Historic Towns of the Western States
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Title: Historic Towns of the Western States
Editor: Lyman P. Powell
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE WESTERN STATES ***
[Illustration THE DEARBORN MONUMENT. _Frontispiece._]
American Historic Towns
HISTORIC TOWNS
OF
THE WESTERN STATES
Edited by
LYMAN P. POWELL
Illustrated
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1901
COPYRIGHT, October, 1901
BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
[Illustration]
PREFACE
In presenting to the reading public this fourth volume in the series of
_Historic Towns_, a volume which brings the series to a close, it is in
order for the editor to call attention to the necessarily large measure of
liberty accorded to the contributors in their treatment of the records of
the several towns. With several of his co-laborers the editor has on one
point or another found himself at variance. Examples of such difference of
conclusions are presented in the references to the Mormons and to the
Mound-builders.
The editor bears in mind, however, the essential difference between
editorial responsibilities and those belonging to the writers of the
papers. It was his duty to choose as contributors not writers who
necessarily share his own view, but those who are most fairly
representative of the towns described, who possess the necessary
familiarity with the historic records, and whose narratives would be
assured of an appreciative and sympathetic reception from their
fellow-townsmen,--men who love their town
"with love far-brought
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present."
In the studies of Western history made by the editor during the past ten
years, two historians have been his inspiration: Francis Parkman, of
blessed memory, revered by all who love good literature and good history;
and Theodore Roosevelt, now by the will of God President of the United
States, and a trustworthy and inspiring writer of our nation's history long
before he took his place among its distinguished makers.
In offering to the public this final volume of _American Historic Towns_,
the editor ventures to hope that by thus focalizing and localizing Western
history, the publishers, authors, and editor are contributing somewhat to
the popular knowledge of and interest in the history of the Great West
which Parkman and Roosevelt first made possible.
Since with this volume the series is brought to a close, the editor trusts
that the publishers, Messrs. G.P. Putnam's Sons, will lay aside their
reluctance to be mentioned in the Preface, and will permit the editor to
express his admiration and indebtedness for their share, larger than is
usual with publishers, in the production of the series. To his wife,
Gertrude Wilson Powell, acknowledgment is also due for aid given in this as
in the earlier volumes, the full value of which cannot here be indicated.
Besides making two important contributions to the volume, Messrs. R.G.
Thwaites and Harold Bolce have ever been ready with suggestion and counsel,
always valued and almost always followed. To Doctors Talcott Williams,
Albert Shaw, and George Petrie, the editor would speak this last word of
gratitude for cordial and skilled assistance in connection not alone with
this book but with the whole undertaking. This closing volume now goes out,
with the editor's best-wishes, to the earlier friends of the series and to
the new friends yet to be gained for it.
LYMAN P. POWELL.
ST. JOHN'S RECTORY,
LANSDOWNE, PENNSYLVANIA,
September 21, 1901.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION Reuben G. Thwaites xix
MARIETTA Muriel Campbell Dyar 1
CLEVELAND Charles F. Thwing 31
CINCINNATI Milton E. Ailes 55
DETROIT Silas Farmer 87
MACKINAC Sara Andrew Shafer 121
INDIANAPOLIS Perry S. Heath 147
VINCENNES William Henry Smith 169
CHICAGO Lyman J. Gage 197
MADISON Reuben G. Thwaites 235
MINNEAPOLIS } Charles B. Elliott 265
AND ST. PAUL }
DES MOINES Frank I. Herriott 301
ST. LOUIS William Marion Reedy 331
KANSAS CITY Charles S. Gleed 375
OMAHA Victor Rosewater 401
DENVER John Cotton Dana 425
SANTA FÉ Frederick Webb Hodge 449
SALT LAKE CITY James Edward Talmage 479
SPOKANE Harold Bolce 509
PORTLAND Thomas L. Cole 535
SAN FRANCISCO Edwin Markham 569
MONTEREY Harold Bolce 617
LOS ANGELES Florence E. Winslow 645
INDEX 685
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE DEARBORN MONUMENT _Frontispiece_
MARIETTA
MARIETTA 3
GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM 7
OLD BLOCKHOUSE, MARIETTA 9
THE MILLS HOMESTEAD, MARIETTA 17
HARMAN BLENNERHASSETT 19
MRS. BLENNERHASSETT 21
MARIETTA COLLEGE BUILDINGS 23
MOUND CEMETERY, MARIETTA 25
OHIO COMPANY'S LAND OFFICE 27
OLD TWO HORN CHURCH 29
CLEVELAND
VIEW IN GORDON PARK 33
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CLEVELAND 35
SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT, CLEVELAND 38
ARMORY OF THE CLEVELAND GRAYS 42
LAKE IN WADE PARK, SHOWING ADELBERT COLLEGE IN THE
DISTANCE 45
PERRY'S MONUMENT, WADE PARK, CLEVELAND 48
CHARLES F. BROWNE ("ARTEMUS WARD") 49
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON 50
GARFIELD MEMORIAL, CLEVELAND 52
CINCINNATI
TYLER-DAVIDSON FOUNTAIN 59
ENTRANCE TO SPRING GROVE CEMETERY 65
RACE STREET, CINCINNATI 69
CITY HALL, CINCINNATI 73
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CINCINNATI 77
SUSPENSION BRIDGE 79
RESERVOIR, EDEN PARK 83
DETROIT
CADILLAC SQUARE SHOWING CITY HALL AND MAJESTIC
BUILDING 89
THE DETROIT RIVER FROM "WINDMILL POINT," 1838 93
From a Pencil Drawing.
WEST GRAND CIRCUS PARK 97
WAYNE COUNTY BUILDING, FACING CADILLAC SQUARE 103
COLONEL ARENT SCHUYLER DE PEYSTER 112
EVACUATION DAY TABLET, ON POST-OFFICE 113
GENERAL GRANT'S HOME IN DETROIT 115
HURLBUT MEMORIAL GATE ENTRANCE TO WATER-WORKS
PARK 117
MACKINAC ISLAND
OLD MISSION CHURCH (CIRCA) 1823, MACKINAC ISLAND 123
ARCH ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND 127
SUGAR LOAF ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND 131
OLD BLOCKHOUSE (1780) OVERLOOKING THE LAKE 135
"OLD STONE QUARTERS," FORT MACKINAC, 1780 137
SIGNATURES OF THE CHIPPEWA CHIEFS, WHO, IN 1781,
DEEDED THE ISLAND TO KING GEORGE III 139
From "Mackinac," by John R. Bailey, M.D., Brevet
Lieut.-Col., U.S.V., by whose kind permission they
are here reproduced.
FORT MACKINAC, AND THE CANNON CAPTURED BY COMMODORE
PERRY 141
REV. ELEAZAR WILLIAMS 143
Reproduced from Latimer's "Scrap-Book of the Revolution,"
by permission of A.C. McClurg & Co.
INDIANAPOLIS
THE OLD STATE HOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS 149
THE NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY, INDIANAPOLIS 151
BENJAMIN HARRISON 153
STATE HOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS, EAST FRONT 155
SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, INDIANAPOLIS 159
MARION COUNTY COURT HOUSE 161
COLUMBIA CLUB, INDIANAPOLIS 163
THE HENDRICKS MONUMENT 165
VINCENNES
EARLY FRENCH SETTLERS AT VINCENNES 175
FORT SACKVILLE, 1779 179
CLARK AND HIS MEN CROSSING THE RIVER 181
GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 187
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON 192
ST. XAVIER'S CHURCH, 1779 193
CHICAGO
THE DEARBORN MONUMENT 203
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BUILDING, CHICAGO 207
AUDITORIUM HOTEL, CHICAGO 211
THE ART INSTITUTE, CHICAGO 215
STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 219
By St. Gaudens.
RUINS OF THE GREAT FIRE, CHICAGO 223
PUBLIC LIBRARY, CHICAGO 231
MADISON
THE STATE HOUSE, MADISON 237
THE FIRST EXECUTIVE RESIDENCE (STILL STANDING) IN USE
BY GOVERNOR DOTY 241
PROFILE ROCK ON LAKE MENDOTA 244
VIEW OF MADISON ACROSS LAKE MONONA 247
THE FIRST STATE HOUSE, MADISON 251
MADISON FROM THE STATE HOUSE, SHOWING UNIVERSITY
BUILDINGS IN THE DISTANCE 253
PROFESSOR WILLIAM FRANCIS ALLEN 254
UNIVERSITY HALL, STATE UNIVERSITY 257
STATE HISTORICAL LIBRARY BUILDING 259
GENERAL LUCIUS FAIRCHILD 262
Ex-Minister to Spain.
MINNEAPOLIS AND ST. PAUL
THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY ABOUT 1850 267
TOWER AT FORT SNELLING 269
The Original "Fort" now used as a Guard-House.
ALEXANDER RAMSEY 272
COURT HOUSE AND CITY HALL, MINNEAPOLIS 275
FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY DURING HIGH WATER 279
THE MILLING DISTRICT 281
PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS 284
OLE BULL MONUMENT IN LORING PARK 286
LORING PARK, MINNEAPOLIS 289
THE FALLS OF MINNEHAHA 291
THE CAPITOL, ST. PAUL 295
A CALM EVENING 299
DES MOINES
FORT DES MOINES IN 1844 303
KEOKUK AT THE AGE OF 67 307
From a Daguerreotype taken in 1847.
IOWA SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT 315
GOVERNOR SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD 319
HON. JOHN A. KASSON 324
THE CAPITOL, DES MOINES 325
THE IOWA HISTORICAL LIBRARY 327
ST. LOUIS
COLONEL AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU, ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF
ST. LOUIS 334
From a painting in Missouri Historical Society Collection.
THE OLD CHOUTEAU MANSION, BUILT FOR LACLEDE IN 1765 336
From a Daguerreotype in Missouri Historical Society
Collection.
OLD FRENCH POST-HOUSE, BUILT IN 1770, INHABITED UNTIL
1870 341
OLD MOUND, ST. LOUIS. REMOVED IN 1869 346
From a photograph in Missouri Historical Society Collection.
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AS PROJECTED, NOW UNDER CONSTRUCTION 359
ST. LOUIS IN 1854 365
From a print in Missouri Historical Society Collection.
EADS BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS 367
FOREST PARK, ST. LOUIS 369
UNION STATION, ST. LOUIS 371
KANSAS CITY
KANSAS CITY FROM THE SOUTH 377
JACKSON COUNTY COURT HOUSE, KANSAS CITY 379
CONVENTION HALL, KANSAS CITY 383
THE CITY HALL, KANSAS CITY 387
THE POST OFFICE, KANSAS CITY 391
A BIT OF GLADSTONE BOULEVARD, KANSAS CITY 393
THE STOCK YARD EXCHANGE, KANSAS CITY 396
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, KANSAS CITY 397
OMAHA
ALFRED D. JONES 402
WILLIAM P. SNOWDEN, OMAHA'S FIRST WHITE SETTLER 404
A TYPICAL OMAHA INDIAN 407
Reproduced by permission of F.A. Rinehart, Omaha.
THE HIGH SCHOOL, OMAHA, ON THE SITE OF THE OLD
CAPITOL 411
Reproduced by permission of Heyn, Omaha.
THE CITY HALL 414
RETURN OF THE FIRST NEBRASKA VOLUNTEERS, AUG. 30, 1899 417
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, OMAHA 419
THE OMAHA EXPOSITION, 1898 421
Reproduced by permission of F.A. Rinehart, Omaha.
DENVER
SOURCES OF TERRITORIAL ACQUISITION IN COLORADO 427
DENVER, COLORADO 429
"SMOKY" JONES 431
THE PRAIRIE SCHOONER, THE PROPER CREST FOR THE COAT-OF-ARMS
OF THE WEST 433
FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE IN DENVER 435
FACSIMILE LETTER FROM WM. N. BYERS, THE FOUNDER OF
THE "ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS" 439
PROSPECTING PARTY, RICO, COLORADO, 1880 441
RICO, COLORADO, IN 1880, A TYPICAL MINING CAMP 443
WILLIAM GILPIN 444
THE CAPITOL, DENVER 445
SANTA FÉ
THE SO-CALLED OLDEST HOUSE IN SANTA FÉ 451
FORT MARCY AND THE PARROQUIA, SANTA FÉ 455
SAN MIGUEL CHAPEL BEFORE ITS RESTORATION 457
SAN MIGUEL CHAPEL IN 1899 465
From a photograph by A.C. Vroman, Pasadena, Cal.
CHRISTOPHER ("KIT") CARSON 467
THE OLD PALACE AT SANTA FÉ 471
SANTA FÉ IN 1846 473
THE TERRITORIAL CAPITOL, COMPLETED IN 1900 474
SALT LAKE CITY
PAVILION OF SALTAIR, GREAT SALT LAKE 481
BRIGHAM YOUNG 483
Founder of Salt Lake City.
EAST TEMPLE STREET, LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE TEMPLE 485
JEDEDIAH M. GRANT, FIRST MAYOR OF SALT LAKE CITY 491
EAGLE GATE 492
BRIGHAM YOUNG MONUMENT 495
MAIN STREET IN 1861 497
HOUSE BUILT IN 1847 WITHIN THE OLD FORT 499
MORMON TEMPLE 501
MORMON TABERNACLE 503
CITY AND COUNTY BUILDING, SALT LAKE CITY 505
LION AND BEE-HIVE HOUSES 506
SPOKANE
THE COUNTY COURT HOUSE, SPOKANE 511
THE LAST CHIEF TO INTIMIDATE THE INHABITANTS OF
SPOKANE 516
THE CITY HALL, SPOKANE 519
J. KENNEDY STOUT 522
THE "SPOKESMAN-REVIEW" BUILDING 525
MIDDLE FALLS, SPOKANE 529
MIDDLE FALLS, ECHO FLOUR MILLS, AND OLD POWER
HOUSE 531
PORTLAND
JOHN JACOB ASTOR 537
ASTORIA IN 1811 541
Based on a print in Gray's "History of Oregon."
FORT VANCOUVER, 1833 545
THE CITY HALL, PORTLAND 555
PORTLAND IN 1850 557
THE PORT OF PORTLAND 559
JUDGE MATTHEW P. DEADY 560
VIEW OF PORTLAND, 1900 561
A CORNER IN CHINATOWN 563
THE PORTLAND 565
SAN FRANCISCO
VIEW NORTHWEST FROM SPRECKEL'S BUILDING 571
THE DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY 575
From the painting by A.F. Mathews.
MISSION DOLORES, BUILT IN 1776 577
SEAL OF THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE 588
UNION DEPOT 597
CHINESE PHARMACY 599
CHINESE GROCERY STORE 603
SMOKING ROOM, CHINESE RESTAURANT 604
A BUSINESS CENTRE 605
PRAYER-BOOK CROSS, GOLDEN GATE PARK 608
SEAL ROCK AND CLIFF HOUSE 609
CITY HALL, SAN FRANCISCO 611
LELAND STANFORD 612
THOMAS STARR KING 613
HENRY GEORGE 615
MONTEREY
JUNÍPERO SERRA, FOUNDER OF MONTEREY 618
CARMEL MISSION (RESTORED) 620
TWILIGHT, MONTEREY BAY 621
SAN CARLOS CHURCH 624
OLD MEXICAN JAIL 630
FISHING VILLAGE 636
ANCIENT CYPRESS AT CYPRESS POINT 637
STATUE OF JUNÍPERO SERRA 638
OLD MEXICAN CUSTOM-HOUSE 641
ANCIENT ADOBE CABIN, MONTEREY 642
LOS ANGELES
BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL 647
SAN DIEGO MISSION, FOUNDED 1769 649
THE PUEBLO OF LOS ANGELES. EARLY SPANISH PLAN 653
Suertes from C. to E.
DON PIO PICO 655
The Last Mexican Governor.
DON ANTONIO F. CORONEL, WITH SPANISH CANNON BROUGHT
TO SAN DIEGO BY SERRA IN 1769 657
THE OLD PLAZA CHURCH, LOS ANGELES 659
A TYPICAL COTTAGE 663
JOHN C. FRÉMONT 666
OLD ADOBE, FRÉMONT'S HEADQUARTERS 671
FIRST STAGE IN THE ASCENT OF MT. LOWE, CONNECTING
WITH ELECTRIC ROAD ON ECHO MOUNTAIN 673
A MODERN RESIDENCE 677
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 679
THE COURT HOUSE, LOS ANGELES 681
IMPROVED HARBOR OF SAN PEDRO, PORT OF LOS ANGELES 683
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
BY REUBEN G. THWAITES
The first two volumes of this series--those devoted to the historic towns
of New England and the Middle States--dealt with communities each group of
which has had for the most part a common origin, has progressed along
practically parallel lines, and possesses characteristics closely akin. The
volume upon the towns of the South brought closely to view the cosmopolitan
character of the population which has settled our continent to the South
and Southwest of the Appalachian wall. The stories of Baltimore,
Washington, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and St. Augustine bring into
view widely-different origins, experiences, and interests along a single
stretch of coast; while Mobile and New Orleans, Knoxville, Nashville, and
Louisville, Vicksburg and Little Rock, are groups representing chapters in
our history which appear to have but slight connection save in the view of
those who have closely studied the mainsprings of American development.
The present volume represents even a wider range of historical interest.
The attentive reader will, however, discover that although these towns of
the far-stretching trans-Alleghany region have sprung from curiously
divergent beginnings, and are apparently incongruous in composition and in
aims, there really is and has been much in common among them.
In order to understand Western history, one must first have knowledge of
the details of the titanic struggle for settlement in North America, made
respectively by Spain, France, and England. The early decline of Spanish
power north of the Red and the Arkansas, save for the later temporary
holding of Louisiana; the protracted tragedy which ended on the Plains of
Abraham in the Fall of New France; the Revolution of the English colonists,
and its portentous results; the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; the Mexican
War, the episode of California, the story of Texas, with their consequent
ousting of Spain from lands north of the Rio Grande and the Gila--all these
are factors bearing the closest relation to the history of the West, and
consequently of many of the historic towns whose stories have been grouped
within these covers.
With these episodes of national rivalry, and consequent diplomacy and war,
were intimately concerned the French fur-trade outposts of Detroit,
Mackinac, Vincennes, and St. Louis, links in the forted chain which bound
Canada and Louisiana, and by means of which it was sought to form a barrier
against the Westward growth of the English colonies; also the Spanish
stations of San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles, and Santa Fé, which were
at once political vantage points and mission seats, for the spread of
Spanish power and civilization from Mexico, among the brown barbarians of
the North. St. Louis experienced both French and Spanish régimes, while
Mackinac, Detroit, and Vincennes were much affected by the period of
English occupancy.
As settlement grew upon the Atlantic coast, the English frontier was
inevitably pushed farther and farther from tidewater. The hunter followed
his game westward; so the forest trader, seeking the ever-receding camps of
the aborigines, and, in due course, the raiser of cattle, horses, and swine
who needed fresh pastures for his herds as tillage steadily encroached upon
the wild lands of the border. At first timorously occupying the valleys and
foothills of the eastern slopes, hunter, trader, and grazier, each in his
turn, cautiously followed buffalo traces and Indian war-paths over the
crest of the great range, and hailed with glee waters descending into the
mysterious West. Not less formidable than the barriers reared by nature
were those interposed by the savage, who with dismay saw his hunting
grounds fast dwindling under the sway of the land-grabbing English; and by
the jealous machinations of the military agents and fur traders of New
France, who brooked no rivalry in their commercial exploitation of the
forest.
When New France fell, the English crown strictly forbade further settlement
in the back country. This order was issued upon the representations of
London merchants interested, as had been the merchant adventurers of
France, in preserving the forest for the Indians and the fur trade; the
ministry were not unmindful also that the bold and liberty-loving
frontiersmen who crossed the mountains might come to consider English
political control as unessential to their being.
This policy was, however, diametrically opposed to the policy of the
border. The fertile fields of the West were far from the observation of
London officials, the spirit of unrest and the desire for gain laughed at
royal proclamations, and the trans-Alleghany movement but gathered force.
