The story of the Great Lakes
Author: Edward Channing; Marion Florence Lansing
Date: 2025-12-28T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Great Lakes (North America) -- History

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Title: The story of the Great Lakes

Author: Edward Channing

Marion Florence Lansing

Release date: December 28, 2025 [eBook #77559]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909

Credits: deaurider, Daniel Lowe, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES ***

THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES

BY

EDWARD CHANNING

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

AND

MARION FLORENCE LANSING

EDITOR OF THE “OPEN ROAD LIBRARY”

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1909,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1909.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

For three hundred years the Great Lakes have been the centre of an immensely varied and interesting history. They were originally the home of savages; they were discovered and explored by Frenchmen; they became the scene of a century-long struggle for possession by Indians of many tribes and white men of three nations; and they have been finally occupied and developed by Americans. In every epoch they present a rich field for study.

No minute and exhaustive chronicle has been attempted in this volume, but important events, with the customs and life of each period, have been brought together and presented. Changes have come with such rapidity that the conditions of fifty years ago seem remote to-day. In this swift progress the heritage of the past must not be forgotten. The picturesqueness of the early life, the courage and hardihood of the explorers and settlers, and the tale of thrilling adventures and noble deeds should be treasured, as should the achievements of the builders of cities and captains and soldiers of industry of our own day.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,
November, 1908.

CONTENTS

PART I
Discovery and Exploration
CHAPTER | | PAGE

I.

The Great Lakes

3

II.

Champlain on the Great Lakes, 1615–1616

10

III.

The Jesuit Mission to the Hurons, 1626–1650

25

IV.

The Pageant of Saint Lusson, 1671

39

V.

The Building of the Griffon, 1678–1679

49

VI.

La Salle on the Great Lakes, 1679

61

VII.

A Hapless French Governor, 1682–1684

73

PART II
The Struggle for Possession

VIII.

The Founding of Detroit, 1701

87

IX.

Niagara and the Loss of Canada, 1759

101

X.

The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 1763–1764

113

XI.

The Adventures of a Trader, 1761–1764

135

XII.

Wayne’s Indian Campaign, 1794

151

XIII.

The Great Lakes in the War of 1812

165

XIV.

The Conquest of Lake Erie, 1813

179

XV.

General Lewis Cass and Reorganization 1813–1832

191

XVI.

The Black Hawk War, 1832

201

PART III
Occupation and Development

XVII.

Gateways of the Great Lakes, 1600–1900

217

XVIII.

The Story of a Road, 1600–1900

228

XIX.

Before and after the Turnpike, 1796–1811

242

XX.

The Erie Canal, 1825

251

XXI.

The Great Lakes in 1840

266

XXII.

The Coming of the Railroad to Lake Erie, 1836–1853

283

XXIII.

Lincoln and Douglas in Chicago, 1858–1861

299

XXIV.

The Great Lakes in the Civil War, 1864

317

XXV.

Three Great Industries of the Lakes

330

XXVI.

Shipping on the Lakes

356

XXVII.

The Development of the City

374

A Brief List of Books | 385
Index | 393

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS
| PAGE

Huron—Erie—Ontario

12

From Lake Michigan to the Mississippi

202

Gateways of the Lakes

223

By Trail and Turnpike to Lake Erie

232

By Canal and Railroad to Lake Erie

284

ILLUSTRATIONS

La Salle

Frontispiece

The “Soo” Canal

facing page

8

Niagara Falls as sketched by Hennepin

”

52

La Barre and Grangula

”

76

A View of Niagara Fort

”

104

Black Hawk

”

204

Through the Locks at Lockport

”

256

Chicago in 1831

”

278

An Early Lake Superior Copper Mine

”

348

Iron Ore at a Lake Superior Port

”

352

The Old and the New, General Cass’s Canoe and a Modern Freight Steamer

”

360

Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam

”

370

PART I
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION

CHAPTER I
THE GREAT LAKES

Standing in Lake Park, Chicago, beside the statue of General Logan, the supporter of Douglas and, later, of Lincoln, one has behind him the most marvellous city of modern times, and before him the southwesternmost of the Great Lakes. In front, glitter the waters over which La Salle journeyed three centuries ago. As in those days, they respond to the play of wind and weather, now calm as a sheet of glass, and now swept by sudden gales into turbulent waves and breakers; but the aspect of the land is such that were La Salle to visit it he would not recognize the spot. In place of a wilderness with an occasional group of low-lying Indian wigwams he would see a mighty city of buildings towering one hundred and fifty feet above the street and reaching down from twenty-five to fifty feet below ground. In place of a few canoes with their loads of furs and crews of savages, emerging from the narrow mouth of the Chicago River, seven thousand freighters and steamers with an aggregate tonnage greater than that floated in any other port in the world touch annually at the wharves along her splendid harbor front. These vessels and thousands of trains, running on tracks whose mileage is more than a third of that of the whole railway system of the United States, bring to her stockyards, her grain elevators, and her markets the herds and flocks of the western plains, the crops of the wheat-fields of the Northwest, and the merchandise of Europe and of Asia.

Chicago is the greatest distributing centre of this region, but the ports of Lake Erie handle many important industries whose traffic never enters Lake Michigan. The copper of the upper Michigan peninsula, the iron ore of the Wisconsin and Minnesota ranges, the coal of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and many a minor industry have had their share in building up the modern empire of the Great Lakes. The body of water about which this empire has risen is made up of five lakes: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, which together form the greatest inland waterway of the world. These lakes have an area of more than half that of the Black Sea or the Caspian, while Lake Superior is the largest body of fresh water on the globe. The four upper lakes are so nearly level that one canal with a single lock has given them a navigable length of over fourteen hundred miles. Lake Ontario, however, is effectively separated from the others by Niagara Falls and its attendant rapids. Other great inland bodies of water are directly connected with the ocean by navigable straits. The Mediterranean Sea is entered from the Atlantic by the Strait of Gibraltar, the Black Sea is connected in its turn with the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus; but Niagara closes direct navigation between the Great Lakes and the sea.

Canals have done much in the last hundred years to alleviate the natural inaccessibility of the lake system. Eighty-five years ago the Erie Canal gave a water route from the eastern end of Lake Erie to the Hudson River and thus to the Atlantic Ocean. Five years later the Welland Canal passed round Niagara Falls and connected Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and a third canal soon connected Lake Erie with the Ohio River. To-day a second era of canal building is upon us. The Welland Canal has been widened, making it possible for boats of moderate draught to go from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and thence by numerous small cuts around the rapids of the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. The Erie Canal is being enlarged, and engineers dream of a time when it will be made sufficiently wide and deep for sea-going vessels to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Erie. The Hennepin Canal at Chicago will open a route from Lake Michigan by the Illinois and Mississippi rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. Each state bordering on the Great Lakes as well as every province of the Dominion of Canada is to-day planning extensions of this canal system.

On the lonely shores past which La Salle and later explorers voyaged have been built villages, towns, and cities. This region is to-day the clearing-house of the commerce of the central plain of North America. From the western terminals of the lake routes railways pass over the plains and mountains of the Northwest to the Pacific; from their eastern ports stretch lines to the seaboard cities of the Atlantic. The farms of the Northwest send yearly one hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, six hundred million bushels of oats, and a billion bushels of corn to Chicago and Buffalo and thence to the eastern states and Europe. Coming from the west, the transcontinental roads pay tribute at Chicago and then choose between the route north of Lake Erie via Detroit, or south via Cleveland. They unite at Buffalo and follow the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson and then to New York or Boston; or they pass the Alleghanies farther south and reach the coast at Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Norfolk. In any case, by land or water, from the north or from the west, these products come to the Great Lakes, and are carried from their ports to the factories and markets of the East, or to steamers bound for Europe. This combination of land and water transportation makes the Great Lakes the keystone of American industry.

We have spoken of the four upper lakes as united commercially into one great sea. Before Lake Superior could be entered from the others one formidable obstacle had to be overcome. Between Lake Superior and Lake Huron was a ledge of rocks half a mile long over which the waters ran in swirling rapids, forming the Sault (or Rapids of) Ste. Marie. At this point the famous “Soo” Canal has been constructed with a single lock which is the largest and costliest in the world, though it will soon be surpassed by those at the entrance of the Panama Canal. This canal was built in 1855, when the presence of iron and copper deposits in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota was first discovered. To-day the tonnage passing yearly through it runs up into figures that are almost beyond belief; but these figures form the best single index of the traffic of the Great Lakes. In the seven open months of 1907 there passed through the “Soo” one hundred million tons of freight valued at four hundred and fifty million dollars. This tonnage is nine times that of the Suez Canal. The mines whose discovery made necessary the cutting of the “Soo” Canal supply a large part of this freight. Of iron ore alone they send thirty-three million tons to the foundries and furnaces of Pittsburg and other centres, where the raw material is manufactured into articles of iron and steel which form the basis of modern civilized existence. From the deposits of the upper Michigan peninsula comes yearly one-seventh of the world’s supply of copper.

These figures give some idea of the importance of the Great Lakes in the economic development of the United States. Three hundred years have seen this region converted from a wilderness peopled by Indian tribes to the uses of modern civilization. This time might well be shortened, since at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Great Lakes and bordering lands were still occupied by the red man and a few small villages and trading stations of the whites. It is indeed wonderful what changes a century has witnessed.

Copyright, 1904, by Detroit Photographic Co.

The “Soo” Canal

CHAPTER II
CHAMPLAIN ON THE GREAT LAKES

On the 28th of July, 1615, Samuel de Champlain paddled out of the mouth of the French River into the waters of Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron; or, as he named it from its great expanse, the “Mer Douce,” or “Freshwater Sea.” With him was a young interpreter, Étienne Brulé, who had been sent by Champlain when a mere lad to winter in the Huron country, and to learn from the Indians their languages and customs. As a member of this Huron party, in 1610, he had been the first white man to look upon the waters of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes. Now Champlain himself had come, journeying from Montreal with a trading party of Indians. Some of the Indians had slipped away before the rest of the expedition was ready, taking with them a missionary. Father Joseph Le Caron had, therefore, made the journey a few days before his leader, but at last Champlain had reached the marvellous sea of Indian story, and was on the point of exploring the region of the Great Lakes.

He found the lands bordering the lakes occupied by three groups of Indians: the Iroquois, who were closely banded together into a league known as the Five Nations; the Hurons, who were related to them, but were always at war with them; and the Algonquins, who belonged to one great family, but were now divided into many widely scattered and independent tribes.

The Five Nations of the Iroquois were joined in a loose but effective confederacy. Originally they had formed one great tribe, but internal dissension had split them into five,—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Legend states that Hiawatha had counselled union and had thus brought about the League of the Iroquois, which was the most important Indian organization north of Mexico. The confederation was governed by fifty sachems, ten from each nation, who made up a grand council. Unanimity was required in all decisions, but when these were once arrived at the tribes were obedient. The Iroquois lived in a wide strip of country extending from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario eastward across central New York. They called this section of country “The Long House” from its resemblance in shape to one of their oblong dwellings.

The Algonquins occupied the greater part of the country from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the Mississippi, and included the Illinois, Wisconsin, Chippewa, Ottawa, and other tribes of the lake region. In the centre of the Algonquin country, in a narrow district extending eastward from Georgian Bay toward Lake Ontario, lived the Huron nation, a strong and prosperous tribe. Between them and the Iroquois there was constant enmity, and for a time after the coming of the whites it was by no means certain which group of Indians would come out victorious. It was while this contest was at its height that Samuel de Champlain came to the St. Lawrence and in 1608 founded Quebec. It was to the Huron settlements he was journeying in the summer of 1615.

Champlain was born in southern France and had already won fame as an explorer. He had visited the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America, and had suggested the building of a ship canal at Panama. He had coasted the shores of New England and had been one of the first French colonists at the Bay of Fundy. After the founding of Quebec he had traversed the lake which now bears his name and had journeyed far and wide in the surrounding region. In these expeditions he had allied himself with the Indians of the St. Lawrence and had supported them in their battles with the Iroquois.

In the summer of 1615, yielding to the clamors of the Hurons gathered at Montreal for their yearly traffic with the French, Champlain agreed to accompany them on an inroad into the Iroquois country. He departed for Quebec to make needful preparations, but when he returned after a delay of a few days he found that the impatient Indians had set out for their villages, taking with them Father Joseph Le Caron, a Recollect friar who had come out with him from France that spring as a missionary to the Indians. Champlain embarked immediately with ten natives, Brulé, and another Frenchman on the journey to the Huron villages. He approached Lake Huron by the hard northern route, travelling up the Ottawa River, along the portage path to Lake Nipissing, across which he sailed, and down the French River. Indian tribes along the way encouraged the voyagers, telling them that the Lake of the Hurons was at hand. At length they came out from between the banks of the river into the waters of the lake. For more than a hundred miles they coasted southward along its eastern shores, working their way in and out among countless islands, till they reached the lower end of Georgian Bay. There they landed and proceeded by a well-beaten trail into the heart of the Huron country.

From the moment when he entered the first Huron village Champlain recognized that this was an Indian community different from any that he had heretofore seen. He had come upon one of the most remarkable savage settlements on the continent. The people lived in permanent villages protected by palisades of crossed and intersecting trunks of trees. Not only was the land naturally fertile, but in the clearings between the stretches of heavy forests were cultivated fields of maize and pumpkins, and gay patches of sunflowers from the seeds of which the Indians made oil for their hair. To Champlain coming from the roving Algonquins of the St. Lawrence and the barren country along the Ottawa, where the Indian population lived by hunting and fishing, the social advancement of this group of tribes seemed very great.

The Hurons welcomed him with eager hospitality and took him from village to village, entertaining him with lavish feasting and celebration, for he was the champion who was to lead them to victory against their hated foe the Iroquois. At the principal Huron village Carhagouha, a settlement of two hundred bark lodges enclosed in a palisade thirty-five feet high, Champlain found Father Le Caron.

The priest had feared that his leader would not follow the Hurons, or that if he did he would be captured by the Iroquois. When he looked up one morning and saw Champlain standing in the doorway of his dwelling his joy knew no bounds. He showed him the bark wigwam which the Indians, to prove the joy that they felt at his coming, were building for him. They had offered at first to lodge him in one of their common cabins, but Father Le Caron had remonstrated with them, representing that “to negotiate with God affairs so important, involving the salvation of their whole nation,” he needed a place where he could be alone, far from the tumult of their families. So they had brought poles and bark and erected this lodge at the edge of the forest. Here he had raised an altar, and here on the 12th of August was celebrated the first mass ever held in the country of the Hurons. Curious Indians crowded about as the priest stood before his rude altar and led the devotions of the kneeling band of Frenchmen with Champlain at their head. For the first time the solemn chant of the “Te Deum Laudamus” rang out on the listening air, and a volley of muskets proclaimed the planting of a cross outside the priest’s lodge. The symbol of Christianity had been raised in the country of the heathen!

Before they set out on the war-path the Huron chiefs insisted on a weary succession of feastings and dancings, rejoicing in their serene conviction of victory to come. Champlain spent the time going from village to village, gratifying his insatiable curiosity over everything which he saw. At last the savage war-party was ready to set out. They crossed Lake Simcoe and paddled, making the necessary portages, down the chain of intervening lakes to the river Trent, which flowed into Lake Ontario. The country through which the long line of canoes passed was singularly beautiful. Champlain found it hard to believe that the groves of walnut trees, whose branches were twined with hanging grapevines, had not been set out by the hand of man to form a beautiful artistic picture. The party stopped once and encamped for a grand deer-hunt, and then proceeded on its way, well-stocked with provisions for the first days in the enemies’ country. Out upon Lake Ontario the frail canoes ventured, and crossed it in safety, landing on the eastern side of the lake, thirty miles or so from Oswego.

Now a change came over the warriors. Silently they hid their canoes in the woods, and with stealthy and rapid steps they filed in silence through the borders of this hostile country. For four days they marched inland through the forest, crossing the Oneida River at the western end of the lake, and on the 9th of October some of their scouts brought in a captured fishing party of eleven Iroquois, men, women, and children. A Huron chief took possession of the prisoners and began to torture them, cutting off a finger of one of the women. Champlain met this method of celebration with angry protest, declaring that it was not the act of a warrior to treat helpless women with cruelty. The chief agreed, since it was displeasing to Champlain, to do nothing more to the women, but added that he would do to the men what he pleased. It was a curious position in which Champlain had placed himself, aiding one group of savages against another, nor did he find it to his liking.

The next day the war-party came out into a clearing in the forest, from which they could see the Iroquois fort. A number of Iroquois were gathering corn and pumpkins in the adjoining fields. With a rush the impetuous young Hurons who were in advance screamed their war-cry and fell upon them. The Iroquois seized their arms and defended themselves with such success that their assailants began to fall back. Only the timely aid of Champlain and the Frenchmen with their terrifying muskets saved the invaders from defeat.

Champlain saw that this irregular way of fighting, each person according to his whim, would result in utter ruin. The Hurons withdrew into the forest to encamp for the night, and there he addressed them angrily, showing them their foolishness and instructing them in the best methods of war. He found the Iroquois village to be far more strongly defended than any that he had seen among the Indians. Four rows of palisades, made of trees thirty feet high, supported a kind of gallery, which was provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire and piled high with a goodly supply of stones to hurl at the enemy. This was a stronghold that could not be captured by the haphazard methods of the Hurons. Champlain set the Indians to work the next morning building a wooden tower, high enough to overlook the palisades and large enough to shelter four or five marksmen. In four hours the work was done, and two hundred of the strongest warriors dragged it forward to a position from which the musketeers could pour a deadly fire into the crowded galleries. The rank and file of the Hurons were meanwhile equipped with huge wooden shields to protect themselves against the arrows and stones of the enemy. As the deadly bullets fell among them the Iroquois rushed headlong from the gallery, and the result of the battle would have been very different had the Hurons followed out Champlain’s well-conceived plans; but they were ungovernable. With reckless fury they threw away their shields, and yelling their war-cry so shrilly that no command could be heard, they poured out into the open field, discharging their own arrows but exposing themselves meanwhile to a rain of stones and arrows from the Iroquois. One Huron, bolder than the rest, ran forward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others followed him with the dry wood which they had gathered for the purpose. But they set the fire on the leeward side of the fort, where the wind was against it, and torrents of water poured down from above soon put it out. In vain Champlain shouted commands and made every effort to restore order. He soon decided that his shouting would only “burst his own head” and have no effect on any one else. So he and his Frenchmen set to work picking the Iroquois off the rampart with their shots. After three hours of this kind of fighting the Hurons fell back.

Only eighteen men had been wounded, but among them were two chiefs and Champlain himself. He had received one arrow in the knee and another in the leg. He urged the Indians to renew the attack, but they refused. From extreme overconfidence the warriors had passed to the deepest discouragement. The next day a violent wind offered them an opportunity to set fire to the fort, but the Hurons sat silent in their camp. For five days they waited to see if the five hundred allies which Brulé and twelve Hurons had started a month ago to fetch would appear. During this time they ventured out occasionally for imprudent skirmishes, each time running back under the cover of the French musket fire, amid taunts from the Iroquois on the palisade that the Hurons had very little courage to require French assistance. Then they hastily began to retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois harassed the flanks and rear of the company. The wounded, Champlain among them, were packed in rude baskets made on the spot, and bound on the backs of stout warriors. Champlain gives a vivid picture of the suffering he endured, while he was thus “bundled in a heap, and doubled and strapped together in such a fashion that it was as impossible to move as for an infant in swaddling-clothes.” The torment from the cramped position and constant jolting was so much worse than even the pain of his wound that as soon as he could possibly bear his weight on his leg he got out of “this prison.”

Snow and hail overtook the party on their dismal march to the lake. They were relieved to find their hidden canoes safe, and embarked once more on Lake Ontario. In his vain efforts to get the Indians to renew the attack after their first defeat, Champlain had come to see that he had lost some of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that his presence would ensure victory. Now they saw him wounded, and by Indian weapons. Their superstitious reverence for the “man with the iron breast” was weakened. Here on the shores of Lake Ontario he was to experience a very practical consequence of his loss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec; but each warrior found a reason why he should not be able to lend his canoe for the journey. The chiefs who had made the promises had little control over their men, and Champlain found that he must winter with the natives. The great war-party broke up. Some went to hunt deer and bears, others to trap beavers, others to fish in the frozen lakes and streams, and still others returned to their villages. One of the chiefs offered Champlain the shelter of his cabin, which he was glad to accept, and he settled down to get what comfort and information he could from his forced visit.

Fifty pages of Champlain’s minute and wonderfully illustrated account testify to the fact that he was not idle during the winter months. He records many interesting customs of his Indian hosts. He watched their deer-hunts, visited their villages and those of neighboring tribes, was umpire in their disputes, and at last turned his face homeward in the early spring. With him went Darontal, his Huron host. At Quebec Champlain was welcomed as one risen from the dead, for the Indians had long since brought in word that he had been killed. A solemn service was held, and all united in rendering thanks to God for protecting the travellers in their many perils and dangers. Upon this service and the various acts of welcome Darontal gazed in bewildered astonishment. Champlain showed him all the marvellous details of civilization. With the usual Indian stolidity he observed everything carefully and calmly; but at last his wonder broke down his reserve. Before he departed he told Champlain that he should never die contented until he had told his friends of the French way of living and seen them adopt it. With valuable presents and a warm invitation to come again with some of his friends, Darontal paddled back to his lodge in the woods with a story that must have taken months in the telling.

This was Champlain’s last long trip of exploration. For the remaining years of his life the needs of the colony at Quebec held him fast. His writings, sold in the book-stalls of France, inspired others to cross the seas and to continue the exploration and settlement of the wilderness.

CHAPTER III
THE JESUIT MISSION TO THE HURONS

From 1615, when Father Joseph Le Caron celebrated the first mass among the Hurons, for fourteen years a few intrepid priests braved the difficulties of savage life, and endeavored at various times to set up missions in the populous Huron villages south of Georgian Bay. They suffered almost incredible hardships, and in 1629 Jean Brébeuf was the only one who was left in the region. He was recalled to Quebec, but five years later, a year before Champlain’s death, he set out with two Jesuit companions to found, in the villages where Champlain had wintered eighteen years before, the greatest Jesuit mission in the history of New France.

No man in the annals of Church history has shown greater personal heroism than Father Jean Brébeuf. He was tall and strong, well fitted to withstand the hardships of his chosen calling and to impress the Indians with his power. The square cap and surplice which he donned when he assembled them for instruction, in order, as he naïvely writes, to “give more majesty” to his appearance, were never less needed. With natural dignity he combined the power of a life consecrated with the utmost fervor to God and his Church. Never during long years of service did he waver in his devotion nor shrink from anything that lay before him in his work. From his reports sent home to his superiors it is evident that he made a deep impression on the Indians. In these detailed accounts of his experiences and of the savages among whom he worked we get a clear idea of the man. We see him on the long canoe journeys, sharing in the labor of paddling and portages, till even he, who already knew, as he says, “a little what it is to be fatigued,” was so weary that his body could do no more. But he tells us how at these very times his soul experienced a deep peace such as it had never known before. In the most matter-of-fact way he accepts and records the continual hardships, never complaining of his lot, but writing with rare modesty because his whole attention is centred on the work instead of on himself. From his vivid pictures we learn, however, the truth of one of his casual statements. “Truly,” he says, “to come here much strength and patience are needed; and he who thinks of coming here for any other than God will have made a sad mistake.”

In 1634 Father Brébeuf and his companions started on the northern journey by the Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing to the Huron country. They accompanied a party of Hurons who were returning from their annual summer trading visit to Quebec. This nine-hundred-mile trip took thirty days. Brébeuf kept count and found that they carried their canoes thirty-five times on portages one, two, and even three leagues long, covering the distance three and four times to transport even their small amount of baggage, and that they dragged the canoes through rapids at least fifty times, plunging into the icy water and cutting their feet on the rocky bottom. At night they slept on the bare earth or on hard rocks, stung by clouds of mosquitoes. Their only food was a small portion of Indian corn coarsely broken between two stones, which, though better than fasting, was regarded by the Jesuits as “no great treat.” Yet, denying themselves the ordinary necessaries of life, these priests transported the precious vessels for the mass over all this weary way.

The other Jesuits suffered even more than Brébeuf. Their goods were stolen; they were separated from the rest of the Huron party, and deserted midway in the journey. It was weeks before the worn-out travellers rejoined their superior in the Huron village. After a few experiences like this in reaching the mission these wise priests composed a set of instructions to the brethren who should follow them on this Ottawa route. This code of behavior is highly characteristic of the methods of the French Jesuits. In every detail,—from not keeping the Indians waiting when they were ready to embark and not asking too many questions, to being careful that in the canoe the brim of the priest’s hat did not annoy those who sat nearest him,—these Jesuit fathers aimed “not to be troublesome, even to a single Indian,” and to “love them like brothers with whom you are to spend the rest of your life.” In this spirit lay the success of all French effort among these savage peoples.

At length Brébeuf landed on the southern shores of Georgian Bay, only to be deserted at the last moment by his Huron guides and left standing in the midst of his baggage on the lonely shore. He knew the place well, for he had lived three years in a neighboring village. This settlement had, however, been destroyed and its inhabitants had built their huts on another spot several miles away. Brébeuf hid his goods in the woods and set out alone by one of the gloomy forest paths, which brought him, to his great relief, to the new village. At sight of him some one cried out, “Why, there is Echom come again,” and at once every one ran out to salute and welcome him, calling, “What, Echom, my nephew, my brother, my cousin, hast thou then come again?” His goods were fetched from the shore, and Brébeuf was established in the house of a leading chief. As soon as his brother priests had arrived the Indians set about building a house for the Jesuits. Bad crops and famine had afflicted the people of late, and they rejoiced doubly at the coming of Brébeuf, feeling sure that now the crops would no longer fail. They wished, therefore, to provide for his staying in their village instead of that of their neighbors.

The house which the missionaries had built for them was a constant wonder to the Indians. It was thirty-six feet long and twenty wide, and looked from the outside like any Huron bark house. But within, the “black-robes” had made innovations which were the marvel of all their visitors. They divided the house into three apartments, separated by wooden doors such as the natives had never seen. The first room served as antechamber and storm door to keep out the cold. The second was that in which they lived. It was at once kitchen, carpenter shop, place for grinding wheat, dining room, parlor, and bedroom. Beneath high wooden platforms, on which they placed their chests of goods, the missionaries slept on sheets of bark or beds of boughs covered with rush mats, with skins and their clothing for covering. The third part was their little chapel where they set up their altar, pictures, and sacred vessels, and celebrated mass every day.

The house itself attracted scores of visitors, but when the clock and the mill were set going the astonishment of the Indians knew no bounds. No guest came who did not beg to be allowed to turn the mill, and as for the clock, they sat in expectant silence by the hour, waiting for it to strike. They all thought it some living thing, and when it began to strike they would look about to make sure that all the “black-robes” were there and that no one was hidden to shake it. They named it “Captain of the Day,” and inquired for it as they would for a person, wishing to know what its food was and how many times it had spoken that day. The first time they heard it they asked what it said, and the clever Jesuits told them two things. “When he strikes twelve times, he says, ‘Come, put on the kettle.’” This speech they remembered particularly well, for their own scanty meals were usually in the morning and evening, and they were very glad during the day to take a share of the Fathers’ repast. “But when he strikes four times, he says, ‘Go out, go away, that we may close the door,’” the Jesuits told their guests, and immediately they rose and went out, leaving the weary Fathers free from the constant noise and chatter.

The missionaries gathered the Indians for instruction on every possible occasion, teaching the children their prayers in Huron rhymes and preaching and explaining the faith to their elders. The converts, save those baptized on the point of death or in some fear of deadly peril, were few, but the worthy Fathers persisted and won the gratitude of the people by their help in time of famine and their kindly ministrations to the sick. Other Jesuits joined them and founded additional missions in neighboring villages. The Indians never understood these mysterious white men, but regarded them with superstition, holding them answerable for bad weather, famine, and the like, and on the other hand honoring them when all was prosperous. The medicine men and sorcerers were constantly against them, and in 1637 Father Isaac Jogues, one of the leading Jesuits, heard the rumor that the white men were reported to have bewitched the nation and must therefore be cut off. The assembly of Huron chiefs met, and the Jesuit fathers addressed them as usual on their unfailing topic, the joys of heaven and the fires of hell, the latter being always the only part of the instruction that seemed to make any impression on the stolid audience. For the time being the Fathers escaped; but they were still in great peril. Brébeuf wrote a letter of farewell to his superior at Quebec, and no Jesuit left the house without the expectation of having a tomahawk crash into his head before he returned. The unflinching courage of the Fathers won the Indian respect. The Jesuits even went so far as to give, according to the usual Indian custom for one on the point of death, a farewell feast to all the savages, an act which was regarded as a declaration that they knew their peril and faced it boldly. From that time forth their supporters rose in defence of them. For the moment the danger was averted and the Jesuits walked abroad once more. From now on, however, their persecution as sorcerers continued at intervals in different places, rising now and then to a storm of superstitious frenzy.

During the next five years the Jesuits extended their missions among the Hurons till almost every town had resident priests. They established on the shores of the river Wye a central station, which by 1648 had grown into a prosperous community with buildings which would accommodate sixty persons. Pioneers went out to neighboring nations. Brébeuf and a companion journeyed to the Neutral Nation which lived north of Lake Erie and west and south of Lake Ontario, but were met with strong opposition stirred up by the superstitious Hurons, who conceived that it would be an easy and safe method of getting rid of the priests to have their neighbors kill them. The two escaped after great hardship and danger. Isaac Jogues and Charles Garnier went with attendants to the Tobacco Nation, which lived two days’ journey distant to the southwest, but were as rudely repulsed. Jogues was a young man of indomitable will to whom hard tasks seem always to have been assigned because of his complete self-surrender and consequent power. To him fell, nevertheless, in the autumn of 1641 the pleasant duty of visiting a tribe in the far west who had invited the priests to come to them. At Lake Nipissing in September the Jesuits met certain savages called Ojibways, who urged the “black-gowns” to visit them in their homes, and gave directions for the journey. In accordance with this invitation Jogues and Raymbault, with a small Huron escort, set sail on Lake Huron and after a voyage of seventeen days reached the rapids where dwelt their friends at the location of the modern Sault Ste. Marie. Here they found about two thousand savages who welcomed them cordially and looked and listened with awe as the priests celebrated mass and explained their doctrines. They invited the Fathers to take up their abode with them, saying that they would “embrace them like brothers and profit by their words,” but the Jesuits could not be spared from their other work. Jogues listened with interest to tales of a great lake beyond the Sault, which it took nine days to cross, and of a great river beyond, where dwelt mighty nations, “who,” the Fathers reported to Paris, “have never known Europeans or heard of God.” They could not stay, but sailed away, naming the place of their sojourn Ste. Marie after the mission from which they came. They were not the first white men to visit this strait. Nicolet, a voyager and trader, had travelled with Brébeuf in 1634 as far as the Huron mission and had then pushed on alone to the foot of these rapids and thence along the shores of Lake Michigan, greeted everywhere by crowds of wondering savages. It was left, however, to these pioneer missionaries to give to this important waterway the name which it still bears.

Jogues returned to the Huron mission and wintered there, starting in the spring of 1642 for Quebec with the Huron traders to bring supplies to the mission, which was in a state of destitution. As he was returning up the St. Lawrence River he and his companion, Goupil, were captured by the Iroquois, who led them to the Mohawk towns. There most of the Hurons of the party were killed, and Jogues and his white companion were tortured and terribly mutilated. Goupil lost his life in the Iroquois camp, but Jogues was finally rescued by Dutch allies of the Mohawks and sent to Europe. From there he returned to New France and was tortured and killed by the Iroquois in 1646.

Isaac Jogues was the first Jesuit to fall in the progress of that warfare which was to bring to a tragic end the Jesuit mission to the Hurons by wiping out the towns in which the missionaries labored. The journey from Quebec to the Huron country was now fraught with peril from the marauding bands of Iroquois warriors. Two years after the first capture of Jogues an expedition led by Brébeuf relieved the needs of the missionaries by bringing supplies. That same year another Jesuit on his way to the mission was taken by the Iroquois, but in 1645 a temporary peace rekindled the hopes of the Fathers. Three years later the warfare broke out with renewed fury, and it soon became evident that the Huron nation was doomed. Large bands of Hurons, deserting their towns, fled into the interior. The Jesuits aided those who remained to defend their homes, but town after town was taken and one after another Jesuit fell into the hands of the Iroquois and suffered martyrdom with cruel tortures. The story of the tragic death of Jean Brébeuf, the founder of the mission, is one of wonderful strength and endurance amid most revolting tortures. The few remaining Jesuits withdrew with the terrified Indian survivors to an island in Lake Huron, which they were able for a time to defend, but the Iroquois lay in an ambuscade and captured the fugitives whenever they went ashore. At the earnest entreaty of the chiefs of the doomed nation the Jesuits gathered the remnant of their people and abandoned with them the desolated country which had been for thirty-five years the seat of missionary labors. Sadly they proceeded on the long journey to Quebec, passing everywhere deserted villages which had been partially destroyed by fire. Once they were attacked by the Iroquois, but at length reached Quebec in safety. The Iroquois had driven the Hurons from their homes to perish by famine and pestilence until the whole nation was practically wiped out, and the most important field of Jesuit missions was turned into a solitude and a desolation. The future for French missions looked dark indeed, and for a time western exploration was also abandoned.

Within four years hope of better success in converting the heathen appeared in an unexpected spot. The crafty Iroquois, attacked by their southern neighbors, sent overtures of peace to Quebec and invited to their villages the once hated Jesuit priests. Father Le Moyne was the first to respond, and others followed, eager to convert this savage people. The first mission was brought to a speedy end by the uprising of the Iroquois against the remaining Hurons and their former white allies in 1658, but by 1665 the government of New France was strong enough to mete out deserved punishment to the marauding parties of Iroquois warriors, and by 1668 a mission was established in each of the Five Nations.

CHAPTER IV
THE PAGEANT OF SAINT LUSSON

With the destruction of the Huron missions western exploration ceased for a few years. In 1660 Father Ménard passed through the Sault Ste. Marie and spent a winter ministering to the Indians on the southern shore of Lake Superior. In the following summer he set out on an inland journey from the lake and was never heard from again. In the same year, however, two fur-traders, Radisson and Groseilliers, coasted along the shore of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and were followed by many Jesuit missionaries whose names have become famous. Two principal mission stations were established, one at Sault Ste. Marie, the other at La Pointe at the western end of Lake Superior. At these places missionaries and traders heard many tales of a great river to the south and of rich copper deposits in the lake region, which in turn led to more exploring expeditions.

At Sault Ste. Marie, in 1671, there was a picturesque ceremony when Daumont de Saint Lusson, agent of Louis XIV, took possession of the interior of North America in the name of his king. For months the French and the Indians had been preparing for this pageant. Messages had been sent to all the Indian tribes living within one hundred leagues of Ste. Marie, urging them to attend, and Nicholas Perrot, a Canadian voyager and interpreter, had visited many of the tribes in person to make sure of their coming. With a large Indian following, he paddled up the Strait of Mackinac from Lake Michigan and landed at the foot of the rapids. Saint Lusson was already there with fifteen men. The French leaders were housed at the mission station, while the savages made themselves comfortable in temporary lodges erected along the stretch of shore and in the fields. Gradually tribe after tribe from the north and the west arrived, and on the 14th of June, when fourteen tribes or their representatives had come, Saint Lusson announced that the ceremony would take place.

The Frenchmen, led by Saint Lusson, assembled in the village, and crowds of curious Indians gathered about the small group of white men. The French soldiers had brought out their gayest uniforms and had polished their swords and muskets till they shone in the sunlight. Coureurs de bois—runners of the woods—and other Indian traders stood about in their rough picturesque costumes. At the head of the line walked four Jesuits arrayed in the impressive vestments of the priesthood. The names of these four men stand to-day as they signed them at the foot of the instrument which records this act of taking possession. They were a group of priests noteworthy in the history of the lakes. At one end stood Father Claude Dablon, the Superior of the Missions of the Lakes; next him came Gabriel Druilletes, a veteran missionary, whose experience with the Indians exceeded probably that of any Frenchman in Canada, and who had been sent by the government years before on a mission to the English colonists on the Atlantic to invite their coöperation against the Iroquois. Father Claude Allouez had followed Father Ménard in the Lake Superior country and founded the La Pointe Mission, and Father Louis André was establishing a station among the Ottawas at Manitoulin Island. Father Allouez had been obliged to leave the young Jesuit missionary Marquette in charge at La Pointe. Had he been with his brother priests, the circle of famous names would have been complete.

Led by these four men, the line of Frenchmen—a motley company of soldiers, priests, explorers, and traders—marched up the hill to a height which had been selected because it overlooked the surrounding country. On either side of the column and behind it hovered the vast throng of dusky Indians. As the Frenchmen halted and grouped themselves about a huge cross of wood that lay on the ground, the Indians fell into position behind them and stood silent, waiting to see what the “white faces” would do. When all was quiet, Father Dablon, as Superior of the Lake Missions, stepped forward and blessed the cross with all the ceremonies of the Church. At a sign from Saint Lusson the holy wood was lifted, and as the foot of the standard fell into the opening prepared for it, the Frenchmen sang with all their hearts the ancient hymn of their church:—

“The royal banners forward go,
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow:
* * * *
Fulfilled is all that David told,
In true prophetic song of old;
How God the heathen’s King should be,
For God is reigning from the tree.”

As they looked from the mighty cross to the horde of assembled savages the Frenchmen felt that to-day as never before these words were fulfilled. The uncomprehending Indians, who gazed at the pageant with wondering delight in its pomp, little knew how the minds of these white men were filled with the vision of a time, of which this was the forerunner, when these red-skinned savages should be followers of the heavenly King of the French and the obedient retainers of their earthly monarch.

Beside the cross was erected a cedar pole to which was nailed a metal plate engraved with the royal arms of France. As this was being raised the Frenchmen chanted the twentieth Psalm, “In the name of our God we will set up our banners,” and one of the Jesuits, even “in that far-away corner of the earth,” as the record says, offered a prayer for the French king in whose name all this was being done. Thus side by side the standards of the two monarchs were raised in the wilderness, and Saint Lusson, stepping forward amid an expectant hush, with a sword in one hand and a sod of earth in the other, took formal possession of the soil with these words:—

“In the name of the most high and redoubtable sovereign, Louis the Fourteenth, Christian King of France and Navarre, I now take possession of all these lakes, straits, rivers, islands, and regions lying adjacent thereto, whether as yet visited by my subjects or unvisited, in all their length and breadth, stretching to the sea at the north and at the west, or on the opposite side extending to the South Sea. And I declare to all the people inhabiting this wide country that they now become vassals of His Majesty, and bound to obey his laws and follow his customs. He will protect them against all enemies. In his name I declare to all other princes and sovereigns and potentates of whatever rank,—and I warn their subjects,—that they are denied forever seizing upon or settling within the limits set by these seas; except it be the pleasure of His Most Christian Majesty, and of him who shall govern in his behalf; and this on pain of incurring his resentment and the efforts of his arms. Long live the King!”

As the last words fell from his lips the Frenchmen responded with a loud shout, “Vive le Roi! Long live the King!”; guns were fired, and the Indians shouted and yelped with delight. “The astonishment and delight of those people,” says the chronicler, knew no bounds, “for they had never seen anything of the kind.” If words and the planting of symbols could do it, the king of France had taken possession of the continent of North America, extending his dominion to the shores of seas of which he had no knowledge. But the dream of the French was not fulfilled. To-day a rival people, which then occupied only a small strip of the Atlantic seaboard, has swept away almost every trace of the empire thus proclaimed.

In order to impress upon the Indians more clearly the meaning of this august ceremony, Father Claude Allouez had been appointed to set forth the glory of the monarch to whom they were that day submitting themselves. He had spent many hours listening to flowery Indian harangues, and was familiar with the style of speech which suited their comprehension and met with their approval. What the Indians gathered from his curious address we do not know. After reading the part of it which has been preserved we cannot wonder that, as the record tells, “they had no words with which to express their thoughts.”

As soon as the wild uproar of shouts and musketry was hushed Father Allouez stepped forward on a slight eminence and began his speech. With a few words he dismissed the usual subject of his priestly discourses, the cross and its significance, and turned to the other post on which, as he explained to them, were fastened the armorial bearings of the great “Captain of France.” To him all the captains whom they had seen were mere children, or little herbs which one tramples underfoot as compared to a great tree. Even Onontio,—the governor of New France,—whose name was a daily terror to that mighty nation, the Iroquois, was but one of ten thousand captains who lived beyond the seas. When this great captain said, “I am going to war,” all obeyed him. Those ten thousand captains raised companies of a hundred warriors each, disposing them according to his orders, on sea or land. Those who were needed at sea embarked on great ships which held four or five hundred or even a thousand men, while their Indian canoes held only four or five, or at best ten or twelve. Thus did this king with his vast numbers of followers prepare for war, and when he came to attacking the enemy he was more terrible than thunder, and the earth trembled beneath him, while air and sea were set on fire by the discharge of his cannon. He had been seen in the midst of his warriors covered with the blood of his enemies whom he killed in such numbers that he set flowing rivers of blood. But all this was now long past. No one dared to make war on him; all nations had submitted to him and begged humbly for peace.

In this warlike guise Father Allouez presented Louis XIV till the Indian admiration was fully aroused and all were “astonished to hear that there was any man on earth so great and rich and powerful.”

The day closed with a “fine bonfire,” lighted toward evening, around which the Frenchmen sang the “Te Deum,” thanking God on behalf of “those poor peoples,” who did not know enough to do it for themselves,—that they were the subjects of so great and powerful a monarch. The Indians departed to their homes, traders and coureurs de bois disappeared into the forests, the Jesuits returned to their self-sacrificing life of ministry, and adventurous French pioneers set out across lake and wood to explore and claim the vast wilderness thus appropriated by France. The pageant of Saint Lusson was over, and Sault Ste. Marie relapsed into its usual life; but thus early in the history of the Great Lakes this place had been singled out as a strategic spot.

CHAPTER V
THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFON

The next noteworthy event in the story of the Great Lakes is the building and the launching of the Griffon, and the voyage of La Salle from the Niagara River to the southern end of Lake Michigan. Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, or La Salle as he is usually called, came to Canada in 1666, when he was three or four and thirty years of age. Outwardly cold and reserved, he was inwardly consumed with a burning desire for adventure. After his arrival, he set to work to study the Indian languages, in which he soon became proficient; and it was his delight to invite Indians to his cabin, and to draw from them tales of the far-off regions in which they dwelt, and especially of those wonderful rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi, by the exploration of which he hoped to provide a new passage to China and Japan. An exploring trip which he took in 1669 gave him the practical experience which was later to be of value. La Salle was a man of strong prejudices and personal dislikes, who took little pains to overcome the jealousy of those who were envious of him; but he gained one strong friend and patron, Count Frontenac, the governor of New France, who recognized a kindred spirit in this bold, enterprising young man.

To a person of La Salle’s disposition, the lands to the south of the Great Lakes offered alluring prospects of immediate gain. Instead of the barren soil, gloomy forests, and harsh climate of the lower St. Lawrence Valley, this new country was largely open and abundantly supplied with meadows, brooks, and rivers. The soil was so fertile that everything which could be produced in France could be easily raised, and there was an abundance of fish, game, and venison. Colonists would find it easy to supply their own needs, and could engage in profitable cattle raising, for flocks and herds could be left out all winter. La Salle also reported that there was a species of native wild cattle, called the buffalo, whose wool was better than that of any sheep in France. He sought Louis XIV, king of France, and asked permission to found colonies and to conduct the fur trade and explorations on the regions bordering on the Great Lakes. The French king did not wish to found new colonies, for those already in existence had proved very expensive, but he was willing that La Salle should “labor at the discovery of the western parts of New France,” provided that he pay all the expenses of the enterprise himself, and bring the matter to a conclusion within five years. With this permission and such money as he could raise, La Salle returned to New France, and in the autumn of 1678 set out to put his plans into execution. Detailed and interesting reports of his voyage on the waters of the Great Lakes have been preserved in the entertaining account of the journey which was written by Father Louis Hennepin, an adventurous missionary who delighted in telling stories about himself and his doings. He was also something of a prophet in foreseeing the time when there would be an “inconceivable commerce” on the Great Lakes, and their shores would be lined with the shops and dwellings of the whites.

