Iroquois County, Illinois - Chapter 20: The War for the Fur Trade, 1880

Chapter 20: The War for the Fur Trade

FORMERLY the great Northwest abounded in game and water-fowl. The small lakes and lesser water-courses were full of beaver, otter and muskrats. In the forests were found the marten, the raccoon, and other fur-bearing animals. The plains, partially submerged, and the rivers, whose current had a sluggish flow, the shallow lakes, producing annual crops of wild rice, of nature's own sowing, teemed with wild geese, duck and other aquatic fowl bursting in their very fatness. *

The shy deer and the lordly elk, crowned with outspreading horns, grazed upon the plain and in the open woods, while the solitary moose browsed upon the buds in the thick copsewood that gave him food and a hiding place as well. The fleet-footed antelope nibbled at the tender grasses on the prairies, or bounded away over the ridges to hide in the valleys beyond, from the approach of the stealthy wolf or wily Indian. The belts of timber along the water-courses

*"The plains and prairies (referring to the country on either .side of the Illinois River) are all covered with buffaloes, roebucks, hinds, stags, and different kind of fallow deer. The feathered game is also here in the greatest abundance. We find, particularly, quantities of swan, geese and ducks. The wild oats, which grow naturally on the plains, fatten them to such a degree that they often die from being smothered in their own grease.11 - Father Marest's letter, written in 1712. We have already seen, from a description given on page 103, that water- fowl were equally abundant upon the Mauvnee.

t In a letter of Father Rasles, dated October 12, 1723, there is a fine description of the game found in the Illinois country. It reads: " Of all the nations of Canada, there are none who live in so great abundance of everything as the Illinois. Their rivers are covered with swans, bustards, ducks and tea's. One can scarcely travel a league without finding a prodigious multitude of turkeys, who keep together in flocks, often to the number of two hundred. They are much larger than those we see in France. I had the curiosity to weigh one, which I found to be thhty-six pounds. They have hanging from the neck a kind of tuft of hair half a foot in length.

"Bears and stags are found there in very great numbers, and buffaloes and roebucks are also seen in vast herds. Not a year passes but they (the Indians) kill more than a thousand roebucks and more than two thousand buffaloes. From four to five thousand of the latter can often be seen at one view grazing on the prairies. They have a hump on the back and an exceedingly large head. The hair, except that on the head, is curled and soft as wool. The flesh has naturally a salt taste, and is so light that, although eaten entirely raw, it does not cause the least indigestion. When they have killed a buffalo, which appears to them too lean, they content themselves with taking the tongue, and going in search of one which is fatter.11 Vide Kip's Jesuit Missions, pp. 38, 39.

The Hunter'S Paradise

afforded lodgment for the bear, and were the trellises that supported the tangled wild grapevines, the fruit of which, to this animal, was an article of food. The bear had for his neighbor the panther, the wild cat and the lynx, whose carnivorous appetites were appeased in the destruction of other animals.

Immense herds of buffalo roamed over the extensive area bounded on the east by the Alleghanies and on the north by the lakes, embracing the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and the southern half of Michigan. Their trails checkered the prairies of Indiana and Illinois in every direction, the marks of which, deep worn in the turf, remained for many years after the disappearance of the animals that made them.* Their numbers when the country was first known to Europeans were immense, and beyond computation. In their migrations southward in the fall, and on their return from the blue-grass regions of Kentucky in the spring, the Ohio River was obstructed for miles during the time occupied by the vast herds in crossing it. Indeed, the French called the buffalo the "Illinois ox," on account of their numbers found in "the country of the Illinois," using that expression in its wider sense, as explained on a preceding page. So great importance was attached to the supposed commercial value of the buffalo for its wool that when Mons. Iberville, in 1698. was engaged to undertake the colonization of Louisiana, the king instructed him to look after the buffalo wool as one of the most important of his duties; and Father Charlevoix, while traveling through "The Illinois," observed that he was surprised that the buffalo had been so long neglected, f Among the favorite haunts of the buffalo were the marshes of the Upper Kankakee, the low lands about the lakes of northern Indiana, where the oozy soil furnished early as well as late pasturage, the briny earth upon the Au Glaize, and the Salt Licks upon the Wabash and Illinois rivers were tempting places of resort. From the summit of the high hill at Ouiatanon, overlooking the Wea plains to the east and the Grand Prairie to the west,

