Kendall County, Illinois - Chapter 4: Trade and War, 1877

Chapter 4: Trade and War

France, through her missionaries, had the start, and, with the exception of the Atlantic coast, claimed and held the entire land from Maine to Hudson's Bay. It was called New France. Yet, so weak were the garrisons that English traders, through the Senecas, obtained a large share of the commerce of the lakes, and individual rangers penetrated every forest where there was an Indian with skins to sell.

In 1689 war was declared between France and England that continued eight years, and the Jesuits, heretofore so self-denying, became bloody partisans for their country. They stirred up the Indians to such horrid massacres of the English colonists, that the very name of a French missionary was hated, and in 1700 the New York legislature made it legal to hang any Popish priest who should come into the province. The blood policy, though ruinous in the end, was successful at the time, for when peace was made, France retained all but the cod fisheries of Nova Scotia.

The Seven Years' War

In 1696 it was stated in a public document to be the wish of Louis XIV of France to preserve the rock fort in Illinois as a permanent fortress, but whether it was done or not we cannot say. Tonti, with twenty Canadians, left it in February, 1700, again going down the Mississippi to meet some new arrivals, and we have no certain account of his ever returning. He had become an old man, and after twenty-two years of wilderness life, doubtless longed for his native Italy. The probability is that the post was maintained, as traders were still more numerous. That very year a company in quest of copper ore wintered among the lowas, far up the Mississippi, above St. Paul. But the western records of the following half century are scarce. We find fewer missionary narratives to appeal to. Their pens were drowned in blood. Or, perhaps the stoi'y of the wilderness being once told, there was less to write about. The general history, however, was one of Indian trading; the colonist had not begun to come. In 1756, begun between the powers of Europe, during which 886,- 000 men were slain. In many parts not enough were left to till the ground. Nothing at all was gained by those who planned the carnage. The possession of the Great West passed over to England. Illinois ceased being a part of New France, and became a part of the Northwestern Territory. The Indians under

PONTIAC continued the war two years longer, and then yielded. This imperious, long-haired, dark-skinned orator, prophet and general, was truly one of nature's noblemen, but had the misfortune to be born a savage. He was of extraordinary talent and force of character, and was signally famous for his hatred of the English. He organized against them a confederacy of Indian tribes, through a region of wilderness a thousand miles long, but only to be defeated in the end. He retreated to Illinois, and in April, 1769, was killed by an Indian assassin from the tribe of the Peorias. On this, a bitter Indian war followed, which resulted in nearly exterminating some of the Illinois tribes. One was besieged on the rock of the old French fort. Their provisions gave out. For water, they rolled up their blankets and let them down to the river below, but the cords were cut off by their watchful enemies. And so, by the agonies of hunger and thirst, they perished, and the spot has ever since been known by the name of Starved Rock - the greatest historical relic in Illinois. One great battle was fought on the site of the city of Morris, and the bones of the dead still moulder there in the soil. At this time there were about two thousand whites, including women and children, in the whole Illinois valley, and about fifty families at St. Louis, the center of the fur trade with the Indian nations on the Missouri. Daniel Boone had but just wandered forth " in quest of the country of Kentucky."

Illinois was regarded as a land of boundless plains and boundless wealth, and many advocated sending out colonies immediately to take possession of it. But it was objected that a power would be formed which distance would make practically independent of the colonies on the coast. So the land was left to become the asylum of the distressed and adventurous, the poor man's refuge, and log cabins and clearings rapidly multiplied. It is a strange fact, but probably true, that went out with the French. Up to that time, as the Indians said, "they were as thick as trees in the forest," and roamed in vast droves over the prairies. They were so plenty and so valued that one of the specifications in LaSalle's first commission was a monopoly of the trade in buffalo robes. But in 1763 the snow fell, it is said, twelve feet deep - the severest winter ever known - and the buffaloes, cut off from their supplies, wholly perished. For fifty years or more, acres of bleaching bones, here and there upon our prairies, testified to the hard winter that destroyed nearly every buftalo east of the Mississippi.

In 1790, Gen. St. Clair was appointed Military Governor of the northwest territory, and the first territorial legislature meeting, at Cincinnati, elected William Henry Harrison delegate to Congress.

St. Clair was succeeded by Gen. Wayne, who defeated the Indians in a pitched battle, and so made peace for a time. In the peace treaty, the Indians ceded to the United States, " one piece of land six miles sijuare, at the mouth of the Chikajo river, emptying into the southwest end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood." The name of the river in one of the missionary narratives is Chikajoux.

Indian Territory

In 1804 Fort Dearborn was built, and Mr. Kinzie, father of John H., moved there as Indian trader. In 1811 Gen. Harrison was Governor, and defeated the Indians in a bloody battle at Tippecanoe, not more than a hundred miles southeast from Yorkville. Tecumseh was not present, but was the general commander of the Indians. British agents, however, were the real cause of the troubles, and this battle greatly increased the desire of the people, especially along the frontier, for war Avith England, both to avenge their calamities and also as the only sure road to peace. This feeling was shared by Congress, and led to a declaration of war in June, 1812. In August, the traitor general Hull, commandant at Detroit, ordered the Chicago fort to be abandoned, and the garrison, in trying to escape, were nearly all murdered by the Pottawatomies, near what is now Twelfth street. Their bones bleached on the prairie for four years, until the war was over, when they were gathered and buried in 1816.

one of the most formidable Indian chiefs that ever fou2;ht against the United States, was killed at the battle of the Thames, near Lake St. Clair, in Upper Canada. Shabbona, the ff\mous Pottawatomie, was with him at the time, as one of his aids. He had a presentiment that it would be his last battle, and gave his sword to one of his followers, to be given to his son as soon as he should become a warrior. Then raising the war-cry, he sprang up from the swamp where he lay with his men, and charged the Kentucky cavalry. He was wounded several times, but fought on with the greatest desperation. At last, says Shabbona, he sprang forward with uplifted tomahawk towards a man riding a gray horse. Before he could reach him the man discharged a pistol, and the fiery chief received a mortal wound in the breast. He shouted his last word of command, and stepping forward, sunk down at the foot of a tree and died. The officer on the orrav horse was Col. Richard M. Johnson. As soon as they knew their commander was no more, the red men were seized with terror and despair, and fled.

Such scenes were repugnant to the peaceful disposition of young Shabbona, and it was the last great battle he was ever engaged in. In referring to it he used to say : " Indians and red coats all run ; Shabbona run, too. He never more fight 'Mcricans ; Ugh, never I" At the close of the war in 1815, the Indians made a general peace, which was not broken for seventeen years. In 1816 the fort was re-built, and the Pottawatomies c^dcd to the State a tract of land twenty miles wide, for the canal route from Chicago to a line uniting the mouths of the Fox and Kankakee, or thereabouts. Thev asked but a trifle'for it, being convinced by the treaty commissioners that the canal would be greatly to their benefit. The project was the result of a lesson learned by the government during the war, viz : The need of a more perfect means of communication with the interior.

made the Union of legal age, by being admitted as the twenty-first State. Shadrach Bond was the first Governor. There was not in the northern part a single white man, so far as known, except at the military post at Chicago. The prairies, covered with grass and spangled with flowers, were undisturbed save by droves of passing deer, or Indian travelers following their trail in single file. The rivers and creeks, stocked with fish, flowed silently by. The solitude of the groves was unbroken except by the hungry howling of the wolves and the occasional sound of an Indian's musket.