Milo Milton Quaife

“ The contrast presented by the United States in 1812 in all that pertained to military affairs could hardly have been more striking. That the Americans were brave and potentially capable of making good soldiers does not, of course, admit of question. But this is equally true of the members of the mob which flees in terror before a detachment of regulars one-tenth as numerous as itself. The lack of a well-trained army was less serious, however, than was the absence of a disposition to submit to the labors and discipline necessary to create one. Of capable military leaders we had none. ”

“ Fighting desperately with bayonet and musket-butt the militia were cut down to a man. But one, Sergeant Burns, escaped instant death, and he, grievously wounded, was slaughtered an hour after the surrender by an infuriated squaw. Ronan and Van Voorhis shared their fate as did the regular soldiers, Kinzie being the only white man at the wagons who survived. Even the soldiers' wives, armed with swords, hacked bravely away as long as they were able. ”

“ In the ranks of the two armies, about to join combat, were a number of men who are famous in the history of the Northwest. General Wayne had acquired fame in the Revolution as a daring leader of men, but this campaign furnishes the climax of his military career and his surest claim upon the grateful remembrance- 120 - of posterity. From the most unpromising of raw material he had fashioned an army fit to cope with the red man in his lair, and had imbued it with his own dauntless confidence and enthusiasm. ”

“ They labor by every unprincipled means to instigate the Savages against the Americans, to inculcate the idea that we intend to drive the Indians beyond the Mississippi, and that in every purchase of land the Government defrauds them; and their united efforts aim too at the destruction of every trading house and the prevention of the extension of our frontier. Never till a prohibition of the entrance of all foreigners, and especially British subjects, into the Indian Country takes place, will we enjoy a lasting peace with the credulous, deluded, and cannibal savages. ”

“ The natural contempt of the frontiersman for a regular force, heightened as it was by the disasters of the army in the last few years, gave way to genuine admiration for Wayne's troops. The cavalry had been trained to maneuver over any ground, and the infantry to load while on the run. By constant practice the soldiers had become as good marksmen as were the frontier hunters themselves, and Wayne, who had become famous in the Revolution for his reliance on the bayonet, had imbued his men with his own zeal for coming to close quarters with the enemy. ”

“ For while her citizens have striven worthily, during the three-quarters of a century that has passed since the birth of the modern city, to achieve greatness for her, it is none the less true that Nature has dealt kindly with Chicago, and is entitled to share with them the credit for the creation of the great metropolis of the present day. If in recent years the enterprise of man rather than the generosity of Nature has seemed chiefly responsible for the growth of Chicago, in the long period which preceded the birth of the modern city such was not the case ”

“ In this barter the red man should have occupied a position of equality with the white, since each possessed articles valuable in the eyes of the other. But, as always in bargaining, where the parties are unequally matched, the Indian, less intelligent and less shrewd than the white man, and dependent on the supplies of the latter for his very existence, got the worst of it. As long as the French monopolized the trade of the Northwest, so long was their control over the Indians absolute. ”

“ Those who allege that the Indians will remove to the English, if Brandy be not furnished them do not tell the truth; for it is a fact that they do not care about drinking as long as they do not see brandy; and the most reasonable would wish there had never been any such thing; for they set their entrails on fire and beggar themselves by giving their peltries and clothes for drink." "This passion for drink," said General Cass to the chief, Metea, at the Chicago Treaty of 1821, "has injured your nation more than any other thing—more than all the other causes put together. ”

“ Half a hundred painted Indians on horseback followed some thirty naked savages on foot, as they danced, whooped, and shouted from the fort down South Water Street, stopping before each door to receive whisky, tobacco, or bread. ”

“ Thus it has come to pass that Kennison's burial place possesses a prominence of which the humble soldier in life can hardly have dared to dream. Veteran of our two wars against Great Britain, participant in the Boston Tea Party and the Fort Dearborn Massacre, he enjoys the unique distinction of a grave in Chicago's most famous park, overlooking the blue waters of Lake Michigan. ”

“ And Governor Harrison, pleading for a law to protect the Indians against the liquor traffic, thus addressed the Indiana legislature in 1805: "You are witnesses to the abuses; you have seen our towns crowded with furious and drunken savages, our streets flowing with their blood, their arms and clothing bartered for the liquor that destroys them, and their miserable women and children enduring all the extremities of cold and hunger. So destructive has the progress of intemperance been among them, that whole villages have been swept away. ”

