Vermilion County, Illinois - Chapter 24, 1879

The Indian Country Ravaged

THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY - THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 - BILL OF RIGHTS - FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM - PROVISIONS FOR STATES - OLD BOUNDARIES BETWEEN CANADA AND LOUISIANA - INDIAN WARS - THE INDIAN COUNTRY RAVAGED.

Col. Clark having captured Gov. Hamilton's forces at Vincennes, and reestablished the authority of Virginia over the northwest territory, Col John Todd, commissioned as lieutenant for the county of Illinois, in the spring ol 1779 proceeded to Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and organized a government under the act of the General Assembly of Virginia of October, 177S, for the establishing of KiIUi7iois County?'' Col. Todd formed courts of justice, and provided other machinery to secure peace and good order among the inhabitants. The court was comprised of several magistrates, who -dispensed justice, in the absence of statutes specifically defining their powers, pretty much according to their own unrestrained notions of equity, applied according to the emergency of each particular case, as it would come before them, much after the manner of the early French commandants.*

The northwest territory soon became a source of trouble to the continental congress. Besides the claims of Virginia, Xew York, Massachusetts and Connecticut asserted title to portions of it by virtue of their ancient charters. + These conflicting claims were the subjects of much discussion and legislative action in the states named, and by congress as well. Congress, on the 6th of September, 1780, recmested the several states "having claims to waste and unappropriated lands in the western country to cede a portion

*"The court" was one of high authority, and among the powers it arrogated to itself was the right of disposing of the public lands. After having granted some twenty-two thousand acres to private individuals, by orders entered from time to time upon their records, "the court" partitioned large tracts ain/mg themselves; the recipient member would, out of modesty, absent himself from "court" on the day the entry was made on the journal by his associates in his favor, "so that it might appear to be the act of his fellows only." Official letter of Gen. Harrison, January 19, 1802. The evil grew to such proportions that Gen. Harner, in 1787, issued a military order suppressing it.

t Connecticut, claiming through her charter granted on the 23d of April, 1662, by King Charles the Second, passed a resolution in 1783. to the effect "That all the land lying west of the western limits of Pennsylvania and east of the Mississippi, and between the forty-first and forty-second parallels of latitude," was hers.

Cession Of The Northwest Territory

thereof to the United States.* Virginia, on the 2d of January, 1781, released her claim to the northwest territory, reserving one hundred and fifty thousand acres near the falls of the Ohio, which she had promised to Gen. Clark, and the officers and soldiers of his regiment who marched with him, and preserving to the French and Canadian inhabitants of Kaskaskia, Vincennes and neighboring villages their titles to the lands claimed by theni.f However, owing to conditions imposed by the terms of cession, further legislation intervened, and the Virginia delegates did not execute the deed of release until the 1st of March, 1781. New York followed Virginia, and ceded her claim on the 1st of March, 1781 ; then Massachusetts, on the 18th of April, 1785, executed her release, and oh the 11th of September, 1786, the Connecticut delegates delivered a deed of cession from that state, reserving a strip of territory west of Pennsylvania, and bordering on the lakes, since known as the Western Reserve.^

Before these disputes were settled it was proposed in congress to divide the territory into states by parallel lines of latitude and meridians of longtitude.§ It seems that the States of Virginia and Massachusetts had made their grants with reference to a previous resolution of congress, limiting the area of the states, to be formed out of the territory named, to a hundred and fifty miles square, and therefore further legislation by these states became necessary. In July, 1786, congress passed another resolution, looking to a division of the territory into not less than three nor more tYL&wjive states, and Massachusetts and Virginia gave their assent to this modification. All differences and conflicts of title being now settled, congress, on the 13th day of July, 1787, adopted unanimously, "An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States northwest of the Ohio." The act, when considered with respect to the times in which it was adopted, was a most radical document. It made sweeping changes in the whole theory of social laws as practiced in Europe, and contravened the prevailing opinions of many of our own people, emerging, as they then were, from the accumulated prejudices of the old world into the daydawn of a new and experimental government. u For the purpose of extending the fundamental principles of civil

§ Old Congressional Journals, vol. 4, pp. 379 and 380; Land Laws, p. 34. The prospective states were to be named as follows': Washington, Illinoia, Michigania, Sylvania, Saratoga, Pelisipia, Mesopotamia, Polypotamia, Chersonisus and Assenispia. The act for such division of the territory, and naming of the states to be formed out of it. was passed unanimously, with the exception of the vote of South Carolina, on the 23d of March, 1784.