Up to this time the French missionaries and the fur traders had gained the interior by way of the Ottawa River, or the Toronto, and Georgian Bay. La Salle decided to build a sailing-vessel on the shore of Lake Erie, in which he could transport his men to the stations he intended to establish, and also carry his trading goods to the Indians, and bring back the furs which he obtained in exchange for them. He already had a fortified post at Fort Frontenac on the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario; but he could not build his ship at this point, because the natives told him that formidable cataracts interrupted the navigation between Lakes Ontario and Erie. He sent an advance company to establish a station at the head of Lake Ontario, and to seek a convenient site on Lake Erie for the construction of the ship. With this expedition went Father Hennepin, whose graphic account of what he saw and of what he experienced is one of the most interesting in the annals of American exploration. The voyagers reached the mouth of the Niagara River in safety. When the current became too strong for them to go farther in their canoe, they landed and pushed forward through the snow. As they made their way along the edge of the river, they heard more and more clearly the roar of falling waters; and, at length, there burst upon their sight the falls of Niagara, or the “Thunder of Waters,” as the Indians called it,—that “vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel, those of Italy and Switzerland being but sorry patterns.” Hennepin describes this wonderful cataract as made up of two great cross-streams of water and two falls with an island between, and declares that when this “prodigious quantity” of water comes to fall, there is a din and a noise more deafening than the loudest thunder; the rebound of the waters was so great that a cloud arose from the foam and hung over the abyss, even when the sun was at its height. He could not say enough of this “most beautiful, and at the same time most frightful cascade” which he saw for the first time on this December day in 1678.[1]

[1] Lake Ontario is 326 ft. lower than Lake Erie and about 30 miles distant. For 18 miles the Niagara River flows peacefully along, then suddenly the channel narrows and the waters rush down 53 ft. in half a mile, and then drop over a cliff 160 ft. in two separate falls, one 600 and the other 200 ft. wide. Seven thousand tons of water are thus discharged every second into a narrow gorge whose nearly perpendicular walls rise 200 ft. on either side. Down its steep slope the imprisoned waters dash in a succession of boiling rapids, white with foam, forming in one loop of the channel a curious whirlpool. Issuing from this gorge at Lewiston, the river flows tranquilly on to Lake Ontario.

Niagara Falls as sketched by Hennepin

While Hennepin and his party were exploring the Niagara, La Motte, the leader of the expedition, had selected a site for a fortified house about two leagues above the mouth of the river and not far from the present town of Lewiston. He set his laborers to work, but their task was hard, because the frozen ground had to be thawed with boiling water before it was possible to drive down stakes for a palisade. As the carpenters labored at their tasks, distrustful and jealous Indians from a neighboring Seneca village of the Iroquois loitered about, watching them with sullen looks, and intimated in a way that could not be disregarded their unwillingness to allow the work to go on. And well they might! Niagara was the key to the four upper lakes from which the Iroquois fur trade could be controlled, and this fort was being built expressly to hold in check those vigorous tribes, and put an end to their trade with the English and the Dutch in the furs which they obtained from the Indians of the western territory. La Salle had realized that difficulty would probably arise, and had instructed La Motte to go to the great village of the Senecas and endeavor to gain their consent to the French plans for building the fort and the ship. This La Motte now decided to do. After five days’ journey through the snowy forests, he and his companions reached the town which was beyond the Genesee and southeast of Rochester, not far from the present town of Victor, New York. The weary travellers were conducted to the wigwam of the principal chief, where women and children flocked to gaze upon the whites. An old man, according to custom, went through the village announcing their arrival, and younger savages washed their feet and then rubbed them with bear’s grease.

The next afternoon, La Motte was summoned to confer with forty-two old men who made up the Indian council. These chiefs, clad in robes of beaver, wolf, or black squirrel, squatted upon the ground; but, writes Hennepin, “the senators of Venice do not appear with a graver countenance and perhaps do not speak with more majesty and solidity than these ancient Iroquois.” La Motte’s interpreter harangued the assembly, stating that the French wished to build a great wooden canoe and to erect a fort on the banks of the Niagara River. He endeavored to convince the natives that this enterprise would be for their advantage, as it would enable the French to sell them goods at lower prices than the Dutch and English traders. He enforced every reason with wampum belts, and gifts of axes, knives, coats, and scarlet cloth,—for the best arguments in the world were not listened to by the Indians unless accompanied by presents. The shrewd, savage politicians received the gifts, but were not convinced. Their replies were general and evasive and gave no satisfaction. When the council was over, they proceeded to torture an Indian prisoner, and La Motte with his men left the camp in disgust to go back and await the arrival of La Salle from Fort Frontenac. La Salle and Tonty, his ever faithful friend and follower, with men and supplies for the expedition arrived at the Seneca town not long after the departure of La Motte and his men. La Salle succeeded in “so dexterously gaining their affection” that the Indians consented to permit him to carry arms and ammunition by the Niagara portage, to build a vessel above the cataract, and to establish a fortified warehouse at the mouth of the river. Armed with this permission, he proceeded to the encampment of La Motte. The rejoicing at this success was short lived, for a few days later report came that a vessel which La Salle had left at the mouth of the Genesee River had been ship-wrecked on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Of all the equipment for his enterprise with which this vessel was laden, only the anchors and cables for the new ship were saved; but La Salle with his unvarying fortitude went on with the work as if nothing had happened.

La Salle selected a spot on the banks of the Niagara River above the falls at the mouth of what is now called Cayuga Creek, where the water was quiet, being sheltered by an island from the current of the river—a little village near that spot still bears his name. Hither the little company of thirty men, heavily laden with tools and provisions, journeyed laboriously through the snow on one of the last days of January, 1679. Two Mohegan hunters, who were with the party, set about making bark wigwams for the men and a chapel for Father Hennepin, who had travelled the twelve miles with his portable altar lashed to his back. The ship carpenters went to work at once, and in four days the keel of the vessel was ready. La Salle invited Father Hennepin to drive the first bolt, “but the modesty of my religious profession,” he says, “compelled me to decline this honor.” So La Salle himself drove the first nail in the ship.

Fortunately the majority of the Iroquois warriors had gone on the war-path beyond Lake Erie; but although those who had remained at home were less insolent because of the absence of the rest, yet they did not fail to visit the shipyard frequently, loitering sullenly about and exhibiting their displeasure. One of them, pretending to be drunk, attacked the blacksmith, and tried to kill him; but the blacksmith vigorously defended himself with a red-hot bar of iron. This, together with the severity of the reprimand administered by Father Hennepin, who always represents himself as indispensable on every occasion, induced the savages to depart for the moment. The work went rapidly on, and as the great “wooden canoe” began to show its proportions the Indians became more and more alarmed. A few days later a squaw told the French that they meant to burn the vessel on the stocks, and had not a very close watch been kept they would undoubtedly have done so.

These frequent alarms, the steady cold, and the shortage of supplies owing to the loss of La Salle’s vessel and the enmity of the Iroquois, who refused to sell them food, discouraged the shipbuilders. They would certainly have deserted had not La Salle and Hennepin taken great pains to reassure and cheer them on. Toward spring La Salle set out on foot for Fort Frontenac to procure food and supplies and to attend to his personal affairs. His presence was needed there because his enemies had persuaded his creditors that the undertaking was a rash one, and had instigated them to seize all his goods, although Fort Frontenac alone was more than sufficient to pay his debts. During La Salle’s absence from Niagara one of the workmen endeavored to stir up the others to desert. “This bad man,” announces Hennepin, “would infallibly have perverted our carpenters, had not I confirmed them in their good resolution by the exhortations I made them after divine service.”

The Mohegan hunters brought in deer and other game, warmer weather arrived, and cheerfulness once more prevailed. The shipbuilders went on with their work more briskly, and in the early spring of 1679, before La Salle returned, the vessel was ready to be launched. Father Hennepin blessed the ship and christened it the Griffon, for on the prow La Salle had placed a roughly carved figure of this mythical monster, taken from the coat of arms of Count Frontenac. The assembled company sang a hymn of praise; three cannon were fired; and amid loud acclamations from both French and Indians, the Griffon glided into the Niagara River. All haste had been made to get her afloat, even before she was entirely completed, to save her from the plots of the Indians, who were determined to burn her. But the men did not wait for her to be finished to put her to use. They immediately quitted their bark wigwams, swung their hammocks under her decks, and that very night, rejoicing in their security from the Indians, all slept soundly on board the ship.

The Iroquois warriors, returning from a hunting trip, were mightily surprised to see the vessel afloat, and shouted, “Otkon! Otkon!” which means “most penetrating wits,” to the triumphant Frenchmen. For they could not understand how in so short a time the white men could build so large a canoe,—although the craft was of only about forty-five tons. With her five cannon she was to the savages a wonderful moving fortress, and inspired in them a wholesome fear and admiration for the French.

CHAPTER VI
LA SALLE ON THE GREAT LAKES

In the summer of 1679, La Salle returned from Fort Frontenac to Niagara to find the Griffon finished and ready for her first voyage. By the completion of this vessel his enterprise was fairly launched. Behind him at Montreal were enemies and creditors; before him stretched the waters of the Great Lakes, and beyond was the unexplored wilderness. The men had been unable to sail the Griffon up the Niagara River to the mouth of Lake Erie because of the strong adverse current. Now, with the help of a strong wind and with tow-ropes in the most difficult places, La Salle brought the vessel through the turbulent water to the calm outlet of the lake. There the crew celebrated their safe passage with religious services and cannonading and then set sail on the unknown waters.

To deter his men from the voyage, La Salle’s enemies had declared that the lake was full of rocks and sands. For the first day and night, therefore, the men kept their sounding-lines busy, but navigation proved to be easy. On the fourth day after leaving Niagara, they reached the mouth of that wide river called by the French “The Strait,”—Détroit. Here the current was so strong that they came to anchor to wait for a favorable breeze. Soon a brisk wind arose and the Griffon ploughed her way through the rapids between Grosse Isle and the mainland, pioneer of the mighty vessels which to-day make that strait one of the great commercial highways of the world. On both sides stretched fine open fields dotted with fruit trees, and walnut and chestnut groves, and beyond in the distance were lofty forests. All were “so well-disposed,” says Hennepin, “that one would think Nature alone without the help of art could not have made so charming a prospect.” Flocks of turkeys and swans circled about, and from the deck of the ship herds of deer could be seen roaming the meadows. The Griffon was soon well stocked with meat, and the returning hunters united in heaping praises on this beautiful spot where fruit and game of every kind abounded, and where even the bears were not so savage as in other places. Hennepin urged La Salle to make a settlement on this “charming strait,” but La Salle coldly reminded him of the great passion which he had professed a few months before for the discovery of a new country, and the priest was silenced. Amid the later hardships of the journey all must have looked longingly back to this time of ease and plenty at the strait of Detroit.

On the 12th of August, the Griffon passed by the site of the present city of Detroit. Had they come here ten years before, the explorers would have found on the bank of the river a large stone, rudely fashioned in the likeness of a human figure and bedaubed with paint, which the Indians worshipped as a manito, or god. But in 1670 French priests, making the first recorded passage through the strait, had come upon this image, and “full of hatred for this false deity,” had fallen upon it with their axes, breaking it in pieces and casting it into the water. Beyond Detroit the river widened into a beautiful little sheet of water. As it was St. Claire’s day, Hennepin’s proposal that the name of the founder of his order be given to this lake was carried out, and it received its present name.

When the Griffon had crossed the lake, the men saw before them wide marshes through which the swift-moving river had many a winding channel. They had come to the St. Clair Flats, a fan-shaped delta of seven channels, on which has been built to-day a popular summer resort. They set to work sounding one passage after another, only to find them shallow and almost barred with shoals. But at last they came upon an excellent channel about a league broad, with no sands and a depth everywhere of from three to eight fathoms of water through which the vessel sailed easily toward Lake Huron. At the mouth of the river, however, they were forced to drop anchor and remain for several days. A north wind had been blowing, driving the water of the three upper lakes into the strait. This had increased so much the usual force of the current that it was as violent as that of the Niagara, and entirely impassable for a vessel like the Griffon. Even when the wind turned southerly, La Salle could make no headway against this current until he sent ashore a dozen men who hauled and towed the vessel along the beach for half an hour, dragging her out of the narrow mouth of the channel into the wave-tossed waters of the lake. Once more all returned “thanks to the Almighty for their happy navigation,” and set sail on the 23rd of August on Lake Huron.

The favoring winds soon died down, and La Salle lay becalmed for two days among the islands of Thunder Bay. Starting from there at noon on his way northward, he was caught in a furious westerly gale. For hours the little vessel tossed and drifted over the raging waters of the lake, lying at the mercy of wind and wave. Even La Salle gave up hope and told his men to prepare for death. All fell on their knees except the pilot, who devoted the time instead to cursing and swearing against his employer for having brought him there to perish in a “nasty lake, and lose the glory he had acquired by long and happy navigations on the ocean.” But Pilot Lucas and his brave commander were not destined to perish in that storm. Hennepin vowed an altar to St. Anthony of Padua, prudently agreeing to set it up in Louisiana if they should reach there. The storm-clouds rolled away, the waters grew quiet, and the sun shone out on the wooded cliffs of the islands of Bois Blanc and Mackinac, and the dense forests of Michigan. The vessel anchored behind the point of St. Ignace, in the harbor of Michilimackinac, the settlement which was at once the centre of Jesuit missions and of Indian traders.

The sound of the Griffon’s cannon brought out a varied throng from the wigwams and cabins on shore. Shouting Indians gazed with wonder at this huge wooden canoe; lawless French traders, swarthy from long years in the wilderness, to whom the distance of this trading post from civilization was its strongest recommendation, lounged idly out of their cabins, gazing with resentment at this invader of their trade and country; while black-robed Jesuit priests hurried to the shore to welcome the newcomers. Indians, traders, and Jesuits united in a show of welcome to La Salle as he landed, finely dressed and wearing a scarlet cloak bordered with broad gold lace. All marched to the little bark chapel in the Ottawa village, and united with the voyagers in hearing mass and giving thanks for their safe passage.

At this settlement La Salle found four of fifteen men whom he had sent ahead the autumn before to buy furs, and to go to the tribes along the Illinois River, making preparations for his coming. Most of these men had been enticed from his service, and had wasted the goods given them to exchange for furs, using them for their own personal gain. Troubled over his affairs in Canada La Salle had meant to return from this point to Montreal, leaving Tonty to conduct his party to the Illinois River. But he soon felt the hostile spirit at the trading post, and realized that his presence was necessary to keep his men from being drawn away. Even the swarms of Indians who hovered in their canoes about the vessel regarded it with wonder and jealousy rather than friendliness, and La Salle feared that the Illinois tribes would be tampered with by his enemies.

He determined to push on at once, and embarked early in September. The vessel proceeded across Lake Michigan, called by the French and Indians Lake Illinois from the name of the tribes who inhabited its southern shores, and cast anchor at the entrance of Green Bay. Here matters took a turn for the better. As the vessel lay tossing about behind a point of the bay, an Indian chief came out in his canoe to greet the Frenchmen. When he learned that La Salle was a friend of Count Frontenac and bore his commission, the Indian told him of his own warm friendship for Frontenac, for whom he would gladly lay down his life, and welcomed La Salle with the greatest cordiality. He reported, too, the presence of Frenchmen near by, and La Salle found the faithful remnant of his advance party waiting with a cargo of furs which they had collected. Eager to satisfy his clamorous creditors, he determined to send back the Griffon, in charge of the pilot and five men, with this load of furs. On the 18th of September, the Griffon fired a parting shot and started for Niagara, to return as soon as she had discharged her cargo; and La Salle, with Hennepin and fourteen others, embarked in four canoes for the south.

The canoes had hardly started when a sudden September storm swept across the lake. The waves washed into the heavily laden canoes, darkness fell, and it was only by constant shouting that the men kept their boats together and got to shore. For four days the storm raged with unabated fury. As La Salle and his men waited from day to day in their cheerless encampment, living on pumpkins and Indian corn presented them by the friendly Indian chief and the meat of a single, porcupine brought in by a hunter, the thought of the Griffon haunted them. Their worst fears proved afterward to have been fulfilled; she was never heard of again. With her sank the cargo which was to have restored La Salle’s credit in Montreal; and with her, too, perished the high hopes that had been set upon this first vessel on the upper lakes.

Although La Salle feared the worst, he did not turn back. As soon as the lake grew calm the four canoes set out again, coasting southward along the shore of Wisconsin. But the elements were against them. Storm after storm drove them ashore, where they spent wretched days and nights among the rocks and bushes, crouched around driftwood fires with nothing to shelter them from snow and rain but their blankets. As they went southward, steep, high bluffs ran so close to the lake that it was hard to find a landing-place. Yet the violence of the wind was so great that they were compelled at evening to drag their canoes to the top of the bluffs in order not to leave them exposed all night to the waves which would have dashed them to pieces. In the morning, in order to reëmbark, two men had to go into the water to the waist and hold a canoe upright until it was loaded, pushing it out or drawing it back as the waves advanced or retreated. Food gave out and the men paddled from morning till night with nothing to eat but a daily handful of Indian corn and hawthorn berries which they picked on shore and devoured so ravenously that they made them ill. Exhaustion and famine stared them in the face, but relief was in sight.

One morning as the men were paddling along near the site of Milwaukee, they saw upon the shore a cloud of ravens and eagles hovering over something. They hastened on land and found the body of a deer which had been killed by a wolf. This was the beginning of better things. As the little fleet advanced toward the south, they found the country ever fairer and the weather more temperate. There was an abundance of game, of which there had hitherto been an exceptional lack. They passed the Chicago River and circled the end of the lake, landing at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here La Salle waited for Tonty to join them, employing the time in building a fort. On the third of December the party sailed up the river, bound for the villages of the Illinois. On a later trip in 1682 La Salle reached the Illinois settlements by a shorter route, crossing from his fort to the river Chicago, and journeying from its waters into a northern branch of the Illinois River.

In four months La Salle had traversed the length of Lake Erie, had passed through the strait of Detroit, up Lake Huron, through the Straits of Mackinac, and down Lake Michigan; from the sites of Buffalo and Cleveland he had sailed past Detroit and Milwaukee even to Chicago, and had then journeyed inland to the Illinois River. He had lost his vessel and her crew, as well as all his furs; he had met with hostility from French and Indian alike; he had been deserted by most of his advance party, and had held his own crew only by his presence and the dominating force of his personality; he had suffered endless hardships and privations: but nothing had shaken his purpose. In later years he followed the Illinois and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and led a colony to the limits of the present state of Texas, where he was murdered by one of his men. In history, La Salle stands out as a man whose courage and persevering fortitude in the face of almost insuperable obstacles mark him as one of the greatest explorers the world has ever known. We do well to join with Hennepin in saying, “Those who shall be so happy as to inhabit that noble country cannot but remember with gratitude those who discovered the way by venturing to sail upon unknown lakes.”

CHAPTER VII
A HAPLESS FRENCH GOVERNOR

Like all strong men Frontenac made many enemies. He was recalled in 1682, and General La Barre, a man of about sixty, was sent out in his place. La Barre had made a good record in the West Indies, but was entirely unable to handle the difficult problems which met him in New France. In an evil hour for the French, the Iroquois had conquered the southern neighbors with whom they had long waged wars that had occupied much of their time and strength. Now, they were free to turn on the Indian allies of Canada of whose commercial gains through the fur trade with the French they had long been envious. Frontenac before his departure had found the Iroquois unusually arrogant and unruly, although they had come to regard him as the greatest of all “Onontios,” as they named the governors of New France. The Dutch and the English had meanwhile made more or less successful advances to the Iroquois, who now fully realized their own importance from the efforts of both French and English to gain their support.

For two years La Barre struggled on, entangling rather than helping the situation. At length an Iroquois chief was murdered in a village of French Indians, and the crisis came. In the early spring of 1684, French canoes were plundered by the Senecas and La Barre felt that he must assert his power, or the Indians would lose their respect for the French. After making great preparations, he started with his soldiers and frontiersmen for the Seneca country by way of the St. Lawrence to Fort Frontenac and thence across Lake Ontario. The opposing current of the river was so strong that frequently the men could make no progress by paddling, but were obliged to tow the canoes or push them along with poles. Every few miles were rapids around which the canoes were transported and through which the flatboats were pulled with the greatest effort. The mosquitoes were “insufferably troublesome,” hovering over the men in such clouds that they could hardly see their way,—so one of the soldiers wrote. At Fort Frontenac, the men fell ill of a malarial fever which killed many and disabled more. La Barre repented more than once of entering upon an expedition that he now saw would be disastrous.

Whatever his former warlike purposes, La Barre was now eager for peace. He sent Le Moyne, a veteran interpreter whom the Iroquois called the “Partridge,” to the Onondagas asking them to meet him on the southern side of the lake, twenty miles or so north of Oswego. Le Moyne returned in a few days with the famous Onondaga chief, “Big Mouth”; in French this is “La Grande Gueule,” which the soldiers shortened into “Grangula.” Big Mouth had recently been conferring with the English, whose arbitrary demands had offended his pride; he was now in a haughty mood that boded ill for the French.

The Indian chief was accompanied by a train of thirty young warriors. As soon as he disembarked, General La Barre sent him a present of bread and wine, and thirty salmon-trouts. At the same time he gave him to understand that he was pleased at his arrival, and would be glad to have an interview with him after he had rested himself. To conceal from Big Mouth the weakness of the French forces Le Moyne represented to him that the most of the soldiers had been left behind at Fort Frontenac, and that the troops which he saw were the general’s guards; but one of the Iroquois knew a little of the French tongue. Strolling noiselessly about the tents by night he overheard the talk of the soldiers and learned the true state of affairs.

It was two days after his arrival before Big Mouth gave notice to La Barre that he was ready for an interview. The council was held on an open spot between the two encampments. From the picture drawn by one of the French soldiers we see the arrangement. La Barre was seated in state in an armchair with his Jesuit interpreter beside him and the French officers ranged on his right and left. The two lines of French soldiers formed two more sides of the square. Opposite La Barre sat the Indians with Big Mouth, their spokesman, in front, and between them in the centre of the square was placed the great Calumet or Pipe of Peace. The stem of this huge pipe was about four feet long, and the body or bowl about eight inches high. The bowl was of handsome red stone, well polished, and the stem of a strong reed or cane, trimmed with yellow, white, and green feathers. In shape it resembled a huge hammer more than anything else. The Indians used these calumets for negotiations as we use a flag of truce, holding them peculiarly sacred. To violate the rights of this venerable pipe was regarded among them as a flaming crime that would draw down mischief upon their nations. About this calumet were piled the wampum belts to be presented by the speakers.

La Barre and Grangula

La Barre opened the council, speaking boldly and with apparent assurance. He made no allusion to his original purpose of making war on the Senecas, but announced that the king, his master, had sent him there with a guard to meet the principal chiefs of the Five Nations at an appointed council fire. The Five Nations had made infractions upon the peace concluded between them and the French. Should Big Mouth be willing, as their representative, to make reparation and offer promises for the future, the great French monarch desired that La Barre and Big Mouth should smoke together the calumet of peace.

La Barre recounted the three offences of the Iroquois. They had robbed and ill-used French traders; for this he demanded reparation. They had brought the English to the lakes which belonged to the French, thus diverting trade from the latter; this he would forget, provided it did not happen again. They had attacked the Illinois, and still held many in captivity. “These people are my master’s children,” said La Barre, “and must therefore cease to be your slaves.” They must be sent home at once. He enforced each statement with a wampum belt, and ended every request with an announcement, as bold as though he had the whole French army at his back, that should these demands not be complied with, he “had express orders to declare war,” even going so far once as to say, “in case of your refusal, war is positively proclaimed.” He would gladly leave them in peace, should they prove “religious observers of the treaties,” but if not he added, concluding with a statement which he knew to be false, he would be obliged to join the governor of New York, who had orders from his king to assist La Barre in burning the five villages and cutting off the Iroquois.

While La Barre’s interpreter translated this speech, Grangula sat silent and attentive, gazing steadily at the bowl of his pipe. After the harangue was finished he rose and walked round inside the square made by the French and savages, five or six times. Then he returned to his place, and drawing himself to his full height began to speak. “Onontio, I honor you,” he said, “and all the warriors that accompany me do the same. Your interpreter has made an end of his discourse, and now I come to begin mine. My voice glides to your ear, pray listen to my words.”

He thought that the French captain must have started out from Quebec with some strange idea that the Five Nations had been wiped out by fire or flood. Nothing else, he implied, could make him set out against so powerful a federation with such an army. The Indian chief ironically assured the French general of the continued prosperity of the Five Nations, congratulating him that he brought the calumet of peace, rather than the bloody axe that had been so often dyed with the blood of the French. Then he spoke out boldly and directly, telling La Barre that he knew better than to believe the Frenchman’s pretence that he did not have any other purpose in approaching the lake than to smoke the pipe of peace with the Onondagas. He saw plainly that the Onontio meant to “knock them on the head,” if the French arms had not been so much weakened. The French soldiers were to be congratulated that the Great Spirit had visited them with sickness, for only thus had their lives been saved from Indian massacre. Even the women and old men and children would have attacked the French camp without fear, had not Akouessan (Le Moyne) appeared at the Onondaga village announcing that he was an ambassador of peace, not of war.

With this bold and telling introduction, in which he revealed to the French his full comprehension of their weakness and of their deceit, Big Mouth proceeded to consider the accusations of La Barre. The pillage of French traders he justified on the ground that they were carrying arms to the Illinois, and for this he flatly refused to give satisfaction, declaring insultingly that even the old men of his tribe had long ceased to fear the French. They had conducted the English to the lakes to traffic with French allies, just as the Algonquins conducted the French to the Five Nations to trade with them. Moreover, he claimed that they had a perfect right to do as they pleased in this matter. “We are born free-men,” he declared proudly, “and have no dependence either upon the Onontio [governor of Canada], or the Corlaer [governor of New York]. We have power to go where we please, to conduct whoever we will to the places we resort to, and to buy and sell where we think fit.” If the French chose they might make slaves of their allies, robbing them of the liberty of entertaining any other Indians, but the Five Nations would brook no such interference. The Iroquois attacked the Illinois because they invaded their territory, hunting beavers on their lands. Big Mouth met the reproof of La Barre with a bold stroke in return. He declared that in defending their own lands against the Illinois they had done less than the English and French, who without any right, had usurped the grounds they now possessed, dislodging from them several nations in order to make way for the building of their cities, villages, and forts.

Big Mouth closed his address with a warning. A year ago the hatchet had been buried in the presence of Count Frontenac at his fort, and the tree of peace had been planted. It was then stipulated that this fort should be used as a place of retreat for traders, and not a refuge for soldiers. Big Mouth warned the French to take care lest so great a number of soldiers as he now saw before him “stifle and choke the tree of peace,” and hinder it from shading both countries with its leaves. The Iroquois were ready to dance under its branches the dance of peace, and never dig up the hatchet to cut it down, unless the governors of Canada and New York, jointly or separately, should invade the country given by the Great Spirit to their ancestors. The Indian orator presented two wampum belts and sat down.

As soon as he had done, Le Moyne and the Jesuits interpreted his answer to La Barre, who thereupon retired to his tent and stormed and blustered till somebody came and represented to him that good manners were not to be expected from an Iroquois. It was little wonder that La Barre raged. The Indian chief had seen through his artifices, had yielded to none of his demands, and had contrived to assert the complete independence of his own tribes and their contempt for the French.

Big Mouth entertained some of the French officers at a feast, which he opened for them by dancing an Indian dance. There was another council in the afternoon, and the terms of peace were settled upon in the evening. These terms were in the usual form of Indian treaties. A “word” of the Iroquois was answered by a “word” of the French accepting it, and all disputed points were taken up in a series of such “words.”

The Iroquois offered to the French a beverage devoid of bitterness to purify whatever inconvenience they had experienced on their voyage, and to dispel whatever bad air they had breathed between Montreal and this council fire,—a beverage of which the malarial French were certainly in dire need. They reminded the French of the deep ditch dug the year before, into which all unkind things that might occur were to be cast, and requested the French to throw into it the Seneca robbery, to which the French agreed. Again the tree of peace was set up, each side solemnly adjuring the other to sustain and strengthen it. The French agreed to depart at once, and then,—and not till then,—did the Iroquois consent to renew the former treaty, “dispelling all the clouds that had obscured the Sun from their sight.”

Thus ended the grand expedition of La Barre. No real satisfaction had been gained by the French, but a weak truce had been made, and the Iroquois had taken the opportunity to assert boldly their independence of French and English alike, whom they treated as invaders of their rightful possessions.

Big Mouth and his men returned to their homes, and the French set out for Montreal. The few healthy men that remained manned the General’s canoes and took charge of the flat-bottomed boats in which the soldiers were carried. Of the dangers attendant on shooting the rapids in these boats one of the soldiers draws a vivid picture, declaring that he and his companions wished themselves back in the canoes that had brought them up, when they shot down such precipices of water as had never been heard of before. The main current wound its way in and out past eddies and rocks, dashing along as fast as a cannon ball, and the men steered as well as they could along this zigzag course, knowing that a false stroke of the oar would send them upon the rocks. But in spite of the discomfort and the danger, this soldier confesses from the safe shelter of Montreal that, though the risk was very great, “yet, by way of compensation one had the satisfaction of running a great way in a very short time.” And he closes with a word of sympathy for La Barre. “All the world blames our General for his bad success.... The people here are busy in wafting to court a thousand calumnies against him.... But after all the poor man could do no more than he did.”

PART II
THE STRUGGLE FOR POSSESSION

CHAPTER VIII
THE FOUNDING OF DETROIT

After the failure which has been recounted in the preceding chapter, La Barre was recalled to France, and a new governor, Denonville, sent over to take his place. He had not much greater success and was in turn replaced by Count Frontenac, who returned to the scene of his former labors. This was in 1689, when England and France were at war. For the remaining nine years of his life Frontenac devoted all his energies to defending New France against the English and the Iroquois and to holding what the French had already gained on the Great Lakes. In November, 1698, in his seventy-eighth year, he died, and was deeply mourned as a strong governor and beloved leader. He had come out to New France in 1672, and during his long term of service he had used his power and influence not only to build up the settlements on the St. Lawrence, but also to plant on the shores of the Great Lakes and the rivers beyond a line of French forts and trading posts. He had gathered about him a group of young men who shared his enthusiasm for expansion and were eager to carry on his work. Five years before his death, Frontenac had sent one of his men, Cadillac, to the Straits of Mackinac to hold that centre of the fur trade.

Cadillac was a rough, forceful soldier who was summary in his methods and short in his speech. He was well suited to the command of a frontier post and did good work in keeping the lake Indians from alliance with the enemies of the French. He did not, however, get on well with the missionaries at Michilimackinac. They resented his presence and his influence with the Indians, for whose conversion to Christianity they were earnestly laboring. Cadillac soon came to see that Detroit and not Mackinac was the key to the interior. Whoever held the narrow channel connecting Lake Erie and Lake Huron would control the fur trade of the whole lake region. He hastened to Quebec to gain support for his scheme of erecting a fort and trading station on the Detroit River. There he was stoutly opposed by the Jesuits, who foresaw that the carrying out of his project would mean the ruin of their mission, which could not compete commercially with the new station, and that the extension of trade would bring the vices of civilization to the natives. Nothing daunted, Cadillac went over the seas to France, gained the favor of the colonial minister, and returned to Canada with permission to found his colony. He reached Detroit with a band of one hundred colonists and soldiers on the 24th of July, 1701.

Cadillac had done well in choosing Detroit as the situation for the first permanent colony on the lakes. In the century that was past the Great Lakes had been discovered and explored; the eighteenth century was to witness their occupation and the contest for the possession of this rich country. In this long strife, first France and England, and then England and the American colonies, were to come to blows, while always on these shores unceasing warfare would be waged between the advancing white man and the retreating red man. In the opening years of the new century Cadillac was taking the first step in permanent occupation of the country, planting his settlement on a site so important that a wise English leader was at that very time urging upon the New York assembly its colonization by the English. So long as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario had been avoided by the French, the northern Ottawa River-Georgian Bay route had been the highway of travel and trade. The easier southern route was now open to the French, but it was even more convenient and accessible to their English rivals. The French were brought face to face with the problem of how to hold the trade of the upper lakes from the English. In the solution of this problem Detroit would be the key.

There rushes through the strait of Detroit more water than through any other river in the world, save only the Niagara and the St. Lawrence. Through this channel, whose average width is a mile and whose length is only twenty-seven miles, pour in a steady, even current, unbroken by rapids or eddies, and with a speed of over two miles an hour, the waters of three lakes, Superior, Michigan, and Huron, and of the hundreds of streams that feed them. This little river is the natural outlet for eighty-two thousand square miles of lake surface and one hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles of land. Down the swift current floated in those early days scores of canoes paddled by silent Indians and swarthy coureurs de bois, bearing to the markets at Montreal, Quebec, and Albany loads of beaver, mink, and otter furs of immense value. They were the forerunners of a tonnage passing through that strait which to-day exceeds that of the Thames and London.

Cadillac and his soldiers and settlers, fifty each, had paddled, pushed, and carried their canoes, heavily laden with provisions, tools, ammunition, and supplies, all the way from Montreal. As they gazed on the beautiful site of their future homes, their weariness passed away. With shouts of joy they drew their canoes to the bank and unpacked their heavy loads for the last time.

No exploring party had ever passed through the Detroit River without longing to stop. To appreciate the charm and wealth of that spot, one must read the vivid descriptions which were written by men of that time. Such an enthusiast was Cadillac. Two months after his arrival, he wrote home the following, which would do credit to a promoter’s prospectus of the present day.

“The business of war being so different from that of writing,” he said, “I have not the ability to make a portrait of a country so worthy of a better pen than mine; but since you have directed me to render an account of it, I will do so.” He described the river and then continued: “Its borders are so many vast prairies, and the freshness of the beautiful waters keeps the banks always green. The prairies are bordered by long and broad rows of fruit trees which have never felt the hand of the vigilant gardener. Here also orchards, young and old, soften and bend their branches, under the weight and quantity of their fruit, towards the mother earth which has produced them. It is in this land, so fertile, that the ambitious vine, which has never wept under the knife of the vine-dresser, builds a thick roof with its large leaves and heavy clusters, weighing down the top of the tree which receives it, and often stifling it with its embrace.

“Under these broad walks one sees assembled by hundred the timid deer and fawn, also the squirrel bounding in his eagerness to collect the apples and plums with which the earth is covered. Here the cautious turkey calls and conducts her numerous brood to gather the grapes, and here also their mates come to fill their large and gluttonous crops. Golden pheasants, the quail, the partridge, woodcock, and numerous doves swarm in the woods and cover the country, which is dotted and broken with thickets and high forests of full-grown trees.... There are ten species of forest trees, among them are the walnut, white oak, red oak, the ash, the pine, whitewood and cotton-wood; straight as arrows, without knots, and almost without branches, except at the very top, and of prodigious size.... The fish here are nourished and bathed by living water of crystal clearness, and their great abundance renders them none the less delicious. Swans are so numerous that one would take for lilies the reeds in which they are crowded together. The gabbling goose, the duck, the widgeon [a kind of duck], and the bustard are so abundant that to give an idea of their numbers I must use the expression of a savage whom I asked before arriving if there was much game. ‘So much,’ he said, ‘that they draw up in lines to let the boats pass through.’... In a word, the climate is temperate, and the air purified through the day and night by a gentle breeze. The skies are always serene and spread sweet and fresh influence which makes one enjoy a tranquil sleep.”

Cadillac landed at the narrowest part of the river, where the city now stands, and began to build the little village which was to survive without a break the conflicts of the coming century. In this wilderness, inhabited only by wild beasts and savages, the first thought must be for defence; only when that was provided, could the settlers turn to plans for their own shelter from wind and weather. On the first rise of ground back from the river, along the line of the present Jefferson Avenue, Cadillac marked out a space of a little less than an acre, with a width of about two city blocks and a depth of one, which was to be enclosed by a palisade. Small trees were hewn in the forest and fashioned into sharply pointed pickets which were driven into the ground as closely as possible, thus forming a solid fence ten or twelve feet high. At the four corners were bastions of stout oak pickets from which the soldiers could shoot along the line of the palisade. Inside the stockade, Cadillac laid out a street twelve feet wide, and assigned small lots to the settlers and soldiers. The settlers bought theirs outright, but Cadillac retained the ownership of the others.

Fifty hours after their landing, on the day sacred to St. Anne, they began the foundation of a chapel on the very spot where St. Anne’s church stands to-day. In a month the chapel was completed by a rude cross placed over the door, and a bell summoned the colonists to daily prayers. When the storehouse and magazine for ammunition were also finished the people set to work on their own log huts. Trees were cut in the forest, and the rough-hewn logs were hauled to the spot. There a framework was set up, the logs were fitted into it, and the cracks were filled with mortar and mud. Last of all the top was covered with a roof of birch bark, or was thatched with grass. Land outside the stockade was assigned for agriculture, each soldier having a half acre for cultivation, and the civilians larger tracts. That very year wheat was sown for the next summer. With remarkable speed the settlement sprang up in the wilderness, and before the end of August took on an appearance of stability and permanence.

Cadillac now summoned the Indians to council and urged them to build settlements in the vicinity. He was wise enough to see that if a sufficient number of friendly Indians located near by, traders would come to buy their furs, the colony could rely on greater numbers in case of attack, and the scanty three months’ supply of provisions brought from Montreal could be eked out by food bought from Indian hunters. Three large villages sprang up, and within eight months the population of the strait was some six thousand people, whites and Indians.

Hitherto there had been on the Great Lakes nothing looking to family life or permanent residence, but in the spring of 1702, Madame Cadillac and Madame Tonty, wife of the captain of the garrison, started in open canoes, manned by Indians and Canadians, on the seven-hundred-mile journey from Montreal to Detroit. At a season when storms were likely to be frequent these two women braved the hardships of the trip, going up the rapids of the St. Lawrence, across Lake Ontario and around Niagara, and up Lake Erie to the strait. With her Madame Cadillac brought her little boy, Jacques, six years of age; her oldest son was already with his father. These were the first white women to come to the Great Lakes. They were soon followed by the wives and families of other settlers. By 1708 the settlement had grown so fast that houses were built outside the stockade, as the twenty-nine huts within the enclosure were not sufficient to accommodate the people.

The little colony suffered the usual troubles of frontier life, but managed to survive them. In 1703 several of the buildings were destroyed by a fire set by the Indians. For the first few years the colony was managed by a company, but in 1705 Cadillac succeeded in getting full control and ruled there with as absolute sway as had any feudal chief in his turreted castle. He owned the public buildings and defences and he alone could grant lots for settlement. From him alone could the people obtain their liquor, and to prevent excessive drinking by the Indians and traders he restricted the amount sold to each person at one time and charged a high price for it. To him also all must come for permits to carry on their different trades and occupations. For every privilege the people must pay, and right bitterly did they complain of their commandant to his enemies, though when he walked along the narrow street, firm and erect, in soldierly costume and with clanking sword, every hat was doffed. Doubtless some of his charges were exorbitant, but the money was turned back into the improvement of the colony, as, for instance, to build a public windmill where the people could pay to have their corn ground. The blacksmith complained that he had to pay six hundred francs a year and two casks of ale for the privilege of blacksmithing, besides having to keep all Cadillac’s horses shod. The latter task could not have been very arduous, for until 1706 there were no horses in the settlement, and of the three that Cadillac bought in that year only one, named Colin, was alive in 1711.

In 1710 Cadillac was ordered to go to Louisiana to govern the colony there, and his connection with Detroit and the Great Lakes was brought to an abrupt end. The settlement which he handed over to his successor was fairly prosperous. In the following winter, however, while the men of the neighboring Indian tribes were away at their hunting-grounds, a thousand or more hostile Indians of the Fox-Wisconsin river tribes descended upon the region and prepared to settle there. The colonists were powerless to prevent them, but waited anxiously for the return of the hunting-parties. In May they came, and under the leadership of the French finally drove off the enemy after a hard and bloody siege in which many lives were lost. For the next ten years the colony was so weak that its abandonment was contemplated. Successive governors mismanaged its internal affairs, demanding tolls and fees so exorbitant that traders refused to come there. Cadillac’s demands had been for the advancement of the colony; these men used their power to enrich themselves.

In 1720 and 1721, financial distress in France sent many a ruined Frenchman to Detroit, so that in 1722 the population was again two hundred, as it had been at the time of its founder’s departure. For the next thirty years the story of Detroit was uneventful. The settlement increased gradually in numbers and strength. Of its hardships we may best judge by the large mortality of children in those years. By the middle of the century we find the authorities in Canada so eager to have the colonies on the Great Lakes strong and permanent, that the following inducements are offered in a proclamation posted, by order of the governor-general, in all the parishes of Canada:—

“Every man who will go to settle in Detroit shall receive gratuitously, one spade, one axe, one ploughshare, one large and one small wagon. We will make an advance of other two tools to be paid for in two years only. He will be given a cow, ... also a sow. Seed will be advanced the first year, to be returned at the third harvest. The women and children will be supported for one year. Those will be deprived of the liberality of the King who shall give themselves up to trade in place of agriculture.”

In this way men with families were encouraged to make France strong in her western outposts. Within a year one hundred persons responded, and an official census shows a population at Detroit of nearly five hundred persons, of whom thirty-three were women over fifteen, and ninety-five girls under that age. This represents no mere floating population of traders and adventurers. The property returns of the inhabitants show them to have been an agricultural people who made the most of the rich land on which they lived. In the census they reported one hundred and sixty horses in place of the one of forty years before, and six hundred and eighty-two cattle. The fertility of the strait of Detroit seemed to inspire even the roving Canadian, usually so restless and adventurous, with a desire to plant and develop a home.

CHAPTER IX
NIAGARA AND THE LOSS OF CANADA

The importance of Niagara in trade and warfare was early recognized by both the French and the English as well as by the Iroquois. La Salle and Denonville, in their desire to monopolize the Indian trade, had built fortified storehouses on the shore of the river, but both had been destroyed by the Iroquois. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the English began to make serious inroads on the fur trade of the interior, and the French became more anxious than ever to secure a permanent foothold at Niagara. For twenty-five years French and English orators harangued at Indian councils, begging for permission to build forts or trading houses at that point; governors wrote home for the necessary funds to purchase the Indians’ consent; and rival traders watched every camp on the river with suspicion. At length French diplomacy won the day. In 1720, Joncaire, with the help of Charles Le Moyne, Chevalier de Longueuil, gained from the Indians a reluctant consent to the building of a bark house at Niagara. He made the most of this permission, and on the site of Lewiston built a large house, forty feet wide and thirty long, which could accommodate fifty traders. This he surrounded with a high fence or palisade and named the Magazin Royal. In their turn the English built a similar, though smaller, house at Oswego (1722), from which the Indians could go by portage by the Oswego River to Lake Oneida, and, gaining the Mohawk, could paddle their fur-laden canoes to Albany.

In their first permission to the French, the Iroquois had carefully stipulated that the house to be built at Niagara should be of bark, for they had learned the danger of stone forts. Now, Le Moyne told them that he could not keep his skins dry in a bark house, and wrung from them an unwilling consent to the erection of a stone house, provided it be “no stone fort.” The authorities at once wrote to the king, asking for money to defray the expense of building a house of solid masonry. De Léry, the king’s chief engineer, who had come out to fortify Quebec and Montreal, was directed to proceed to Niagara, and to build this trading house. He decided not to put it near Joncaire’s station, which was seven miles up the river, where the rapids made further navigation impossible, but to place it at the outlet of the river into Lake Ontario. On the eastern bank of the Niagara, near its mouth, he began the erection of the stone structure which stands to-day as the oldest part of the government buildings at Fort Niagara. It took two summers in time and thirty thousand livres in money to build. When completed, the house of stone possessed four bastions erected with a massiveness of construction that makes it strong after nearly two hundred years have passed away. Charles Le Moyne, who had gained the Indians’ consent to the building of this stone house, was put in command and held it for many years. The first Charles Le Moyne came to Canada in 1654, and for a century his sons and grandsons played most important parts in the building up of the French power in the New World. Two of his sons led the attack on Schenectady, and later founded Louisiana; a third son fell in the defence of Quebec against Sir William Phips in 1690, and another in the struggle with the English for Hudson’s Bay. The second Charles Le Moyne accompanied La Barre and Denonville on their expeditions against the Iroquois, and the third established this fortified post at Niagara.

In a hundred and forty years, more or less, the French had made wonderful progress in opening up the interior of North America to exploration and trade; they had founded settlements at the extremities of their dominion on the St. Lawrence and the lower Mississippi, and had connected these by a chain of forts on the Great Lakes and the northern tributaries of the Mississippi; but they had established only one strong colony in the interior, the settlement at Detroit. As the middle of the eighteenth century approached, they awoke to the need of making good their claim to the Ohio Valley, building a line of forts at Presque Isle on Lake Erie, Le Bœuf, Duquesne, on the route from that lake to the Ohio River. They also strengthened themselves by erecting a fort on the southern shore of Lake Erie at Sandusky, about halfway between Cleveland and Detroit. The energy of the French was in part due to the exhibition of an intention of the English to enter the great interior basin; but the French activity aroused the English, and in 1754 the final contest for the control of the continent began in the western wilderness of Virginia and Pennsylvania. With the war elsewhere, this book has nothing to do; the campaigns for the capture of Duquesne, Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, Quebec, and Montreal, all took place far away from the shores of the Great Lakes; but it was the success of the English in these other fields that determined the fate of the interior. From the beginning the importance of Niagara had been recognized by both combatants, but the strength of its position deferred an attack upon it for several years. In 1758 the English captured Fort Frontenac, and the next summer made a determined attack on Niagara.

