Heroes of the Middle West Part 8

After the settlement of Kaskaskia a strong fortress was built sixteen miles above, on the same side of the Mississippi. The king of France spent a million crowns strengthening this place, which was called Fort Chartres. Its ma.s.sive walls, inclosing four acres, and its buildings and arched gateway were like some medieval stronghold strangely transplanted from the Old World. White uniformed troops paraded. A village sprang up around it. Fort Chartres was the center of government until Kaskaskia became the first capital of the Illinois territory. Applications for land had to be made at this post. Indians on the Mississippi, for it was a little distance from the sh.o.r.e, heard drumbeat and sunset gun, and were proud of going in and out of its mighty gateway under the white flag of France.

Other villages began on the eastern bank of the river--Cahokia, opposite the present city of St. Louis, and Prairie du Rocher, nearer Kaskaskia.

Ste. Genevieve also was built in what is now the state of Missouri, on land which then was claimed by the Spaniards. There was a Post of Natchitoches on the Red River, as well as a Post of Was.h.i.+ta on the Was.h.i.+ta River. Settlements were also founded upon La Fourche and Fausse Riviere above New Orleans.

"The finest country we have seen," wrote one of the adventurers in those days, "is all from Chicago to the Tamaroas. It is nothing but prairie and clumps of wood as far as you can see. The Tamaroas are eight leagues from the Illinois." Chicago was a landing place and portage from the great lakes long before a stockade with a blockhouse was built called Fort Dearborn.

"Monjolly," wrote the same adventurer, "or Mount Jolliet, is a mound of earth on the prairie on the right side of the Illinois River as you go down, elevated about thirty feet. The Indians say at the time of the great deluge one of their ancestors escaped, and this little mountain is his canoe which he turned over there."

La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the continent.

The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. "It was the common hunting and fighting ground of Ohio tribes on the north and Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south."

There was indeed one exception to the uninhabited state of all that land stretching betwixt the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Vincennes, now a town of Indiana, was, after Kaskaskia, the oldest place in the west.

This isolated post is said to have been founded by French soldiers and emigrants. Five thousand acres were devoted to the common field. De Vincennes, for whom it was named, was a nephew of Louis Jolliet. And while it is not at all certain that he founded the post, he doubtless sojourned there in the Indiana country during his roving life. A small stockade on the site of the town of Fort Wayne is said to have been built by him.

French settlements began to extend southward from Lake Erie to the head waters of the Ohio, like a chain to check the English. Presqu' Isle, now Erie, Pennsylvania, was founded about the same time as Vincennes.

A French settler built his house in an inclosure of two or three acres.

The unvarying model was one story high, with porches or galleries surrounding it. Wooden walls were filled and daubed with a solid ma.s.s of what was called cat-and-clay, a mixture of mortar and chopped straw or Spanish moss. The chimney was of the same materials, shaped by four long corner posts, wide apart below, and nearer together at the top.

As fast as children grew up and married they built their cottages in their father's yard; and so it went on, until with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a small village acc.u.mulated around one old couple.

The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land.

Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired.

A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family.

If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle to graze in.

Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for defense. But generally the French had little trouble with their savage neighbors, who took very kindly to them. The story of western settlement is not that dreadful story of continual wars with Indians which reddens the pages of eastern colonies. The French were gay people. They loved to dance and hunt and spend their time in amus.e.m.e.nts. While the serious, stubborn English were grubbing out the foundations of great states on the Atlantic coast, it must be confessed these happy folks cared little about developing the rich Mississippi valley.

During all its early occupation this hospitable land abounded with game.

Though in November the buffaloes became so lean that only their tongues were eaten, swans, geese, and ducks were always plentiful, and the fish could not be exhausted.

On a day in February, people from Kaskaskia hurried over the road which then stretched a league to the Mississippi, for the town was on the Kaskaskia River bank. There were settlers in blanket capotes, shaped like friars' frocks, with hoods to draw over their heads. If it had been June instead of February, a blue or red kerchief would have covered the men's heads. The dress of an ordinary frontiersman in those days consisted of s.h.i.+rt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggins, with moccasins, and neips, or strips of blanket wrapped around the feet for stockings.