and religious liberty forever, and to fix and establish those principles as a basis of all laws, constitutions and governments which should thereafter be formed within the territory," the ordinance impressed conditions upon every acre of the soil, prohibited certain arbitrary practices of power, and enjoined beneficial acts to be performed, which have resulted in the largest measure of happiness and prosperity. The act was a " compact between the original states and the people and states within the territory, to remain unalterable unless changed by common consent." It is, therefore, in the nature of a bill of rights - a Magna Charta - to every inhabitant of the five several states since formed out of the territory to which the ordinance was applied.* The act forever prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude, thus ennobling honest labor, and endowing it with a dignity it could not have attained in competition with the unrequited toil of human chattels.

Heretofore the plan of governments was one of force, in which the intelligent few dominated over the ignorant many. The American Declaration of Independence announced the new theory that all men should be free, and that the people should govern themselves. This they could not be, or do unless they possessed an enlarged intelligence, a requirement that rendered a system for the general education of the masses necessary. Happily, congress realized the force of this, and nobly provided the means. Subsequent to the cession by Virginia of the northwest territory to the United States, and at the time congress passed the act of May 20, 1785, relative to the disposition and sale of the public lands northwest of the Ohio, one thirty-sixth part of the whole of this vast domain was reserved and set apart for the maintenance of public schools ; and so determined was congress that the educational system to be inaugurated in the northwest territory should not be balked by any unwise legislation of the future states to be formed therein, that the great plan was carried into the ordinance of 1787, where it was further declared that "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and happiness of mankind, schools and the means

*The act, among other things, fixes the law of descent upon the just and equitable terms of equality in the division of real estate among the heirs of the ancestor, thus catting up by the roots the European doctrine of primogeniture ; it provides for perfect liberty of conscience, and declares that no person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner should ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiment; it secures to every one the writ of habeas corpus, and the right of trial by jury; it makes all offenses bailable except capital crimes, and while it provides that all fines shall be moderate, it prohibits the infliction of cruel or unusual punishments; it declares that no person shall be deprived of his liberty or property but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land, and prevents the body politic from taking his property or demanding his services without making full compensation, etc.

Subdivision Of The Northwest Territory

of education shall forever he encouraged?"** The act of May 20, 1785, is the quarry from whence was procured the "corner-stone' laid by our forefathers deep in the ordinance of 1787, upon which the states, since formed out of the old northwest territory, have, with most generous hand, established a system of public schools which is a guarantee of our national life and the citadel of our liberties.

The provision - the ordinance of 1787 - contains relative to a subdivision of the territory is, ' ' that there shall be formed in said territory no less than three nor more than five states ; the western state to be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Wabash Rivers ; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Post St. Vincent due north to the territorial line between the United States and Canada, and [west] by said territorial line to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi, f The middle state shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Post St. Vincent to the Ohio ; by the Ohio, and by a direct line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami to said territorial line.:}; The eastern state shall be bounded by the last-mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania and the said territorial line."§ The act provided "that the boundaries of these three states should be subject to alteration if congress should find it expedient," with "authority to form one or two states in that part of the territory lying north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly hend or extreme of Lake Michigan." The wording of the proviso, and a want of means for a correct geographical knowledge of the lake region, led to a sharp controversy in adjusting the boundaries of the two additional states. When the ordinance was passed, the current maps of the day represented the "southern bend v of Lake Michigan as being quite far north of its true position. While the convention was in session at Chillicothe, in 1802, a hunter, well acquainted with the country, told some of the members that Lake Michigan extended much farther south than was generally supposed. This caused the convention to alter the boundary prescribed by congress, so that the line between the then terri-

* One section in every township, section 16, being selected on account of its central position, and known as the school section, was set apart in the act of May 20, 1785, for public schools. The proceeds arising from the sales thereof called the school fund, is a sacred fund, the yearly accruing interest from which is expended in the maintenance of "free schools " within the township.

In 1818, when Illinois was about to become a state, her delegate in congress, Nathanial Pope, procured an amendment of the act for its admission, so as to extend its northern boundary to the parallel of 42° 30' north latitude. f By a literal construction of the ordinance of ITS", two tiers of counties in northern Illinois would have been within the limits of Wisconsin. These changes, made through a wise forethought, have secured the harbor of Toledo to Ohio, Michigan City to Indiana and Chicago to Illinois.

