Paint Township (part 2 of 14)

That part of the Illinois River above the Desplaines is called the Kankakee, which is a corruption of its original Indian name. St. Cosme, the narrative of whose voyage down the Illinois River, by way of Chicago, in 1699,' and found in Dr. Shea's work of " Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi," refers to it as the The-a-li-ke, " which is the real river of the Illinois, and (says) that which w^e descended (the Desplaines) was only a branch." Father Marest, in his letter of November 9, 1712, narrating a journey he had previously made from Kaskaskia up to the Mission of St. Joseph, says of the Illinois River : " We transported all there was in the canoe toward the source of the Illinois (Indian), which they call Hau-ki-ki. Father Charlevoix, W'ho descended the Kankakee from the portage, in his letter, dated at the source of the river Theakiki, September 17, 1721, says : " This morning I walked a league farther in the meadow, having my feet almost always in the water ; afterward I met with a kind of a pool or marsh, which had. a communication with several others of different sizes, but the largest was about a hundred paces in circuit ; these are the sources of the river The-a-ki-ki, which, by a corrupted pronunciation, our Indians call Ki-a-ki-ki. Tlieak signiiies a wolf, in what language I do not remember, but the river bears that name because the Mahingans (Mohicans), who were likewise called wolves, had formerly taken refuge on its banks." The Mohicans were of the Algonquin stock, anciently living east of the Hudson River, where they had been so persecuted and nearly destroyed by the implacable Iroquois that their tribal integrity was lost, and they were dispersed in small families over the west, seeking protection in isolated places, or living at sufferance among their Algonquin kindred. Tliej were brave, faithful to the extreme, famous scouts and successful hunters. La Salle,- appreciating these valuable traits, usually kept a few of them in his employ. The "savage," or "hunter," so often referred to by Hennepm, in the extracts we have taken from his journal, was a Mohican.

In a report made to the late Governor Ninian Edwards, in 1812, by John Hays, interpreter and Coureur de Bois of the routes, rivers and Indian villages in the then Illinois Territory, Mr. Hays calls the Kankakee the Quin-que-que, which was probably its French-Indian name. Col. Guerdon S. Hubbard, who, for many years, dating back as early as 1819, was a trader, and commanded great influence with the bands of Pottawatomies, claiming the Kaiikakee as their country, informs the writer that the Pottawatomie name of the Kankakee is Ky-an-ke-a-kee, meaning "the river of the w^onderful or beautiful land - as it really is, westward of the marshes. " A-kee," "Ali-ke " and "Aki," in the Algonquin dialect, signifies earth or land.

The name Desplaines, like that of the Kankakee, has undergone changes in the progress of time. On a French map of Louisiana, in 1717, the Desplaines is laid down as the Chicago Eiver. Just after Great Britain had secured the possessions of the French east of the Mississippi, by conquest and tr^ty, and when the British authorities were keenly alive to everything pertaining to their newly acquired possessions, an elaborate map, collated from the most authentic sources by Enian Bowen, geographer to His Majesty King George the Third, was issued, and on this map the Desplaines is laid down as the Illinois, or Chicago Eiver. Many early French writers speak of it, as they do of the Kankakee above the confluence, as the " River of the Illinois." Its French Canadian name is Aio Plein, now changed to Desjjlaines, or Riviere Au Plein, or Despleines, from a variety of hard maple - that is to say, sugar tree. The* Pottawatomies called it Sheskik-mao-shi-ke Se-pe, signifying the river of the tree from which a great quantity of sap flows in the spring. It has also been sanctified by Father Zenobe Membre with the name Divine River, and by authors of early western gazetteers, vulgarized by the appellation of Ivickapoo Creek.

Below the confluence of the Desplaines, the Illinois River was, by La Salle, named the Seignelay, as a mark of his esteem for the brilliant young Colbert, who succeeded his father as Minister of the Marine. On the great map, prepared by the engineer Franquelin in 1684, it is called Eiver Des Illinois, or Macoupins. The name Illinois,

Names Of The Illinois

" We continued our course," says Hennepin, " upon this river (the Kankakee and Illinois) very near the whole month of December, at the latter end of which we arrived at a village of the Illinois, which lies near a hundred and thirty leagues from Fort Miamis, on the Lake of the Illinois. We suffered greatly on the passage, for the savages having set lire to the grass on the prairie, the wild cattle had fled, and we did not kill one. Some wild turkeys were the only game we secured. God's providence supported us all the while, and as we meditated upon the extremities to which we were reduced, regarding ourselves without hope of relief, we found a very large wild ox sticking fast in the mud of the river. We killed him, and with much difliculty dragged him out of the mud. This was a great refreshment to our m#n ; it revived their courage - being so timely and unexpectedly relieved, they concluded that God approved our undertaking.

The great village of the Illinois, where La Salle's party had now arrived, has been located with such certainty by Francis Parkman, the learned historical writer, as to leave no doubt of its identity. It was on the north side of the Illinois River, above the mouth of the Yermill on and below Starved Rock, near the little village of Utica, in La Salle county, Illinois.

"We found," continues Father Hennepin, "no one in the village, as we had foreseen, for the Illinois, according to their custom, had divided themselves into small hunting parties. Their absence caused great perplexity amongst us, for we wanted provisions, and yet did not dare to meddle with the Indian corn the savages had laid under ground for their subsistence and for seed. However, our necessity being very great, and it being impossible to continue our voyage without any provisions, M. La Salle resolved to take about forty bushels of corn, and hoped to appease the savages with presents. We embarked again, with these fresh provisions, and continued to fall down the river, which runs directly toward the south. On the 1st of January we went through a lake (Peoria Lake) formed by the river, about seven leagues long and one broad. The savages call that place Pimeteoui, that is, in their tongue, ' a place where there is an abundance of fat animals.' "

Resuming Hennepin's narrative : " The current brought us, in the meantime, to the Indian camp, and M. La Salle was the first one to land, followed closely by his men, which increased the consternation of the savages, whom we easily might have defeated. As it was not our design, we made a lialt to give them time to recover themselves and to see that we were not enemies. Most of the savages who had run away upon our landing, understanding that we were friends, returned ; but some others did not come back for three or four days, and after they had learned that we had smoked the calumet.

" I must observe here, that the hardest winter does not last longer than two months in this charming country, so that on the 15th of January there came a sudden thaw, which made the rivers navigable, and the weather as mild as it is in France in the middle of the spring. M. La Salle, improving this fair season, desired me to go dowii the river with him to choose a place proper to build a fort. We selected an eminence on the bank of the river, defended on that side by the river, and on two others by deep ravines, so that it was accessible only on one side. We cast a trench to join the two ravines, and made the eminence steep on that side, supporting the earth with grea% pieces of timber. We made a rough palisade to defend ourselves in case the Indians should attack us while we were engaged in building the fort ; but no one offering to disturb us, we went on diligently with our work. When the fort was half finished, M. La Salle lodged himself, with M. Tonti, in 'the middle of the fortification, and every one took his post. We placed the forge on the curtain on the side of the wood, and laid in a great quantity of coal for that purpose. But our greatest difficulty was to build a boat - our carpenters having deserted us, we did not know what to do. However, as timber was abundant and near at hand, we told our men that if any of them would undertake to saw boards for building the bark, we might surmount all other difficulties. Two of the men undertook the task, and succeeded so well that we began to build a bark, the keel whereof was forty-two feet long. Our men went on so briskly with the work, that on the 1st of March our boat was half built, and all the timber ready prepared for furnishing it. Our fort was also very near finished, and we named it ' Fort Crevecoeur,' because the desertion of our men, and other difficulties we had labored under, had almost ' broken our hearts.' "

" M. La Salle," says Hennepin, " no longer doubted that the Griffin was lost ; but neither this nor other difficulties dejected him. His great courage buoyed him up, and he resolved to return to Fort Frontenao by land, notwithstanding the snow, and the great dangers attending so long a journey. We had many private conferences, wherein it was decided that he should return to Fort Frontenac with three men, to bring with him the necessary articles to proceed with the discovery, while I, with two men, should go in a canoe to the River Meschasipi, and endeavor to obtain the friendship of the nations who inhabited its banks.

"M. La Salle left Tonti to command in Fort Crevecosur, and ordered our carpenter to prepare some thick boards to plank the deck of our ship, in the nature of a parapet, to cover it against the arrows of the savages in case they should shoot at us from the shore. Then, calling his men together, La Salle requested them to obey M, Tonti's orders in his absence, to live in Christian union and charity ; to be courageous and firm in their designs, and above all not to give credit to false reports the savages might make, either of him or of their comrades who accompanied Father Hennepin."