By the opening of the Revolution, Kentucky and Tennessee were practically
staked out; by its close, Americans were sole white masters of the West to
the east of the Mississippi, save for a brief holding by the British of
Detroit, Mackinac, and other upper lake posts, as security for treaty
obligations as yet unfulfilled.
It had been the custom of England to grant lands for military service; the
American colonies had likewise liberally rewarded their defenders in the
Indian wars; Revolutionary soldiers were now given free access to the broad
acres of the West, the direct result of this policy being the settlements
of Marietta and Cleveland.
Water courses have ever been of the highest importance in determining the
lines of continental settlement. The river St. Lawrence and the great lakes
offered to the people of New France a continual invitation to explore the
regions whence they flowed. It was not long before the French found that
the sources of south and west-flowing waters were not far from the banks
of the eastering waterways upon which they dwelt. By ascending short
tributaries, and carrying their light craft along practicable paths, or
portages, first used by the Indians, they could re-launch into strange and
devious paths which led to all parts of the continental interior--the
Ohio, the Mississippi, the Assiniboine, and their multifarious affluents
and connections. Thus easily did New France spread along the St. Lawrence
and the lakes, over into the Ohio and the Mississippi, and down their
gliding channels to New Orleans and the sea.
In crossing the Alleghanies, the English sought the Ohio and its
tributaries--the Alleghany, the Monongahela, the Cumberland, the Tennessee,
the Kanawha, the Big Sandy. The Ohio was long the chief gateway to the
West. Upon this royal path into the wilderness, the Ohio Company sent
Christopher Gist to prospect and report; for its possession, France and
England came to final blows through the action at Fort Necessity of Major
Washington, than whom no man knew the Ohio better; it was an approach to
Kentucky more inviting than Boone's Wilderness Road, through Cumberland
Gap; Clark's flotilla came swooping down the great river to conquer
Kaskaskia and Vincennes; and, the Revolution ended, Rufus Putnam and his
fellow veterans from New England claimed their military land grants along
this continental highway, at Marietta. Cincinnati, also, was an outpost
deliberately planted upon the great pathway to the West, although otherwise
differing in genesis. It was by the Great Lakes, that other principal
approach to the West, that Moses Cleaveland founded the settlement of
Revolutionary soldiers who were redeeming their land warrants in New
Connecticut, or the Western Reserve--an incident closely connecting Ohio
with colonial history.
Early in the Western experiences of the new nation, came Indian wars. These
resulted in treaties whereunder the defeated tribesmen were either
forbidden to enter defined areas of settlement, or were confined within
specific reservations. This necessitated the construction of rude but
effective frontier forts, which not unfrequently proved the nuclei of
hamlets that grew into considerable towns. Sometimes these forts were
essential to the direct protection of the white settlers, who, upon
occasion of alarm, flew to cover within the log palisades, which were stout
enough to resist a barbaric foe unpossessed of artillery; such was Fort
Washington, which in time became Cincinnati.
The forest trade was long the chief and only commercial interest in the
West, and at certain points garrisoned forts were necessary to serve the
traders as depôts and as havens of refuge; this was the part played by
Detroit, Mackinac, Chicago, St. Paul, Vincennes, and St. Louis. In the
case of Des Moines, the fort was established for the protection of a group
of reservation Indians who might otherwise have fallen victims to a
superior savage foe.
Agricultural settlers rapidly took up lands. Battle against it as he
would,--and the early history of the border is a piteous tale of man's
inhumanity to man,--the dispossessed savage found this army of occupation
impregnable. As the frontier moved to the westward of the Mississippi, it
was accompanied by the Indians and the fur trade. Territories were erected
by Congress out of the lands of the ousted Iroquois and Algonkins, and
these political divisions were soon admitted to the Union as states; mines
were exploited, forests were depleted, miscellaneous industries were
created, and these new interests not only profoundly affected the old
towns, but gave rise to a new order of cities.
Indianapolis and Madison are examples of town sites staked out in virgin
forests by ambitious and imaginative speculators, and, before a house could
be built, set aside by statute as capitals of their respective young
commonwealths. It is not always that towns thus artificially planted have
similarly thriven. Under normal conditions, a successful city is as much a
matter of natural growth as a tree, whose germ has chanced to fall in
favored soil. Many, perhaps most, Western towns of importance, that were
planted before the days of the railroad, when waterways were highways, are
upon the sites of early villages of aborigines, who made their stands at
natural vantage points--at a river mouth, convenient for transportation, or
close to considerable fishing grounds; at a waterfall, because here fish
are plenty, and canoes must be carried around the obstruction, so that the
villagers are masters of the highway; upon a portage path, because of ease
in reaching and controlling divergent water systems; upon a bluff
overlooking waterways, for facility of observation and control; upon a
fertile river bottom, because of good corn lands. In due time, whites came
to such a centre of population and established a trading post; here and
there, as at Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Vincennes, and Kansas City
(Westport), the post in due time developed into a garrisoned fort; and the
surrounding community, at first dependent on the fur trade or the military,
under modern conditions became a town of importance. Scores, possibly
hundreds, of such examples might be cited; and even when some thrifty towns
of the West appear at first sight to have no connection with such a past,
antiquarians have not infrequently discovered evidences that substantially
the same reasons which before the railway era had led civilized men to
select the site, caused its previous occupancy by aborigines--sometimes at
so early a day that the only remaining relics are the curious earthworks
which the progenitors of our Western Indians, prompted by religious fervor,
constructed anywhere from two and a half to ten centuries ago.
Minneapolis and Spokane, both of them old Indian sites, are the direct
outgrowth of the superb waterpowers which have given them pre-eminence in
the industrial world.
We have seen that the Great Lakes and the great rivers were the paths to
the Mississippi basin in the days of the canoe, the bateau, and the
pack-horse. The early movement of population over the trans-Mississippi
plains and through the passes of the Rockies was by means of wagons along
well-worn buffalo traces, which Indians had followed in the pursuit of
game. Where rivers intersected these overland trails, ferries were
instituted, their keepers doing a thriving business in helping upon their
way fur traders, explorers, miners, and settlers. Such was the origin of
Kansas City and Omaha, which naturally developed, with the rush of
immigration, into great centres of distribution. In every quarter of our
land, from the earliest colonial days, the frontier ferryman, with his
tavern and trading house, has been a town builder.
The discovery of precious metals in the hills of Colorado gave life to the
mining camp of Denver, which in time became the metropolis of a wide
district, to which irrigation brought a wealth more enduring than gold and
silver.
Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are the open doors of the Pacific
Coast, and their growth is thus easily accounted for. Prophecies are
current of the possible commercial supremacy of these Pacific-coast towns,
as a consequence of our new interests in the Far East. It is curious, in
this connection, to remember that Spain's motive in founding her California
colonies, four generations ago, was, on the temporal side, the more
strongly to establish herself in the Philippines.
Strangest of all stories is that of Salt Lake City, the product of
religious zeal seeking a supposedly inaccessible desert as a haven from
persecution. Finally, when the laborious development of the wilderness has
brought rich fruitage, this hermit city finds itself a station on one of
the world's most-travelled highways.
The coming of the railway, and the consequent practical abandonment of the
waterway, wrought a profound change in the fortunes of the Western towns.
The railway paid small heed to watercourses, save in mountainous country;
it struck out upon short-cuts over the plains and prairies, almost
regardless of topography. Hundreds of staid and promising river and lake
towns received a staggering blow when, for various reasons,--sometimes
their own failure to encourage the enterprise,--the railway passed them by
and entered rival and often less pretentious communities, which now were
quickened into new vigor. A more favorable situation for a bridge across
the stream was often the determining factor which caused several towns upon
a river to die and the fortunate one to be transformed into a metropolis.
The arbitrary erection throughout the West of new paths of commerce, of new
centres of distribution, during the decade and a half before the War of
Secession, was of itself a revolutionary element in urban history.
Almost as profound in its effects was the practically contemporaneous
dispersion through this vast territory of millions of European immigrants,
who came to open farms, to practise trades, and in city and in village to
carry forward, often to inaugurate, hundreds of new commercial and
industrial enterprises. The new-comers brought strange habits of thought
and social customs; some of the most desirable of these they engrafted upon
their American neighbors, while at the same time they themselves were being
consciously or unconsciously remoulded into American citizens--who,
whatever may be said, will always be essentially but transplanted
Englishmen modified by environment and political education.
Of the many nationalities of the European continent which have planted
stakes in North America, the Germans and the Scandinavians, closely allied
to our Anglo-Saxon stock, have been the most numerous and have exercised
the greatest influence. Many considerable towns, like Cincinnati, Detroit,
St. Louis, and Omaha, have become strongly German, with not a few of the
characteristics of old Germany, such as are evinced in a general fostering
of music and rational outdoor recreation. The Scandinavian element vies
good-naturedly with the German, as at Madison and Chicago; while
Minneapolis may be considered as the centre of Scandinavian influence,
fostering sturdy democracy and tenacious enterprise.
In the large towns which have their roots planted in New France, the French
element is no longer of considerable importance. The French borderer was a
vivacious, fun-loving, easy-going fellow, and upon the road to modern
opulence and power has long since been passed; to-day, as an urban dweller,
he is not seriously reckoned with by the politician, and this is a safe
guide to the relative standing of a race in any American city. The towns
which we have more recently inherited from Spain still possess, in their
older quarters, strong characteristics to link them with the past. Here and
there, as with the French, individual Spaniards or mixed-bloods rise into
prominence in our modern life--but only through the channel of
Americanization, which means effacement of the old régime. Spanish traits
have left permanent traces on the Southwest and the Pacific, as some French
traits are a part of the lasting heritage of the Old Northwest; but
Spaniards and Frenchmen as such are rapidly fading from our historic towns.
A half-century ago, few of the twenty-one Western towns whose stories are
herein collected had taken upon themselves the characteristics which to-day
chiefly distinguish them. We have seen that the advent of the railway was
for many the starting-point upon the road to prosperity; the arrival of
European immigrants, with traditions of toil and thrift, proved the turning
stage for others, and strengthened all. The War of Secession shook the
Republic to its foundations; but from it the North rose with fresh vigor,
and rapidly developed in growth and ambition, with the ensuing commercial
and industrial conditions which we encounter to-day. Nowhere has this
development been quite so noticeable as in the towns of the West.
Pioneer men and women are necessarily too closely engaged in taming the
wilderness to have either thought or leisure for any but the most
elementary education. But now that the West is no longer the frontier, and
mines, forests, fisheries, manufactures, and scientific agriculture have
brought wealth and comparative leisure, there is among her people no lack
of aspiration for culture. In no section of the United States are study
clubs relatively more numerous, in town and country; university extension
courses and the lyceum prosper everywhere; the common-school systems,
capped by the fast-growing State universities with their thousands of
students, are exhibiting a healthy growth along the most approved lines
under the guidance of teachers of national reputation; excellent private
academies and colleges are numerous in every commonwealth. Several of the
towns mentioned in this volume have won wide reputation as educational
centres--notably Cleveland, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and
San Francisco.
From these Western towns there issues no note of decadence. Theirs is the
glowing ambition of youth. Each of our several authors is quite confident,
and properly so, that his town is the handsomest, brightest, and most
prosperous of all; or, if it is not, that it is soon to be. Its commerce
ever widens, its industries expand in capacity and number, its railways
connect it each year with some new sphere of trade; and, what is better, it
is making strides, in breezy Western fashion, in the cultivation of the
higher things of life, in its churches, its schools, its libraries and
museums, its charities, its parks, its popular conveniences, its insistence
upon moral and material municipal cleanliness. It is pleasant and
profitable to trace the careers of communities such as this; to note, for
instance, by what means the Indian village became a trading post, then a
fort, next a hamlet, and at last comes to be pulsating with the ambitions
and struggling with the multifarious problems of a great modern city.
Herein is a record of urban development crowded into the span of a single
human life, that in the Old World it took centuries to accomplish.
It is often flippantly asserted that America has no history; and even
well-informed Americans, who have come to appreciate their national history
at large, are apt to fancy that, in any event, the West has had a prosaic
career, being simply an overflow or outgrowth from the East. But a perusal
of these pages will surely convince the thoughtful reader that Western
history is not so easily disposed of. It will be found a chronicle
abounding in complexities, aglow with life and color, freighted with
significance to the continent at large. The chief towns of this historic
West have come down to us from many sorts of beginnings, have travelled by
differing and devious paths, often encountering curious adventures by the
way, until, quickened by modern resources and demands, they have each in
its kind come creditably to serve mankind in some useful way.
HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE
WESTERN STATES
[Illustration]
HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE WESTERN STATES
MARIETTA
THE PLYMOUTH OF THE WEST
BY MURIEL CAMPBELL DYAR
"The paths from the heights of Abraham led to Independence
Hall, Independence Hall led finally to Yorktown, and Yorktown
guided the footsteps of your Fathers to Marietta."--_Daniels._
At the point where the Muskingum empties into the Ohio, the River
Beautiful, across whose waters the Ohio hills look tenderly away into the
distances of West Virginia, there was sown, in 1788, the tiny seed for the
development of the Northwest Territory. Here, on the memorable seventh of
April, landed forty-eight New England pioneers; here stayed the keel of the
second _Mayflower_, bearing as her burden not only the men whose names have
become immortal in American history, but, more than these, the Ordinance of
1787 with its momentous articles of compact--an ordinance ranking "next to
the Declaration of Independence in the establishment of Constitutional
liberty in the United States." Here was founded that other Plymouth,
Marietta, the brave little gateway through which the nation's civilization
journeyed onward from the Atlantic seaboard to the fallow empires of the
West.
[Illustration MARIETTA.]
No seer was needed to foreshadow the success the Marietta colony was to
have. Two years before its coming, the character of the colony was presaged
when there met in Boston, at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, whose gilded sign
creaked temptingly in her high salt winds, a convention called by General
Rufus Putnam and General Benjamin Tupper for the formation of the Ohio
Company, with the purpose of founding a new State in the territory
northwest of the Ohio River. The Company was composed of high-minded men,
largely officers in the late war. In their petition to Congress for the
purchase of western land they stipulated, for its organization, law and
order, provision for education and for the maintenance of religion and the
total exclusion of slavery. For these compacts, some of the greatest
statesmen in the young Republic brought to bear the power of their genius;
for these, the quiet Ipswich clergyman, Manasseh Cutler, as agent of the
Ohio Company, pleaded with matchless eloquence in Congress; for these,
Rufus Putnam, the "Father and Founder of Ohio," gave the largess of his
ability and rugged force.
"An interlude in Congress," says Mr. Bancroft, "was shaping the
character and destiny of the United States of America. Sublime
and humane and eventful as was the result, it will not take
many words to show how it was brought about. For a time wisdom
and peace and justice dwelt among men, and the great Ordinance
which alone could give continuance to the Union came in
serenity and stillness. Every man that had a share in it seemed
to be moved by an Invisible Hand to do just what was wanted of
him; all that was wrongfully undertaken fell by the wayside;
whatever was needed for the happy completion of the work
arrived opportunely and at the right moment moved into its
place."
To the forty-eight men sent into the wilderness by the Ohio Company history
gives a generous and well-merited praise. They were of the same race and of
the same upright faith as the brave Englishmen who in 1620 landed on the
bleak, gray rock of Plymouth. All that was true and forceful in the
Plymouth faith was theirs; they had the same love of law and religion, the
same genius for order and a firm self-government, the same courage of
conviction, the same independence of thought and action. They possessed,
too, much of that ancient war-ready temper which had shorn the English King
of his divine right and had created for the English people the House of
Commons. Their heroism had adorned every battlefield of the Revolution;
their roll included generals, majors, colonels and captains.
"No colony in America," said Washington, with that cautious,
unerring judgment of his, "was ever settled under such
favorable auspices as that about to commence at the Muskingum.
Information, property and strength will be its characteristics.
I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were
men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a
community."
"I know them all," cried the Marquis de La Fayette, his fine French voice
trembling with emotion when the list of their names was read to him on his
visit to Marietta. "I knew them at Brandywine, Yorktown and Rhode Island.
They were the bravest of the brave." General Putnam himself was at their
head, the "impress of whose character is strongly marked on the population
of Marietta in their business, institutions and manners." Here were Samuel
H. Parsons, the distinguished general, the able writer, the accomplished
jurist; James M. Varnum, the brilliant scholar, the gallant officer;
Abraham Whipple, the brave commodore, to whom belongs the glory of firing
the first naval gun in the cause of American independence, an act that gave
birth to the American navy. Here were Winthrop Sargent, the Secretary of
the Territory, Benjamin Tupper, the hero of many battles and the devoted
friend of Putnam in the forming of the Ohio Company; Return Jonathan Meigs,
afterwards Governor of Ohio. Here were Nye, Buell, Cutler, Fearing, Foster,
Sproat, Cushing, Goodale, Dana, True, Devol and others no less worthy and
distinguished, whose names are the richest heritage of their descendants.
[Illustration GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM.]
The story of the coming of the pioneers is a twice-told tale to the student
of our nation's history. In the disheartening gray dawn of a December
morning, 1787, the first little band paraded before Manasseh Cutler's own
church at Ipswich, and, after the firing of a salute, started "for the
Ohio country," as their leading wagon proclaimed. Another joined this at
Danvers, and yet another, pushing on from famous old Rutland, started from
Hartford, Ct., led by the beloved and always inspiring General Putnam. The
toilsome journey overland, along an old Indian trail through Connecticut
and Pennsylvania, at that season of the year white with winter, ended at
last at the Ohio River. Here, at Sumrill's ferry, out of timber that still
sang of the forests, was built the _Mayflower_, her bows raking like a
galley, her burthen fifty tons--a humble enough namesake of the famous
Pilgrim vessel. As the pioneers went onward down the river, the snow, which
at first lay heavy in the hollows of the hills, melted into thin patches
here and there, until, when they reached Fort Harmar, at the fair mouth of
the Muskingum, April bourgeoned into unexpected beauty about them. It was a
golden augury for the little town, to which its soldier founders gave the
name of Marietta, in grateful remembrance of the sympathy of Marie
Antoinette for the colonies during the weary period of their Revolution, a
name which still keeps her citizens lovers of that ill-fated Queen of
France.
[Illustration OLD BLOCKHOUSE, MARIETTA.]
Enthusiastic news of the first summer of the colony went back over the
mountains to Ipswich and Rutland. "The climate is exceeding healthy,"
blithely carols one of the old letters, "not a man sick since we have been
here. We have started twenty buffalo in a drove--deer are plenty as sheep
in New England. Turkeys are innumerable. We have already planted a field of
one hundred and fifty acres in corn." Another settler drips from his
ecstatic, and, we trust, veracious quill, "The corn has grown nine inches
in twenty-four hours for two or three days past." The garrison, very soon
erected for defence and called the Campus Martius in academic quaintness,
is described as the "handsomest pile of buildings this side of the
Alleghanies," and as presenting an appearance of almost mediæval
stateliness and strength, bastioned as it was with great blockhouses and
surrounded by a stout double wall of palisades. The Fourth of July was
celebrated by a great "banquet," eaten in a bowery set up on the banks of
the Muskingum; its menu tickles even a jaded modern palate--venison
barbecued, buffalo steaks, bear-meat, roasted pigs, "the choicest delicacy
of all," and a great pike, six feet long, the largest ever caught in the
river. "We kept it up till after twelve o'clock at night," succinctly
observes one of the participants, "and then went home and slept until
after daylight." On the fifteenth of July, a yet more memorable occasion,
General St. Clair, the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, was
welcomed with great ceremonies, and the Ordinance of 1787 was read with
much solemnity in the midst of profound silence. In early August a pleasant
little ripple of diversion was caused by the arrival of the families of the
pioneers. In the latter part of the same month, Dr. Cutler made a visit to
the settlement, and delivered the first sermon ever preached at Marietta.
In September was opened the first Court of Common Pleas in the Territory.