Soon after the passage of the ordinance, a party of New Engenders, under the name of The Ohio Company, bought five millions of acres of land lying along the Ohio, between the Muskingum and Sciota rivers. Gen. Rufus Putnam, the agent of the company, with a colony from Massachusetts, landed at the mouth of the Muskingum on the 7th of April, 1788, and proceeded to lay out a town, to which the name of Marietta was given. ^ Another sale was made to John C. Simms, embracing a tract of two millions of acres, fronting upon the Ohio, between the Great and Little Miami rivers. This was known as '*The Simms Purchase,11 and its beauty and fertility soon attracted immigration. In this way the settlements westward of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio were fairly begun.

The subdivisions of New France, when owned by the French, for political purposes, seems not to have been clearly defined or well understood. Originally, La Salle, under his grant, claimed all of the territory between the Mississippi and the Wabash, - as appears from a letter of his lately published in the rare collections of P. Margry, - and also a strip ten leagues wide, on the west side of the Mississippi, to the mouth of the Ohio. He gave the name of "Louisiana to all the country watered by the Mississippi below the mouth of the Ohio,'1 a name, says Father Charlevoix, writing in 1743, which it still retains. Shortly after this the line was changed, and, says the great geographer, Thomas Pownall, quoting from maps and authorities accessible in 1756, the time at which he wrote, "the line which now divides Canada and Louisiana in the Illinois country begins from the Wabash at the mouth of Vermilion River, thence to the post called Le Rocher [Starved Rock] on the River Paeorias [the

Posts Retained By Great Britain

Illinois], and from thence to the peninsula formed at the confluence of Rocky [Rock] River and the Mississippi.''''" While the English owned the northwest, it was governed from Quebec, through officers or commandants stationed at Detroit, Fort Chartres and other military posts in the territory. Having thus briefly noted some of the subdivisions of the northwest by France and Great Britain for administrative purposes, those of our own government will be noticed.

By the terms of the definite treaty of peace, concluded at Paris on the 3d of September, 1783, between the United States and Great Britain, the boundary between the possessions of the two powers was established along the lakes substantially as it now remains. Among other stipulations, Great Britain was, without delay, to surrender the several military posts within the acknowledged territory of the United States. She declined to perform this part of the treaty, and on the 8th of December, 1785, the American minister, John Adams, addressed a letter to Lord Carmarthen, the English secretary of. state, protesting "that although a period of three years had elapsed since the signing of the preliminary treaty, and more than two years since that of the definite treaty, the posts of Niagara, Presque Isle, Sandusky, Detroit, Michilimackinack, with others, and a considerable territory around each of them, all within the incontestible limits of the United States, are still held by British garrisons, to the loss and injury of the United States," etc.,f and demanding "that all of His Majesty's armies and garrisons be forthwith withdrawn,'1 etc. To which, on the 28th of February, 1786, the British secretary replied, admitting that while Mr. Adams was correct in his construction of the seventh article of the treaty, the fourth article of the same, stipulating "that creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of all bona fide debts, heretofore contracted, had not been fulfilled on the part of the people of the United States.";}:

The reasons put forward by Lord Carmarthen were a mere pretext. The true cause for the action of Great Britain in retaining possession of these military posts was to prolong her enjoyment of the fur trade and continue her influence over the several Indian tribes. With her it was the old desire to continue "master of the fur

* Appendix to The Administration of the Colonies, p. 16. This line, it would appear, placed all of the country north of it and east of the Wabash in the jurisdiction or Canada, and the territory to the south of the line and west of the Wabash within the confines of Louisiana.

% Secret Journals of Congress, vol. 4, p. 187. Massachusetts and Virginia, for good reasons, refused to comply with the article of the treaty concerning the collection of debts.

trade" Her traders, in conjunction with the Canadians and ooureurs de bois, had. since the submission of the westward Indians to her authority, in 1765, extended and perfected the "fur trade" over the entire northwest, and were reaping such profits as they never before realized, while the supply of goods required by the Indians absorbed a vast quantity of British manufactures.