* " Nothing," says Father Charlevoix, writing of the country about the confluence of the Fox with the Illinois River, " is to be seen in this course but immense prairies, interspersed with small groves which seem to have been planted by the hands of men. The grass is so very high that a man would be almost lost in it, and through which paths are to be found everywhere, as ivell trodden as they could have been in the most populated countries, although nothing passes over them but buffaloes, and from time to time a herd of deer or a few roebuck": Charlevoix' Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 200.

as far as the eye could reach in either direction, the plains were seen covered with groups, grazing together, or, in long files, stretching away in the distance, their dark forms, contrasting with the greensward upon which they fed or strolled, and inspiring the enthusiasm of the Frenchman, who gave the description quoted on page 104. Still later, when passing through the prairies of Illinois, on his way from Vincennes to Ouiatanon, - more a prisoner than an ambassador, - George Croghan makes the following entry in his daily journal: "18th and 19th of June, 1765. - We traveled through a prodigious large meadow, called the Pyankeshaws' hunting ground. Here is no wood ~ to be seen, and the country appears like an ocean. The ground is exceedingly rich and partially overgrown with wild hemp.* The land is well watered and full of Ijnffalo, deer, bears, and all kinds of wild game. 20th and 21st. - We passed through some very large meadows, part of which belonged to the Pyankeshaws.on the Yermilion River. The country and soil were much the same as that we traveled over for these three days past. Wild hemp grows here in abundance. The game is very plenty. At any time in a half hour we could kill as much as we wanted, "t

Gen. Clark, in the postscript of his letter dated November, 1779, narrating his campaign in the Illinois country, says, concerning the prairies between Kaskaskia and Vincennes, that "there are large meadows extending beyond the reach of the eye, variegated with groves of trees appearing like islands in the seas, covered with buifaloes and other game. In many places, with a good glass, you may see all that are upon their feet in a half million acres. "J It is not known at what time the buffalo was last seen east of the Mississippi. The Indians had a tradition that the cold winter of 17 - , - called by them "the great cold" on account of its severity, - destroyed them. " The snow was so deep, and lay upon the ground for such a length of time, that the buffalo became poor and too weak to resist the inclemency of the weather;" great numbers of them perished, singly and in groups, and their bones, either as isolated skeletons or in bleaching piles, remained and were found over the country for many years afterwards. §

* Further on in his Journal Col. Croghan again refers to " wild hemp, growing in the prairies, ten or twelve feet high, which if properly cultivated would prove as good and answer all the purposes of the hemp we cultivate." Other writers also mention the wild hemp upon the prairies, and it seems to have been supplanted by other grasses that have followed in the changes of vegetable growth.

§ On the 4th of October, 1786, one day's march on the road from Vincennes to the Ohio Falls, Captains Zigler's and Strong's companies of regulars came across five buffalo. The animals tried to force a passage through the column, when the commanding officer

The Destruction Of The Game

Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians hunted the game for the purpose of supplying themselves with the necessary food and clothing. The scattered tribes (whose numbers early writers greatly exaggerated) were few, when compared with the area of the country they occupied, and the wild animals were so abundant that enough to supply their wants could be captured near at hand with such rude weapons as their ingenuity fashioned out of wood and stone. With the Europeans came a change. The fur of many of the animals possessed a commercial value in the marts of Europe, where they were bought and used as ornaments and dress by the aristocracy, whose wealth and taste fashioned them into garments of extraordinary richness. Canada was originally settled with a view to the fur trade, and this trade was, to her people, of the first importance - the chief motor of her growth and prosperity. The Indians were supplied with guns, knives and hatchets by the Europeans, in place of their former inferior weapons. Thus encouraged and equipped, and .accompanied by the coureur des bois, the remotest regions were penetrated, and the fur trade extended to the most distant tribes. Stimulated with a desire for blankets, cotton goods and trinkets, the Indians now began a war upon the wild animals in earnest ; and their wanton destruction for their skins and furs alone from that period forward was so enormous that within the next two or three generations the improvident Indians in many localities could scarcely find enough game for their own subsistence.