It was an august spectacle. The sheriff, Colonel Ebenezer Sproat, of the
Massachusetts line, preceded by a military escort, marched with his drawn
sword and wand of office ahead of the governor, judges, secretary and
others, to the blockhouse where the court was held. As the picturesque
little procession wound its way along the river banks, the friendly
Indians, loitering about the new city, admired immensely the mighty form of
Colonel Sproat, who, being six feet four inches tall, towered conspicuously
above his companions. Ever thereafter they called him Hetuck, or Big
Buckeye, and ever since then the natives of Ohio have been dubbed
"Buckeyes."
Great provisions were made for good order in the settlement; almost before
the seeds of New England harvests had germinated in the virgin soil,
Marietta had her pillory, whipping post and stocks for the discipline of
evil-doers, instruments of torture which lingered as late as 1812. Every
man was ordered to "entertain emigrants, visit the sick, feed the hungry,
attend funerals, cabin-raisings, log-rollings, huskings and to keep his
latch-string always out." Once during the fruitful summer the settlers
assembled to attend a funeral, for the first death in the colony occurred
in August, when little Nabby Cushing, daughter of Major Cushing, passed
away. She was buried tenderly in the alien soil, where, in an unmarked
grave, she is slumbering still. Although many years have come and gone
between, a vague pity stirs to-day at the thought of that little pioneer
baby, whose feet so soon grew weary in the vast wilderness.
The hospitality of the latch-strings was put to the test two years later,
when a hapless colony of Frenchmen took shelter in the town, lured into the
wilderness by the unscrupulous agent of a land company, with the promise
that they should find a land where there were no taxes to pay, no military
services to be performed, where frost, even in winter, was entirely unknown
and where candles grew ready-made on the bushes and sugar dripped
spontaneously from the trees. They were a curious crew: carvers, gilders,
wig-makers and hair-dressers from Paris, even a Viscount of broken-down
fortunes and a young Marquis, with a few peasants as helpless as themselves
in the new conditions,--hardly a mother's son of them able to plough or
reap or chop for himself, and many a man without a sou in his pocket. The
major part of them drifted down the river that winter to what is now
Gallipolis, the City of the Gauls, where they at once began to give balls
in the cabins which the Marietta settlers helped them build, and proceeded
to spend what little money they had in hiring American hunters to bring
them game! A few became citizens of Marietta, notably Monsieur Thiery, a
Parisian baker and confectioner, who quickly adapted himself to the new
life, and made toothsome little sweet-cakes and bread for the
settlement,--there is a tradition that while Louis Philippe was whiling
away his exile in the United States, he visited Marietta, where he had the
pleasure of eating a fair wheaten loaf of his countryman's baking, and
Monsieur Cookie, bred to no trade, very short and very stout, who wore at
all times and in all seasons a very tall steeple-crowned hat which once
saved his life, when the Indians, catching sight of it bobbing up and down
in the paw-paw bushes, fired at it in a vain attempt to hit the head
within.
After the sober jollity of the first summer, the Marietta colonists
experienced the hardships which every early settlement knows. They had
their "sick years, their times of famine and their Indian wars." The sick
years played a sad havoc in their numbers by dreadful scourges of epidemic
diseases. The famous starving-time came in the spring and summer of 1790.
A black frost falling out of due season ruined their crops, and the
Indians, already beginning their hostilities, had driven from the forest
every startled wild thing within their reach. It was a period that tried
the Puritan mettle, for the solace of religion may prove vain if the
stomach be empty. The only food was nettle-tops and the tender shoots of
the pigeon-berry, boiled with a little corn pounded on the hominy block.
Occasionally a hunter, faring far afield, brought in a bit of bear-meat or
a wild turkey, which made a feast at least fitting if not full. The heroic
matrons sipped spice-bush tea, unsweetened, in lieu of a more stimulating
beverage. Many a heart turned back in homesick longing to where the blue
haze curled comfortably from New England kitchens, but hope returned with
the early squashes. The new corn crop was abundant, and from that day to
this, whatever may have been their vicissitudes of fortune, the citizens of
Marietta have never again been reduced to a starvation diet.
A much graver calamity, coming not long after, was the Indian wars, which
were not to end for five long, weary years. During this time the town was
strained to its generous capacity to receive under the shelter of the
Campus Martius the men, women and children from remoter settlements. The
settlers worked in the fields like the Israelites at the rebuilding of the
walls of Jerusalem,--every man with his weapon in his hand. On the puncheon
cabin-floors, mothers rocked their babies in the first cradles of Ohio,
while often, on some far-off hill, they could see savage warriors
brandishing their blood-stained hatchets in defiance at the fort.
The news of the defeat of General St. Clair's expedition caused
consternation, and threatened for a time to break up the settlement. So
disastrous was the defeat that when in 1793 Mad Anthony Wayne camped on the
General's battlefield, his soldiers could not lie down to sleep for the
bones of the unfortunate army. Humiliated by his misfortune and its implied
disgrace, the Governor soon left his Marietta home. The colonists mourned
with his loss that of his daughter Louisa, so brave, so lovely, so
brilliant, that it seems no mere legend that the great Indian chief,
Brandt, was madly in love with her.
In the grim terror of the times, an amusing incident now and then comes
like a lilt of girlish laughter. Once the signal gun gave the alarm that
the Indians were besieging the town. The night was dark and the confusion
indescribable. Men rushed to their posts and the women and children
scuttled to the central blockhouse. Colonel Sproat led the way with a box
of valuable papers; next came a woman with her bed and children, and
tumbling after her, old Mr. Moulton, with his leathern apron full of
goldsmith's tools and tobacco. His daughter Anna carried the china tea-pot.
Lyddy brought the great Bible. When all were in the frightened cry was
raised that Mrs. Moulton was missing--that she had been scalped by the
Indians. "Oh, no," said Lyddy calmly, "she'll be here in a minute. She
stopped to put things a little to rights; she said she _would not_ leave
the house _looking so_." And in a few moments the old lady scuttled in,
bearing the looking-glass--a triumph of New England housewifery!
A certain regularity of living was maintained in spite of the continuous
fear. Every Sabbath morning church was held in a blockhouse where Psalms
were droned with Puritan unction, and the sermon by Mr. Story, the
scholarly Massachusetts divine, was tasted with much critical acumen by
the learned backwoodsmen, many of whom were graduates of Harvard and
Dartmouth. On the long Sabbath afternoons the children of the settlement
studied their catechisms in the simple log cabin of Mrs. Mary Lake, the
earnest woman who thus started what was perhaps the first Sunday-school in
the United States. On week days they were gathered together for lessons,
nor was the rod kept in less perpetual pickle because of the proximity of
the Indians.
[Illustration THE MILLS HOMESTEAD, MARIETTA.]
The war once over, a busy activity ensued. Mills were built, bridges made,
and more comfortable houses erected. It was not strange that the sons of
the old coast States, with the siren voice of the sea still in their ears,
should become notable builders of ships. The great trees of the forest were
masts ready for felling, and many a stately vessel slipped into the water
from this inland ship-yard, to glide down the Ohio into the Mississippi,
and from thence to the shining ocean beyond. The town became a centre of
industry and traffic, a position which she was not long to keep, for
gradually trade drifted from her, and by and by she fell asleep
commercially beside her pleasant waters, to nod and dream serenely through
years to come. But not only was the early Marietta noted for her
industrial prosperity; she was a centre of culture as well, and her place
in this regard she has never lost. As soon as a greater wealth and leisure
came to the pioneer colony, there bloomed abundantly the flowers of an
intellectual refinement, which was the birth-right of those heroic men and
women.
[Illustration HARMAN BLENNERHASSETT.]
It is with this gracious era, redolent of sweet old customs and stately
courtesies, that there is associated the romantic, old-time tragedy of the
Blennerhassetts. On the lovely island lying some twelve miles below
Marietta, Harman Blennerhassett, the dreamy Irish exile, built his idyllic
mansion, whose grandeur was the wonder of the West.
"A shrubbery that Shenstone might have envied," wrote Wirt,
"blooms around him. Music that might have charmed Calypso and
her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treasures
before him. A philosophical apparatus offers him all the
secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity, and
innocence shed their mingled delights about him. And to crown
the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely
even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that
can render it irresistible, has blessed him with her love."
[Illustration MRS. BLENNERHASSETT.]
Here he plotted a new empire with the bad and brilliant Aaron Burr, whose
hands were still red with the blood of the murdered Alexander Hamilton; and
from here he fled accused of treason to his country, disgraced and ruined.
Memories of the "Blennerhassett days" are many, for the great man was for
several years a partner of Dudley Woodbridge, the first merchant of
Marietta, and both he and his accomplished wife were familiar figures in
Marietta homes. Fancy, inspired by local annals, has a charming glimpse of
the loving mistress of the hospitable mansion, dashing through the woods on
her spirited horse, like some brilliant tropical bird, in her habit of
scarlet cloth, and white hat with the long drooping plume. A pretty story
is told of her wit and beauty at the famous "Burr ball" which the fashion
of Marietta once gave in honor of the crafty statesman and his daughter
Theodosia. To-day, the site of the regal dwelling is marked only by an old
well and some magnificent trees. "Blennerhassett's Island" is a point of
attraction for pleasure-seekers, who give little enough thought to its sad
story; but sometimes there journeys to it a lover of past years who looks
with blurred eyes at the spot where once was enacted one of the most
pathetic little tragedies in all American history.
But Marietta is not altogether a tale of yesterdays; she has as well her
to-day, with its rich promise for the morrow. To-day, a stranger in the
town has pointed out to him "New" and "Old" Marietta. In New Marietta,
brought into existence by the discovery of vast surrounding oil-fields,
there are thriving factories, modern business blocks, new hotels, improved
school-buildings, electric cars; there are evidences of wealth and business
prosperity, and signs of an increasing population. This commercial
progress, from a civic standpoint, is undeniably a benefit, yet it must be
admitted, for the time being, it gives Marietta a little the appearance of
a kindly, old-style grandmother, startled from a long afternoon nap in the
chimney-corner, to find her cap gone, her scanty petticoats replaced by
strangely ample frills, and the caraway seeds in her limp black bag
supplanted by indigestible bon-bons. In Old Marietta the scene shifts. Here
is the drowsy peace of a New England village; here are wide streets shaded
by avenues of splendid trees, and ancient houses, generous-portalled,
serene. Here is the burring of bees in old-fashioned gardens. And is not
this lingering fragrance the smell of the lotos-flower?
[Illustration MARIETTA COLLEGE BUILDINGS.]
The glory of the old dispensation is the venerable college, whose buildings
cluster picturesquely on the green lift of College Hill. Founded in the
fear of God by the first scholars of Ohio, it has behind it a proud
history. At its head have stood men of rich culture and ability, among
whose names shines pre-eminently that of Israel Ward Andrews. In the list
of its instructors have been scholars who have led it upward to all that is
noblest and best. From its classes have gone out students who have taken a
fitting and often distinguished place in the professions and in politics.
When the call of 1861 came, the student sons of Marietta responded with a
gallant patriotism and a devoted service, some among them winning the
highest recognition. To-day, with its able faculty, its fine library, its
well equipped class-rooms, it holds no mean place in the roll of American
colleges. It pays to its past the precious thanks of a worthy present. And
with happy confidence it looks forward to its future, under the guidance of
its sixth and latest President, Alfred Tyler Perry, but recently called to
its leadership from Hartford Theological Seminary.
[Illustration MOUND CEMETERY, MARIETTA.]
In the old Mound Cemetery sleep an honored dead. In its center is the
prehistoric mound, as well preserved to-day as when it was discovered by
the pioneer fathers, a vast monument to the unknown fittingly encircled by
the quiet dignity of this ancient Acre of God. General Putnam's grave is
marked by a plain granite monument, bearing the simple inscription more
touching than the loftiest eulogy:
GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM
A Revolutionary Officer
And the leader of the
Colony which made the
First settlement in the
Territory of the North-West.
Born April 9, 1738,
Died May 4, 1824.
[Illustration OHIO COMPANY'S LAND OFFICE.]
Not far from him are the majority of the Revolutionary heroes who came with
him from New England. It is claimed that there are buried here more
officers of the Revolution than in any other burying-ground in the United
States. About them lie thirteen soldiers of the War of 1812, and a number
of the brave men who fought in the Mexican War. Here too, are the
resting-places of many early citizens of Marietta, who are as a "Choir
Invisible"
"Of those immortal dead, who live again
In minds made better by their presence."
The gates are seldom open now to the silent caravans, for the graves in the
cloistral grass lie close.
Many relics of bygone days make Old Marietta interesting. The streets
running north and south bear yet the names given them by the early
settlers, of Washington and his generals. The "Sacra Via" and the breezy
"Capitolium" and "Tiber Way" bear witness to an old scholarship. "The
Point" recalls the picketed Point of the Indian wars. There still stands
the Ohio Company's Land Office, a wee, weather-beaten building, gray with
time, probably the oldest structure in Ohio. Opposite this is the old
homestead of Rufus Putnam, which stood within the Campus Martius. On the
park, fronting the river, is the quaint Two Horn Church of the
Congregationalists, erected in the wilderness in 1806 and now Ohio's oldest
church building. On the same street where it stands is the stately old
mansion of Governor Meigs, which was built two years earlier and which
still holds an honored place among Marietta's beautiful homes. In families
whose names mark their descent from the "forty-eight immortals" are
treasured numerous heirlooms,--ancestral portraits which look from their
tarnished frames pink-cheeked, confident and calm; old dresses, dim and
faintly odorous; and divers warming-pans, candlesticks and Blennerhassett
chairs, together with sundry bits of sprigged, delightful china.
[Illustration OLD TWO HORN CHURCH.]
"Age is a recommendation in four things," runs a Spanish proverb: "Old wood
to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, old books to read." To
these might well be added a fifth,--old towns to love. To those who know
her, Marietta is a hallowed spot. She is a tender-bosomed matron, this
mother of many sons. Around her is a fair line of hills, which, whether
green with the eternal promise of the spring, or wrapped in the blue smoke
from autumn's invisible battlefield, or hoary with winter's snows, are
changelessly beautiful. About her are broad fields, now quivering to their
resurrection, now white to the harvests. Before her are the lovely,
far-stretching rivers, calling to her all day long with their old, sweet
notes of running water. By the bonds of her historic beauty she holds her
children in a very tender thrall. In all times, and in all places, their
hearts yearn unto her in the far Horatian cry: "Septimius,--_that angle of
the earth laughs for me beyond all others_!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CLEVELAND
THE PLEASANT CITY
BY CHARLES F. THWING
The first thing to be said about Cleveland is what, with the change of a
pronoun, a Cambridge poet said about one of whom he wrote: "It is so
pleasant." Its streets are pleasant to live in and to look upon; its parks
are pleasant to stroll in or to ride in; its houses are, on the whole,
pleasant to the æsthetic sense; its libraries are pleasant for their
selectness though not for their bigness; its people are, above all,
pleasant for their dignity, graciousness, genuineness, simplicity and
appreciation. In the year 1838 the late Asa Gray spent a short time in
Cleveland, and wrote from Cleveland to a friend, saying that the city would
"ultimately be a very pleasant place"; he adds: "The people show some signs
of civilization; they eat ice cream, which is sold in many places."[1] I
wish I were able to assure my old friend and neighbor, as he now lives with
the immortelles and other fadeless flowers, that he has proved to be a true
prophet: Cleveland has become a "very pleasant place," and possibly I might
be allowed to assure him that signs of the ice-age of modern civilization
still linger.
In that relation in which men commonly use the word "pleasant," the
weather, Cleveland is not pleasant. It has as much cloudy weather as
almost any part of the world; and yet it has a pleasant climate. Its
summers are not hot, its winters not cold. To the worker of any sort this
pleasant climate of much unpleasant weather is very pleasing, for in it, as
in the climate of London, one can get much work out of himself.
[Illustration VIEW IN GORDON PARK.]
Cleveland is a singular creation of contraries. It is an inland town, but
it builds more vessels and owns more vessels than almost any other in the
United States. About a quarter of all the steel vessels, rated in tonnage,
built in the United States in the last fiscal year of the Government were
constructed in Cleveland, the order of precedence being Cleveland, Newport
News, Chicago, and Detroit; and almost three quarters of the modern steel
ships in service on the Great Lakes are owned or operated by Cleveland
vesselmen. It is a city of four hundred thousand people, but it impresses
both the visitor and the resident as a big village or a series of big
villages. From it can be reached in a long or short night's ride, New York
and Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis, Detroit and Cincinnati; within seven
hundred miles of Cleveland dwell more than half the entire population of
the country, and yet Cleveland has been called provincial. Its homes are
among the most palatial of the world, but the owners of not a few are more
at home in New York and Paris than on Euclid Avenue. It is distinguished
for its iron, steel and coal interests, but it has scholars and teachers
who are known where its steel rails have never been carried. It is a city
of the East, and it is also a city of the West--of the East it is the
newest, of the West it is the oldest. It is often called conservative, but
it is also distinguished by its sense of power and of progress. It
represents in its citizens a pure New England type; but it has also
gathered up folks from all over the world,--"Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites, ... strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians,"
who read their newspapers in a dozen different languages. But, be it said,
the New England, the Connecticut and Massachusetts type still dominates.
The names of the families which are most representative of the things of
the spirit include a large number of New England names.
[Illustration CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CLEVELAND.]
This city of contraries and of contrasts is yet made a great city by only
one or two simple elements. One may say that Lake Erie makes Cleveland.
Were there no Lake Erie there would be no Cleveland. But Lake Erie is the
occasion and not the cause. One may say that the age of steel makes
Cleveland. But that this age is the age of steel is only the condition, not
the cause. The cause that makes Cleveland Cleveland is that at or near
Cleveland the various elements that are necessary in the manufacture of
iron and steel can be most economically and efficiently assembled. The
iron ores from the Lake Superior region, the coal from the Massillon,
Mohoning and Pennsylvania region, the limestone from the Lake Erie islands
and southern shores, can here be most profitably brought together.
Cleveland is, too, by rail and by boat a good point for the distribution of
the finished product as well as a good point for the bringing together of
the crude material. Here ore, coal and lime meet and mingle as naturally as
the heat of the sun and the life of the seed unite in the springtime.
Nothing can prevent their meeting, and little can subsidies or other
artificial stimulus do to promote it. From this union spring forth
factories making nuts and bolts and sewing-machines and engines and the
thousand products and by-products of this age and place of steel. Therefore
Cleveland is Cleveland.
[Illustration SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MONUMENT, CLEVELAND.]
It may not only be said that Cleveland is herself; it should also be added
that Cleveland has done some things first which are worth doing anyway, and
which are especially worth doing first. As among the colleges Williams and
Harvard have done not a few first things, so among the cities Cleveland
may claim a certain priority. The city was, if not the first, among the
first to adopt the federal system of municipal government, a system which,
after ten years of usefulness, has proved to be like every other form of
democratic government, good if good men are in control, and bad if bad men
are in control. Cleveland was the first to adopt the proper method for the
government and administration of its public schools, namely the separation
of the business side of the administration from the educational, a system,
too, which, like the more general plan of government, finds its efficiency
in the character of the men who administer it. In Cleveland, too, was
organized the great Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Here,
too, one of the first women in America to enter the medical profession was
trained in the old Medical College, now a part of the Western Reserve
University. Here the recondite experiments were made by Morley for
determining the atomic weight of oxygen, and practical experiments by Brush
for giving the best light, as well as the important experiments also made
by Brush which resulted in adding "etherion" to the elements. Here, also,
important facilities in the use of the public library and in the making of
finest machinery, such as is used in astronomical apparatus, were first
applied. One, too, should not in a commercial age be suffered to forget
that in Cleveland the Standard Oil Company was born and grew to be a lusty
youth.
This city of first things had as its first man and founder, one whose name
it bears, Moses Cleveland. A Connecticut man, born in Canterbury, Windham
County, in 1754, graduated at Yale in 1777, admitted to the bar,
interrupting his professional practice by service in the Revolutionary
army, serving in the Connecticut Legislature and also in the State militia,
Moses Cleveland was made agent for the Connecticut Land Company in 1796,
and came into the historic territory of New Connecticut, or the Western
Reserve.[2] He seems to have had those elements which usually are found in
founders of states and builders of cities. Reserved in speech, vigorous in
action, friendly with all, grave, shrewd, he was born to command. His
career was brief: he died in the town of his birth in 1806; but he lived
long enough to entertain a rational hope of the future greatness of the
city he founded and named. It is said that he once remarked: "While I was
in New Connecticut I laid out a town, on the bank of Lake Erie, which was
called by my name, and I believe the child is now born that may live to see
it grow as large as old Windham."