Unfortunately, the revolutionary war was concluded without Great Britain's having made any provisions for her Indian allies, who continued their hostilities. No treaties had ever been made between the United States and the Wabash tribes, and the latter continued their hostilities upon the people of Kentucky, in which the injuries and murders seemed to have been reciprocal.*

The government tried peaceable means to put an end to these depredations. Failing in this, expeditions were sent out, the first under command of Gen. Harmar, wTho, in the fall of 1790, destroyed the villages about Fort Wayne, as. noticed on page 173. The next, by Gen. Charles Scott, in June, 1791, who burnt several villages above and below La Fayette, and carried a number of women and children captives to Fort Washington, where they were held as prisoners. A third, under Gen. Wilkinson, who, in the summer of the same year, burned the Wea village above Logansport and destroyed some Kickapoo villages on the west side of the river, taking away with him a number of women and children, as Scott had done before him. Old scores with long accumulating interest were paid back. From Yincennes to Fort Defiance the heart of the Indian country had been ravaged. The principal villages along the Wabash and Maumee were destroyed. The fields were devastated, and the Indians, suffering for food and shelter, were made to feel the retributive hand of the Americans, whom traders within our borders, and other subjects of Great Britain in Canada, had heretofore taught them to despise.

While the expeditions of Scott and Wilkinson were being executed, Gov. St. Clair was organizing a force with which, under instructions from the war department, he was to proceed to the forks of the Maumee and there establish a permanent military post, from which forces could be sent as occasion required, to punish such tribes as might dare to further molest the border settlements. On the way to the Maumee his army, consisting of about 1,100 men, was, on the 4th of November, 1791, attacked by the confederated

* American State Papers, vol. 4, p. 13. It was estimated that between the years 1783 and 1790 no less than fifteen hundred persons were killed and captured in that state and adjacent territory, and upward of twenty thousand horses and other property, estimated at $75,000, were taken or destroyed by the Indians: Idem, p. 88.

Treaty At Vincennes

Indians, and almost totally destroyed. The calamity was one of the most severe ever sustained by the United States at the hands of the Indians until the time of the recent defeat of Custer. The battle ground is in Mercer county, Ohio, and since known as Fort Recovery.

The government, too feeble and greatly embarrassed, financially, from its struggle with Great Britain, could not speedily retrieve its loss. St. Clair resigned his commission in disgrace and Gen. Wayne - Mad Anthony, of revolutionary fame - was appointed military commander of the northwest in his stead. While the new general was recruiting his forces and subjecting them to a discipline that rendered their subsequent movements invincible, the government again tried to bring the Wabash tribes to a treaty of peace. The latter, now arrogant beyond measure from their victory, declined all overtures, and basely murdered Messrs. Hardin, Freeman and Trueman, who were sent with messages of peace to them. Gen. Putnam, the agent of the Ohio company, at Marietta, offered his services, and at the hazard of his life undertook to visit the hostile tribes and induce them to come to Philadelphia or Fort Washington and enter into negotiations. He was soon satisfied that the Indians would neither go to Philadelphia nor Fort Washington. Persisting in his efforts, however, several of the Wabash tribes agreed to meet him at Vincennes. Thither he went, starting from Fort Washington on the 26th of August, in company with the Moravian missionary, John Heckwelder, and the surviving prisoners - consisting mostly of women and little children - captured at the Wea towns by Scott and Wilkinson the previous year. The party, numbering in all one hundred and forty persons, were put in boats and taken down the Ohio and up the Wabash, ascending which they reached Vincennes on the afternoon of the 12th. The Indians, already notified of its coming, "were assembled upon the banks of the river, and when they saw their friends approaching," says Heckwelder, "they discharged their guns in token of joy, and sang the praises of their friends in tunes peculiar to themselves." The prisoners were immediately delivered to their friends with a happy speech by Gen. Putnam. From the 13th to the 23d the Indians were daily coming in to participate in the treaty.

Delegates representing the Eel Creek, Wea, Pottawatomie, Mascoutin, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Kaskaskia and Peoria tribes being present, a conference was opened in the council house on the morning of the 24th. Here Gen. Putnam assured the assembled chiefs that the United States desired peace ; that ample time and opportu- nity would be given to them all to talk with the United States about all that had happened ; to settle all old scores and to begin anew. An answer was deferred until the next day, when the council was again convened, at which the speakers chosen to reply on behalf of their respective tribes rose up in succession, and spoke upon strings - i. e., giving presents - of wampum. The drift of their speeches was that the whites should not take their land, but remain on the east and south side of the Ohio, letting that river be the mutual bounddary. Their speeches were not clear, and Gen. Putnam requested a more definite answer, with which they gratified him in the afternoon. Among other things, the Indian speakers stated "that they did not wish to live too near the white people, as there were bad persons on both sides ; that they wished to trade with us, and concluded with a request that the French dwelling in the vicinity of Yincennes might not be deprived of the lands which had been given them by the forefathers of the speakers in times past."*

Definite articles of peace were concluded and signed on the 27th of September, 1792, and this was the first treaty ever entered into between the United States and the several Wabash tribes. As heretofore intimated, it was a treaty of peace and friendship only.