Hennepin and his two companions, with a supply of trinkets suitable for the Indian trade, left Fort Crevecoeur for the Mississippi, on the 29th oi February, 1680, and were captured by the Sioux, as already stated. From this time to the ultimate discovery and taking possession of the Mississippi and the valleys by La Salle, Father Zenobe Membre was the historian of the expedition.

La Salle started across the country, going up the Illinois and Kankakee, and through the southern part of the present State of Michigan. He reached the Detroit River ; ferrying the stream with a raft, he at length stood on Canadian soil. Striking a direct line across the wilderness, he arrived at Lake Erie, near Point Pelee. By this time only one man remained in health, and with his assistance La Salle made a canoe. Embarking in it the party came to Niagara on Easter Monday. Leaving his comrades, who were completely exhausted, La Salle on the 6th of May reached Fort Frontenac, making a journey of over a thousand miles in sixty-five days, " the greatest feat ever performed by a Frenchman in America."

La Salle found his afPairs in great confusion. His creditors had seized upon his estate, including Fort Frontenac. Undaunted by this new misfortune, he confronted his creditors and enemies, pacifying the former and awing the latter into silence. He gathered the fragments of his scattered property and in a short time started west with a company of twenty-five men, whom he had recruited to assist in the prosecution of his discoveries. He reached Lake Huron by the way of Lake Simcoe, and shortly afterwards arrived at Mackinaw. Here he found that his enemies had been very busy, and had poisoned the minds of the Indians against his designs.

for Fort Frontenac. On this journey, as La Salle passed up the Illinois he was favorably impressed with Starved Koek as a place presenting strong defences naturally. He sent word back to Tonti, below Peoria Lake, to take possession of " The Rock " and erect a fortili cation on its summit. Tonti accordingly came up the river . with a part of his available force and began to work upon the new fort. While engaged in this enterprise the principal part of the men remaining at Fort Crevecoeur mutinied. They destroyed the vessel on the stocks, plundered the storehouse, escaped up the Illinois River and appeared before Fort Miami. These deserters demolished Fort Miami and robbed it of goods and furs of La Salle, on deposit there, and then fled out of the country. These misfortunes were soon followed by an incursion of the Iroquois, who attacked the Illinois in their village near the Starved Rock. Tonti acting as mediator, came near losing his life at the hand of an infuriated Iroquois warrior, who drove a knife into his ribs. Constantly an object of distrust to the Illinois, who feared he was a spy and friend of the Iroquois, in turn exposed to the jealousy of the Iroquois, who imagined he and his French friends were allies of the Illinois, Tonti remained faithful to his trust until he saw that he could not avert the blow meditated by the Iroquois. Then, with Fathers Zenobe Membre and Gabriel Rebourde, and a few Frenchmen who had remained faithful, he escaped from the enraged Indians and made his way, in a leaky canoe, up the Illinois River. Father Gabriel one fine day left his companions on the river to enjoy a walk in the beautiful groves near by, and while thus engaged, as he was meditating upon his holy calling, fell into an ambuscade of Kickapoo Indians. The good old man, unconscious of his danger, was instantly knocked down, the scalp torn from his venerable head, and his gray hairs afterward exhibited in triumph by his young murderers as a trophy taken from the crown of an Iroquois warrior. Tonti, with those in his company, pursued his course, passing by Chicago, and thence up the west shore of Lake Michigan. Subsisting on berries, and often on acorns and roots which they dug from the ground, they finally arrived at the Pottawatomie towns. Previous to this they abandoned their canoe and started on foot for the Mission of Green Bay, where they wintered.

La Salle, when he ariived at St. Joseph, found Fort Miamis plundered and demolished. He also learned that the Iroquois had attacked the Illinois. Fearing for the safety of Tonti, he pushed on rapidly, only to find, at Starved Rock, the unmistakable signs of an Indian slaughter. The report was true. The Iroquois had defeated the Illi- nois and driven them west of the Mississippi, La Salle viewed the wreck of his cherished project, the demolition of the fort, the loss of his peltries, and especially the destruction of his vessel, in that usual calm way peculiar to him ; and, although he must have suffered the most intense anguish, no trace of sorrow or indecision .appeared on his inflexible countenance. Shortly afterward he returned to Fort Miamis. La Salle occupied his time, until spring, in rebuilding Fort Miamis, holding conferences with the surrounding Indian tribes, and confederating them against future attacks of the Iroquois. He now abandoned the purpose of descending the Mississippi in a sailing vessel, and determined to prosecute his voyage in the ordinary wooden pirogues or canoes.

Tonti was sent forward to Chicago Creek, where he constructed a number of sledges. After other preparations had been made. La Salle and his party left St. Joseph and came around the southern extremity of the lake. The goods and effects were placed on the sledges prepared by Tonti. La Salle's party consisted of twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Indians. The savages took with them ten squaws and three children, so that the party numbered in all fifty-four persons. They had to make the portage of the Chicago River. After dragging their canoes, sledges, baggage and provisions about eighty leagues over the ice, on the Desplaines and Illinois Rivers, they came to the great Indian town. It was deserted, the savages having gone down the river to Lake Peoria. From Peoria Lake the navigation was open, and embarking on the 6th of February, they soon arrived at the Mississippi. Here, owing to floating ice, they were delayed till the 13th of the same month. Membre describes the Missouri as follows : " It is full as large as the Mississippi, into which it empties, troubling it so that, from tlie mouth of the Ozage (Missouri), the water is hardly drinkable. The Indians assured us that this river is formed by many others, and that they ascend it for ten or twelve days to a mountain where it rises ; that beyond this mountain is the sea, where they see great ships ; that on the river are a great number of large villages. Although this river is very large, the Mississippi does not seem augmented by it, but it pours in so much mud that, from its mouth, the water of the great river, whose bed is also slimy, is more like clear mud than river water, without changing at all till it reaches the sea, a distance of more than three hundred leagues, although it receives seven large rivers, the water of which is very beautiful, and which are almost as large as the Mississippi." From this time, until they neared the mouths of the Mississippi, nothing especially worthy of note occurred.

On the 6 til of April tliej came to the place where the river divides itself into three channels. M. La Salle took the western, the Sieur Dautray the southern, and Tonti, accompanied "by Menibre, followed the middle channel. The three channels were beautiful and deep. The water became brackish, and two leagues further it became perfectly salt, and advancing on they at last beheld the Gulf of Mexico. La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the borders of the sea, and then the parties assembled on a dry spot of ground not far from the mouth of the river. On the 9th of April, with all the pomp and ceremony of the Holy Catholic Church, La Salle, in the name of the French king, took jjossession of the Mississippi and all its tributaries. First they chanted the " Yexilla Regis " and " Te Deum," and then, while the assembled voyagers and their savage attendants fired their muskets and shouted " Yive le Roi," La Salle planted the column, at the same time proclaiming, in a loud voice, " In the name of the Most High, Mighty, Invincible, and. Yictorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God King of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name, I, this 9th day of April, one thousand six hundred and eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of His Majesty, which I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all whom it may concern, have taken, and do now take, in the name of His Majesty and his successors to rhe crown, possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors, ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the people, nations, provinces, cities, towns, villages, minerals, fisheries, streams and rivers, within the extent of the said Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis, otherwise called Ohio, as also along the river Colbert, or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge themselves therein, from its source beyond the country of the Kadonessious (Sioux), as far as its mouth at the sea, and also to the mouth of the river of Palms, upon the assurance we have had from the natives of these countries that we were the first Europeans who have descended or ascended the river Colbert (Mississipj)i) ; hereby protesting against all who may hereafter undertake to invade any or all of these aforesaid countries, peoples or lands, to the prejudice of His Majesty, acquired by the consent of the nations dwelling herein. Of which, and of all else that is needful, I hereby take to witness those who hear me, and demand an act of the notary here present."