The coureur des lois were a class that had much to do with the development of trade and with giving a knQwledge of the geography of the country. They became extremely useful to the merchants engaged in the fur trade, and were often a source of great annoyance to the colonial authorities. Three or four of these pe,ople, having obtained goods upon credit, would join their stock, put their property into a birch bark canoe, which they worked themselves, and accompany the Indians in their excursions or go directly ordered the men to fire upon them. The discharge killed three and wounded the others: Joseph Buell's Narrative Journal, published in S. P. Hildreth's Pioneer History. Thirteen years later, in December, 1799, Gov. St. Clair and Judge Jacob Burnett, on their way overland from Cincinnati to Vincennes, camped out over night, at the close of one of their days' journeys, not a great ways east of where the old road from Louisville to Vincennes crosses White River. The next day they encountered a severe snow-storm, during which they surprised eight or ten buffalo, sheltering themselves from the storm behind a beech-tree full of dead leaves which had fallen beside of the trace and hid the travelers from their view. The tree and the noise of the wind among its leaves prevented the buffalo from discovering the parties until the latter had approached within two rods of the place where they stood. They then took to their heels and were soon out of sight. One of the company drew a pistol and fired, but without effect: Burnett's Notes on the Northwest Territory, p. 72.

into the country where they knew they were to hunt.* These voyages were extended twelve or fifteen months (sometimes longer) before the traders would return laden with rich cargoes of fur, and often followed by great numbers of the natives. During the short time required to settle their accounts with the merchants and procure credit for a new stock, the traders would contrive to squander their gains before they returned to their favorite mode of life among the savages, their labor being rewarded by indulging themselves in one month's dissipation for fifteen of exposure and hardship. "We may not be able to explain the cause, but experience proves that it requires much less time for a civilized people to degenerate into the ways of savage life than is required for the savage to rise into a state of civilization. The indifference about amassing property, and the pleasure of living free from all restraint, soon introduced a licentiousness among the coureur des bois that did not escape the eye of the missionaries, who complained, with good reason, that they were a disgrace to the Christian religion, "f

" The food of the coureur des bois when on their long expeditions; was Indian corn, prepared for use by boiling it in strong lye to remove the hull, after which it was mashed and dried. In this state it is soft and friable lijce rice. The allowance for each man on the voyage, was one quart per day ; and a bushel, with two pounds of prepared fat, is reckoned a month's subsistence. JSTo other allowance is made of any kind, not even of salt, and bread is never thought of; nevertheless the men are healthy on this diet, and capable of performing great labor. This mode of victualing was essential to the trade, which was extended to great distances, and in canoes so small as not to admit of the use of any other food. If the men were supplied with bread and pork, the canoes would not carry six months' rations, while the ordinary duration of the voyage was not less than fourteen. No other men would be reconciled to such fare except the Canadians, and this fact enabled their employers to secure a monopoly of the fur trade. "^

"The old voyageurs derisively called new hands at the business mangeurs de lard (pork eaters), as, on -leaving Montreal, and while en route to Mackinaw, their rations were pork, hard bread and pea

*The merchandise was neatly tied into bundles weighing sixty or seventy pounds; the furs received in exchange were compressed into packets of about the same weight, so that they could be conveniently carried, strapped upon the back of the voyageur, around the portages and other places where the loaded canoes could effect no passage.

The Coureur Des Bois

"The coureur des lois were men of easy., virtue. They would eat, riot, drink and play as long as their furs held out," says La Hontan, ' ' and when these were gone they would sell their embroidery, their laces and their clothes. The proceeds of these exhausted, they were forced to go upon new voyages for subsistence, "f

They did not scruple to intermarry with the Indians, among whom they spent the greater part of their lives. They made excellent soldiers, and in bush fighting and border warfare they were more than a match for the British regulars. "Their merits were hardihood and skill in woodcraft ; their chief faults were insubordination and lawlessness."^:

Such were the characteristics of the French traders or coureur des bois. They penetrated the remotest parts, ^voyaged upon all of our western rivers, and traveled many of the insignificant streams that afforded hardly water enough to float a canoe. Their influence over the Indians (to whose mode of life they readily adapted themselves) was almost supreme. They were efficient in the service of their king, and materially assisted in staying the downfall of French rule in America.