Gen. Putnam, as appears from his receipt, dated May 22, 1792, to the war department, had taken with him, besides a quantity of goods for presents, "the following silver ornaments: twenty medals, thirty pairs of arm and wristbands, twelve dozen of brooches, thirty pairs of nose jewels, thirty pairs of ear jewels, and two large white wampum belts of peace, with a silver medal suspended to each, bearing the arms of the United States. "\

The chiefs of the several tribes having " signed the articles of treaty," says the Journal of Gen. Putnam, "the latter arose and delivered the following speech to them :

"Brothers, listen to what I say: We have been for some days past industriously engaged^ in a good work, namely, in establishing & peace, and we have happily succeeded, through the influence of the Great Spirit.

"Brothers, we have wiped off the blood, - we have buried the hatchet on both sides; and all that is past shall be forgotten. (Takes up the belts.)

"Brothers, this is the belt of peace, which I now present you in the name of the United States. This belt shall be the evidence of, and the pledge for, the performance of the articles of the treaty of

The Great Peace Belt

-'Brothers, whenever you look on this, remember that there is a perpetual peace and friendship between you and us, and that you are now under the protection of the United States.

"Brothers, we both hold this belt in our hands, - here, at this end, the United States hold it, and you hold it by the other end. The road, you see, is broad, level and clear. We may now pass to one another easy and without difficulty. Brothers, the faster we hold this belt the happier we shall be. Our women and children will have no occasion to be afraid any more. Our young men will observe that their wise men performed a good work.

tk Brothers, be all strong in that which is good. Abide all in this path, young and old, and you will enjoy the sweetness of peace." (Delivers the belts.)

The connection which the relic here illustrated sustains with the treaty at Vincennes will now be shown. We leave the treaty for a moment while we narrate the circumstances under which this medal, together with the other one illustrated farther on, was found. For the purposes of description, the first may be designated as the kk Washington medal," although it is an engraving, and the latter as the k' British medal." The former is believed to be none other than the silver medal "suspended to the white wampum belt of peace'1'' presented by Gen. Putnam, and referred to in his speech.

The two medals, the illustrations of which are the exact size of the originals, and fine representations of the sides of the medals they display, were found in April, 1855, at the old, so-called, Kickapoo Indian burying-ground, near the mouth of the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River, four miles west of Danville, Illinois, in a grave which had become exposed by the giving way of the high bluff, on the brink of which this grave, with many others, is situated.*

* The old burial-place bears the appearance of having been used by the Indians for many years prior to the time of the cession of the territory along the Vermilion by the Pottaw atomies and Kickapoos. It is a level plateau of several acres, at an elevation that commands a fine view of both streams, overlooking the bluffs beyond, and taking in a wide scope of the prairies, before the timber and undergrowth had intercepted the view. The plateau is terminated at the westward by a precipitous bluff, the foot of which, nearly a hundred feet below, is washed by the Middle Fork. Of late years the stream has encroached upon the bluff at the water-line, causing the earth to slide down from above. Two young men, John Ecard and Hiram Chester, then living upon the farm of Samuel Chester, near by, were passing along the water's edge, in the month of April, 1855, and found a skull and some other parts of a human skeleton that had fallen out of a grave above and rolled down the hill. The skull was well preserved, and had clinging to it the remains of a rotted band, filled with plain brooches, about a half an inch in diameter, made of silver, which, owing to their delicate structure and the length of time they had been buried, crumbled to pieces on exposure to the air. The young men, following an accessible path that led up the hill, proceeded to the grave out of which the remains had fallen, and found a part of the grave still intact. Ecard took a stick, and digging around in that portion of the grave that yet remained, quickly unearthed both of the medals, which were highly discolored. He sold them to Samuel Chester, and the latter disposed of them to the present owner, Josephus Collett, of Terre Haute, to whom the writer is indebted for permission to illustrate them. The writer has the affidavit of Samuel Chester as to the time, place and manner of their finding. Mr. Chester was informed of the facts within a few moments after their discovery, and immediately went over to the spot in company with the young men, of whom he then and there received the particulars substantially as given.

Desckiptiojst Of The Medal

its breast; a bundle of arrows in one foot and an olive branch in the other ; and the stars, representing the several states, about the head of the bird, from which lines radiate, representing the sun's rays. The 'eye,' by which the medal is suspended, shows no signs of having been used ; the delicate tracings of the engraver appear as perfect as when first made. These facts would seem to preclude the idea that it was worn about the person as an ornament.