At the foot of the tree to which the cross was attached La Salle caused to be buried a leaden plate, on one side of which were engraven the arms of France, and on the opposite the following Latin inscription:

Cio Ioc Lxxxil

After which, La Salle remarked that His Majesty, who was the eldest son of the Holy Catholic Church, would not annex any country to his dominion without giving especial attention to establish the Christian religion therein. He then proceeded at once to erect a cross, before which the " Vexilla " and " Domine Salvum fac Regem " were sung. The ceremony was concluded by shouting " Vive le Eoi ! "

Thus was completed the discovery and taking possession of the Mississippi valley. By that indisputable title, the right of discovery, attested by all those formalities recognized as essential by the laws of nations, the manuscript evidence of which was duly certified by a notary public brought along for that purpose, and witnessed by the signatures of La Salle and a number of other persons present on the occasion, France became the owner of all that vast country drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. Bounded by the AUeghanies on the east, and the Eocky Mountains on the west, and extending from an undefined limit on the north to the burning sands of the Gulf on the south. Embracing within its area every variety of climate, watered with a thousand beautiful streams, containing vast prairies and extensive forests, with a rich and fertile soil that only awaited the husbandman's skill to yield bountiful harvests, rich in vast beds of bituminous coal and deposits of ii'on, copper and other ores, this magnificent domain w*as not to become the seat of a religious dogma, enforced by the power of state, but was designed under the hand of God to become the center of civilization - the heart of the American republic - where the right of conscience was to be free, without interference of law, and where universal liberty should only be restrained in so far as

Had France, with the same energy she displayed in discovering Louisiana, retained her grasp upon this territory, the dominant race in the valley of the Mississippi would have been Gallic instead of Anglo- Saxon.

Chapter Vi The Miamis The Miami, Piankeshaw, And Wea Bands

The people known to us as the Miamis formerlj^ dwelt beyond the Mississippi, and, according to their own traditions, came originally from tlie Pacific. " If what I have heard asserted in several places be true, tlie Illinois and Miamis- came from the banks of a very distant sea to the westward. It would seem that their first stand, after they made their first descent into this country, was at Moingona. At least it is certain that one of their tribes bears that name. The rest are knowm under the name of Peorias, Tamaroas, Caoquias and Kaskaskias."

The migration of the Miamis from the west of the Mississippi, eastward through Wisconsin and northern Illinois, aroi;nd the southern end of Lake Michigan to Detroit, and thence up the Maumee and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the mass of records handed down to us from the missionaries, travelers and officers connected with the French. Speaking of the mixed village of Maskoutens, situated on Fox Piver, Wisconsin, at the time of his visit there in 1670, Father Claude Dablon says the village of the Fire-nation " is joined in the circle of the same barriers to another people, named Oumiami, w^hich is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters. It is beyond this great river that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Fire-nation to form here a transplanted colony." -

From the quotations made there remains little doubt that the Miamis were originally a branch of the great Illinois nation. This theory is confirmed by writers of our own time, among whom we may mention General William H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official connection with the several bands of the Miamis and Illinois gave him the opportunities, of which he availed himself, to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. "Although the language, manners and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they derived tlieir origin from the same source with the Miamis, the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi." The assertion of General Harrison that the tribal relation between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken at the time of the discovery of the Upper Mississippi valley by the French is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities. In the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and other enemies, we have no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen. After the separation, on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them.

Father Dablon, in the narrative from which we have quoted, gives a detailed account of the civility of the Miamis at Mascouten, and the formality and court routine with which their great chief was surrounded. " The chief of the Miamis, whose name was Tetinchoua, was surrounded by the most notable people of the village, who, assuming the role of courtiers, with civil posture full of deference, and keeping always a respectful silence, magnified the greatness of their king. The chief and his routine gave Father Dablon every mark of their most distinguished esteem. The physiognomy of the chief was as mild and as attractive as any one could wish to see ; and while his reputation as a warrior was great, his features bore a softness which charmed all those who beheld him."

^Nicholas Perrot, with Sieur de St. Lussin, dispatched by Talon, the intendant, to visit the westward nations, with whom the French had intercourse, and invite them to a council to be held the following spring at the Sault Ste. Marie, was at this Miami village shortly after the visit of Dablon. Perrot was treated with great consideration by the Miamis. Tetinchoua " sent out a detachment to meet the French agent and receive him in military style. The detachment advanced in battle array, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, were uttering war cries from time to time. The Pottawatomies who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, perpared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put himself at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge.

" But the Miamis wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pottawatomies were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signals for a kind of combat. The Miamis fired a volley from their guns, wliicli were only loaded with powder, and the Pottawatoinies returned it in the same way ; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tomahawks. Peace was then made ; the Miamis jDresented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his chief escort into the town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him magnificently after the custom of the country, and gave him the diversion of a game of ball. The Miami chief never spoke to his subjects, but imparted his orders through some of his officers. On account of his advanced age he was dissuaded from attending the council to be held at Ste. Marie, between the French and the Indians; however, he deputized the Pottawatomies to act in his name.

This confederacy called themselves " Miamis ," and by this name were known to the surrounding tribes. The name was not bestowed upon them by the French, as some have assumed from its resemblance to 3fon-ami, because they were the friends of the latter. When Hennepin was captured on the Mississippi by a war party of the Sioux, these savages with their painted faces rendered more hideous by the devilish contortions of their features, cried out in angry voices, " '-Mia-Jiama ! Mia-hama P and we made signs with our oars upon the sand, that the Miamis, their enemies, of whom they were in search, had passed the river upon their flight to join the Illinois."

" The confederacy which obtained the general appellation of Miamis, from the superior numbers of the individual tribe to whom that name more properly belonged," were subdivided into thi-ee principal tribes or bands, namely, the Miamis proper, Weas and Piankeshaws. French writers have given names to two or three other subdivisions or families of the three principal bands, whose identity has never been clearly traced, and who figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis, that it is not necessary here to specify their obslete names. The different ways of wi-iting Miamis are : Oumiamwek, Oumamis, Maumees, Au-Miami (contracted to Au-Mi and Omee) and Mine-ami.

The French called the Weas Ouiatenons, Syatanons, Ouyatanons and Ouias ; the English and Colonial traders spelled the word, Ouicatanon, Way-ough-ta-nies, Wawiachtens, and Wehahs.

British, as well as by the American colonists. Of this name there are various corruptions in pronounciation and spelling, examples oi which we have in " Twich-twichs," " Twick-twicks," " Twis-twicks," " Twigh-twees," and " Twick-tovies." The insertion of these many names, applied to one people, would seem a tedious superfluity, were it otherwise possible to retain the identity of the tribes to which these different appellations have been given by the French, British and American officers, traders and writers. It will save the reader much perplexity in perusing a history of the Miamis if it is borne in mind that all these several names refer to the Miami nation or to one or the other of its respective bands.

Besides the colony mentioned by Dablon and Charlevoix, on the Fox River of Wisconsin, Hennepin informs us of a village of Miamis soutli ^nd west of Peoria Lake at the time he was at the latter place in 1679, and it was probably this village whose inhabitants the Sioux were seeking. St. Cosme, in 1699, mentions the '- village of the ' Peanzichias-Miamis, who formerly dwelt on the of the Mississippi, and who had come some years previous and settled ' on the Illinois Piver, a few miles below the confluence of the Des Plaines."

The Miamis were within the territory of La Salle's colony, of which Starved Pock was the center, and counted thirteen hundred warriors. The Weas and Piankeshaws were also there, the former having five hundred warriors and the Piankeshaw band one hundred and fifty. This was prior to 1687. At a later day the Weas " were at Chicago, but being afraid of the canoe people, left it." Sieur de Courtmanche, sent westward in 1701 to negotiate with the tribes in that part of Kew France, was at " Chicago, where he found some Weas (Ouiatanons), a Miami tribe, who had sung the war-song against the Sioux and the Iroquois. He obliged them to lay down their arms and extorted from them a promise to send deputies to Montreal."

In a letter dated in 1Y21, published in his " Narrative Journal," Father Charlevoix, speaking of the Miamis about the head of Lake Michigan, says : " Fifty years ago the Miamis were settled on the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, in a place called Chicagou, from the name of a small river which runs into the lake, the source of which is not far distant from that of the river of the Illinois; they are at present divided into three villages, one of which stands on the river St. Joseph, the second on another river which bears their name and runs into Lake Erie, and the third upon the river

A.Wae Witu The Sioux

In 1694, Count Frontenac, in a conference with the Western Indians, requested the Miamis of the Pepikokia band who resided on the Maramek, to remove and join the tribe which was located on the Saint Joseph, of Lake Michigan. The reason for this request, as stated by Frontenac himself, was, that he wished the different bands of the Miami confederacy to unite, " so as to be able to execute with greater facility the commands which he might issue." At that time the Iroquois were at war with Canada, and the French were endeavoring to persuade the western tribes to take up the tomahawk in their behalf. 'The Miamis promised to observe the Governor's wishes and began to make preparations for the removal.