There is no data from which to ascertain the value of the fur trade, as there were no regular accounts kept. The value of the trade to the French, in 1703, was estimated at two millions of Jivres, and this could have been from only a partial return, as a large per cent of the trade was carried on clandestinely through Albany and New York, of which the French authorities in Canada could have no knowledge. With the loss of Canada, and the west to France, and owing to the dislike of the Indians toward the English, and the want of experience by the latter, the fur trade, controlled at Montreal, fell into decay, and the Hudson Bay Company secured the advantages of its downfall. During the winter of 1783-4 some merchants

*Vol. 2 Wisconsin Historical Collection, p. 110. Judge Lockwood gives a very fine sketch of the coureur des bois and the manner of their employment, in the paper from which we have quoted.

\ Parkman's Count Frontenac and New France, p. 209. Judge Lockwood, in the paper referred to, speaking of the coureur des bois as their relations existed to the fur trade in 1817, thus describes them: " These men epgaged in Canada, generally for five jears, for Mackinaw and its dependencies, transferable like cattle, to any one who wanted them, at generally about 500 livres a year, or, in our currency, about $83.33, furnished with a yearly equipment or outfit of two cotton shirts, one three-point or triangular blanket, a portage collar and one pair of shoes. They were obliged to purchase their moccasins, tobacco and pipes at any price the trader saw fit to charge for them. At the end of five years the voyageurs were in debt from $50 to $150, and -could not leave the country until they paid their indebtedness."

of Canada united their trade under the name of the ^Northwest Company"; they did not get successfully to work until 1787. During that year the venture did not exceed forty thousand pounds, but by exertion and the enterprise of the proprietors it was brought, in eleven years, to more than triple that amount (equal to six hundred thousand dollars), yielding proportionate profits, and surpassing anything then known in America.*

The fur trade was conducted by the English, and subsequently by the Americans, substantially upon the system originally established by the French, with this distinction, that the monopoly was controlfed by French officers and favorites, to whom the trade for particular districts was assigned, while the English and Americans controlled it through companies operating either under charters or permits from the government.

Goods for Indian trao^e were guns, ammunition, steel for striking fire, gun-flints, and other supplies to repair fire-arms; knives, hatchets, kettles, beads, men's shirts, blue and red cloths for blankets and petticoats ; vermilion, red, yellow, green and blue ribbons, generally of English manufacture ; needles, thread and awls ; lookingglasses, children's toys, woolen blankets, razors for shaving the head, paints of all colors, tobacco, and, more than all, spirituous liquors. For these articles the Indians gave in exchange the s'kins of deer, bear, otter, squirrel, marten, lynx, fox, wolf, buifalo, moose, and particularly the beaver, the highest prized of them all. Such was the value attached to the skins and fur of the last that it became the standard of value. All other values were measured by the beaver, the same as we now use gold, in adjusting commercial transactions. All differences in exchanges of property or in payment for labor were first reduced in value to the beaver skin. Money was rarely received or paid at any of the trading-posts, the only circulating medium were furs and peltries. In this exchange a pound of beaver skin was reckoned at thirty sous, an otter skin at six livres, and marten skins at thirty sous each. This was only about half of the real value of the furs, and it was therefore always agreed to pay either in furs at their equivalent cash value at the fort or double the amount reckoned at current fur value, t

When the French controlled the fur trade, the posts in the interior of the country were assigned to officers who were in favor at headquarters. As they had no money, the merchants of Quebec and Montreal supplied them on credit with the necessary goods, which were to be paid for in peltries at a price agreed upon, thus being required to earn profits for themselves and the merchant. These officers were often employed to negotiate for the king with the tribes near their trading-posts and give them goods as presents, the price for the latter being paid by the intendant upon the approval of the governor. This occasioned many hypothecated accounts, which were turned to the profit of the commandants, particularly in time of war. The commandants as well as private traders were obliged to take out a license from the governor at a cost of four or five hundred livres, in order to carry their goods to the posts, and to charge some effects to the king's account. The most distant posts in the northwest were prized the greatest, because of the abundance and low price of peltries and the high price of goods at these remote establishments.