Moses Cleveland was a prophet at once true and false. Cleveland became as
large as old Windham and even larger, in the lifetime of children born in
the last decade of the eighteenth century. The method by which Cleveland
has attained the first place in its State, and the seventh place in the
United States, is a process, a growth, and not a manufacture. In the year
1830, thirty-four years after the coming of Moses Cleveland, it had only a
thousand people; but the one thousand had increased to six thousand by
1840, and in the next ten years the six thousand increased threefold. In
the next ten years the number more than doubled, becoming forty-three
thousand in 1860, and yet again doubled in the following decade. By 1870,
it had become ninety-two thousand. The doubling process could not long
continue, but it came so near it that in 1880 there were one hundred and
sixty thousand inhabitants, in 1890 two hundred and sixty thousand and
more, and in 1900 almost four hundred thousand.
[Illustration ARMORY OF THE CLEVELAND GRAYS.]
A growth more normal and steady, a growth which has also carried along
with itself elements far more precious than mere size, it would be hard to
find. For these folks do not deserve the epithet which Carlyle applied to
London's millions. They are a people of vigor, initiative, progressiveness,
carefulness, wealth, work, comfortableness, and good-heartedness.
Cleveland may be conservative; but it is the conservatism of the English
nation which Emerson describes in saying: "The slow, deep English mass
smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its borders in flame."
Cleveland's fires are the fires of anthracite and not of straw.
A city of comfort, Cleveland has no London's East End. I do not believe
that in any other population of the world of its size can be found so few
hungry stomachs or homeless bodies. Work abounds. All men work. Its rich
men are workers, and, what is far more exceptional, the sons of its rich
men are workers. Its wealth is of the solid sort. It represents investments
which pay dividends every six months, and which represent the advancement
of every commercial and manufacturing interest. But Cleveland is obliged to
acknowledge that not a few of its rich men are legal citizens of New York
City, ostracized from its pleasant borders by what they and others regard
as the unjust tax laws of the State.
The city has not yet reached the condition in which it is understood that
in case a will is probated representing a large estate which fails to give
at least a considerable sum to charity or to education, the court shall set
it aside on the ground that the testator was of unsound mind. Of course
money is given away both by gift and by bequest, but more, on the whole, by
gift than by bequest, and in large amounts, but not in amounts so large as
prevail in communities of an age of two hundred and seventy-five years
rather than of one hundred. The rate of increase which money may make for
itself is so great, that the holder and the maker hesitate to part with
such a remunerative agent. Yet the beneficence viewed in the light of
decades is great. A noble school of science, a noble college and
university, including professional schools, a noble foundation for an art
school, are easily found among the more obvious tokens. Hospitals and
orphanages, private schools, endowed churches, Young Men's Christian
Association buildings, parks and college settlements, are ready proof of
private beneficence for public ends. Testimony should also be borne to the
wisdom as well as the generosity which characterize the giving of this
people. My pen refuses to write names, but it is free to say that to find
beneficence which is, it shall not be said so little harmful, but which is
so gloriously efficient, as the beneficence of some of Cleveland's noblest
women and men would be difficult. With the gift, before the gift, and after
the gift goes the wisdom as well as the graciousness of the giver. One,
too, should not neglect to say that in not a few of the great manufacturing
concerns of Cleveland prevails a spirit that the employer owes to the
employee something more than wages. The dividend to labor consists, in the
more obvious relations, in providing rest and recreation rooms, facilities
for eating the midday luncheon, and in doing what can be done in creating
associations and conditions which make for the enrichment of life and the
betterment of character.
[Illustration LAKE IN WADE PARK, SHOWING ADELBERT COLLEGE IN THE DISTANCE.]
Of course Cleveland has societies and clubs: clubs into which the worthiest
life of the community naturally organizes itself for worthiest purposes,
and clubs which represent the life that is simply worthy and of which the
purposes are not the highest. Clubs of women and clubs of men, clubs social
and clubs professional, clubs literary and clubs commercial, clubs
anthropological and clubs sociological, clubs chemical and clubs
engineering, clubs collegiate and clubs pedagogical, clubs athletic and
clubs æsthetic, clubs piscatorial and clubs ecclesiastical, clubs
architectural and clubs of free-traders, clubs for municipal improvement
and clubs for no improvement of any kind--they all and many others are
found in this very pleasant city.
And underneath all these associations and organizations it is easy to
discover the growth of a distinctly civic spirit, also manifest in special
movements and conditions. The endeavor to build in one group buildings so
important as a county court-house, a city hall, a public library and others
reveals the willingness to surrender individual advantages to the public
weal. The attempt to deal largely and justly with all municipal franchises
proves the presence of a desire to serve all as well as each. The Municipal
Association, an organization of a few gentlemen of high purpose and of
patience as well as of great influence, has, in recommending or in refusing
to recommend certain candidates for office, promoted the growth of a public
sense out of which it has itself sprung. The determination that the public
schools shall not be used for partisan purposes is perhaps as strong an
illustration as could be given of the presence and potency of the civic
spirit of Cleveland.
[Illustration PERRY'S MONUMENT, WADE PARK, CLEVELAND.]
In the three great professions are found noble members. In this triple
service is manifest a high tableland of general excellence rather than a
level broken by high and distinct peaks of individual conspicuousness. The
highest relative standing belongs, I judge, to the members of the medical
profession. This prominence may be the result of the presence for more than
fifty years of a medical school which has numbered among its faculty some
great investigators and teachers. But not a few of those who are examples
of highest service have been unwilling, it must be said, to remain in
Cleveland. As the Atlantic draws down the level of the Great Lakes, so the
territory of the Atlantic draws away some (not all) of the more eminent
members of the great professions. The supply however never becomes
exhausted, nor does it deteriorate.
[Illustration]
[Illustration CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.]
But the most eminent of Cleveland's people belong to the literary or
political class rather than to the strictly professional. The earliest of
the writers who spread Cleveland's fame and his own was Artemus Ward. It
was a short career enough which Artemus Ward had, and its Cleveland part
covered only two years, but while it lasted it bore one of Cleveland's
daily papers round the world on the wings of his wit. One cannot forget
that here lived and wrote John Hay, beloved as among the best of men as
well as honored as the most efficient of Secretaries of State. James Ford
Rhodes here fitted himself while engaged in business to begin his career as
a fascinating writer of later American history. Constance Fenimore Woolson
was a Cleveland child, although not born here, and the Great Lakes are the
scenes of her stories. Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, writer of useful and
pleasing biographies and other books, divides her residence between Boston
and Cleveland. Charles W. Chesnutt, too, is esteemed not only for his
sketches but also for a distinct charm of character. Cleveland would like
to claim that rare poet and great soul, Edward Rowland Sill, for his home
was only a few miles away, and in Cleveland he died, in 1887. One should
not decline to say that books written by college professors may not only be
the material for literature but also literature itself. Such books, written
in Cleveland, are neither few nor barren.
The eminence in politics of the Cleveland man belongs rather to the present
than to the past. If one should name the gentlemen who have served the city
in the national Congress the names would to most prove to be without
significance. The name of Senator Payne--and he had been long associated
with the life of the city--one recalls, but no name has the meaning of the
name of Wade or of Giddings, who came from the little town of Jefferson, a
few miles east of Cleveland, or of Sherman, who came from the south. Hayes,
Garfield and McKinley might be called citizens of the Greater Cleveland. At
the present time, however, in both the Senate and the House the city is not
without able and significant representation.
[Illustration GARFIELD MEMORIAL, CLEVELAND.]
Like a piece of music the chapter returns upon itself. It began with the
argument that Cleveland is so pleasant. From the breakwater which the
Government builds to keep Cleveland great and to make it greater, along the
avenues of residence or of trade, even through its smoky and sooty
atmosphere,--sign of prosperity,--out mile after mile to the city of the
dead where the well-beloved Garfield sleeps in nobly wrought sepulchre, in
all and through all, Cleveland is pleasant. Pleasant to live in, pleasant
to work in, I know, and pleasant to go to heaven from, I hope, is
Cleveland.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Letters of Asa Gray_, i., 72.
[2] This section, known as the Western Reserve, lying between parallels
forty-one and forty-two, and a line one hundred and twenty miles west of
the western line of Pennsylvania and parallel with it, was "reserved" to
Connecticut when she ceded to the United States certain territory which she
had received from the grant of Charles II. Of this territory Connecticut
granted one half million of acres to such of her soldiers as had suffered
from the British during the Revolution. The larger, if not the entire, part
of the balance passed into the control of a private-public corporation,
known as the Connecticut Land Company.
[Illustration]
CINCINNATI
ALWAYS A STRATEGIC POINT
BY MILTON E. AILES
On the day before Christmas, 1788, twenty-six adventurous men, in deerskin
hunting shirts and leggins, with tomahawk, powder-horn and scalping knife
at their belts, embarked at Limestone on the Ohio River in rude barges of
their own construction, and fighting their way through dangerous floes,
proceeded on a journey which was to prove memorable in the annals of
American colonization.
These pilgrims were well aware of the perils and tragedies awaiting them,
for their mission was to build them homes and found a city on the edge of
the rich Miami Valley, through which mixed tribes of raging Shawnees,
Senecas, Iroquois and Miamis roamed, determined to halt the threatening
advance of the hated paleface.
The Indian braves realized that a crucial moment in their history had come.
Their allies, the British, had gone down in defeat before the Thirteen
Fires. Henceforth the tribes must look to their own councils, and rely upon
their own strength, and they swore grimly that the Ohio should run with
blood, and that the advent of every western pioneer should bring an
additional scalp for the grewsome decoration of their lodges.
But these hardy voyagers, now celebrating a frugal Christmas as they
steered their course down the swollen and half-frozen Ohio, were not to be
turned aside by impending conflict with savage tribes. To meet grave danger
like brave men was for them no new experience; they had passed through
seven years of revolution; they had stood the trying tests of honorable
hardships, and were now making their way to found a community which was to
develop within a few generations into one of the greatest inland cities of
the world. Four days they fought their way through floating masses of
débris and ice, finally finding their haven in Sycamore Inlet, opposite
the mouth of the Licking River. To-day the traveller, smoking meditatively
in a Pullman, will cover the same distance before he has occasion to light
a fresh cigar.
In a grove of sycamores, osiers and water maples they struck their flint
and built their fires. There was no theatrical assertion of dominion, nor
is it on record that sacred rites were invoked to consecrate the struggle
for civilization that was to centre round this far outpost of the Republic,
and yet their first performance was one of the most dramatic incidents in
western history; for, knowing that savage armies lurked in the dim woods
that overhung the terraces above them, these twenty-six hardy Anglo-Saxons
dismantled the crafts that had carried them into the far wilderness, and
converted the planks and timbers of their barges into cabins. There was to
be no retreat. In the name of the new Democracy, they established the
primitive beginnings of a great city in the very centre of the famous
Indian path over which for unnumbered centuries naked aborigines from the
Great Lakes to the Kentucky hunting grounds had hurried to battle or the
chase.
The new settlement thus became a bold and significant challenge to the red
man, and in its fate was involved the future of the West and of the nation.
The earthquake of war, which the founding of Cincinnati invited, was not
long delayed, and when it came it startled Washington from his incomparable
composure, and shook the Republic to its foundations.
From the moment of its inception, Cincinnati was the most important point
on the Ohio River. Other settlements, it is true, at the start hoped to
outstrip Cincinnati in population. There was Marietta, founded two months
before, which had a more romantic birth. And there was North Bend, which
enjoyed the personal backing of John Cleves Symmes, the famous pioneer who
superintended the first development of the Miami Valley, and from whom
Denman, Patterson and Filson, the promoters of the settlement that
subsequently became Cincinnati, purchased the site of that city. These and
other settlements along the river were, for a time, pointed to with pride
by their founders as the coming commercial centres. Cincinnati, moreover,
began life with an impossible name. Filson, a fantastic pedagogue who had
drifted into Kentucky, combining a smattering of tongues with an unbridled
imagination, compounded the name "Losantiville," which means when
interpreted, "the village opposite the mouth of the Licking." Historians,
in malign humor, seem to rejoice in the sudden translation of this
picturesque polyglot and town-site boomer, remarking with a certain gleeful
unanimity of phrase that "shortly after naming the settlement he was
scalped by the Indians."
[Illustration TYLER-DAVIDSON FOUNTAIN.]
The offer of free lots to original settlers did not give Cincinnati
pre-eminence, for similar lures were held out by other aspiring communities
along the Ohio; nor will it be seriously contended that the location there
of Fort Washington, although this made the spot the headquarters of the
American army in the Northwest, gave Cincinnati a superior start, for the
sense of security expected because of the presence of the United States
garrison was not abiding. General Harmar marched to defeat in 1790 from
this pioneer fort and arsenal, and the victorious savages pursued him until
their cries of exultation terrified the little hamlet clustered about the
military station.
Then came St. Clair, bold and assertive. Heroes of the Revolution had
founded the town. The fort had been named in honor of the great General and
President, and as both town and fort represented the extension into the
West of that democratic strength of arms which had humbled the most
powerful kingdom of Europe, this new settlement from which civilization was
to radiate into the western valleys should be dignified with the name of
the order that held together in fraternal bond the grizzled survivors of
the great war. And so Losantiville, the dream of a bizarre scholar, became
Cincinnati.
In the name of that order and city, St. Clair went to war. But sickness
laid him low, and he was carried to the field of battle wrapped in
flannels. Managing the forces against him was Thayendanegea, the celebrated
Mohawk, or Joseph Brandt, as the English called him, as astute as Tecumseh
and as fearless. Thayendanegea had been secretary to Sir Guy Johnson. He
had learned the tactics of civilized armies, and with masterful native
cunning he planned to annihilate the forces of St. Clair. Nearly fifteen
hundred officers and men marched away from Cincinnati to crush the
semi-savage captain who had directed the massacres of Minisink and Wyoming,
and back to Cincinnati in rout and dishonor, their guns and blankets
abandoned, rushed in unspeakable terror a pitiful five hundred. Before
sundown on the day of that battle, November 4, 1791, nearly a thousand
scalps of white men dangled from the wigwams of the armies of
Thayendanegea.
Other communities along the Ohio looked with envy upon the federal ramparts
at Cincinnati, but the protection afforded by the garrison was at first
more fanciful than real. The pioneer clergymen of the town ventured to
Sabbath services cautiously, rifle in hand, peering down the dim aisles
hewn through dense woods of linden and birch that led to a clearing, in the
midst of which some charred stump served as a pulpit; or, as congregations
grew, a log-built chapel housed the earnest worshippers. And by the law of
Cincinnati and the territory every communicant was required to go to the
altar with loaded firearms, that savages, taking advantage of the hour of
prayer to attack the town, might be repulsed. Even when pews were built to
give regularity to worship, the brethren were commanded to sit at the outer
end, with their rifles in readiness.
If Fort Washington had not been built or had been located elsewhere,
Cincinnati would have still become the metropolis of the Ohio. Here water
highways crossed. And as it marked the path over which the red men had
passed for ages, so now it became the intersecting point of civilized
adventure. Out of the shadows of the Licking in their pirogues Daniel Boone
and George Rogers Clark had hurried across the Ohio to watch hostile
campfires from the Cincinnati hills, and thence had descended upon the
barbarians to avenge crimes committed in Kentucky. The long beaches at the
Cincinnati site afforded safe landing, while the settlement, secure upon
the higher ground and the succession of terraces beyond, could not be
engulfed by the periodical river floods. North and south the rivers that
mingled their waters here furnished natural pathways to vast and fertile
valleys.
Here, too, a vanished race once had had a city or perhaps a capital, for
Cincinnati is built upon extensive prehistoric ruins of the Mound
Builders. It was a walled city with great gates, pyramids and sacrificial
altars, and over these surviving memorials of a people whose origin and
destiny are alike a mystery grew, when Cincinnati was founded, oak, beech,
sycamore and cedar, whose concentric rings revealed that hundreds of years
had elapsed since the disappearance of the race which had reared these
shrines and tombs and city walls. Among the prehistoric pottery, the
polished pipes of catlinite and stone axes such as a race of troglodytes
might have swung to brain abhorrent monsters of forgotten periods, they
will show you in the artistic Cincinnati Museum in Eden Park, the famed
Cincinnati Tablet exhumed from a tumulus near Fifth and Mound streets in
that city. Some antiquarians believe the sculptured stone to be an
astronomical calendar or a table of measurement and calculation. Some have
imagined it to be a sacred relic from the tomb of kings. Nearby, in the
same museum, you see records lucidly deciphered from the second Theban
dynasty, and carved inscriptions, intelligently translated, from the
balustrade of the temple of Athene, but scholarship is dumb and imagination
is the only interpreter of these strange mementos of a race which found in
the site of Cincinnati a natural spot for the building of a large and
fortified city.
Although the star of empire may have been destined at all hazards to pause
over Cincinnati until the tenth census of the United States should show
that the center of the nation's population had moved westward to that city,
there was grave alarm in the settlement when the soldiers of St. Clair
arrived in confusion and defeat.
[Illustration ENTRANCE TO SPRING GROVE CEMETERY.]
Generations have thrilled over the story of the officer on horseback, who,
bearing important news, hurried to the President, tossed his bridle reins
to an orderly and leaped up the steps of Washington's reception room only
to find that the Chief Executive was dining with distinguished visitors and
could not be disturbed. The officer was so importunate and so impressive
that the secretary was impelled to grant him audience. The grave President
listened without visible emotion to the whispered message from Cincinnati,
the officer departed, and Washington returned to the banquet table. Not one
of his guests could guess that beneath the calm exterior the far-seeing
statesman was experiencing one of the most tragic moments of his career. It
was not merely that a trusted general had minimized warning and had met
defeat, for Washington had devoted a long life to warfare against both
savage and civilized foes, and he was not to be easily moved by the
uncertain fortune of battles. But he knew that the defeat which the
soldiers of Cincinnati had encountered now threatened the destiny of the
country. The East and West were not yet riveted by steel rails into
coherent union. Beyond the Alleghanies there were projects of a
protectorate under France or Spain, or both, and bolder dreams of a
Kentucky republic. With few connecting links with the East, what could hold
the western empire, since the federal government had displayed inability to
protect the pioneers? Washington's guests departed unaware that their
illustrious host who had entertained them with consummate decorum had
during those hours felt the nation slipping beneath his feet. But when they
had gone the pent spirit of the great leader, in one of the few instances
of his lifetime, found expression in tumultuous grief and rage. He voiced
in advance the storm of public protest, indignation and fear that broke out
when the dismal tidings from Cincinnati became known. And when Congress
learned that Washington favored the creation of an army of five thousand to
avenge the defeat of Harmar and St. Clair, there was little in the
resourceful vocabulary of political abuse spared the President.
Anti-expansionists called him an imperialist bent on converting the
Republic into an empire. Why send an army to inevitable slaughter beyond
mountain frontiers in a vain struggle for the wilderness of the Indians
when the colonies then possessed more domain than the citizens of the
Republic would ever be able to use?
Fortunately the anti-expansionists, while mordant and powerful, could not
prevail, and the war measures became law. Anthony Wayne, whose daring
during the Revolution had won for him the admiring sobriquet of "Mad," then
took command and hastened to Cincinnati but none too soon. The Six Nations
with Little Turtle as their spokesman had followed up their victories by
demands that Cincinnati, the capital of the Northwest, should be abandoned
and that the Ohio should mark the perpetual boundary between the white man
and the red. British arms bristled behind this native ultimatum, and at the
rapids of the Maumee, as if to stay Wayne's advance, British forces built a
fort and garrisoned it with three companies. The fears of Washington seemed
about to be realized.
