Joseph Kirkland

“ Kind Friends:—"The Story of Chicago" is Major Kirkland's masterpiece. He has comprehended what envious New York has called the "Windy City," but which is in reality the Magic City, not only of America but of the world. Whoever helps to put this book under eyes that have not been blessed by its fair, inspiring pages and choice photogravures has helped to increase the sum of human happiness, for as the brain of man is creation's masterpiece so Chicago is the planet's whispering gallery of whatever is most hopeful, progressive and inspiring to humanity. ”

“ The Indians are riotously happy; for have they not done harm? Have they not killed, scalped, destroyed, wasted, life and property? Have they not annihilated the source whence they had been getting arms, ammunition and blankets, and driven off the men who tried to keep whisky from them? Have they not made a solitude and called it war? The goods are scattered. The fort is burned. The cattle are dead or dying. The soldiers are defeated, slain or held as prisoners, for ransom if unhurt, for torture if disabled. The babes are brained and their mothers dead or desolate. ”

“ In any circumstances, one cannot cast blame on a beaten commander, negotiating with his victorious foes, while bleeding from a bullet deep-bedded in his hip-joint. In this case, it is not likely that blame would be due, even if Captain Heald had been unhurt. But for his surrender, the Chicago Massacre would have been, on a small scale, the fore-runner of the great Custer slaughter, where not a white man lived to tell the tale. ”

“ Years afterward, in 1831, Chandonnais visited the Healds at their home, near O'Fallon, Missouri, and Darius Heald remembers his father's meeting and greeting the brave who had so nobly rescued them. It is thought that the Indians went off down the lake to have "a general frolic"—in other words, torture to death the wounded prisoners.
Here arises before the mind's eye the dim and cloudy vision of horror, the acme of the tragedy, all the more appalling for its shrouding mystery. It makes the flesh creep and the hair stand on end. ”

“ Among the world's great cities, Chicago should be the one most thoroughly recorded. No other that counts her denizens by the million has among them those born before her annals fairly began. No other has had such startling vicissitudes. Laid low by slaughter in her infancy and by fire in her youth, she has climbed with bounding steps, upward and onward. Toiling, enduring, laughing, prospering, exulting; she has taken each scourge as a fillip to her energy, each spur as a stimulus to her courage. Hers is the enthusiasm of youth with the strength of maturity. ”

“ Looking north, west and south, he sees serried ranks of enormous buildings towering for miles on miles, each one so tall as to dwarf the fort and the block-house to nothingness. He sees hundreds of miles of paved streets, thronged with innumerable passengers and vehicles moving hither and thither, meeting and impeding each other, so that sometimes so many try to pass that none can pass; all must wait until the uniformed guardians of the peace bring order out of chaos. Every acre of ground in sight is worth millions of dollars. ”

“ The feeling will intrude itself that Captain Heald was too truthful, trustful, brave and good a man to be a perfect Indian-fighter. He had none of the savage's traits except his courage. He was without guile, or craft, or duplicity or cruelty. The soul of honor, he attributed good faith to his foe. A temperate man, he could not conceive of the insanity of maniacs to whom the transient delirium of drunkenness is heaven on earth. ”

“ From Ouilmette's house the party of Indians proceeded to the dwelling of Mr. Kinzie. They entered the parlor, in which the family were assembled with their faithful protectors, and seated themselves upon the floor in silence.
Black Partridge perceived, from their moody and revengeful looks, what was passing in their minds, but he dared not remonstrate with them. He only observed, in a low tone, to Wau-ban-see:
"We have endeavored to save our friends, but it is vain; nothing will save them now." ”

“ Kinzie's book did not assume to be history; was not written as a grave and literal record of things as they were; a statement carefully scrutinized to see that no unjust slur is cast upon any character, even so unimportant a one as the poor wounded, dying surgeon. Mrs. Helm, on the dreadful day, was a mere girl-wife of seventeen years, and was a woman of thirty-seven when Mrs. Kinzie transcribed the artless tale into Wau-Bun, a book which reads like a romance, and was meant so to be read. ”