A View of Niagara Fort,
taken by Sir William Johnson,
on the 25th of July 1759.
Drawn on the Spot in 1758.

The fort at Niagara was now commanded by a French officer and engineer, Captain Pouchot; he had strengthened and enlarged the fortifications and had a garrison of six hundred men well supplied with food and ammunition. The English general, Prideaux, marched with a force of twenty-three hundred men from Oswego and laid siege to the fort. The English engineers opened the trenches so near the fort that they were obliged to withdraw and build a second series. When the artillery was placed in position and opened fire, one of the first shells to be discharged burst prematurely, and a fragment striking General Prideaux on the head, killed him instantly. Sir William Johnson took command in his place and carried on the siege effectively.

In two or three weeks the French garrison was reduced to the last extremity. The walls and defences were riddled with shot and broken through; more than a hundred of the defenders were killed or seriously wounded, and all were worn out with the strain of the constant defence day and night. Captain Pouchot still held out, for ever since the siege began he had been watching for expected assistance from the western posts. An army of thirteen hundred French and Indians had been gathered from the stations of the Illinois River and from Detroit, Michilimackinac, Le Bœuf, and Venango, to defend the Ohio Valley. As soon as Pouchot heard that the English were coming to attack Niagara he had sent a summons to the leaders of this force to come to his aid, and now he was daily and hourly expecting their arrival, together with the garrison of Fort Duquesne, which had abandoned that place on the approach of an English army under General Forbes.

The western reënforcement was even now coming up Lake Erie under the leadership of two French generals. It was an oddly assorted force, such as no other time or place could have produced. A company of well-drilled colonial militia paddled their boats beside the canoes of a war-party of Indians who had been induced by traders to come from their distant homes to take part in the white men’s strife. Hardly less savage than the Indian warriors were the western traders and coureurs de bois, who had lived so long in Indian wigwams that they had adopted the dress, the war-paint, and the customs of their neighbors. All the members of this mixed company were alike, however, in one thing,—they were skilled in the warfare of the woods.

From Lake Erie the fleet paddled past the site of Buffalo and down the swift-moving Niagara River around Grand Island, and, on the morning of July 24, 1759, the soldiers and Indians landed at the head of the portage path, a mile and a half above the falls. Here the French found the ruins of their Fort of the Portage, of Fort Little Niagara, a trading station which had been fortified in 1750. Joncaire, a son of the Joncaire who built the first trading house on the river, had occupied this post till recently, but had burned it at the approach of the British. The army made its way up over the rough seven-mile portage path and down over the rocks to the old French trading house. From here they proceeded cautiously along the bank of the river.

Sir William Johnson had meanwhile been informed by scouts of the approach of the expected French reënforcement. He divided his twenty-three hundred men into three bodies,—one to guard the boats on Lake Ontario, one to hold the trenches, and the third to cut off the advance of the southern army. For this last company he picked the provincial light infantry, two companies of grenadiers, and a hundred and fifty men of the Forty-sixth Regiment. They were commanded by Colonel Massey, under whose orders they threw up, about a mile and a half up the river from the fort, a rough breastwork of felled trees behind which they could stand and pour shot into the ranks of the advancing enemy. The Iroquois warriors who had come with Johnson were placed along the flanks of the English. They had recently shown signs of disaffection, and when the French army came in sight they opened a parley with the Indian allies of the French. This did not last long, for they could come to no agreement, and without further delay the savages threw themselves into the fight with wild war-whoops.

The French made a gallant fight, but were fatally hampered by their unprotected position. For half an hour they made sallies, retreating each time after heavy losses, but led back for another assault by those who survived of their heroic officers. At last their ranks were completely broken, and they fled along the shore to regain the portage road around the falls and escape to their boats. For five miles the English pursued them through the woods, capturing and bringing back as many as they could overtake. The bravery of the French officers and the desperate efforts that they made to check the retreat are shown by the fact that nearly all of them were either killed or captured. Their followers hastened back to their boats and retreated across Lake Erie, burning, on their way, Presque Isle, Le Bœuf, and Venango, and journeying to the safe and distant fort of Detroit.

On the morning of July 24th, Captain Pouchot, shut up in the fort at Niagara, heard the sound of distant firing and began to watch for his allies. Through the open spaces of the forest, he could see in the far distance, moving forms and groups of men meeting and parting. The English had evidently gone out to attack the advancing army; the cannonading from the trenches which had sounded for so long in the ears of the garrison had ceased, and the trenches seemed deserted. Captain Pouchot called for volunteers to sally forth from the fort and destroy the English works; but as soon as they appeared the English soldiers stationed there by Johnson sprang up from their hiding places behind the works and forced the French to retreat into their fortification.

At last the sound of distant firing stopped and the smoke of guns ceased to rise from the scene of the conflict. The garrison waited hour after hour in anxious suspense. About two o’clock in the afternoon a friendly Indian slipped through the lines and told of the utter rout of the relieving force. Captain Pouchot refused to believe him, but at four o’clock, after a sharp cannonade from the English had been answered by a similar discharge from the besieged garrison, a trumpet was sounded in the English trenches, and an officer approached the fort with a demand for its surrender. He presented also a paper with the names of the captive French officers. Captain Pouchot still refused to admit to the enemy his belief in the disaster, and sent an officer of his own to see the prisoners. His worst fears were confirmed when the officer returned with the report that under a shelter of boughs near Johnson’s tent were sixteen officers, some of them severely wounded.

All hope for the French was gone, and Captain Pouchot could only endeavor to arrange for his garrison honorable terms of surrender. Such terms the English, recognizing the gallant conduct of their enemies, were glad to grant. The French were accorded all the honors of prisoners of war, although they must be sent under guard to New York. Pouchot asked and was granted a special stipulation that they should be protected from their Indian enemies, who might take this occasion to revenge themselves for the massacre at Fort William Henry three years before. He signed the articles of surrender and delivered over to the English the fort with ten officers and four hundred and eighty-six men, besides women and children.

The surrender of Niagara broke the line of communication between Montreal and the interior. In the next year, 1760, the Marquis de Vaudreuil signed articles of capitulation by which Canada and all its dependencies passed into the hands of the English, and French supremacy on the Great Lakes was ended. It remained only for the conquerors to take possession of the other French posts on the Great Lakes.

CHAPTER X
THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC

On the thirteenth day of September, 1760, five days after the surrender of Montreal, Major Robert Rogers, the most energetic Indian fighter of the time, set out from Montreal with two hundred of his “Rangers,” whose exploits in war had made his name famous, for the lakes. He was to take possession of Detroit and the other lake forts for England. Reaching Niagara on the first day of October, they crossed by portage to the site of the modern Buffalo and skirted the southern shore of Lake Erie, encamping nightly on its margin and taking every precaution by day to keep the boats from losing sight of one another on the rough, stormy waters. One night on the Cuyahoga River, near where the present city of Cleveland now stands, a party of Indians entered the camp and announced themselves to be ambassadors from Pontiac, “the king and lord of that country,” who requested them to halt until he himself should arrive. In a few hours the great sachem stalked into camp. He was of medium height, with an active, muscular figure, and a stern face. His first words were an imperious demand as to Major Rogers’ business. “How dare you,” said he, “enter my country without my leave?” “I do not come with any design against you or your people,” replied Rogers, “but to remove out of your country the French, who have been an obstacle in our way to mutual peace and commerce.” The Indian who greeted Rogers so haughtily was the principal chief of the Ottawa and Ojibway tribes, a man to whom all the nations of the Illinois country deferred and whose name was held in respect even by the distant Algonquins of the St. Lawrence. Rogers told him of his present mission, taking occasion to dwell on the total defeat of the French in Canada, and gave him several belts of wampum in token of his friendly intent. These Pontiac accepted with dignity, but without any sign of unbending. He announced that he stood in the path the English travelled in until the next morning, and proffered a string of wampum to intimate that they must not march farther without his leave. He inquired whether the party was in need of anything he or his warriors could supply, and then withdrew.

The English kept a double force on guard all night, but in the morning Pontiac came with his attendant chiefs and declared that he had made peace with Rogers and his detachment, and that they might therefore pass through his country unmolested and expel the French garrison from Detroit. He was inclined, he said, to live peaceably with the English while they used him as he deserved, but if they treated him with neglect, he should shut up the way and exclude them from his domains. The pipe of peace was passed around the council fire and smoked by officers and chiefs alike.

As Rogers and his men proceeded on their way, they found the march made easy by the powerful influence of Pontiac, who dissuaded a war-party of Detroit Indians from attacking them, furnished guides and welcome supplies of venison, turkeys, and parched corn. He even sent word ahead to the Indians within the limits of the fort that he was a friend of the English, making it impossible for the French commander to get any help from them. In the rôle of guide, counsellor, and patronizing friend of the newly arrived strangers, this remarkable savage comes for the first time into prominence in history. Three years later he was to make of what would have been without his leadership a series of spasmodic and scattering raids a formidable and sustained Indian uprising of the most serious kind.

Rogers took Detroit, sent the French commander and his garrison down to Niagara, disarmed the Canadian militia, and received the oath of allegiance from all the inhabitants; and in a few hours Detroit was, in name at least, an English town. Within a year all the posts on the lakes came into English possession; but the English were far from gaining the hearty support of either the French-Canadian inhabitants,—who were naturally not pleased at this change of hands,—or even of the Indian tribes, who liked the French.

The French had always had unusual success in dealing with the Indians. They were friendly with them, tolerant of their presence, and generous with their gifts, without any insulting show of patronage. The previous reputation of the English was bad among the Indians. They resented their austere manners, their steady seizure of forest lands for agriculture, and their ill-concealed contempt for the red man. This bad name had been somewhat obscured in these recent years by the excellent prices paid by the English for furs, and their lavish gifts to gain Indian support; but it was now confirmed at every post along the whole frontier.

When the two rival nations were using the Indians as allies, both had treated them with respect and endeavored to gain their friendship. Now the Indians began to realize that this friendship was no longer considered valuable, but that the English were insolently seizing more and more of their domain with the apparent intention of driving them out. Their chiefs were no longer treated with respect as they hung about the white men’s forts. Owing to a sudden policy of retrenchment the gifts, too, were cut down or withheld altogether, until the savages really suffered from want of supplies which the wise Frenchmen had seen the necessity of providing for them. The customary amount of powder was denied them, and the Indians feared lest their independence was threatened. The English fur trade was in lawless hands, and the traders abused and outraged the Indians while they cheated them out of their lawful dues. The discontent of the natives was encouraged and fostered by the French traders and settlers, who told their sullen audiences incredible tales of the further evil purposes of the English, and spread far and wide a rumor that the armies of the French were even now advancing up the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers to drive out these pretenders.

Suddenly, in May, 1763, the Indians uprose. With characteristic secrecy and stealth the tribes had exchanged wampum belts, spreading the summons to war and signifying in return acquiescence in the plan, with hardly a suspicion on the part of their indifferent English neighbors. Occasionally in the last month a story was brought in that roused the anxiety of those who were wise in the ways of the Indians, but these were laughed to scorn. Looking backward, one marvels both at the secrecy with which the uprising was planned, and at the serene confidence of the scanty garrisons stationed at these isolated and dangerous outposts. From contemporary accounts it appears that at Presque Isle there were twenty-seven men; at Michilimackinac thirty-five men with their officers; at the foot of Lake Michigan, on the St. Joseph’s River, fifteen, and at Fort Miami ten, while the other posts were held by mere handfuls of soldiers; Detroit was the only station that was suitably manned.

In their dealings with white men, the Indians had never before been banded together under a single leader. The tribes were restless and jealous of one another, but Pontiac restrained and humored them. He made his plans so well, and they were carried out so secretly and energetically, that within ten weeks of the time when the first blow was struck, not a single post remained in British hands west of Niagara, save only the fort of Detroit, where he himself conducted the siege in person.

The garrison at Detroit was commanded by Major Gladwin, a young British officer, who had taken an active part in the war with the French, and had been at Detroit for nearly a year. He had eight officers and one hundred and twenty men in his command; and besides the Canadian residents, whose white cottages lined either bank of the river, there were about forty fur traders at the settlement. The original stockade had been several times enlarged since Cadillac’s day, once recently during the three years of English occupation. It contained about a hundred small houses, a well-built group of barracks, a council house, and a church. Three rows of pickets, twenty-five feet high, with large gateways surmounted by blockhouses for observation and defence, had taken the place of the original twelve-foot fence. Within each gateway, which was closed at sunset, was a small wicket, through which one person could enter at a time. This was kept open until nine o’clock. The fort was protected by three small cannon, one carrying three-pound balls, the other two six-pounders; but these guns were badly mounted and better calculated to terrify the Indians than to render much actual assistance. Far more effective were the two small vessels, the Beaver and the Gladwin, which lay anchored in the stream.

At a council on the 27th of April, 1763, Pontiac inflamed the minds of his hearers by reporting a vision vouchsafed to him by the Great Spirit, who asked him why the Indians suffered these English,—“these dogs dressed in red,”—to dwell among them. The first step of his plan, as he unfolded it to his warriors, was to spy out the land. On May-day, 1760, forty men of the Ottawa tribe, purporting to have returned from their winter hunting-grounds, went to the fort and asked permission to dance the calumet dance before the English officers. They were admitted, and while thirty of them danced, the remaining ten strolled about and noted every detail of the defence, all retiring at the close without rousing any suspicion in the minds of their hosts.

Four days later one of the leading French settlers brought in word that his wife, while purchasing supplies in the Ottawa village, had found the warriors filing off the ends of their gun-barrels so as to make them only about a yard long, probably with some treacherous intent of concealing them more easily. The next day Major Gladwin was informed of the plot for the destruction of his garrison on the morrow. Two stories are told of the source of this information,—one that an Indian girl to whom he had been kind made it known to him, and another that a friendly young warrior told him. We would like to believe the former, which tells of the reluctance of the beautiful girl to depart after she had done her errand of delivering a pair of embroidered moccasins ordered by Major Gladwin, and of her confession to him, when he pressed her for the reason of her sad manner, that danger threatened him and his men. Gladwin hardly believed the story, but made all preparations to thwart the plans of Pontiac if occasion offered.

The next morning the guards in the blockhouse saw Pontiac and sixty men land from their canoes and walk in Indian file up the river road towards the gateway of the stockade. They were admitted and escorted to the council chamber, where Major Gladwin and his principal officers were awaiting them. It is said that even the iron composure of Pontiac was shaken and that he gave a momentary start when he saw drawn up on either side of the gateway and standing about in watchful groups in the streets the armed soldiers of the garrison. The officers, too, were in full uniform with their swords at their sides and a brace of pistols in their belts. Before he was seated Pontiac asked, “Why do I see so many of my father’s young men standing in the street with their guns?” “To keep them in good discipline and exercise them,” replied Major Gladwin, through his interpreter.

When the Indians were seated on the skins prepared for them, Pontiac began his address. Holding in his hand the wampum belt which had been agreed upon as the signal for attack, he spoke of the friendship of the Indians for the English. Once, it is said, he raised it as if to give the signal, but Gladwin signed with his hand and the soldiers without the open door made a clattering with their arms. Pontiac trembled and gave the belt in the usual way instead of in the manner agreed upon in the council.

Gladwin replied that the Indians should have the friendship of the English just so long as they kept the peace, but not one moment longer. Some writers say that he drew aside the blanket of the chief nearest to him and showed hidden in its folds a shortened gun. At any rate, the English found out that every chief was armed, and knew that they had narrowly escaped a frightful massacre. The Indians were awed by the sharp rebuke of Gladwin into departing quietly. For two days they attempted to parley with the English and gain admittance by deceit; but Gladwin was firm that not more than sixty might enter the fort at one time, and on the 9th of May Pontiac threw aside his mask of pretended friendship. Hostilities were begun by the Indians murdering an old English sergeant who lived on a neighboring island.

The Indians moved their camp to the same side of the river as the fort, establishing themselves just above the line of the French houses. One more attempt was made for peace, when two brave English officers, Captain Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall, insisted upon risking their lives in the Indian camp to see if they could persuade the savages to desist from war. Both were detained by the Indians in spite of the previous promises of Pontiac. Lieutenant McDougall later made his escape, but Captain Campbell was murdered by the natives in an outburst of anger. The blockade of Detroit was begun, and many months were to pass before a white man could venture in daylight to step outside the little wicket or to show his head at a port-hole or window without fear of Indian bullets. For weeks every one from Major Gladwin down to the lowest soldier was on the watch night and day, no man lying down to sleep except in his clothes and with his gun beside him. The garrison began to suffer for food and would have been forced to withdraw from the fort and escape down the lake, had not a few friendly Canadians smuggled in supplies. The Indians, too, whose method of warfare is that of sudden attack rather than of protracted siege, had not sufficient food, but began to make raids on the Canadian families, who, though taking no part in the struggle, were in general indifferent to the English. At a time like this the remarkable gifts of Pontiac came out. With a foresight and method most unusual in a savage he established a base of supplies, undertook a systematic levy on those who had provisions, and gave out a regular amount each day to every Indian.

On the 29th of May, after the blockade had been going on for three weeks, the long-expected boats from Niagara, which had been summoned by Major Gladwin in the first days of the siege, were seen rounding the wooded point below the fort, the red flag of England flying at their sterns. All was rejoicing within the fort until, as the boats came nearer, the English saw that they were occupied and guided by Indians. Three Englishmen who escaped to the fort brought a mournful tale of a night attack and seizure of the boats at the mouth of the Detroit River, and also of the destruction of Sandusky and Presque Isle. This was the first of many reports that were to come during that month of similar successful attacks, until the little garrison at Detroit was the only one left on the upper lakes. The remaining Englishmen of the rescuing party were massacred that night in the Indian camp.

Towards the end of June Pontiac sent another summons to surrender, saying that nine hundred Indians from the north were on their way to join him. Major Gladwin refused to consider terms till Captain Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall were returned to him, and once more hostilities were resumed. On the 30th of June the Gladwin, which about the middle of May had eluded the Indians and slipped down the river to Niagara, succeeded in making her way up the river and landing at the fort a force of fifty men, together with much-needed provisions and ammunition. She brought the news that peace had been formally concluded between England and France. While many of the French-Canadians refused to admit the truth of this report and continued to romance to the Indians about large French armies that were approaching, forty settlers accepted their new position as English subjects and took service under Gladwin. Through them the English officers were kept even better informed of what went on without the fort than before, but always throughout the blockade there seem to have been daily reports from some source of what happened in the Indian camp, as well as frequent sorties from the fort.

During the month of July the efforts of the Indians were directed particularly against the two armed vessels, which had not only afforded defence to the fort and brought men and supplies, but had begun to make trips up the river to a point opposite the Indian camp, from which they could pour shot into the wigwams. One night the attention of the watchful sentries was attracted by a mass of flames shooting up into the sky in the general direction of the Indian camp. Their first thought was that the village was on fire, but the mass of flame seemed to be moving and to come nearer. A huge fire-float, made of four bateaux[2] filled with fagots, birch bark, and tar, appeared on the water, drifting down to set fire to the schooners anchored opposite the fort. The vessels were anchored by two cables, and as the blazing raft approached, they slipped one cable and swung to the other side of the river while the raft floated harmlessly by, lighting up the fort and the dark shores till it burned itself down to the water’s edge.

[2] Bateau, the French word for boat, usually applied to a flat-bottomed boat with pointed ends.

The next event of the blockade came at the end of that month. On the 29th of July the garrison heard firing down the river. They waited anxiously, wondering what new disaster was to fall upon them, for similar sounds had often been followed by the arrival of a single survivor from some abandoned fort with a tale of Indian butchery. Half an hour later the sentries called to their officers to come quickly, for the whole surface of the water was covered with boats. In breathless suspense the weary garrison waited to see if the story of two months before was to be repeated and dusky forms were to appear crouching in captured English vessels; but they were reassured by the salute of an English gun. In an hour two hundred and sixty men had landed at the little wharf and been welcomed with cheers and shouts. Captain Dalyell had been sent from Niagara with companies from two regiments and with twenty of Rogers’ Rangers, commanded by Major Rogers himself, to put an end to the siege.

The newcomers were eager to sally forth and meet the Indians. Gladwin, who had been made wary by long months of experience with Pontiac, strenuously opposed Dalyell’s plan of a night attack, and only gave his consent when the latter threatened to leave Detroit unless some such bold stroke was permitted. About two o’clock in the morning, on the thirty-first day of July, two hundred and fifty men marched in three detachments up the bank of the river, past the French cottages, to a little stream a mile and a half above the fort. Treacherous Canadians, who had in some way learned of the plan, had warned the Indians, and as the advance guard passed across the bridge which spanned the stream, the Indians dashed down from the heights above and poured volleys of musketry into the English ranks. The soldiers recoiled for a moment; then they pushed on over the bridge, but the savages vanished yelling into the darkness beyond. For a time the English pressed on, shot at from every side; but flesh and blood could not stand against this invisible enemy. The remaining troops endeavored to retreat in orderly fashion, but were soon under heavy fire again from a rear ambuscade of Indians. Major Rogers gained entrance to a house on the road and from its windows commanded the road with his guns and covered the retreat. The two bateaux which had followed the party up the river were loaded with the dead and wounded. Slowly the English made their way back under constant fire, and by eight o’clock the survivors gained the shelter of the fort. Of the two hundred and fifty who had gone out six hours before, one hundred and fifty-nine had been killed or wounded, and Captain Dalyell himself had lost his life. The victory of Bloody Run, as the stream was ever afterwards called, restored the confidence of Pontiac and brought many accessions to his side; but in spite of this disaster Major Gladwin, with his reënforced garrison of over two hundred able-bodied men, was confident of ultimate success.

The schooner Gladwin made her way again to Niagara and returned early in September with a welcome load of forty-seven barrels of flour and one hundred barrels of pork, but with a tale of Indian attack and the loss of six of her crew of twelve. Other attempts from Niagara to relieve the garrison were unsuccessful, but Pontiac received in October a heavy blow in a letter from the French commander at Fort Chartres in the Illinois country, saying that not only could he offer Pontiac no help but he was now at peace with the English and wished the Indians to follow his example. This message had its effect. Pontiac had had great hopes of French assistance. With these hopes dashed he knew he could not hold out much longer; already his warriors were wearying of the attack and deserting him. He sent a letter to Gladwin asking for peace and agreeing to forget the “bad things that had happened,” if the Englishman would do the same. Gladwin replied that he would grant a truce while he sent Pontiac’s message to his general, who alone had power to grant pardon.

As it was then late in the season, it was deemed best to leave matters in this condition until spring, as it held the Indians in a wholesome state of uncertainty. Within a few days the encampments in the vicinity of Detroit were abandoned. After a confinement of five long months the inhabitants of the town could venture outside the stockade without dread of Indian bullets.

A report was sent to General Amherst, the commander of the British army, and during the winter plans were made to relieve Detroit and bring peace to the lake region. A military expedition was to be sent in the spring to force the tribes into submission; and in the meantime Sir William Johnson, the superintendent of Indian affairs, despatched messages to all the tribes, warning them of the coming expedition and urging those who were ready to make peace to come, while there was yet time, to a grand council fire at Niagara.

From the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, from Lake Superior and eastern New York, the friendly tribes came up in July to Niagara. When Johnson stepped ashore from the boat which brought him from Oswego, he saw dotting the fields the wigwams of more than a thousand Indians, and in a few days the number was doubled. Councils were held at which the representatives of the tribes promised their friendship to the English, agreed to restore the forts, to cede lands, and in so far as their own nations were concerned to guarantee safe navigation on the lakes. This convention was the most remarkable assemblage of Indians that had ever gathered on the shores of the Great Lakes.

While the council was in progress Colonel Bradstreet arrived at Niagara with his troops, and when it was over he proceeded up Lake Erie to Detroit, for Pontiac and his tribes had not come to the conference, and Detroit was still in danger. During the winter the Indians had left the town in peace, but in the spring warriors had returned to encamp on the strait and had made occasional attacks. In August, 1764, fifteen months from the time when Pontiac and his sixty chiefs sat in Gladwin’s council chamber, the English army under General Bradstreet came to relieve the weary garrison. Pontiac sent a message of defiance to the English chief, but he sent it from the safe distance of a village on the Maumee River, forty or fifty miles away, in what is now the state of Ohio.

Fresh troops were put in place of the worn-out veterans of the siege; such Indians as remained in the vicinity came in and offered their allegiance to the English; and Gladwin, weary of fighting the Indians, started down Lake Erie on his way to England. Now that his defence of Detroit was honorably ended, he was glad to resign his commission. Lesser posts had fallen, but Detroit had been saved, and with it the upper lakes.

Pontiac spent the next two years among the western tribes of the Illinois region. In the summer of 1766 he went to Oswego, and as official representative of the tribes of the West offered to Sir William Johnson his friendship and theirs. His conspiracy had failed and he returned sadly to his home in the Illinois villages. For two years little is known of him, but in April, 1769, his name became once more the watchword of bloodshed and slaughter. From tribe to tribe runners carried the news that he had been murdered in an Indian village, and the nations rose in their wrath to avenge the death of their great chieftain. The Illinois nation, to which the assassin belonged, was almost wiped out, and internal feuds sprang up between the tribes till all the Indians of the southern lake region were involved, and the death of Pontiac was avenged among his people by a period of universal tribal war.

Chronology of the Ending of French Rule

1759.

Capture of Quebec and Niagara.

1760.

Capture of Montreal and surrender of Canada.

Taking possession of Detroit.

1763.

Pontiac’s attack, and the fall of the other posts of the western lakes.

Treaty of Peace.

1764.

Sir William Johnson’s conference at Niagara.

Bradstreet’s expedition up Lake Erie, and the close of the blockade of Detroit.

CHAPTER XI
THE ADVENTURES OF A TRADER

A fur trader by the name of Alexander Henry was the first Englishman to reach Mackinac after the fall of New France. His story of his adventures gives a graphic picture of the course of events on the upper lakes during the years when the siege of Detroit and the Indian uprising under Pontiac left the northern forts isolated and unprotected.

Henry reached Fort Mackinac in September, 1761. For the latter part of his journey from Montreal he had adopted the disguise of a French trader, for the Indians stopped every party to inquire whether any Englishman was coming to the lakes. As soon as his nationality became known at Mackinac he was warned by the Canadians that he should lose no time in making his escape to Detroit, as the Indians would not tolerate the presence of an Englishman. Henry suspected that the Canadians had fostered this spirit to retain control of the fur trade, and were exaggerating the dangers of his position in the hope of frightening him away. Still, it did not add to his comfort to hear that a party of Indians was coming to pay him a visit. As he sat in his house one afternoon the door opened and an Indian chief, six feet tall, walked quietly in. Behind him were sixty more, each with a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other. In absolute silence they stalked into the room in single file, seated themselves, at a sign from their leader, on the floor, and began to smoke their pipes. In the long pause that followed Henry had time to study his formidable visitors. Their faces were painted with charcoal mixed with grease, and their bodies, bare to the waist, were decorated with white clay plastered on in various patterns. Some had feathers thrust through their noses; others had them stuck into their hair. Unless their purpose was friendly these warriors would not be safe guests for a single trader to entertain. After a long time the chief began to address him. He told him that because of his bravery in venturing into this country alone he might stay among them, in spite of his being an Englishman, the hated enemy of their father, the king of France. The august assembly ended with a request that the young men be allowed to taste his “English milk,” meaning rum, and the trader was assured of his safety at Mackinac.

That week a detachment of English troops arrived from the lower lakes, and the trader’s protection was ensured. Henry fitted out expeditions to go into the interior to buy furs of the more remote Indian tribes, and prepared to spend the winter at the fort. During these months at Mackinac and the succeeding winter which he spent at Sault Ste. Marie he was much interested in the fisheries. In both these straits the whitefish were very abundant. At Sault Ste. Marie in the late autumn there was such a run of fish that two men would go out in a canoe, one paddling and the other handling a scoop-net on the end of a ten-foot pole, and would return in two hours with a catch of five hundred whitefish, each weighing from six to fifteen pounds. The steersman would guide the canoe in and out between the sharp rocks and rushing rapids; the fisherman would dip his net and throw in a pile of fish; and before long the canoe would be loaded down to the water’s edge. During the winter the fish were cured by drying them in smoke, and packed for transportation to the nearest frontier posts, and even for the markets of the St. Lawrence.

In May, 1763, when Henry returned to Mackinac, he found that the traders, who were gathering there, brought rumors of Indian hostility. These reports were disregarded by the officers of the garrison, who with their force of soldiers and their fort could not believe there was any cause for alarm. Henry himself received a warning. The year before, he had won the friendship of one of the Chippewa Indians, named Wawatam, who had surprised him one day by bringing his whole family to the trader’s house, offering a present of skins, sugar, and dried meat, and declaring his wish of adopting him into his family as a brother. Henry had accepted the honor and thought no more of the incident until now, in the spring of 1763, his Indian brother came to his house in a very sober mood, and begged him to go back to the Sault the next morning with himself and his family. He further inquired whether the commandant of the fort had not heard bad news, saying that he himself had been frequently disturbed by “the noise of evil birds.” He hinted that there were many more Indians about the fort than the English had seen. Henry paid little attention to the Indian’s words, but the next morning he returned with his wife and once more entreated the trader to go with him. Henry was not sufficiently familiar with the Chippewa language to follow all his figurative and elaborate speech, and unfortunately turned a deaf ear to his plea. After long effort the chief went sadly away. He had warned Henry that all the Indians were coming in a body one day soon to demand liquor of the commandant, and that before they became intoxicated he had better be gone. Henry kept careful watch, but except that a great many Indians came in the next day to purchase tomahawks, he saw nothing unusual. The next day, the 4th of June, was the king’s birthday, and from this time on we will let Henry tell his own story.

“The morning was sultry. A Chippewa came to tell me that his nation was going to play at baggatiway (called by the Canadians “la crosse”) with the Sacs, another Indian nation. He invited me to witness the sport, adding that the commandant was to be there, and would bet on the side of the Chippewas. In consequence of this information, I went to the commandant and expostulated with him a little, representing that the Indians might possibly have some sinister end in view; but he only smiled at my suspicions.

“I did not go myself to see the match, which was now to be played without the fort, because, there being a canoe prepared to depart on the following day for Montreal, I employed myself in writing letters to my friends; and even when a fellow-trader, Mr. Tracy, happened to call upon me, saying that another canoe had just arrived from Detroit, and proposing that I should go with him to the beach to inquire the news, it so happened that I still remained to finish my letters, promising to follow Mr. Tracy in the course of a few minutes. Mr. Tracy had not gone more than twenty paces from my door, when I heard an Indian war-cry, and a noise of general confusion.

“Going instantly to my window, I saw a crowd of Indians, within the fort, furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they found. I had, in the room in which I was, a fowling-piece, loaded with shot. This I immediately seized, and held it for a few minutes, waiting to hear the drum beat to arms. In this dreadful interval, I saw several of my countrymen fall.”

At length, realizing that there was no hope of a call to arms, and that one person could do nothing against four hundred Indians, Henry decided to seek shelter for himself. He saw that many of the Canadian inhabitants of the fort were calmly looking on, neither helping nor hindering the Indians, and conceived the hope that he might be safe in one of their houses. He climbed the low fence that separated his house from that of Mr. Langlade, his next neighbor, and found the whole family at the windows, gazing at the scene of blood before them. Henry begged Mr. Langlade to put him in some place of safety, but he paid no attention. “This,” says Henry, “was a moment for despair; but the next an Indian woman, a slave of Mr. Langlade’s, beckoned to me to follow her. She brought me to a door, which she opened, desiring me to enter, and telling me that it led to the garret, where I must go and conceal myself.” The woman locked the door after him, and from his hiding-place he looked out on the horrible scenes that were passing without. Soon every one who could be found had been massacred, and there was a general cry, “All is finished.” At the same instant Indians entered the house and asked Mr. Langlade whether there were any Englishmen in the house. The Canadian replied that he did not know of any,—for the Indian woman had kept her secret,—but that they might hunt for themselves. They were delayed in their search by a hunt for the key of the garret door, and in those few moments Henry hid himself under a pile of birchbark vessels. Four Indians came up with Mr. Langlade, walked round the dark garret so near to the fugitive that they might have touched him, told how many they had killed and how many scalps they had taken, and went off again, locking the door after them.

Exhausted by suspense Henry fell asleep, and was awakened in the evening by Mrs. Langlade, who came up to the garret and was much surprised to find him there. She gave him a little water to drink and told him she hoped he would escape. The next morning the Indians returned, and discovered the trader’s hiding-place. An Indian walked into the garret and seized him with one hand by the collar of his coat, while in the other he brandished a large carving-knife as if he meant to plunge it into him. For some seconds the Indian looked into Henry’s eyes, and then dropped his arm, saying, “I won’t kill you!” He added that he had once lost a brother, and that he would call his prisoner after him. He was going to take him to his cabin, but Henry begged Mr. Langlade to request that he be allowed to stay in the garret, as the Indians were so intoxicated that no Englishman would be safe among them. Once more the trader settled himself in the garret to await his fate, but in an hour an Indian came, purporting to be from his new master, and led him outside the fort among the bushes, where he tried to murder him. Henry managed to escape and ran with all speed to the fort, where he found his master, who gave him protection. The next morning three other Englishmen who had escaped massacre were brought to Mr. Langlade’s house. From them Henry learned that the game of “la crosse” had been a device to get as many Englishmen as possible outside the walls. It had been agreed that a ball should be tossed as if by accident over the pickets of the fort, and that it should be instantly followed by all engaged in the game. When a sufficient number were inside they could seize the fort. Twenty Englishmen had survived the massacre. They consulted together to see whether there was any hope of their regaining possession of the station, but were forced to decide that without the help of the Canadian inhabitants, who could not be counted upon, it was impossible.

The next day the prisoners went through a strange experience. They were put into canoes and told that they were to be taken to the Castor Islands in Lake Michigan, but a thick fog came up and their guards thought it safer to keep near shore and paddled towards an Ottawa village. Every half hour the Indians gave their war-whoops, one for every prisoner in the canoe, in order to notify all other Indians of the number of prisoners they were taking. At the Ottawa village they were greeted by an Ottawa chief, who made signs to them to land. When they came within a few hundred yards of the shore warriors rushed into the water, dragged the prisoners from the canoes, and carried them ashore. The English thought that their last moments had come, but the Ottawas hastened to assure them that they were their friends. The Ottawas were indignant because they had not been consulted by the Chippewas about destroying the English. Therefore they had rescued the prisoners from the Chippewas, who were taking them to the Castor Islands to kill them. Before long the bewildered prisoners were returning to Mackinac in the canoes of the Ottawas, and were marched by their new masters into the midst of the astonished Chippewas.

While their captives slept the two nations held a long conference, and the Ottawas were unfortunately persuaded to relinquish their grievance and return the prisoners to their former conquerors. The prospect for the Englishmen was now dark indeed, and several of them were to lose their lives that day; but as preparations were being made for the slaughter, Wawatam, Henry’s adopted brother, walked into the council. By presents he bought the trader,—all the Indians recognizing his right to do so,—and took him away with him into the interior. There Henry spent the winter hunting with the Indians. He was often in danger from hostile tribes who brought tales of the siege of Detroit and summons from Pontiac to help in the war, but his position in the family of Wawatam protected him, and in the spring of 1764 he returned with a party of Canadian traders to Sault Ste. Marie.

While Henry was at the Sault a canoe arrived one day from Niagara. A council was assembled to meet the strangers and receive their message. They proved to be the ambassadors of Sir William Johnson, who warned the tribes of the great English army that was coming, and advised them to hasten to Niagara to make peace. Such a weighty matter could not be settled by mere human knowledge and wisdom; so the Indians made solemn preparations to consult their guiding spirit, the “Great Turtle.”

They built a large wigwam, within which they placed a small moose-skin tent for the use of the priest. At nightfall the whole village assembled in the wigwam. Several fires had been kindled near the tent, and their flames lighted up the expectant faces of this strange assemblage. The priest entered the tent, and as the skins fell over him many voices were heard. Some were barking like dogs, some howled like wolves, and others sobbed as if in pain. After a time these frightful sounds died away, and a perfect silence followed. Then a voice not heard before seemed to show the arrival of a new character in the tent. Henry describes this as “a low feeble voice, resembling the cry of a young puppy.” When it was heard the Indians clapped their hands for joy, for now the chief spirit, the “Turtle,” the spirit that never lied, had come to them. The others had been evil and lying voices. For half an hour sounds of conversation were heard from the tent, and then the priest spoke, saying that the “Great Turtle” was come and would answer such questions as should be asked. The chief of the village desired the priest to inquire whether the English were preparing to make war on the Indians, and whether there were at Fort Niagara large numbers of English troops. When the priest put these questions the tent began to shake violently, and soon a voice announced that the “Turtle” had departed.

A quarter of an hour elapsed in silence, and then the voice of the “Turtle” was heard again. After it had talked for some time in a language unintelligible to the audience, the priest gave an interpretation of what it had said. The spirit had, during its short absence, crossed Lake Huron, been to Fort Niagara, and thence to Montreal. At Fort Niagara he had seen no great number of soldiers, but on the St. Lawrence he had found the river covered with boats, and the boats filled with soldiers, “in number like the leaves of the trees,” and these were coming to make war on the Indians. The chief had a third question to ask, and the spirit, “without a fresh journey to Niagara,” gave an immediate and most satisfactory answer. “If,” said the chief, “the Indians visit Sir William Johnson, will they be received as friends?” “Sir William Johnson,” said the spirit, “will fill their canoes with presents; with blankets, kettles, guns, gunpowder and shot, and large barrels of rum, such as the stoutest of the Indians will not be able to lift; and every man will return in safety to his family.”

“At this,” writes Henry, “the transport was universal; and amid the clapping of hands, a hundred voices exclaimed, ‘I will go, too! I will go, too!’”

On the 10th of June, Henry embarked with the Indian deputation of sixteen men, leaving the scene of his long captivity. The party went down Georgian Bay, across the country where the great Huron missions had been built to Lake Simcoe, and out past the site of Toronto to Lake Ontario. There they built canoes to take the place of those they had left on Georgian Bay, completing two large boats in two days. They spent their last night encamped four miles from Fort Niagara. In the morning the Indians feared to start lest they should be going into a trap set by the English. Henry assured them of a friendly welcome, and at length, after painting themselves in their gayest colors to show their peaceable intent, and singing the song which they used on going into danger, they embarked. “A few minutes after,” says Henry, “I crossed to the fort; and here I was received by Sir William Johnson, in a manner for which I have ever been gratefully attached to his person and memory.”

The Indians joined in the great council, and Henry conferred with General Bradstreet, who with three thousand men was preparing to go up Lake Erie and raise the siege of Detroit. Bradstreet informed him that it was his plan when he reached Detroit to send a body of troops to Mackinac, and that they should assist the trader to recover his property there, should he care to accompany them. Henry was given command of a corps of Indians of the upper lakes, ninety-six in number, who were to proceed with the army. Among them were the sixteen men with whom he had come to Niagara. Henry comments on the reversal of conditions which made him their leader, he “whose best hope it had very lately been, to live through their forbearance.” Most of the Indians promptly deserted, not caring to march against their own nation at Detroit, but Henry went on with Bradstreet and landed at Detroit on the 8th of August. He proceeded up Lake Huron with two companies of troops and three hundred Canadian volunteers to Mackinac, where peace was concluded with the Indians and the fort was reoccupied by English soldiers.

CHAPTER XII
WAYNE’S INDIAN CAMPAIGN

With the turn of a single page of history and the passage of a single decade of time, during this century of struggle for possession, the actors in the drama change, or if the same actors remain, a new set of circumstances makes them play a new part amid the old scenes. Like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope they are shaken up and come out in new combinations, and with them our ideas and sympathies are shaken up and must be readjusted.

We have followed the fortunes of the little English garrisons at Detroit and Mackinac in their struggles against a horde of savages, and have breathed a sigh of relief when a strong British army came to the rescue and England once more resumed possession of her lake posts. We return to Detroit in twelve years to find General Hamilton, the British commander of the French-English town, reading with scorn the announcement in a stray copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette of July, 1776, that a new American nation has been formed and a Declaration of Independence has been adopted. Within two years Daniel Boone, the hero pioneer, is brought to Detroit a British prisoner, taken by Indians in their raid on Kentucky, and before he has made his escape from prison, Hamilton is chanting the war-song and dancing the war-dance at a grand council of Indians. To them he is offering his congratulations on the success of their raids into the southern states of the newly formed Union, on the number of prisoners they have taken, and especially on the far greater number of scalps they have brought. The War of the Revolution has begun, and with it a period of bloodshed in the Northwest.

While the main bodies of troops were being marshalled and the decisive battles were being fought in the south and the east, the British carried on upon the western frontier an incessant Indian warfare. This border campaign was marked by a horrible series of bloody raids and massacres, many of which were planned at Niagara and Detroit. Niagara, wrested in the past from the Indians and the French, became at this time a place of refuge for the loyalists of New York, “a nest of Tories,” and a centre of British influence so strong that an American leader could make no more telling expression of his dread of the threatened loss of a southern point of vantage than to say that it must be saved, for if taken by the British it would become “another Niagara.”

From Detroit, Hamilton set out in the summer of 1778 with a force of one hundred and seventy-five men to oust from Kaskaskia and Vincennes the American “rebel,” George Rogers Clark, who had taken these British strongholds. But instead of returning to Detroit triumphant, Hamilton was taken by that same young rebel and started on a twelve-hundred-mile journey to a Virginia prison. Even after this it seemed to the Americans that plans and conspiracies came out from Detroit as fast as prisoners and scalps went into the British prison there. There were many schemes to take the fort, but all were abandoned because of its inaccessibility.

When the negotiators met at Paris, in 1782, to arrange terms of peace between Great Britain and the American colonies or states, it was difficult to decide what should be done with the Great Lakes. At first it was suggested that the boundary line between the United States and Canada should be so drawn as to give the territory south of the Ottawa River and Lake Superior to the United States, as far west as the Mississippi. At another time it was proposed that all of the land north of the Ohio and west of the Alleghanies should continue to be English. Finally it was arranged that the Great Lakes, with the exception of Michigan, should form the boundary line between the United States and Canada in that part of the world. This arrangement gave to the United States the posts at Detroit, Mackinac, and other points on the lakes; but the English would not surrender them, justifying their not doing so on the ground that the Americans had broken the treaty in other respects. As long as the British retained the posts in the Northwest, the Indians of that region looked to them for support and were inclined to take up an attitude of hostility to the government of the United States and to colonists, who now came into the Ohio Valley in great numbers. Treaties were made with them, but these the Indians failed to keep, and there ensued a period of confusion and bloodshed on the frontier. Into the details of this petty warfare it is not worth our while to enter.

At first the British seemed anxious to preserve peace for the sake of the fur trade, but as time went on and relations between England and the United States became more strained, the English lent undisguised assistance to the Indians. It was inevitable that there should be constant strife between the rough, encroaching frontiersman who overstepped the original boundaries and the jealous, suspicious Indian who met all wrongs by treachery and violence. The record of the years shows a succession of efforts for peace by the United States government and a series of councils, treaties, ruptures, and hostilities on the part of the Indians.

A formal government had been organized in the Northwest by the Ordinance of 1787, which created the great Northwest Territory, out of which were later formed the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. By 1789 and 1790 the United States government began to realize that it had to deal in this region with no petty skirmishes with scattered tribes, but with a widespread Indian uprising. Raids and counter-raids must be abandoned, and war with organized armies and carefully planned campaigns must be waged against the lawless hordes of savages who were breaking faith with the white man and murdering whom they pleased.

An expedition under the leadership of General Harmar, sent north in 1790 from Fort Washington (Cincinnati), met defeat at the hands of the Indians at the present Fort Wayne. A similar expedition, commanded a year later by General St. Clair, was routed on a battle-ground in central Ohio, and the whole frontier was terrorized. Matters had now become serious. Armies of regulars had been defeated by these savage masters of the art of treacherous warfare, and the Indians were becoming more and more aggressive in their elation at their victories, while the British were becoming more and more open in their support of the lake tribes.

Needing a leader who could drive back the Indians, President Washington turned to a soldier who had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War for hard fighting and daring bravery. Major General Anthony Wayne had so often snatched success in the face of almost certain defeat that he had earned for himself the nickname “Mad Anthony.” He was the grandson of a Pennsylvanian pioneer and had had hard schooling from his Indian-fighting grandfather and father in the methods of frontier warfare. Above all else he gloried in difficulty and danger.