[Illustration RACE STREET, CINCINNATI.]
But at the battle of Fallen Timbers "Mad Anthony" scattered the allied
tribes like forest leaves. Nearly half a hundred mighty chiefs fell in that
historic engagement, and in their defeat the Indians christened their
conquerer "Big Thunder" and for years trembled when they heard his name.
Cincinnati and Ohio were saved to the Republic.
Wayne in his campaign and in his no less notable treaties was brilliantly
seconded by a young man who, unannounced and unwelcomed, landed at
Cincinnati on the day the broken columns of St. Clair fell back upon the
fort. The generals there looked upon his smooth cheeks and his boyish frame
with soldierly disdain, one remarking that he would as readily send his
sister to the front as entrust this beardless neophyte with the
responsibilities of border warfare. This youth, in whose veins flowed the
blood of one of Cromwell's generals, was to shame his flippant critics, for
he was to win a lieutenancy at the battle of Fallen Timbers, and rising
steadily in the service of his country was to become a western Napoleon,
avenging the disasters of the River Basin and Detroit, defeating the
powerful Tecumseh at Tippecanoe, laying firm and broad the foundations of
northwestern statehood, serving in the Senate of the United States, and
finally going in triumph to the White House. Cincinnati has fostered many
famous sons, but none greater than William Henry Harrison.
To many new communities the first settlers have gone with the hope of
returning with fortunes to their former homes. Cincinnati was founded and
developed by men and women who came to stay. Harrison identified himself
with the West at the start by marrying the daughter of John Cleves Symmes,
the Miami pioneer, and to the Harrison homestead near Cincinnati, which for
a quarter of a century had been an American mecca, the body of the famous
General was borne for burial.
From the start, self-reliance has been a prevailing characteristic of
Cincinnati. Its isolation in the days of the canoe, the barge and the
pack-horse, developed its originality. A copy of the _Centinel of the
Northwest Territory_, published in 1794, graphically illustrates its
remoteness at that period, for news from Marietta had been eight days in
arriving, Lexington dispatches were twenty-one days old, fifty-six days had
been consumed in getting the latest information from New York, and European
news antedated the day of issue four months and a half. It was natural
among such conditions that the city should look to itself as the centre of
interest, and hence at an early day the journals of Cincinnati, instead of
canvassing distant localities for belated sensations, were encouraging
local writers to entertain the public. It was the press of Cincinnati that
first gave the poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary to the world, and they repaid
it by conferring immortality in the world of letters upon the blue Miami,
where they spent the simple years of their girlhood. And thither, because
of the fame their singing had won them, traveled Horace Greeley and other
celebrities of the day to do these gifted sisters homage. In Cincinnati was
born Gen. Wm. H. Lytle, author of _Antony and Cleopatra_, and it was the
journalism of that city that gave inspiration to his pen. Here, too, was
directed the early genius of Wm. D. Howells, Rutherford B. Hayes, Salmon P.
Chase, and other men who have dignified literature or public life.
[Illustration CITY HALL, CINCINNATI.]
Savage yells had not ceased to echo in its surrounding woods before music
began to charm in Cincinnati. Even before Wayne came to silence the
exultant war-cries of the tribes, Thomas Kennedy, in whose honor a street
in Covington is named, used to entertain the frontier society with his
fiddle, and a Mr. McLean, a butcher, took time to train the voices of the
primitive colony. The Rev. Daniel Doty, who visited Cincinnati at an early
day, was shocked at the singing and fiddling and dancing in the log cabins,
as if the people "feared not God nor regarded Indians." Music, since
directed in large measure by the German element in the city, has by its
Chorus, its musical groves, its Saengerbund, Haydn Society, and other
clubs, imparted distinction to Cincinnati and made it the Vienna of the
American continent.
It is not surprising that the pioneer butcher of the city found time from
his chopping blocks to strike the tuning-fork, for Cincinnati, even after
the location there of Fort Washington, was many times on the verge of
starvation, and would have starved but for the timely help of frontier
hunters under the noted Colonel Wallace, who brought the meat of buffalo,
bear and deer to the stricken settlement. To-day the city dines well. In
truth, it is famed for its good cheer and its bohemian independence.
Cincinnati is a city of homes and churches, and singularly free from the
crime that prowls in the slums of other cities. Therefore some of its
citizens take pride that the city is credited with being one of the
greatest whiskey markets in America, that forty-three breweries and storage
vaults are in demand, and that the city annually turns out 49,000,000 packs
of playing-cards, making it the largest center of this industry in the
world.
In many industries Cincinnati leads. The wealth of cities throughout the
continent is locked in banks and vaults manufactured in Cincinnati. The
cowboys on the plains and the horsemen on city paddocks sit in saddles
fashioned in Cincinnati. Cigars by the millions in this country are packed
in boxes manufactured in Cincinnati. It produces more schoolbooks than any
other city, and is near the head of the list in turning out religious
publications.
On the 22d of February, 1794, a canoe left Cincinnati with a federal
mailbag consigned to Pittsburg. This marked the beginning of regular
service with the East. In early days, a Cincinnati merchant seeking to buy
goods in New York consumed sixty days in making the journey to the
metropolis. To-day he may lunch in the Queen City, take a train and lunch
the following noon in Manhattan. Long before the advent of railways,
Cincinnati became a center of travel and distribution. As early as 1801, a
full-rigged brig took on a cargo at Cincinnati and set sail for the West
Indies. Not long after, and many years before Fulton turned his attention
to Western waters, citizens of Cincinnati met at Yeatman's Tavern to
consider a "contrivance for transporting boats against the current by the
power of steam or elastic vapor," but without tangible results; and, in
fact, when the first steamboat did paddle noisily past the city the
circumstance was dignified with only a four-line notice in the Cincinnati
press.
Before long, however, the steamboat revolutionized river travel, and
thenceforth Cincinnati leaped by bounds from a village to a great city, and
every recurrent trip of these harbingers of vast commerce seemed to find a
new suburb springing into bustling life on the Cincinnati uplands.
[Illustration CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, CINCINNATI.]
The fact that this city was originally included and still remains in the
New Orleans customs district shows its accessibility to ocean traffic. Its
superiority in water communication is shown by a computation made by the
Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce regarding the relative cost of transporting
freight from points of origin to all parts of the United States. The
comparisons per 100 pounds are as follows: From Cincinnati, 81 cents;
Chicago, 84 cents; St. Louis, 88 cents; Minneapolis, $1.22. A similar
computation applicable to a radius of 600 miles from the point of origin
gives the following averages per 100 pounds: From Cincinnati, 66 cents;
Chicago, 73 cents; St. Louis, 75 cents; Minneapolis, $1.11.
While growing into greatness, Cincinnati did not forget, in the critical
times of the Civil War, its honorable history as the former outpost of the
Republic. Its trade was largely with the South, but sternly its citizens
decided that arguments in favor of trade interests smacked of treason, and
with stoic heroism closed the city to rebellion. And when Lew Wallace,
fortifying Cincinnati to anticipate attack, called for volunteers, the
whole community responded, and from the Ohio valleys came the
sharp-shooting "squirrel hunters" in procession seemingly endless to defend
the city.
[Illustration SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
Since then the growth of Cincinnati has been in keeping with the
development of the nation. It does not hope, as Harriet Martineau
suggested during her visit here, ever to become the home of the country's
capital, but it rejoices in being the great city nearest the American
centre of population. Its library of a quarter of a million volumes and its
Historical Society cherish the splendid stories of its past and the
accumulating data of its current achievements. Its artists and citizens
delight in dignifying that record in bronze and marble in the environing
parks and city squares.
The visitor to Cincinnati, on a clear afternoon, should take passage on an
incline road, rise to the heights of Eden Park, and traversing that high
plateau, whose natural beauty and landscape gardening earn for it its name,
find his way to the water tower. An elevator lifts him five hundred feet to
the observatory platform, where with field-glasses he may behold the
splendid panorama of Cincinnati. Far below, spanning the river over which
"a crazy craft with sails and paddles" once ferried the people, he sees
five massive structures of steel and stone, including the famous suspension
bridge, begun in the early part of the Civil War, and by its completion
during the stress of that conflict testifying eloquently to the faith of
its citizens that strife was not to sever the nation, and that these
mammoth girders of steel would constitute an important tie in the
inevitable reunion of North and South. It was of this structure that James
Parton wrote in 1867, that the whole population of Cincinnati might get
upon it without danger of being let down into the water. The five superb
bridges in their capacity and security afford marked contrast to the
earlier attempts to span the river which floods swept away, including the
arched structure which went down in the torrent of 1832, accompanied on its
seaward flight by a tumbling Methodist church which the roaring Muskingum
had added to the universal baptism.
Not all of the life that now courses through Cincinnati's streets could
crowd upon its bridges, for the people of the cities and villages across on
the Kentucky shore belong in every commercial and social sense to
Cincinnati, and swell its population to the half-million mark. In fact,
within a radius which the vision from this tower almost sweeps, there are a
dozen ambitious and wealthy Ohio cities, founded by the sturdy men of the
Revolution who went forth from Cincinnati and still tributary to the parent
town.
The traveler is surveying sacred ground. Mount Auburn beside him marks the
site where fell a captain serving under George Rogers Clark, one of the
first of the many brave soldiers of the American Revolution to mingle their
dust with Ohio soil, which thus enriched has produced many Presidents and
renowned statesmen almost without number.
Leading away from the city the observer on the tower sees the Miami and
Erie Canal, which, connecting Cincinnati with Toledo and furnishing a
highway by which boats could pass from New Orleans via the Queen City
through various inland waters, finally reaching the harbor of New York,
made Cincinnati as early as 1830 a half-way house for continental traffic.
The canal recalls that on the tow-path the barefooted Garfield began his
career.
While glancing at the surrounding reservoirs from which water is forced to
this tower for the supply of the terrace-built city, the traveler may
recall the story of the eccentric wanderer, the celebrated Cincinnati
"water witch" who with hazel or willow crook went about from hamlet to
hamlet indicating hidden springs and at whose direction, in truth, the
Queen City dug its first well.
[Illustration RESERVOIR, EDEN PARK.]
Descending now, the traveler may view the observatory which John Quincy
Adams dedicated to science, or move with the crowds flocking to the Zoo or
to the groves where free concerts are given, or he may find his inspiration
in roaming through the haunts that still treasure the memory of U.S. Grant,
or visit the site of taverns that entertained Webster and Andrew Jackson,
who paused here on his way to Washington, and that extended frequent
hospitality to Henry Clay, stopping here while journeying to or from the
national capital.
Passing over the suspension bridge, the traveler may let the sun go down
upon his itinerary as he stands upon the bank of the Licking, made
memorable by the vigilant canoe cruises of Daniel Boone. Near by is the
cottage home of the Grants. Passing a Shawnee effigy in front of a
tobacconist's stand, the visitor sees the illumination of the city
beginning to twinkle against the shadowy background. The multi-colored
lights of myriad street-cars flash over bridges and up the steep streets of
the hill-built metropolis. The headlights of locomotives on nineteen
railroads, representing over twenty thousand miles of track, gleam in and
out of the city. It is a moving picture, a perpetual memorial and
celebration of the valiant labors of those paladins of pioneer conquest who
on that Christmas week, 113 years ago, struck their flint and started
their fires in the primeval woods, kindling thereby a light which though
flaring at times before the whirlwinds of savage war, and all but quenched
with baptisms of fraternal bloodshed, now burns with a steadiness and
brilliancy that shall last as long as time.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
DETROIT
THE QUEEN CITY
"Here, beside the broad, blue river builded,
I am Queen City of the Lakes."
BY SILAS FARMER
A stream of crystal clearness, wide and swiftly flowing, the waters of
silver and blue alive with fins and scales, a course dotted with islands
large and small, wild ducks in myriads diving and dining along shores
bordered with pond lilies and flags, stretches of yellow sand and bluffs
of yellow clay peopled with buffalo, bear and deer, with wide leagues of
grassy pastures and pleasing vistas beyond, walnuts, oaks and maples
sentinelling the scene, and skies and sunsets of unrivalled azure and gold
adding the final touch of beauty--such was Nature's invitation to the first
visitors to the Detroit.
The earliest of the French travellers to this region was the Sieur Joliet,
who came in 1670, and was followed the same year by the Sulpician priests,
Galinee and Dollier. Eight years later La Salle in _Le Griffon_, the first
sail-vessel on the Great Lakes, passed through the "strait of Lake Erie,"
and July 24, 1701, Cadillac and his company landed at the present site of
Detroit to establish a fort and permanent settlement.
The desire to escape from Roman or Protestant oppression which led to the
founding of Baltimore and Plymouth had no place in the thought of those who
colonized Acadia and the West. True, there had been one or two feeble
efforts to found French Protestant colonies in America. The great Coligny
sent a Huguenot colony to Florida more than fifty years before the
_Mayflower_ arrived at Plymouth Rock. The Spaniards, however, fell upon and
hanged these colonists, their placards stating that it was done, "not
because they were Frenchmen, but because they were heretics." Under
Cardinal Richelieu, all Protestant emigration to America was discouraged
for fear the emigrants would unite with the English or make converts of the
Indians. The conversion of the Indians to the Romish faith was always
specially designated among the objects of French enterprise in America. The
charter of the "Hundred Associates" of April 29, 1627, expressly stated
that it was granted for the primary purpose of converting to the Catholic
faith the Indians, usually designated as "worshippers of Baal." All these
motives played their part in the founding of Detroit, but not quite so
important a part as the commercial motive.
[Illustration CADILLAC SQUARE, SHOWING CITY HALL AND MAJESTIC BUILDING.]
Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, the founder and commandant, was no
mere adventurer. In courage, in scholarship, in mental grasp and in general
acumen he deserves a place with the founders of Baltimore and Philadelphia.
The confessedly fictitious description of his personal appearance and the
one-sided analysis of his character by Gayarré were founded on incomplete
knowledge. As an officer of the French marine, Cadillac fearlessly crossed
the Atlantic again and again as though it were but an inland ferry. On the
coast of America he explored the harbors and islands of New England and
noted at length their peculiarities and advantages. As a soldier and knight
of the Order of St. Louis, he penetrated into the wildest of western wilds,
served as commandant at Mackinaw, Detroit and Mobile, repeatedly defeated
the Indians at these posts, and compelled them to sue for peace. He had the
scholar's habit of writing detailed memoirs of the places he established or
was commanded to inspect. He wielded a pen as sharp as his sharp sword. The
opponents of his plans had need to fear its point. He spared no words. "A
traveller cannot afford to stop," he said, "for every dog that barks." And
illustrating the fact that many of the French lived so much among the
Indians that they became like Indians themselves, he sententiously said,
"With wolves one learns to howl."
He denounced frauds boldly. Count Frontenac spoke highly of his "valor,
wisdom, experience and good conduct." It was no ordinary man to whom a wife
could by word and deed alike bear witness as Cadillac's wife bore witness
to her husband. After they had been married for fourteen years, and when
the colony was less than two years old, in company with Madame Touty, in an
open canoe with Indians and woodsmen for an escort, she made the journey
of a thousand miles from Quebec to Detroit in the fall of the year when
fierce winds and rough waves and heavy rains might be expected. When one of
the Quebec ladies reminded her in advance, "At Detroit you will die of
_ennui_," she replied, "A woman who loves her husband as she should has no
stronger attraction than his company wherever he may be; everything else
should be indifferent to her."
The American cities that equal us in age and population are few indeed. Two
hundred years are behind us, and three hundred thousand people fill our
homes. Our people are and ever have been of many types. In the early days
_coureurs des bois_, bluff, hearty, reckless, and Indians, the squaw
trudging along bent double under her basket of bead-work, the unburdened
brave stalking proudly, noiselessly along, frequented the place. Dutch
traders from the Mohawk coasting along the Lakes early brought negro slaves
from Albany.[3] In our social life the Gallic spirit remains to soften and
harmonize. The dash of gorgeous coloring which the almost continuous
existence here of a military post has given, the distinction and grace
which the early arrival of some of old Virginia's noblest children has
lent, the intellectual vigor which Puritan New England has contributed, and
the solidity and conservatism furnished by the presence of the many wealthy
landed proprietors have all shared in the making of a social life as rich
as it is attractive.
[Illustration THE DETROIT RIVER FROM "WINDMILL POINT," 1838. FROM A PENCIL
DRAWING.]
After the first settlers came strange sights. Round-towered and red-painted
windmills began to dot the banks of the Detroit, and all "along shore"
narrow farms, a city block in width and fifty times as long, stretched from
the river rearward to meadows and woods. The canoe and the pirogue were
always in the stream, and in them the French girls were as much at home as
mermaids in the sea. The fort was the centre of every interest. It was a
log stockade enclosing a plot of ground three or four hundred feet square,
and lay south of what is now Jefferson Avenue, occupying at least the
western half of the block between Griswold and Shelby streets. Within it
commandant and soldiers were gathered, the church was located, justice
administered and goods were kept on sale.
A large influx of immigrants, especially in 1749 and 1754, caused the
extension of the stockade, but at no time were grants of farms made within
several hundred feet of the fort. The intervening space was in large part
used as a "common field," and year after year oats and onions were produced
where only paving-stones could now be raised. Eventually of course the
houses overflowed the stockade, stretching towards the farms, but for a
long time the owners of farms on either side resisted any encroachment of
streets or people, and for many years the city could grow only northwards.
The French farms that hemmed in the city possessed many advantages. Even
when included within the city they, for many years, practically escaped
taxation because undivided into lots. Indeed, until a comparatively recent
period there was no taxation of real estate and really no need for any; for
whenever the city needed money it sold a lot. This reckless style of
living continued till 1834, the extraordinary expenses connected with the
cholera season of that year making larger taxation needful.
In this connection it is well to recall an unusual state of affairs that
placed many lots at the disposal of the city. In the year 1778, during the
Revolutionary War, the English, to protect them against the Americans,
erected a large fort where the new Post-office is located, in the block
bounded by Shelby, Wayne, Lafayette and Fort streets. At the close of the
war this fort, with its grounds, passed into the possession of the United
States. In 1826 Congress gave this property, worth to-day more than a score
of millions, to the city whose expenses had before been paid by fees
derived from various licensed persons and pursuits. Upon the reception of
this property the city fathers deemed it necessary to level and grade the
old fort and its appurtenances and to lay out streets thereon. The cost of
the work was paid by the issuing of city "shinplasters" which could soon be
bought for sixty cents on the dollar. The lots laid out within the limits
of the old cantonment were sold at nominal prices, the purchasers paying
for them in the depreciated city bills. The result was that the net
proceeds to the city from the sale of this extensive domain amounted to
only $15,000, and even this was not permanently invested, and no vestige of
the funds remains. In contrast to the dissipation by the city of valuable
property is the wisdom displayed by individual holders whose property later
became worth millions. If the city officers of that day had possessed
foresight as well as power, they might have so conserved the city's
possessions as to have made Detroit an Utopia. All the public schools and
other civic buildings and appurtenances could have been built and paid for,
and the city government could to-day be carried on without taxation, or at
least with only a tithe of the amount that is now required to be paid.
[Illustration WEST GRAND CIRCUS PARK.]
It was during the decades of 1820-1840 that the tide of emigration from
East to West reached its height. It began in 1825, on the completion of the
Erie Canal, and was greatly increased by the larger number of steamboats on
the Lakes that immediately followed. The opening in 1854 of the first
railroad from the East to the West, the Great Western of Canada, made it
possible to go still faster and with greater ease, and during the whole
period Detroit gained largely in population. The introduction of
street-cars in 1863 afforded opportunity for easy access to outlying
regions, and since then the city limits have been several times extended,
until now they embrace an area of not far from thirty square miles, with a
river frontage of seven miles.