“ The incidents of daily life went on in the lonely settlement, as elsewhere.
There was the occasional birth of a baby in the Kinzie house, the fort or somewhere about, as there were several women here, soldiers' wives, etc. Those born in the Kinzie mansion and the officers' families we know about. But these were not all. There were at least a dozen little ones who first saw the light in this locality, whose play-ground was the parade and the river bank, whose merry voices must have added a human sweetness to this savage place; whose entire identity, even to their names, is lost. ”

“ We must remember that there is always a hard feeling between the military and the civil authority in every Indian post—East Indian or American Indian—the soldier holding the sword and the civilian the purse, each slightly envying the other what he possesses, and slightly despising him for the lack of what he is deprived of.
At any rate. Captain Heald (by and with the advice of Mr. Kinzie) concluded not to give the whisky and arms to the savages. He did what any of us, common-sense, reasonable men, ignorant of the worst traits of the most cruel of races, might have done. ”

“ Captain Heald rather gave way to Captain Wells, knowing his superior excellence in Indian warfare, Wells having been trained from childhood by such warriors as Little Turtle, Tecumseh and Black Hawk; especially by the first two.
Here to the eye of common-sense, whether soldierly or civilian, the battle is already gone—lost beyond salvation. The onus of blame appears to rest on poor Wells, the brave, devoted volunteer. He had learned war in a school that took no account of the supply-train; in the school of individual fighters, living on nothing, saving no wounded or non-combatants ”

“ As to this band of whites, what had it to fight for but its train of wagons with all the helpless ones, all the stores, all the ammunition, all the means of progress and of caring for the wounded? To charge the centre of a brave, unformed rabble which outflanks you is only heroic suicide at best, and when the doing so leaves the train at the mercy of the spreading flanks of the foe, it is fatal madness.
To return to the Heald narrative:
Another charge was made which enabled Captain Wells to get a little closer to the Indians. ”

“ I have looked with the deepest interest on the portraits of the men who have wrought all these marvels, and I only wish that I could promise myself the delight of beholding Chicago as she will appear in her more than royal robes when the world is flocking to look at her, the Empress City of the West ”

“ Not victory or defeat, not wounds or even death—nay, not old Time himself can clear a soldier from the terrible ordeal of the "Accounting Department." Poor Heald had evidently been asked: "Where is the money which was in your hands before the savages surrounded you, slaughtered your troops, wounded yourself and your wife, massacred the civilians under your care, tortured to death your wounded and burned your fort?" ”

“ Lower than Russia would stand if, in a war along the Afghan frontier, she should scheme for a new Sepoy rebellion, with its ravishing and maiming of well born English women. Such women were treated worse than even Dante's fancy could portray, and yet not worse than were the survivors of the Chicago Massacre.
In the little settlement a wild season of alarm followed the double murder at Hardscrabble. The surviving civilians, consisting of a few discharged soldiers and some families of half-breeds, organized themselves for defense. ”

“ A lonely, weedy streamlet flows eastward past the fort, then turns sharp to the right and makes its weak way by a shallow, fordable ripple, over a long sand-bar, into the lake, a half mile to the southward. ”

“ This stipulation indicates the savage's view of the value of a prisoner. If likely to live, and therefore exchangeable for ransom, then his life might be spared; if not, then he belonged to his captor and could be used for the keen delight of torture. This is probably the idea which inspired the hellish notion of the exclusion of the wounded from Captain Heald's capitulation. For the unhurt they could get ransom, therefore they would spare their lives. But the wounded! Why spare them? They are not merchantable. Nobody will give anything for a dead man. ”

“ Helm, in this artless tale told to glorify the younger officer, awakens in our minds a feeling of dislike for him. That a youth, scarce two years out of West Point, should add an ill-timed insult to the heavy cares of his senior officer, a soldier of thirteen years service, must be shocking to every one. ”