"Late in August, 1696, they started to join their brethren settled on the St. Joseph. On their way they were attacked by the Sioux, who killed several. The Miamis of the St. Joseph, learning this hostility, resolved to avenge their slaughter. They pursued the Sioux to their own country, and found them entrenched in their fort with some Frenchmen of the class known as coureurs des bois (bushlopers). They nevertheless attacked them repeatedly with great resolution, but were repulsed, and at last compelled to retire, after losing several of their braves. On their way home, meeting other Frenchmen carrying arms and ammunition to the Sioux, they seized all they had, but did them no harm."

The Miamis were very nmch enraged at the French for supplying their enemies, the Sioux, with guns and ammunition. It took all the address of Count Frontenac to prevent them from joining the Iroquois; indeed, they seized upon the French agent and trader, Nicholas Perrot, who had been commissioned to lead the Maramek band to the St. Josephs, and would have burnt him alive had it not been for the Foxes, who interposed in his behalf. This was the connnencement of the bitter feeling of hostility with which, from that time, a part of the Miamis always regarded the French. From this period the movements of the tribe were observed by the French with jealous suspicion.

We have already shown that in 1699 the Miamis were at Fort Wayne, engaged in transferring across their portage emigrants from Canada to Louisiana, and that, within a few years after, the Weas are described as having their fort and several miles of cultivated fields on the Wea plains below La Fayette. From the extent and character of these improvements, it may be safely assumed that the

When the French first discovered the Wabash, the Piankeshaws were found in possession of the land on either side of that stream, from its mouth to the Yennilion River, and no claim had ever been made to it by any other tribe until 1804, the period of a cession of a part of it to the United States by the Delawares, who had obtained their title from the Piankeshaws themselves.

We have already seen that at. the time of the first account we have relating to the Maumee and the Wabash, the Miamis had villages and extensive improvements near Fort Wayne, on the Wea prairie below La Fayette, on the Vei'milion of the Wabash, and at Yincennes. At a later day they established villages at other places, viz., near the forks of the Wabash at Huntington, on the Mississinewa, on Eel River near Logunsport, while near the source of this river, and westward of Fort Wayne, was the village of the " Little Turtle." Near the mouth of the Tippecanoe was a sixth village. Passing below the Yermilion, the Miamis had other villages, one on Sugar Creek and another near Terre Haute.

The country of the Miamis extended west to the watershed between the Illinois and Wabash rivers, which separated their possessions from those of their brethren, the Illinois. On the north were the Pottawatomies, who were slowly but steadily pushing their lines southward into the territory of the Miamis. The superior numbers of the Miamis and their great valor enabled them to extend the limit of their hunting grounds eastward into Ohio, and far within the territory claimed by the Iroquois. " They were the undoubted proprietors of all that beautiful country watered by the Wabash and its tributaries, and there remains as little doubt that their claim extended as far east as the Scioto."

Unlike the Illinois, the Miamis held their own until they were placed upon an equal footing with the tribes eastward by obtaining possession of fire-arms. With these implements of civilized warfare they were able to maintain their tribal integrity and the independence they cherished. They were not to be controlled by the French, nor did they sufEer enemies from any quarter to impose upon them without prompt retaliation. They traded and fought with the Frencli, English and Americans as their interests or passions inclined. They made peace or declared war against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice dictated. More than once they compelled even the arrogant Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies that protection which they themselves had failed to seciire by their own prowess. Bold, independent and flushed with success, the Miimis afforded a poor field for missionary work, and the Jesuit relations and pastoral letters of the French priesthood have less to say of the Miamis confederacy than any of the other western tribes, the Kickapoos alone excepted.

The country of the Miamis was accessible, by way of the lakes, to the fur trader of Canada, and from the eastward, to the adventurers engaged in the Indian trade from Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia, either by way of the Ohio River or a connnerce carried on overland by means of pack-horses. The English and the French alike coveted their peltries and sought their powerful alliance; therefore the Miamis were harrassed with the jealousies and diplomacy of both, and if they or a part of their several tribes became inveigled into an alliance with the one, it involved the hostility of the other. The French government sought to use them to check the westward advance of the British colonial influenae, while tlie latter desired their assistance to curb the French, whose ambitions schemes involved nothing less than the exclusive subjugation of the entire countries westward of the Alleghanies.- Jn these wars between the French and the English the Miamis were constantly reduced in numbers, and whatever might have been the result to either of the former, it only ended in disaster to themselves. Sometimes they divided , again they were entirely devoted to the interest of the English and Iroquois. Then they joined the French against the British and Iroquois, and when the British ultimately obtained the mastery and secured the valley of the Mississippi - the long sought for prize - the Miamis entered the <3onfederacy of Pontiac to drive them out of the country. They fought with the British - except the Piaukeshaw band - against the colonies during the revolutionary war. After its close their young men were largely occupied in the predatory warfare waged by the several Maumee and Wabasli tribes upon the frontier settlements of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. They likewise entered the confederacy of Tecumseh, and, either openly or in secret sympathy, they were the allies of the British in the war of 1812. Their history occupies a conspicuous place in the military annals of the west, extending over a period of a century, during which time they maintained a manly struggle to retain possession of their homes in the valleys of the Wabash and Maumee.

bj the exercise of tlieir cunning and bravery. " In the year 1680 the Miamis and Illinois were hunting on the St. Joseph River. A party of four hundred Iroquois surprised them and killed thirty or forty of their hunters and captured three hundred of their women and children. After the victors had rested awhile they prepared to return to their homes by easy journeys, as they had reason to believe that they could reach their own villages before the defeated enemy would have time to rally and give notice of their disaster to those of their nation who were hunting in remoter places. But they were deceived; for the Illinois and Miamis rallied to the nmnber of two hundred, and resolved to die fighting rather than suffer their women and cliildren to be cariied away. In the meantime, because they were not equal to their enemies in equipment of arms or numbers, they contrived a notable stratagem.

After the Miamis had duly considered in what way they would attack the Iroquois, they decided to follow them, keeping a small distance in the rear, until it should rain. The heavens seemed to favor their plan, for, after awhile it began to rain, and rained continually the whole day from morning until night. When the rain began to fall the Miamis quickened their march and passed by the Iroquois, and took a position two leagues in advance, where they lay in an ambuscade, hidden by the tall grass, in the middle of a prairie, which the Iroquois had to cross in order to reach the woods beyond, where they designed to kindle fires and encamp for the night. The Illinois and Miamis, lying at full length in the grass on either side of the trail, waitiid until the Iroquois were in their midst, when they shot off their arrows, and then attacked vigorously with their clubs. The Iroquois endeavored to use their fire-arms, but finding them of no service because the rain had dampened and spoiled the priming, threw them upon the ground and undertook to defend themselves with their clubs. In the use of the latter weapon the Iroquois were no match for their more dexterous and nimble enemies. They were forced to 'yield the contest, and retreated, fighting until night came on. They lost one hundred and eighty of their warriors.

The fight lasted about an hour, and would have continued through the night, were it not that the Miamis and Illinois feared that their women and children (left in the rear and bound) would be exposed to some surprise in the dark. The victors rejoined their women and children, and possessed tliemselves of the fire-arms of their enemies. The Miamis and Illinois then returned to their own country, wHhout taking one Iroquois for fear of weakening themselves.

Defeat Of The Iroquois

Failing in their first efforts to withdraw the Miamis from the French, and secure their fur trade to the merchants at Albany and New York, the English sent their allies, the Iroquois, against them. A series of encounters between the two tribes was the result, in which the blood of both was profusely shed, to further the purposes of a purely commercial transaction.

In these engagements the Senecas - a tribe of the Iroquois, or Five N"ations, residing to the west of the other tribes of the confederacy, and, in consequence, being nearest to the Miamis, and more directly exposed to their fury - were nearly destroyed at the outset. The Miamis followed up their success and drove the Senecas behind the palisades that inclosed their villages. For three years the war was carried on with a bitterness only known to exasperated savages.

When at last, the Iroquois saw that they could no longer defend themselves against the Miamis, they appeared in council before the Governor of New York, and, pityingly, claimed protection from him, who, to say the least, had remained silent and permitted his own people to precipitate this calamity upon them.

" You say you will support us against all your kings and our enemies ; we will then forbear keeping any more correspondence with the French of Canada if the great King of England will defend our people from the TwichUoichs and other nations over whom the French have an influence and have encouraged to destroy an abundance of our people, even since the peace hetween the two crowns" etc.

