on a farm and was made a justice of the peace and appointed Indian agent at Fort Wayne. His children "grew up and married well in the community," says Roosevelt in his history, "so that their blood now flows in the veins of many of the descendants of the old pioneers." One of these descendants, writing to the Hon. John Wentworth at Chicago, said of his ancestors: "We are proud of our Indian (Little Turtle) blood, and of our Captain Wells blood. We try to keep up the customs of our ancestors, and dress occasionally in Indian costumes. We take no exceptions when people speak of our Indian parentage." Referring to the later services of Captain Wells in the Tippecanoe campaign and of his tragic end at the Fort Dearborn massacre, this letter-writer further says: "We take pleasure in sending to you the tomahawk which Captain Wells had at the time of his death, and which was brought to his family by an Indian who was in the battle. We also have a dress sword which was presented to him by General William Henry Harrison, and a great many books which he had, showing that even when he lived among the Indians he was trying to improve himself."

Wells was indeed a man of fair education for those times, as his correspondence, preserved in the _American State Papers_, shows. Wentworth, in one of his lectures, printed in the _Fergus Historical Series_, says that all of Captain Wells's children were well educated, one of them, William Wayne Wells, having graduated at West Point in 1821.

Little Turtle, the Miami chief, and father-in-law of Captain Wells, became reconciled to the Americans after Wayne's victory at the battle of Fallen Timbers, and indeed became their fast friend to the end of his life. In 1797, three years after the battle. Captain Wells accompanied Little Turtle on a visit to the East, and no doubt met President Washington himself at the seat of government, which was at that time in Philadelphia. Little Turtle was frequently at Chicago during the following years, but lived near Fort Wayne, where he died in July, 1812. This was only a few weeks before the dreadful massacre of that year. Wells himself was also a frequent visitor at Chicago during these years and was thoroughly familiar with the surrounding country.

Some account of the Indian tribes and their chiefs will aid the reader in obtaining a clearer knowledge of the conditions and surroundings of the garrison and the few civilian traders dwelling at this remote outpost of the frontier, during the next few years after the establishment of Fort Dearborn.

The Potawatamis were the principal tribe of Indians met with by the whites in the vicinity of Fort Dearborn in 1803, and they continued here until their final removal to their new reservations in 1835. Other tribes were represented by occasional parties camping in their wigwams on the banks of the river near the fort. Among such visitors were Winnebagoes, Miamis, Ottawas, and Chippewas.

When the early explorers passed over the Chicago Portage more than a century before, they found the Illinois Indians in possession of most of the territory of what is now the northern portion of Illinois; but their country was frequently invaded by the Iroquois Indians from the East and their allies, and their numbers rapidly diminished, until the last remnant of the tribe was exterminated, about the year 1770, at Starved Rock, on the Illinois River. It is worthy of notice here that more Indians perished and more tribes were exterminated in intertribal conflicts than in all the wars that have taken place between the white race and the red.

The Potawatami tribe had formerly made their abiding-place near the shores of Green Bay, except when roaming in quest of game into neighboring regions. A portion of the tribe, which was scattered over the southern peninsula of Michigan and continually advancing toward the south, began to press upon the Illinois tribes, which included, besides the Illinois, the Kickapoos and Miamis. The Indians from Michigan in time succeeded in reaching the region of the Chicago Portage, where they met the southward advance of their former friends from Wisconsin, from whom, they had been long separated. The Michigan Indians, when they appeared in this region, became known as the "Potawatamis of the Woods," or "Woods Indians," while those who had come from Wisconsin more recently, having in their movements wandered over the prairie country, became known as the "Potawatamis of the Prairies," or the "Prairie Band." The latter were also often referred to as "Plains Indians." The two divisions of the tribe, having thus met after so long a separation, had become quite different from each other in their habits and customs, and also in their disposition and character.

The Woods Indians were engaged in agriculture to some extent, and were susceptible to the influences of civilization and religion; the Prairie Indians "despised the cultivation of the soil," says Judge Caton, "as too mean even for their women and children, and deemed the captures of the chase the only fit food for a valorous people." In other respects the two divisions were regarded as a single tribe. The northern portion of Illinois was particularly the possession of the Potawatamis, over which they ranged freely, though Chicago and its immediate vicinity was the most important point in their territory where councils were held and trading was carried on.

Caton writes:

The relations existing between the Potawatamis and the Ottawas were of the most harmonious character. They lived together almost as one people, and were joint owners of their hunting grounds. Their relations were quite as intimate and friendly as existed among the different bands of the same tribe. Nor were the Chippewas scarcely more strangers to the Potawatamis and the Ottawas than the latter were to each other. They claimed an interest in the land occupied, to a certain extent by all jointly, so that all three tribes joined in the first treaty for the sale of their lands ever made to the United States.

The relations existing between the whites in and around Fort Dearborn and their Indian neighbors were generally harmonious throughout the interval of time from the first occupation of the fort in 1803 until 1811, when Tecumseh became active in stirring up the Western tribes to oppose the settlement of Western lands by the whites. Tecumseh was a chief of the Shawnee tribe, whose country was on the lower Wabash. He believed that this country was created by the Great Spirit for the exclusive use of the Indians, and that the grants of land made by the tribes in their treaties with the United States Government were not valid or binding unless the consent of "all the tribes of the continent" had been obtained.