The voyageur so equipped could undertake any hards.h.i.+p. But in the settlements wooden shoes were worn instead of moccasins, and garments of texture lighter than buckskin. The women wore short gowns, or long, full jackets, and petticoats; and their moccasins were like those of squaws, ornamented with beautiful quill-work. Their outer wraps were not unlike the men's; so a mult.i.tude of blanket capotes flocked toward the Mississippi bank, which at that time had not been washed away, and rose steeply above the water. They had all run to see a procession of boats pa.s.s by from Fort Chartres.

A little negro had brought the news that the boats were in sight. Black slaves were owned by some of the French; and Indian slaves, sold by their captors to the settlers, had long been members of these patriarchal households. Many of them had left their work to follow their masters to the river; the negroes pointing and shouting, the Indians standing motionless and silent.

The sun flecked a broad expanse of water, and down this s.h.i.+ning track rushed a fleet of canoes; white uniforms leading, and brick-colored heads above dusky-fringed buckskins following close after. This little army waved their hands and fired guns to salute the crowd on sh.o.r.e. The crowd all jangled voices in excited talk, no man listening to what another said.

"See you--there are Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette and the Chevalier De Vincennes and excellent Father Senat in the first boat."

"The young St. Ange and Sieur Lalande follow them."

"How many of our good Indians have thrown themselves into this expedition! The Chickasaw nation may howl when they see this array!

They will be taught to leave the boats from New Orleans alone!"

"But suppose Sieur De Bienville and his army do not meet the Commandant D'Artaguette when he reaches the Chickasaw country?"

"During his two years at Fort Chartres has Sieur D'Artaguette made mistakes? The expedition will succeed."

"The saints keep that beautiful boy!--for to look at him, though he is so hardy, Monsieur Pierre D'Artaguette is as handsome as a woman. I have heard the southern tribes sacrifice their own children to the sun. This is a fair company of Christians to venture against such devils."

The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. So he had planned with Le Moyne de Bienville a concerted attack on these allies of the English.

Bienville, bringing troops up river from New Orleans, was to meet him in the Chickasaw country on a day and spot carefully specified.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Autograph of Bienville.]

The brilliant pageant of canoes went on down the river, seeming to grow smaller, until it dwindled to nothingness in the distance.

But in the course of weeks only a few men came back, sent by the Chickasaws, to tell about the fate of their leaders. The troops from New Orleans did not keep the appointment, arriving too late and then retreating. D'Artaguette, urged by his Indians, made the attack with such force as he had, and his brave array was destroyed. He and the Chevalier Vincennes, with Laland, Father Senat, and many others, a circle of n.o.ble human torches, perished at the stake. People lamented aloud in Kaskaskia and Cahokia streets, and the white flag of France slipped down to half-mast on Fort Chartres.

This victory made the Chickasaw Indians so bold that scarcely a French convoy on the river escaped them. There is a story that a young girl reached the gate of Fort Chartres, starving and in rags, from wandering through swamps and woods. She was the last of a family arrived from France, and sought her sister, an officer's wife, in the fort. The Chickasaws had killed every other relative; she, escaping alone, was ready to die of exposure when she saw the flag through the trees.

But another captain of Fort Chartres, no bolder than young Pierre D'Artaguette, but more fortunate, named Neyon de Villiers, twenty years afterwards led troops as far east as the present state of Pennsylvania, and helped his brother, Coulon de Villiers, continue the struggle betwixt French and English by defeating, at Fort Necessity, the English commanded by a young Virginia officer named George Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN GAME OF BALL.

After Catlin.]

VI.

THE LAST GREAT INDIAN.