Contemporaneously with the rush of settlers to the State and city between
1830 and 1840, came what is known as the "flush times of 1837." Emigration
to the West had become almost a stampede, both steam and sail vessels were
crowded to their utmost, and knowing the dearness of Eastern lands and the
cheapness at which Western lands could be purchased, nearly every person
came prepared to buy and did buy lands for settlement or speculation. So
great was the rush that all careful preliminaries were dispensed with, and
if only a title could be shown, anything that "lay outdoors" could be
disposed of. Town sites were a favorite form of investment, and the supply
kept pace with the demand. Surveyors and draftsmen were soon busy day and
night representing imaginary cities on paper. On these plans, literally
like "Jonah's gourd," there sprang up in a night, stores, dwellings and
court-houses, indeed, all the appurtenances of an old established town. The
era of "wildcat" banks had just begun and the principal security of their
bills was the land covered by these imaginary towns. Theoretically, twenty
per cent. of the bills issued by the too easily organized banks were to be
secured by specie deposits. Actually, not five per cent. was so deposited.
The same coin--in some cases in the same boxes--was exhibited by a score of
different banks, and in some instances "coin boxes" were filled with iron
and other substitutes for specie. These frauds were winked at by bank
commissioners, who should have inspected the contents of the boxes. There
was thus a trinity of imaginings,--imaginary towns, imaginary banks and
imaginary inspection. When the bubbles burst there were left in some places
towns and houses without a single inhabitant, and certain of these houses
contained room after room in which the walls were literally papered with
bank bills in sheets that had never been cut apart or signed.
The most important local event was the fire of June 11, 1805, which
destroyed every house in the city save one. The memory of the fire is
preserved in the present seal of the city, the mottoes, _Resurget
Cineribus_, "She has risen from the ashes," and _Speramus Meliora_, "We
hope for better things," representing both prophecy and fulfilment. Out of
the fire grew an entirely new plan of the town, new lot alignments and
assignments, and a new form of government. The former streets, twelve feet
wide, grew into broad avenues, and the years have added areas and
improvements which in any city would be marks of prosperity and beauty.
The form of government which the fire introduced was, however, its unique
result. The beginnings of the strange methods of government that obtained
are found in the organization of the Ohio Company, and in that notable
document, the Ordinance of 1787. Under the latter, Congress was to appoint
a governor whose term was for three years, unless sooner revoked, who was
required to possess in freehold an estate of one thousand acres in the
territory; a secretary for the term of four years, unless revoked, who was
required to have five hundred acres of land; and three judges, any two of
whom constituted a court to have common-law jurisdiction, and each of whom
was required to own five hundred acres of land.
The governor and judges were appointed January 11, 1805. Judges Woodward
and Bates arrived at Detroit June 12th, and found the town wiped out by the
fire of the previous day. A few stone chimneys and, near the fire line,
several antique pear trees alone remained. Governor Hull arrived on the
evening of July 1st. The date of the arrival of Judge Griffin is unknown.
In many respects the Governor and judges were well fitted to enter upon
and complete the laying out of a new Detroit. Judge Woodward came from
Alexandria, Va., and understood and admired the plan of Washington, then
new. He manifestly desired and determined that Detroit should be modelled
after that "City of Magnificent Distances." Sections of his plan as drawn
by A.F. Hull, the son of the Governor, could be laid upon the plan of
Washington and matched to a line.
[Illustration WAYNE COUNTY BUILDING, FACING CADILLAC SQUARE.]
There was much delay in adopting the plan; but after summering and
wintering as best they could, however, among their friends outside, the
inhabitants were gratified with the news that April 21, 1806, Congress had
authorized the Governor and judges to lay out a new town, build a
court-house and jail, dispose of ten thousand acres near, give former
owners and householders lots, convey lots to others and in general settle
all details therewith connected. It was not, however, until September 6,
1806, or four months after the date of the act, that the Governor and
judges held their first meeting. Interminable slowness seems to have been
their purpose; plans and counter-plans, change and repeated change in
surveys, their method. Lots were numbered and renumbered, streets laid
out on paper, obliterated and then laid out anew in new directions and
locations. Decisions were bandied about and referred from one person or
authority to another, and questions of ownership of lots, like a
shuttlecock, were tossed to and fro. Plans were prepared, approved, used
and then discarded. Every new difficulty and scheme seemed to give rise to
new and radically different lot outlines and numbers. Lots were
capriciously granted and as capriciously withdrawn. Without bond or books
of account, without method other than the method of not leaving any record
of what moneys were received or how expended, they did as they pleased. As
a result, for a year and a half after the fire there was not a single house
erected, and up to May, 1807, deeds had been given for only nineteen lots.
Meantime, the débris of the fire covered the site of the ancient village,
the blackened stone chimneys standing as monuments of the disaster and of
the incompetency or worse of those in authority.
The three judges and the Governor in themselves possessed all power,
legislative, executive, judicial. They made laws, built court-houses,
issued scrip, laid out streets and lots, gave away lots to churches,
schools, societies and individuals and were practically "Lords of the
Manor of Detroit." The adoption of laws from the original thirteen States,
which was all that they were authorized to do, became under their methods a
mere burlesque. A writer of that period openly charged, and exaggerated but
little in saying, that they would
"parade the laws of the original States before them on the
table, and cull letters from the laws of Maryland, syllables
from the laws of Virginia, words from the laws of New York,
sentences from the laws of Pennsylvania, verses from the laws
of Kentucky, and chapters from the laws of Connecticut."
It is due to one or two of those associated as judges during a part of this
régime, to say that Judge Woodward, who was in office for the entire
period, was very largely responsible for the conditions that existed. The
accession of General Cass as Governor, the establishing of the _Detroit
Gazette_, which exposed the proceedings, and the coming of new immigrants
finally secured sentiment and people sufficient to have a General Assembly.
And with freer discussion and elective methods, order began to reign after
twenty years of disorder.
In military matters Detroit has had an almost continuous series of
startling experiences. Indians, French, English, and Americans have all
struggled in and about the city. Blockhouses, stockades, forts, and cannon
have defended it. Stories of attacks, sieges, battles, massacres, and
conspiracies crowd its annals. The tramp of regiments, the challenge of
sentinels, the bugle-call, the drum-beat, and the war-whoop of the savage
were familiar sounds in its past.
Within two years after Fort Pontchartrain was erected, hostile Indians
surrounded the stockade, and at varying intervals during many subsequent
years the savages sought to dislodge the French and destroy their
fortifications. The French traders, however, soon demonstrated that they
were willing to deal more liberally than the English, and there can be no
doubt but that many Indians came to prefer French methods and manners, for
they finally united with the French during the French and Indian War in
attacking the English settlements. The victory of Wolfe at Quebec in 1759
and the consequent surrender of Detroit to the English did not please the
Indians, and before the final treaty of peace was signed, Pontiac, an
Ottawa chief, who had declared his intention to "stand in the path," formed
his conspiracy to overthrow all the English posts. He secured the
co-operation of a number of tribes and in May, 1763, prepared to strike at
Detroit. Fortunately, as has happened more than once in similar plots,
female sympathy and tenderness caused the revelation of his design. An
Indian maiden gave warning to Gladwin, then commanding at Detroit, who made
preparations to foil the conspirators. On the morning of May 7th, Pontiac
and a number of his warriors sought admission to the fort.
On arriving at the gateway,[4] Pontiac and his warriors were freely
admitted, but found the garrison under arms, the cannons loaded for
service and the inhabitants ready for battle. At a glance he foresaw the
certain failure of his scheme, and after being warned by Gladwin that his
plot had been discovered, he retired still protesting friendship. Within a
day or two afterwards he threw off all attempts at concealment, summoned
his warriors, massacred several persons on the island now known as Belle
Isle and commenced a siege which lasted for five weary months. During the
siege, the garrison was relieved several times by provisions and
ammunition from Niagara, and on July 29th, by the arrival of 280 soldiers
commanded by Captain Dalyell together with 20 rangers from New Hampshire
under Major Robert Rogers. Captain Dalyell now determined to "turn the
tables" by an attack on the Indians. Gladwin opposed the idea, but was
compelled to yield, and on July 31st 250 troops in three detachments
marched against the savages. Pontiac in some way was informed of the plan
and, ambushed on the border of Parents' Creek, afterwards called Bloody
Run, awaited the approach of the soldiers. As the latter reached a small
bridge that then crossed the stream not far from what is now the corner of
Jefferson Avenue and Adair Street, they heard the war-whoop of the Indians
and from every side bullets thinned their ranks. Dalyell and seventeen
others were killed, nearly forty soldiers wounded and several captured.
Within six hours after this ignominious failure, the rest were glad to be
within the shelter of the stockade.
The siege was then renewed with increased vigor until at last General Gage
of Boston determined to send a force large enough to subdue the Indians.
Accordingly, Colonel Bradstreet was put in command of a combined force of
100 friendly Indians, 900 Canadians, and a detachment of 219 Connecticut
militia in charge of the noted Israel Putnam. They came by water from
Albany and reached Detroit on August 26, 1764. Their bateaux and barges
blocked the river; the display of flags and force alarmed the Indians, and
made them yield before an army such as they had never seen before.
Meantime the war-clouds of the Revolution were gathering. The common
impression is that the war was fought in the East, around Boston and New
York. The important events that occurred at Detroit are usually ignored;
that, too, in spite of the fact that at no other point was so much use made
of the Indians by the English.
King George and his ministers evidently feared that, unless kept busy
defending their homes, the hardy settlers of Western Virginia and Tennessee
would aid their brother colonists in the East. In order to prevent them
from so doing, deliberate and pitiless plans were made to incite the
Indians against the western settlers. Indians were invited to Detroit from
as far west and south as Arkansas, and gathered here by thousands. They
were feasted, clothed and furnished with guns, scalping-knives, and
tomahawks. Blankets, shirts, scarlet cloth and other things were given.
The value of the requisitions for this post in a single year reached
hundreds of thousands of dollars. The writer has personally seen the
original record of the supplying of "sixteen gross of red-handled
scalping-knives." Fully equipped, they set forth on their forays, returning
with men, women, and children as prisoners, and with many scalps. The
expedition which perpetrated the "Massacre of Wyoming" was equipped at this
post, as was also the expedition of Captain Bird against Kentucky at a cost
of over $300,000. The writer has an original account book of that period
giving the names and pay per diem of the French who as guides and
interpreters accompanied the English and Indians on some of their raids.
The noted Daniel Boone was brought as a prisoner to Detroit after one of
these expeditions. After the return of each party the guns of the fort were
fired, the prisoners and scalps were counted and recorded, and again the
Indians were feasted and given presents.
It was during these days that Col. A.S. De Peyster was in command at
Detroit, but he was not in full sympathy with such savage warfare. It will
be remembered that it was to him that Burns, while in his sick-chamber,
dedicated his last poem, on "Life," beginning:
"My honored Colonel, deep I feel
Your interest in the poet's weal," etc.
De Peyster himself could turn a bit of society verse. On one occasion he
addressed the following lines to the wife of Lieutenant Pool England, then
at Detroit:
"Accept, fair Ann, I do beseech,
This tempting gift, a clingstone peach,
The finest fruit I culled from three,
Which you may safely take from me.
Should Pool request to share the favor,
Eat you the peach, give him the flavor;
Which surely he can't take amiss,
When 't is so heightened by your kiss."
The English officers then at Detroit did not have an easy life. There were
resident rebel Americans who made much trouble--some of whom were sent away
and others fined. American prisoners, too, were brought here. Some were
compelled to work in the streets, in ball and chain, and others were forced
to cut wood on Belle Isle.
[Illustration COL. ARENT SCHUYLER DE PEYSTER.]
At last Detroit and the West were yielded by treaty to the United States,
but on one pretext or another they were not actually surrendered until July
11, 1796. On that day Fort Lernoult for the first time displayed the Stars
and Stripes.[5]
[Illustration EVACUATION DAY TABLET ON FORT STREET ENTRANCE OF
POST-OFFICE.]
The animosities growing out of the Revolutionary War were not allayed by
the peace declarations. The Indians continued to hold allegiance to King
George, and frequently massacred Americans. British officials on various
occasions assumed such authority that at last there came a renewal of
strife and the War of 1812. Again Detroit became a focal point. Twelve
hundred troops from Ohio, under command of Governor Hull, were soon
marching hither to secure the safety of Detroit. Governor Hull's trunk,
containing military papers and plans of great value, which had been sent by
boat, was captured near Malden, Canada, by the British who had apparently
received the earliest announcement of the declaration of war. Governor Hull
arrived at Detroit July 5th, soon afterward crossed to Canada and issued a
proclamation, but a few days later returned without having accomplished any
results of value. On August 16th, without any reasonable excuse, and
without the firing of a single gun, he surrendered his entire force and all
of the territory under his control to General Brock. He was tried and found
guilty of cowardice, unofficer-like conduct and neglect of duty. In his
memoirs, Governor Hull, trying to defend himself, seeks to make Secretary
of War Eustis a fool or a traitor, Gen. H.A. Dearborn a knave, and Colonel
Cass a conspirator. Original letters and testimony, however, from President
Madison, ex-President Jefferson, and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
show that Governor Hull was justly condemned. On September 29, 1813, as
the result of Commodore Perry's notable victory of September 10th, the
whole region was restored to American control.
[Illustration GENERAL GRANT'S HOME IN DETROIT.]
Detroit's interest in several local and subsequent wars was large, but the
unimportance of some and the well-known results of others make comment
thereon unnecessary.
[Illustration HURLBUT MEMORIAL GATE ENTRANCE TO WATER-WORKS PARK.]
While these varied historical events were taking place, the city was
steadily gathering to itself prestige and reputation. Its houses now excel
in number and beauty, its streets, wide and well paved, are edged with the
smoothest of stone walks and lined with elms, maples, and grassy lawns. The
distinctive buildings of the municipality, its court-houses, schools,
police stations, water-works, and engine houses are remarkable for their
excellent architecture and well-kept condition. The churches, by their
number and in their construction, indicate the possession of religious
desire and æsthetic taste. The manufacturing interests of Detroit are
varied. Its commercial representatives are found in almost every country,
and "Detroit" stoves, drugs, and chemicals are known in every clime. We
have numerous parks, but Belle Isle is indeed the priceless jewel in the
crown of Detroit: woods of green and waters of blue, art and nature, moving
waves and waving grass, stillness and activity, vistas and broad views,
beautiful flowers and lofty trees, the white sails of numerous vessels, and
the swift motions of great steamers all alike are combined in the
captivating beauties of this favored place.
Besides serving as a charm to drive away care, our beautiful river gives us
one of the greatest ports in the world. More tonnage passes annually
through "the Detroit" than in the same time enters and clears the combined
ports of London and Liverpool. During the season nearly four hundred
vessels pass daily, bearing more grain and minerals than traverse any other
stream in the world. The city is a central starting-point for reaching all
northern summer resorts, and more steamboat passengers arrive and depart
from our wharves than from any others on the Lakes. The stream that
attracted the earliest visitors attracts later ones as well. The river
never overflows and therefore is never a menace, but always a joy and
blessing. Yachts, sail-boats, barges, shells, ferries, steamers, and great
"whale-backs" fly and ply over it, and in the season it is a panorama of
beauty, gay with music, streamers, and happy _voyageurs_.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Under treaty stipulations negro and Indian slaves were held until
Michigan became a State. Detroit has always had to do with slavery
questions. Before the Civil War it was an important station on the
"Underground Railroad," and occasionally slaves were seized on our streets.
Some of the conspicuous leaders of the party that secured the abolition of
slavery lived at one time or another in Detroit. General Grant's home may
still be seen. United States Senator Zachariah Chandler of "blood-letting
letter" fame was one of our oldest merchants, and the notable
"fire-in-the-rear" editorial appeared in a local paper.
[4] The gateway was located on what is now the corner of Jefferson Avenue
and Griswold Street, and a bronze tablet there erected bears a
representation of an Indian warrior and the following inscription:
"This Tablet designates the site of one of the gateways of Fort
Detroit. The original stockade was known as Fort Pontchartrain
and was erected when the city was founded in 1701.
"Through the gateway here located Pontiac, the Ottawa chief,
with a band of Indians, passed on May seventh, 1763, intending
to surprise and massacre the garrison.
"The exposure of his plot on the previous day caused the defeat
of his plans and gave the English the supremacy in this region
until the close of the Revolutionary War."
[5] The Post-office on Fort Street, which occupies a portion of the site of
this fort, displays at its southerly entrance a tablet erected in 1896
which bears the following inscription:
"This Tablet designates the site of an
English Fort erected in 1778 by
Major R.B. Lernoult as a defense
against the Americans. It was subsequently
called Fort Shelby, in honor
of Gov. Isaac Shelby of Kentucky,
and was demolished in 1826.
The evacuation of this Fort by the
British at 12 o'clock noon, July 11th,
1796, was the closing act of the War
of Independence.
On that day the American Flag was
for the first time raised over this
soil, all of what was then known
as the Western Territory becoming
at that time part of the Federal Union."
[Illustration]
MACKINAC
"THE HOME OF THE GIANT FAIRIES"
BY SARA ANDREW SHAFER
At the northernmost point of the meeting of the waters of the mighty trio
of lakes which divide the States of the Middle West from the Dominion of
Canada, lies an archipelago in size and beauty like that of the
"Sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily that o'erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light waves
whisper 'Greece.'"
An old writer says that there are two-and-thirty thousand of them, great
and small, clustered chiefly where Huron leans her head to meet those of
Michigan and Superior, "as if they were discussing some great matter."
Perhaps they are talking over the old days and the things and people they
knew long ago. Perhaps they speak of the morning when, according to an old
saga, the worshippers of the Rising Sun in February saw the Island like a
great turtle--_Nocchenemockenung_--rise slowly out of the water, to become
the home of the Giant Fairies of the Michsawgyegan, or Lake Country, and to
be a place of refuge for the vanished peoples, whose names are as the sound
of many waters for beauty and for harmony. Perhaps they tell of the wild,
free life of those roving, painted bands of fishers, trappers, and hunters
which make pictures of so much action and color against the ever-shifting
background of these seas and shores. Perhaps they tell of the coming of the
Black Robes in the days when the lilies of France had no fear of the lion
of England, and the eagle of the American Republic was as yet unthought of.
There are things enough of which the Lakes may speak as their waves lapse
on the beach of
"This precious stone set in a silver sea."
[Illustration OLD MISSION CHURCH (CIRCA), 1823, MACKINAC ISLAND.]
Occupying as it does, one of the most important strategic points in the new
world, it is not strange that the Island of Mackinac should have a rich and
varied history, and that in its earlier Indian-French form
"Michilimackinac was a word familiar in the cabinets of European monarchs
before it was known to people dwelling along the Atlantic." The name was
given not only to pioneer settlements on either side of the Straits, but
also to a vast province which reached as far south as the Ohio River and as
far west as the Red River of the North. The Straits are but a dozen miles
in width, and the Island but nine miles in circumference, but whether it be
frozen in the long clasp of "Peboan, the Winter," when the white, endless
snows are marked only by the dark accents of evergreens on islet and
mainland, over which the cold stars look down, or the Northern Lights flame
and fade; whether it be decked with the unspeakable splendors of its early
autumn, or rejoices with the sudden coming of its tardy summer, it is a
land whose beauty is indescribable, and whose spell is supreme.
The village numbers many thousand flitting folk in summer, but it has less
than eight hundred permanent residents. It lies along the perfect crescent
of a bay worn into the southeastern end of the Island, at the foot of the
cliffs, upon which the long lines of the fort stand sentinel, and is a
curious conglomeration of huge caravanserai, summer villa, shop,
fish-house, pier, half-French, half-Indian cottage, and church. Old days
and new meet over and over again in the little streets, where, in the soft
_patois_ of the _habitants_, in the names they bear, and in many of their
strongly marked faces, much of the Island's story is suggested. St. Ann's
is a true daughter of the first chapels built by the old heroes of the
Church. The Mission House tells of the earnest early efforts to teach the
tenets and virtues of Calvinism to the savages, made by the reverend
geographer, Morse, father of Morse of the electric telegraph, and Mr.
Ferry, whose son, born in the village, ably represented Michigan in the
Senate of the United States.