The governor declined sending troops to protect the Iroquois against their enemies, but informed them: "You must be serisible that the Dowaganhaes, Twichtwicks, etc., and other remote Indians, are vastly more numerous than you Five Nations, and that, by their continued warring upon you, they will, in a few years, totally destroy you. I should, therefore, think it pruderice and good policy in you to try all possible means to fix a. trade and correspondence with all those nations, by which means you would reconcile them to yourselves, and with my assistance, I am in hopes that, in a short time, they might be united with us in the covenant chain, and then you might at all times, without hazard, go hunting into their country, which, I understand, is much the best for beaver. I wish you would try to bring some of them to speak to me, and perhajjs I might prevail upon them to come and live amongst you. I should think myself obliged to reward you for such a piece of service as I tender your good advantage, and will always use my best endeavor to preserve you from all your enemies.

The conference continued several days, during which the Iroquois stated their grievances in numerous speeches, to which the governor graciously replied, using vague terms and making no promises, after the manner of the extract from his speech above quoted, but placed great stress on the value of the fur trade to the English, and enjoining his brothers, the Iroquois, to bring all their peltries to Albany ; to maintain their old alliance with the English, offensive and defensive, and have no intercourse whatever, of a friendly nature, with the rascally French of Canada.

The Iroquois declined to follow the advice of the governor, deeming it of little credit to their courage to sue for peace. In the meantime the governor sent emissaries out among the Miamis, with an invitation to open a trade with the English. The messengers were captured by the commandant at Detroit, and sent, as prisonei;s, to Canada. However, the Miamis, in July, 1702, sent, through the sachems of the Five Nations, a message to the governor at Albany, advising him that many of the Miamis, with another nation, had removed to, and were then living at, Tjughsaghrondie, near by the fort which the French had built the previous summer ; that they had been informed that one of their chiefs, who had visited Albany two years before, had been kindly treated, and that they had now come forward to inquire into the trade of Albany, and see if goods could not be purchased there cheaper than elsewhere, and that they had intended to go to Canada with their beaver and peltries, but that they ventured to Albany to inquire if goods could not be secured on better terms. The governor replied that he was extremely pleased to speak with the Miamis about the establishment of a lasting friendship and trade, and in token of his sincere intentions presented his guests with guns, powder, hats, strouds, tobacco and pipes, and sent to their brethren at Detroit, waumpum, pipes, shells, nose and ear jewels, looking-glasses, fans, children's toys, and such other light articles as his guests could conveniently carry ; and, finally, assured them that the Miamis might come freely to Albany, where they would be treated kindly, and receive, in exchange for their peltries, everything as cheap as any other Indians in covenant of friendship with the English.

Ueged To Unite At One Place

suade tlie Miamis from trading witli the English ; failing in this, forcible means were resorted to. CajDtain Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac marched against the Miamis and rednced them to terms.

The Miamis were not unanimous in the choice of their friends. Some adhered to the French, while others were strongly inclined to trade with the English, of whom they could obtain abetter quality of goods at cheaper rates, while at the same time they were allowed a greater price for their furs. Cadillac had hardly effected a coercive peace with the Miamis before the latter were again at Albany. " I have," writes Lord Cournbury to the Board of Trade, in a letter dated August 20, 1708, " been there five years endeavoring to get the^e nations (referring to the Miamis and another nation) to trade with our people, but the French have always dissuaded them from coming until this year, when, goods being very scarce, they came to Albany, where our people have supplied them with goods nmch cheaper than ever the French did, and they promise to return in the spring with a much greater number of their nations, which would be a very great advantage to this province. I did, in a letter of the 25th day of June last, inform your Lordships that three French soldiers, having deserted from the French at a place they call Le Destroit, came to Albany. Another deserter came from the same place, whom I examined myself, and I inclose a copy of his examination, by which your Lordships will perceive how easily the French may he heaten out of Canada. The better I am acquainted with this conntry, and the more I inquire into matters, so much the more I am confirmed in my opinion of the facility of effecting that conquest, and by the method I then proposed."

Turning to French documents, we find that Sieur de Callier desired the Miamis to withdraw from their several widely separated villages and settle in a body upon the St. Joseph. At a great council of the westward tribes, held in Montreal in 1694, the French Intendant, in a speech to the Miamis, declares that " he will not believe that the Miamis wish to obey him until they make altogether one and the same fire, either at the Eiver St. Joseph or at some other place adjoining it. He tells them that he has got near the Iroquois, and has soldiers at Katarakoui, in the fort that had been abandoned ; that the Miamis must get near the enemy, in order to imitate him (the Intendant), and be able to strike the Iroquois the more readily. My children," continued the Intendant, "tell me that the Miamis are numerous, and able of themselves to destroy the Iroquois. Like them, all are afraid. What ! do you wish to abandon your country to your enemy ? . . Have you forgotten that I waged war against him principally on your account, alone ? Your dead are no longer visible in his country; their bodies are covered by those of the French wlio have perished to avenge them. I furnished you the means to avenge them likewise. It depends only on me to receive the Iroquois as a friend, which I will not do on account of you, who would be destroyed were I to make peace without including you in its terms."

" I have heard," writes Governor Yaudreuil, in a letter dated the 28th of October, 1719, to the Council of Marine at Paris, " that the Miamis had resolved to remain where they were, and not go to the St. Joseph River, and that this resolution of theirs was dangerous, on» account of the facility they would have of communicating with the English, who were incessantly distributing belts secretly among the nations, to attract them to themselves, and that Sieur Dubinson had been designed to command the post of Ouaytanons, where he should use his influence among the Miamis to induce them to go to the Eiver St. Joseph, and in case they were not willing, that he should remain with them, to counteract the eifect of those belts, which had already caused eight or ten Miami canoes to go that year to trade at Albany, and which might finally induce all of the Miami nation to follow the example." Finally, some twenty-five years later, as we learn from the letter of M. de Beauharnois, that this French oflicer, having learned that the English had established trading magazines on the Ohio, issued his orders to the commandants among the Weas and Miamis, to drive the British off by force of arms and plunder their stores.

Other extracts might be drawn from the voluminous reports of the military and civil ofiicers of the French and British colonial governments respectively, to the same purport as those already quoted ; but enough has been given to illustrate the unfortunate position of the Miamis. For a period of half a century they were placed between the cutting edges of English and French purposes, during which there was no time when they were not threatened with danger of, or engaged in, actual war either with the French or the English, or with some of their several Indian allies. By this continual abrasion, the peace and happiness which should have been theirs was wholly lost, and their numbers constactly reduced. They had no relief from the strife, in which only injury could result to themselves, let the issue have been what it might between the English and the French, until the power of the latter was finally destroyed in 1763 ; and even then, after the French had given up the country, the Miamis were compelled to de- fend their own title to it against the arrogant claims of the English. In the effort of the combined westward tribes to wrest their country from the English, subsequent to the close of the colonial war, the Miamis took a conspicuous part. This will be noticed in a subsequent chapter. After the conclusion of the revolutionary war, the several Miami villages from the Yermilion River to Fort Wayne suffered severely from the attacks of the federal government under General Harmer, and the military expeditions recruited in Kentucky, and commanded by Colonels Scott and Wilkinson. Besides these disasters, whole villages were nearly depopulated by the ravages of small-pox. The uncontrollable thirst for whisky, acquired through a long course of years, by contact with unscrupulous traders, reduced their numbers still more, while it degraded them to the" last degree. This was their condition in 1814:, when General Harrison said of them : " The Miamis will not be in our way. They are a poor, miserable, drunken set, diminishing every year. Becoming too lazy to hunt, they feel the advantage of their annuities. The fear of the other Indians has alone prevented them from selling their whole claim to the United States ; and as soon as there is peace, or when the British can no longer intrigue, they will sell." The same authority, in his historical address at Cincinnati in 1838, on the aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio, says : "At any time before the treaty of Greenville in 1795 the Miamis alone could have furnished more than three thousand warriors. Constant war with our frontier had deprived them of many of their braves, but the ravages of small-pox was the principal cause of the great decrease in their numbers. They composed, however, a body of the finest light troops in the world. And had they been under an efficient system of discipline, or possessed enterprise equal to their valor, the settlement of the country would have been attended with much greater difficulty than was encountered in accomplishing it, and their final subjugation would have been delayed for some years."