In April, 1792, Washington appointed General Wayne to the command of the army and sent him to the Ohio to drill his men. Wayne found there the remnant of St. Clair’s force, to which were being constantly added hundreds of raw recruits enlisted under new legislation for the campaign by Congress. The one stipulation that Wayne had made when he took command was that he be allowed to wait to fight until his ranks were full and his men thoroughly trained. He knew that he had to deal with the same kind of men who had failed St. Clair. He attributed this failure to poor organization and lack of military discipline. He knew, too, that he had the added difficulty of meeting the paralyzing discouragement caused by previous defeats and well-remembered scenes of horror. Patiently and deliberately he went to work, and new recruits arriving in the summer and autumn found themselves living in a camp where an army was being taught with all speed the essentials of warfare. By spring Wayne had twenty-five hundred soldiers who were eager for the campaign and worthy of their commander.

Congress was reluctant to begin war and kept Wayne waiting all through the summer of 1793, while it made fruitless negotiations with the Indians. The tribes finally demanded that the Ohio River should be the boundary of American advance, and to this the government could not agree. In October Wayne was given permission to open his campaign, but with cautions that on no account was he to run any risks of defeat. He moved his men from Fort Washington to a point eighty miles north, which he fortified as a winter camp and named Greenville in honor of his former comrade at arms, Captain Nathanael Greene. Here he spent the winter, sending a large detachment of his men north to build on St. Clair’s fatal battle-ground a fort which was prophetically named Fort Recovery. Several skirmishes with the Indians took place at Greenville during the winter, and in the early summer a large war-party made an unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery. On the 27th of July, 1794, General Wayne started with his “legion” of troops, more than two thousand men, for the Miami towns of northern Ohio.

The march of the American army was watched with wonder and admiration by the Indians, who reported to the British that the soldiers went twice as far in a day as St. Clair’s had done, that Wayne kept scouts out in every direction, and that he was always ready for attack and guarded carefully against ambush by day or surprise by night. At the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, where the line of hostile Indian villages began, Wayne built a strong log stockade which he christened with the characteristic name of Fort Defiance, a name perpetuated to this day. Warned of his approach, the Indians had fled, leaving their homes and their rich fields of corn and vegetables, in which the soldiers revelled after their hard march and short rations. From Fort Defiance Wayne sent a final offer of peace to the Indians, declaring that he would restore to them their lands and villages and preserve their women and children from famine should they agree to a lasting peace. The Indians returned an evasive answer, and Wayne advanced against them. From scouts he learned that the natives were encamped near the British fort on the Maumee River a few miles west of the present city of Toledo. There were between fifteen hundred and two thousand warriors in all, with seventy rangers from Detroit,—the latter company being made up of French, English, and other refugees.

On the 20th of August Wayne met the Indians at a spot some six miles down the river, known as the Fallen Timbers because there a whirlwind had overturned the forest and left the trees piled across one another in rows. Wayne’s army numbered about three thousand men, two-thirds of whom were regulars, and one-third mounted volunteers from Kentucky led by General Scott. At the front of the line was a small force of mounted volunteers, and back of them were the carefully placed lines of infantry and cavalry. The Indians were secreted as usual in the woods and tall grass and behind the piles of trees. From their shelter they poured a murderous fire into the ranks of the army, but the volunteers pressed on. The front line of infantry rushed up and dislodged the savages from their covert, the cavalry dashed over the rough ground and the piles of logs, and the Indians fled before the second line of soldiers could even come up to the battle-field. Of this engagement one of the men wrote that there was not “a sufficiency of the enemy for the Legion to play upon.” The entire action lasted less than forty minutes, and not a third of Wayne’s force took part in it. The army pursued the fugitives two miles to the shelter of the British fort, and then burned everything near by. Thirty-three Americans were killed and one hundred wounded in this engagement, which closed a forty years’ warfare with the Indians in as many minutes. Wayne’s carefully drilled troops had won the most decisive victory ever gained over the Indians of the Northwest.

General Wayne completed his conquest by marching back to Fort Recovery, and thence westward to the Miami towns at the junction of St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s rivers, the scene of Harmar’s disaster. The Indians dared offer no resistance, but fled before his triumphant army. Along his route he burned their villages, and at the meeting-place of the rivers he built the fort which was to perpetuate his name to the present day, Fort Wayne. Then he returned to Greenville for the winter. Meanwhile the anger of the Indians had been stirred by the inaction of their British allies, who had urged them on to war but had furnished no troops from Detroit. A new respect had been called forth for the Americans. All the winter Wayne received at Greenville delegations from various Indian tribes, and in the summer of 1795 a formal treaty was signed, in which Wayne, representing the United States, made peace with all the western tribes. Eleven hundred and thirty Indians assembled, making a full representation from all tribes previously hostile. Gathered about the council-fire and supplied with a pile of wampum strings, the chiefs and the American general conferred day after day as the various groups of Indians arrived during the months of June and July. The record of their speeches is eighty pages long and carries one back to the days when Champlain and Frontenac conferred with their Indian children and received their repentant promises of good behavior in the future; but now Wayne was addressed by the chiefs as “Elder Brother,” and he called them always his younger brothers.

By the treaty of Greenville the Indians ceded to the United States all of what is now southern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, various reservations about the forts of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and those which Wayne had built, a six-mile tract at Chicago, and a large grant of land near the Falls of the Ohio. The government, in its turn, agreed to the Indian title to the remaining country, and promised to pay the tribes large annuities. Both sides were to return all prisoners. Wayne, by his skill at warfare, had brought to the borders a peace that lasted for fifteen years, when new conditions brought new difficulties.

While Wayne was fighting for the supremacy of the United States in the Northwest, John Jay was representing the government in London in negotiations for a treaty which should settle disputed points between the two nations, providing, among other things, for the settlement by a commission of any ambiguities in the boundaries and for the surrender of the lake posts to the Americans. In 1796 this treaty was ratified by Congress, and American officers were sent to take command of the various posts. With appropriate ceremonies the English flag was lowered and the American Stars and Stripes were raised at each of the posts whose history we have followed under French and later under English control. General Wayne was sent by a grateful Congress to conduct the final transfer of the forts. After a twelve-hundred-mile journey he arrived at Detroit, where he was received with great honor by Indians, English, French, and Americans. Leaving there in November for Presque Isle, he was taken with his old enemy, the gout, and died at that place. His remains were later removed by his son to Philadelphia, but a log-house, patterned after the one which Wayne himself built there in 1790, marks to-day the place of his grave at the present city of Erie, Pennsylvania.

It is worthy of note that the month before General Wayne started for Detroit to conclude the ceremonies of taking possession of that post, Moses Cleveland, with a party of Connecticut pioneers, set out to found on the shores of Lake Erie the city which bears his name,—the advance guard of an army of occupation which the stipulations of the treaty of Greenville and Wayne’s intimidation of the Indians made possible.

CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT LAKES IN THE WAR OF 1812

From the surrender of the northwest posts and the founding of Cleveland to the year 1812, there is little to note in the history of the Great Lakes. The forts were gradually strengthened, the fur trade was continued, and a few settlements were made on the southern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Travel and transportation between the Atlantic seaboard and the Great Lakes were so difficult that few settlers found their way into the lake region, and there was no market for such agricultural products as were raised. In the same period the Ohio Valley was fast filling up, and settlers were pushing westward and northward from the Ohio River into central Ohio and Indiana. The ever increasing pressure on the Indians of that region aroused their fears and resentment, and made them listen to the plans of an able chieftain, Tecumseh, who banded them together in a strong league for resistance to the whites. The natives looked for aid to the British in Canada, but how far these had gone in encouraging the Indians is unknown. In 1811 matters became so serious that General William Henry Harrison, Governor of Indiana Territory, marched against the Indians and defeated them in the battle of Tippecanoe. When the War of 1812 began, Tecumseh and many of his allies joined the British.

The opening of the war found the lake frontier of the United States exposed and almost unprotected. At Fort Wayne there were eighty-five soldiers, at Fort Harrison (Terre Haute) fifty, at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) fifty-three, at Fort Mackinac eighty-eight, and at Detroit one hundred and twenty. The last-named post claimed early attention, because of its great importance, and also because of its exposed situation. Its loss to the United States would mean the loss of the upper lakes, at least temporarily. The problem was a difficult one because the United States had no war vessels on the lakes to secure communication between Detroit and the settlements on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie. William Hull, Governor of Michigan Territory, fully recognized the importance of a naval force, but he was obliged to do what he could to defend Detroit without one. In the spring of 1812, with three regiments of Ohio militia, a troop of Ohio dragoons, and a regiment of United States infantry,—in all about sixteen hundred men,—he set out from the settlements in Ohio to march overland to reënforce this important post. The route lay through the wilderness, much of the way over swampy grounds, but the soldiers cut roads and advanced with a rapidity that amazed the British. At Frenchtown, on the River Raisin, forty miles below Detroit, Hull received word that war had been declared. Before this he had sent a schooner to Detroit with supplies and a letter to the commandant apprising him of his coming. This vessel was seized by the British soldiers stationed at Malden, on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, and some distance below the American town.

On the 5th of July, 1812, Hull reached Detroit. Besides its small garrison, the town contained about eight hundred inhabitants. It was defensible from Indian attacks, but was within gunshot of the British side of the Detroit River, was insufficiently supplied with provisions and ammunition for a siege, and was liable to be completely cut off from communication with the United States should the British gain command of Lake Erie and the road along the river to the south. At once, Hull seized the town of Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Canada which brought many of them over to the American side, but an expedition which was to have reënforced him from Niagara came to naught.

On the British side in the spring of 1812, affairs seemed even more gloomy, but the difficulties were overcome by the capability and courage of one man, Brigadier General Isaac Brock, who exercised entire command in upper Canada. He had at his disposal barely two thousand men, who were hundreds of miles from their supplies and scattered through several posts. When war seemed imminent, Brock fitted out armed vessels on Lake Erie and strengthened the defences of Malden. The moment war was declared, he directed a subordinate to seize the American post at Michilimackinac and himself hurried with all available men to the Detroit River.

Day after day the American army waited at Sandwich before striking a decisive blow at the British in their fort at Malden. General Hull had, indeed, good reason for fear of failure, for although he had more men than the British, the English army had in its fortification a base of attack, and in its fleet a pronounced advantage. With ineffective sallies into the neighboring country and prolonged councils of war the days wore on, and the officers as well as the rank and file of the army became more and more disheartened. They had crossed the river July 12. They finally set August 8 for the attack on Malden; but meanwhile word came that British reënforcements were on their way to the fort, and that a party of Indians under Tecumseh had captured the American supplies and mail-bags coming from Ohio. Prisoners of war from Fort Mackinac arrived at the American camp, announcing that their fort had been surrendered and that a horde of Indians were coming from the Northwest to attack Detroit in the rear. With the British garrison at Malden increased, Detroit threatened by the Indians, and the line of communication between the American army and headquarters in danger, Hull saw nothing to do but to recross the river; and on the night of the day when he had planned to attack the British fort he withdrew with his force to Detroit.

Meanwhile General Brock reached Malden, held a council of war at which Tecumseh with his following of a thousand Indians was present, and sent to General Hull a summons to surrender. Hull refused to yield and started messengers to recall an expedition of three hundred and fifty men which he had despatched under two Ohio colonels, MacArthur and Lewis Cass, to the River Raisin to rescue the necessary supplies for the army. As soon as Hull’s reply was received two British vessels moved up the river to Sandwich, where their guns could cover the American fort. During the night Tecumseh and six hundred Indians crossed to the American side of the river and established themselves in the woods at a point where they could intercept the returning Ohio colonels with their force. On the morning of August 16, General Brock crossed the river with seven hundred soldiers. The British commander had intended to take up a position and force Hull to attack him, but after he reached the American bank of the river, he learned from Tecumseh that the Ohio detachment was only a few miles away. Fearing lest he be surrounded if he delay, Brock determined to make an immediate attack.

Within his tent General Hull sat debating what to do. Should he admit to his officers and men his desire to surrender at once, their undisguised scorn at his previous delays would perhaps turn to open mutiny; yet he felt sure that the fort must ultimately be taken, and he dreaded the loss of life and possible Indian massacre should he hold out. The British column began to advance. Every soldier expected that the heavy American guns which were pointed toward them would be lighted and discharged into their midst; instead, an American was seen advancing from the fort with a white flag. Within an hour, and without the firing of a single shot, the surprised British troops found themselves in possession of Detroit. Hull included in the terms of capitulation not only the troops within the fort but the Ohio detachment now advancing up the river, so that General Brock gained at least twenty-five hundred prisoners of war. The mortification of the country at the whole course of the war vented itself after this surrender upon General Hull, who was really the victim of poor management of the army and lack of support at headquarters. He might have been forced to give up Detroit within a few weeks unless he was reënforced, but he could have kept Brock from returning to harry Niagara in nine days.

Detroit was surrendered on the morning of August 16. On the same day and at the same hour Fort Dearborn at Chicago was being burned by an Indian war-party, after the members of its garrison had been massacred. Two weeks earlier Hull had sent an order to Captain Heald, commander of the fort, to evacuate it if practicable. The Indian runner reached Fort Dearborn on August 9 with this message and with the news of the fall of Fort Mackinac, the receipt of which had been the occasion of Hull’s decision in regard to Chicago.

It had taken the Indian messenger a suspiciously long time to make the journey, and as Indians from a distance began to gather about the fort it was surmised that he had in some way learned the contents of the message, and in particular the clause which directed that Captain Heald deliver up to the Indians all the public property of the garrison, and had told the news along the way. Accounts differ as to what Captain Heald promised to the Indians. According to the story of Mr. Kinzie, a trader in the fort, Captain Heald held a council with them, at which he agreed to divide among them the public property at the fort on condition that they should furnish him with a friendly escort. Unfortunately the two things that the Indians most wanted were ammunition and liquor. These the white men considered it an act of madness to put into their hands, and under cover of night knocked in the heads of the barrels and poured the whiskey into the river, threw powder, bags of shot, and cartridges into the river, and breaking to pieces the muskets and pistols they could not take with them, dropped them into a well. An unknown writer, who was present at the time, distinctly states that Heald objected to this act and argued that it was a bad thing to lie to an Indian. The watchful Indians found out what had been done, and from that time on the older chiefs were unable to restrain the anger of their young men. So many Indians had gathered that the officers became convinced that the tribes had been notified by the messenger from Detroit as he made his trip of the distribution of gifts that was to take place. The supply of blankets, paints, calicoes, and trinkets that were given out did not satisfy the warriors.

On the evening of the 13th of August the garrison was cheered by the arrival from Fort Wayne of Captain William Wells, a famous Indian fighter and uncle of Mrs. Heald, the commander’s wife. This man had had a most romantic life. Born in Kentucky, he had been stolen when a boy of twelve by the Indians and adopted by a chief of the Miamis, whose daughter he had married. He had grown up with the Indians and fought their battles with them as a matter of course, taking part in the engagements with General Harmar and General St. Clair. Discovered by his Kentucky kindred and convinced that he was brother of Captain Samuel Wells, he had been persuaded after a time to return to his own people. He had bidden his Indian father-in-law a dramatic farewell, telling him that in the past they had been friends, but henceforth they must be enemies; but as a matter of fact he had always kept in friendly relation with his former chief and had on one occasion saved his family from being taken prisoners. He had been one of Wayne’s most valuable scouts, and had since occupied the position of Indian agent, first at Chicago and now at Fort Wayne, where he was living with his Indian wife. Hearing of the probable evacuation of Fort Dearborn he had marched thither with all haste, bringing a party of thirty friendly Miamis in the hope that he could be of assistance to his friends and especially to his favorite niece, Mrs. Heald.

On the morning of the 15th of August, at nine o’clock, the soldiers left the fort for their journey of two hundred and eighty miles to Detroit. Without a sign of ill-feeling the Indians bade them good-by, and the little party started along the lake shore. Captain Wells with half his Miamis, all mounted on Indian ponies, led the line. The soldiers of the garrison with the wagons, in which sat the twelve women and twenty children, followed directly behind them, and the remainder of the friendly Miamis brought up the rear. The escort of five hundred furnished by the neighboring tribes kept abreast of the troops until they reached the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the fort. There they struck out suddenly into the prairie and disappeared, hurrying forward to prepare an ambuscade.

The little company had proceeded about a mile and a half when Captain Wells was seen to turn and ride back, swinging his hat in a circle above his head, which, in the sign language of the frontier, meant: “We are surrounded by Indians.” As he came nearer he shouted, “We are surrounded. March up on the sand ridges.” All at once, in the language of Mrs. Heald, who left a graphic report, they saw “Indians’ heads sticking up and down again here and there, like turtles out of water.” As the member of the party most experienced in Indian warfare, Captain Wells was immediately put in command. He led the men in a charge up the bank, and with a volley of shot they broke the line of the Indians. A second time they charged, and again the Indians drew back. But though they were beaten in front, they poured in from all sides, captured the horses and baggage, and began to kill the women and children. For fifteen or twenty minutes the fight went on. Captain Wells was here, there, and everywhere. With two pistols and a gun, which he kept reloading with lightning rapidity, he sighted and brought down the warriors in the midst of their wanton work.

Wounded himself and isolated on a mound with a remnant of his men, Captain Heald saw that there was no hope but to surrender. The Indians made signs for him to approach them, and he offered to surrender in the hope of sparing further bloodshed. His own wife was slightly wounded, and Mrs. Helm, the wife of his lieutenant, had only been saved from being tomahawked by the friendly chief, Black Partridge, who seized her from the grasp of her captor, and took her to the water, where he made feint to drown her, but kept her head out until the fight was over. After the surrender Captain Wells rode up, desperately wounded, to send farewell messages to his wife, and was killed on the instant by a group of Indians, who mangled his body horribly. Of the ninety-three in the party but thirty-six were still living. Of the sixty-six fighting men forty-three had been killed, and only seven women and six children survived. Some of the prisoners made their escape, finding their way to safety through a series of hairbreadth adventures; some died in captivity, and others were exchanged at intervals during the next two years. On the spot where the massacre took place,—then out in open prairie, now at the foot of Eighteenth Street in the city of Chicago,—there stands a noble monument to the Fort Dearborn garrison.

With Fort Dearborn and Fort Mackinac abandoned, the last American defences on the western lakes were gone. The boundary line of the United States became the Wabash and Maumee rivers, and the surrender of Detroit made it doubtful whether even that line could be maintained. The hold of the United States on the Great Lakes in August, 1812, looked very uncertain.

CHAPTER XIV
THE CONQUEST OF LAKE ERIE

The year 1813 began with another disaster for the United States. After the surrender of Detroit, Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory, placed himself at the head of a popular movement to retrieve the defeat at any cost and to recover Detroit. It was winter before he succeeded in getting an army within reach of the lake coast. For months the three divisions of his force of ten thousand men struggled through the swampy lands of Ohio, where the movement of troops and of necessary provisions was rendered well-nigh impossible by the heavy rains. On the 15th of January two Frenchmen had entered the camp of the advance division of the army, which under command of General Winchester was establishing itself at a point on the Maumee River twenty miles inland from Lake Erie. They urged the troops to occupy Frenchtown, a village on the American shore of Lake Erie but within British lines. This town on the River Raisin was held by Canadians and Indians, and its loss, if taken by the Americans, would be a serious blow to the British. Six hundred and fifty men, the flower of the Kentucky regiments, started under the command of Colonel Lewis for the attack. After considerable losses the Americans seized the town. General Winchester hastened to their support with three hundred more men, making a total American force at the River Raisin of eight or nine hundred men.

General Proctor, Brock’s successor at Fort Malden, had under his command over two thousand soldiers. On the morning of January 22, 1813, he crossed the lake on the ice with a force of six hundred men and from six to eight hundred Indians and attacked the Americans in the ill-fortified village. When the hard-fought engagement was ended four hundred Americans were missing, either killed during the battle by the British or scalped by the Indians in the horrible massacre that followed the defeat. Only after the ammunition had given out and retreat had been proved impossible because of the deep snow and the position of the enemy, did the last of the gallant Kentuckians surrender. “Remember the River Raisin” became the watchword of a desperate people, and operations on the Great Lakes were suspended until Commodore Perry was ready with his navy to retrieve these defeats and turn the tide of American fortune.

Oliver Hazard Perry had been brought up in the naval service. His father was a gallant seaman who had fought in the Revolution and been on the sea ever since. When Oliver was ready he was appointed midshipman on his father’s ship, and had seen since that day service in the West Indies, in the Tripolitan war, and off the Atlantic coast. At the beginning of the War of 1812 he was put in charge of a flotilla of gun-boats stationed at Newport, but he had petitioned to be removed from this retirement and placed in active service, preferably on the lakes. He was summoned in the winter of 1813 to take charge of the construction of vessels on Lake Erie. He found the lake fleet divided. At the Black Rock Navy Yard on the Niagara River lay several vessels, unable to get out past the British fleet and the overlooking British forts. At Erie, Pennsylvania, two brigs, a schooner, and a gun-boat were being built. It was for Perry to unite the two sections of the fleet, to provide them with a crew of able seamen, and to force the British fleet into decisive action.

An American victory on the Niagara River on the 27th of May set free the vessels at Black Rock. Perry was on hand to superintend their laborious removal from the navy-yard. Oxen and men worked day after day dragging the vessels against the heavy current of the river into Lake Erie. Once on the waters of the lake the American ships under Perry’s command evaded the British cruisers which were sailing back and forth between Niagara and Erie, with the sole purpose of intercepting them, and reached the latter port in safety. For two months the fleet lay in that harbor while Perry strained every nerve to get the vessels into shape and secure sailors to man them. We get a little idea of his difficulties by the fact that between the last of May and the first of August he cut down his requirements in the number of seamen to one-half his original estimate. On the sixth day of August all preparations were completed and the fleet sailed out on Lake Erie.

Commodore Perry was twenty-eight years old; his antagonist, Barclay, was thirty-two. Barclay had met as many difficulties as Perry in getting his fleet ready, and especially in securing provisions for his men. The American squadron had, moreover, cut off communication between Fort Malden and its source of supplies. So in September, even though his best vessel, the Detroit, had to be launched unfinished from the stocks, Barclay saw no choice but to fight at once. Early on the morning of September 9, the British fleet sailed to meet the American squadron, which was anchored at the mouth of the Sandusky River. Barclay had six vessels with sixty-three guns, and probably about four hundred and fifty men. Perry had nine vessels with fifty-four guns, and about the same number of available men. His guns, however, were much heavier, and his vessels larger.

At daybreak of September 10, Perry’s lookout discovered the approaching British fleet; the American ships at once weighed anchor, in twelve minutes they were under sail and standing toward the enemy. The wind was light and the lake calm, so that both sides found difficulty in getting into position, but by noon they were drawn up for battle. The British vessels were in a single column, the American in a somewhat more irregular formation, and each vessel opposed one of its own tonnage and build in the enemy’s fleet. Barclay commanded the Detroit, a ship of four hundred and ninety tons carrying nineteen guns, and opposite him was Perry’s flagship, the Lawrence, with twenty guns. At a quarter before twelve the British opened fire, and the Americans replied.

Finding the British fire at long range very destructive, especially to his own vessel, Perry set more sail and passed the word by hail of trumpet for the whole line to close up and advance nearer the enemy. For two hours the fleets manœuvred in this position, the Lawrence within two hundred and fifty yards of the Detroit and both vessels pouring a heavy fire into each other. A second vessel, the Queen Charlotte, came to the support of Barclay, and Perry’s flagship, after sustaining the action for over two hours, was seriously disabled. Every gun was rendered useless, the greater part of the crew killed or wounded, and the rigging shot away. At 2.30 the English commander saw the Lawrence drop from her position and a small boat pass from her to the Niagara, a vessel under command of Lieutenant Elliot, which had been at some distance from the main engagement and was at this time comparatively fresh. As Barclay wrote in his official report, “The American commodore, seeing that as yet the day was against him, made a noble and, alas! too successful an effort to regain it; for he bore up [in the Niagara] and supported by his small vessels, passed within pistol-shot and took a raking position on our bow.” Up to this time the result of the action had been in doubt. For some reason the portion of the fleet under Elliot had pursued an independent course, and Perry with the vessels nearest him had been too hard pressed. A bitter dispute as to the cause of this condition was waged by Elliot’s friends in the ensuing years after the close of the war. Whatever the reason, it was evident to all that the American force was not in its most effective position because so many of the vessels were fighting at long range instead of at close. When Elliot came up near enough to the disabled flagship to allow Perry to go on board, the advantage was for the first time on the American side. Perry was able to bear down on the Detroit and pour into her volleys of shot so that, with American vessels on every side aiding in the attack, she soon became completely disabled. The topmasts and rigging were cut away, the hull was shattered, and the vessel became unmanageable. Within half an hour the British commander was forced to strike his flag and surrender.

It had been a desperate alternative for Commodore Perry to venture into a small boat and transfer his flag from one ship to another. By his personal action in thus rushing his own vessel in at the crisis and exposing himself to a fusillade from the enemy for several minutes before he could make any reply to it, Perry had won the battle for the Americans. He determined to receive the surrender on his original flagship, the Lawrence, at whose peak had been flying throughout the battle the words spoken a few months before by the hero for whom the vessel was named, the dying commander of the Chesapeake, “Don’t give up the ship.” Perry returned to the ship and the English officers came to him there. Each presented his sword, and in reply Perry bowed and requested that their side-arms be retained by the officers. The deck of the Lawrence was covered with dead and wounded. On both sides the battle had been very hard-fought, and the loss of life, both of officers and men, was very heavy. Out of one hundred and three men on the Lawrence twenty-two had been killed and sixty-one wounded. On both the flagships every officer save Perry was killed or wounded, even Barclay being seriously injured, and the loss on these vessels was probably four-fifths of the men disabled or killed. When the ceremony of surrender was over, Perry tore off the back of an old letter, and using his hat for a writing-desk, wrote to General Harrison, stationed with reënforcements on the Sandusky River: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.”

Perry’s victory was immediately followed up both by himself and by General Harrison. Within a week the remnant of the fleet was ready to convey land forces to Malden, where they disembarked on the 27th of September. The timidity and incompetence of the British general, Proctor, gave the Americans a great advantage. To the utter scorn of Tecumseh and his Indians, who were supporting the British, General Proctor evacuated Malden, Detroit, and Sandwich without a stroke in their defence, and retired along the road to Lake Ontario even before the Americans landed. With such a start Harrison thought that the English with their thousand horses would be out of his reach, but he prepared to follow them. This Proctor seems not to have included in the range of possibilities.

By easy marches the British proceeded to Chatham, fifty miles from Sandwich on the River Thames. Here Proctor halted the army while he himself went on to the Moravian town twenty-six miles beyond. The American army appeared, and the British tried to follow their commander to Chatham. The organization of the whole army was by this time completely demoralized. They had, however, no choice but to turn and fight, as the younger officers and soldiers had long desired. The British were so stationed as to give the advantage of position to their opponents; and the American force was strengthened by a mounted regiment commanded by Richard Johnson, who had won a great reputation for himself and his men in previous battles on the frontier. The Americans lost only fifteen men in the engagement, with thirty wounded. The British list of dead and wounded was also short, but nearly five hundred were taken prisoners, and their supply of provisions and ammunition fell into the hands of the Americans. Only two hundred of this whole division of the British army returned to report at headquarters a month later. The Indian warrior, Tecumseh, was killed in this battle, and with his death the remote prospect of an Indian confederacy was gone. After these two victories the western Indians fell away from their alliance with the British and took no active part in the war.

The last year of the war, the year 1814, was marked by constant and active operations on Lake Ontario and about Niagara. The naval movements were not particularly effective on the American side, nor did they win great results. The possession of the Niagara River was sharply contested, and the American troops distinguished themselves by their bravery at the battles of Chippewa Creek and Lundy’s Lane. Cut off from any other lake position, the British could concentrate their forces at this point and throw the Americans on the defensive. These battles concerned, nevertheless, only a small portion of the Great Lakes, which were again the northern boundary of the United States. By Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, the subsequent recovery of the Detroit River, and the defeat of the British army at the Thames, Lake Erie and the whole Northwest were saved to the United States. The close of the war by the treaty of Ghent in the winter of 1814 brought to the lake frontier a well-earned and a lasting peace.

CHAPTER XV
GENERAL LEWIS CASS AND REORGANIZATION

A period of conflict always leaves behind it changed and unsettled conditions. Between the close of a war and the final readjustment of affairs leading up to a settled and permanent life, there must be a time of reorganization. Into this period of reconstruction the western territory about the Great Lakes passed at the close of the War of 1812. Since the Ordinance of 1787 the Northwest Territory had been subdivided. Ohio had become a state in 1802, and the region west of it had all been included in a territory under the general name of Indiana, of which section William Henry Harrison was the first governor. From Indiana, in its turn, Michigan was set off in 1805, with William Hull as its first governor. On Hull’s retirement from public life, after the surrender of Detroit, Colonel Lewis Cass was appointed governor of Michigan Territory. As the man who had most influence on the Northwest during these years of reconstruction, Governor Cass deserves detailed notice.

Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1782, Lewis Cass was the son of a soldier of the Revolution. During his son’s boyhood Major Cass, the father, was with Anthony Wayne or in command of Fort Hamilton, and after the peace of Greenville he brought his family, as did so many of the soldiers, to the rich country through which he had marched in war time. The young man divided his time between Marietta, where he began the study of law, and the frontier, where his father was hewing a home and making a living out of the wilderness. Under the state constitution of Ohio the first certificate of admission to the bar was given in 1802 to Lewis Cass. In the school of the county court the young lawyer gained a first-hand knowledge of the practice of the law and an understanding of the people of the frontier and how to deal with them, both of which served him well in his governorship. Even before he reached the proper age of eligibility he was sent to the Ohio legislature, and at the outbreak of the War of 1812 he was given a colonel’s commission.

Cass was one of the three Ohio colonels who served with Hull in the ill-starred Detroit expedition. Indeed, he led one of the few successful minor charges of that campaign. To his great indignation he was included by his general in that surrender, although he was not at the fort. For some months he was prisoner of war on parole. As soon as he was released he joined Harrison, under whom he did such efficient service that Harrison left him after the battle of the Thames in command of Detroit and the northwest frontier. The President soon appointed Cass governor of Michigan Territory, which then included only the lower peninsula of the present state, but to which the territory that is now Wisconsin was added in 1818 under the name of the Huron District.

Indiana became a state two years after the close of the war, but as governor of Michigan Territory and superintendent of Indian affairs General Cass had control of all Indian posts in the Northwest, as well as of the whole of Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Illinois. Illinois became a state in 1818, but at that time the only recognized settlements were in the southern portion of the territory, and the region about Chicago was practically left to the care of General Cass. The management of this vast territory presented many difficulties. The governor’s immediate residence, Detroit, was four-fifths Canadian, and of this population a large proportion was French. It was only fifty years since Major Gladwin had taken possession of a Detroit that was wholly French, and when the Americans took command in 1796 they had found a large predominance of French-Canadians. These settlers were in the best of times poor farmers, and in war times they had stopped all attempts to cultivate the land. Governor Cass found among them the most absolute ignorance of the rudimentary principles of farming that he had ever encountered. They used one piece of ground, without the least attempt to fertilize, until it was exhausted, and then proceeded to another. As these settlers of Detroit were typical of the more scattered inhabitants of the region, and as the Indians were almost entirely dependent on the gifts and supplies of the ruling people, Cass found himself confronted by the problem of how to feed a starving territory. For its immediate need he sought and obtained government bounties for the people. For the remedy of the condition he did everything in his power to stimulate settlement, urging the government to survey the land and allot portions for sale. In this he was hindered by the false reports of the first surveyors, who for some reason represented the whole of Michigan as so swampy, barren, or otherwise unfit for cultivation that there could be no incentive to immediate settlement. This, be it remembered, was said of Michigan, whose rich bottom-lands, fertile prairies, and timber tracts were soon to be so productive and whose orchards were to become among the greatest fruit producers of the states. Cass did everything in his power to counteract these statements and to further immigration. Occupation of the land by thrifty settlers would solve the difficulties by making the inhabitants independent as they became capable of producing what they needed, and would also lessen their isolation by creating lines of communication with the East. In these efforts he was successful. A public sale of lands was held in 1818, and by 1820 the population had nearly doubled since before the war. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought in a period of rapid immigration in which Cass began to see the fulfilment of his hopes. The population jumped from nine thousand in 1820 to thirty-two thousand in 1830. This came just before he was called to the position of Secretary of War at Washington. During his period of national service he had the satisfaction of seeing his territory flooded with newcomers, till in 1837 it entered the Union as a state with one hundred and seventy-five thousand inhabitants. It was due to the statesmanship of its governor that Michigan Territory was so well-ordered and well-developed a region and was therefore so soon ready for statehood. He educated the original settlers to self-government, organized courts and legislative assemblies and guided their policies, and furthered the cause of public education. During the eighteen years of his governorship he devoted himself to such service with a zeal that won immediate results.

In his double position as governor and superintendent of Indian affairs, Cass did much else for the western lake region. Even after the cessation of hostilities, he found the British attitude hostile and aggravating. This showed itself in two ways. The British were inclined to ignore the rights of the United States citizens and to interfere with their liberty when the proximity of the two nations brought up any disputed question; they also stirred the Indians to hostility. Governor Cass stood out boldly, insisting that the United States must be treated according to the customs of international law between two equal powers. In time the British came to realize that they were dealing with a nation, not with a detached and feeble territory. Governor Cass could not handle so openly the British instigation of the Indians to hostility toward the United States and its western settlers. There was no law to prevent the distribution of sixty tons of presents among the Indians who gathered at Malden from the American as well as from the Canadian side of the river. The British did not realize that the time had come for them to give up their guardianship of all Indian tribes who did not live within their lawful jurisdiction.

In the conduct of Indian affairs Governor Cass showed himself skilled as no leader had been since the days of the wise French explorers. The Indians had never forgotten the French missionaries. “Seven generations,” said a Chippewa chief, “have passed since the Frenchmen came to these falls (Sault Ste. Marie), but we have not forgotten them. Just, very just, were they to us.” This spirit of fairness now returned in Governor Cass, who combined with it an insight into Indian character, a patience that enabled him to deal with the savages, and an energy which made him go to endless trouble to arrange matters with them. The work of this wonderful man held off raids and massacres,—if not open and continued war,—which would have retarded settlement in this exposed wilderness for many years. If the white men were to occupy the greater part of the country, agreements must be made and kept with the Indians. Cass recognized this as his cardinal principle, and began to act on it even before the close of the war. He first made treaties with the Indians near Detroit. From this centre the circle widened until it included the whole of his vast territory and parts of more settled regions. At St. Mary’s in Ohio, at Saginaw in Michigan, and at Chicago in Illinois, he concluded treaties which brought to the United States vast stretches of valuable territory.

With the permission of the government Cass organized an expedition to go into the remote sections of its northwestern possessions, investigate their resources, and come into friendly relations with the Indians. Of this picturesque and important expedition made by twenty Americans into the then unknown Lake Superior country Mr. Schoolcraft, one of his scientific companions, has left us a full account. In every transaction the figure of Cass stands out strong and forceful. At Sault Ste. Marie he wanted to obtain a piece of ground which through old British and French treaties the Indians had previously admitted to belong to the white men. Adorned with British medals the Indians greeted him with an independence of word and gesture that soon became open rudeness and impudence. Retiring from the council the chiefs ran up the British flag on their lodge and cleared the room in preparation for battle. Governor Cass, with a single interpreter, walked into the Indian camp, tore down the British flag, and faced the astonished savages. The Americans were studious, he said, to render justice and promote peace with the Indians, but the flag was the distinguishing token of national power, and two could not fly over the same spot. The Indians were forbidden to raise any flag but the American, and if they should the United States would put strong feet on their necks and crush them to earth. With these words he turned and walked out of the lodge with the British flag in his hand. In a few hours the Indians signed the treaty, and the expedition proceeded on its way.

At the request of Cass mineralogists and geologists had been sent with him, and they made such discoveries as he had expected of copper and other minerals. So valuable were they that the attention of the whole United States was turned toward this rich region. Part of the company, led by Cass, returned by way of Chicago, a village of only ten or twelve houses outside the limits of a well-garrisoned fort, but with a location in what seemed to Cass “the most fertile and beautiful country that could be imagined.”

Six years later Cass was back on Lake Superior making on the site of Duluth important treaties with the tribes of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In all these treaties with the Indians he insisted on three points. The chiefs should understand fully what they were doing; just remuneration should be made by the Americans; and the promises made should be faithfully observed on both sides. The flag that he carried into the lake region remained during his administration the symbol of justice and honor, and won the respect of all.

CHAPTER XVI
THE BLACK HAWK WAR

The settlement of northern Illinois and Wisconsin by American colonists brought on in 1832 the last serious Indian outbreak in the lake region. The white men had been pushing the Indians farther and farther west. On the banks of the Mississippi the red men turned and made a desperate attempt to keep possession of the lands which held the homes and the graves of their ancestors.

Between Rock River in Illinois and the Wisconsin River there lay on the eastern bank of the Mississippi a region which had been known to the white men ever since the visit of Nicholas Perrot in 1690 because of its extensive deposits of lead. Mines had been worked there by the Indians and Frenchmen for two centuries and had yielded a considerable output, which had been bought by French-Canadian traders and in later years by the British. The United States concluded in 1804 a treaty with the Sauk and Fox Indians, who occupied this country, by which they ceded to the Americans the territory east of the Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois at the south to the mouth of the Wisconsin at the north. It had been agreed that so long as the lands remained the public property of the United States the Indians might live and hunt there, but when they were bought by settlers the Indians must move.

FROM LAKE MICHIGAN TO THE MISSISSIPPI

American mining settlements sprang up after the close of the War of 1812, and by 1827 an established coach road, known as Kellogg’s Trail, ran from Peoria one hundred and twenty miles north to Galena, which was in the heart of the mining country. Along this road were occasional groups of cabins, while on either side trails ran off into the wilderness which would have led the traveller who followed them to solitary homesteads and well-ordered farms. In a rich and fertile tract at the mouth of Rock River stood the chief village of the Sauks. It was one of the largest and most prosperous Indian towns on the continent, with more than five hundred families, and was besides the principal cemetery of the nation. Squatters seized the Indian fields, built their huts on their clearings, and stole their harvests. Until the lands were formally sold the Indians had a right there, and their complaints were just. In 1828, however, the site of the village was sold, and the tribes were given notice to leave. Keokuk, the chief of the Sauks, crossed the Mississippi with the majority of the tribe and counselled the rest to yield peaceably. A considerable number of the Indians remained in the settlement, living on the high bluff which has since been known as Black Hawk’s Watch Tower, and cultivating the few fields which remained to them.

Black Hawk was one of the Indians who did not share Keokuk’s submissive temper of mind. He was a warrior about sixty years of age, who seems always to have been a restless and discontented member of the tribe. He was a tall, spare man, with pinched features, high cheek-bones, and a prominent Roman nose. His black eyes were piercing; he had practically no eyebrows, and his hair had been plucked out save for a single scalp-lock, in which on occasions was fastened a bunch of eagle feathers. He was a striking figure, and his history bore out in interest his appearance. He had begun his warlike career in early youth. Before he was fifteen he had won in his tribe the rank of a brave, and at that age the scalping of an enemy had gained him the coveted right to paint, to wear feathers, and to dance the war-dance. Since that time he had been involved in every tribal skirmish that had taken place, and he had played a prominent part in the white men’s wars.

Black Hawk

In the unsettled period before the War of 1812, Black Hawk had gathered about him a group of two hundred young warriors, who won for themselves in the war the name of the “British Band,” from their support of the British troops. He had fought at the battle of Frenchtown on the River Raisin, at the battle of the Thames under Tecumseh, and after the latter’s death he returned to Illinois and carried on there a border warfare which was only ended by his signing at St. Louis in 1816 a treaty of peace. Since that time he had made the Rock River village his headquarters, and when the white men began to take up his lands, his smouldering hatred of the Americans blazed out. Returning with a band of warriors from the winter hunting season of 1831, he was warned off his land. He refused to cross the Mississippi River, and appealed to the Indians to defend the graves of their ancestors. In spite of Keokuk’s remonstrances the best young men of the Sauk and Fox tribes flocked to his standard, and his threats excited such alarm among the settlers that Governor Reynolds of Illinois issued a call for volunteers to assist the regular troops in guarding the frontier. There was a prompt response, and when the troops reached Black Hawk’s village the Indians withdrew during the night to the west side of the river and signed a treaty never to return to their former homes without the express permission of the United States authorities.

Black Hawk did not abide by this treaty. During the winter of 1832 he recruited a large force, and in the spring he crossed the Mississippi at a point just south of his former village, and began a march up the Rock River Valley. This invasion of the state by a hostile band of savages excited great alarm along the frontier. The settlers came in from their lonely farms and built about the larger villages stockades and defences. A call for volunteers was issued, and the enthusiastic response was a surprise, even to the governor who summoned them.

One of the first to enlist was Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois citizen of two years’ standing. He had come with his family in his seventh year from Kentucky to Indiana and thence in 1830 to the newer settlements of Illinois. He was twenty-three years old, and was a tall, sturdy backwoodsman, who was to prove himself in the wrestling matches that were the soldiers’ pastime, the strongest man but one in the whole army. He was at once chosen captain of his company, an honor which brought him more gratification than most of his greater successes. The volunteers were organized into four regiments, and started to follow Black Hawk up the Rock River. The command of four hundred regulars was given to Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterwards President of the United States; and during the months of this war there served in the army Robert Anderson, the defender of Sumter, Winfield Scott, Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederate hero, and Jefferson Davis. It was a distinguished group of men who responded in their youth to the call of their country.

The marching was difficult. There were no roads or bridges, only marshy trails and streams swollen into torrents by the spring thaws. But the hardy backwoodsmen were used to such conditions. They marched steadily on, and when they had gone some ninety miles up Rock River to Dixon’s Ferry halted to await the arrival of General Atkinson with the regular troops and the loads of provisions. They found there two battalions of horsemen, under the command of Majors Stillman and Bailey, which had been gathered in the upper country. They had had no long march to weary them, but were impatient to get a chance at the enemy. They set off as scouts on a dark, threatening morning in May, with orders to coerce what Indians they met into submission. “I thought,” says the governor in his memoirs, “they might discover the enemy.” And they did.

Black Hawk had been urging the tribes of the Rock River region to join him, but had received so little encouragement that he was almost prepared to make peace with the advancing army. He was now a little way up the river with a party of forty or fifty warriors, a body-guard selected from his eight hundred men, who were encamped seven miles beyond. As the chief sat at supper on the evening of the 14th of May, he was told that a small party of white horsemen was making camp near by. The creek on whose banks the Americans had halted was lined with tall willows, which made a good protection for the camp. The vanguard of the two brigades had stopped, tied their horses to the trees, and begun to build fires for supper when three Indians appeared on a height nearly a mile away. It afterwards proved that these Indians were messengers from Black Hawk and were bearing a white flag of truce. The scouts at sight of the Indians rushed out and seized them. Black Hawk and his men, watching at a distance, saw their men captured and prepared hastily to meet and attack the whites. The squads of soldiers who had started in the chase were scattered without any regular order along half a mile of the valley. When the foremost of the pursuers came upon Black Hawk and his men hidden behind a growth of brush, the savages dashed out upon them with wild war-whoops. The soldiers thought that eight hundred Indians were behind their leader, and scattered in every direction. Their officers tried to rally them, but the force was disorganized. The men leaped on their horses and rode away. The Indians, astonished at this sudden development, feared that they were being led into an ambush; but they pursued the white men, killing those whom they overtook. At one or two places companies of soldiers turned and made a gallant fight, but most of them escaped on their swift horses. By twos and threes they straggled into the camp at Dixon’s Ferry, twenty-five miles away, with a story of defeat that spread a panic over the whole frontier. The army marched next day to the scene of the surprise; but Black Hawk and his men were gone, and it was not thought wise to pursue them farther north without a better supply of provisions. The unexpected and easy victory had encouraged Black Hawk and had brought many Indians of other tribes to his side.

A reign of terror followed Stillman’s defeat. Scalping parties organized by Black Hawk covered the frontier, making raids on the exposed northern settlements. Many on both sides lost their lives, for small parties of American settlers made gallant defences in their scattered villages and held the Indians back. Three weeks from the time of the first attack a new army of volunteers, four thousand strong, took the field. They marched to Dixon’s Ferry and then plunged into the wilderness, taking every precaution as they proceeded into the enemy’s country to guard against surprise. On the 30th of June they crossed the Illinois border near the present city of Beloit, Wisconsin, and came upon abandoned camps and other signs of the retreating Indians.