Another kind of trade was carried on by the coureurs des bois, who, sharing the license with the officer at the post, with their canoes laden with goods, went to the villages of the Indians, and followed them on their hunting expeditions, to return after a season's trading with their canoes well loaded. If the coureurs des bois were in a condition to purchase their goods of first hands a quick fortune was assured them, although to obtain it they had to lead a most dangerous, and fatiguing life. Some of these traders would return to France after a few years' venture with wealth amounting to two million five hundred thousand livres.*

The French were not permitted to exclusively enjoy the enormous profits of the fur trade. We jiave seen, in treating of the Miami Indians, that at an early day the English and the American colonists were determined to share it, and had become sharp competitors. We have seen (page 112) that to extend their trade the English had set their allies, the Iroquois, upon the Illinois. So formidable were the inroads made by the English upon the fur trade of the French, by means of the conquests to which they had incited the Iroquois to gain over other tribes that were friendly to the French, that the. latter became "of the opinion that if the Iroquois were allowed to proceed they would not only subdue the Illinois, but become masters of all the Ottawa tribes, t and divert the trade to the English, so that it was absolutely necessary that the French should either make the Iroquois their friends or destroy them.\ You perceive, my Lord, t Whose territories embraced all the country west of Lake Huron and north of Illinois, - one of the most prolific beaver grounds in the country.

that the subject which we have discussed [referring to the efforts of the English of New York and Albany to gain the beaver trade] is to determine who will be master of the heaver trade of the south and southwest"*

In the struggle to determine who should be masters of the fur trade, the French cared as little, - perhaps less, - for their Indian allies than the British and Americans did for theirs. The blood that was shed in the English and "French colonies north of the Ohio River, for a period of over three-quarters of a century prior to 1763, might well be said to have been spilled in a war for the fur trade, f

In the strife between the rivals, - the French endeavoring to hold their former possessions, and the English to extend theirs, - the strait of Detroit was an object of concern to both. Its strategical position was such that it would give the party possessing it a decided advantage. M. Du Lute, or L'Hut, under orders from Gov. De Nonville, left Mackinaw with some fifty odd coureurs des hois in 1688, sailed down Lake Huron and threw up a small stockade fort on the west bank of the lake, where it discharges into the River St. Clair. The following year Capt. McGregory, - Major Patrick Magregore, as his name is spelled in the commission he had in his pocket over the signature of Gov. Dongan, - with sixty Englishmen and some Indians, with their merchandise loaded in thirty-two canoes, went up Lake Erie on a trading expedition among the Indians at Detroit and Mackinaw. They were encountered and captured by a body of troops under Tonty, La Forest and other officers, who, with coureur de bois and Indians from the upper country, were on their way to join the French forces of Canada in a campaign against the Iroquois villages in New York.;}: The prisoners were sent to Quebec, and the plunder distributed among the captors. Du Lute's stockade was called Fort St. Joseph. In 1688 the fort was placed in command of Baron LaHontan.§

Fort St. Joseph served the purposes for which it was constructed, and a few years later, in 1701, Mons. Cadillac established Fort Pontohartrain on the present site of the city of Detroit, for no other pur- f War was not formally declared between France and England, on account of colonial difficulties, until May, 1756, but the discursory broils between their colonies in America had been going on from the time of their establishment.

§ Fort Du Luth, or St. Joseph, as it was afterward called, was ordered to be erected in 1686. " in order to fortify the pass leading to Mackinaw against the English." Du Luth, who erected it, was in command of fifty men. Several parties of English were either captured or sent back from this post within a year or two from its establishment. Vide Paris Documents, vol. 9, pp. 300, 302. 306, 383.

English And American Traders

The French interests were soon threatened from another direction. Traders from Pennsylvania found their way westward over the mountains, where they engaged in traffic with the Indians in the valleys of eastern Ohio, arid they soon established commercial relations with the Wabash tribes, t It appears from a previous chapter that the Miamis were trading at Albany in 1708. To avert this danger the French were compelled at last to erect military posts at Fort Wayne, on the Maumee (called Fort Miamis), at Ouiatanon and Yincennes, upon the Wabash.;}: Prior to 1750 Sieur de Ligneris was commanding at Fort Ouiatanon, and St. Ange was in charge at Yincennes.