Among the manuscript papers of Gen. Putnam relating to the treaty of Yincennes is a speech, in his own handwriting, in which he particularly describes one side of this medal.*

"Brothers, the engravings on this medal distinguish the United States from all other nations ; it is called their arms, and no other nation has the like. The principal figure is a broad eagle. This bird is a native of this island, and is to be found in no other part of the world ; and both you and the Americans being also born on this island, and having grown up together with the eagle, they have placed him in their arms, and have engraved him on this medal, by which the great chief, Gen. Washington, and all the people of the United States hold this belt fast. The wings of the eagle are extended to give protection to all our friends, and to assure you of our protection so long as you hold fast this belt. In his right foot the eagle holds the branch of a tree, which with us is an emblem of peace, and it means that we love peace, and wish to live in peace with all our neighbors, and is to assure you that while you hold this belt fast you shall always be in peace and security, whether you are pursuing the chase, or reposing yourselves under the shadow of the bough. In the left foot of this bird is placed a bundle of arrows ; by this is meant that the United States have the means of war, and that when peace cannot be obtained or maintained with their neighbors on just terms, and that if, notwithstanding all their endeavors for peace, war is made upon them, they are prepared for it."f

* " Whether this explanation, or the substance of it, was delivered at Vincennes, we cannot say. It does not appear in the journal of the proceedings." Letter of Dr. Andrews, custodian of the Putnam papers at Marietta College, Ohio, to the writer. However, while the journal may be silent on this point, it was doubtless delivered, as appears from the remarks of an Indian chief two years later, at Greenville, noticed farther on.

f It will be borne in mind that prior to this treaty the tribes represented at Vincennes had never held official or diplomatic relations with the United States, and it was highly proper that our coat of arms, and the signification of its several parts, should be explained to them. The bill of account of Gen. Putnam against the United States shows that at this treaty he delivered one of the peace belts, six of the medals, and a quantity of other jewelry itemized in the account, and that he retained the other peace belt, medals, etc., in his custody. Extract from the Putnam papers, supplied to the writer by Dr. Andrews.

The obverse side of the medal, illustrated, required no explanation from Gen. Putnam ; it interpreted its own story to the Indian clearer than any words could do. The Indian has thrown his tomahawk, the emblem of war. at the foot of the tree, under whose roots it was to be typically buried. The extendeol pipe is the universal token of peace, which Washington, representing the United States, with outstretched hands was about to receive and smoke, as the Indian had already done. These friendlv acts assured protection to the pioneer plowman and his cabin in the background. All this is plain to the merest novice in picture reading.

Turning to the minutes of the great treaty held at Greenville, in 1795, we take the following extracts from two speeches of Kesis, or the Sun, a prominent Pottawatomie chief, who took an active part in both of the treaties at Yincennes and Greenville.

"'Elder Brother:- If my old chiefs were living, I should not presume to speak in this assembly ; but as they are dead, I now address you in the name of the Pottawatomies, as Massas has spoken in the name of the three fires, of which we are one.+ I have to express my concurrence in sentiment with him. It is two years since I assisted at the treaty of Yincennes. My voice there represented the three fires. I then said it will take three years to accomplish a general peace."

In another speech (made in order of time before the one quoted), Kesis says : " Brother,, the Master of Life had pity on me when he permitted me to come and take you \ first by the hand. With the same hand and heart I then possessed I now salute you. When I gave you my hand you said I thank you, and am glad to take your hand, Pottawatomie ; and you thanked the other Indians, also, and told them you had opened a road for them to come and see you."§ fMassass was a Chippewa, and the expression, of the three fires being one, is intended by Kesis to refer to the fact that the Ottawas, Chippeways and Pottawatomies were one nation.