Yet their decline, from causes assigned, was so rapid, that when the Baptist missionary, Isaac McCoy, was among them from 1817 until 1822, and drawing conclusions from jDersonal contact, declared that the Miamis were not a warlike people. There is, perhaps, in the history of the North American Indians, no instance parallel to the utter demoralization of the Miamis, nor an example of a tribe which stood so high and had fallen so low through the practice of all the vices which degrade human beings. Mr. McCoy, within the period named, traveled up and down the Wabash, from Terre Haute to Fort Wayne ; and at the villages near Montezuma, on Eel River, at the Missis- sinewa and Fort Wayne, there M'ere continnons rounds of drunken debaucliery whenever wliiskj could be obtained, of wliich men, women and children all partook, and life was often sacriliced in personal broils or by exposure of the debauchees to the inclemency of the weather.

By treaties, entered into at various times, from 1795 to 1845, inclusive, the Miamis ceded their lands in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and removed west of the Mississippi, going in villages or by detachments, from time to time. At a single cession in 1838 they sold the government 177,000 acres of land in Indiana, which was only a fragment of their former possessions, still retaining a large tract. Thus they alienated their heritage, and gradually disajDpeared from the valleys of the Maumee and Wabash. A few remained on their reservations and adapted themselves to the ways of the white people, and their descendants may be occasionally met with about Peru, Wabash and Fort Wayne. The money received from sales of their lands proved to them a calamity, rather than a blessing, as it introduced the most demoralizing habits. It is estimated that within a period of eighteen years subsequent to the close of the war of 1812 more than five hundred of them perished in drunken broils and fights.

The last of the Miamis to go westward were the Mississinewa band. This remnant comprising in all three hundred and fifty persons, under charge of Christmas Dagney, left their old home in the fall of 1846, and reached Cincinnati on canal boats in October of that year. Here they were placed upon a steamboat and taken down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and Missouri, and landed late in the season at Westport, near Kansas City. Ragged men and nearly naked women and children, forming a motley groujD, were huddled upon the shore, alone, with no friends to relieve their wants, and exposed to the bitter December winds that blew from the chilly plains of Kansas. In 1670 the Jesuit Father Dablon introduces the Miamis to our notice at the village of Maskoutench, where we see the chief surrounded by his officers of state in all the routine of barbaric display, and the natives of 'other tribes paying his subjects the greatest deference. The Miamis, advancing eastward, in the rear of the line of their valorous warriors, pushed their villages into Michigan, Indiana, and as far as the river still bearing their name in Ohio. Coming in collision with the French, English and Americans, reduced by constant wars, and decimated, more than all, with vices contracted by intercourse with the whites, whose virtues they failed to emulate, they make a M^estward turn, and having, in the progress of time, described the round of a most singular journey, we at last behold the miserable and friendless remnant on the same side of the Mississippi from whence their warlike progenitors had come nearly two centuries before.

From Westport the Mississinewas were conducted to a place near the present village of Lowisburg, Kansas, in the county named (Miami) after the tribe. Here they suffered greatly. Nearly one third of their number died the first year. They were homesick and disconsolate to the last degree. " Strong men would actually weep, as their thoughts recurred to their dear old homes in Indiana, whither many of them would make journeys, barefooted, begging their way, and submitting to the imprecations hurled from the door of the white man upon them as they asked for a crust of bread. They wanted to die to forget their miseries." " I have seen," says Mrs. Mary Baptiste to the autlior, " mothers and fathers give their little children away to others of the tribe for adoption, and after singing their funeral songs, and joining in the solemn dance of death, go calmly away from the assemblage, to be seen no more alive. The Miamis could not be reconciled to the prairie winds of Kansas ; they longed for the woods and groves that gave a partial shade to the flashing waters of the Wa^esha.

The Wea and Piankeshaw bands preceded the Mississinewas to the westward. They had become reduced to a wretched community of about two hundred and fifty souls, and they suffered severely during the civil war, in Kansas. The Miamis, Weas, Piankeshaws, and the remaining fragments of the Kaskaskias, containing under that name what yet remained of the several subdivisions o± the old Illini confederacy were gathered together by iJaptiste Peoria, and consolidated under the title of The Confederated Tribes. This little confederation disposed of their reservation in Miami county, Kansas, and adjacent vicinity, and retired to a tract of reduced dimensions within the Indian Territory. Since their last change of location in 1867 they have made but little progress in their efforts toward a higher civilization. The numbers of what remains of the once numerous Illinois and Miami confederacies are reduced to less than two hundred persons. The Miamis, like the unfortunate man who has carried his dissipations beyond the limit from which there can be no healtliy reaction, seem not to have recovered from the vices contracted before leaving the states, and with some notable exceptions, they are a listless, idle people, little worthy of the spirit that inspired the breasts of their ancestors.

Chaptee Yii The Shawnees And Dela Wares

The Shawnees were a branch of tlie Algonquin family, and in manners and customs bore a strong resemblance to the Delawares. They were the Bedouins of the wilderness, and their wanderings form a notable instance in the history of the nomadic races of N^orth America. - Before the arriyal of the Europeans the Shawnees lived on the shores of tiie great lakes eastward of Cleveland. At that time the principal Iroquois villages were on the northern side of the lakes, above Montreal, and this tribe was under a species of subjection to the Adirondacks, the jriginal iribe from whence the several Algonquin tribes are alleged to have sprung, and made " the planting of corn their business."

" The Adirondacks, however , value' i themselves as delighting in a more manly employment, and despised the Iroquois in following a business which they thought onlv fit for women. But it once happened that game failed tlie Adirondacks, which made them desire some of the young men of the Iroquois to assist them in hunting. These young men soon became much more expert in hunting, and-able to endure fatigues, than the Adirondacks expected or desired ; in short, they became jealous of them, and one night murdered all the young men chey had with them." The chiefs of the Iroquois complained, but the Adirondacks treated their remonstrances with contempt, without being apprehensive of the resentment of the Iroquois, " for they looked upon them as women."

The Iroquois determined on revenge, and the Adirondacks, hearing of it, declared war. The Iroquois made but feeble resistance, and were forced to leave their country and fly to the south shores of the lakes, where they ever afterward lived. " Their chiefs, in order to raise their people's spirits, turned them against the Satanas, a less warlike nation, who then lived on the shores of the lakes." The Iroquois soon subdued the Satanas, and drove them from their country.

Their Removal Erom Florida

From this time the Iroquois pursued them, each year driving them farther southward. Forty years Liter they were on the Tennessee, and Father Marquette, in speaking of them, calls them Chaouanons, which was the Illinois word for southerners, or people from the south, so termed because they lived to the south of the Illinois cantons. The Iroquois still waged war upon the Shawness, driving them to the extremities mentioned in the extracts quoted from Father Marquette's journal. To escape further molestation from the Iroquois, the Shawnees continued a more southern course, and some of their bands penetrated the extreme southern states. The Suwanee River, in Florida, derived its name from the fact that the Shawnees once lived upon its banks. Black Hoof, tlie renowned chief of this tribe, was born in Florida, and informed Gen. Harrison, with whom for many years he was upon terms of intimacy, that he had often bathed in the sea.

" It is well known that they were at a place which still bears their name on the Ohio, a few miles below the mouth of the Wabash, some time before the- commencement of the revolutionary war, where they remained before their removal to the Scioto, where they were found in the year 1774 by Gov. Dunmore. Their removal from Florida was a necessity, and their progress from thence a flight rather than a deliberate march. This is evident from their appearance when they presented themselves upon the Ohio and claimed protection of the Miamis. They are represented by the chiefs of the Miamis and Delawares as supplicants for protection, not against the Iroquois, but against the Creeks and Seminoles, or some other southern tribe, who had driven them from Florida, and they are said to have been literally sans provant etsans culottes [hungry and naked].

After their dispersion by the Iroquois, remnants of the tribe were foimd in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but after the return of the main body from the south, the}^ became once more united, the Pennsylvania band leaving that colony about the same time that the Delawares did. During the forty years following that period, the whole tribe was in a state of perpetual war with America, either as British colonies or as independent states. By the treaty of Greenville, they lost nearly all the territory they had been permitted to occupy north of the, Ohio.

In 1819 they were divided into four tribes - the Pequa, the Mequachake,the Chillicothe, and the Kiskapocoke. The latter tribe was the one to which Tecumseh belonged. They were always hostile to the United States, and joined every coalition against the government. In 1806 they separated from the rest of the tribe, and took up their

At the close of Gen. Wayne's campaign, a large body of the Shawnees settlecl near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, upon a tract of land granted to them and the Delawares in 1793, by Baron de Carondelet, governor of the Spanish provinces west of the Mississippi.