“ The exhortations of the Americans that the red man hold aloof from the war, which did not concern him, and let the whites fight out their own quarrel, would be heeded only on one condition. The Americans must manifest such a decided superiority over the British as to convince him that theirs was the successful cause. Both disposition and self-interest urged the Indian to take his stand on the winning side. As long as appearances led him to believe that this was the American, he would hold aloof from the war, since the United States did not desire his assistance. ”

“ Dilbone was given over for that night, through fear of an ambuscade. In the morning it was resumed and he was soon found, too weak to move or even to cry out. He, too, was borne to the blockhouse, where he expired the following day. Thus after her own escape from captivity and death at the hands of the savages, Mrs. Simmons found herself once more in the midst of bloodshed and slaughter—her sister and brother-in-law slain, her nephews orphaned. To such perils were the people on the northwestern frontier exposed during these troublesome and bloody years. ”

“ The dreary story of the hardships endured by the captives and the indignities and cruelties meted out to them by their masters is relieved, happily, now and then by some act of kindness or generosity calculated to prove that gentleness and humanity were qualities not entirely unknown, even to the savage red man. Ultimately the majority of the prisoners were to find their way back to civilization, but for several death offered the only avenue of escape from their captivity. For some, indeed, death must have come as a welcome relief from sufferings far more dreadful. ”

“ France and Spain had entered into the conflict between Great Britain and her American colonies from no love of the latter, but rather from a desire on the one hand to humble Great Britain, on the other to advance their own interests. With the opening of the peace negotiations, therefore, an effort was made by these countries to limit the boundary of the new nation on the west to the Allegheny Mountains, and to give the dominant influence over the vast territory stretching thence to the Mississippi, together with the exclusive navigation of that stream, to Spain. ”

“ In a speech to the President of the United States in 1802 Little Turtle dwelt on the demoralization wrought among his people by liquor, and urged that its sale be prohibited. "Your children are not wanting in industry," he said, "but it is the introduction of this fatal poison which keeps them poor. Your children have not that command of themselves which you have, therefore, before anything can be done to advantage, this evil must be remedied." ”

“ In more recent years on the western plains the forces of the regular army of the United States have time and again manifested their superiority over the Indians in open battle; and only rarely, when the advantage of numbers or position was greatly in their favor, have the red men won a victory over them. But in the old Northwest, where advantage could be taken of the heavy timber which covered so much of the country, the Indian warriors fighting on their own ground were superior, man for man, to any regular force that could be sent against them. ”

“ Yet this, while deplorable enough, was not so serious, probably, as was the contempt which all Americans outside the army itself evinced for regular military training and experience. Even after the bitter lessons taught us on land by the War of 1812, a sixteen-year-old runaway boy could convince as intelligent a man as Calhoun that he had a greater claim to preferment in the army than had the graduate of West Point. ”

“ At an earlier date than the foregoing, in an official communication to the Secretary of War, Harrison described the general- 184 - effect upon the Indians of their intercourse with the whites in these words:
"Killing each other has become so customary amongst them that it is no longer thought criminal. They murder those whom they have been most accustomed to esteem and regard—their chiefs and their nearest relatives fall under the stroke of their tomahawks and their knives.... All those horrors are produced to those unhappy people by their too frequent intercourse with the white people. ”

“ Said Hamtramck to St. Clair in 1790: "The people of our frontiers will be the first to break any treaty. The people of Kentucky will carry on private expeditions and will kill Indians whenever they meet them, and I do not believe there is a jury in all Kentucky who would punish a man for it." [461] This opinion was substantially repeated by Washington, who affirmed that the "frontier settlers entertain the opinion that there is not the same crime (or indeed no crime at all) in killing an Indian as in killing a white man." ”

“ In the picturesque language of Latrobe there were "emigrants and land speculators numerous as the sand, horse dealers and horse-stealers—rogues of every description, white, black, brown, and red—-half-breeds, quarter-breeds, and men of no breed at all; dealers in pigs, poultry, and potatoes; men pursuing Indian claims, some for tracts of land, others for pigs which the wolves had eaten;—creditors of the tribes, or of particular Indians, who know they have no chance of getting their money if they do not get it from the government agents ”

“ Unscrupulous individuals were never lacking to take advantage of these opportunities, and others, who under a proper system of administration of affairs pertaining to the Indians would have scorned corrupt practices, permitted their honesty to be undermined by the influence of the example of their fellows in the mad scramble for plunder. The Treaty of 1833 afforded the last, and at the same time the greatest, opportunity at Chicago for individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of the Indians or of the government of the United States. ”