Where the fort garden now stands once stood the agency, then the centre of
the vast trade of the fur companies. Within its walls Henry Schoolcraft
wrote down the precious results of his studies in Indian dialect and
folk-lore, from which, as from a root, sprang the perfect flower of our one
native epic, _Hiawatha_. Not to have read _Hiawatha_ with the pine-spiced
winds of the north blowing upon the page, with the magnificent prospect of
the Straits before one's eyes, lifted while a page is turned, and with the
waves breaking into a thousand jewels against the rocks at one's feet, is
hardly to have read _Hiawatha_ at all.
The Fort is the successor of the feeble early posts set up by the pioneers
of France. The great propellers and the swift-winged yachts that throng the
summer waters are of a kindred with the birch canoe, most poetic of all
water craft--own brother to the violin by reason of the perfect beauty of
its lines, having in it
"All the mystery and magic"
of the woodland and the wood life. As of old, the deep wild roses and the
frail harebells cling to the cliffs; as of old, in the gorges hushed into
fragrant silence by pine and larch and hemlock, arbor-vitæ and juniper,
beech, and birch, the shy, delicate flora of the north finds shelter. As of
old, the winds try their strength against the splendid masonry of the
curious limestone formations for which the place is noted, the Arch Rock,
the Fairy Arch, the Chimney Rock, the Sugar Loaf, Scott's Cave, Skull Cave,
the Devil's Kitchen. Around each of these the legends cluster like bees
about a linden-tree in blossom, but how can they be forgiven whose crass
stupidity gave them these commonplace titles and who have lost for us their
Indian names?
[Illustration ARCH ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND.]
In the days when New France "had two fountain heads, one in the cane brakes
of Louisiana, and the other in the snows of Canada," a charter was given by
Louis XIII. to the Hundred Association Company, which was thereby invested
with rights almost monarchical, together with injunctions to do all that
was possible for Holy Church which was consistent with the keeping of a
watchful eye upon such earthly advantages as might accrue from a monopoly
of the fur trade and the acquisition of new territory. It was in 1634,
under the governorship of Champlain, that Jean Nicolet, a fearless
explorer, well versed in woodcraft and in the speech of many aboriginal
tribes, was the first paleface to see the white cliffs of Mackinac, as he
was also the first to carry back to civilization tidings of a great new
sea, the Lac des Ilinese, or Michigan, which he had discovered. That he
perished by the capsizing of his canoe in the St. Lawrence River was a
great loss to the infant colonies to whom his sixteen years' experience in
frontier life would have been very valuable. The path he opened, was,
however, soon followed by others. The explorers and traders, Des
Grosselliers, Radisson, Perrot, and their fellows did for the world what
the Jesuits, the Recollets, and the Sulpicians did for the Church. It is in
the _Relations_ sent home by the priests that we learn what were the trials
overcome by those dauntless sons of "the sturdy North." Perhaps from no
country but France, and in no other years than the glittering, romantic,
covetous, daring, devoted years of the seventeenth century, could have come
adventurers so tireless and churchmen so selfless as these. To read their
simple, patient chronicles is to have new belief in man, new faith in the
Church Universal, "which is the blessed company of all faithful people,"
and to clasp hands across years and above creeds with those courageous
pioneers and with those humble saints.
The story of Mackinac is for many years the story of the French in Canada.
"Not a cape was turned," says Parkman, "not a river was entered, but a
Jesuit led the way." Every year the establishment of new posts pushed the
realms of the Unknown Territory nearer and nearer to the sunset. Poor
little posts they were, slenderly garrisoned, and feebly armed, but beside
each one rose a chapel and a cross where the "bloody salvages" might learn,
if they would, the religion of the fathers. The missionaries made, perhaps,
but few converts to their faith, but they made many friends for their
country by their kindly offices to the sick, the aged, the dying, and the
infant, by the gentleness and urbanity of their high breeding, and by the
perpetual sacrifice of their lives of love and loyalty. Of their hardships
we can only read between the lines of their brave, uncomplaining
_Relations_, but what litanies of pain, sorrow, and disappointment, what
_Te Deums_ of hope and rejoicing lie in these marks, oft recurring on their
queer old maps:
[symbol] _marque des villages sauvages_
[symbol] _marque des etablissements françois._
By 1668 many missions were strung along the waterways. The Island was the
centre of a thriving trade, had thirty native villages, and a palisaded
enclosure for defence, and a year later its shores were hallowed by the
feet of "The Guardian Angel of the Ottawa Mission," Father Jacques
Marquette.
[Illustration SUGAR LOAF ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND.]
Here, in what he called "the home of the fishes," and "the playground of
all the winds of heaven," he spent the hard winter of 1669-70, going later
to the first Fort Michilimackinac, at St. Ignace, where he built a
log-and-bark chapel, and whence he wrote the letters which reflect his pure
spirit, as a clear pool reflects a star. Ever alert, ever anxious, "_Ad
Majoram Gloriam Dei_," to hear of new countries to be brought to Him, his
great opportunity came when the tribes trooped past the Island on their way
to the Sault Ste. Marie and the Great Congress, convened on the 14th of
June, 1671, by the hardy Perrot. The French wanted to control the frontier
trade; the Indians wished a market for their furs. To both peoples pomp and
ceremony were natural and dear, so here, in all the splendor of war-paint
and wampum, tomahawk, calumet, feathers, bows and arrows, and handsome furs
came the braves of many tribes; in all the gay accoutrement of
blanket-surtout, scarlet cap, fringed elk-skin leggins, rifle, and
dagger-decked sash came the _coureurs des bois_ and the _voyageurs_; in the
dignity of their uniforms came a handful of soldiers; with cross and
cassock came the priests, to gather under a great wooden cross, to which
the arms of France had been nailed, where, by a _procès verbal_, the
overlordship of the Great West was assumed by Louis XIV.
Among the representatives of so many scattered savages, Father Marquette
doubtless made the inquiries about and gained the knowledge concerning the
Great Unknown River which served him in such good stead when, on the 17th
of May, 1673, he started with Louis Joliet, five _voyageurs_, and in two
canoes, on the voyage which made the Mississippi known to Europe. Of the
honor coming from the discovery the good father never thought, but only
with joy of new lands to which the message of the Cross could be carried.
It is the story of a hero, the story of his short life and of his
triumphant death, "alone, a Jesuit, and a Missionary," beside an obscure
creek on the Michigan shore, on the 19th of May, 1675, in the
eight-and-thirtieth year of his age. Descendants of his Ottawas and his
Hurons still tell of his "bright hair, like the sun," and of the great
funeral when, two years after his death, his body was brought back to St.
Ignace. Whether the dust now held sacred was his or no, is of little
moment. In the Book of Life, above and below, the name of Jacques Marquette
has long been written, and like the blessing of peace his spirit rests upon
the Northland.
In 1679, the _Griffin_, a little ship of sixty tons, took Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de la Salle, and the garrulous, mendacious Recollet friar, Hennepin,
past the Island on their way to the Great River, which they were to explore
to the Gulf, and beside which the murdered body of the great Norman was to
be flung. He only touched the Island, but the touch of La Salle was a royal
accolade.
In 1688, La Honton, a soldier of unusual sagacity, noted the importance of
the site, and in 1695 M. de la Motte Cadillac says that the fort, with its
garrison of two hundred soldiers, and the village of Canadians and Indians
to the number of six or seven thousand souls, made it one of the largest
posts in Canada. Disputes between the commandant and the Jesuits, chiefly
about the sale of liquor to the Indians, resulted in the discouragement of
the priests, who, in 1705, burned their chapel and their school, and went
back to Quebec. St. Ignace was then gradually abandoned for a second
Michilimackinac on the southern peninsula.
[Illustration THE OLD BLOCKHOUSE (1780) OVERLOOKING THE LAKE.]
When the French and English war was ended on the Plains of Abraham, George
III. became indeed sovereign of the soil of Canada, but Louis XV. was lord
of the hearts of too many French, half-breeds, and Indians to make the
transfer of allegiance easy. Loves and hates and racial sympathies are not
matters for cold diplomacy, and the people of the Northwest waited
longingly for a leader who should give them again the light-hearted,
friendly rule of the French, under which they had been far happier than
they found themselves as subjects of the stern, alien English. In the
person of an Ottawa chieftain, the most remarkable personage produced by
the Indian race, the leader was found. In the brain of Pontiac, grim,
far-seeing, fearless, heroic, there arose as a prophetic vision the
assurance that English encroachments upon the rights of his people would
never cease so long as they held a rod of ground coveted by an English eye.
To avert the evils he foresaw, he planned the capture of all forts west of
Niagara, the extermination of all English settlers, and the restoration to
the Great Father at Versailles of the lands he had just lost. With
incredible swiftness he formed the vast conspiracy whose story has been
told, once for all, in the living pages of Parkman's narrative.
[Illustration "OLD STONE QUARTERS," FORT MACKINAC, 1780.]
Whisperings of coming trouble had been heard at Fort Michilimackinac by
Major Etherington, the commandant, but none of so serious a nature as to
prevent the presence of the soldiery at a great game of baggatiway which
was to be played in a field near the fort by rival companies of Sacs and
Chippewas, in honor of the King's birthday, August 4, 1763. The game is a
very intricate and brilliant one, requiring great agility and skill, and
the participation of a large number of players. As was most natural, the
excitement of the onlookers was intense, and when an apparently stray ball
flew high over the palisades of the unprotected fort (which had been
silently invaded by a crowd of squaws with weapons hidden under their
blankets) and at least four hundred players in hot pursuit swarmed over the
stockade, nothing was thought amiss, until the cries appropriate to the
game changed into the war-whoop, and a massacre began. Of the English,
all were either killed or made captive, except Alexander Henry, whose
narrative curdles the blood even yet. This event led to the abandonment of
the southern fort and the establishment of one on the Island.[6]
[Illustration SIGNATURES OF THE CHIPPEWA CHIEFS WHO, IN 1781, DEEDED THE
ISLAND TO KING GEORGE III. FROM "MACKINAC," BY JOHN R. BAILEY, M.D., BREVET
LIEUT.-COL. U.S.V., BY WHOSE KIND PERMISSION THEY ARE HERE REPRODUCED.]
"It is now certain," writes Schoolcraft in 1834, "that the
occupancy of Old Michilimackinack--the Beekwutenong of the
Indians--was kept up by the British until 1774; between that
date and 1780 the flag was transferred ... the principal trade
went with it, the Indian intercourse likewise. Some residents
lingered a few years but the place was finally abandoned, and
the site is now covered with loose sand."
By the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, the Island was ceded by Great Britain to
the United States. Possession was, however, withheld on one pretext or
another, until 1796.
[Illustration FORT MACKINAC, AND THE CANNON CAPTURED BY COMMODORE PERRY.]
When the second war with England began, it was natural that one of the
first points to be attacked should be the fort so commandingly situated.
Far from all base of supplies and all possibility of rapid
communication, the oft-repeated appeals of General Hull for an effective
garrison at this and other important points were totally disregarded in
Washington. Only fifty-seven soldiers were in residence in Mackinac when
the British forces, 1021 strong, landed before dawn on the 17th of July,
1812, on a point nearly opposite St. Ignace. By eleven o'clock Captain
Roberts sent a flag of truce, and a demand of surrender to Lieutenant
Porter Hanks, who had had "no intimation" that a war between the powers
had been declared until that moment. After considering the futility of
resistance, and a consultation with the American traders in the village,
with the valor which was ever bettered by discretion, he capitulated.
In August, 1814, an attempt was made to retake the Island. A battle was
fought near the scene of the British landing two years before, in which
battle Major Holmes and twelve privates were killed, and many men were
wounded or missing. The routed Americans, under Colonel Croghan, withdrew
to their ships. The Island finally passed into the keeping of the United
States in 1815.
Then followed the great days of the fur companies, when the place was
astir with a life so gay and vivid that only to hear of it stirs the blood
of the untamed savage which centuries of the repressions of civilization
have not routed from our hearts. Hundreds of hardy, ill-paid _engagés_,
hundreds of happy-go-lucky, hard-working _voyageurs_ and _coureurs des
bois_ and hundreds of Indians crowded into the hundreds of tents set up
along the beach; into the log-houses of the primitive village, and into the
huge barracks of the company, which counted and weighed the rich peltries
they had gathered, paying them in return the miserable wages which in
dancing, gambling, drinking, fighting, feasting and sleeping, were spent
long before the _bateaux_ freighted with the poor necessities for the
fast-coming winter were again rowed out toward the wilderness, the brave
_chansons_ of the oarsmen growing fainter and fainter as the boats passed
steadily out of sight.
[Illustration REV. ELEAZAR WILLIAMS. REPRODUCED FROM LATIMER'S "SCRAP BOOK
OF THE REVOLUTION," BY PERMISSION OF A.C. McCLURG & CO.]
An incident but little known connects the Island with one of the great
mysteries of history,--the fate of the little son of Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette. That the Dauphin did not die in the Temple, but had been
secretly conveyed to America and had been placed among the Indians, was
believed by persons whose opinions were entitled to respect; but that he
might be found in the person of the Rev. Eleazar Williams, a half-breed
missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church among the tribes about Green
Bay, was a supposition stranger than any fiction. The story is too long to
tell here,[7] but as it touches Mackinac at a single point, it must have a
line in this chapter.
On the wharf of the moon-shaped bay, one bright day in October, 1841, a
crowd was gathered to see the Prince de Joinville, son of Louis
Philippe, then reigning in France, who was on his way to Green Bay, and
who had stopped off at Mackinac to visit some of the natural curiosities
of the place. A salute had been fired in honor of the royal sailor with
true republican fervor, and while the steamer which had brought him
waited his pleasure, the village was _en fête_. Waiting on the dock, and
also about to embark for Green Bay, was the Rev. Eleazar Williams, who,
before the boat left the bay, was, at the request of the Prince,
presented to his Highness. The acquaintance thus begun led to
disclosures which, if true, make the identity of the Dauphin and the
missionary all but certain.
Wrapped in a legend, the Island of Mackinac comes into sight. With a
thousand legends, its old fields, its cliffs, its caves, its gorges, its
wooded glens, its shores, and its far, dim distances are haunted. With a
thousand mysteries and bewilderments and witcheries it holds captive all
who come within reach of its magic. With a mystery, which too may be but a
legend, our story closes, as the light that smites the waters of the
Straits into a myriad of glittering flakes paints on the sunset sky the
old, old golden track which the Indians loved to call "the Path that leads
Homeward."
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The deed for the Island, bought from its Indian owners in 1781 by
George III. for £5000, was long in possession of Dr. John R. Bailey, Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel U.S.V., and author of a most interesting monograph on
Mackinac. It is from its pages, and by his kind permission, that the Indian
signatures to the document are here reproduced.
[7] For an admirable statement of the facts bearing upon this interesting
problem, the reader is asked to turn to _My Notebook of the French
Revolution_, by Mrs. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (A.C. McClurg & Co.). The
book upon which Mrs. Latimer has chiefly based her account, _The Lost
Prince_, by the Rev. Mr. Hanson, has long been out of print, and is almost
inaccessible.
[Illustration]
INDIANAPOLIS
THE HOOSIER CAPITAL
BY PERRY S. HEATH
The visitor to the Hoosier capital familiar with the capital of the nation
instantly observes a striking similarity between the two. Well he may, for
Alexander Ralston, who carried the chains for Pierre Charles L'Enfant, and
placed the stakes which fixed the lines and curves of the City of
Magnificent Distances, was the surveyor of Indianapolis. When, in 1821, he
carved out of the small cleared space in the centre of a great wilderness
the plan just one mile square for Indianapolis, his architectural abilities
and ambitions had more than a superficial justification. The result was
perhaps the handsomest city between Philadelphia and Denver.
When Indianapolis was platted on the surveyor's map it had but 800
inhabitants. By the year 1840 the town had grown to 2672 inhabitants. There
were only 48,244 souls in the city in 1870. But by 1890 the population had
increased to 105,436, and the census of 1900 placed the population at
169,164. In the latter decade Indianapolis outstripped Rochester, New York,
St. Paul, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Denver, and Omaha in increase of
population. And the area occupied by the city grew in three quarters of a
century from one to twenty-seven square miles.
Entering Indianapolis to-day upon any one of the seventeen independent
railroads operated by steam locomotives, or any one of the many interurban
electric systems, the traveller is entranced, in passing the wide,
asphalted avenues, by the magnificent view which carries the vision to the
hub of the city, where the eye readily perceives the panorama of the State
House, four or five magnificent hotels, some majestic club-houses, and the
world-famed Soldiers' Monument in the Governor's Circle. The city is not
one over which dense clouds of smoke hover daily, marks unmistakable of
great manufacturing interests. The sky is usually clear. Natural gas and
oil are largely employed as fuel for the production of steam. Where coal is
used the consumers are largely located in the remote outskirts. During half
the year the foliage from the splendid system of shade and other trees
along the avenues and streets and in the parks clothes the city in a
verdure producing a pleasing effect upon the vision and the atmosphere. In
winter-time the well-paved streets and the universal system of cement
sidewalks are ever under the enforcement of perfect city regulations, clear
of snow and sleet and other impediments to boulevard driving and
pedestrianism.
[Illustration OLD STATE HOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS.]
There is about the history of Indianapolis much of quaint Indian tradition
and historical attractiveness. While almost every trace of the rural, or
the virgin forests which were in view from any point a few years ago, has
disappeared and modern structures and improvements abound, the visitor
wherever he goes, cannot forget, that he is in a city which made great
progress during the last half of the nineteenth century. On every hand this
fact is illustrated. It was as late as April, 1816, that Congress
authorized the construction of a constitution for the State. As recently as
three quarters of a century ago the White River, on which Indianapolis is
situated, was dotted from source to mouth, with the canoes of savages, and
lined along its banks, in the dense wilderness, with Indian villages. The
white man made his way in constant fear through the country. It is true
that Vincennes had been settled by white people generations before, but its
citizens had at this time few if any relations, social or commercial, with
any other section of the Territory, and everywhere the red man continued to
be a prime factor, holding and controlling the affairs of the domain. While
the White and Wabash rivers in the interior furnished during a part of the
year transportation by raft, the old buffalo trail from Vincennes to the
Falls of the Ohio, cleared by immigrants, afforded the only safe outlet or
inlet, and was in consequence a great thoroughfare. The Whetzels, known to
history as the intrepid Indian fighters, paved the way through the
Territory and made it possible for immigrants to find Indianapolis in its
early days.
[Illustration NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY, INDIANAPOLIS.]
At the time this city was located and titled there was so much of Indian
lore in the minds of the legislators, and in fact so much of the red man in
the wilderness around, a constant source of apprehension, that great
difficulty was found in securing a name for the new metropolis. Tecumseh,
Suwarrow, Whetzel, Wayne, Delaware, and other names familiar to the
paleface hunted by or hunting the red man, were suggested. Finally Mr.
Samuel Merrill, a name significant in the modern history of Indiana and
Indianapolis, and prominent in the upbuilding and development of the best
institutions of the State and city, proposed Indianapolis as the name for
the city which is now the pride of all Hoosier hearts.
The original city was platted with streets just one mile in length from end
to end. The avenues, or "diagonals," as they were termed on the original
plat, radiated from the Circle (the hub) in the centre and constituted that
beautiful design which makes the capital of France and the capital of the
United States so attractive in appearance, and yet in some respects "a
labyrinth or mesh to the unfamiliar." Near the radiating point or Circle
was early established a market, which is to-day one of the great
conveniences to the residents of the city and to those who market their
products and an attraction at most seasons of the year to visitors.
[Illustration BENJAMIN HARRISON.]
It was not until the removal in November, 1824, of the archives of Indiana
from Corydon to Indianapolis, that the latter became the actual capital. In
1827 the Legislature appropriated four thousand dollars for a Governor's
residence to be located in the Circle. Its construction was commenced, but
never completed. The unfurnished portion was occupied at one time as a
schoolhouse, until finally the officers of the Supreme Court made it their
headquarters. After some years the crude building was demolished and the
ground was converted into a park, the present location of the Soldiers'
Monument.
[Illustration STATE HOUSE, INDIANAPOLIS. EAST FRONT.]