The sound of the Indian drum was heard on Detroit River, and humid May night air carried it a league or more to the fort. All the Pottawatomies and Wyandots were gathered from their own villages on opposite sh.o.r.es to the Ottawas on the south bank, facing Isle Cochon. Their women and children squatted about huge fires to see the war dance. The river strait, so limpidly and transparently blue in daytime, that dipping a pailful of it was like dipping a pailful of the sky, scarcely glinted betwixt darkened woods.

In the center of an open s.p.a.ce, which the camp-fires were built to illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting his own deeds and those of his forefathers. He was a muscular rather than a tall Indian, with high, striking features. His dark skin was colored by war paint, and he had stripped himself of everything but ornaments. Ottawa Indians usually wore brilliant blankets, while Wyandots of Sandusky and Detroit paraded in painted s.h.i.+rts, their heads crowned with feathers, and their leggins tinkling with little bells.

The Ojibwas, or Chippewas, of the north carried quivers slung on their backs, holding their arrows.

The dancer in the ring was the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, a man at that time fifty years old, who had brought eighteen savage nations under his dominion, so that they obeyed his slightest word. With majestic sweep of the limbs he whirled through the pantomime of capturing and scalping an enemy, struck the painted post with his tomahawk, and raised the awful war whoop. His young braves stamped and yelled with him. Another leaped into the ring, sung his deeds, and struck the painted post, warrior after warrior following, until a wild maze of sinewy figures swam and shrieked around it. Blazing pine knots stuck in the ground helped to show this maddened whirl, the very opposite of the peaceful, floating calumet dance. Boy papooses, watching it, yelled also, their black eyes kindling with full desire to shed blood.

Perhaps no Indian there, except Pontiac, understood what was beginning with the war dance on that May night of the year 1763. He had been laying his plans all winter, and sending huge black and purple wampum belts of war, and hatchets dipped in red, to rouse every native tribe.

All the Algonquin stock and the Senecas of the Iroquois were united with him. From the small oven-shaped hut on Isle Cochon, where he lived with his squaws and children, to Michilimackinac, from Michilimackinac to the lower Mississippi, and from the eastern end of Lake Erie down to the Ohio, the messengers of this self-made emperor had secretly carried and unfolded his plan, which was to rise and attack all the English forts on the same day, and then to destroy all the English settlers, sparing no white people but the French.

Two years before, an English army had come over to Canada and conquered it. That was a deathblow to French settlements in the middle west.

They dared no longer resist English colonists pus.h.i.+ng on them from the east. All that chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie down to the Ohio--Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango, Ligonier--had been given up to the English, as well as western posts--Detroit, Fort Miami, Ouatanon on the Wabash, and Michilimackinac. The settlements on the Mississippi, however, still displayed the white flag of France. So large was the dominion in the New World which England now had the right to claim, that she was unable to grasp it all at once.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The White Flag of France.]

The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt, would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or dance with their red brethren.

All the tribes were, therefore, eager to rise against the English, whom they wanted to drive back into the sea. Pontiac himself knew this could not be done; but he thought it possible, by striking the English forts all at once, to restore the French power and so get the French to help him in fighting back their common foe from spreading into the west.

Pontiac was the only Indian who ever seemed to realize all the dangers which threatened his race, or to have military skill for organizing against them. His work had been secret, and he had taken pains to appear very friendly to the garrison of Detroit, who were used to the noise of Indian yelling and dancing. This fort was the central point of his operations, and he intended to take it next morning by surprise.

Though La Motte Cadillac was the founder of a permanent settlement on the west sh.o.r.e of Detroit River, it is said that Greysolon du Lhut set up the first palisades there. About a hundred houses stood crowded together within the wooden wall of these tall log pickets, which were twenty-five feet high. The houses were roofed with bark or thatched with straw. The streets were mere paths, but a wide road went all around the town next to the palisades. Detroit was almost square in shape, with a bastion, or fortified projection, at each corner, and a blockhouse built over each gate. The river almost washed the front palisades, and two schooners usually anch.o.r.ed near to protect the fort and give it communication with other points. Besides the homes of settlers, it contained barracks for soldiers, a council-house, and a little church.