As soon as the English settlements reached the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, their traders passed over the ridge, and they found it exceedingly profitable to trade with the western Indians. They could sell the same quality of goods for a third or a half of what the French usually charged, and still make a handsome profit. This new and rich field was soon overrun by eager adventurers. In the meantime a number of gentlemen, mostly from Yirginia, procured an act of parliament constituting "The Ohio Company," and granting them six hundred thousand acres of land on or near the Ohio River. The objects of this company were to till the soil and to open up a trade with the Indians west of the Alleghanies and south of the Ohio.

The French, being well aware that the English could offer their goods to the Indians at greatly reduced rates, feared that they would lose the entire Indian trade. At first they protested " against this invasion of the rights of His Most Christian Majesty" to the governor of the English colonies. This did not produce the desired effect. Their demands were met with equivocations and delays. At last the French determined on summary measures. An order

* Statement of Mons. Cadillac of his reasons for establishing a fort on the Detroit River, copied in Sheldon's Early History of Michigan, pp. 85-90.

\ The date of the establishment of these forts is a matter of conjecture, owing to the absence of reliable data. A " Miamis " is referred to in 1719, and in the same year Sieur Duboisson was selected as a suitable person to take command at Ouiatanon, and in 1735 M. de Vincenne is alluded to, in a letter written from Kaskaskia, as commandant of the Post on the Wabash. However, owing to the successive migrations of the Miami Indians, the " Miamis " mentioned in such documents, in 1719, may have referred to the Miami and Wea villages upon the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph rivers, in the state of Michigan. The post at Vincennes, it may be safely assumed, was garrisoned as early as 1735, and Ouiatanon, below La Fayette, and Miamis, at Fort Wayne, some years before, in the order of time.

was issued to the commandants of their various posts on Lake Erie, the Ohio and the "Wabash, to seize all English traders found west of the Alleghanies. In pursuance of this order, in 1751, four English traders were captured on the Yermilion of the Wabash and sent to Canada/" Other traders, dealing with the Indians in other localities, were captured and taken to Presque Isle,f and from thence to Canada.

The contest between the rival colonies still went on, increasing in the extent of its line of operations and intensifying in the animosity of the feeling with which it was conducted. We quote from a memoir prepared early in 1752, by M. de Longueuil, commandant at Detroit, showing the state of affairs at a previous date in the Wabash country. It appears, from the letters of the commandants at the several posts named, from which the memoir is compiled, that the Indian tribes upon the Maumee and Wabash, through the successful efforts of the English, had become very much disaffected toward their old friends and masters. M. de Ligneris, commandant at the Ouyatanons, says the memoir, believes that great reliance is not to be placed on the Maskoutins, and that their remaining neutral is all that is to be expected from them and the Kickapous. He even adds that "we are not to reckon on the nations which appear in our interests ; no Wea chief has appeared at this post for a long time. M. de Villiers, commandant at the Miamis, - Ft. Wayne, - has been disappointed in his expectation of bringing the Miamis back from the White River, - part of whom had been to see him, - the small-pox having put the whole of them to rout. Coldfoot and his son have died of it, as well as a large portion of our most trusty Indians. Le Grls, chief of the Tepicons,* and his mother are likewise dead > they are a loss, because they were well disposed toward the French."

The memoir continues: "The nations of the River St. Joseph, who were to join those of Detroit, have said they would be ready to perform their promise as soon as Ononontio§ would have sent the necessary number of Frenchmen. The commandant of this post writes, on the loth of January, that all the nations appear to take j This is the first reference we have to Tippecanoe. Antoine Gamelin, the French merchant at Vincennes, - whom Major Hamtramck sent, in 1790, to the Wabash towns with peace messages, - calls the village, then upon this river, Qiti-ie-pi-con-nae. The name of the Tippecanoe is derived from the Algonquin word Ke-non-ge, or Ke-no-zha - from Kenose, long, the name of the long-billed pike, a fish very abundant in this stream, vide Mackenzie's and James' Vocabularies. Timothy Flint, in his Geography and History of the Western States, first edition, published at Cincinnati, 1828, vol. 2, p. 125, says: " The Tippecanoe received its name from a kind of pike called Pic-ca-nau by the savages." The termination is evidently Frenchified.