It was not until a third of the nineteenth century had passed, not until
near 1840, that Indianapolis became more pretentious than any other country
town. The public squares were feeding-grounds for the ox and horse teams of
countrymen who came to market. There were practically no industries, and
the buildings were primitive and simple. As late as 1875 the wags of the
stage and the humorists of the press amused themselves with jeers at the
Hoosier capital. The Hoosier was a joke in the East. He was represented as
the typical raw character, greatly in need of common advantages and
ordinary enlightenment. And the impression persisted until some time after
three quarters of the nineteenth century had passed that Indianapolis was
simply a congregating-point for him and his kind. About 1880 the city began
to take on the appearance of a modern ambitious metropolis. As wealth
increased the people resorted in ever increasing numbers to the capital, to
enjoy the schools for their children and the best civilization for
themselves. Gradually there have gathered there not only the prosperous
citizens of the State, but many who have at home or abroad achieved renown
in letters, diplomacy, official life, the army and navy. Here have lived
two Vice-Presidents of our country. One of our Presidents, the late General
Benjamin Harrison, lived and died here. Dialect poets, local historians,
and novelists have spent their days here and been the pride of their
fellow-citizens.
In 1831 the Legislature made an appropriation of fifty thousand dollars for
the construction of a State House. The investment, when completed, however,
aggregated about sixty thousand dollars. And the State viewed the result
with satisfaction and believed she had one of the most attractive and
majestic State Houses in the entire country, as indeed she had after the
substitution in 1887, at an expense of $1,936,000, of the present
magnificent structure.
Indianapolis has more than one hundred church buildings. The City Hall,
with a seating capacity of over five thousand, the gift of Mr. Daniel
Tomlinson, was constructed at an expense of $150,000, and is principally
used for conventions and musical festivals.
In 1836 the State began an elaborate system of internal improvements.
Railroads, canals, and turnpikes were subsidized and encouraged in every
manner possible. The first railroad to reach Indianapolis came up in 1847
from Madison, on the Ohio River, creating the usual sensation of the new
railroad in those days. As long ago as 1860 Indianapolis became the
railroad centre of the Central West. The diversified and almost limitless
products of the State, of the farm and the mine, and the fact that
Indianapolis is in the direct pathway between the East and the West,
afforded great attraction to railroad builders. The Union Railroad Station,
until recently the largest and best in the United States, is still one of
the most commodious, comfortable, and beautiful in the country.
During the Civil War Indianapolis was a storm-centre. The State was not
surpassed by any other in the percentage of soldiers sent out to defend the
Union. Here they rendezvoused, and Camp Morton and other points about the
city for many years after the war bore signs of the long presence of the
"Boys in Blue." Indiana possessed a great war Governor in Oliver P. Morton,
the steadfast friend of Lincoln and a loyal anti-slavist. For five years in
Indianapolis the shrill sound of the fife and the roll of the drum scarcely
ever ceased, day or night. Those living to-day who recall the activities of
the days of the Civil War view the Soldiers' Monument, in the heart of the
city, and the many evidences of reverence for the memory of our Union
soldiers in the beautiful cemeteries without surprise. These to them are
but simple sequences, natural results.
[Illustration SOLDIERS' MONUMENT, INDIANAPOLIS.]
The straggling village of the first days of the war soon became a bustling
little city. For the first time business blocks began to appear along the
leading streets and avenues. The architecture in the residences evinced a
tendency toward the modern as time progressed. The corduroy or cobble
streets were improved. The heavy artillery and ponderous wagons carrying
munitions of war required something more substantial in heavy weather, and
gravel was thrown upon the muddy thoroughfares. Level as a plain, but
beautifully drained by the slight inclines to the White River, it was
possible to transform those streams of mud in winter-time and heaps of
brown dust in the dry summer into the magnificently paved or perfectly
asphalted streets of the present day. The city now has 150 miles of
improved streets--forty miles of asphalt, costing $2,514,576; twenty-three
miles of brick, $902,276; twelve miles of wooden block, $710,646, and
seventy-five miles of gravel and boulder, $777,306. There are 107 miles of
cement sidewalks, which required an expenditure of $552,489, and ninety-one
miles of sewers, at an outlay of $1,575,878.
[Illustration MARION COUNTY COURT HOUSE.]
Many beautiful residences, surrounded by well-kept lawns and parks, may be
viewed by a drive through the city or by a tour over any of the lines of
the splendidly managed consolidated street-railway system. The city has
1207 acres of parks, more attractive than the parks of Washington.
Riverside Park, containing 953 acres, the ground for which was purchased in
1900, lies along the White River. Garfield Park contains 103 acres;
Brookside Park, eighty-one acres; and there are various smaller parks
throughout the city. The municipality of Indianapolis has a large park
fund, created from the sale of bonds and from a tax levied for park
purposes. The financial condition of the municipality is the pride of the
citizens. The value of school property is $1,993,620. The city library is a
handsome building, erected especially for library purposes, and contains
one hundred thousand volumes.
In 1887 the Legislature appropriated $200,000 for the erection in
Governor's Circle of the monument to the soldiers and sailors of the State.
The conerstone was laid August 2, 1889. The monument was designed by Bruno
Schmidt, of Berlin, and was built of Indiana limestone, at an expense of
$600,000, including the images at the base. The monument stands 268 feet in
height. Around the approaches are eight magnificent candelabra, valued at
$40,000. The two cascades are the largest artificial waterfalls in the
world, discharging each minute seven thousand gallons. The water is derived
from driven wells beneath the monument, and after flowing over the cascade
returns to the reservoir, from which it is again used through power
furnished by force pumps. In 1900 the revenue of the city was $1,341,861,
and the expenditure $1,245,000. The bonded debt was $2,135,700. The
assessed valuation of property for 1900 was $126,672,652. There are five
national banks with a combined capital of $2,400,000, and four trust
companies with a combined capital of $3,000,000. The wholesale trade is
extensive, confined mostly to drygoods, boots and shoes, and hats, and
reaches as far south as Texas and west to Oklahoma.
[Illustration COLUMBIA CLUB, INDIANAPOLIS.]
Manufacturing interests are large, consisting mainly of structural iron,
mill machinery, engines and various kinds of bent-wood. It is contended
that only Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York surpass Indianapolis in
the amount of many manufactured products. Mill machinery and structural
iron is shipped in large quantities to Europe, South America, and other
foreign lands. Indianapolis is one of the greatest horse markets in the
country, and is surpassed by only three cities as a market for hogs and
cattle. A belt railroad circles the city, connecting the two immense
stockyards with all the steam railroads.
[Illustration THE HENDRICKS MONUMENT.]
In May, 1895, John Herron willed to the Art Association $200,000, with
which to erect an art gallery. A site has been purchased, and the gallery
is this year to be built. The Commercial Club, composed of the leading
business men of the city and devoted to advancing the interests of the
city, occupies its own building, an elegant eight-story structure. The home
for the Columbia Club, a Republican organization of State importance, which
has just been completed at an expense of nearly $200,000, is one of the
finest club properties in the entire West. The Marion and the University
clubs both own their buildings, and the women, too, have a club-house. The
Law Building is a handsome and valuable structure of twelve stories,
occupied exclusively by attorneys. The corporation has a large law library
for the use of the tenants.
State institutions are the Insane Hospital, containing fifteen hundred
patients; Institute for the Education of the Blind, and a similar
institution for deaf-mutes. The city has a large and handsomely equipped
hospital, and there are two others well appointed. A new hotel building
will this year take the place of the Bates House, at a cost of more than
$2,000,000. The city is adorned with impressive statues of her favorite
sons: Morton, Whitcomb, William Henry Harrison, and George Rogers Clark in
Monument Place, Vice-President Colfax in University Park, and
Vice-President Hendricks in the State House grounds. To these will be added
in 1901 one of General Henry W. Lawton, a native Hoosier, who fell in
battle in the Philippines, one of General Pleasant A. Hackleman, the only
general officer from Indiana killed in the Civil War, and one sometime, of
course, of the late ex-President Harrison.
Except Philadelphia, it is doubtful if there is a city in the Union where a
greater percentage of the wage-earners possess their own homes. Labor
strikes or disturbances are here almost unknown, and the conditions of
peace and prosperity are assured for many years to come.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VINCENNES
THE KEY TO THE NORTHWEST
BY WILLIAM HENRY SMITH
"On the banks of the Wabash" is one of the greater historic sites of the
great Northwest. Of no great importance, at least commercially, to-day, it
was once the seat of the empire of France in the Ohio Valley, and long
before, possibly when Moses was leading his people out of bondage, the seat
of an empire established by a race we now call prehistoric. When the Mound
Builders came, whence they came, when they went away, or whither, will, in
all probability never be determined; but they were surely here, and from
the works they left behind, must have been here for centuries, and must
have numbered millions. The site of their capital is not known, but if it
was not on the spot where Vincennes now stands, certainly one of the most
populous cities of their empire did stand here. In the immediate vicinity
are several large mounds, and around them are hundreds of smaller mounds.
There must have been something attractive about this spot on the Wabash,
for after the Mound Builders deserted it and the red men came to occupy the
land, they, too, selected it for the site of one of their principal towns.
No one knows what tribes have dwelt here, but when it was first visited by
white men, the Pi-ank-a-shaws, one of the leading tribes of the great Miami
Confederacy, organized to drive back eastward the Six Nations, occupied it
as their principal village, and called it Chip-kaw-kay. As the red men
depended upon the forests and streams for both food and clothing, this was
for them an ideal spot. The finest forests in America were here, filled
with buffalo, bear, deer, and other game; while the Wabash furnished them
fish and gave them a highway easily traversed by which to visit friends in
other sections or to make raids on hostile tribes.
The traditions of the Pi-ank-a-shaws indicate that they occupied the
site for more than a century before the coming of the whites. Just when
the first white man visited the spot cannot be determined. There is
little doubt that La Salle passed up the Wabash about 1669, gave it the
name of the Ouabache, and marked it on his maps.[8] Finding an Indian
town, he probably stopped and, as was his wont, made friends with the
tribes. A few years later the town was abandoned for a while, owing to
the irruptions of the fierce Iroquois, who were extremely hostile to the
French, and La Salle gathered all the other Indian tribes around his
fort on the Illinois, where they remained until about 1711. When the
Iroquois retired over the mountains the other tribes returned to their
old homes; the Pi-ank-a-shaws to their village on the Wabash, the Weas
erecting their wigwams near the mouth of the Tippecanoe, and the
twightwees locating at the head of the Maumee. Afterward the Delawares
took up their home in Central Indiana, the Shawnees in the eastern
portion, and the Pottawatomies around the foot of Lake Michigan.
The Indians had hardly gotten back to their old hunting-grounds before the
_coureurs des bois_ began to make excursions into the territory in search
of peltries and adventures. Some of them penetrated as far as Chip-kaw-kay
and dwelt for some time with the Pi-ank-a-shaws. Traditions tell of the
visit of a missionary or two, but there is no certainty.
Rumors grew of English traders crossing the mountains, and as all the
territory from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi was claimed by France
because of the explorations of La Salle, the French authorities in Canada
and Louisiana became alarmed, and in 1718 sent out Jean Baptiste Bissot,
the Sieur de Vincent, from Canada to establish posts on the Wabash. He
reached Ke-ki-on-ga, the town of the Twightwees, at the head of the Maumee,
selected it for one of his posts, and for another, Wea town, below the
mouth of the Tippecanoe.
At that time not all of the Ohio Valley was under the jurisdiction of
Canada, but the lower half of what are now Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
belonged to the province of Louisiana. For this reason Bissot made no
effort to establish posts farther down the Wabash than Wea town, afterward
known as Ouiatenon. He died at Ke-ki-on-ga, in 1719. The incursions of the
English growing bolder and more frequent, M. Broisbriant, Governor of
Louisiana, about 1725, ordered François Margane, Sieur de Vincent, who had
succeeded to the title of his uncle, Jean Baptiste Bissot, to prepare to
repel the advance of the English and drive them back across the mountains.
For this purpose Margane established a post at Chip-kaw-kay, and about
seven years later a number of French-Canadian families settled there. This
was the first settlement of whites in Indiana, although trading posts had
previously been established at the head of the Maumee and at Ouiatenon.
This was the beginning of Vincennes, which was called "the Post," "au
Poste," and "Old Post," till in 1735 it received the present name.
Margane commanded the Post until 1736, when he joined an expedition against
the Indians on the Mississippi, and was captured and burned at the stake.
After his death till the territory was ceded in 1763 to the British, the
Post was commanded by Lieutenant Louis St. Ange, who had assisted in
establishing it. The French during this period lived in peace and
friendship with the Indians, the Pi-ank-a-shaws giving the settlers a large
tract of land around the Post for their use. This land was held in common
by all the inhabitants. In the spring a certain portion was allotted to the
head of each family, or to any one else willing to cultivate it, but when
the harvest was over the fences were taken down and the land again became
public property. After the accession of St. Ange to the command, he made to
certain of the more important persons in the little settlement individual
grants of some of this land, which later caused great confusion.
Lieutenant St. Ange had much influence with the Indians, and as the French
made no attempts to claim the lands of the Indians, or to destroy their
hunting-grounds by cutting down the forests, the little settlement at
Vincennes lived without molestation or fear, until about 1751, when
British agents stirred up some of the tribes to attempt the destruction of
the French posts in the Ohio Valley. St. Ange put his post in a secure
state of defence, and although a few friendly Indians were killed by the
hostiles in the immediate neighborhood, the Post itself was not attacked.
[Illustration EARLY FRENCH SETTLERS AT VINCENNES.]
When Canada was ceded to the British it took with it the posts at the head
of the Maumee and Wea town. They were garrisoned by small detachments of
British troops. Pontiac's conspiracy to drive the British out of the
country included the capture and destruction of all the posts then held by
the British west of the mountains. The two other posts in Indiana were
captured, but Vincennes, being still under the command of St. Ange, was not
attacked. Pontiac endeavored to enlist St. Ange in his warfare against the
colonists, but that astute officer was proof against all his blandishments.
When the treaty of 1763 was made known, St. Ange was transferred to the
command of Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi, and left the affairs of
Vincennes under the control of three of the more prominent citizens.
The British reoccupied Fort Miamis, at the head of the Maumee, and
garrisoned Fort Chartres, but did not occupy Vincennes or assume control
over its affairs. General Gage, commander-in-chief of the British forces in
America, issued a proclamation to the people of Vincennes offering them the
privilege of remaining or of removing to the French or Spanish possessions,
assuring them that if they remained they should have the same religious
privileges as had been granted to the people of Canada. In a later
proclamation he informed the inhabitants that he would not recognize any
claim they had to the lands in and around the Post.
The priest of the little parish and some of the leading citizens
memorialized the General, showing that the lands had been held by them for
many years under grants recognized by the French government, and that it
would be a hardship now to deprive them of the rights they had so long
enjoyed. On the receipt of this memorial General Gage ordered that all
evidences of title be submitted to him at Boston. This, for various
reasons, could not be done. Many of the written grants had, as was the
custom in France, been left in charge of a notary, who had disappeared with
them. In other cases, the grants had been verbal, title passing again,
after a French fashion, by the giving of possession with certain
ceremonies. While this matter was in contest between the citizens of
Vincennes and General Gage, the first mutterings of the American Revolution
brought the General duties of more pressing interest, and nothing further
was done in regard to the land grants at Vincennes.
From 1763, when St. Ange left for Fort Chartres, until 1777, the people of
Vincennes had no civil government except such as they exercised themselves.
On May 19, 1777, Lieutenant-Governor Abbott, of Detroit, arrived and
formally took possession of the place for the King, establishing a
government and building a small stockade fort, which he named "Fort
Sackville." He reported the "Wabache" as one of the finest rivers in the
world, and spoke highly of the peaceful and correct attitude of the
citizens of Vincennes. He also took supervision of the garrisons at
Ouiatenon and Fort Miamis, and the work of the British agents in stirring
up the Indians to active hostilities against the Americans began.
The arrival of Lieutenant-Governor Abbott, and the hostilities of the
Indians he encouraged, gave rise to the most interesting chapter in the
history of Vincennes, and one of the most dramatic chapters in the history
of the United States. Through the influence of the British agents, the
savages made a number of forays against the people of Kentucky, and brought
about an event which added an empire to the United States.
In all American history there is no story more remarkable than that of
George Rogers Clark, yet it is one of the least known. Some of the
encyclopædias do not even mention him, while others dismiss with a few
lines a man who gave an empire to the United States. He lived a remarkable
life, performed great services for his country, and was then permitted to
die in extreme poverty in his old age. His country neglected even to
reimburse him for the expenses incurred while winning for it an empire.
[Illustration FORT SACKVILLE, 1779.]
In 1777 Clark was a citizen of Kentucky. The great question to the people
of Kentucky was how best to defend themselves against the Indian forays.
Clark, through reports of spies he had sent out, became satisfied that the
Indian hostilities were fomented by the British at the various posts
northwest of the Ohio River. He went to Virginia and laid the facts before
Governor Patrick Henry. He pointed out that the best, if not the only, way
to protect the people of Kentucky was to capture and hold the posts at
Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and Detroit; that with those posts in the possession
of the Americans they could overawe and hold in subjection the various
Indian tribes. He offered in person to lead an expedition for their
capture.
[Illustration CLARK AND HIS MEN CROSSING THE RIVER.]
It was known to Governor Henry that the Spaniards west of the Mississippi
had been secretly trying, with some encouragement, to induce the people of
Kentucky to place themselves under Spanish protection. When Clark
approached him with the suggestion to capture the posts northwest of the
Ohio, Governor Henry at first regarded the project as chimerical. One day,
after a long argument, Clark left his presence with the significant remark
"that a country that was not worth defending was not worth possessing."
Interpreting this remark to mean that if Virginia would not help to defend
Kentucky the people there would seek protection from Spain, Governor Henry
recalled Clark, and after a further conference, authorized him to recruit
350 men for the capture of the posts.
He gave him also a small supply of Virginia money and some ammunition.
Returning to Kentucky, Clark hastily recruited a number of men, without
divulging his purpose to them. They rendezvoused on an island in the Ohio
River, opposite the site of Louisville. There he explained his full design,
and all but about 150 refused to join the expedition. Undismayed, Clark
floated the few men remaining with him down the river in boats prepared for
the purpose, and captured Kaskaskia on the 4th of July, 1778. Hearing that
the British had a large force at Vincennes, and had gathered around the
fort a large number of Indians hostile to the Americans, he waited at
Kaskaskia till he could get further information.
The cordial welcome which the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia gave the
Americans led Clark to believe that the inhabitants of Vincennes would
prove friendly. French in both places, they were easily led by their
priests. The priest at Kaskaskia, Father Gibault, a warm partisan of
Clark, offered to go to Vincennes, sound the inhabitants, and learn the
strength of the British there. His offer was accepted, and with a single
companion he made the journey. He found the French inhabitants, in the
absence of the commander of the post, who had gone to Detroit, willing to
welcome a change of rulers, and induced them to go in a body to the little
church and take an oath of allegiance to the American colonies. After this
they took possession of Fort Sackville, and garrisoned it with some of
their own number. Father Gibault also induced the Indians to bury the
hatchet and promise to live in peace with the Americans, now the friends,
as he reminded them, of their great French father.
The news of his success was speedily sent to Clark. Though he had no troops
to send to garrison the fort, he dispatched Captain Leonard Helm to assume
direction of affairs. This was a fortunate selection, for Helm added to
great courage, tact and an intimate knowledge of the Indian character.
It was not long before the British authorities at Detroit were informed of
the change in the situation at Kaskaskia and Vincennes, and at once began
preparations to recover the lost ground. At this time Colonel Henry
Hamilton, of the British army, was Lieutenant-Governor of Detroit. He
assembled a force of five hundred men--regulars, militia and Indians--and
started for Vincennes. Captain Helm did not learn of the approach of this
force until, about the middle of December, it was within three miles of the
fort. His garrison consisted of one American and a few inhabitants of
Vincennes. Seeing that it would be impossible to defend the fort, the
inhabitants quietly dispersed to their homes, leaving Helm and his one
American in the for
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