“ Kicking Bear is the best specimen of physical manhood I have ever critically examined. He is a wonderful man and seems to enjoy the novelty of posing, besides evidently having a clear understanding of the use to which his figure will be put. The assailant of Mrs. Helm, the one with the uplifted tomahawk [Short Bull] fills the historical idea that the assailant was a "young" Indian, naturally one who would not be as fully developed as the vigorous, manly chief, Black Partridge. The presence of these Indians has been of great value to me in producing the figures. ”

“ If all men were honest, "red tape" could be done away with; but as men are, individual accountability is indispensable. Without it, the army might fall into negligence leading to corruption, instead of being, as it is, the very example of administrational honor and probity.
It so happens that the death of Mrs. Maria (Heald) Edwards, niece of Captain Nathan Heald and mother of Mrs. General Chetlain, is announced after the above matter had been put in print. She died on May 6, 1893, at the residence of General Chetlain, in this city, at the ripe age of ninety years. ”

“ There was no place on earth for a race which, through all its history, had found delight in the spectacle of pain, which inflicted torture, not as a means leading to some ulterior object, but as itself a source of joy and gladness. The race is still in existence, but the inhuman part of its characteristics are being refined away, leaving some of its best traits in the more advanced of its present representatives. ”

“ On the whole, it is safe to say that, had they had a due sense of the condition of things, they might have made themselves, if not secure from attack, at least safe from annihilation; for, once massed behind the wagons, with the lake at their back, the first onslaught would have met such a rebuff as would have daunted the fickle Indian, who never perseveres against severe loss, no matter how great the stake or how heavy the damage he is inflicting on his enemy. ”

“ Certainly the happiest of the crowd were the unconscious little ones, sure of love and care, full of hope and curiosity—a round dozen of them in one wagon, beginning the first journey of their innocent lives—the first and last. ”

“ While at Detroit, John Kinzie began his long career as Indian-trader, beginning with the Shawnees and Ottawas in the Ohio country. In this way he made the acquaintance of two Indian girls, who, when young, had been captured on the Kanawha River and taken to Chillicothe, the headquarters of the tribe. Their names were Margaret and Elizabeth McKenzie, and their story is thus romantically told by Rufus Blanchard in his admirable "Discovery of the Northwest and History of Chicago." ”

“ Among the Peoria Indians he probably found scanty elbow-room, especially if his friend and rival trader, Glamorgan, was, as his name implies, of Welsh blood—a race which gleans close, and thrives where others starve.
Not unnaturally would he, as tradition suggests, aspire to headship of the great tribe of Pottowatomies, for he knew how vastly superior he was to the best of them; and quite as naturally would he fail, seeing that the red strain of blood and the black have even less in common than has each with the white. ”

“ William was now convinced for the first time that he was the brother of Colonel Samuel Wells, but he went back with his Indian friends, his father-in-law, Little Turtle, and the rest, and it was not until sometime later that he told Little Turtle that, although he had fought for his Indian friends all his life, the time had now come when he was going home to fight for his own flesh and blood. It was under a big tree on the banks of the Miami that he had this talk, and he pointed to the sun and said: "Till the sun goes up in the middle of the sky we are friends. ”

“ The day which dawned so bright has dragged through its bloody hours and come to its dark and hideous close. The dead, men, women and children, are at peace. The wounded are suffering the torments of the pit, the rest are shuddering in the uncertainties that lie before them. ”

“ One winter of starvation, exposure and abuse would "hang its hide on the fence," even while its wretched Indian-pony companions were living on in stubborn endurance.
It turned out afterwards that the Indians took their booty down to Peoria, to sell and "trade" for whisky, and it found its way quickly to St. Louis, where Colonel O'Fallon recognized a great deal as belonging to the Healds, and redeemed it and sent it to Colonel Samuel Wells at the Falls of the Ohio [Louisville] as a memento of his daughter and her husband, both supposed to be dead. ”

“ Sightless she is not, for in her the mind's eye is of a brilliancy that seems to make our mere physical vision useless by comparison. Better the soul's sight without eyes, than the eyesight without soul. ”