The progress through the wilderness of Wisconsin was slow and difficult. Day after day the troops pushed on, wading up to their armpits in mud and water, or hewing away the trees and underbrush that barred their course. After three weeks they came up with the last of the fugitives. Passing through a forest where stands to-day the city of Madison, they came to the shores of the Wisconsin River, and there they fought the battle of Wisconsin Heights. The loss of life among the Indians was heavy; among the Americans, light. During the night after the battle, the startled soldiers sitting in their camp heard from the direction of the Indian encampment a loud, clear voice speaking in an unknown tongue. They feared that some chief was directing his men to descend upon the camp and make a night attack. After a time, however, the voice ceased and nothing more was thought of the incident. It proved afterwards that this was the voice of an orator sent by Black Hawk to beg for peace. He had used the Winnebago tongue, and as the members of that tribe had left the camp that very day, no one understood him. Thus the second attempt of Black Hawk to make peace failed.

From this time on the story of the campaign is a tale of relentless pursuit and slaughter of the fugitives. Black Hawk and his starving war-party reached the banks of the Mississippi, but an American steamer prevented their crossing in safety. The troops came upon them at a point called Bad Axe, and for three hours the bloody conflict raged. The white men lost only seventeen men killed, and twelve wounded. At least one hundred and fifty Indians were killed in the battle and as many more men, women, and children were drowned or shot down in their attempts to escape. Nearly a thousand Indians had crossed the Mississippi at Rock River, two hundred miles below. Barely one hundred and fifty regained the western bank at Bad Axe.

General Winfield Scott brought home the remaining troops, who were attacked by cholera on the journey and suffered great losses. The Winnebagoes, with whom Black Hawk sought refuge, delivered him over to the Americans, who put him under the guardianship of his former rival, the peace-loving Keokuk. By order of the war department the fallen warrior was taken during the time of his captivity on a tour of the country to see in the east the strength of the white man and realize the futility of further resistance by the Indian. On his first trip he went to Washington, was received by President Jackson, and was taken to Philadelphia, New York, up the Hudson, and back by way of the Great Lakes to Rock River, where he was set free. In 1837 Keokuk, who did not dare leave him unwatched in his absence, took him to Washington again with a deputation of Sauk and Fox Indians, and on this trip he went to Boston. The experiences of the savage warrior in this eastern city take us back to the time when Champlain took his Indian host Darontal to the little settlement at Quebec in 1616, and showed him the civilization of the Frenchman. Nothing could portray better the change in the relations of the white man and the red man in the two hundred years that had come between.

The Indian delegation was received by the mayor, the aldermen, and the common council of Boston at Faneuil Hall. The armories and the navy-yard were visited to show the military power of Bostonians; a levee was held at Faneuil Hall to receive the ladies who desired to meet the warriors; and on Monday morning, October 30, 1837, they were formally received in the Hall of the House of Representatives by Governor Everett, attended by his staff and other officers. In flowing and graceful language the governor welcomed the Indians on behalf of the Commonwealth, addressing them in the Indian style of oratory. The chiefs responded, one by one, to his words, Black Hawk in a shrill, clear voice that attracted the attention of the audience to the famous veteran warrior. All thanked the governor for his kind words and shook hands with him, expressing their desire for friendship with the white men. The party then adjourned to the Boston Common, where they performed a series of war-dances in the presence of an immense crowd; and in the evening they went to the Tremont Theatre to see “The Banker of Bogota,” which was being played there. With this scene the picture of the life of the last great Indian warrior of the lake region ends. Black Hawk returned to his home and died the next year at the age of seventy-one, in a reservation at Des Moines, Iowa, set apart for him and his few remaining followers. The Indians had been humbled and defeated.

The Black Hawk War called national attention to the western country. The troops had explored a wilderness little known to the Americans, and the story of their march into Wisconsin had been published in full in the newspapers of the East. Guide-books were issued, painting in brilliant colors the charms of the region, and a tide of westward immigration followed the sale of public lands by the government. Northern Illinois gained a large population, and Wisconsin was made a territory within four years. The foundation of the lake states had been laid; the Northwest had been Americanized.

PART III
OCCUPATION AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER XVII
GATEWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES

The Great Lakes are entered from the outer world by a series of natural gateways extending from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the westernmost end of Lake Superior. With a shrewd instinct the savages selected these spots as the centres for their forest trails and as the crossing places over which they could carry their boats from river to lake and lake to river. At these points the French and English erected stockades and forts around which gathered small settlements. Americans, entering at the beginning of the nineteenth century into possession of the country, built there the towns and cities which to-day command the commerce of the Great Lakes. With the founding of these cities the period of permanent occupation begins.

The French approached the Great Lakes from Quebec and Montreal. Because of Iroquois hostility they avoided the southern route by Niagara and along Lake Erie, and ascended instead the Ottawa River, crossed Lake Nipissing, and passed through Georgian Bay into Lake Huron. At Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac they built their missions and trading posts. Here Marquette and Joliet heard tales of the great river to the south and the rich copper country to the west, and from these centres the French explorers started on their expeditions into Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Before the English had explored more than a narrow strip of seaboard the French were travelling up the Fox-Wisconsin rivers to the Mississippi, or by way of the Chicago and Illinois rivers to the southern country. Returning parties often proceeded by way of the Kankakee River to the St. Joseph, or by the Wabash and the Maumee to Toledo on Lake Erie.

Frontenac saw the importance of occupying the strategic points on the lakes. He himself went up the St. Lawrence River and planted on the site of Kingston the fort that bore his name. He encouraged La Salle to build a trading post at Niagara, and did all in his power to gain Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for the French. Gradually the French succeeded in making their way eastward. They occupied the strait of Detroit, and built forts at Sandusky, Presque Isle (Erie), Niagara, Oswego, and Toronto. The English seized these forts and planted many more. When the Americans in their turn took possession, and Wayne’s treaty of Greenville gave, in 1796, some assurance of safety in the region, they sent out not only soldiers but colonists and settlers. Their story is the tale of the beginning of our modern civilization.

In the early days of the American Revolution, Congress suggested to the states that they should cede their claims to lands west of the Allegheny to the central government; but many years elapsed before the United States gained from the eastern states these cessions. Of all the states Connecticut had the best claim; in making its cession it reserved a triangular bit of country on the southern shore of Lake Erie, west of Pennsylvania, which was known as the Western Reserve. Before long a Connecticut land company bought three million acres in this tract at forty cents an acre, and in the spring of 1796 Moses Cleveland with fifty associates set out to plant on the shores of Lake Erie the colony of New Connecticut. They decided to found their first settlement at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which was the terminus of several trails, notably that which led to Akron, Ohio, and south to Marietta. At this spot, on the 22d of July, 1796, they began to build their houses, where stands to-day the city of Cleveland, and so rapid was the growth of this region that in four years’ time there were thirty-two settlements within the limits of the Connecticut Reserve.

Massachusetts ceded to the United States her claims to lands west of Pennsylvania, but retained her right to lands in what is now western New York. In 1788 she sold to a company of New Yorkers a large part of these lands, including the Genesee Valley. At this time there was but one white man’s cabin between Oswego and Fort Niagara. The falls of the Genesee attracted settlers, because there they could build mills for grinding corn and sawing lumber. Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, with three other Maryland gentlemen, purchased in 1802 one hundred acres at this point, including the site of this mill, and laid out a village, opening the sale of lots in 1811. He moved to his land in 1818, the little village was named after him, and before many years became a prosperous town.

Buffalo was founded by Joseph Ellicott, brother of the first surveyor-general of the United States. He laid out the town on the plan of Washington city, with broad, radiating avenues, and gave to them Dutch names, as Vollenhoven and Schimmelpennick, calling the village New Amsterdam. When the town was incorporated in 1810, the inhabitants renamed it Buffalo, according to the old Indian name for the creek which makes into the lake at this point. The prosperity of Buffalo and Rochester, and of Oswego, which was incorporated as a village in 1828, was assured by the building of the Erie Canal system in 1825.

In spite of her hundred years of history Detroit began life anew under American rule. In 1805 the town caught fire, and within four hours the old French settlement was gone. Of two hundred buildings within the stockade, only one was left standing. The newly elected officers of Ohio Territory reached Detroit the day after the fire to find the town wiped out, and in a few years the American Detroit was laid out and built up on the favorite plan of the city of Washington.

The western lakes had been the first to be approached by Frenchmen coming from the north; they were the last to be settled by Americans coming from the Atlantic seaboard. But when their importance came to be recognized their cities sprang up with amazing rapidity. By the treaty of Greenville the Indians ceded to the white men, along with other territory, “one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Checagau River.” This spot had always been a centre for Indian tribes and for fur trade. In 1821 Governor Cass bought from the Indians this part of Illinois and the state of Michigan. Trade with the Indians attracted a few settlers to Chicago during the next few years, and in 1833 twenty-eight electors met and chose trustees to administer public affairs. They established a free ferry across the river, reconstructed and strengthened the log jail, and built for twelve dollars an estray pen for lost animals, and thus the town of Chicago began. Four years later it became an organized municipality with a population of four thousand. It was the centre of one of the land-booms which collapsed in the panic of 1837, and suffered for many years thereafter a succession of disasters. Floods swept the low ground on which the town was built, which has since been elevated; cholera, droughts, and financial panics came upon her but were unable to conquer. From the great fire of 1871 Chicago rose once more to justify the opportunities of her location and to become the leading city of the Great Lakes.

GATEWAYS OF THE LAKES

The Black Hawk War opened up in 1832 the southern part of Wisconsin. Land along the Milwaukee River was purchased by the Indians, and in 1835 the first white owners began their homes. In the summer of 1836 there was a rush of immigration. Sixty buildings were put up in the seven months, and more would have been erected if lumber could have been obtained. Streets were graded, ferries established, and on July 14 the first number of the first newspaper of Milwaukee issued a call to “all good men and true” to assemble and petition the governor to appoint officers of law for the township. That winter seven hundred people stayed in the town, and three years later the canal from Rock River to Milwaukee made the town an eastern gateway for the trade of the new territory of Wisconsin, which was at that time notably wealthy in furs. In 1846 the town became a city.

Through the entire struggle for possession of the Great Lakes, Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie had kept their positions as trading centres and points for military defence. No permanent settlement was made west of these posts for many years. Nearly two centuries before the city of Duluth was founded, Daniel Greyselon Du Luth was leader of an expedition organized by French merchants of Quebec and Montreal to trade with the Indians. In the course of his dealings with the tribes he held an important conference at the head of the lake, where a trading post was later established on land now a part of the city of Superior, Wisconsin, opposite the city of Duluth. This trading station was owned by the Northwestern Fur Company, and was an important meeting-place for white men and Indians. In 1826, on his second western trip, Governor Lewis Cass concluded at this Minnesota outpost a treaty with the Indians, giving to the United States the right to explore and carry away any minerals that might be found in the country bordering on the lake. To gain this important concession the commissioners determined to do all they could to impress the tribes with the power and majesty of the United States’ representatives. In barges from which the Stars and Stripes were gayly flying, and to the tune of “Hail Columbia,” played by a military band, the treaty-makers sailed into the harbor amid the shouts and cheers of the Indians on the shore. The treaty was signed, and later agreements also made on this spot gave to the government the remainder of the country. By 1850 there were permanent settlers at the head of the lake as well as lumbermen all along the St. Croix River. Congress appropriated in 1854 money to build a road to connect Lake Superior by the St. Croix Valley with the Mississippi River. The settlers at Superior, Wisconsin, were bitter rivals of those at Duluth. In order to be sure to get the road they cut a road southward from Superior to meet it and bring it out on the Wisconsin side of the St. Louis River. In this way Superior got the start of Duluth, but the latter was incorporated in 1857, and became before many years a prosperous city.

By the middle of the nineteenth century Duluth, the most remote gateway of the Great Lakes, had begun its history as a town. In 1825 Henry Clay, speaking on the bill to grant lands for the building of the Soo Canal, had mentioned these great waterways as “beyond the furthest bounds of civilization,—if not in the moon.” Six years later Edward Everett enunciated the principle of the future, declaring that “intercourse between the mighty interior West and the seacoast is the great principle of our commercial prosperity.” The cities of the Great Lakes—Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Duluth—recognized their opportunity to become the connecting links in this inevitable chain of intercourse. Their sites were strategic, but they had much to do to meet the demands of the rapidly increasing commerce. Their citizens were alert and eager to fulfil these demands. Buffalo gained her position as the terminus of the Erie Canal because public-spirited citizens gave bonds that her harbor should be improved. Every city spent large sums in constructing and improving her natural facilities. The fresh needs of every new decade have been met, and to-day the lake system is on the eve of even greater achievements.

These cities have a background of which they may well be proud,—a background of men who, in pioneer times of hardship and poverty, were men of prescience, of courage, and of action. To-day the six cities have a population of nearly four million people. United by their common bond of harborage on the Great Lakes, but situated in six states of the Union, these cities and their smaller neighbors are taking a prominent part in the nation. Men of vision and of energy still walk their streets, planning and guiding their present and future. Their sites are being beautified and improved; their social and economic problems are being solved; and they are keeping themselves fit gateways for the prosperous states they represent on the great inland seas of North America.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE STORY OF A ROAD

As the Indian read in the signs of the trail—the depth of a moccasin print or the direction of a broken twig—the story of those who had journeyed over the path before him, so we can find in the tale of successive kinds of roads the record of the advance of the white man into the West. For roads the French traders used those of the original occupants of the land,—the buffalo tracks and the Indian trails. English-speaking settlers, coming from the Atlantic seacoast, used two main routes. They came either by river and portage up the Ohio and its various tributaries to Presque Isle on Lake Erie, or from Albany across western New York to Niagara. The story of early voyages and of the founding and life of Detroit gives a picture of French exploration and settlement; in like manner there is written in the rapid change of the land and water thoroughfares across New York State, from Indian trail and river course to turnpike, canal, and railroad, the tale of the settlement of the lake region, and of the change from a wilderness to a thickly populated country.

As soon as the explorer landed on the southern shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, he came upon buffalo roads or “traces.” Sometimes these were narrow ditches, a foot wide and from six inches to two feet deep, trodden down by the impact of thousands of hoofs as herd after herd of buffaloes had stamped along in single file behind their leaders. When the first path became too deep for comfort because of repeated travel, the buffaloes would abandon it and begin a second path alongside the first, and thus the frequented traces would be gradually widened. Again an immense herd of these heavy animals would crash through the forest, breaking in their rapid progress a broad, deep road from one feeding-ground to another. As this route would be followed again and again by this and other herds, it would become level and hard as rock, so that there was great rejoicing in pioneer settlements when the weary road-makers, struggling with log causeways and swampy hollows, came upon a firm, solid buffalo trace. Nor was this an uncommon experience. The line of many of these roads is followed to-day by our railroads and canals as it was followed in the middle period by log roads and turnpikes. The buffalo was a good surveyor. He did not reason out why he should go in a certain direction, but his sure instinct took him by the easiest and most direct paths over high lands and low to the salt licks and watercourses which were his goal. Indeed, he observed precisely the principles which govern to-day the civil engineer. He followed the level of the valley; he swerved around high points wherever it was possible, crossing the ridges and watersheds at the best natural divides and gorges; and he crossed from one side of a stream of water to the other repeatedly in order to avoid climbing up from the level, after the fashion of our modern loop railways.

Not so conspicuous, but more numerous, were the Indian trails. Where their destination was the same the Indians used the buffalo roads, but their own paths were quite distinct. These were narrow foot-paths, usually from twelve to eighteen inches wide, through which the Indians travelled single file. Three things were necessary for an Indian trail: it must be secluded, hidden if possible from hostile eyes; it must be direct; and it must be dry. Over these narrow lanes the trees and bushes interlaced so closely that it was impossible to see more than a rod or two ahead, and a neglected path soon became impassable. To know which paths could be traversed at each season of the year, and where storm, flood, or fire were likely to have had the least effect, and to be able to follow the forkings and windings of these forest routes, was to be skilled in the art of the woodsman and to be valuable as a guide.

Like the buffalo traces the Indian paths were often worn deep, almost always six inches and sometimes a foot. So well-travelled was the Indian trail of our story, the Iroquois trail across New York, that it was called by the Jesuit fathers “The Beaten Road.” That buffalo came as far east as the present city of Buffalo, New York, is beyond question. Whether they penetrated farther into the interior of the state is not known, but in every other respect this region had each kind of road in turn. It is not only one of the main thoroughfares of travel, but is also a typical scene of pioneer adventure and achievement.

The main Iroquois trail led from Albany, the eastern door of the “Long House,” to Niagara, the western door. It followed the natural geographical route along the Mohawk Valley to Schenectady, Utica, and Rome, where stood the great Mohawk “castles,” and turned from this point south to Onondaga (Syracuse), the centre of the confederacy, and westward by the heads of Lake Seneca and Canandaigua to Lewiston and Niagara. It is unusual among Indian trails because it was notably a peace-path. The Six Nations rarely quarrelled among themselves, but kept up an interchange of goods and gossip that was remarkable among savages. Runners were trained to carry summonses to councils and to spread the news. It was said that it took only three days and three runners to send a message from one door of the “Long House” to the other, from Albany to Niagara, a distance of three hundred miles, each Indian being expected to make in a day his “century run.”

BY TRAIL AND TURNPIKE TO LAKE ERIE

Along the line of this trail the American pioneer built, in the twenty years from 1785 to 1815, his log roads and turnpikes. They were crude, rough affairs, “very grievous to the limbs,” and called forth the maledictions of the travellers who ventured off the usual routes into the outskirts of civilization. As the district grew more populous the roads came gradually under state control. Commissioners and improvement companies connected and made better the separate stretches of highway. In 1794 the legislature passed a law, directing the state road to be extended from Fort Schuyler (Utica) to the Genesee River, and four years later it was voted to extend it “westward to the extremity of the state.” This western end of the road, from the Mohawk River to Lake Erie, was, as it happened, incorporated by the state under the name of “The Genesee Turnpike” in 1800 before that from Albany to the Mohawk was given formal recognition. We have thus the unusual spectacle of a road established in the remote sections of the country before the connecting road to the nearest city is completed. To raise money for its construction all kinds of methods had been used, from government appropriations to lotteries.

The method of road-building in the pioneer settlements was one that developed throughout the colonies, as here in New York, into the establishment of turnpike roads. At first the local governments, the townships, or counties, built the roads. As these became inadequate, corporations of individuals were given permission to build roads and charge tolls for their use. The name of turnpike was given to these private highways because at the place where toll was to be collected there was placed a gate hung in such a way as to turn on a post. This gate was made of a long pole and could be swung across the road to stop carriages, animals, and people till the toll fees had been collected. When a corporation was given a charter, the legislature prescribed the number of toll-gates to be set up on the given length of road, and gave the usual form for tolls. The directors were left to fill in the fees in each case. This accepted table of tolls shows the kind of vehicles in use in New York at this time. A one-horse two-wheeled carriage was called a sulky, chair, or chaise. A chariot, coach, coachee, or phaeton might be drawn by one horse, but was more commonly specified to have two. Stage-wagons, stages, and other four-wheeled carriages drawn by two horses had their separate fee. Just as our highway commissioners of to-day encourage wide tires because they put less wear on the road, so in these days there was a rule that carriages with tires twelve inches wide should pay no tolls, nine-inch tires should exempt the vehicle from three-quarters of the tolls, and six-inch from one-half. It was required that the table of tolls be posted in a conspicuous place over the gate.

In March, 1813, Nathaniel Rochester and other gentlemen were given permission to form a turnpike company for a road from Canandaigua to the falls of the Genesee River. As this was not a thickly settled region the table of tolls is a simple one without elaborate specifications as to the kinds of carriages and with only two toll-gates, but as part of our historic road it is of special interest.

Table of Tolls of Rochester Turnpike Company,
March 31, 1813

Cents

For every cart, wagon, or other wheeled carriage, drawn by 2 horses, mules, or oxen

12¹⁄₂

And for each additional horse, mule, or ox

6

For every cart, wagon, or other two-wheeled carriage drawn by 1 horse or mule

9

For every horse rode, led, or driven

6

For every four-wheeled pleasure carriage or wagon drawn by 2 horses

25

And for each additional horse

6

For every sleigh or sled drawn by 1 horse, mule, or ox

6

And for every additional horse, mule, or ox

6

For every score of horses, mules, or cattle

20

And in like proportion for a greater or less number

For every score of sheep or hogs

8

And in like proportion for a greater or less number

In the next chapter the experiences of two travellers are given, the first in 1796, the second in 1811. The two accounts of their journeys show the wonderful transformation wrought along the line of this highway in fifteen years. By the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century New York State had one hundred and thirty-one turnpikes, and our second traveller was constantly hearing discussion of a new project to which the enterprising leaders of the state were turning their attention. For purposes of trade the new land route had never supplanted the old waterways. With the rapid occupation of the region of the Great Lakes this trade was increasing at a surprising rate, and much of it was being diverted to the English merchants of the St. Lawrence River, because of the greater facility of the route to Montreal over that to New York. It cost only a dollar and a half to send a barrel of flour from Cayuga in western New York to Montreal, while it took at least two dollars and a half to get the same barrel from Cayuga only as far as Albany. If this were true of western New York, it was even more true of the southern shores of the Great Lakes.

Only an artificial canal could overcome the natural obstacles to water transportation, and this the leading men of New York were urging with all their power. Since 1792 the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company had been seeking systematically to improve the existing water route by building canals around the worst obstructions to navigation, the various falls and rapids of the Mohawk River. From the success of these small ventures and the no less convincing evidence of the ability of the canal to solve the whole problem, came in the minds of Gouverneur Morris, Jesse Hawley, and others the plan to connect the Atlantic with the lakes by an artificial waterway. To Governor De Witt Clinton and his associates belongs the credit of working out this stupendous undertaking. The story of its progress and achievement is too long a tale to be summarized here, but must be reserved for another chapter. In 1825 the Erie Canal of three hundred and sixty-three miles was completed and opened with appropriate ceremonies.

The turnpike had followed the line of the old Iroquois trail. The canal had followed it in certain sections but had swerved off and gone northward along a minor Indian trail which passed over a natural highway formed by a wide ridge from four to six miles inland from the shores of Lake Ontario. This was what was called by the pioneers the Ridge Road from Lewiston to Rochester. One more kind of road was destined to cross the state, supplanting the lumbering stage-wagon and the slow canal-boat for the purposes of travel, and even as time went on for the carrying of freight. The first piece of railroad to be built in New York State, and one of the oldest in the United States, was the Mohawk and Hudson. It was chartered in 1826, the year after the completion of the Erie Canal, and work was begun upon it in 1830. Seventeen miles of this road, connecting Albany and Schenectady, were opened in 1831; the remaining part from Schenectady to Utica five years later. Horses were used when the road was put into operation, so that it was in reality little more than a tramway, but locomotives were soon substituted. The third engine built in the United States was sent from the West Point Foundry Works to this little piece of road. It was called the De Witt Clinton, and was built in 1831. It weighed three and a half tons where now two hundred tons is not considered especially heavy for an engine, and was fed by anthracite coal. Mr. William H. Brown, who was one of the passengers on the first trip, was so impressed by the appearance of this “singular-looking affair and its equally singular-looking appendages,” that he sketched on the back of a letter a drawing of the engine and the passenger-cars, with correct likenesses, which he afterwards enlarged to a picture six feet long which was cut out of black paper in silhouette fashion and is in possession of the Connecticut Historical Society. Reproductions of this picture give a good idea of the first locomotive and train of passenger-cars ever run in the state of New York. The cars are those which had been used for a year with horses on this same route.

A great crowd assembled on August 9, 1831, to see the train start. The fortunate guests of the road climbed into their seats, the engineer took his place on the tender, a tin horn was sounded, and the train with its five passenger-coaches started off. The outside passengers had no awning or roof to protect them, and as the sparks and smoke were blown back they began to fear for their combustible straw hats and summer garments; but no accident happened. The passengers had hardly had time to adjust their high beavers and settle themselves after the shock of starting, which had been with such a jerk that they had been knocked into each other and against the low roof, when the train stopped abruptly at the first water station on the road. Here a halt was made and an experiment tried to avoid these unpleasant jerks. The links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost length, and rails, borrowed unceremoniously from a neighboring fence, were bound to these couplings, one between each pair of cars, to hold the coaches steady. This arrangement worked well, and in a short time the train pulled into Schenectady, where thousands of people were lined up to await its coming.

As in the case of the canal and the turnpike, small sections of the railroad were built first, and finally joined into one long highway. Eight short lines were built in New York along the line of the road to Lake Erie and were put in operation at different times. These lines were owned in 1842 by eleven companies. The tendency to consolidation reduced the number to seven by 1850, and then the great era of concentration brought them all under the New York Central management.

From the leaf-strewn path for the moccasined Indian the road of our story has become a part of a system of seventy thousand miles of highway which replace the turnpikes in connecting the towns of New York State. Its turbulent streams have become the feeders for a great artificial waterway, and an iron-railed road-bed stretches along its route, over which flies a limited train at the rate of seventy miles an hour. The lumbering stage-wagon has given way to the smooth-running drawing-room car. The rivers and swamps are spanned by fine bridges. The story of the road has been one of swift change and rapid advance.

CHAPTER XIX
BEFORE AND AFTER THE TURNPIKE

Before the nineteenth century, travellers who visited Niagara generally went there by way of Montreal and Lake Ontario, returning to the seacoast by Presque Isle (Erie, Pennsylvania) and Pittsburg to Philadelphia or Baltimore. Occasionally an adventurous tourist struck out from Albany into the “Back Woods”. Such an one was Lieutenant John Harriott, an Englishman, who visited whatever parts of the known world he could reach and recorded his journeyings in a book with the suggestive title,—“Struggles Through Life, Exemplified in the Various Travels and Adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America”. In June, 1796, he set out from New York on a “tour to view the back lands”. He chose the land route to Albany, going the one hundred and sixty miles in a “coachee” drawn by two horses. Albany he describes as a town of “upwards of six thousand inhabitants, collected from various parts.... It is the storehouse for the trade to and from Canada and the lakes, therefore likely to flourish and the inhabitants to grow rich.” The next morning he set off at half-past five and travelled forty miles by stage through the fertile country of the German Flats, every now and then being obliged to alight and walk for a mile or two as the wagon floundered through a bit of swampy road, or up a steep grade.

Across wet places were bits of log causeways. These were made of trunks of pine and oak trees laid down crossways layer upon layer, regardless of uniformity of size or the comfort of those who might travel over them. This kind of road was called corduroy because it resembled the French cloth of that name. In drier places, the settlers cut down trees on the line of the road. Six or eight oxen yoked to a plough would stir up the soil as deeply as possible, pulling out or displacing stumps or rocks. The cleared surface would then be smoothed over a little and left to be worn hard by travel.

The “coachee” or stage-wagon, in which Harriott travelled over this route, was typical of the region and was not supplanted on this road twenty years later, although by that time more modern ones had been put on the line between New York and Boston, and New York and Philadelphia. The body of the coachee was rather long in proportion to its breadth. It had four seats, each holding three passengers, who faced towards the horses. “From the height of the seat,” writes a traveller of the time, “it is open all round, and the roof is supported by slender shafts rising up at the corners and sides; in wet weather a leathern apron is let down at the sides and back, to protect the inmates.” The wagon had no door; the passengers got in by the front, stepping over the seats as they went backward. It was said that these coaches had no outside seats on top, as did those in England, because the vehicle lurched and jolted so violently that passengers sitting on them would have been thrown off. The heavier boxes and trunks were fastened behind, upon the frame of the carriage, but smaller articles and the mail-bag were huddled under the seats, to the great annoyance of the passengers, who were frequently forced “to sit with their knees up to their mouths or with their feet insinuated between two trunks, where they are most lovingly compressed whenever the vehicle makes a lurch into a rut.” The body of the wagon was suspended upon two stout leathern straps passing lengthwise under it and strongly secured before and behind. When these straps gave way, as they sometimes did, the driver selected a stout rail from a neighboring fence. The passengers by united effort thrust in this substitute for a spring and the conveyance jolted on.

At the end of his first day’s journey, Harriott found that the coach in which he was going to proceed had been overturned and broken to pieces, so that he was obliged to stop three days at German Flats Town. As he continued on his way to Fort Schuyler (Utica) he found himself in a rich country with many new settlers, but as the road steadily became worse and worse, although, as he says, he and his fellow-travellers “alighted safe from broken bones, [they were] most miserably bruised from head to foot.” At Whitestown, he stayed several days watching with interest the allotment of land to settlers and visiting the remnant of the Six Nations, some sixteen hundred in number, all that were left of that fierce confederacy that so long had held this region against the white men.

From this point there was no public conveyance, and Lieutenant Harriott bought a horse and proceeded in company with a young farmer from Massachusetts who was making his third trip westward to conclude a purchase of land on the Genesee River and could therefore serve as a guide. It took the travellers three days to reach Geneva, from which place they journeyed fifty miles to the river and thence to Niagara Falls, seventy miles more through the wilderness following the Indian trails. By making haste, they avoided spending more than one night in the woods. As darkness fell, they made a bed of boughs and kept two fires burning “as a guard against wolves and panthers.” Again gaining the Mohawk, he went down-stream in a bateau, managed by five men, which he hired for the trip. On his return, Harriott wrote that “except for a view of the grand falls,” there was nothing to reward him for the fatigue of the journey.

Fifteen years after Harriott’s visit, John Melish, the map-maker, passed over the same route. He had come from Cleveland, Ohio, and Erie, Pennsylvania, to the Niagara River and the town of Buffalo, which had been laid out about five years previously, but already had five hundred inhabitants and was rapidly growing. The buildings were mostly of wood, painted white, but there were a number of good brick houses and a few of stone. There were four taverns, eight stores, two schools, and a weekly paper in this town, which Melish prophesied would become a great settlement. Already roads were being constructed in all directions, and the Albany turnpike had been brought to within a few miles of the village. As he travelled along, he was surprised to find the country so well settled. The houses were so frequent that the traveller was seldom out of sight of one, and every few miles there was an inn. Lands were all taken up for a mile or so on either side of the road. He constantly met parties journeying westward and from inquiry found that a family of seven could travel in their own wagon at the rate of twenty miles a day, making the journey of six hundred miles from Connecticut to Cleveland at an expense of seventy dollars. The emigrants would carry their own provisions but would stop at the inns to feed their horses and eat their food. In the course of one day’s journey, he met more than twenty families thus proceeding westward.

Stage fares would have made the trip much more expensive. By law these fares could not exceed seven cents a mile, and no fees to drivers were expected. Stage travel was at this time made inconvenient by the number of companies operating only on short sections of the road. Each proprietor took up payment for his own portion of the way,—half a dollar here, seventy-five cents there,—and turned the traveller out of his vehicle when he came to the end of his stretch to wait with what patience he could summon till the next stage appeared.

As Melish neared Utica, the houses along the road were so thick that it was for a considerable way like a continuous village. Yet here as everywhere on the route, back of the neat white houses with their green blinds and roomy verandas, and the fertile, cultivated plots of ground around them, the land would be covered with stumps from one to three feet high, and the smoke of the clearing fires could often be seen in the distance. The expense of the trip from Buffalo to Utica had been ten dollars and ninety-one cents.

Melish had made his journey on horseback, although he met many coaches on the way. In 1819 an Englishwoman describes a trip which she made from Albany to Utica in one of the fifteen coaches that made the trip daily. On her way she met the man who eighteen years previously had carried in his coat pocket the weekly mail between the two towns. She found the journey rough, but her companions good-humored, intelligent, and accommodating. She recommended the stage-coach for the traveller who wished “to see people as well as things,—to hear intelligent remarks upon the country and its inhabitants, and to understand the rapid changes that each year brings forth, and if he be of an easy temper, not incommoded with trifles, not caring to take, nor understanding to give, offence, liking the interchange of little civilities with strangers, and pleased to make an acquaintance, though it should be but one of an hour, with a kind-hearted fellow-creature, and if too he can bear a few jolts,—not a few,—and can suffer to be driven sometimes too quickly over a rough road, and sometimes too slowly over a smooth one,—then let him, by all means, fill a corner in the post-coach or stage-wagon.... But if he be of an unsociable humour, easily put out of his way, or as the phrase is, a very particular gentleman—then he will hire or purchase his own dearborn or light wagon and travel solus cum solo with his own horse.”

This was turnpike travel in the early nineteenth century, and this was the route over which thousands of families made their way to the lakes. For years the tide of emigration went on until the story of western New York was repeated in every part of the region, and the wilderness of twenty and thirty years before became the seat of thriving towns and cities.

CHAPTER XX
THE ERIE CANAL

Since the beginning of the century there had been more or less talk of a canal to connect the Hudson with Lake Erie, and in 1816 the legislature of New York voted to undertake the building of the Erie Canal. The adoption of this plan and its success were due mainly to De Witt Clinton, who set forth in a carefully reasoned memorial the advantages of the proposed waterway. For years thousands of men had been employed in the work, and many difficulties had been met and solved. Commissioners had been appointed to determine the route which the canal should follow and to oversee its construction. They conducted operations in three sections, intrusting the job of digging and filling to contractors, no contract covering any large amount of territory.

The eastern section extended along the line of the Iroquois trail up the Mohawk Valley from Albany to Rome. On this part of the route swift streams had to be crossed, and falls and rapids had to be passed. Where the canal crossed creeks and streams, guard locks were built to keep the water from rushing into the canal and overflowing it. At Little Falls there was such a narrow space between the mountains that rocks had to be blasted to make a bed for the canal, and a wall twenty or thirty feet high, rising from the channel of the Mohawk River, built to support it. Other falls on this section required aqueducts and elaborate series of locks.

The middle section followed the line of trail and turnpike as far as Syracuse, and then went northwards to Clyde and Montezuma. It had the greater part of the “Long Level,” a sixty-nine-mile stretch from a point east of Utica to Syracuse, without any locks. At Montezuma, near the beginning of the third section, the builders came to the edge of the Cayuga marshes, and here they erected an embankment, nearly two miles long and so high that boats were often seventy-two feet above the level of the swamps. At Rochester a great aqueduct was built at the Genesee River. Between Rochester and Buffalo the canal ran for a long distance inside the great ridge which rises south of Lake Ontario, but at Lockport it crossed the mountains. Here was performed one of the most difficult engineering feats of the whole construction. An excavation was made through the three-mile ridge at an average depth of twenty feet, and five great locks were built, each twelve feet high, so that vessels were elevated and dropped sixty feet.

The first surveyors drove along the route of the canal five lines of stakes. The two outer rows were sixty feet apart, indicating the space to be cleared. Between these were two other rows forty feet apart, which indicated the exact width of the canal, and in the middle a single line of stakes marked the centre of the waterway. It was eight years and four months since the surveyors had driven these stakes, amid the mocking laughter of the inhabitants, who thought these dreamers crazy to plant their bits of wood in swamps and forests, on rocky ledges and in watercourses. In spite of swamp fever, which had at one time laid low a thousand men, and in spite of rough tools and almost insuperable obstacles, the three hundred and sixty-three miles were at length completed. By eighty-three locks and eighteen aqueducts, covering a descent of 568 feet from Lake Erie to the Hudson, navigation was made open. Sections of the canal had been in use since 1819, and now, on October 26, 1825, Governor Clinton had started on the first trip along the entire length of the waterway which had long been familiarly known as “Clinton’s Big Ditch.”

The city of Buffalo was particularly rejoiced over this occasion because the western terminus of the canal had long been in doubt and had only very recently been settled in favor of that town over her rival, the present suburb of Black Rock. Buffalo was located on the shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Niagara River. Black Rock was three miles down the river, and had a good open harbor, in which its citizens had recently built a two-mile pier to protect vessels from the waves of the lake and river. Buffalo Creek had a troublesome sand-bar which injured its harbor, and the Black Rock settlers had built their pier in the hope of stopping the canal at their town instead of having it run on to Buffalo. When the canal commissioners came to decide on the terminus, they were of the opinion that the current of the river was too swift at Black Rock, and that the danger from ice and sunken rocks was too great. They would bring the canal to Buffalo if that harbor could be improved. When the public-spirited men of that place heard that, they agreed together that if the canal was brought to their town, they would remove the sand-bar. They clubbed together and on their own personal notes borrowed from the state twelve thousand dollars, a large sum in those days, with which they removed the sand-bar and made a safe harbor.

A new canal-boat, the Seneca Chief, had been built of Lake Erie cedar for the opening trip, and lay moored in the harbor at Buffalo. On her deck were two paintings, one of the scene which was soon to be enacted, Buffalo creek and harbor with the canal-boat moving away along the canal, and the other representing Governor Clinton as Hercules, dressed in Roman costume, and resting from his labors. At nine o’clock in the morning a grand procession formed in front of the court-house and marched to the head of the canal. Governor Clinton and his staff, and a group of prominent New Yorkers who had been closely connected with the furtherance of the project, went on board the Seneca Chief and an address was given. Upon the boat had been placed two new kegs containing Lake Erie water, which was to be mingled at New York with that of the ocean. The Seneca Chief was to be followed by four other canal-boats, and a fifth craft, which was called Noah’s Ark. The last contained, under the title “Products of the West,” a bear, two eagles, two fawns, several fish, and two Indian boys,—the counterparts of the “beasts, birds, and creeping things” of the Bible story.

As four magnificent gray horses pulled at the tow-rope of the Seneca Chief and the vessel began to move, a signal-gun was discharged, and all along the route the cannon that had been stationed took up the sound and passed it on till the news of the opening was carried to New York in one hour and thirty minutes. New York responded, sending the message back to Buffalo in the same time.

Through the Locks at Lockport

At almost every town and village along the route the Seneca Chief was met with exercises, dinners, triumphal arches, and illuminations. So steadily was the party welcomed and fêted that it took them six days to make the journey to Albany. Two or three of the celebrations are of especial interest. At Lockport the boat was greeted by a salute of guns which had been captured by Perry at the battle of Lake Erie, being discharged by a gunner who was said to have fought under Napoleon. At Rochester a dramatic ceremony had been arranged. Rain was falling when the guests arrived, but this did not dampen the inhabitants’ zeal. They assembled in large numbers along the banks of the canal, headed by eight companies of uniformed soldiers. As the boat approached the great nine-arch stone aqueduct over the Genesee River, the Young Lion of the West, stationed there “to protect the entrance,” pushed out from the shore and a voice hailed the Seneca Chief.

“Who comes there?” cried the Young Lion’s spokesman.

“Your brothers from the West, on the waters of the Great Lakes.”

“By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural course?”

“By the channel of the Grand Erie Canal.”

“By whose authority, and by whom, was a work of such magnitude accomplished?”

“By the authority and by the enterprise of patriotic people of the state of New York.”

At this answer the Young Lion gave way, guns were fired, and amid the cheers of the great crowd the flotilla of boats, with Governor Clinton, Lieutenant-Governor Talmadge, and other distinguished men on deck, floated into the spacious basin at the end of the aqueduct. The customary procession and address of welcome were followed by a grand ball and illumination, and the flotilla, increased by the Young Lion of the West with several Rochester gentlemen on board, proceeded.

At Rome, on the 30th of October, the first sign of unfriendliness was encountered. The inhabitants of that place were dissatisfied because the canal did not follow the line of the old waterway laid out by the Western Inland Locks Navigation Company, upon which the village of Rome had been built. On the day when the group of boats left Buffalo, the citizens of Rome had held a solemn mourning assembly, and had marched with muffled drums from the old canal to the new, bearing with them a barrel of water from the old which they emptied into the new. Even this mournful occasion had been closed with an appropriate celebration and feast at the hotel, but no warm welcome greeted the travellers on the thirtieth. At Schenectady rain and a spirit of marked opposition met them because it was believed that the Erie Canal would be the ruin of the town. Hitherto it had been the terminus of the Mohawk River route and of the western stage and wagon lines. The opening of a direct water route to Albany would be fatal to all these interests. Only the students of Union College broke through the general disapproval, and did the honors of the town in the pouring rain. That afternoon, November 2, the boats entered the last lock at Albany, and were greeted by a welcoming salute of twenty-four cannon, followed by appropriate ceremonies.

From Albany the canal-boats were towed down the Hudson by steamer to New York, where great celebrations had been prepared. “Never before,” writes an enthusiastic onlooker, “was there such a fleet collected and so superbly decorated; and it is very possible that a display so grand, so beautiful, and we may even add, sublime, will never again be witnessed.”

Governor Clinton poured the Lake Erie water into the ocean, another gentleman poured in water from several other places, and the waters of the Atlantic and the Great Lakes were pronounced “wedded,” joined in indissoluble union. A procession a mile and a half long, the greatest ever formed in America at that date, marched through the streets, a grand exhibition of fire-works was held, and a ball was given in a room made by the joining of an amphitheatre and a circus building, forming the largest ball-room ever used in America. All about the hall the great names of the canal constructors were blazoned, and in the ladies’ banquet room a boat made of maple sugar, which had been presented to Governor Clinton at Utica, floated in a vessel filled with Lake Erie water. At the end of the celebration the committee from the West departed for home, bearing a keg of Atlantic water, ornamented with the arms of the city of New York and the following words in letters of gold: “Neptune’s return to Pan. New York, 4th Nov. 1825. Water of the Atlantic.” When the committee reached Buffalo with this gift, they held the closing scene of the great pageant, mingling the waters of the Atlantic with those of Lake Erie.

If words, festivities, symbolic ceremonies, and a waterway of commerce could do it, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were united. The importance of the outcome justified the hopes of the canal-promoters. The canal cost nearly eleven million dollars; but the last debts were discharged in 1836. Commerce increased greatly and was immensely benefited, and within twelve years plans were on foot for enlarging the canal, which were soon carried out.

Travellers soon found great pleasure in making their western journeys by canal-boat, and the canal became a thoroughfare of travel as well as of trade. That bright and interesting raconteur, Mrs. Anne Royall, went west by this route in 1827–1828, and left a vivid account of the boats and their method of locomotion. The canal she describes as having a neat railing outside the tow-path, painted white and about four feet high. Within this railing the route was fringed on both sides with beautiful crimson Canadian thistles, which flourished in the sandy gravel. Two kinds of boats passed along this waterway,—packet boats and freight boats. The packet boats, accommodating about thirty passengers, were fitted up with dining-rooms, separate quarters for ladies and gentlemen, and rooms lined with berths, as was the custom in all steamboats of that day. The fare, including board, was four cents a mile; without board, three cents. The prices were thirty-seven and a half cents for dinner, twenty-five for breakfast, and twelve and a half for lodging. Mrs. Royall made her first journey from Schenectady to Utica, a distance of eighty miles, passing through twenty-six locks, in twenty-four hours. The boat was drawn by three stout horses, who proceeded at a brisk trot and were relieved every ten miles by fresh horses and a new driver. Freight boats were drawn by two horses or even only one, and took passengers at the same rate as freight, a cent and a half a mile.

Whenever her boat met another, and this was very often, Mrs. Royall sat in dread of a collision, or at least a tangling of the ropes, but each time they slipped past each other as if by magic. After some watching she saw that the boats going west had the right of way and proceeded as usual, while the boatman of the vessel going east checked his horses till the rope fell for an instant very loose in the water, and the other boat and team could slip over it. The canal was frequently crossed by bridges, which made sitting on the upper deck dangerous; but when they approached one of these obstructions the helmsman called out in a loud voice, “Low bridge!” and the passengers promptly “ducked” their heads. When the tow-path crossed the bridge instead of going under it, the driver swung his team over so fast that the movement of the boat was barely slackened. These boats carried the mails, were widely advertised for traffic and travel, and were met at every important point by stages connecting with the neighboring towns and villages. This method of travelling was recommended by all as far preferable to the jolting, overcrowded stage-coach.

Until 1858 the Erie Canal was the all-important transportation route between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic. Even the coming of the railroad did not take away its trade, and as late as 1862 the ton-mileage of canal traffic was more than double the combined ton-mileage of the New York Central and the Erie railroads. Twenty years later canal tolls were abolished and the canal became a free waterway, maintained and operated by the state. Since the 1862 enlargement there has been no permanent improvement of any importance of the canal until the present day. With the increase of railroad traffic and the hampering effect of the conditions of forty years ago,—even the same style of boats, and horse towage,—the canal has not been able to keep pace with the railroad, and its traffic has gradually fallen off, until it is to-day only two-thirds that of 1868 and less than one-tenth the freight tonnage on either the New York Central or Erie roads.

A committee appointed in 1899 investigated the condition of the canal and advised enlargement of its bed. Their recommendations were approved by popular vote in 1903, and the enlargement is now in progress. The new canal is to be navigable by steam-towed barges drawing ten feet of water and having a carrying capacity of at least a thousand tons, which is four times that of the largest boat in use on the existing canal. The route is also to be considerably changed. River and lake channels are to be utilized in one-half the new part of the route, carrying the canal northward along the line of the Seneca River and Oneida Lake to the Mohawk, and away from Syracuse and Rochester. It is interesting to note that in making use of river and water beds the canal returns more nearly to the route of the old Indian trail. Improved methods of engineering will do away with several locks. At Waterford on the Hudson five locks will take the place of the sixteen now necessary at Cohoes; at Lockport two locks are to be substituted for five. The minimum depth of the channel is to be twelve feet, and the locks are to be at least three hundred and twenty-eight feet long. With all these changes it is estimated that the trip from Buffalo to New York will be cut down from ten days to five, and that a large amount of traffic will turn to the canal as the cheapest and most satisfactory method of transportation.