From their towns in eastern Ohio, the Shawnees spread north and westward to the headquarters of the Big and Little Miamis, the St. Mary's, and the Au Glaize, and for quite a distance down the Maumee. They had extensively cultivated fields upon these streams, which, with their villages, were destroyed by Gen. Wayne on his return from the victorious engagement with the confederated tribes on the field of " fallen timbers." Gen. Harmer, in his letter to the Secretary of War, communicating the details of his campaign on the Maumee, in October, 1790, gives a fine description of the country, and the location of the Shawnee, Delaware and Miami villages, in the neighborhood of Fort Wayne, as they appeared at that early day. We quote : " The savages and traders (who were, perhaps, the worst savages of the two) had evacuated their towns,and burnt the principal village called the Omee, together with all the traders' houses. This village lay on a pleasant point, formed by the junction of the rivers Omee and St. Joseph. It was situate on the east bank of the latter, opposite the mouth of St. Mary, and had for a long time past been the rendezvous of a set of Indian desperadoes, who infested the settlements, and stained the Ohio and parts adjacent with the blood of defenceless inhabitants. This day we advanced nearly the same distance, and kept nearly the same course as yesterday ; we encamped within six miles of the object, and on Sunday, the 17th, entered the ruins of the Omee town, or French village, as part of it is called. Appearances confirmed accounts I had received of the consternation into which the savages and their trading allies had been thrown by the approach of the army. Many valuables of the traders were destroyed in the confusion, and vast quantities of corn and other grain and vegetables were secreted in holes dug in the earth, and other hiding places. Colonel Hardin rejoined the army."

: " Besides the town of Omee, there were several other villages situ, ated upon the banks of three rivers. One of them, belonging to the jOmee Indians, called Kegaiogue, was standing and contained thirty (houses on the bank opposite the principal village. Two others, conjsisting together of about forty-five houses, lay a few miles up the St. Mary's, and were inhabited by Delawares. Thirty-six houses occu- pied b}' other savages of this tribe formed another but scattered town, on the east bank of the St. Josepli, two or three miles north from the Frencli viHage. About tlie same distance down the Omee River lay the Shawnee town of Chillicothe, consisting of fifty-eight houses, opposite which, on the other bank of the river, were sixteen more habitations belonging to savages of the same nation. All these I ordered to be burnt during my stay there, together with great quantities of corn and vegetables hidden as at the principal village, in the earth and other places by the savages, who had abandoned them. It is computed that there were no less than twenty thousand bushels of corn, in the ear, which the army either consumed or destroyed."

The Shawnees also had a populous village within the present limits of Fountain county, Indiana, a few miles east of Attica. They gave their name to Shawnee Prairie and to a stream that discharges into the Wabash from the east, a short distance below Williamsport.

In 1854 the Shawnees in Kansas numbered nine hundred persons, occupying a reservation of one million six hundred thousand acres. Their lands were divided into severalty. They have banished whisky, and many of them have fine farms under cultivation. Being on the border of Missouri, they suffered from the rebel raids, and particularly that of Gen. Price in 1864. In 1865 they numbered eight hundred and fortj'-five persons. They furnished for the Union army one hundred and twenty-five men. The Shawnees have illustrated by their own conduct the capability of an Indian tribe to become civilized. , '

The Delawares called themselves Lenno Lenape, which signifies " original " or " unmixed " men. They were divided into three clans : The Turtle, the Wolf and the Turkey. When first met with by the Europeans, they occupied a district of country bounded eastwardly by the Hudson River and the Atlantic ; on the west their territories extended to the ridge separating the flow of the Delaware from the other streams emptying into the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay.

They, according to their own traditions, " many hundred years ago resided in the western part of the continent ; thence by slow emigration, they at length reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the Allegewi, against whom the Delawares and Iroquois (the latter also emigrants from the west) carried on successful war ; and still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehanna and Potomac rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions.

" "When William Penn landed in Pennsylvania, the Delawares had been subjugated and made women by the Iroquois." They were prohibited from making war, placed under the sovereignty of the Iroquois, and even lost the right of dominion to the lands which they had occupied for so many generations. Gov. Penn, in his treaty with the Delawares, purchased from them the right of possession merely, and afterward obtained the relinquishment of the sovereignty from the Iroquois. The Delawares accounted for their humiliating relation to the Iroquois by claiming that their assumption of the role of women, or mediators, was entirely voluntary on their part. They said they became " peacemakers," not through compulsion, but in compliance with the intercession of different belligerent tribes, and that this position enabled their tribe to command the respect of all the Indians east of the Mississippi. While it is true that the Delawares were very generally recognized as mediators, they never in any war or treaty exerted an influence through the possession of this title. It was an empty honor, and no additional power or benefit ever accrued from it. That the degrading position of the Delawares was not voluntary is proven in a variety of ways. " We possess none of the details of the war waged against the Lenapes, but we know that it resulted in the en^;ire submission of the latter, and that the Iroquois, to j)revent any further interruption from the Delawares, adopted a plan to humble and degrade them, as novel as it wag effectual. Singular as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that the Lenapes, upon the dictation of the Iroquois, agreed to lay aside the character of warriors and assume that of women." The Iroquois, while they were not present at the treaty of Greenville, took care to inform Gen. Wayne that the Delawares were their subjects - " that they had conquered them and put petticoats upon them." At a' council held July 12, 1742, at the house of the lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, where the subject of previous grants of land was under discussion, an Iroquois orator turned to the Delawares who were present at the council, and holding a belt of waumpum, addressed them thus : " Cousins, let this belt of waumpum serve to chastise you. You ought to be taken by the hair of your head and shaken severely, till you recover your senses and become sober. . . But how came you to take upon yourself to sell land at all ? " referring to lands on the Delaware River, which the Delawares had sold some fifty years before. " We conquered you ; we made women of you. You know you are women, and can no more sell land than women ; nor is it fit you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it." The Iroquois warrior continues his chastisement of the Delawares, indulging in the most opprobrious language, and closed his speech by telling the Delawares to remove immediately. " We don't give you the liberty to think about it. You may return to the other side of the Delaware, where you came from ; but we don't know, considering how you had demeaned, yourselves, whether you will be permitted to live there."

The Quakers who settled Pennsylvania treated the Delawares in accordance with the rules of justice and equity. The result was that during a period of sixty years, peace and the utmost harmony prevailed. This is the only instance in the settling of America by the English where uninterrupted friendship and good will existed between the colonists and and the aboriginal inhabitants. Gradually and by peaceable means the Quakers obtained possession of the greater portion of their territory, and the Delawares were in the same situation as other tribes - without lands, without means of subsistence. They were threatened with starvation. Induced by these motives, some of them, between the years 1T40 and 1750, obtained from their uncles, the Wyandots, and with the assent of the Iroquois, a grant of land on the Muskingum, in Ohio. The greater part of the tribe remained in Pennsylvania, and becoming more and more dissatisfied with their lot, shook ofi the yoke of the Iroquois, joined the French and ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania. Peace was concluded at Easton in 1758, and ten years after the last remaining bands of the Delawares crossed the Alleghanies. Here, being removed from the influence of their dreaded masters, the Iroquois, the Delawares soon assumed their ancient independence. During the next four or five decades they were the most formidable of the western tribes. While the revolutionary war was in progress, as allies of the British, after its close, at the head of the northwestern confederacy of Indians, they fully regained their lost reputation. By their geographical j30sition placed in the front of battle, they were, during those two wars, the most active and dangerous enemies of America.

The territory claimed by the Delawares subsequent to their being driven westward from their former possessions, is established in a paper addressed to Congress May 10, 1779, from delegates assembled at Princeton, New Jersey. The boundaries of their country, as declared in the address, is as follows : " From the mouth of the Alleghany Kiver, at Fort Pitt, to the Yenango, and from thence up French

Creek, and by Le Boeiif, along the old road to Presque Isle, on the east. The Oliio River, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Ouabache, on the south ; thence up the River Ouabache to that branch, Ojye-co-mee-cah, and up the same to the head thereof; from thence to the headwaters and springs of the Great Miami, or Rocky River; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto River; thence to the westernmost springs of Sandusky River ; thence down said river, including the islands in it and in the little lake, to Lake Erie, on the west and northwest^ and Lake Erie on the north. These boundaries contain the cessions of lands made to the Delaware nation by the Wyandots and other nations, and the country we have seated our grandchildren, the Shawn ees, upon, in our laps ; and we promise to give to the United States of America such a part of the above described country as would be convenient to them and us, that they may have room for their children's children to set down upon."