§ " Opening a road " has the peculiar signification that the parties who have given and received a "road belt" are at liberty to go to and from, and visit each other freely, as friends, without danger of molestation. It seems that Kesis was the custodian of several of these belts or records, for at Greenville he displayed a road belt which he said he had received from the United States, to which the eagle was suspended holding an olive branch which, he said, had been explained as " a leaf of that great tree under whose shade we and all our posperity should repose in prosperity and happiness." He also displayed a war belt which, he said, "was presented to us by the British, and has involved us for four years past in misery and misfortune." This war belt he gave to Gen. Wayne, saying: " You may burn it if you please, or transform it into a necklace for some handsome squaw, and thus change its original design and appearance, and prevent forever its future recognition. It has caused us much misery, and I am happy in parting with it." Kesis, as stated in another speech made by him at the same treaty, and quoted in foot-note on page 147. said his village was a

English Medal

The British medal was struck with a die. It is of pure silver, or silver containing very little alloy, nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and weighing nearly four ounces, troy weight. On the reverse side (not illustrated) is the coat-of-arins of Great Britain. The hole through which the string was passed, unlike the Washington medal, is badly worn, while the finer lines of the bust of the British king are also worn away, showing that that side of the medal had been worn against the breast or clothing of its owner. All the delicate lines on the eoat-of-arms side are as perfect as when the medal was struck.

It is without date. A correspondence with the custodian of medals in the British Museum in London, England, has resulted in disclosing that a duplicate is among the collections of that institution, and that the die with which they were struck was made either in the year 1786 or 1787, and that many like them had been presented to the Indians.* day's walk below Ouiatanon, referring1, as is believed, to the mixed Kickapoo and Pottawatomie village at the mouth of the Vermilion River. Now, the same people occupied a village called the Old Kickapoo Town, within a short distance of the old burying ground we have described, and this last was not abandoned as a permanent village until the year 1819, as the writer is informed by early settlers who were cognizant of the fact. It is probable that Kesis was buried there, and the medals with him, where they were afterward found in the manner narrated.

* This circumstance makes the medal illustrated another witness of the fact that subsequent to the treaty of peace in 1783 British subjects continued distributing

Resuming the notice of the treaty at Vincennes, peace being now proclaimed, Gen. Putnam informed the Indians that he should have a piece of artillery fired on the occasion ; that he would fire the first gun, and that each of those chiefs who had received belts should follow the example.

After the conclusion of this ceremony, all of the Indians - we here quote from Heckwelder's journal, which states that eight cannon were fired, the first by Gen. Putnam himself, the rest by the chiefs who had received the belts - "all the Indians performed a dance in the council house, to express their rejoicings at the peace. Each nation was painted in a different style, and all took the utmost pains to make themselves appear as fierce and terrific as possible. They commenced by proceeding, with drums and singing, through all the streets of the town ; they then adjourned to the council house, where they sung and related their warlike deeds. The figures and grimaces which they made during this dance, the disfigured and ferocious countenances, the instruments of war they whirled about, with which they dealt blows upon the posts and benches, the rattling of deer's claws about their legs, the green garlands about their necks and waists, and their naked bodies, presented a scene which I am unable to describe. All, however, passed off in an orderly manner, .at least in their way."

The distribution of presents began on the 3d of September, and continued several days, and on the 5th of October Father Heckwelder, with sixteen of the chiefs and one Indian woman, in charge of Lieut. Prior, two pilots and two soldiers, started overland on pack-horses for Philadelphia, by way of the falls at Louisville. At the latter place they continued the voyage in three canoes, passing up the Ohio by Fort Washington, Gallipolis," Marietta, Wheeling and Pittsburgh, at all of which places they were received with public demonstrations. From Pittsburgh they went, by way of Bethlehem, to Philadelphia. The treaty concluded by Gen. Putnam was laid before the United States Senate in February, 1793, where it lingered until January, 1794, the senate refusing to ratify it because the fourth article recognized the right of the Indians "to their lands, as being theirs and theirs only/'f medals bearing the coat-of-arms and bust of their king among the Indians within the ceded territory, thus keeping up the old relation of the latter as children of their "British father."

ffien. Putnam had only carried out his orders, and the objectionable clause was almost literally in the words of his instructions from the Secretary of War.