CHAPTER XXI
THE GREAT LAKES IN 1840

The decade from 1830 to 1840 witnessed a rush of people to the country of the Great Lakes. As pioneers had poured into New York State twenty years before and changed the wilderness into a settled country, so they came now by hundreds and thousands into Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, clearing away the forests and building villages, towns, and cities with amazing rapidity. The common phrase of gazetteers of that day about cities like Toledo, Michigan City, Chicago, and Milwaukee is that in 1830–1834 this place was “dense forest,” or “contained a solitary family,” or “was scarcely known,” but now in 1840 it has from two to three or four thousand inhabitants, as the case may be; and the tale might be repeated in a lesser way for all the villages and towns of the region.

In a few years Buffalo and Cleveland changed from “remote settlements” to the well-built, luxurious eastern gateways through which rushed a swift and ever-increasing flood of emigrants. Mere words or even figures can hardly convey what this movement of population meant to the country. It was said that in 1838 five thousand people left Buffalo in one day to go up the lakes, and the larger part of them went to stay. In 1811 Michigan had only nine principal settlements, with a total population of under five thousand, four-fifths of whom were French; in 1837, when she was admitted as a state into the Union, she had a population of over 175,000, distributed over thirty-one counties, nearly two-thirds of whom were from New England and western New York. Together the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin had come in 1837 to have nearly three million inhabitants.

Another picture of the rapid growth of the country is given in the successive additions to a series of “Travellers’ Guides,” published between 1825 and 1840 by Gideon Davison. He wrote for tourists, not emigrants, and entitled each book “The Fashionable Tour in 1825” or whatever the year might be. In the first edition, published in 1825, he included in the western part of his journey only an excursion from Albany to Niagara, and thence to Montreal and Quebec. Five years later, in the fourth edition, a two-page description of the western lakes was inserted, with a mention of Mackinac and Green Bay, military posts which steamboats from Buffalo occasionally visited during the summer. A footnote announced that steamboats left Buffalo for Detroit every other day, stopping at Erie, Grand River, Cleveland, and Sandusky (cabin fare $15), and a line of boats ran daily to Erie. All description of the lakes is, however, as “the sources of the Niagara, a river inferior in splendor to none, perhaps, in the world,” and the account is inserted to give a more adequate idea of the vast amount of water united in this “stupendous river.” In 1834 the notice of these steamboats which ran every other day to Detroit in forty hours is set in contrast with the conditions of 1811, when a passage from Buffalo to Detroit required from five to seven days, and the traveller was liable to wait ten days for a schooner and a fair wind. In the seventh and eighth editions, of 1837 and 1840, even fashion had come to recognize the lakes. A full western trip on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan is outlined, and steamers are reported to leave Buffalo for Detroit daily in 1837 and twice a day in 1840. Had the editions been continued for fifteen years, a trip to Lake Superior would have been included; indeed, it began to be taken by 1845 by some travellers.

Davison’s guide-books were the most conservative of the many “Companions,” “Directories,” and “Gazetteers with Immigrant Guides” published at that time. Although Davison would not send his tourist so far, there was in all these years a rush of western travel on the lakes. A guide-book of 1825, Davison’s first year, contains an advertisement of the steamboat Superior, which ran between Buffalo and Detroit from April to November, occupying four days each way and landing passengers at Cleveland and the other main settlements “unless prevented by stress of weather.” This steamboat had, besides its principal cabin, a forward room fitted up especially for families moving westward, where nothing but ship room and access to the kitchen was supplied, and the fare was only seven dollars and a half, one-half the regular cabin fare.

A landowner from Boston published in 1838 a little book, “Illinois and the West,” which aimed to give to others contemplating land purchases an account of those of his experiences as a western traveller which might be of value to them. He explained the simple method by which the government divided the new territories and states, and sold lots to newcomers. The whole country was surveyed by five principal meridian lines running due north and south, and intersected by lines running east and west. Parallel in both directions to these main lines ran lines six miles apart which divided the country into so-called townships exactly six miles square. These townships were mere geographical divisions and had nothing to do with the political and social system of villages and towns. Indeed, an actual town might happen to be in two or even three of these paper townships. At the government land offices, of which there were ten in Illinois, were maps on which these six-mile squares were divided in their turn into sections a mile square, and numbered with the section as a unit. The section was not, however, the unit of purchase, but might be cut according to the wish of the buyer and the character of the land into fourths, eighths, sixteenths, and even “fractions” and “excesses and deficiencies” as proved necessary. The latter divisions were only used when the regular system had to be interrupted by old and irregular claims, or streams, or parts of established townships. From the agents the emigrant could buy a sixteenth of a section, or forty acres, for fifty dollars. As the western fever sent the first settlers farther west, partially cultivated farms came into the market, and by 1835 the prices of farms ranged from two to ten dollars an acre, according to the amount of improvement of the property, and by paying the higher prices a newcomer could avoid the first clearing of the land and the erection of a log cabin or frame-house.

Such an opening up of country as came in this decade between 1830 and 1840 attracted many travellers to the lake region. By picturing from their various accounts a “Grand Tour” of the lakes as it was taken by many a person between 1837 and 1843, we can get the best idea of the various settlements. The traveller usually came up the Erie Canal and started from Buffalo, taking from there one of the well-appointed steamers of from four hundred to seven hundred tons which left in the morning and evening for Detroit. This trip would always be taken in the summer, for during the four or five months when the lake was closed Detroit could only be reached by a stage journey of three hundred and seventy miles along the shore of Lake Erie. The towns of Erie, Cleveland, and Sandusky were the main stops between Buffalo and Detroit, but between them was a succession of villages which were just beginning to give signs of their future importance as the terminus of some railroad or canal. The steamer sailed along the southern edge of the lake, keeping always in sight of land, and gave the passengers a good view of Dunkirk, a little village which was waiting for the completion of the New York and Erie Railroad, and of the towns of Portland and Erie. This last-named had always been the point at which to turn southward into Pennsylvania, and was now made all the more important by the termination there of the Pennsylvania and Erie Canal, which connected Lake Erie with Pittsburg. Between Erie and Cleveland, Conneaut, Ashtabula, and Grand River were the principal settlements.

Cleveland had been incorporated as a city in 1836, and was rightly considered one of the most attractive cities of the West. Standing on a plain eighty feet above the surface of the lake, from the steamer’s deck it made a beautiful picture. Above the roofs of the well-built brick blocks and the residences in their carefully laid-out rows, towered the white dome of the court-house, four church spires, and the turrets of its hotels. The hotels of the city were particularly praised by travellers. On the roofs of the two principal ones, the “American” and the “Franklin,” were towers in which sentinels stood on watch day and night, keeping a lookout for vessels and notifying those below of their approach in time to send runners to the wharf to meet the guests. The remarkable growth of the town in the last few years was particularly attributed to its being the terminus of the Ohio and Erie Canal, making it one of the principal routes of trade and travel from the Ohio. Along this canal a side excursion to Cincinnati and Columbus was often made.

From Cleveland the boat proceeded with only two stops, at Black River and Huron, to Sandusky Bay, and steamed past the lighthouse and up the carefully staked-out channel to the town of Sandusky, which was at the bottom of the seven-mile inlet. This town had the fresh, bright appearance of all the recently built settlements, with an added air of substantiality which it owed to the abundance near by of good building material, which had led the inhabitants to erect fine stone residences. After a brief stop the steamer ran out of the bay and northward across the lake to the mouth of the Detroit River, passing on the way the islands near which Commodore Perry won his victory. At the entrance of the strait on the Canada side was the town of Amherstburgh, formerly known as Malden, and the scene of much fighting in the War of 1812. All the twenty miles of shore from here to Detroit were lined with pretty villas and gardens, many of them of the old French style.

To the traveller of 1840 as to the tourist of to-day, Detroit made from the water a most pleasing picture. For a mile along the bank of the river and half a mile back from the water stretched regular avenues with large white houses and green patches of gardens interspersed, and in the centre of the city were the court-house with its dome and turrets, the churches with their tall spires, and the blocks of solid brick business buildings. The low-lying French buildings had disappeared, and with them the French atmosphere of twenty years before. Detroit had become in the last ten years a busy port and thoroughfare for the emigrants who yearly composed one-half or even two-thirds of the city population. Even in 1830 they were arriving by the thousands,—ten, even fifteen thousand in a single season. In May of that year the Free Press of the city announced that besides those arriving by land or by sailing vessels, over two thousand people had come in that one week on the seven steamboats. In 1836 a diligent citizen kept watch of those who came and went, and computed that, in the twelve hours between daylight and dark, a wagon left the city for the interior every five minutes.

The pioneers who had started out from Detroit in 1832–1834 to found Chicago and the other towns beyond, had to go in primitive fashion by mail-coach, by flatboats with Indian guides, by schooner, or whatever conveyance they could get for any part of the way. For the traveller of 1840 there were three regular and established routes by any one of which he would be reasonably comfortable. One was by steamer through the lakes, but this he more commonly took on his return trip. A second was by railroad to Ypsilanti, thirty-three miles away, from which a regular line of stages ran to St. Joseph on Lake Michigan, one hundred and seventy miles across the state, and thence by steamer the remaining ninety-two miles to Chicago. The stages travelled along the government road (about twenty miles north of the present boundary of the state) and found the whole way lined with tiny hamlets and cleared farms in the midst of dense forests. The most common route lay just south of this with Toledo as a starting-point. The traveller would take the steamer down the Detroit River and along the western end of the lake and go up the Maumee River nine miles to Toledo, a town of three or four thousand people, destined, said the guide-book, to be a place of much importance. As by the other route, he could go thirty-three miles by railroad, this time to Adrian, which was as far as the road had been built, and thence across the state through the newly occupied country to Michigan City, Indiana, which was then the “commercial depot” for the entire northern part of that state. This town was soon to be benefited by a branch from Fort Wayne of the Wabash and Erie Canal, which was then in progress and was to find its outlet at Toledo. This route left only a trip of fifty-five miles by water to Chicago.

At Chicago the visitor stopped to wonder, as men have stopped to wonder ever since. The splendid location of the town as a commercial thoroughfare between the lakes and the Mississippi had made it an easy victim to the land-boom of 1834 and 1835, and Mr. Buckingham, visiting there in 1840, was told by persons who had been present at the time that building lots on streets only marked out on paper had been sold over and over again in a day, with an advance of price each time until the evening purchaser was likely, at the very least, to pay ten times as much as the morning buyer of the same lot. Chicago had, however, been able to survive the succeeding panic in 1837, which swamped for the time being several smaller towns. It was now a prosperous trading centre of six thousand people. The town was planned with the symmetry of all these newly built cities, and the streets were of good width with rows of trees separating the plank sidewalks from the main road. None of the streets were as yet paved; and indeed many of them had still the green turf of the prairie grass in the centre. So scarce was stone and so high was labor that a small piece of flagstone pavement around the Lake House Hotel had cost nine hundred dollars,—an extravagance which no one else had yet committed. On the south side of the river were the stores, many of them built of brick, and the main street was a busy trading mart. There were in the city six churches, four hotels, banks, and insurance offices, and along the water front stretched a growing line of warehouses. The fashionable residential district was on the north side of the river, where were avenues of large villas surrounded by gardens. Between the two parts ran a ferry-boat, drawn across the river by a rope, and passing and repassing every five minutes. This was maintained by subscription among the inhabitants, and no fee was therefore charged for crossing.

Chicago in 1831

Margaret Fuller spent the summer of 1843 on the lakes, and left a charming account of her impressions. Chicago she found rather commercial, “with no provision for the student or the idler,” but she recognized its commanding position. “There can be no two places in the world more completely thoroughfares,” she says, “than this place and Buffalo.” They were to her two correspondent valves that opened and shut all the time, as the life blood rushed from east to west and back again. Yet, even in this business place, she saw for the first time in her drives along the lake shore the beautiful prairie flowers of the West. To her the most picturesque sight in all Chicago were the lines of Hoosier wagons, in which the rough farmers who had driven in from the country camped on the edge of the city, living on their own supplies of provisions and seeming as they walked about the town like foreign peasantry put down among the “active, inventive business people” of Chicago. With the characteristically sharp contrasts of this wonderful new land, the other sight which interested her especially was the arrival of the great lake steamers, magnificent floating palaces of six and eight hundred tons, which “panted in from their rapid and marvellous journey” of a thousand miles from Buffalo. When she went out to watch the lights of these boats as they came in at night she heard as she walked along on one side the Hoosier dialect, on another, cultivated French, and the very next moment the sounds of German, Dutch, and Irish. Then as now Chicago was a cosmopolitan city.

Miss Fuller found the boats so comfortable that her trip to Milwaukee was a “pleasure party.” The beautiful situation of this town on a bluff eighty feet above Lake Michigan made a great impression on all visitors. If the other towns had grown up recently and rapidly, Milwaukee could be seen in the very process. With a population of only two thousand people, who were erecting buildings as quickly as they could on newly laid-out broad avenues, it had received in one week from Buffalo three thousand emigrants on their way to the interior, not to mention the numbers which came weekly from Chicago and Ohio. Here, as at Chicago, Miss Fuller was delighted at the gathering of pleasant people drawn from all over the world. The great interest of the town was in its new arrivals. Boats came and went every day, and crowds swarmed down to the pier to meet them. The poorer emigrants who landed were taken to rude “shantees” in a particular part of the town, and then walked off the next morning into the country, “the mothers carrying the babies, and the fathers leading the little children.” She stayed only a fortnight at Milwaukee, but she declares that had she been rich in money she might in that time have built a house or set herself up in business, so swiftly did matters move there.

Leaving Milwaukee Miss Fuller went by steamer, as did all lake travellers, to Mackinac, crossing Lake Michigan and passing near the beautiful western shores of the state of that name. All steamers stopped at Manitoulin Island for wood. They could not carry the very large amount of this fuel needed for their thousand-mile trips without so lumbering the decks as to lose the necessary space for passengers and cargo. So they must stop at this way-place and pay to the twenty wood-cutters who lived there an exorbitant price for wood enough to carry them the remaining one hundred miles to Mackinac. As the engines consumed a cord and a half an hour, the decks, immediately after the taking on of a new supply, were heavily loaded down, so that even the windows of the staterooms were darkened until the piles began to diminish.

Mackinac, or Mackinaw, was out of the path of emigration and had scarcely changed in the last thirty years. Always a centre for Indian traders and American Fur Company buyers, it was doubly picturesque when Margaret Fuller reached there in August, 1843, for over two thousand Indians had just come in from distant villages and made their camps, waiting for trade and for the annual payments made them by the government. Of the beauty of the scenery and of the interest of these constantly arriving Indian parties Miss Fuller could not say enough. She stayed there nearly a fortnight, and made one day an excursion by steamer up to Sault Ste. Marie, where two Indians took her in a canoe through the rapids. To all travellers the days on the Strait of Mackinac were among the most pleasant of the trip, but when the steamer came from Chicago they reluctantly bade farewell to its beauties and sailed down the transparent waters of Lake Huron to the strait which led into Lake St. Clair and across that lake to Detroit, and thence back along Lake Erie, as they had come, to Buffalo.

In taking the “Grand Tour” with one of these travellers, we have gained a picture of the beginnings of the western lake states and of the rapid progress of the eastern ones in a time not remote and distant, but scarcely seventy years ago. The accomplishment of so much in so short a time well deserved the adjectives and encomiums that were bestowed upon it by admiring travellers, who little dreamed of the vast changes that were to take place in the century to come.

CHAPTER XXII
THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD TO LAKE ERIE

Lake Erie became in the nineteenth century the portal of the Great Lakes. To her shores came from the east an army of immigrants pouring into the states beyond, and from these regions, as they became populated, came back an immense volume of produce to be carried to the cities of the east and the south. These conditions led the citizens of the lake shore promptly to adopt any new means of transportation. In its day they had welcomed the turnpike and built many roads into the interior. During the era of canal-building the people of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on artificial waterways. In 1840 five canals over a thousand miles in length, not including their many branches, opened into Lake Erie. The Welland Canal united it with Lake Ontario, the Erie with the Hudson, while the Ohio and Erie connected Cleveland with Columbus and the Ohio and also with the Pennsylvania Canal and thus with Pittsburg; and from Toledo and the Maumee River the Miami Canal went south to Cincinnati, and the Wabash and Erie west to Lafayette, Indiana. This remarkable group of canals had been built in twenty years. No less wonderful was the building of railroad lines in the next two decades; and to us who are accustomed to limited trains and “flyers” the story of the first trains is one of curious interest.

BY CANAL AND RAILROAD TO LAKE ERIE

Ohio and Michigan were progressive in the matter of building railroads. Michigan gave a charter to the Michigan Central in 1830, and in 1832, when there were only two hundred and twenty-nine miles of railroad in operation in the United States, the Ohio legislature granted a charter for the construction of a road from Sandusky to Dayton, a distance of over one hundred and fifty miles. These early dates are rather an exhibition of good intentions and foresight than a measure of actual achievement, for neither road was begun until 1837 and then each was carried but a few miles. All railroad-building about the lakes until nearly the middle of the century was a matter of crude and small beginnings, but it is these very beginnings which make us realize the transformations that have taken place within less than eighty years.

The first railroad to be built in Ohio was the Kalamazoo and Erie from Toledo, Ohio, to Adrian, Michigan. This was later bought up by the Michigan Southern road and was the first link in the route to Chicago, taken, as will be remembered, by our traveller of 1840. It was thirty-three miles long and was a typical early railroad. Seven-eighths of it was built in unbroken forest, and one-third through a densely timbered swamp where malaria and mosquitoes made the lives of the workmen miserable. The track was built of oak stringers, or long wooden beams, upon which were fastened strips of iron five-eighths of an inch thick and two and a half inches wide. These rails were supported by wooden cross-ties placed about four feet apart and resting securely on a heavy foundation of broken stone. The cars were built after the fashion of the body of a stage-coach, or rather of three stage-coaches put together, and were set on a four-wheeled truck instead of directly on wheels, to make it possible for them to swing round on curves. The conductor walked along an outside footboard to collect fares. These cars opened at either end and seated about twenty-four persons, who faced to the front. On the Toledo road a horse track was laid between the rails, and the road was used for one year with horse power. In 1837 a locomotive was purchased and steam power was substituted.

For ten years American builders had been experimenting with types of locomotives and had adopted a pattern which has persisted to this day in its principles, although it has been much changed in details and size. The fore part of the engine was placed on a four-wheeled truck and fastened to it with a bolt, which allowed the truck to swing some distance and thus to round sharp curves safely. The back part rested on four connected driving wheels. An engine of this type had been built in 1836 in Philadelphia, and was speedily adopted elsewhere. It weighed about ten tons when water and coal tanks were loaded, and would seem to us to-day a crude and small affair, but it was better suited to wooden rails than a heavier engine would have been. Passengers paid four and a half cents a mile to be carried on this Toledo railroad at a speed of less than ten miles an hour.

The leisureliness and timidity of the first trains would seem to us amazing, did we not remember how tiny the engine was, how unstable the road-bed, and how loosely the cars were coupled together by bolt and pin. Twenty years after this first road was built one of the printed instructions to engineers was to be perfectly sure before they pulled out of the station that they had their entire train with them and had dropped no cars in starting. At first it was the custom for the engineer to stop the train to collect fares, or for any other urgent business connected with the road. It was many years before the companies dared run night trains. The Michigan Central, which was opened in 1837, found in the autumn of 1841 that its depots were so loaded with barrels of flour and cords of wood that they would not be able to get it all to Detroit before the close of navigation on the lakes. The directors conferred together and hired teams to transport the goods from stations near Detroit to that place. For the long distances they had no alternative but to put one of their four locomotives on for night service, but they considered it unsafe and hoped that such extreme measures would not be necessary in the future. When this road had been opened, four years before, an adventurous young man who owned a sorrel pony announced that he was going to race the train for the last mile before it reached Dearborn. The crowds who had been assembled to see the first train come in were much excited over the competition, and, needless to say, the pony won.

After the completion of these and other short roads there was a lull in railroad-building, due to the hard times in the western country which succeeded the panic of 1837. In 1845 and 1846 the legislatures began once more to plan internal improvements, and a great era of railroad-building began which continued until the opening of the Civil War. In the history of Lake Erie 1851 stands out as the year when three of the trunk lines were completed and their opening fittingly celebrated. In that year the first train came into Cleveland, and with the thought of the hundreds of trains that enter its stations daily, let us put ourselves back into the city of 1851 and watch the first train arrive.

The state legislature had voted to loan to the credit of the city $200,000 for the construction of the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad. In 1851 the road-bed of two hundred and sixty-three miles was completed, and on the morning of February 21 was formally opened by the passage over the road of a party of four hundred and twenty-eight persons, who took the train from Columbus and Cincinnati to Cleveland, the “city of the Lake Shore.” The party was made up of members of the legislature, officers of the state, the councils of both cities, and many citizens. The road over which these people travelled was a very different one from the Toledo road of fourteen years before, and from the number of people accommodated it is evident that the passenger coaches were very different, also. Iron rails had taken the place of wooden ones, and heavier locomotives and more comfortable cars had been built. When the excursion train reached the city of Cleveland, thousands of citizens were lined up along the track and about the station and the cannon of the city boomed out a loud welcome to the incoming guests. The party had arrived late in the day, as it was a twelve-hour journey. The next morning a procession of Cleveland people was formed, with General Sanford as chief marshal, to escort the guests to the public square in front of the court-house, where the mayor received them with a speech of welcome. He was followed by Mr. Convers, speaker of the senate, Mr. Starkweather, who spoke for the people of Cleveland, three gentlemen from Cincinnati, and the governor of the state, Mr. Wood, who was a Cleveland resident. Last on the programme came Mr. Cyrus Prentiss, the president of the Cleveland and Pittsburg Railroad, forty miles of which were also opened that day. This road ran to Ravenna, where passengers could take the canal packet to Beaver River, and there transfer to a steamboat for Pittsburg. Mr. Prentiss invited the guests to take an excursion on that road. After that trip they returned to a banquet and grand torchlight procession in the evening.

In their pulpits on Sunday the ministers discoursed on the wonderful event that had taken place, the arrival of the railroad, and on Monday morning the people gathered from all the region round to see the strange iron horse start back across the state with its load. Just before the train pulled out of the station, one of the visiting party sang a humorous song, describing the effect of the trip upon the interior regions of the state. He told of the delight and astonishment of mothers and children in their log cabins, and of wood-choppers of the back country as they had looked up and seen this “snorting iron horse with the long tail” race through the country. He ended his song with praise of the governor Cleveland had given the state and of Cleveland itself,

“The beautiful city, the forest-tree city,

The city upon the lake shore.”

The opening up of the Venango oil-district in Pennsylvania in 1858 brought to Cleveland a large refining and shipping industry, for which it was well fitted by its advantageous position on the lake and its railroads and vessels.

Two months later a similar occasion took place in the little village of Dunkirk, Pennsylvania, when the New York and Erie road was completed. This line crossed the state of New York some seventy miles south of the Albany turnpike and New York Central route, and with its completion the Great Lakes and the Atlantic were once more united and the occasion was celebrated as if such an idea had never entered the minds of any one before. President Fillmore and Daniel Webster, his Secretary of State, with three other members of the cabinet, came on from Washington and took the trip on the first train over the road. In New York City and all along the way there was great excitement, and in the little village of Dunkirk grand preparations had been going on for weeks. The train arrived at four-thirty on the afternoon of May 15. As it rolled into the station the church bells rang, cannon roared, and a salute of thirteen guns was fired from the United States steamship Michigan, which was stationed in the harbor. The cars passed under a canopy of French, American, and British flags, and beyond the engine at the very end of the track was an arch of evergreen and flowers built over an old plough on which was printed the word “Finis.” This was the plough used to break ground for the first ten-mile section of the road at Dunkirk in 1838.

The distinguished visitors formed in a procession and marched about the town, to be welcomed by the mayor before they entered the huge shed erected for the occasion. Over the table, three hundred feet long, hung two barbecued oxen suspended on poles. Upon the table were ten sheep roasted whole. Bread had been baked in loaves ten feet long by two thick, which it took two men to carry. Even the pork and beans were in tin vessels holding fifty gallons each, and barrels of cider were set at intervals along the side of the table. The presidential party looked, admired, and praised—and then returned to the hotel for a collation, leaving the sampling of these triumphs of the culinary art to the other guests of the occasion.

From the window of the hotel the great men made speeches in the evening, President Fillmore and Senator Douglas leading and being followed by ex-Governor Seward and others. This group was of great interest to the political world as having six presidential candidates in its ranks—Fillmore, Crittenden, Douglas, Seward, Marcy, and Webster. The last-named was to have spoken that night, but he was so hoarse from previous efforts that he could only say a few words in answer to the calls of the people for him, and postponed his speech until the next night. With suitable éclat, the ocean and the lakes were once more “forever united,” this time in very truth, by a service which took only twenty hours in contrast to the three days of the Erie Canal. In the words of one of the banners in the hall, “’Tis done,—’tis done, the mighty chain that binds bright Erie to the main.”

“Bright Erie” was not yet connected as closely as the public might naturally demand, as was shown by the famous Erie war of 1853. On all the roads between what are to-day the great cities of the country there ran one or at most two trains a day. Even on the New York and Erie itself, which was one of the fastest and best equipped in the matter of service, the mail train ran one-half the distance in one day, and then stopped overnight at Elmira before it proceeded on its way. These arrangements made it very necessary that the traveller should make good connections and that the various roads should run in harmony, for each piece was operated by a separate company. Besides this there was another complication. The tracks of different roads were of different gauges or widths, so that the train of one could not by any possibility be run on another. This condition of affairs was particularly bad at Erie, twenty miles beyond Dunkirk, where all passengers had to leave the cars, ride across the town in omnibuses, or walk a mile to the other station, and if connections failed, as they often did, dine or even stay overnight in the town. This state of affairs was satisfactory to the local hotel and baggage men and others who gained from the opportunities offered by a large transfer of baggage and people, but it was very annoying to travellers. The railroad manager of the eastern road decided to alter the gauge of his road and attempt an arrangement by which passengers could be carried through direct to Cleveland. He began by buying up all the stock he could of the other line. This was the pioneer attempt at a railroad merger and resulted in one of the most bitter local wars the country has ever known, involving every one in the region and the people of both states in a protracted and very serious struggle. The issue was complicated and intensified by state and railroad rivalry, but the whole affair began because the people of Erie were unwilling to be made a “way-station,” as they termed it, on a through route and thus lose the commercial advantages of being a terminus for railroads and steamboat lines.

On the morning of December 7, 1853, the citizens of Erie were summoned by the ringing of the court-house bell. Men rushed to the centre of the town to find that the eastern railroad company had begun work at the state line altering their road from their four-feet-ten-inches gauge to the six-foot width of the western railway. As the road ran for a short distance through the street of the town the municipal authorities had refused a permit for change, but the company had begun, nevertheless. After listening to impassioned speechmaking from the court-house steps till it was thoroughly roused, the crowd, led by the mayor, started for the wooden railroad bridge. They found it guarded by employees of the railroad, who were soon scattered by a shower of rotten eggs and other missiles. The mob then attacked the bridge, tore up the tracks and the timber, and returned triumphantly to the city. Two days later a similar mob tore up the track, destroyed the bridge, and ploughed the road at Harbor Creek, seven miles east of Erie. Mob-rule had come in earnest.

It was two months before a single train got through to any point near these places, and it was three years before the matter was finally adjusted. The courts and the state militia became involved. State feeling ran high between Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York over the question of their local gauges, and the press of the whole country took sides in the matter. Passengers and freight had to be transferred during the winter months, when the lake was closed, by wagon from the stop east of Erie to the stop west of that town, a process that was called “Crossing the Isthmus.” But still the Erie people rallied with the watchword, “Break gauge at Erie, or have no railroad.”

Horace Greeley, going west at this time, had to ride the seven miles across the “Isthmus” in an open sleigh through a severe storm of wind, snow, and sleet, and after that the railroad managers and the townspeople were continually denounced in the New York Tribune. “Let Erie be avoided by all travellers,” he wrote on his return, “until grass shall grow in her streets, and till her piemen in despair shall move away to some other city.”

Homes of railroad officers and sympathizers were mobbed by the “Rippers,” as the opponents of the road were called because of their violent methods. The bridge at Harbor Creek was rebuilt by the company four times, only to have it burned or torn down. At last when the whole town was split into bitter factions and all united local spirit was for the time being destroyed, the courts and legislature settled the matter. The railroad company, having made certain concessions to Erie interests, was allowed to change to a compromise gauge of four feet eight and a half inches (that of the New York Central road) and run trains through Erie on what is now a part of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad. The great era of consolidation which was to create our transcontinental lines had begun.

CHAPTER XXIII
LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS IN CHICAGO

In the last years before the Civil War, Illinois became a political storm centre to which the eyes of the whole nation were turned. Reaching farther south than any other lake state, and bounded on the west by the Mississippi River,—the main artery of trade and travel of the south,—she was bound geographically and commercially to the south. But on the other hand she reached north to Lake Michigan, a part of the great system of inland waterways of the North. More than any other state she presented in miniature the condition of the nation, divided thus between north and south. Moreover her settlers, moving westward along the lines of latitude, had come from both sections. With a southern sentiment in those counties that were nearest to Kentucky and Missouri, she combined in her upper counties men from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania with the strongest northern principles. Seeing within her own bounds the elements of the great national conflict, she became a state whose strongest sentiment was for union, for which in the last analysis all her best political leaders stood.

Into this state came Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Arnold Douglas when they were young men, Lincoln from Kentucky after a stay in Indiana, and Douglas from Vermont by way of New York State. In Illinois these two men fought out in the decade before the Civil War the great contest of the two national parties of the time. The campaign of 1858, with its famous series of joint debates between them, was opened in Chicago by speeches of Douglas and Lincoln from the balcony of the Tremont House. In Chicago the National Republican Convention nominated Lincoln for President on the 16th of May, 1860. To a royal welcome in Chicago Douglas returned in the spring of 1861 after his noble and disinterested support of his elected rival and his patriotic efforts for the preservation of the Union. Here within a few weeks he died. Before we pass to the story of these events in Chicago we must learn a little more of the condition of affairs in the lake states during the interval since the War of 1812. Of the growth of their cities and of their great prosperity we shall speak in detail in later chapters. It is sufficient to say that the movement of population, of wealth, and of power into the West had become so great that the Republicans in 1860 considered Chicago the fitting place for their national convention.

Of the definite problems of the great sectional contest, the lake states had a concrete as well as a theoretic knowledge. They were located on the northern frontier of the United States, and they dipped down from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty miles into the south. Inevitably they became the scene of fugitive slave migration. In spite of the strict laws of the United States and the bitter protests of the South, the escaped slave found friends when he slipped over the border into the free states, and was helped by them into Canada, where his safety was assured. Since 1815 there had been a regularly organized system of passing these runaways from one place to another on the northern route, a system which so baffled and mystified the unsuccessful masters in their search that they had given it the name of the “Underground Railroad.” The route through Ohio was the shortest of these lines. Only a little more than two hundred miles lay between the slave states south of the Ohio River and freedom. Along the river were twenty-two or twenty-three stations, and every port on Lake Erie was a point of departure. The five principal outlets were Toledo, Sandusky, Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Fairport, and through these stations there was an ever increasing procession of fugitives. Within this one state it has been calculated that there were nearly three thousand miles of “underground road.” Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois had their roads, converging at Erie, Detroit, Toledo, Michigan City, and Chicago. Such was the anti-slavery sentiment on which Lincoln could rely.

A hasty sketch of the lives of Lincoln and Douglas before their speeches in Chicago in 1858 will show the typical western conditions which had put them in their leading positions. Douglas was forty-five years old, Lincoln four years older. Born in Brandon, Vermont, Stephen Arnold Douglas was the son of a young physician, whose father was Benajah Douglass,[3] a New York pioneer who had moved to Vermont and there been prominent in local politics, and whose mother was Martha Arnold, a descendant of Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island. Dr. Douglass had married Sally Fisk, the daughter of a prosperous farmer. He died when Stephen was very young, and the widow and children went to live with their mother’s bachelor brother on the Fisk farm. Here Stephen lived the life of a healthy Vermont boy until the marriage of his uncle and the birth of a son changed his standing in the family. When the boy began to propose going to Brandon Academy to prepare for college, his uncle told him kindly that he could not provide for his further education. Stephen in a fit of boyish anger left the farm and apprenticed himself to a cabinet-maker in Middlebury. He stayed with him for a year, delighting in the novelty of the life and in the companionship with a group of young men with whom he could discuss politics and eulogize his favorite hero, Andrew Jackson; but, nevertheless, he grew weary of the humble position of apprentice. After two years with this man and with another cabinet-maker, he gave up the trade and returned to the home of his mother, enrolling himself at Brandon Academy.

[3] The elder Douglass spelled his name with a double s.

The marriage of his sister and later of his mother started the boy at the age of seventeen on his westward journeying. It put him into Canandaigua, New York, where he pursued his studies at its excellent academy for three years, and prepared for his later career by studying law out of school in the offices of local attorneys. The western fever was upon him, and life on one of the great channels of westward migration induced him in the spring of 1833, against the wishes of his relatives and friends, to start for Buffalo and the tempting world beyond.

Douglas’s first six months in the new country were marked by hardship and by a serious illness. Lack of funds drove him to teaching in a little Illinois village in place of practising law as he had hoped. Within a year, however, the penniless boy had been admitted to the Illinois bar, by what must have been a very simple examination, and was happily established in a law office in the court-house at Jacksonville, Illinois. From this time on law was subordinated to his chosen pursuit, politics, for which his ready comradeship, his acute intelligence, and his keen ambition fitted him admirably. He filled at astonishingly early ages several minor positions, working his way into the hearts of the people and into the councils of the Democratic party. He was secretary of state for Illinois at the age of twenty-seven, and in that year was also made a district judge. At thirty he was sent as a member of Congress to Washington. Reëlected twice he was promoted in 1847 to the honor of senatorship, and became immediately prominent as chairman of a leading committee. During these years he married a southern lady and removed to Chicago, with whose commercial interests he allied himself closely by investing in real estate, the promise of which he was quick to see.

To Chicago and northern Illinois Douglas rendered a great service by contending for the building of the Illinois Central Railroad through the upper counties of the state to Chicago as a terminal. In this measure, whose passage he secured by making a combination plan with a southern railroad so that the proposed bill contemplated in the future a trunk line from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and thus became a national instead of a local measure, Senator Douglas showed himself more than a state and party politician. There was statesmanlike genius in a plan thus to unite the North and South industrially and socially at a time when the tendency was to separate interests and separate policies. His speech in Congress was one of the first to set forth the power of the Great Lakes and the place of the Mississippi Valley in the national well-being.

Reëlected senator for several successive periods, he became through the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he himself drafted, the advocate of “popular sovereignty,” a phrase which he coined to take the place of the less dignified term “squatter sovereignty,” that had previously designated the principle that each state had a right to decide such questions as slavery for itself. He returned to Chicago in 1854, to be met by a mob who denounced his policy, and immediately threw himself into an active campaign in the hostile counties of northern Illinois. When he came back to secure his seat in the Senate for another term, Douglas had been placed by the course of national events in an entirely new position. Bitterly resenting the trickery which had made “popular sovereignty” a mere name and had given the state of Kansas at the Lecompton convention into the hands of the pro-slavery men, Douglas stood out on the floor of the Senate against his party and declared his opposition to the Lecompton constitution. Revolting against his own party, he was nevertheless representing the sentiment of Illinois and the Northwest, and he returned to Chicago in 1858 to an unequalled popularity.

It was four years since Douglas had been in Chicago,—since the day when he had been met by a storm of abuse and his address had been heralded by the lowering of flags to half-mast and the tolling of bells as for some public calamity. Now an enthusiastic delegation met him at Michigan City and escorted him by special train to his home. As his train entered Chicago it was greeted by the booming of cannon, and every sign of public enthusiasm. Crowds filled the streets and banners waved from the balconies and windows. The whole city was brilliantly decorated; bands of music marched the streets; and in a carriage drawn by six horses and surrounded by a military escort Senator Douglas, “The Defender of Popular Sovereignty,” as the banners proclaimed him, drove to the Tremont House, receiving everywhere a welcome that proclaimed him the idol of his fellow-citizens.

The Tremont House was the finest hotel in the city. The first house of that name had been built in 1832. It had been burned, as had its immediate successor, and the proprietor had erected on the land a fine brick building five stories and a half high, containing two hundred rooms, whose extravagant cost of seventy thousand dollars and whose magnificence the business men of Chicago had been inclined to ridicule as entirely beyond the possible needs of the city at its erection, but which they were now beginning to regard as an evidence of great foresight on the part of its builder. From its balcony Douglas delivered on the night of his arrival the first address of the campaign for the senatorship in which, by the nomination of the Republicans, Abraham Lincoln was to be his opponent.

While Douglas had been carrying off the honors of the Democratic party of Illinois, Lincoln had been rising more slowly to prominence in the ranks of the Whig and later of the newly organized Republican party. With the events of his early life his subsequent career has made every one familiar. He had been a practising lawyer as well as politician, had been several times to the state legislature, and in 1846 had been sent to Congress. Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he had done much to organize the new Republican party in Illinois, and was recognized as its strongest man. He was now unanimously named as “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.” Yet, although known to the Republicans of the Northwest as a lawyer of ability and a political leader, he seemed no match for the popular and well-known senator from Washington.

With Lincoln standing behind him within the hotel, Douglas made on the evening of the 9th of July a long address to the thousands of people who surged in the street below the balcony. This speech was a defence of his Lecompton attitude, and a review of his differences with Lincoln’s propositions, as expressed in his speech accepting the nomination, the famous “house-divided-against-itself” declaration. Douglas was a short, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with great alertness and animation of manner. A traveller from the East who was staying at the hotel recorded her impressions of the two speakers. Of Douglas, she said that in manner he combined force and unusual grace. His head was noble, almost Websterian, his voice pleasant, and altogether he was “a most effective popular speaker.” The next night Lincoln spoke to a large and enthusiastic audience from the same balcony. Because he was not so well-known the writer described him more fully. In person tall and awkward, and in manner ungainly, his face still had such good humor, generosity, and intellect beaming from it that it made the eye love to linger there until one almost fancied him good-looking. As a political speaker she found him ready, humorous, and argumentative, with a gift at telling anecdotes with inconceivable quaintness and effect.

The two candidates had met many times before, and had debated together as early as 1834. Lincoln was not underrated by Douglas as a weak opponent in the campaign. When Douglas heard of his nomination he had said, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party—full of wit, facts, dates—and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”

Immediately after the Chicago speeches the two candidates set out on the tour of Illinois which soon became a three months’ continuation of joint debates. As a result Douglas went back to the Senate, but he went back a weakened man to a divided party. Two years later, while he was being nominated for the presidency by one wing of his party, Lincoln was being nominated for the same office by the Republicans at Chicago.

When it was decided to hold the National Republican Convention in that city, the people set about providing a building for the occasion. At Pittsburg in 1856 a hall for two thousand was large enough. At the corner of Lake and Market streets the Republicans erected a huge oblong wooden building which would hold ten thousand men, and as the event proved it was not large enough by a third, and twenty thousand more clamored in the streets for admittance. This structure was absolutely bare, its walls being broken by two rows of windows, and its two front corners surmounted by small square towers with flagstaffs. Over the door was an arched front bearing the words “Republican Wigwam”. It cost seven thousand dollars and its great virtue was the excellence of its acoustic properties.

Thousands of men came to the city for the convention and the excitement was tremendous. During the first two days of the gathering the time was given up to framing the platform and to other business, and it was not till the third day that the four hundred and sixty-five delegates proceeded to balloting. The New Yorkers were jubilant in their assurance of the success of their nominee, Mr. Seward, and had created the same impression in many circles. As a last demonstration the Seward men held a great parade on the morning of the third day, the 18th of May; but by this act they lost more than they gained, for while they were marching about with bands the Lincoln men filled up the Wigwam, and when the Seward men arrived they had to take back seats.

When the convention was called to order, there was not an unoccupied space a foot square in the building. The three broad doorways were crowded, and outside tens of thousands of men thronged the streets. The excitement was tremendous, and thunders of applause burst forth at the names of Seward and Lincoln. When the delegates settled down to voting, the result of the first ballot was 173¹⁄₂ for Seward and 102 for Lincoln, the rest of the votes going to the six minor candidates. On the next ballot the states abandoned their “favorite sons,” turning to one or the other of the two leaders, with the result that Seward had 184¹⁄₂ and Lincoln 181. Two hundred and thirty-three votes were necessary for a choice. As the delegates were preparing for the third ballot, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Committee entered the hall with a large crayon likeness of “Honest Old Abe,” while Judge Davis followed, carrying on his shoulders a long, moss-covered old rail bearing the legend, “Split by Lincoln.” The dense crowd went wild with enthusiasm.

On the third ballot Lincoln had 231¹⁄₂, Seward 180. One vote and a half more were needed, and there was a moment of breathless silence until the chairman of the Ohio delegation rose and announced the change of four votes from Chase to Lincoln. For a moment the hall was still, and then as every one drew a long breath of relief the sound in the Wigwam was like the rush of a mighty wind. Then the thunders of applause and the shouting broke loose. The man on the roof who had been reporting the balloting to the crowds without leaned over the skylight to find out who had been the man named. One of the tellers shouted above the din, “Fire the salute! Abe Lincoln is nominated!” and outside the waiting thousands took up the cry. So loud was the uproar that men in the Wigwam could hardly hear the sound of the cannon discharged on the roof of the building, or the answering salute of one hundred guns fired from the roof of the Tremont House. Votes were promptly changed over until the number for Lincoln was three hundred and fifty-four, and then the convention adjourned. It had been one of the memorable conventions of the nation, and had been made up of a large number of leading men. Sixty of the delegates were later sent by their respective states to Congress, and many of the members were made governors. A great man had been called to lead the nation through a great crisis.

One more memorable scene in the lives of these two men took place at the Wigwam, which had been rechristened National Hall. To Chicago Douglas returned after war had been declared. With rare nobility and greatness he had supported President Lincoln and the administration in Washington, upholding Lincoln in every way that the leader of a great party, who had polled at the last election over a million votes, could. No leader has ever shown less personal feeling and more true greatness than Mr. Douglas in that crisis. He sank the partisan in the patriot and turned all his energies towards the saving of the Union. With Lincoln’s approval and gratitude he left Washington to arouse the sentiment of loyalty and Unionism in the critical Northwest, and made in April, 1861, a series of addresses along his homeward route, closing with a great plea in the Capitol at Springfield. One who had never admired him, listening now to this speech for the support of the government and the defence of the Union, said that he did not think it was possible for a human being to produce a more prodigious effect with spoken words. Southern as well as northern Illinois was ready after this for the conflict.

As he entered Chicago Douglas was met with a remarkable demonstration. He had come home many times, sometimes for honor and sometimes for abuse, but never to meet the united regard and support of men of all parties and all beliefs. In the Wigwam he made a final address, setting forth to his hearers the situation, and announcing that the critical time was come. “The conspiracy is now known.... There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it.” For the first time he drew the sharp distinction setting the two sides in striking contrast, and calling the people of Illinois to loyalty. The gentle side of his personality made him foresee with dread the horrors of war, and he besought the people to remember that they were a Christian nation and as such they must prosecute the war, saving as far as possible the innocent, the women and children, from suffering.

The Chicago speech was published all over the country, and Douglas supporters recognized that their leader had become the first of the great company of “War Democrats,” of which General Logan and other distinguished men were to be loyal members. In a few days he was taken ill and died at the Tremont House. His last words were a message to his sons to “obey the laws and support the Constitution of the United States.” Chicago, Illinois, and the nation mourned him as a true patriot.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE GREAT LAKES IN THE CIVIL WAR

As the northern frontier of the United States the Great Lakes, although at some distance from the decisive battles of the Civil War, were the scene of strong Confederate activity, especially in the last year of the struggle. In April, 1864, Jefferson Davis sent three men to Canada as “Special Commissioners of the Confederate Government.” They established quarters at Montreal and Toronto, and prepared themselves according to their written and verbal instructions to use in any way possible the feeling of hostility to the administration, which existed in the Northwestern states, and to organize this sentiment into definite opposition to the further prosecution of the war. That was where they began. The most daring Confederate leaders in Canada and the South had dreams of a Northwestern Confederacy which should come into being after a general uprising and should be matched by the Southern Confederacy and an Eastern Union. There were at this time probably one hundred escaped Confederate prisoners in Canada, as well as many Southern men and Confederate sympathizers who had come there when, for some reason, they were better able to serve their cause at this distance.