French Traders Killed

sides against us ; that he would not be responsible for the good dispositions these Indians seem to entertain, inasmuch as the Miamis are their near relatives. On the one hand, Mr. de Joncaire* repeats that the Indians of the beautiful riverf are all English, for whom alone they work ; that all are resolved to sustain each other ; and that not a party of Indians go to the beautiful river but leave some [of their numbers] there to increase the rebel forces. On the other hand, "Mr. de St. Ange, commandant of the post of Vincennes, writes to M. des Ligneris [at Ouiatanon] to use all means to protect himself from the storm which is ready to burst on the French ; that he is busy securing himself against the fury of our enemies."

"The Pianguichias, who are at war with the Chaoua-nons, according to the report rendered by Mr. St. Clin, have declared entirely against us. They killed on Christmas five Frenchmen at the Vermilion. Mr. des Ligneris, who was aware of this attack, sent off a detachment to secure the effects of the Frenchmen from being plundered ; but when this detachment arrived at the Yermilion, the Piankashaws had decamped. The bodies of the Frenchmen were found on the ice.:J:

"M. des Ligneris was assured that the Piankashaws had committed this act because four men of their nation had been killed by the French at the Illinois, and four others had been taken and put in irons. It is said that these eight men were going to fight the Chickasaws, and had, without distrusting anything, entered the quarters of the French, who killed them. It is also reported that the Frenchmen had recourse to this extreme measure because a Frenchman and

* A French half-breed having1 great influence over the Indians, and whom the French authorities had sent into Ohio to conciliate the Indians.

i Col. Croghan's Journal, before quoted, gives the key to the aboriginal name of this stream. On the 22d of June, 1765, he makes the following entry: "We passed through a part of the same meadow mentioned yesterday; then came to a high woodland and arrived at Vermilion River, so called from a fine red earth found there by the Indians, with which they paint themselves. About a half a mile from where we crossed this river there is a village of Piankashaws, distinguished by the addition of the name of the river" (that is, the Piankashaws of the Vermilion, or the Vermilions, as they were sometimes called). The red earth or red chalk, known under the provincial name of red keel, is abundant everywhere along the bluffs of the Vermilion, in the shales that overlay the outcropping coal. The annual fires frequently ignited the coal thus exposed, and would burn the shale above, turn it red and render it friable. Carpenters used it to chalk their lines, and the successive generation of boys have gathered it by the pocketful. Those acquainted with the passion of the Indian for paint, particularly red, will understand the importance which the Indians would attach to it. Hence, as rioted by Croghan, they called the river after the name of this red earth. Vermilion is the French word conveying the same idea, and it is a coincidence merely that Vermilion in French has the same meaning as this word in English On the map in " Volney's View of the Soil and Climate of the United States," Phila. ed. 1804, it is called Red River. The Miami Indian name of the Vermilion was Piankashaw. as appears from Gen. Putnam's manuscript Journal of the treaty at Vincennes m 1792.

two slaves had been killed a few days before by another party of Piankashaws, and that the Indians in question had no knowledge of that circumstance. The capture of four English traders by M. de Celoron's order last year has not prevented other Englishmen going to trade at the Yermilion River, where the Rev. Father la Riehardie wintered."*

The memoir continues: "On the 19th of October the Piankashaws had killed two more Frenchmen, who were constructing pirogues lower down than the Post of Vincenne. Two days afterward the Piankashaws killed two slaves in sight of Fort Yincenne. The murder of these nine Frenchmen and these two slaves is but too certain. A squaw, the widow of one of the Frenchmen who had been killed at the Yermilion, has reported that the Pianguichias, Illinois and Osages were to assemble at the prairies of - - , the place where Messrs, de Yilliers and de Noyelle attacked the Foxes about twenty years ago, and when they had built a fort to secure their families, they were to make a general attack on all the French.

"The Miamis of Rock Riverf have scalped two soldiers belonging to Mr. Yilliers' fort.:}: This blow was struck last fall. Finally, the English have paid the Miamis for the scalps of the two soldiers belonging to Mr. de Yilliers' garrison. To add to the misfortunes, M. des Ligneris has learned that the commandant of the Illinois at Fort Charters would not permit Sieurs Delisle and Fonblanche, who had contracted with the king to supply the Miamis, Ouyatonons, and even Detroit with provisions from the Illinois, to purchase any provisions for the subsistence of the garrisons of those posts, on the ground that an increased arrival of troops and families would consume the stock at the Illinois. Famine is not the sole scourge we experience ; the smallpox commits ravages ; it begins to reach Detroit. It were desirable that it should break out and spread generally throughout the localities inhabited by our rebels. It would be fully as good as an army."

The Piankashaws, now completely estranged from the French, withdrew, almost in a body, from the Wabash, and retired to the Big Miami, whither a number of Miamis and other Indians had,

* Father Justinian de la Richardie came to Canada (according to the Liste Cronologiqm. No. 429) in 1716. He served many years in the Huron country, and also in the Illinois, and died in February, 1758. Biographical note of the editor of Paris Documents : Col. Hist, of New York, vol. 9. p. 88. The time when and the place at which this missionary was stationed on the Vermilion River is not given. The date was before 1750, as is evident from the text. The place was probably at the large Piankashaw town where the traders were killed.

fThe Big Miami River of Ohio, on which stream, near the mouth of Loramies Creek, the Miamis had an extensive village, hereafter referred to.

Pickaw1Llany

some years previous, established a village, to be nearer the English traders. The village was called Pickawillany, or Picktown. To the English and Iroquois it was known as the Tawixtwi Town, or Miamitown. It was located at the mouth of what has since been called Loramie's creek. The stream derived this name from the fact that a Frenchman of that name, subsequent to the events here narrated, had a trading-house at this place. The town was visited in 1751 by Christopher Gist, who gives the following description of it:* "The Twightee town is situated on the northwest side of the Big Min e ami River, about one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. It consists of four hundred families, and is daily increasing. It is accounted one of the strongest Indian towns in this part of the continent. The Twightees are a very numerous people, consisting of many different tribes under the same form of government. Each tribe has a particular chief, or king, one of which is chosen indifferently out of any tribe to rule the whole nation, and is vested with greater authority than any of the others. They have but lately traded with the English. They formerly lived on the farther side of the Wabash, and were in the French interests, who supplied them with some few trifles at a most exorbitant price. They have now revolted from them and left their former habitations for the sake of trading with the English, and notwithstanding all the artifices the French have used, they have not been able to recall them." George Croghan and Mr. Montour, agents in the English interests, were in the town at the time of Gist's visit, doing what they could to intensify the animosity of the inhabitants against the French. Speeches were made and presents exchanged to cement the friendship with the English. While these conferences were going on, a deputation of Indians in the French interests arrived, with soft words and valuable presents, marching into the village under French colors. The deputation was admitted to the council-house, that they might make the object of their visit known. The Piankashaw chief, or king, "Old Britton," as he was called, on account of his attachment for the English, had both the British and French flags hoisted from the council-house. The old chief refused the brandy, tobacco and other presents sent to him from the French king. In reply to the speeches of the French ambassadors he said that the road to the French had been made foul and bloody by them ; that he had cleared a road to our brothers, the English, and that the French had made that bad. The French flag was taken down, and the emissaries

When negotiations failed to* win the Miamis back to French authority, force was resorted to. On the 21st of June, 1752, a party of two hundred and forty French and Indians appeared before Pickawillany, surprised the Indians in their corn-fields, approaching so suddenly that the white men who were in their houses had great difficulty in reaching the fort. They killed one Englishman and fourteen Miamis, captured the stockade fort, killed the old Piankashaw king, and put his body in a kettle, boiled it and ate it up in retaliation for his people having killed the French traders on the Vermilion River and at Yincennes.* "Thus," says the eloquent historian, George Bancroft, "on the alluvial lands of western Ohio began the contest that was to scatter death broadcast through the world."f

* The account of the affair at Pickawillany is summarized from the Journal of Capt. Wm. Trent and other papers contained in a valuable book edited by A. T. Goodman, secretary of the Western Reserve Historical Society, and published by Robert Clarke & Co., 1871, entitled "Journal of Captain Trent."

| Old Britton's successor was his son, a young man, whose name was Mu-shegu-a-nock-que, or "The Turtle." The English, and Indians in their interests, had a very high esteem for the young Piankashaw king. It is said by some writers, and there is much probability of the correctness of their opinion, that the great Miami chief, Little Turtle, was none other than the person here referred to. His age would correspond very well with that of the Piankashaw, and members of one band of the Miami nation frequently took up their abode with other bands or families of their kindred.