After Wayne's victory the Delawares saw that further contests with the American colonies would be worse than useless. They submitted to the inevitable, acknowledged the supremacy of the Caucasian race, and desired to make peace with the victors. At the treaty of Greenville, in 1795-, there were present three himdred and eighty-one Delawares - a larger representation than that of any other Indian tribe. By this treaty they ceded to the United States the greater part of the lands allotted to them by the Wyandots and Iroquois. For this cession they received an annuity of $1,000.

" Father : Your children all well understand the sense of the treaty which is now concluded. We experience daily proofs of your in. creasing kindness. I hope we may all have sense enough to enjoy our dawning happiness. Many of your people are yet among us. I trust they will be immediately restored. Last winter our king came forward to you with two ; and when he returned with your speech to us, we immediately prepared to come forward with the remainder, which we delivered at Fort Defiance. All who know me know me to be a man and a warrior, and I now declare that I will for the future be as steady and true a friend to the United States as I have heretofore been an active enemy."

Become Citizens

The Delawares remained faithful to the United States during the war of 1812, and, with the Shawnees, furnished some very able warriors and scouts, who rendered valuable service to the United States during this war.

After the treaty of Greenville, the great body of Delawares removed to their lands on White River, Indiana, whither some of their people had already preceded them.

Their manner of obtaining possession of their lands on "White River is thus related in Dawson's Life of Harrison : " The land in question had been granted to the Delawares about the year 1770, by the Piankeshaws, on condition of their settling upon it and assisting them in a war with the Kickapoos." These terms were complied with, and the Delawares remained in possession of the land.

The title to the tract of land lying between the Ohio and White Rivers soon became a subject of dispute between the Piankeshaws and Delawares. A chief of the latter tribe, in 1803, at Yincennes, stated to Gen. Harrison that the land belonged to his tribe, " and that he had with him a chief who had been present at the transfer made by the Piankeshaws to the Delawares, of all the country between the Ohio and White Rivers more than thirty years previous," This claim was disputed by the Piankeshaws. They admitted that while they had granted the Delawares the right of occupancy, yet they had never conveyed the right of sovereignty to the tract in question.

Gov. Harrison, on the 19th and 27th of August, 1804, concluded treaties with the Delawares and Piankeshaws by which the United States acquired all that fine country between the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. Both of " these tribes laying claim to the land, it became necessary that both should be satisfied, in order to prevent disputes in the future. In this, however, the governor succeeded, on terms, j)erhaps, more favorable than if the title had been vested in only one of these tribes; for, as both claimed the land, the value of each claim was considerably lowered in the estimation of both ; and, therefore, by judicious management, the gover)ior effected the purchase upon probably as low, if not lower, terms than if he had been obliged to treat with only one o'f them. For this tract the Piankeshaws received $700 in goods and $200 per annum for ten years ; the compensation of the Delawares was an annuity of $300 for ten years.

emigrated to Missouri upon the tract of land granted jointly to them and the Shawness, in 1793, by the Spanish authorities. Others of their number who remained scattered themselves among the Miamis, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos ; while still others, including the Moravian converts, went to Canada. At that time, 1819, the total number of those residing in Indiana was computed to be eight hundred souls.

In 1829 the majority of the nation were settled on the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They numbered about 1,000, were brave, enterprising hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853 they sold to the government all the lands granted them, excepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late Rebellion they sent to the United States army one hundred and seventy out of their two-hundred able-bodied men. Like their ancestors they proved valiant and trustworthy soldiers. Of late years they have almost entirely lost their aboriginal customs and manners. They live in houses, have schools and churches, cultivate farms, and, in fact, bid fair to become useful and prominent citizens of the great Republic.

Chaptek Yiii And Their Manners Ajstd Customs

Before the arrival of the Europeans the nse of iron was but little known to the !North American Indians. Marquette, in speaking of the Illinois, states that they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron tools, their weapons being made of stone. This was true of all the Indians who made their homes north of the Ohio, but south of that stream metal tools were occasionally met with. When Hernando De Soto, in 1539-43, was traversing the southern part of that territory, now known as the United States, in his vain search for gold, some of his followers found the natives on the Savanna River using hatchets made of cojjper. It is evident that these hatchets were of a native manufacture, for they were " said to have a mixture of gold."

The southern Indians " had long bows, and their arrows were made of certain canes like reeds, very heavy, and so strong that a sharj) cane passe th through a target. Some they arm in the point with the sharp bone of a fish, like a chisel, and in others they fasten certain stones like points of diamonds." These bones or " scale of the armed fish " were neatly fastened to the head of the arrows with splits of cane and fish glue. The northern Indians used arrows with stone points. Father Rasles thus describes them : " Arrows are the principal arms which they use in war and in the chase. They are pointed at the end with a stone, cut and sharpened in the shape of a serpent's tongue ; and, if no knife is at hand, they use them also to skin the animals they have killed." " The bow-strings were prepared from the entrails of a stag, or of a stag's skin, which they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as many different colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes and stone, which they work very finely and handsomely."

Most of the hatchets and knives of the northern Indians were likewise made of sharpened stones, " which they fastened in a cleft piece of wood with leathern thongs." Their tomahawks were constructed from stone, the horn of a stag, or " from wood in the shape of a cut- lass, and terminated by a large ball." The tomahawk was held in one hand and a knife in the other. As soon as they dealt a blow on the head of an enemy, they immediately cut it round with the knife, and took off the scalp with extraordinary rapidity.

Du Pratz thus describes their method of felling trees with stone implements and with fire : " Cutting instruments are almost continuually wanted ; but as they had no iron, which of all metals is the most useful in human society, they were obliged, with infinite pains, to form hatchets out of large flints, by sharpening their thin «8dge, and making a hole through them for receiving the handle. To cut down trees with these axes would have been almost an impracticable work ; they were, therefore, obliged to light tires round the roots of them, and to cut a^yay the charcoal as the fire eat into the tree. "

Charlevoix makes a similar statement : " These people, before we provided them with hatchets and other instruments, were very much at a loss in felling their trees, and making them fit for such uses as they intended them for. They burned them near the root, and in order to split and cut them into proper lengths they made use of hatchets made of flint, which never broke, but which required a prodigious time to sharpen. In order to fix them in a shaft, they cut off the top of a young tree, making a slit in it, as if they were going to draft it, into which slit they inserted the head of the axe. The tree, growing together again in length of time, held the head of the hatchet so firm that it was impossible for it to get loose ; they then cut the tree at the length they deemed sufficient for the handle."

When they were about to make wooden dishes, porringers or spoons, they cut the blocks of wood to the required shape with stone hatchets, hollowed them out with coals of fire, and polished them with beaver teeth.

Early settlers in the neighborhood of Thorntown, Indiana, noticed that the Indians made their hominy-blocks in a similar manner. Kound stones were heated and placed upon the blocks which were to be excavated. The charred wood was dug out with knives, and then the surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by individual families as occasion required.

" They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together."

Their Implements And Potteky

The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side. " In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodious than their own."

That the ]S"orth American Indians not only used, but actually manufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks ; " Before the arrival of the Eurojjeans in ISTorth America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may jsrocure kettles and other movables." M. Pouchot, who was acquainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states " that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made j^ottery and drew fire from wood."

In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says : " You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches hiit earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed as neat as you would see in France." The Illinois also occasionally used glazed pitchers. The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the women. By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc.

The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breastworks and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541, entered the town of Pacaha, which was very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall. Charlevoix said : " The Indians are more skillful in erecting their 'fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts ; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void si3ace between them. This sort of fortification was sufiicient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the' use of fire-arms.

These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascoutins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dug holes four or five feet deep in the bottom of their fort.

The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American author remarks : " The remains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote ; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers." When Major Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief, well versed in the lore of his tribe, whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. "He immediately replied that they had heen constructed by the Indians as fortifications before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those constructions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to be at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not describe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen. Tie stated to be on the headwaters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne."

One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron that " he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua, Ohio ; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it."

While at Chicago, and " with a view to collect as much information as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Robinson whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. He observed that these ancient fortifications were a frequent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is Tcnoxon to have served as an intrenchment to the Kickapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Pottawatomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. l^o date was assigned to this transaction. We understand that the Etnataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo."

Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east, in Kankakee county, Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Eock Creek, are some ancient mounds. " One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees ; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same distance to the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties.

Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high degree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occupied the continent anterior to themselves.