Talk with Northern men who visited Canada disclosed to the commissioners the fact that there was in all the lake states a large body of disaffected men who did not support the administration. These were divided into two classes: first, the members of secret societies of a political and semi-military nature, of which the “Sons of Liberty” was the leading organization; and secondly, a large number who were actuated mainly by a general weariness and dissatisfaction with the war. Especially in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois the “Sons of Liberty” had great strength. It is difficult to find out the exact figures. In the three states it is thought they may have had one hundred and seventy-five thousand members. Chicago had a strong chapter of two thousand men, which was constantly adding to its numbers. The latter class, of those who were generally disaffected with the situation, was strengthened by Mr. Lincoln’s call in July of 1864 for five hundred thousand more men for the army. Indeed, it was along this line that the secret societies did most harm. When the time for definite action came, these men were not ready to strike a blow against the Union; but the sentiment of the bodies was against volunteering, and by reducing the numbers of ready volunteers they made drafting, with its attendant discontent, necessary in these last years, after these same states had sent out so many regiments of their best sons to serve gallantly on the field.

The first project of the Confederates on the Canadian frontier was to liberate all Confederate prisoners in the North, and in this purpose their hopes centred in Chicago, for here there was a great prison with thousands of men in confinement. Camp Douglas had been laid out in the summer of 1861 as a camp for military instruction. It was located on land belonging to the Douglas estate, just north of the grounds of the first Chicago University. In this region, where stands to-day the Douglas monument, no streets were then laid out, but the whole was open prairie, save for the little University building erected four years before, and one solitary residence. The camp was first used as a military station, but in February, 1862, after the battle of Fort Donelson, it was hastily prepared for the reception of prisoners and eight or nine thousand Confederates were placed there. Temporary quarters were erected to hold them, but the barracks became so crowded that the United States regiments were obliged to encamp in tents on the prairie. During this year Camp Douglas served as military prison for seventeen thousand Confederate prisoners and furnished barracks as well for eight thousand paroled Confederate troops. In 1863 it was much improved by a thorough rebuilding which followed a season of inclement weather, when the unsanitary and crowded conditions made the men, already weakened by exposure and army life, a prey to all kinds of disease. It was in the fall of this year that many dramatic escapes were made, the prisoners taking up the floor of their barracks and digging gradually at night and during the absences of the guards a long tunnel large enough for one man to crawl through to the open land beyond the camp fence. On a dark night eight or ten men would make their way out, watching from the outer end of the tunnel to escape between the rounds of the sentinel. During November some seventy prisoners made their escape through a tunnel over fifty feet long, of whom fifty were afterwards recaptured. The next year the prisoners’ barracks were raised four feet above the ground to prevent such escapes.

It was no wonder that the thoughts of the Canadian Commissioners turned to this prison. During the year 1864, seventy-five hundred men came to join the five thousand already there, and in spite of the large death-rate that summer from smallpox and other contagious diseases, this was a body of men who, if liberated, could do great things in the Northwest.

All summer the leaders of the movement tried to get their Northern sympathizers to move, but the “Sons of Liberty” set as the first possible time for action the 29th of August, the date of the meeting of the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. At this time, and under the guise of politics, large numbers of men could be introduced into the city without suspicion and it was hoped that the sentiment of the convention would be one of strong disaffection to further prosecution of the war. Captain Hines, one of the leading agents of the Confederacy, and sixty picked men were ready to head the movement; arms had been brought into the city, and the prisoners had been notified to be ready; but the rank and file of the prospective army did not materialize. The government had got wind of the project and had sent extra troops to the city. These amounted to only a thousand men, but the convention was not so rabid in its opposition as had been hoped, and when it came to the moment the “Sons of Liberty” were not ready to strike the decisive blow, and the leaders were soon convinced that the time was not ripe. They could not count on a sufficiently large number of Northwestern men for their support, and without them they could do nothing.

The next step in the programme of the disappointed Commissioners was to capture the war steamer Michigan, the only armed vessel on the lakes, which was now at Sandusky, and to release the Confederate prisoners on Johnson’s Island within that inlet. The Camp Douglas scheme had been to march southward through Illinois to the support of the Southern army. The present plan was to go by steamer from Sandusky to Cleveland, capture that city, and proceed through Ohio to Virginia. The plot was worked out to its last detail. Every signal was arranged. There were conspirators in the city and on the island, and even on the gunboat itself. But the plan was disclosed by a spy to the lieutenant-colonel at Detroit, who telegraphed an instant warning to the commander of the Michigan, and Cole, the leader in this part of the plan, was taken. Mr. Beall, who was to bring men from Canada, received no word of this misadventure, but proceeded to execute his share of the scheme. To disarm suspicion the first of his party, a Mr. Burley, took passage on the steamer Philo Parsons, a merchant vessel plying between Detroit and Sandusky. Mr. Beall and two others embarked at Sandwich on the Canadian side of the river, and sixteen men came on at Amherstburg. This last party embarked in worn and ragged garments, passing as tramps who had gone to Canada to better their fortunes, but without success. Their only baggage was one great old-fashioned trunk tied with ropes. After the steamer left Kelley’s Island, outside Sandusky Bay, Beall announced to the mate in a loud voice that he hereby took possession of the boat in the name of the Confederate States. As he spoke his followers opened the trunk and pulled out a formidable array of revolvers and hatchets which they brandished about. The crew and passengers had no choice but to surrender. As the boat needed fuel Beall had it put about and headed for Middle Bass Island, ten miles from the Ohio shore and about the same distance from Johnson’s Island. Here the passengers were set on shore and another steamer, the Island Queen, was boarded as she came up to make her usual landing, and taken possession of with much uproar and some shooting. Her passengers were also landed after a time of suspense on their part, and she was towed out into the lake, scuttled, and set adrift to sink where she might.

Beall again headed the Philo Parsons for Sandusky Bay and the gunboat Michigan, but when he reached the inlet there was no sign of the signal lights and rockets which were to have guided him. It was bright moonlight, and the conspirators could see the lights on the gunboat, and even the outlines of her dark hulk, but all was quiet and peaceful. Then seventeen of Beall’s men declared that they would go no farther. No one of the expected signals had been shown; Cole had evidently failed, and they did not mean to rush blindly into battle with a gunboat already warned of their approach. The steamer was brought to a stop and Beall and his assistant, Burley, urged the men on, but in vain. The seventeen men drew up and signed a formal protest, in which they stated that they as a crew would here express their admiration of John Beall, both as captain and military leader, but being convinced that the enemy was already apprised of their approach and so well prepared that their attack could not possibly succeed, and having already captured two boats, they declined to prosecute the enterprise further. Beall and his two supporters had no alternative but to head about for the Detroit River. He landed several prisoners on an island in the river, among them the captain of the Island Queen, and then went on to Sandwich on the Canadian shore. He and his men removed everything of value from the Philo Parsons, bored holes in her keel and sides, and left her to sink, while they made their escape into the interior.

This bold attempt caused great excitement on the northern borders of the United States and in Canada. The British government redoubled its watchfulness, and the United States sent detectives across the lakes to keep a close lookout on the Canadian ports. So successful was this care that the next expedition planned by Beall within a few weeks failed utterly. He was to start with a vessel from Canada, capture the American steamers in Buffalo harbor, take the city if possible, and then proceed to Cleveland and to the prisoners at Johnson’s Island. The Confederates were so closely watched that they could not even get arms or supplies on the boat.

September had seen these two attempts on the lakes. The next step was the famous St. Albans raid, when Confederates descended from Canada into Vermont, and in a half hour tried to fire the town, robbed the banks, shot at the citizens, and were gone again, leaving consternation in their wake. The whole frontier was aroused by this time. The citizens of the lakes became alarmed for their business and commerce, fearing that such attempts would paralyze trade. The convention of 1817 with Great Britain had limited the naval force on the lakes of each of the two nations to three armed vessels, neither fleet to be increased without six months’ notice to the other power. On October 24, four days after the St. Albans raid, the British were notified that the United States would now deem themselves at liberty to increase the armament within six months if in their judgment the condition of affairs should require it. Congress in December authorized the construction of six revenue cutters on the lakes, but the war was fortunately drawing to a close and no further action was taken.

The Canadian officials made up their minds that there should be no more open raids to cast reproach on the neutrality of their government, but the Confederates were becoming more desperate as the end of the struggle drew near. They had not given up their hopes in Chicago, but now set the night of election day, November 8, for an attempt on Camp Douglas. The plan of the leaders, as they afterwards confessed, was to attack Camp Douglas, releasing the prisoners, to seize the polls, and stuff the boxes until the city, county, and state were for McLellan, the Democratic candidate, and finally to “utterly sack the city, burning and destroying every description of property, except what they could appropriate for their own use and that of their Southern brethren—to lay the city waste and carry off its money and stores to Jefferson Davis’s dominions.” Colonel Sweet, commanding at Chicago, was warned of this plan by United States detectives so early that he was able to break up the conspiracy without open bloodshed. When, on November 6, the city began to fill up with suspicious characters, especially the leaders of the August gathering, and it became evident that the Confederate sympathizers would soon outnumber the small garrison at Camp Douglas, Colonel Sweet caused the arrest of Colonel St. Leger Grenfell and fourteen other Confederate officers, and also the heads of the “Sons of Liberty.” This completely broke up the conspiracy.

Two more attempts were made by the Confederates from Canada, one to burn New York City, and the other to wreck trains on the lake roads. The Confederate Commissioner, Thompson, received word in December that seven Southern generals were to be moved from Johnson’s Island to Fort Lafayette, New York. He detailed Beall and ten others to take the train and release them. They were to stop the train at a lonely place between Sandusky and Buffalo by putting rails across the track, and to secure the engineer and conductor. While Beall and a few men went to secure the money in the express safe of the train, others were to arm the generals and intimidate the passengers. The coaches were to be detached, the engine derailed, and then the Confederates were to take such money as they would need, get into sleighs, and scatter over Ohio and Pennsylvania, while the leaders drove to Buffalo and caught the train to Canada. The detectives discovered their plans, and Beall and his companion were arrested while they were asleep in an eating-room near the place of the proposed attack. When the others failed to find their leader, they hastened to escape to Canada.

Beall was tried for this and other similar deeds, and for his capture of the Philo Parsons and the Island Queen, and sentenced to be hanged for his conduct as a spy and for carrying on irregular and guerilla warfare against the United States. The Camp Douglas leaders were also tried by military courts. St. Leger Grenfell was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to imprisonment for life in Florida, from which he escaped three years later. The other leaders received sentences of imprisonment for terms of two, three, and five years. Camp Douglas had in 1865 nearly twelve thousand men in its barracks, but at the close of the war these were gradually sent to their homes, the property was sold, and the buildings torn down.

CHAPTER XXV
THREE GREAT INDUSTRIES OF THE LAKES

No part of the story of the Great Lakes is more significant than the tale of the building up of the large enterprises that have made that region one of the leading centres of production and consumption in the United States and the world. The heroes of exploration and of adventure were the forerunners of commerce, and the founders of cities were the leaders of industry. Two of the three great industries of the early days have persisted to the present time; all three of them have contributed largely to exploration and occupation and deserve to be treated somewhat in detail.

Washington Irving has well said that two leading objects of commercial gain have given birth to wide and daring enterprise in the early history of America. The precious metals led the Spaniard to Mexico and Peru, while, as he puts it, the “adroit and buoyant Frenchman” and the “cool and calculating Briton” pursued the “less splendid, but no less lucrative traffic in the rich peltries of the north.” The pioneer fur traders were followed only after many, many years, by what Irving has characterized as “the slow and pausing steps of agriculture.”

Apart from the land which agriculture might in times of settled peace make profitable, the white man found three great natural sources of wealth. These were animals bearing fur of great value, enormous deposits of copper and iron, and primeval forests filled with trees suited to the uses of civilized man. Profits from these financed many an enterprise, from the earliest voyages and the building of the Griffon to the days of the railroad and the “Soo” Canal. For two centuries, from 1634 to 1834, the fur trade was the leading interest and source of profit of the Great Lakes.

During Champlain’s governorship the French, through Nicolet, first opened an active system of trade and barter with the Indians of the lakes, and the history of French control thereafter is the history of the fur trade. It paid the bills of many of the voyages we have chronicled. In 1660 Radisson and Groseilliers returned to Quebec from their Lake Superior voyage with sixty canoes loaded with furs valued at two hundred thousand pounds, in return for which they had distributed among the Indians kettles, graters, awls, needles, tin looking-glasses, ivory combs, and knives. Even the official expedition of Saint Lusson to take possession of the Northwest for France was to be paid for by gifts to the Indians and return offerings of fur.

The fur trade of the Great Lakes supported not only those who took up their dwelling on these shores, but the struggling settlements of Canada as well. It kept up home interest in the support of these colonies by the rich profit that it brought across the seas. In 1703 La Hontan wrote that Canada subsisted only on the trade of skins and furs. The profits and the fascination of this pursuit robbed Canada of its young men while it supplied it with money. An official reported, in 1680, that eight hundred men out of a population of ten thousand had vanished from sight into the wilderness, and that there was not a family of any condition or quality that had not children, brothers, uncles, or nephews among the traders. There came to be in the woods a distinct class of men known as coureurs de bois, or rangers of the forest, who had escaped from the restraints of civilized life and reported themselves only once or twice a year at the trading posts.

The government tried to stem the rush of young men into the wilderness by requiring licenses for trading with the Indians and limiting the number to seventy-five a year; but the country was too large and remote and the government too feeble to carry out any such policy. In the end the rulers turned their attention instead to providing fortified trading posts for these wanderers, first to afford defence against the Indians, and more especially to concentrate and monopolize the trade, protecting it from the rival Englishmen. These forts also made a claim of possession in the regions which they commanded. Thus Mackinac, Detroit, Niagara, Green Bay, Oswego, and a dozen minor posts sprang up.

Travellers of the eighteenth century were likely to meet on any one of the lakes fleets of fifty or sixty canoes, heavily laden with beaver, otter, mink, and marten skins, and paddled by Indians in their paint and feathers, or by hardly less picturesque coureurs de bois in their blanket coats, leathern moccasins and leggings, and scarlet sash and cap. These men were no mere traders whose knowledge was limited to prices and profits. They were experts not only in the science of the woods but also in the arts of diplomacy. The success of the trade depended on the maintenance of peace between the various Indian tribes and groups of tribes; and the life of the individual trader, as well as his earnings, depended on his own adaptability. There came in time to be leaders to whom the most difficult negotiations with the Indians were left. Daniel de Greyselon Du Luth, a prince among coureurs de bois, was the chief hero of the early French period in the upper country. In the summer of 1679 he made a tour of Minnesota, planting with all ceremony the arms of France in the leading Indian villages, many of which he was the first Frenchman to visit. At the end of the summer he held on the shores of Lake Superior, near the site of the present city of Duluth, a great Indian council of chiefs from all these villages, and negotiated a treaty of peace. The city that bears his name may well be proud of the fact that after ten years among the Indians he entered a written protest, still preserved in the archives of Canada, with his disapproval of the sale of whiskey and brandy to the natives. These leaders were very important to the success of the administration in Canada and were relied on and treated with all respect. Their names were even sent across the ocean, as we see in the laconic but warm commendation of Du Luth sent by the Governor of Canada in his colonial report of 1710: “Captain Du Luth died this winter; he was a very honest man.”

After the fall of New France, a time of chaos followed in the wilderness. With the restraint of the strictly enforced code of French rule removed, with a host of French traders in the woods who did not yield to British control, and with an opportunity for rivalry and ill-feeling between every two traders, Indians as well as white men became demoralized and the profits decreased greatly. Then twenty-three merchants of Montreal formed the Northwest Fur Company (1783) and took into their employ two thousand French and other fur traders. They traded with the Indians of the Northwest, with Mackinac as a centre. A rival company soon started competition in the southern region of Wisconsin, Illinois, and the Mississippi Valley. A careful statement concerning the British trade was sent to the authorities in Canada in 1790, when the possible future evacuation of the southern shores of the lakes was beginning to be considered. By this estimate the average produce of furs and skins amounted for ten years to two hundred thousand pounds a year. How this was distributed among the various lake posts is shown in the following table:—

Statement concerning Trade at Detroit and Other Posts

Pounds

The whole Country & Posts below Montreal

30,000

The Grand River, the North Side of the Lakes Ontario, Huron, & Superior

30,000

In the Country generally called the North West

40,000

In the Countries to the Southward of the Lakes, the Trade of which is principally brought to the posts of Detroit and Michillimackinac, there being very little Indian Trade at Niagara

100,000

As above

£200,000

Dividing this general estimate into smaller districts, the estimate was as follows:—

In the District of the Garrison of Detroit

Packs

The Fort of Detroit, Sagana & the South Side of Lake Huron

1000

Miamis & Wabash Country

2000

Sandusky

400

Say | 3400 | packs of
Furrs estimated at 12£ each is | £40,800

In the District of Michillimackinac:

On Lake Michigan

Packs

The Grand River

100

St. Josephs

300

Checago

100

Milwaki

120

La Bay or Green Bay, including the upper ports of the Mississippi, the South Side of Lake Superior

300

The Illinois Country

600

Say | 3220 | packs of
Furrs estimated at £20 each | £60,400
Total of the two Districts | £101,200

This estimate was sent to the colonial office to show that if the lake posts were ceded to America, at least half if not seven-tenths of the Indian trade would be lost.

The Americans were not ignorant of this great opportunity for trade. When the lake posts were evacuated by the British in 1796, they began to take a hand in the competition. The United States government sent out agents, and John Jacob Astor found a field for his business enterprise. In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and two years later he bought out the Mackinaw Company and the Northwest Company south of the boundary line. His plan to unite the Pacific and the Great Lakes failed for the time being, and the War of 1812 interfered with his schemes; but his organization of the lake trade did its work in turning the stream of profits southward of the border and Americanizing Lake Superior.

The settlements built up by the fur trade were unique and amazing when we consider their isolation in the midst of the wilderness. With Mackinac under French rule we are somewhat familiar, having visited it with La Salle and Saint Lusson. At Fort William, at the western end of Lake Superior, the British merchants built an establishment that reminds one of the feudal castles of the Old World. In 1805 the Canadian companies awoke to the fact that the old Grand Portage, the former gateway of the North, was on territory claimed by the American government. They promptly demolished their old fort there, and built Fort William, forty-five miles north of the portage. There they established a village surrounded by a high palisade, within which stood a big central building, a counting-house, a doctor’s residence, stores for merchandise and depots for furs, workshops for mechanics,—carpenters, coopers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and canoe builders,—boarding-houses for traders, a powder-house and guard-house, and not the least necessary of the many buildings, a jail. Outside the palisade was a long wharf, a ship-building yard, a cemetery, and a considerable line of log houses and Indian wigwams.

The great feature of the settlement, however, was the central building. This wooden edifice stood in the middle of a spacious square and had a long balcony, five feet from the ground. In the centre, flanked by rows of apartments, was a great dining hall, sixty feet long by thirty wide, where two hundred agents, partners, clerks, interpreters, guides, and visitors could dine. Across the upper end of the hall was stretched a very large map of the Indian country, with all the Northwest Company’s posts and routes from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay and the Pacific,—probably the only accurate map of that region on the continent, save for its smaller copies in the factories themselves. Along the sides of the room were portraits of various proprietors of the company, a bust of Simon McTavish, a pioneer member of the company and long its head, a full-length portrait of Nelson, and a painting of the battle of the Nile.

To this post came every spring from Montreal two of the directors of the company, with a retinue of cooks, bakers, clerks, and attendants, and in the great hall from the last of May to the end of August there was always high carnival of feasting and merriment. In this room, too, were held the parliaments of the fur trade, when with all solemnity the Scottish chiefs regulated the affairs of the company and shrewdly made their bargains and estimated their earnings. About them gathered a host of traders, coming every day out of the bleak wilderness to enjoy the good cheer of this metropolis of the Northwest and spend their hard-earned gains in the short summer holiday; and with these came a legion of half-breeds, Indians, and hangers-on. It was a picturesque and motley throng. Ross Cox, visiting there in 1817, found natives of every part of the British Isles, of France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland, and, in the capacity of servants, of Africa, the Sandwich Islands, and Bengal. “In their features,” he says, “all shades of the human species,—in their dress, all the varied hues of the rainbow.”

If the paddle and moccasin of the fur trader had been the pathfinder for the lake region, the axe of the lumberman and the pick of the miner who followed them opened up and cleared the wilderness. The fur trader had discovered and explored the wilderness. He was driven out by the lumberman and miner, who spoiled his field with such speed that in a decade or two fur trading as a leading industry was banished to more distant regions. The newcomers made a place for their successors, the pioneer farmers and settlers, by clearing and preparing the country. Extensive lumbering and mining operations came only with the Americans. For two hundred years the French and English tried to keep the western part of the lake region a wilderness and preserve for hunting. The French did it by instinct, for they preferred the wild, free life it offered them; the English did it by policy. In the Parliament of Great Britain leading legislators argued for the restriction of immigration, so that the hunting-grounds should not be disturbed. By a royal proclamation of 1763 the valley of the Ohio and the country about the Great Lakes was declared closed to settlement or purchase of land without special leave or license. A forest preserve was created, and the northwest country was designated by the English “the habitation of bears and beavers.” Only with the coming of the Americans was the lake region developed, and the first signs of the approaching civilization were the cutting down of forests and the mining of copper and iron deposits.

Two great divisions are recognized in the forest distribution of the United States,—the Atlantic and the Pacific. These are separated by the great interior plains and prairies of the continent. The line of cleavage between timber land and prairie is nowhere so defined that it does not have inlets of prairie land in the forest region, and stretches of wooded land in the plain, but the Mississippi River is in general the western boundary of the Atlantic forest area, and the states of the Great Lakes are all included in this section. Within this eastern forest there are several belts of different kinds of woods. Two of these are in the lake states. The northern belt, largely of white pine mixed with red or Norway pine, stretches from New England across New York State and northern Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and the eastern part of Minnesota, and is broken only by Lake Erie. This tract has been the chief source of supply for the United States. South of this white pine belt runs a central hardwood section, where are particularly valuable forests of hickory, maple, oak, and walnut. This section extends from Niagara eastward into New York, and westward across the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As it was in the natural line of migration both from the rivers of the south and the lakes of the north, this central belt was cut long before the pine sections were touched. It fell out in this way, therefore, that for three-quarters of a century these states have been in the main agricultural, rather than forest lands.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have had a long history of lumber prosperity. The first railroads of Michigan were welcomed by the settlers as a means of transporting lumber from the logging-camps and sawmills that were springing up all through the central part of the state. The northern industry was taken care of by the lake vessels, which took the lumber from the ports on the shore through the straits of Mackinac. Lake Superior, which had long been a centre for the shifting fur trade, was settled permanently for the first time by the men who were brought by lumber interests. The Mackinac region, the Saginaw and St. Croix rivers, and many smaller streams became the scenes during the winter months of a busy and picturesque activity, and have been associated ever since in fact and fiction with the romance as well as the profit of the lumber industry. As Rochester in the East had begun with a sawmill, so Duluth and Superior in the West came into being as supply stations for the rivermen, and their prosperity depended in 1870 so largely on the lumber traffic that the contest over the railroads, which each place wanted on its side of the state line, was determined by the interests and preferences of the lumber kings.

No accurate record of the entire amount of lumber produced was made in the first decades of the industry, but in 1890 Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were cutting more than one-third of all the lumber supply of the United States, and to this Michigan contributed one-half the amount credited to the three states, and one-fifth of the whole product of the country. Four-fifths of Michigan was then reported to be forested,—a record leading that of any other state.

As early as 1850 the Michigan lumber business was so large as to attract attention throughout commercial centres of the country, and it grew with the amazing rapidity of all western development. In 1854 there were in the state sixty-one sawmills with an output of 108 million feet; in 1872 there were fifteen hundred sawmills, to say nothing of all the other activities incident on lumbering, such as making shingles and planing. By 1881 the amount had jumped to nearly forty million feet, and it was calculated that the output of Michigan mills that year would have loaded a train of cars nearly twenty-five hundred miles long.

These figures have come from the western states, but here as everywhere else the cities and states of the lakes show their interdependence. Buffalo, at the eastern extremity of Lake Erie, becomes one of the leading lumber markets of the world by reason of the immense shipments that come to it from the upper lakes. In 1907 Buffalo had one hundred and thirty-two lumber firms, and an annual output from her yards of over two hundred million feet of pine and over one hundred and fifty million feet of hardwood. This product was made up of the best species of pines, sought for by all dealers, and the hardwood embraced every known variety of American trees.

It is beginning to be evident that this pace cannot be kept up without exhausting the forests. In 1903 the cut from the three northern states was not fifty million feet, a smaller cut than any year since 1878 and hardly more than half that of 1890. To the danger involved in reckless cutting without reforesting our people and legislators have become aroused, and these states are matching their past leadership in output by a corresponding activity in protecting their forest areas. Minnesota led in having an effective system of fire-wardens, and each state is creating forestry commissions and buying up preserves. In thus rescuing from destruction our forests no one can be too prompt or too energetic. Less than a hundred years of occupation of the lake region must not wipe out this industry or destroy the natural beauty and resources of the country. The fur trade had to go before the advance of civilization; the lumber industry must not be allowed to follow in its wake.

The fur trade was at its height in 1820 and was seriously on the wane by 1835; the lumber industry was of a size to be reckoned with by 1830; in the next decade, between 1840 and 1850, the mineral industry came into existence. The earliest explorers had known of the presence in the Lake Superior region of large deposits of virgin copper. References are made to these deposits in the Jesuit “Relations.” The first attempt at mining was made in 1770 by Alexander Henry, the trader at Mackinac, after the Indian wars were over, but he was not successful.

With the coming of the Americans, copper mining began in earnest. Indeed, it was said by a friend, who told the story twenty years after the conversation, that Benjamin Franklin told him that when he was drawing the treaty of peace in Paris he had access to the journals and charts of a corps of French engineers who had been exploring Lake Superior, and that he drew the line through Lake Superior to include the best and largest supply of copper in the American possessions. “The time will come,” said Franklin, “when drawing that line will be considered the greatest service I ever rendered my country.”

Copper and silver were the minerals whose discovery created the most enthusiasm, and several companies were formed for their mining in the thirties and forties after the expedition of Governor Cass. Of these at the time of the Civil War only two were paying dividends. In 1865 the Calumet and Hecla mines were started and began to develop that part of the rich upper peninsula of Michigan known as Keweenaw Point. From that time the mines have sent out yearly thousands of tons, and millions of dollars are realized every year from them. Until 1880, when copper was found in Montana and Arizona, Michigan was the only source of supply in the United States, and sent out five-sixths of the nation’s whole product. Since that time her output has trebled, but owing to the great increase of mining in the West this tremendous tonnage of copper is to-day only one-fourth of the total, although still a most important factor in the contribution of the lake region to the wealth of the country.

An Early Lake Superior Copper Mine

The presence of iron ore in the Lake Superior country was hardly suspected until after 1840. All companies were formed to mine copper, silver, or gold. The state geologist made no mention of iron in his first report in 1840, but in September, 1844, a party of government surveyors running the lines of a township twelve miles west of Marquette, noticed the deflection of their compass needle. The party was under the leadership of Mr. Burt, the inventor of the solar compass, and he was overjoyed to find his instrument working according to his predictions. The deflection was so great that he summoned his party and sent them out in all directions to search for the iron which he was convinced must exist in large quantities in the near vicinity. Every one of them returned in a short time with specimens of the ore. Thus was discovered the first of the famous ranges that to-day produce one-third of all the iron mined in the United States.

At the time of the discovery of iron deposits there were not over fifty people in Marquette County. Expeditions were fitted out in each succeeding year, and companies began to operate the mines. They worked against great natural obstacles in the remote wilderness. It is hard for us to realize how far out of the world this country seemed at that time. When Michigan was admitted as a state in 1837, the reception of the upper peninsula in compensation for a cession to Ohio of the well-known Toledo tract was regarded with the greatest dissatisfaction. The “State Gazetteer” of that year spoke of the new possession as a wild tract of twenty thousand miles of howling wilderness, while one of the political songs of the time told with scorn how the people were being coerced into trading away the southern land for “that poor frozen land of Michigan.” Within twenty years that sentiment underwent a swift and radical change.

The first companies struggled along in the wilderness carrying their ore to a forge on the Carp River, bringing it first by Indian trail and then by wagon road twelve miles down to the waterside, where it was loaded on sailing vessels by being put on wheelbarrows and rolled up a steep plank. In 1852 the Marquette Iron Company shipped six barrels by this laborious method to Cleveland, which was the first ever received from Lake Superior. The first considerable shipment was one of five thousand tons three years later. Then the great panic of 1857 stopped people for the time being from venturing their money in new and unproved enterprises; but the Civil War created a great demand for iron, and from that time the industry has flourished.

When transportation facilities were needed, the “Soo” Canal was built, and at that very time Mr. Heman B. Ely began an agitation for the building of a railroad in this region. Owing to his influence and under his direction the Iron Mountain Road was built from Marquette to the shore of Lake Superior, the first road in the whole northern country. Mr. Ely was well known in other lake states, as well as being one of the leading pioneers in the north. He had built the first telegraph lines from Buffalo to Detroit and from Cleveland to Pittsburg, had been president of a railroad company at Cleveland whose holdings were the foundation of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and was director of the Northern Pacific. He was in all his activities a leader to whom the Great Lakes owe much. Railroads built during these years in Ohio and Pennsylvania helped to solve the problem of iron transportation, while the freight traffic in iron ore helped these young roads to live. The enormous demand for iron, due to the great era of railroad building, made furnaces spring up in the Cleveland, Mahoning, and Shenango valleys, and the Michigan industry was fairly launched.

For a long time only the Michigan and Wisconsin ranges were worked, but in 1875 presence of large deposits in the Vermilion Range of Minnesota was brought by Mr. George Stone to the attention of Charlemagne Tower, a prominent lawyer and business man of Pennsylvania. Mr. Tower had had large experience in coal mining, both in the examination of coal fields in Pennsylvania for his cases in the law courts, and as an owner and manager of companies. He sent an expedition to explore the Minnesota ranges, and becoming convinced of their wealth proceeded at once to their development. The friends and business associates whom he endeavored to enlist in this venture were sceptical, so Mr. Tower had to proceed single-handed in his task.

From Stereograph, copyright, 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.

Iron Ore at a Lake Superior Port

It is little wonder that men doubted the practicability of Mr. Tower’s schemes; it is the more worthy of admiration that he dared to undertake them amid the almost insuperable obstacles. To plant a mining establishment ninety miles north of Duluth and seventy miles west in a direct line from Lake Superior in a region that had no intermediate connections with even the outskirts of civilization seemed an impossible task. The country was densely wooded, with only very small streams and impassable swamps breaking the forest stretch. Provisions, supplies, tools,—everything needed for the camp must be taken either in midwinter over frozen ground and snow when the temperature was usually forty degrees below zero, or in summer on the backs of men and in Indian canoes over a most circuitous route. A railroad must be built to carry the ore, and dock and harbor facilities must be provided on Lake Superior. All this Charlemagne Tower undertook at the age of seventy-three, and carried through to a wonderful success. He built a railroad from the mines to Two Harbors on Lake Superior; he selected Two Harbors as the best place for his docks, roundhouses, machine-shops, and sawmills; and he opened up his mines in the iron district.

In August, 1884, the railroad was finished and the first shipments of ore were made. These shipments were shrewdly distributed among manufacturers of three states leading in iron industries, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, instead of being sent to a single dealer. They met with instant favor from all the companies. The quality of all the northern ranges had been found to be very fine. The percentage of metallic iron contained in the best red hematites shipped from the Michigan mines had been over sixty per cent; this first shipment from Minnesota contained sixty-eight per cent, and with its success the future of the country was assured. The country opened up rapidly, the railroad was carried to Duluth, and a town sprang up about the docks at Two Harbors. In the first year 68,000 tons were shipped; three years later the output had jumped to 400,000 tons, and Minnesota had been transformed in four years from a non-mineral district into one of the foremost iron markets of the United States. Fifteen hundred men were working in its mines, and five thousand were directly or indirectly employed by the industry. In 1887 the Mesabi Range began to be opened up, and together the five ranges,—the Marquette, Gogebic, Menominee, Vermilion, and Mesabi,—located in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, supply to-day more iron than any single country in the world.

This is the history of three of the leading industries of the Great Lakes. In the nineteenth century there came to be many more which have contributed much to the prosperity of the region. From the earliest occupation by the French the Great Lakes have offered not only a comfortable means of livelihood to the settler who came to their shores, but also wealth to the country which possessed them.

CHAPTER XXVI
SHIPPING ON THE LAKES

Nowhere has the life of the Great Lakes developed more clearly an individuality of its own than in its shipping. The conditions which confronted the navigators on these great inland seas were peculiar to their environment. The size of the lakes made types of vessel designed for ocean use more suitable than river craft; yet the fact that they were not one inland sea, but a succession of lakes divided by narrow channels, differentiated them widely from the ocean both in the needs and possibilities of their navigation. To meet these special conditions and to suit the demands of the commerce in which they were engaged the shipbuilders of the lakes have designed vessels which are unique and interesting.

The French found on the Great Lakes a type of boat which was so well adapted to the exigencies of combined lake and river travel that it has persisted to this day. This was the birchbark canoe. But it was not the small pleasure canoe of our modern ideas. Even the first canoes that the Jesuit fathers found the Indians using before 1630 were large enough to transport a family of five or six with all their baggage, their kettles, blankets, and other household goods. With the development of the fur trade and the coming of white men in large numbers the canoes became twenty and thirty feet long, and this style persisted as the main water craft until well into the nineteenth century. The merchants from Montreal went up to Fort William in a fleet of ninety canoes, each carrying four tons’ burden and navigated by eight or ten men, and as late as 1820 the furs of Lake Superior were sent south by John Jacob Astor from his depot at Mackinac to the trading post at Chicago in similar vessels. It was no uncommon occurrence to see at Mackinac and Detroit a flotilla of fifty or sixty canoes sweep up to the shore, the Indians paddling silently and the voyageurs singing a gay Canadian boat-song as they moved their paddles in swift unison at the rate of forty or even sixty strokes a minute. These men measured distances by the number of times they had stopped on the journey to smoke, and would tell you that a place was “three or four pipes away,” because the call had been three times given for “pipes—pipes” by the steersman, and at the word every paddle had been drawn in, every pipe lighted, and a few whiffs taken before the three-minute rest was up and they started on again. Sometimes these rests were once in every two miles, sometimes less frequently, and with their help the men paddled from morning to night, singing as cheerily after their forty-mile run as in the morning.

Other boats were used by the Indians and French, but not so universally. The Indian pirogue was a canoe-shaped boat hollowed out of one of the huge cotton-trees,—a vessel forty or fifty feet long and holding thirty men, but too heavy to carry easily around the numerous portages. The French introduced into the lakes in the eighteenth century the bateau, a flat-bottomed boat with sharp-pointed ends, which resisted the storms better than the clumsy scow barges, and was the precursor of the present two-masted Mackinaw boat. On the canoe and bateau sails were sometimes used, but only in very favorable weather, and in any of these boats all but the most experienced navigators hugged closely the shores of the stormy, wind-swept waters. To us with our eight and ten and twelve thousand ton steel vessels, which find the lake storms a source of dread and danger, it seems incredible that the greater part of the navigation for three centuries was in these frail, light canoes and bateaux.

With the story of the pioneer sailing vessel of La Salle, the sixty-ton Griffon of the seventeenth century design, with her high stern deck and her two masts with clumsy square sails, we are already familiar. After she was lost in 1679, sailing vessels did not again appear on the lakes for nearly seventy-five years. Then there were two on Lake Superior, one the property of the man who made the first attempt at copper mining in that region. The first sailing vessels to come into historical importance were the Beaver and the Gladwin, which did such efficient service at the siege of Detroit in 1763. War brought out the need of such vessels, and a shipyard started by the English on Navy Island in the Niagara River turned out several schooners during the next few years. At the end of the eighteenth century, however, the entire fleet of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan consisted of only three schooners and six sloops, and no one dreamed of the commercial changes to come before another century was over. Under the orders of the English government a Mr. Collins had made in 1788 a careful survey of the lakes and had stated that vessels on Lake Ontario might be of sixty or even seventy-five or eighty tons, but those on the other lakes should not exceed fifteen tons’ burden; but the ship-builders paid little attention to his instructions.

The steamboat made its appearance on the Great Lakes in 1818 in the shape of a side-wheeler, naïvely called the Walk-in-the-Water, which was launched at Buffalo. Even a contemporary described her as a “weak but elegant boat,” and an oil painting shows her to be a little craft with a curious tiller at the stern, no pilot-house, a smoke stack of six lengths of stove-pipe put together, and unboxed wheels. She was a profitable venture while she lasted, making the trip from Buffalo to Detroit with forty or fifty passengers, each of whom paid eighteen dollars, but often taking thirteen days to do it. For four years she held a monopoly on the lakes as the solitary steam-propelled craft, and then one stormy night in October she went ashore after riding out a furious gale. None of her passengers were lost, and there is an old picture portraying this mournful event, “one of the greatest misfortunes that has ever befallen us,” as a journal of the day said. The vessel is depicted as going to pieces on the shore while its passengers stand up straight in unruffled silk hats, pointing apparently at spots of interest in the vicinity,—a very different state of affairs from that told of by those who spent that fearful night on the little vessel hoping for daylight to come before she was knocked to pieces.

Copyright, 1905, by Detroit Publishing Co.

The Old and the New

General Cass’s Canoe and a Modern Freight Steamer

The steamboat did not disappear from the lakes, as the journal had feared it would, but in 1827 the first steamboat reached Sault Ste. Marie, carrying among her passengers General Winfield Scott, who came to visit the military post there. She made no effort to pass the barrier of the rapids, as even the little canal built by the Northwest Company in 1790 for canoes and bateaux had been blown up in the War of 1812. The first steamboat reached Chicago in 1832, and from that time on they began to multiply on the lakes. It was not, however, till 1845 that the need of steam navigation for working successfully the rich copper mines south of Lake Superior made it so necessary to have some craft not dependent on the uncertainties of the wind that the mine owners combined and bought a little steamboat which they had hauled laboriously over the portage on rollers, an undertaking that occupied seven weeks.

The great need of connecting the rich Lake Superior region with the other lakes,—urged upon the people for twenty years,—brought about in 1855 the building of the “Soo” Canal. After much discussion Congress voted in 1852 three-quarters of a million acres of land to aid the state of Michigan in building this canal. This was done in spite of the opposition of many Eastern members to spending so much money on a project for so remote a wilderness. The type and size of the canal was fought over by engineers and statesmen, and it was finally agreed that a lock two hundred and fifty feet long would provide amply for any vessels that would ever navigate those waters. A young man who was visiting at Sault Ste. Marie at the time, Mr. Charles T. Harvey, became convinced that this was too small an estimate. Mr. Harvey was neither an engineer nor a canal builder, but was a man with foresight. He went before the legislature with plans, drawn under his direction by a New York engineer, for a lock at least one hundred feet longer, and was met with ridicule. The longest vessel on the lakes was then only one hundred and sixty-seven feet, and the lock proposed by Harvey and the Fairbanks Company, who were backing him, would be the largest lock in the world. Harvey won his point, and was given charge of constructing the canal. It was a tremendous undertaking for those days. The nearest railroad was many hundred miles away; the steamboats were slow; it took six weeks to get a reply to a letter mailed to New York, and agents had to be sent to that city to get gangs of laborers from the immigrant population. The temperature on the Sault was at thirty-five degrees below zero much of the time during the winter months, and the men were necessarily poorly housed and cared for. At one time an epidemic of cholera killed ten per cent of the men, but work went on each day. Again two thousand laborers struck, and Harvey hid all the provisions in the woods until they returned to work, which they did in twenty-four hours. Within two years, and at a cost of less than a million dollars, the canal was completed. Immediately the problems of lake navigation were entirely changed. One of the difficulties of the cautious Mr. Collins of seventy years before, who wanted the size of boats limited to fifteen tons, was removed in the building of a channel around the rapids of the Sault. In fifteen years the lock was enlarged and then later enlarged again, till in 1896 the famous eight-hundred-foot Poe lock was built by the army engineer of that name, at the cost of four million dollars. Mr. Harvey, at the fiftieth anniversary of the building of his first lock, came to the celebration of the event and heard discussion of the possible need of a lock larger than the present one. Thus in the memory of living men there has been built up a great commercial marine of over five thousand vessels, and by the spending of fifty millions of dollars in deepening all the lake channels and cutting canals, the four upper lakes have been united into one great waterway over which passes a large proportion of the productive wealth of the United States. Yearly one hundred million tons of freight pass through this lock, which is twice the record of London and Liverpool combined in their twelve-month season.

With the opening of the “Soo” Canal the old conventional type of lake vessel began to disappear, and the designs were accommodated to the special demands of trade and natural conditions. The sailing vessel is coming to be a thing of the past, and the men who navigated the turbulent waters and were caught in gales and ice-jams in their wooden schooners rejoice in its disappearance. Since 1873 the shipyards have built less and less of this type of ship, and in our own day the steel vessel has come to take its place.

The canoe served its purpose for fur trade, and the schooner for lumber; but the mineral industries of Lake Superior, and a little later the grain crops of the West, demanded a different kind of vessel. With the coming of steam power and the development of the “Soo” Canal came into being the style of vessel which has been well described as a “steel trough with a lid on it.” These vessels are built solely to carry as much cargo as is consistent with safety. They are huge steel freighters five and six hundred feet long, with a hold whose capacity is from six to twelve thousand tons of iron ore or a like amount of wheat. Astern is the machinery with a smoke stack and a row of cabins visible above the deck, and three or four hundred feet off—the length of a city block—is the deck-house, containing officers’ quarters with the wheel-house and bridge. Within this house is invariably to be found a man of rare skill and experience. To the casual observer the narrow lake passages and the crowded, winding channels and flats of the rivers would seem to preclude so long and unwieldy a craft, but the lake sailor can navigate her with the string of barges which she often has in tow through any passage with skill and ease. The bows of these vessels are high and rounded to meet and part the heavy waves of the frequent lake storms, and the whole shell is built with special regard to strength, both to resist these gales and to bear the impact of the thousands of tons of wheat and iron which are to be poured from grain elevators and iron bins into their holds. A crew of twenty-five men can handle one of these vessels, but they have no easy time on long stretches between ports. They must be ever on the alert in their short, swift trips from lake to lake.

In the short summer season the motto of lake transportation is speed, and science has bent its energies most successfully to that end. Up in the mines of Michigan and Minnesota a big steam-operated bucket dips down into the earth and scoops from the hillside a load of iron ore which it dumps into steel cars with openings at the bottom, at a cost of five cents a ton! At the docks of Lake Superior,—and the total length of the ore docks on the lake is well over five miles,—the bottom of the car is turned aside and the whole load of red earth rushes either down long chutes directly into the holds of the vessels, or into big buildings called bins or pockets, from which it can be poured from a great height into the vessels filling them at fifteen or sixteen hatches simultaneously. Such records have been made as the loading of more than ten thousand tons of iron ore into a steamer in less than an hour and a half, and the usual time for the operation is only three or four hours. The cost of this loading is made, by the use of this machinery, less than three cents a ton. After the swiftest passage that can be made the vessel reaches the ports of the lower lakes, and there the devices for unloading are even more wonderful. From a bridgelike crane hangs a huge scoop shaped like a clam-shell, which dips down into the vessel’s hold and pulls out ten tons of ore at a time, swings it to one side and drops it on a mountainous heap of red earth. From there it is put into steel cars which, at the furnaces of Pennsylvania, are picked off the track by an immense crane as though they were mere children’s toys and dumped on the ore piles from which the furnaces are fed. In the interval while the ore was being unloaded from the hold of the vessel, coal for the return cargo has been poured in, and in an incredibly short time the freighter is started on her northward journey. So successfully have time and expense been minimized by the elimination of hand labor that the freight charges of the lakes are the wonder of the whole commercial world. Of some kinds of freight the cost of transporting a ton from Buffalo to Duluth is only eighty-five cents. The railroads have given up the attempt to compete and have bought up instead the lines of steamers with which they make connection. The recent tendency on the lakes is to consolidation of ownership. To-day the Pittsburg Steamship Company owns a fleet of one hundred and eight vessels, whose total length if put in one long line would be over eight miles. These fleets are many times the size of those owned by Americans on the ocean. Indeed, this is one of the striking contrasts between lake and ocean traffic. A very large proportion of lake vessels is owned by Americans, while the reverse is true on the ocean.

Grain is handled in much the same manner as iron ore. Millions of bushels come into the ports of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior,—to Fort William, Duluth, West Superior, Milwaukee, Chicago, and minor ports,—and are stored in huge fireproof buildings on the water front, known as grain elevators. These structures are of all sizes, holding from thirty and forty thousand bushels of wheat to a million or more. They are equipped with machinery for scouring, cleaning, and drying the grain, and for pouring it into the vessels. The unloading is done either by means of an endless chain of buckets which work on a long spout or “leg” lowered into the hatch, or by “pipes” or shafts from the elevators into the fifteen or twenty hatches. Down these pipes the grain rushes with a buzzing sound at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five thousand bushels an hour. For the unloading process the grain is drawn out by suction through similar pipes, the force supplied by powerful engines which give a pressure of several hundred pounds to the square inch. In 1907 grain came into the lake ports which would have made, when converted into flour, forty-three million barrels of flour. Reckoning that two hundred and fifty one-pound loaves can be made from a barrel, this grain would have supplied the world with ten billion loaves of bread.