British Invasion On The Maumee

Secretary of War to the President, in a letter of the 2d of January, 1794, "who visited Philadelphia, having died of the smallpox, it would have been improper to attempt with the remainder any explanation of the fourth article of the treaty," and therefore the senate refused, by a vote of twenty-one to four, to give it effect. While the senate was engaged in deliberating over that, which at best might be called a technicality when compared with the benefit that would have resulted from a ratification of the treaty of Vineennes, the Indians were increasing in their feelings of hostility, and gathering in numbers, and concentrating their forces against the government. Still the latter renewed its efforts to secure a peace. In March, 1793, the President appointed Messrs. Randolph, of Virginia, Lincoln, of Massachusetts, and Pickering, of Pennsylvania, to treat with the northwestern tribes, who proceeded to the Niagara River, intending to go from there to Sandusky. On their way they met Red Jacket and some other chiefs of the Seneca nation, who advised them that the western Indians, to whom the President had sent a speech, inviting them to a treaty, would not attend because the British had not been invited to be present, ''and that it was necessary they should attend, because they originally called the Indians to war against the United States.* Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, "commanding the king's forces in Upper Canada, anticipating the coming of the commissioners, had in April "come from Niagara through the woods to Detroit, and had gone from thence to the foot of the Rapids, and three companies of Col. England's regiment had followed him. to assist in building a fort there." f Having thus invaded the territory of the United States, Gov. Simcoe now intimated that he would be pleased to assist in attempting a reconciliation between the United States and the Indians. The commissioners, unhappily, were not in a position to decline his friendly aid, and accordingly the preliminary courtesies between the Governor of Canada and the commissioners were opened at Navy Hall, the house of the former, opposite Fort Niagara, on the 17th of May. Here the latter were detained by delays they could not foresee or prevent. In the meantime large delegations of the several westward tribes already named, together with representatives of the Five Nations and Cherokees, were assembled in a grand council about Gov. Simcoe' s rising fort at the Rapids of the Mauinee, and were engaged in settling their minor differences, and agreeing upon a united plan of action preliminary to, and to be insisted upon, at the treaty proposed to be held with the United States commissioners at Sandusky. Several messages, as a basis of- peace, passed between the two parties, the views of each being widely apart. In August the commissioners went up the lake to the mouth of the Detroit River, so that less time would be consumed by the bearers of dispatches between themselves and the Indian council at the Rapids. The Indians would not recede from their sine qua -non, which was no less than the Ohio River as the boundary between themselves and the United States. This could not be conceded, for the reason that by the treaties of Fort Mcintosh and Fort Harmar the government had acquired a large tract on the north and west side of that stream, portions of which had been purchased by citizens of the United States, who were then actually living upon the same. The commissioners agreed to purchase the lands over again from any tribes having claims to any part thereof who had not been present or represented at the treaties by which the United States had acquired its title. Brothers, replied the Indians, money to us is of ho value, and to most of us unknown, and as no consideration whatever can induce us to sell the lands on which we get sustenance for our women and children, we hope we may be allowed to point out a mode by which your settlers may be recompensed and peace thereby obtained. We know these settlers are poor, or they never would have ventured to live in a country which has been in continual trouble ever since they crossed the Ohio. Divide, therefore, this large sum of money which you have offered to us among these people ; give to each, also, a portion of what you said you would give to us annually over and above this very large sum of money, and we are persuaded they would most readily accept of it in lieu of the lands you sold them. If you add the great sums you must expend in raising and paying armies, with a view to force us to yield our country, you will certainly have more than sufficient for the purpose of repaying these settlers for all their labor and improvements. You have talked to us about concessions. It appears strange that you should expect any from us, who have only been defending our just rights against your invasions. We want peace ; restore us our country, and we will be enemies no longer. . . . We shall be persuaded that you mean to do us justice if you agree that the Ohio shall remain the boundary line between us. If you will not consent thereto, our meeting will be altogether unnecessary."*

* Extracts from the joint answer of the Pottawatornies, Chippeways, Ottawas Miamis, Shawnees, Delawares, Wyandots, Muncies, the Seven Nations of Canada, the Senecas of the Au Glaize, Mohegans and other tribes, dated at Miami Rapids, August 13,1793.

Close Of The Indian War

Gen. Wayne moved his forces from Fort Greenville, where he had wintered, and on the - day of August, 1/794, obtained a decisive victory over the Indians, almost under the guns of the British fort. After destroying villages and fields the whole length of the Maumee and the Au Glaize, his army returned to Greenville, where he passed a second winter. In the following summer delegates from the several tribes met him, and after a conference extending over five months, a treaty was signed, leaving the Indians with the dimensions of their territories vastly curtailed, and themselves for the first time recognized as the children of a new father, - "The Fifteen Fires," as they called the United States.

Gen. Wayne's success, and the happy negotiations of Chief- Justice Jay, terminated the differences, for the present at least, between our government on the one side and the Indians and Great Britain on the other. The several military posts held by the English within our territory, including Fort Miami, erected by Gov. Simcoe, were surrendered early in 1796 ; Gen. Wayne, authorized by the president so to do, receiving possession of them on behalf of the United States. He at once arranged to have Detroit and the other works provisioned and garrisoned, and late in the season embarked by way of the lake for Erie. On the way he was attacked with gout of the stomach, of which he died before the vessel reached the port.