Chicago and Buffalo, the principal gateways of entrance and exit for grain, have large systems of elevators with a capacity of millions of bushels, and in the winter months these are not sufficient, but the ice-bound vessels as they wait in the harbors of Chicago and Lake Superior become floating storage warehouses, ready to sail east with their cargoes the moment navigation is open.

These cargo freighters, with the huge barges of similar construction that they tow behind them in lines of two or three, are the most characteristic vessels of the lakes. Another style of ship, of which much was expected at the time of its invention, was the whaleback, a long, cigar-shaped steel craft whose decks were so low that they were constantly washed by the waves. These boats were designed, as are all lake boats, to have the greatest possible empty space for cargo, a condition made possible by the fact that in their short voyages they do not need to carry large stores of coal or provisions. The whaleback is a blunt-ended hulk with rounded gunwales, which from its appearance and from its manner of rooting and rolling about in the waves has gained the lake nickname of the “pig.” These vessels are unique and picturesque, but not so successful as the usual style of freighters. Moreover, they have reached their maximum size and cannot be improved or enlarged without change of shape.

Copyright, 1902, by Detroit Photographic Co.

Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam

The passenger steamers of the lakes are models of comfort, built more and more on the style, and even approximating the size of, the ocean liners, and after them there remains only one other type of vessel that deserves mention,—the ice-breaker. The situation of the Great Lakes on the extreme confines of the region whose climate makes it fit for the uses of civilized man keeps them ice-bound and closes their commerce for five months in the year. Early in April vessel owners begin to watch with interest the straits of Mackinac, Sault Ste. Marie, and Detroit. When the channel at Mackinac shows water instead of ice, navigation of the lakes has opened. Then strong ice-breakers force their way through the floating ice with a string of vessels at their sterns. They are powerful craft with a screw at the bow as well as at the stern, the first to suck the water from under the ice so that the boat climbing upon it may crush it down, breaking it and throwing it out of the way, and the second to propel the vessel through the two or three or even four feet of solid blue ice that have been broken in this way. This is an American invention which has been copied in all northern waters. Russia sent one of her foremost generals to study its construction, and it is now in use on her frozen lakes and seas.

The tale of lake shipping is a tale that can only be begun in the limits of a single chapter. There are the car-ferries of Detroit, by which trains are carried across the river. These are now so crowded that a tunnel under the river is in process of construction to relieve the congestion. There are the stories of traffic at the “Soo” Canal, through which for six months of the year a big steamer passes in every fifteen minutes of the night and day, and of the Detroit River, with a record of a vessel every thirteen minutes, and of an average of two hundred tons of freight a minute for a season of two hundred and thirty days. There are the ship-building yards at Cleveland, where thirty-one steel freighters were ordered in a single winter, and more are turned out every year. The ships of the lakes are built on the lakes, and the shipyards are among the busiest centres of all that country. Lastly, there is the sad tale of wrecks and loss of lives, for since the first canoes were lost and the Griffon and the Walk-in-the-Water went down, the waters have exacted their annual toll, and fishing schooners and seven-thousand-ton freighters alike have broken in two or have foundered and been dashed to pieces on the rocks, while of the tale of hairbreadth escapes there is no end.

Lake shipping within the limits of its own waterways has developed in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth is to come the connecting of the lakes with the Atlantic by canal and river, and the story of the twentieth century will be of vessels going direct from the ports of the Great Lakes to the ports of the Old World. With this prophecy the tale would seem to be complete.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY

The last sixty years of the nineteenth century witnessed on the shores of the Great Lakes the development of the city. The towns which we have traced through their early stages as forts, trading posts, and villages began in 1840 to make their appearance on the census lists with populations that could be counted in thousands instead of hundreds. If we reckon a population of eight thousand or over as the requisite number to raise a town to the rank of city, Buffalo with eighteen thousand and Detroit with nine thousand inhabitants were in 1840 the only cities on the lakes. Cleveland had six thousand, and Chicago and Milwaukee timidly entered the lists with records of less than five thousand and two thousand respectively. In the proportionate size of cities in the whole United States these five ranged from being sixteenth, as was Buffalo, to being fifty-fourth, as was Chicago, and down to Milwaukee, which was the seventy-ninth on the list. In 1906 these five cities are among the first twelve on the list, and their joint population is three million six hundred thousand, nearly one hundred times the total population of sixty-five years ago. Figures express this change as well as anything can, but even figures can hardly suggest the wonder of this unparalleled development. It makes this last era of the life of the Great Lakes one of great and unique interest.

Immediately after 1840 this swift growth of the city began. Within twenty years Detroit was five times as large as in 1840, Buffalo and Cleveland were seven times as large, while Chicago and Milwaukee had multiplied their numbers by twenty and twenty-five. Smaller cities, too, like Toledo had had a rapid increase in their population. This sudden tide of immigration and of urban concentration was the natural result of the widespread westward movement of the twenty-five preceding years which had developed the country and created demands for central markets, and of the rise of the great industries described in the preceding chapters with their attendants, the railroad and the steamboat. No communities have ever come into being for more immediate commercial reasons than the cities of the Great Lakes, and the immense wealth derived from their great industries has been directly responsible for their rapid growth and succeeding prosperity. With this story of the industrial side of the life of the lakes we are all familiar. Each city has necessarily passed through a stage when it spent its time and energy trying with breathless haste to keep pace with the outside demands made upon it by commerce. Now that stage has passed, at least in so far as this industrial side takes precedence over everything else and stands out preëminent and alone as the characteristic spirit of the lake city. Great fortunes have been and are being made, and reasonable prosperity has come to thousands of citizens. The last twenty years have seen these cities broaden their interests, and stand out as centres of education, art, sociology, politics, and religion, till now they are leaders as types of all-round development, including all these and many other lines.

Each city claims and has a right to claim an individual spirit and an achievement of its own. But to the student of the past and present of these lake dwellers there comes the evidence of a broader unity under whose general aims and purposes, fostered by similar conditions, the local successes have been accomplished.

In education these cities are preëminent. They have been willing to expend large sums on the public school systems, and have adapted high educational principles to local needs with an independence that has made for a departure from many old and conventional methods, but has resulted almost always in greater efficiency. The large proportion of foreign-born children in the public schools has created many problems and brought the opportunity for great success in dealing with them. Nor does state and city interest stop with the usual public school system. Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have strong state universities, for whose support they give lavishly; and beside them have grown up three other great universities, Chicago and Northwestern in Chicago, and the Western Reserve in Cleveland. There is a widespread enthusiasm for higher education, and these educational centres exert a great influence both as scientific experiment stations, whose discoveries are hailed with delight by the farmer and the mechanic, and as dominant centres of thought. The universities and schools do not wait for the people to come within their walls. They go out with exhibitions and instruction of all kinds. The state legislatures have instituted systems of travelling and branch libraries, and education is being diffused among the people.

As a natural result of high average intelligence and of industrial conditions there has originated in the region bordering on the lakes a political unrest which is being worked out, under the leadership of the cities, into an encouraging independence of party spirit and a striving for the improvement of municipal and state conditions. With the coming of the city there have arisen problems entirely new to the administrators, and these each city is working out in its own way. Cleveland by government by commission, and the other cities by reform mayors running on independent platforms, and everywhere by intelligent open discussion of such questions as municipal ownership of street railways, control of corporations, labor questions, and other matters of public interest which make the party divisions based on live social and industrial issues, not on state and national party platforms. The region of the lower lakes is a political storm centre for the nation as well as for the immediate locality, and conditions there are likely to have great influence throughout the country.

Municipal improvement has long been the watchword of all parties, and the result has been the development of splendid water fronts, the setting apart of land for beautiful park and boulevard systems, the provision of playgrounds for children, and the constant beautifying of the cities. Modern architecture has had its chance here, and has proved itself. The results have made our modern lake city the admiration of all visitors, both from this country and from across the water.

The two periods of rapid industrial growth and of broadening self-improvement each lake city has passed through in the last sixty years. Into the local details of each we have not space to enter, although each is an interesting story by itself. One city has come to be in size and standing the second city of our nation, and in passing briefly over the steps of her growth we can see on a large scale what have been the conditions which have been met in a smaller way by her neighboring cities.

With our traveller of 1840, we visited Chicago and found her a flourishing and rapidly increasing town of nearly five thousand inhabitants. Even then she was recognized as a centre for the region immediately surrounding her. The radius of her influence has extended in a way that would have seemed at that time inconceivable. Her population has run up to over two millions, and in wealth as well she has come to be the second great financial centre of the United States, ranking in this as in population next to New York. She began her city life in 1837 with $1993 in her treasury. To get money for sanitary drainage, for paving a few streets, and purchasing two fire engines the finance committee of the common council applied to the State Bank of Illinois for a loan of twenty-five thousand dollars, to be paid back within five years,—a request which the State Bank politely but curtly declined to grant. To-day her bank clearances amount to some seven thousand million dollars. And so we might go on with striking and astonishing contrasts. We have come to take large statements and superlative adjectives for granted about Chicago’s size, wealth, and commerce. Do we realize that she is the leading lake city in the other lines of which we have spoken?

The public school system of Chicago with its million of children has been and is being developed along the best modern pedagogical principles by men and women who are recognized leaders in the educational world. As a centre for higher education the city takes high rank. Besides its technical schools, like the Armour Institute, it has two great universities, Chicago and Northwestern. The former began its career when John D. Rockefeller decided to take the name and property of the old denominational university of that name, sold at auction under foreclosure, and to found a great institution. To this end he set apart a large sum of money and secured as president Dr. William R. Harper of Yale. With the remarkable growth of the university since it opened in 1892 with seven hundred and two students, we are all familiar.

In music and art Chicago is preëminent, both for its high grade of achievement and for the widespread diffusion of its culture among its citizens. In 1905 Orchestra Hall was dedicated as a home for music, and this building, one of the finest in the world, had been built by a popular subscription, to which thousands of the middle and poorer classes contributed their dollars. The Chicago Art Institute has an attendance yearly of over half a million visitors, a number exceeding that of any art museum in America, and its library is consulted annually by fifty thousand people. Such a record is remarkable, and such enthusiasm has produced and is producing recognized artists. In architectural excellence the story is the same. In philanthropy and social settlement work Hull House, under the leadership of Jane Addams, is only the most conspicuous of many powerful agencies for good.

For the Great Lakes to have developed, in the sixty years that have marked the growth of the big city throughout the land, five of the twelve largest cities of the United States is a remarkable showing. Not only have these cities become leaders industrially, politically, and socially, but they are constantly increasing at a rapid rate in size, volume of commerce, and most of all in plans and forecasts for the future. From 1880 to 1890 the most rapid growth of the city was in this region. During these ten years, while the rate of increase of the ocean ports ranged from San Francisco’s fourteen per cent to New York’s thirty-eight per cent, and that of the river cities from Cincinnati’s nine per cent to St. Louis’ twenty-seven, no one of the six great ports of the lakes fell below an increase of thirty-seven per cent, and Chicago’s ran up to fifty-four, and Toledo’s to sixty-one. This is a striking exhibition of the movement of population in the wake of commercial opportunity.

In the Old World such a group of cities situated close together on immense bodies of water would create an individual empire of great wealth and prosperity. In the United States they are recognized as a leading factor in our prosperity, and a centre from which not only will great wealth and natural resources be evolved and distributed, but great leaders, great policies, and great ideals will come forth, making the lake region a force to be reckoned with and depended upon in the future of the Nation.

A BRIEF LIST OF BOOKS

General Works

There is no important general work covering the entire field. The best single book is Charles Moore’s The Northwest under Three Flags, 1635–1796. B. A. Hinsdale’s Old Northwest (2 vols.) deals with this region, but with especial emphasis on the geographical and political phases. Francis Parkman treats of French and English occupation in his Series of Historical Narratives, France and England in North America, the nine volumes of which will be cited under their individual names. Besides his Narrative and Critical History of America in eight volumes, Justin Winsor has three books on the history of this region: Cartier to Frontenac, 1534–1700; The Mississippi Basin; and The Westward Movement. Under this heading should be mentioned the publications of the various historical societies of the lake states, especially the Buffalo, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota collections.

Part I. Discovery and Exploration, 1615–1700

This period is taken up in Parkman’s Pioneers of France in the New World, The Jesuits in North America, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, and Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. The seventy-three volumes of Jesuit Relations and Allied Volumes, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, are the source books for accounts of the Jesuits. A modern book which covers this period is C. W. Colby’s Canadian Types of the Old Régime, 1608–1698. E. B. O’Callaghan’s Documentary History of the State of New York (4 vols.), 1849, and L. H. Morgan’s League of the Iroquois (2 vols.), 1901, give good accounts of the Indians, while the former has reprints of valuable maps and documents.

The original accounts of the voyages of the explorers are as follows: Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, translated by C. P. Otis, and edited by E. F. Slafter (3 vols.) (a handy one-volume edition is that of W. L. Grant, 1907); Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de La Salle from 1679 to 1681, translated by M. B. Anderson; and Louis Hennepin’s A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America (2 vols.), and Lahontan’s New Voyages to North America, both reprinted and edited by R. G. Thwaites. C. W. Butterfield has written a History of Brulé’s Discoveries and Explorations, 1610–1626. The story of the pageant of Saint Lusson comes to us from his >Procès-Verbal in the Wisconsin Historical Collections, xi, 26, and in Father Claude Dablon’s account in the Jesuit Relations, lv, 105–115.

Part II. The Struggle for Possession, 1700–1832

For the struggle between France and England Parkman’s Half Century of Conflict (2 vols.), Montcalm and Wolfe (2 vols.), and Conspiracy of Pontiac (2 vols.) give the best connected account. S. Farmer’s History of Detroit and Michigan, A. Hulbert’s The Niagara River, and other local histories of Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Niagara, as well as chronicles of the war, contribute to this history. Mr. C. M. Burton has published a very interesting pamphlet on Cadillac’s Village, or Detroit under Cadillac, which is the result of his own research in the records of this time. Besides Parkman’s two-volume story of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, it is well to read Major Robert Rogers’ Journals of the Siege of Detroit, and Concise Account of North America, 1765, and also a Diary of the Siege of Detroit, edited with other documents by F. B. Hough, and The Gladwin Manuscripts, edited by Charles Moore. Alexander Henry tells his own story in Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories, 1809.

For the period of the war between England and America, Henry Adams’ History of the United States, 1800–1817 (9 vols.), is the authority. T. Roosevelt in his The Winning of the West, 1777–1807 (5 vols.), gives his fifth volume to St. Clair and Wayne. There are three standard works on the naval part of the war, J. Barnes’ Naval Actions of the War of 1812, Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812, and A. T. Mahan’s Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 (2 vols.). There are many contemporary accounts of the battles and defences of the leading participants, such as The Defence of Brigadier-General Hull Written by Himself, 1814. Three leading documents of the Chicago massacre are the Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago, 1844, supposed to be the Kinzie account, The Chicago Massacre in 1812, which is the Heald account, written at a much later date by Joseph Kirkland, and an anonymous document in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, viii, 648–652. The Black Hawk War is treated in all histories of the time. The material about Black Hawk himself is gathered from B. Drake’s Life and Adventures of Black Hawk (7th ed., 1846), Life of Black Hawk, Dictated by Himself, 1834, and S. G. Drake’s Book of the Indians (8th ed., 1841), which has also accounts of Pontiac and Tecumseh. R. G. Thwaites’ How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest, has an essay on the Black Hawk War, as well as other interesting essays on this period. Randall Parrish’s Historic Illinois should be mentioned in this connection as the best book of its kind on this whole region, with a clear account of the events that took place in Illinois and a graphic picture of pioneer conditions.

The biographies of Cass and Wayne are valuable. The two contemporary books on Cass are W. L. G. Smith’s The Life and Times of Lewis Cass, and W. T. Young’s Life and Public Services of Lewis Cass. A. C. McLaughlin has written a good biography with the title, Lewis Cass, for the American Statesman Series. John R. Spears is the author of a biography of Anthony Wayne, 1903.

Part III. Occupation and Development

The bibliography of this section would include all that has come before, and much from pamphlets, historical society publications, local histories, and records of anniversary celebrations, which would make too long a list of sources. There are no general works on this phase of the life of the Great Lakes. Archer B. Hulbert’s Historic Highways of America (16 vols.) contains much that is of interest about roads to the lakes, especially in volumes 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 14. J. F. Rhodes’ History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (7 vols.) has in its earlier volumes valuable references and accounts of happenings in its period. In general, however, one must turn to the local records and state histories.

L. P. Powell has gathered and edited two volumes entitled Historic Towns of the Middle States, and Historic Towns of the Western States. Seven suggestive books are: Parker’s Rochester, A Story Historical, and H. O’Reilly’s Sketches of Rochester; The Niagara Book, by W. D. Howells, N. S. Shaler, and others, and F. H. Severance’s Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier; Urann’s Centennial History of Cleveland; W. P. Strickland’s Old Mackinaw, 1860; and A. T. Andreas’ History of Chicago (3 vols.).

The Buffalo Historical Collections have much material about the Erie Canal, as has W. W. Campbell’s Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton. J. L. Barton’s Commerce of the Lakes and the Erie Canal, William Norris’ Map of the Railroads and Canals in the United States and Canada, August, 1834, Early Chicago Railroads, 1838, and W. K. Ackerman’s Early Illinois Railroads, in Fergus Historical Series, No. 23, pp. 3–62, and a little book, Instructions for Running Railroads, 1862, are all good for the years of rapid development about the lakes. Two other books on railroads should be included: F. H. Spearman’s The Strategy of Great Railroads and Mott’s Between Ocean and Lakes.

There are two contemporary lives of Stephen A. Douglas, one by J. W. Sheahan, published in 1860 for campaign purposes, and another, The Life and Speeches of Stephen A. Douglas, by a “Member of the Western Bar.” Allen Johnson has recently brought out a valuable life of this Illinois statesman. Nicolay and Hay’s Abraham Lincoln, A History (10 vols.) is the standard work on Lincoln. J. W. Headley has written on Confederate Operations in Canada and New York, giving an intimate account of events in which he played an active part. F. J. Turner is the authority on the fur trade, which he has described in The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins Studies, Vol. IX.

Gazetteers and Travels

In the numerous guide-books and records of travellers of the past one hundred and twenty-five years is written most vividly the story of the Great Lakes. Each one of those we mention contributes something to the account of the region.

Travels. J. Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts of North America in 1766, 1767, 1768; I. Weld’s Travels, 1795–1797; J. Harriott’s Struggles through Life, etc., 1796, ii, 97–149; Sutcliff’s Travels, 1804, 1805, 1806; John Melish’s Travels in the United States in 1806 and 1807 and 1809, 1810, 1811 (2 vols.); Schultz’ Travels on an Inland Voyage, 1807 and 1808; F. Hall’s Travels in 1816 and 1817; J. M. Duncan’s Travels, ii, 3–120; Views of Society and Manners in America, 1818–1820, pp. 125–181; H. R. Schoolcraft’s Narrative Journal of Travels from Detroit Northwest in 1820, which gives an official account of the Cass expedition; William Dalton’s Travels, 1821; P. Stansbury’s Pedestrian Tour in 1821, giving an account of a trip from Albany to Niagara; C. H. Wilson’s The Wanderer in America, 1823; T. L. McKenney’s Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, which is very valuable; Basil Hall’s Travels in North America in 1827 and 1828, treating in vol. i of this region; Anne Royall’s Black Book, vol. i; John Fowler’s Journal of a Tour in the State of New York in 1830–1831. We come now to a set of travels which tell of the western lakes in particular and give a picture of their towns: A Winter in the West, by a New Yorker (2 vols.), 1835; Life on the Lakes, telling of a Lake Superior trip in 1836 by the author of “Legends of a Log Cabin”; Bela Hubbard’s Memorials of Half a Century, also of a voyage to Lake Superior. J. L. Peyton’s Over the Alleghanies and Across the Prairies, 1848, and Captain Mackinnon’s Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic Sketches, i, 141–233, give vivid pictures of lake travel. Lillian Foster was in Chicago in 1860, and tells in Wayside Glimpses, pp. 200–224, her impressions of Douglas and the political situation. Margaret Fuller spent a Summer on the Lakes in 1843; Charles Dickens went to Niagara, which he describes in his American Notes, 1842, and Harriet Martineau wrote a Retrospect of Western Travel (3 vols.), 1838, in which she devotes seventy pages of the first volume to a trip from Albany to Niagara. Two accounts of travel in Minnesota are E. S. Seymour’s Sketches of Minnesota, 1850, and C. C. Andrews’ Minnesota and Dacotah, 1857.

Gazetteers and Guides (arranged alphabetically). S. R. Brown’s The Western Gazetteer, 1817; E. Dana’s Description of the Bounty Lands of Illinois in 1819, and Geographical Sketches on the Western Country, 1819; William Darby’s Emigrants’ Guide to the Western and Southwestern States and Territories, 1818; G. M. Davison’s The Fashionable Tour, with several successive editions under the title, The Traveller’s Guide, 1830–1840; J. Disturnell’s The Western Traveller, 1844, and A Trip through the Lakes of North America, 1857; T. Dwight’s The Northern Traveller; A. D. Jones’ Illinois and the West, 1838, which is especially good on pioneer conditions; John Melish’s Geographical Description of the United States, Information and Advice to Emigrants, and Traveller’s Directory, 1815–1826; S. A. Mitchell’s Illinois in 1837; J. M. Peck’s Gazetteer of Illinois, Guide for Emigrants, and New Guide for Emigrants to the West, 1831–1848; J. C. Smith’s The Western Tourist, 1840, and Steele’s Western Guide-Books, 1830–1840; H. Spofford’s Pocket Guide of the State of New York, 1824; H. S. Tanner’s The American Traveller (8th ed., 1842); and George Temple’s The American Tourist’s Pocket Companion, 1812.

INDEX

Adrian, 276, 285.

Albany, 91, 102, 228, 232, 237, 242, 248, 252, 256, 259.

Allouez, Father Claude, 41;
address to Indians, 45–47.

American Fur Company, 338.

Anderson, Robert, 207.

André, Father Louis, 41.

Astor, John Jacob, 338, 357.

Barclay, Commodore,
in command of British fleet on Lake Erie, 182, 183;
defeated by Perry, 184–187.
Battles,
Niagara, 108–111;
Bloody Run, 129, 130;
Fallen Timbers, 160, 161;
Tippecanoe, 166;
River Raisin, 180, 181;
Lake Erie, 183–187;
The Thames, 188, 189;
Chippewa Creek, 189;
Lundy’s Lane, 189;
Wisconsin Heights, 210, 211;
Bad Axe, 211.

Beall, John Yates, Confederate agent on the lakes, 322–326, 328, 329.

Bibliography, 385–391.
Black Hawk,
appearance and early career, 201–203;
his war, 205–212;
his eastern trip, 212–214.
Black Rock, 181, 182, 254.
Boone, Daniel, at Detroit, 152.
Brébeuf, Father Jean,
Jesuit missionary to Hurons, 25–37;
founder of mission, 25;
life among Indians, 25–33;
killed by Iroquois, 37.

Brock, Gen. Isaac, captures Detroit for British, 168–172.

Brulé, Étienne, first white man to see Lake Huron, 10, 14.

Buffalo,
founded, 220, 221;
in 1811, 246, 247;
terminus of Erie Canal, 254–256, 260;
in 1840, 266–269;
lumber market, 345, 346;
first steamboat launched at, 360;
grain elevators, 370;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Buffalo roads, 229, 230.
Cadillac, La Mothe,
founder of Detroit, 88–98;
character, 88;
at Mackinac, 88;
at Detroit, 89–98.
Cadillac, Madame, 96.
Campbell, Capt., 124, 126.
Camp Douglas, 319–322, 326.
Canals,
Welland, 5, 283;
Hennepin, 6;
Rock River, 224;
Pennsylvania and Erie, 272, 284;
Ohio and Erie, 273, 283, 284;
Wabash and Erie, 276, 284;
Miami, 284;
Erie, see under Erie;
“Soo,” see under Sault Ste. Marie.
Cass, Lewis,
in War of 1812, 170;
governor of Michigan territory, 191–200;
early life, 192;
management of the territory, 193–196;
dealings with Indians, 196–200;
at Duluth, 200, 224, 225.
Champlain, Samuel de,
on Lake Huron, 10, 14;
early career, 12, 13;
among the Hurons, 14–23;
his writings, 23, 24.
Chicago,
military post, 166;
massacre at, 172–177;
under Governor Cass, 193, 198, 200;
town begun, 222, 223;
in 1840, 266, 275–279;
Lincoln and Douglas in, 299–316;
in Civil War, 318–322, 327–329;
first steamboat to, 361;
grain elevators, 369, 370;
the modern city, 379–383;
see also Chicago River, and Fort Dearborn.
Chicago University, 319, 381.
Cleveland,
founded, 164, 165, 219, 220;
in 1840, 272, 273;
coming of the first train, 289–291;
commerce, 291, 350, 351;
shipyards, 372, 373;
rapid growth, 374, 375, 377, 378.
Cleveland, Moses, 164, 219.

Clinton, De Witt, and the Erie Canal, 237, 238, 251, 254–260.

Confederate operations on the lakes, 317–329.

Connecticut, land cession, 219.

Conventions,

National Republican of 1860, 300, 311–314;

National Democratic of 1864, 321, 322.

Coureurs de bois, 41, 47, 107, 333, 334.

Dablon, Father Claude, 41.

Dalyell, Capt.,
at siege of Detroit, 128, 129;
killed, 130.

Davis, Jefferson,
in Black Hawk War, 207;
sends commissioners to Canada, 317.

Davison, Gideon, his Travellers’ Guides, 267–269.

Denonville, governor of New France, 87, 104.
Detroit,
founded by French, 87–100;
taken by British, 116;
blockaded by Pontiac, 118–134;
in 1776, 151–153;
an American post, 154, 163, 164;
taken by British, 166–172;
under Gov. Cass, 194, 195;
fire at, 221;
in 1840, 274, 275;
terminus of Michigan Central, 288;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Detroit River,
visited by La Salle, 62, 63;
first recorded passage of, 63;
importance of, 88–91;
beauty of, 91–93;
military operations on, 125–131, 167–170, 187, 190, 323, 325;
commerce of, 371–373.
Douglas, Stephen A., 299–316;
early career, 302–306;
debates with Lincoln, 300, 309–311;
Senator, 305, 311, 314, 315;
supporter of Lincoln, 314–316;
death, 316.
Druilletes, Gabriel, 41.
Du Luth, Daniel G., 224, 334, 335.
Duluth,
Indian trading station, 224, 225, 334;
becomes a town, 225;
commerce of, 344, 354, 369.
Dunkirk, railroad celebration at, 291–293.
Erie, Lake,
discovered and explored, 61, 63;
forts on, 104, 108, 109, 118, 125, 164;
in War of 1812, 165–168, 179–190;
settlements on, 219, 220;
roads, canals, and railroads to, 232–241, 242, 251–265, 283–297;
travel on, 268–274;
in Civil War, 322–326;
commerce of, 343, 345, 360.
Erie, Penn.,
in 1840, 268, 272;
railroad war, 294–298;
underground railroad station, 302;
see also Presque Isle under Forts.

Erie Canal, 5, 195, 221, 226, 237, 238, 251–265;
building of, 251–254;
ceremony of opening, 254–260;
travel on, 261–263;
enlarged, 263–265, 271, 283.
Forts,
Frontenac, 52, 61, 105, 218;
Duquesne, 104;
Le Bœuf, 104, 106, 109;
Sandusky, 104, 125, 219;
Venango, 104, 106, 291;

Presque Isle, 104, 106, 109, 118, 125, 164, 219;

Washington, 158;
Recovery, 158;
Defiance, 159;
Harrison, 166;
Dearborn, 166, 172–177;
Wayne, 166, 174, 276;
Malden, 167–170, 180, 183, 187, 188;
William, 338–341.

Franklin, Benjamin, makes Great Lakes U.S. boundary, 347.

Frenchtown,
Hull at, 167;
American defeat at, 179–181.
Frontenac,
governor of New France, 50, 59, 67;
recalled, 73;
returns, 87;
his plan to occupy Great Lakes, 87, 88;
death, 87.
Fuller, Margaret, trip to the lakes, 278–282.
Fur trade,
carried on by French and English, 39, 51, 52, 66–68, 88, 89, 101, 102, 135, 145;
leading interest on the lakes, 330–342;
under the French, 331–335;
under the British, 335–342;
under the Americans, 155, 165, 337, 338, 341, 347.

Genesee Turnpike, 233.

Georgian Bay, 10, 12, 14, 25, 28, 148, 218.

Gladwin, Major,
in command at Detroit, 119;
blockaded by Pontiac, 119–133;
saves Detroit, 133.

Grain, handled by lake ports, 6, 369, 370.

Greeley, Horace, 297.

Green Bay, 76, 333, 337.

Griffon, see under Ships.

Groseilliers, 39.

Hamilton, Gen.,
at Detroit, 151–153;
captured by Clark, 153.

Harmar, Gen., unsuccessful expedition against Indians, 156, 161, 174.

Harriott, John, journey to Lake Erie, 242–246.

Harrison, Gen. W. H.,
at Tippecanoe, 166;
Lake Erie expedition, 179, 180;
battle of the Thames, 187–189.

Harvey, C. T., designer and builder of “Soo” Canal, 362–364.

Hawley, Jesse, and Erie Canal, 237.
Heald, Capt.,
in command at Fort Dearborn, 172–177;
escapes massacre, 176, 177.
Hennepin, Father Louis,
companion of La Salle, 51;
writes of Niagara, 52, 53;
and of the voyage, 58, 59;
names Lake St. Clair, 63.
Henry, Alexander,
adventures at Mackinac, 135–150;
copper mining, 347.
Hines, Capt., Confederate agent, 321, 322.
Hotels,
American, and Franklin, in Cleveland, 273;
Lake House, in Chicago, 277, 278;

Tremont House, in Chicago, 307, 308, 314, 316.

Hull, Gen.,
in War of 1812, 166–172;
surrenders Detroit, 171.
Huron, Lake,
discovered and explored, 10–14, 25–28, 37, 65, 71, 88, 150, 218;
travel on, 282;
commerce of, 336, 337, 360, 372.
Illinois,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
becomes a state, 193;
Black Hawk War in, 201–214;
in 1840, 266, 267, 269, 270;
in 1850–1860, 299, 300, 302, 304, 305;
in Civil War, 318.
Indiana,
part of Northwest Territory, 155, 165;
becomes a territory, 191;
becomes a state, 193;
in 1840, 266, 267;
in Civil War, 318.
Indian treaties,
with La Salle, 56;
with La Barre, 76–83;
with Le Moyne, 102;
with Johnson, 131–133, 145, 149;
with Wayne (Treaty of Greenville), 162, 164, 219, 222;
with Cass, 198–200, 224, 225;
with U. S. government, 202.
Indian tribes,

Iroquois or Five Nations, location and organization, 11, 12, 232;
their relations to the French, 17–22, 36–38, 54, 60, 74–84;
at Niagara, 102, 217;
Hurons, location, 12–16;
at war with Iroquois, 16–23, 36, 37;
Algonquins, 12, 114;
Neutral Nation, 33;
Ojibways, 114;
Ottawas, 114, 120, 144, 145;
Illinois, 114, 134;
Chippewas, 138–145;
Sauk and Fox, 202–214.

For Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, see under Iroquois.

Iroquois Trail, 231, 232, 251.
Jesuits,
missions to Hurons, 25–38;
to Iroquois, 38;
at Sault Ste. Marie, 34, 35, 39;
at La Pointe, 39, 41;
at Manitoulin Island, 41.
Jogues, Father Isaac, Jesuit missionary,
among Hurons, 32, 34;
visits and names Sault Ste. Marie, 35;
captured and killed by Iroquois, 35, 36.
Johnson, Sir William,
captures Niagara, 106–111;
Indian conferences, 131, 132, 133, 146–149.
Johnston, Albert, 207.
Joncaire, 101, 108.
La Barre, Gen. Le Febvre de, 73–84;
expedition against Iroquois, 74–84.
La Motte, companion of La Salle, 53–56.
La Pointe, 39, 41.
La Salle, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de,
early career, 49–51;
builds the Griffon, 56–60;
on Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, 61–71.
Le Caron, Father Joseph, 10, 15, 16.
Le Moyne, Charles (1st), 103.

Le Moyne, Charles (2d), with La Barre, 75, 80, 82, 104.

Le Moyne, Charles (3d), builds Fort Niagara, 102–104.

Le Moyne, Father, 38.

Lewiston, 54, 102, 232, 238.

Lincoln, Abraham,
in Black Hawk War, 206;
debates with Douglas, 300, 302, 308–311;
nominated for presidency, 311–314.

Lockport, 253, 256, 257, 264.

Logan, Gen. John A., 3, 316.

Lumber,
forest distribution, 342, 343;
industry, 343–347.

McDougall, Lieut., at Detroit, 124, 126.

Mackinac (called Michilimackinac, Mackinaw),
trading post, 66, 67, 88, 218, 223, 224, 281;

Northwest Fur Company and American Fur Company station, 335–338, 357;
lumber region, 344;
fort at, 118, 135–150, 166, 168, 169, 177, 224, 268.

Manitoulin Island, 41, 281.

Marquette, 42, 218.

Massachusetts land cession, 220.

Melish, John, journey in western New York, 246–248.

Ménard, Father, on Lake Superior, 39.
Michigan,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
a separate territory under Cass, 191–196;
becomes a state, 196;
in 1840, 266, 267;
railroads, 284–288;
lumber trade, 343–345;
mineral wealth, 347–351.
Michigan, Lake,
discovered and explored, 35, 39, 40, 49, 67–71;
forts on, 70, 118, 119, 166, 172–178;
settlement on, 198, 200, 222, 223;
travel on, 279–281;
commerce of, 337, 357, 361, 369, 370.
Michigan City,
in 1840, 266, 276;
underground railroad station, 302.
Milwaukee,
founded, 223, 224;
in 1840, 266, 279, 280;
fur trade of, 337;
port for grain, 369;
rapid growth, 374, 375.
Minerals,
copper, 4, 8, 347, 348;
iron, 4, 8, 348–354, 367–369;
lead, 201, 202.
Minnesota,
lumber trade, 343, 344, 346;
mineral wealth, 352–354.
New York,
home of Iroquois tribes, 11, 12;
Indian trails, 231, 232;
turnpikes, 232–236, 242–250;
canals, 237, 250–265;
railroads, 238–241, 291–298.
Niagara,
discovered, 52–61;
held by French, 101–105;
taken by English, 105–112;
Indian convention at, 132, 149;
in War of 1812, 181, 182, 189.
Niagara Falls,
location, 5;
seen by Hennepin, 52, 53;
description of, 53;
visited, 246.
Niagara, Fort,
built, 101–105;
captured by British, 105–113;
centre of British influence, 153.
Niagara River,
key to the lakes, 54–60;
in War of 1812, 181, 182, 189.
Nicolet, 35, 331.
Nipissing, Lake, 13, 27, 34, 218.
Northwestern Fur Company, 224, 335, 338–341.
Ohio,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
becomes a state, 191;
in 1840, 266, 267;
canals, 283, 284;
railroads, 284–291;
underground railroad, 301, 302;
in Civil War, 318.
Onondaga, see Syracuse.
Ontario, Lake,
discovered and explored, 17, 22, 52, 56, 75;
forts on, 52, 61, 100–112, 189, 218;
travel on, 242;
commerce of, 336.
Ordinance of 1787, 155, 191.
Oswego,
trading post, 102, 105, 333;
Johnson at, 132, 133;
fort, 219;
village, 220, 221.
Pennsylvania,
canals, 284;
railroads, 291–297, 299, 302, 368.
Perrot, Nicholas, 201.
Perry, Oliver Hazard,
early life, 181;
in charge of Lake Erie fleet, 181–182;
battle of Lake Erie, 183–187, 190.
Pontiac,
meets Rogers, 113;
character and early career, 113–116;
blockades Detroit, 119–131;
later life and death, 133.

Pouchot, Capt., French officer at Niagara, 105;
besieged by English, 106–111;
surrenders, 111.
Prideaux, Gen., killed at Niagara, 105, 106.
Proctor, Gen. Henry,
at Malden, 180, 187;
defeated, 188, 189.
Radisson, 39.
Railroads,
Mohawk and Hudson, 238, 240;
New York Central, 241, 291, 298;
Michigan Central, 284, 287, 288;
Kalamazoo and Erie, 285, 286;
Michigan Southern, 285;
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, 288–291;
New York and Erie, 291–298;
Illinois Central, 305, 306;
Iron Mountain Road, 351;
see also under Roads.
Rivers,
Chicago, 70, 218, 222;
Cuyahoga, 113, 219;
Detroit, see under Detroit River;
Fox-Wisconsin, 98, 218;
Genesee, 56, 220, 233, 235, 246, 252, 257;
Illinois, 66, 71, 106;
Maumee, 133, 159, 178, 179, 218, 276, 284;
Milwaukee, 223;

Mississippi, 12, 49, 104, 154, 155, 201–203, 211, 218, 225, 299;

Mohawk, 232, 237, 246, 252, 259, 264;
Niagara, see under Niagara River;
Ohio, 49, 104, 154, 158, 165, 228, 284, 302;
Oswego, 102;
Ottawa, 10, 13, 27, 51, 90, 154, 218;
Raisin, 179–181;
Rock, 201–208, 212;
Sandusky, 183, 187;
St. Croix, 225, 344;
St. Joseph’s, 70, 119, 161, 218, 275;

St. Lawrence, 12, 13, 74, 84, 96, 104, 147, 236;

Thames, 188–190;
Wabash, 177, 218;
Wisconsin, 201, 202, 210, 211, 212.
Roads,
buffalo roads, 229, 230;
Indian trails, 230–232;
turnpikes, 232–236, 247–250;
log-roads, 243;
railroads, 238–241, 283–298, 305, 344, 351, 353.

Rochester,
founded, 220;
turnpike to, 235, 236;
on Erie Canal, 252;
canal celebration at, 257, 258.

Rochester, Nathaniel, 220, 235.

Rogers, Major Robert,
meets Pontiac, 113;
at Detroit, 116, 128, 129.

Rome, 232, 258, 259.

Saginaw, 198, 344.

St. Clair, Gen., his defeat, 156–159, 174.

St. Clair, Lake, named, 63, 64.

Saint Lusson, Daumont de, his ceremony at Sault Ste. Marie, 40–48.

Sandusky,
in 1840, 268, 272, 273;
Underground Railroad station, 302;
in Civil War, 322–325, 328;
see also under Forts.
Sandwich,
American army at, 168, 169;
evacuated by British, 187, 188.
Sault Ste. Marie,
discovered, 34, 35, 39;
Saint Lusson at, 39–48;
Henry at, 137, 145–148;
Cass at, 199;
Margaret Fuller at, 282;
“Soo” Canal built, 7, 8, 351, 362–365;
commerce of, 8, 364, 372.
Schenectady, 232, 238, 240, 268.

Scott, Gen. Winfield, in Black Hawk War, 207, 212.

Ships,
kinds of,
bateau, 127, 129, 358, 359;
canal boat, 255–259, 261–264;
canoe, 356–359;
pirogue, 359;
sailing vessel, 359, 360, 365;
steamboats, 268, 269, 279, 360–362, 371;
steel freighters, 365–370;
whalebacks, 370, 371;
ice-breakers, 371, 372;
Griffon,
first sailing vessel on the lakes, 51–69;
built by La Salle, 51–60;
on the lakes, 61–68;
lost, 69, 359, 373;
Beaver, at Detroit, 120, 127, 359;
Gladwin, at Detroit, 120, 126, 127, 130, 359;
ships in battle of Lake Erie, 183–187;
on Erie Canal, 255–259;
in Civil War, 322–326, 329;

Walk-in-the-Water, first steamboat on the lakes, 360, 361, 373.

Sons of Liberty, 318–322, 328.
Stage wagons, 234, 236, 243–245, 247, 248.
Superior,
Indian trading station, 224, 225;
became a town, 225;
commerce of, 344, 369.
Superior, Lake,
discovered and explored, 39, 198–200, 224;
settlement on, 225;
commerce of, 336–341, 344, 347–354, 357, 360–370.

Syracuse (Onondaga), 232, 252, 264.

Taylor, Col. Zachary, 207.

Tecumseh,
leads Indian uprising, 165, 166;
with the British, 169, 170, 187–189;
killed, 189.

Toledo,
in 1840, 266, 276;
terminus of canal and railroad, 284, 287;
rapid growth, 375, 383.

Tolls, table of, 235, 236.

Tonty, companion of La Salle, 56, 70.

Tonty, Madame, 96.

Toronto, 148, 219.

Tower, Charlemagne, opens iron mines, 352, 354.

Travel,
bibliography, 389–391;
to Lake Erie, in 1796, 242–246;
in 1811, 246–250;
on Erie Canal, 261–263;
on Great Lakes in 1840, 266–282.
Travellers,
John Harriott, 242–246;
John Melish, 246–248;
an Englishwoman, 248, 249;
Anne Royall, 261–263;
Margaret Fuller, 278–282.
Treaties,
treaty of Paris, 1782, 153, 154;
Jay’s treaty, 1796, 163;
treaty of Ghent, 1814, 190;
see also Indian treaties.
Turnpikes, see under Roads.
Two Harbors, 353, 354.
Underground Railroad, 301, 302.

Utica (Fort Schuyler), 232, 233, 238, 245, 248, 260, 262.

Walk-in-the-Water, see under Ships.
Wayne, Anthony,
Indian campaign, 156–164;
makes treaty of Greenville, 162;
death, 164.

Wells, William, at Fort Dearborn massacre, 174–177.

Wigwam, Republican, 311–315.
Wisconsin,
part of Northwest Territory, 155;
called Huron district, 193;
Black Hawk War in, 201, 210–212;
in 1840, 266, 267;
lumber trade, 343–346;
mineral wealth, 351, 352, 354.

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Transcriber’s Note

Some inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have been retained.

The transcriber was born and raised in the Great Lakes region (the greater Cleveland area) and still lives there as of this writing.

- p. 332: changed “Groseillers” to “Groseilliers” (Radisson and Groseilliers returned to Quebec)

- p. 395: changed “Groseillers” to “Groseilliers” (Groseilliers, 39.)

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Table of Contents

- THE STORY OF THE GREAT LAKES
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
- PART I DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION
- CHAPTER I THE GREAT LAKES
- CHAPTER II CHAMPLAIN ON THE GREAT LAKES

- CHAPTER III THE JESUIT MISSION TO THE HURONS

- CHAPTER IV THE PAGEANT OF SAINT LUSSON
- CHAPTER V THE BUILDING OF THE GRIFFON
- CHAPTER VI LA SALLE ON THE GREAT LAKES
- CHAPTER VII A HAPLESS FRENCH GOVERNOR
- PART II THE STRUGGLE FOR POSSESSION
- CHAPTER VIII THE FOUNDING OF DETROIT
- CHAPTER IX NIAGARA AND THE LOSS OF CANADA
- CHAPTER X THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC
- CHAPTER XI THE ADVENTURES OF A TRADER
- CHAPTER XII WAYNE’S INDIAN CAMPAIGN

- CHAPTER XIII THE GREAT LAKES IN THE WAR OF 1812

- CHAPTER XIV THE CONQUEST OF LAKE ERIE

- CHAPTER XV GENERAL LEWIS CASS AND REORGANIZATION

- CHAPTER XVI THE BLACK HAWK WAR
- PART III OCCUPATION AND DEVELOPMENT
- CHAPTER XVII GATEWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES
- CHAPTER XVIII THE STORY OF A ROAD
- CHAPTER XIX BEFORE AND AFTER THE TURNPIKE
- CHAPTER XX THE ERIE CANAL
- CHAPTER XXI THE GREAT LAKES IN 1840

- CHAPTER XXII THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD TO LAKE ERIE

- CHAPTER XXIII LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS IN CHICAGO

- CHAPTER XXIV THE GREAT LAKES IN THE CIVIL WAR

- CHAPTER XXV THREE GREAT INDUSTRIES OF THE LAKES

- CHAPTER XXVI SHIPPING ON THE LAKES

- CHAPTER XXVII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY

- A BRIEF LIST OF BOOKS

- General Works

- Part I. Discovery and Exploration, 1615–1700

- Part II. The Struggle for Possession, 1700–1832

- Part III. Occupation and Development

- Gazetteers and Travels

- INDEX
- Stories from American History
- Transcriber’s Note
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE