The First Evanstonians 
 
 A Paper Read Before the 
 Evanston Historical Society 
 February 7th, 1916 : : : 
 
 By FRANK R. GROVER 
 
 EVANSTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 Evanston, Illinois
 
 THE FIRST EVANSTONIANS 
 
 A paper read before the Evanston Historical Society, 
 February 7th, 1916, by Frank R. Grover. 
 
 Compiled in part from other monographs 
 of the writer relating to the history of 
 Evanston and the North Shore. 
 
 EVANSTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
 
 THE FIRST EVANSTONIANS
 
 THE FIRST EVANSTONIANS 
 
 It has ever been the aim of historians, of every age and 
 land, either to entertain their readers with romantic stories 
 of men and events, or to perpetuate in plain historic record, 
 a narration worthy both of remembrance and of a place 
 among the countless writings and traditions that constitute 
 a history. The New World is so very new; America is 
 so near in point of time to the Indian Days, the memory 
 of many living men reaching back to the time when wilder- 
 ness was king, that here, both of these aims can easily be 
 gratified. This is not only true of the Illinois country, 
 but it is especially true of that part of our state that has, 
 during the past generation, acquired, probably for all time, 
 the name of "The North Shore." This strip of land on the 
 western shores of Lake Michigan, extending from the 
 northern limits of Chicago to the Wisconsin state line, a 
 distance of some forty miles, and with a western boundary 
 undefined, has been occupied by the Pioneer for scarce a 
 hundred years. The preceding century and a half the 
 exploration period, completes its entire written history as 
 known to white men. For unknown centuries before that 
 it was the land of the Indians. It is my purpose to tell 
 you what I have been able to learn of those very early 
 days, so full of adventure and of interest, the days of the 
 prehistoric Mound Builder, the Indian, the Explorer, the 
 Jesuit Missionary, the First Residents of the North Shore 
 -THE FIRST EVANSTONIANS. 
 
 The human instinct for enjoyment of primeval scenes, 
 to live over again in reverie and in story that which only 
 the Explorers saw, is as imperishable as that indefinable 
 something that one author has designated, "The Call of 
 the Wild." Hence the writers have traveled in all the 
 highways and byways and far off corners of Mother Earth, 
 
 (51
 
 taking their readers on long journeys, far from home, many 
 times overlooking the immediate foreground of their own 
 country, where men have also come and gone, amid associa- 
 tions and scenes that present historic pictures equal to all 
 those brought from far off lands and times. And so, for 
 change, I ask you to take a glimpse of our own country 
 of the North Shore, in a most interesting period of its 
 history. 
 
 On the eastern boundary the winds and waves of Old 
 Lake Michigan then known as the Lake of the Illinois, 
 blew and rolled as in these modern days. The calm summer 
 sea and the glory of the sunrise, meaning then as much to 
 the Red Man as these days to the White, and probably 
 sometimes more, for a calm sea afforded navigation with 
 a canoe and the Sun was the emblem of the Great Spirit. 
 Sand dunes and scrub oak groves lined the shores from 
 the Chicago Creek to the site of modern Davis Street in 
 Evanston, and from there northward to Little Fort, now 
 Waukegan, were the high bluffs ever changing their align- 
 ment with the march of time and the roar of the waves, 
 and there was the great forest as in recent days, presenting 
 a shore line of such beauty and interest, especially in 
 autumn, as to cause repeated comment and description by 
 the early writers. From Little Fort to the Land of the 
 Wisconsins, again sand dunes and the low country with 
 its adjacent bluffs and ravines as one sees it today; rich 
 then as now, as experts tell us, in a greater variety of trees, 
 wild flowers and shrubs than any other one locality of the 
 known world. 
 
 West of the Great Lake there were too, other waters 
 of the North Shore, of very substantial importance, now 
 almost forgotten. For half a century and more the Indian 
 word "Skokie" has been the name of a long swamp or 
 slough extending from Lake Bluff south to a point opposite 
 Wilmette Village. In the Eighteenth Century and before, 
 this swamp was an inland lake, forming the headwaters 
 
 16)
 
 of the North Branch of the Chicago River, and also at 
 times part of one of the great historic highways of America 
 which will receive later mention. The Camps and Vil- 
 lages of the Red Men first and last have occupied almost 
 every available site on the banks of this inland lake and 
 river, and upon the banks of this former lake or its river 
 outlet, in all probability, was located in the year 1 696, one 
 of the very first Catholic Missions of Illinois. 
 
 To the west was another ancient water-way the 
 River Des Plaines, stagnant at times and again a highway 
 for explorer, coureur de bois or Indian, while along its 
 banks amid the forest or belt of timber on either side, again 
 the camp and village of the savage. 
 
 Stretching away to the west of the bluffs and the 
 ravines of the forest on the shores of this Lake of the 
 Illinois, was the panorama of probably the most beautiful 
 part of this Illinois Country. There is grandeur in the 
 mountains to which all mankind pays homage, but the 
 beauty of this Illinois prairie-land in the days of the Indian 
 occupation, must ever remain a picture unpainted by 
 artist and never to be fairly described by any writer not 
 the barren, dusty and treeless plains of the far West, but 
 all that primeval beauty amid summer sunshine and 
 showers, that prodigal Nature, rich and wanton in wealth 
 and resource, can create in the harmony of a thousand little 
 prairies and a thousand little groves, oak openings and 
 forests, around a hundred inland lakes, which, like spark- 
 ling gems, were scattered over the land the paradise of its 
 savage owners, for it abounded in all the wild creatures 
 of the American plain that make happy hunting grounds. 
 The flowers of Spring, the verdure of Summer, rolling in 
 billows like waves of the sea before the prairie wind, the 
 autumnal foliage, and the dreamy haze of the later Indian 
 Summer giving the final touch, are all a part of this un- 
 painted picture. That was the North Shore more than 
 a century before it bore that name and to its proprietors 
 
 [71
 
 and to its distinguished historic visitors, we will turn for 
 a hasty glance of who they were and what they did. 
 
 Beginning with 
 
 THE MOUND BUILDERS 
 
 who bring to mind a thousand fancies of an unknown people, 
 of a race that has come and gone and left no word or trace 
 of whence they came or where and when they disappeared 
 from earth. This will ever be shrouded in mystery and 
 clouded with the conflicting theories of the many writers 
 who have tried in some measure to trace their history. 
 The most recent research seems to indicate that they were 
 of the same races and in reality the progenitors of the 
 later known Indian tribes, though possibly of higher cul- 
 ture. This conclusion is probably the correct one, but 
 whether it be right or wrong, these people have left behind 
 in their mounds and implements indications of their great 
 antiquity, showing a residence in the Illinois Country, as 
 one writer asserts, ante-dating the buffalo, as, says this 
 writer, no carvings or images of the American bison are 
 found among their works, while those of the other animals 
 abound. 
 
 The North Shore has no such works of the Mound 
 Builders as are to be found in other parts of the state, 
 especially along the Mississippi where the great Cahokia 
 or Monk's Mound and the many other great mounds and 
 earth-works at East Saint Louis stand as one of the Wonders 
 . of the Western World still from the emblematic mound 
 in the form of a huge lizard which was under the present 
 site of the Wellington Street Station of the Northwestern 
 Elevated Railroad in Chicago on the south, to the inter- 
 esting group of mounds used at one time as a fortification, 
 still visible near the Village of Antioch on the north, the 
 North Shore has first and last been replete with these 
 works of antiquity so graphically described by that learned 
 pioneer, Mr. E. S. Ingalls of Waukegan, some sixty-five 
 
 [8]
 
 years ago. A few of these earth works still remain and 
 are treasured, as they should be, by thoughtful land 
 owners, but it is a sad and disappointing experience to 
 learn that the ignorance, stupidity and thoughtless vandal- 
 ism of the industrious tillers of the soil have long since 
 levelled these precious Indian landmarks of the North 
 Shore which would in many other localities have been 
 treasured for all time to come as monuments to a departed 
 people and as an inspiration, ever pointing to the field of 
 inquiry, for the historian and archaeologist yet to come. 
 
 THE STONE IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS OF 
 THE NORTH SHORE 
 
 present a much more interesting subject for historical 
 research than do the Mound Builders and their Mounds, 
 for the results are more certain and conclusive. The 
 mere mention of "The Stone Age" generally gives the 
 impression of some far off era, perhaps thousands of 
 years ago, when in truth and reality the Stone Age in 
 America and on the North Shore only began to close when 
 the Indian trader brought from across the Ocean, the new 
 steel hatchets and arrow points to take the place of the old, 
 here wrought in flint and chert and copper in the far off 
 and yet nearby times, of which there is little written 
 history. 
 
 Much of the history of those times must of necessity 
 remain forever undisclosed. Some of it has been gathered 
 from credible traditions, some of it distorted by the frailty 
 of human recollection and by the fragile partition that oft 
 divides memory from imagination and truthfulness from 
 the inclination to boast of the prowess of Indian ancestry. 
 What the exact truth is must be left for the most part to 
 uncertainty and speculation. But a portion of that history, 
 as applied to the North Shore, is told as simply and plainly 
 by the stone implements and weapons as though written 
 in words on monument or obelisk. The entrance to this 
 
 [91
 
 field of research opens, of course, more easily and widely 
 to the man of science the archaeologist; but the merest 
 novice, if he be diligent, will there find a mine of historic 
 facts that are both interesting and reliable. 
 
 One of the greatest orators of modern times spoke 
 of "The man of imagination what does he see?" And so 
 the student, whether he has great learning or that next 
 best substitute industry, when he finds the chippings of 
 flint, chert or cobble stone left in the ancient workshops 
 of the North Shore, or when he sees the many finished wares 
 that have been worn and used and lost by the ancient 
 customers of the ancient artisans and then found again, 
 can reproduce a reasonably accurate picture of the Red 
 Man, who sat generations ago on the West Shore of Lake 
 Michigan and with untold labor and deftness prepared the 
 arrows and spear heads, which his red brother in due time 
 hurled at deer or buffalo or dusky foe. And this student 
 can in fair and truthful speculation follow these red brothers 
 in all they saw and did, through the forest and across the 
 broad prairies, in the hunt and in the chase, to the wigwam 
 and to the camp fire, on the war-path and in their idle 
 roamings from place to place. 
 
 I sometimes think that if these countless objects of 
 flint and stone and copper, scattered in thousands of 
 museums, American homes and collections, could each 
 speak and tell its tale, of all the scenes in peace and war, 
 in village and camp, in field and forest, in the mountain 
 and on the distant plain where the speaker played a part; 
 not only would we know all the history and all the ancient 
 manners and customs of the disappearing race, but the 
 romance of the primeval Red Man would have still a new 
 tinge and there would be themes without end for all the 
 writers of history and poetry and fiction for all time to 
 come. 
 
 To treat this subject, confined even to the North 
 Shore, in detail, would require extended reference not 
 possible within the limits of this outline. The shops or 
 
 [101
 
 chipping stations on the lake shore at Evanston and 
 Rogers Park where arrows were manufactured; the broken 
 pottery and litter locating camps and villages; the chip- 
 pings of chert or lake flint found scattered for miles in 
 extent, either on sand ridges formerly the banks of the lake 
 or where the prehistoric population was most abundant; 
 the implements, some of them of copper, at times found 
 deep in gravel beds at the famous and probably very 
 ancient villages at Bowmanville, west of Rose Hill and 
 along the North Branch of the Chicago River to the north 
 of that site; the almost inexhaustible quantities of such 
 implements and weapons of all kinds found throughout 
 the North shore District during the past fifty years, indi- 
 cating both very ancient prehistoric and prolonged Indian 
 occupation; great hunting grounds and endless visits and 
 barter with distant tribes; not to forget the sites located 
 near Zion City by Dr. Wm. A. Phillips of Evanston, where 
 hatchets and hammers were manufactured of trap-rock 
 or cobble stones and reported by him years ago in an able 
 paper for the Smithsonian Institute; are all, like many 
 others that could be named, of interest and worthy of 
 extended study. 
 
 These land marks these bits of clay and flint and 
 cobble stone, to which has been made but very scant 
 reference, tell a perfect and yet an imperfect story; perfect, 
 because we know from them that in some far off day the 
 North Shore was, as it is now, a favorite abiding place; 
 perfect, too, because the man of science can tell us in some 
 measure how these people lived and what they did. Im- 
 perfect, because we must rely to some extent upon theory 
 and speculation and cannot open wide the door with 
 what is understood by the term written history. 
 
 Mil
 
 THE HISTORIC VISITORS TO THE NORTH SHORE 
 DURING THE EXPLORATION PERIOD 
 
 those men of iron and enterprise who both made and 
 wrote the history of New France, the Illinois Country 
 and the North Shore during the hundred and fifty years 
 intervening between the first voyage of Marquette and 
 Joliet in 1673, and the final decadence of the fur trade, 
 will ever command respect and admiration. 
 
 Mackinac and Chicago or the Chicago Portage were, so to 
 speak, the outer and the inner doorways to the Mississippi 
 Valley and to the heart of a vast continent described upon 
 the maps as "Unknown Interior." In the latter part of 
 the seventeenth century and for a full hundred succeeding 
 years, the Explorer, the Missionary and the Trader reached 
 Georgian Bay or Detroit before he saw Mackinac, and 
 camped at Evanston before he saw Chicago. 
 
 And so in endless procession through all the years came 
 these men along the ancient water-highways, by Lake 
 and by River, used by the Indians for unnumbered cen- 
 turies the lines of least resistance, the Indian thorough- 
 fares the shortest and quickest routes. With such 
 frequency and for such length of time did they come and 
 go with their Indian companions and in their birch-bark 
 canoes between Chicago and Mackinac, that this route 
 became one of the Great Historic Highways of America. 
 The usual route was along the North Shore in the Lake, 
 but there is the best of evidence to show that at times, 
 especially when there were storms upon the lake, the North 
 Branch of the Chicago River and the inland Skokie Lake 
 were utilized as a part of this highway. 
 
 Ever farther and farther in the hiding places of this 
 Western wilderness was the goal of the ambitions of the 
 travelers along this highway; first to find the supposed 
 near-by water route to the Pacific Ocean and to China; 
 again to trace and map the course of the Father of Waters 
 and his mighty tributaries; and ever and ever to explore 
 unknown lands; there to plant the flag of the French 
 
 112]
 
 King, not only extending his empire and dominions, but 
 further to extend and multiply the rapidly increasing and 
 profitable fur trade with the Indians, which afforded 
 practically the only revenue of New France. These 
 activities for adventure, for gain and for the glory of the 
 mother country, enlisted the untiring effort of almost the 
 entire French colonies in America; not only the leaders 
 the Explorer, the Adventurer, the Fur Trader, and 
 the Soldier but the rank and file, who paddled the canoes 
 and who bore the heavy burdens on stream and lake and 
 river, over unknown paths across a continent in the New 
 World. Buoyant and gay the French Canadian and 
 coureur de bois made the wilderness ring with laughter and 
 his boat song as he bent himself to his task, in happy oblivion 
 of all the labor and cares along the unnumbered leagues 
 left behind; ever pressing on with hopeful anticipation of 
 what lay before, always with the fascination of the forest 
 and the wilds driving him onward to the new land to 
 the land of promise and of expectation. 
 
 Hand in hand with these representatives of Commerce 
 and the State, through all the years, went the Jesuit and 
 other missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, not 
 only to shape the character and the destinies of the new 
 colonies, but on the thankless and impossible errand and 
 task of turning the savage North American Indians from 
 the tom-tom to the priest and to the Cross of Christ. 
 For half a century, Laval, the first bishop of New France, 
 exerted a powerful influence not only in the affairs of state, 
 but in this work of the church in the far away Mississippi 
 Valley and in this Illinois Country encouraging and 
 sending missionaries wherever a trader was found or a 
 canoe could go. 
 
 The annals of this Illinois Country, like most of New 
 France, cannot be written without paying some measure 
 of respect to the Jesuit Fathers of that era who have given 
 us much of its history in the Jesuit Relations; their loyalty, 
 fidelity and self-sacrificing zeal are an inspiration in every 
 
 1131
 
 domain of human endeavor. Whether in sympathy or 
 otherwise with their religion and their cause, in fairness, 
 all will say, with the great historian of those times 
 "Their virtues shine amidst the rubbish of error like 
 diamonds and gold in the gravel of the torrent." 
 
 The detailed history of any one of the voyages along 
 this ancient highway of the North Shore tells a story well 
 worth the reading. To tell of its travelers whose names 
 will live forever in the history of the nation and which 
 are stamped indelibly upon the maps of all our states, 
 would be to write the history of the Mississippi Valley in 
 those eventful years and to consider in detail what can 
 here only be mentioned in outline. 
 
 Here came, as we all know, the first white visitors to 
 the North Shore of which there is definite account 
 Marquette and Joliet, returning Northward after their 
 exploration of the Mississippi and the Illinois, guided to 
 the Chicago Portage by the kindly Illinois Indians. It is 
 interesting to read in Marquette's Journal of his Second 
 Voyage, how the following year in 1674, he spent several 
 days in November, camped amid snow and ice, on the 
 lake shore at Waukegan ; of the visits there exchanged 
 between his camp and neighboring Indian Villages; of 
 Father Marquette's description, derived from his Indian 
 friends, of the prairies, little inland lakes and waterways; 
 of the buffalo, deer, wild turkeys and geese killed by his 
 party and the Indians both at Waukegan and Lake Forest; 
 and of his camp at Evanston with his French and Indian 
 companions some ten days later; and on December 3rd 
 near the present site of the Evanston light-house, where 
 the storm and floating ice in the lake compelled a landing. 
 The picture of those camp fires surrounded by this good 
 Father and his Indian friends, the Pottawatomies and the 
 Illinois, with the ten birch-bark canoes drawn up on the 
 banks, away from the storm and the chill of those long 
 winter evenings, is not dimmed by the lapse of time, for 
 it was but the historical yesterday. 
 
 [14]
 
 Volumes have been written and could be repeated 
 almost without number of the daring exploits and voyages 
 here of the great explorer, LaSalle, and of the many and 
 noted associates and successors of Marquette men of 
 the Church Allouez, Hennepin, Pinet, Gravier, Binne- 
 teau, Saint Cosme, Davion, Montigny, and so on through 
 the long list of those men, many of noble birth and great 
 learning, who chose, as willing votaries of their cause, to 
 lead a life of hardship and to perish in the American wilder- 
 ness, far from home and friends and family, rather than to 
 live a life of ease in the civilization across the sea. 
 
 Again volumes could be written of other explorers, 
 traders and soldiers, soldiers both of fortune and of their 
 king, not to forget the hero of them all, La Salle's faithful 
 lieutenant and loyal friend, Henri de Tonty, "the man with 
 the iron hand," who by lake and river and land, and on one 
 occasion on foot, has probably a hundred times and more 
 seen the whole of our North Shore, coming and going with 
 tireless energy between Mackinac and Chicago for twenty 
 years. He held, as we all know, the Illinois Country and 
 most of the Mississippi Valley during those important 
 decades in American history, by force of French arms, 
 Indian friends and allies, and by the strength of his remark- 
 able character and individuality, with his home and fortress 
 at Old Fort Saint Louis,, then standing on Starved Rock, 
 all for the glory of the cause and the empire of The Grand 
 Monarch, Louis the XIV. 
 
 In hasty reference and outline only, of course, for 
 the romantic account of the men who came, and went, 
 and tarried here, and whose camp fires have gleamed at 
 night on every bank of this North Shore, for that hundred 
 and fifty years, tells the story of an empire in the making 
 and gives study and entertainment to those who enjoy 
 such research for the lifetime of any diligent student 
 whether he dies young or old. 
 
 M51
 
 with one exception the oldest Catholic Mission in Illinois, 
 was founded in the year 1696 by Father Pierre Francois 
 Pinet, a Jesuit Missionary, the same man who four years 
 later in the year 1700 founded the first permanent white 
 settlements in Illinois at Cahokia and Kaskakia. This 
 Mission of the Guardian Angel through the hostility of 
 Frontenac was abandoned in the year 1697, but on account 
 of the influence of Laval again resumed in 1698 and con- 
 tinued until 1 699, or early in the year 1 700, when finally 
 it was abandoned. 
 
 Historical writers have never been able to agree upon 
 the exact location of this mission. Writings regarding 
 the work of the mission are in sufficient abundance, but 
 there is no statement of exact location. Pinet, a man of 
 deeds and not of words, has left no record. 
 
 But in the year 1698 Jean Francois Saint Cosme, a 
 Catholic priest, and two companions of the Church, in 
 company with Vincennes and with Tonty, who acted as 
 guide, was one of the voyagers along the North Shore on 
 his way to the Mississippi. The party was caught in a 
 storm and obliged to land the canoes somewhere in the 
 neighborhood of the present village of Wilmette, where, 
 leaving the canoes and the baggage, the company went 
 by land to this Mission House, and they were there cor- 
 dially received and entertained for several days by Father 
 Pinet and his co-worker, Father Binneteau. 
 
 From Saint Cosme's report of this voyage and visit to 
 the Mission House, considered in connection with the 
 topography of the North Shore at that time, there are 
 the best of reasons for believing that this mission was 
 located at the site of a former Indian village in the vicinity 
 of Indian Hill Golf Grounds and on the bank of the then 
 Skokie Lake, or on the bank of the North Branch of the 
 Chicago River near the Skokie for which this river was 
 
 1161
 
 the outlet. While the monograph of the writer respecting 
 Father Pinet and this mission and especially regarding 
 its location, read before a joint meeting of the Evanston 
 and Chicago Historical Societies in 1907, has in the 
 succeeding years run the gauntlet of both compliment 
 and criticism by recent historical writers, no one seems 
 so far to have been able to present a more probable loca- 
 tion, nor to supply proof either from Saint Cosme's report 
 or otherwise that indicates with any certainty that this 
 North Shore location is not the right one. And so, until 
 the contrary be shown, the ancient Mission of the Guardian 
 Angel belongs to the history of the North Shore, as do its 
 many distinguished visitors and its no less distinguished 
 priests who labored there with all self-sacrificing effort 
 at the Indian villages of the Miamis. 
 
 THE INDIAN CAMPS AND VILLAGES AND THE 
 INDIAN TRAILS OF THE NORTH SHORE 
 
 present still another subject worthy of extended considera- 
 tion, impossible within the limits of this discussion. It 
 is made certain from credible statements of pioneers, as 
 well as from the early writers, that at every place on the 
 North Shore, almost without exception, where there is 
 now a White Man's city or village, there was located 
 during periods of short or long duration the camp or 
 permanent village of his Indian Predecessor. For illus- 
 tration, we know from such writings as those compiled in 
 Hurlbut's Chicago Antiquities and from Haines* First 
 History of Lake County written in 1852, that Half Day 
 was a Pottawatomie chief, that he was an orator of 
 reputation, that at an important Indian Council held 
 in Chicago in the year 1832, he, with Chief Alexander 
 Robinson and others, persuaded the Indians in this locality 
 to remain friendly to the whites and not to join in Black 
 Hawk's war. From like written authority we know that 
 Half Day's Village was on Indian Creek, at or near its 
 confluence with the Des Plaines River, east of and near 
 
 (171
 
 the present hamlet bearing Half Day's name, and that 
 Metawa was another chief heading a band of the same 
 village. 
 
 More interesting perhaps, are the sites of camps and 
 villages of which there is no definite written history, for 
 the reason that the very method of fixing their locations 
 is as interesting as the study of the habits, customs and 
 history of a prehistoric people from their weapons and 
 implements and from the ruins of their homes and temples. 
 
 For illustration again: It is made certain that many 
 of the camps along the lake shore were used by Indian 
 fishermen. Here have been found, near the charcoal and 
 stones cracked by the heat of ancient fire places, the per- 
 forated stone net weights or sinkers used to anchor fish 
 nets in the lake. 1 1 is said on good authority that at least 
 10,000 specimens of implements, weapons and pottery 
 have been gathered from the sites of the Indian villages 
 at Bowman ville and other places to the north, on the 
 North Branch of the Chicago River, some of them indicat- 
 ing very early French occupation. The white man's 
 modern home and gardens on the bluffs of the lake present 
 no novelty in location, as the lodge circles left in the 
 ground, preserved by vegetation, show the location of 
 ancient wigwams, and the sod covered rows of long deserted 
 corn fields show clearly that some Indian, possibly cen- 
 turies ago, had the same desire for the lake forest and 
 the lake view as this presumptuous modern Anglo-Saxon 
 resident of the North Shore. We know from glass beads 
 that there were Indian traders at the village, and from 
 silver crosses and similar ornaments found with the dead 
 in Indian cemeteries that catholic missionaries labored 
 here. Copper implements and those of obsidian show 
 that these camps and villages had visitors from the far 
 away Yellowstone where obsidian is found, at the obsidian 
 cliff, in the present Yellowstone National Park, and also 
 visitors from Northern Michigan where were the ancient 
 copper mines. So much for the sites and camps and 
 
 M81
 
 villages, almost countless in number, some to be preserved 
 by maps and writings, many to be lost and forgotten for 
 lack of attention in this busy age of utility. 
 
 From camp to camp and from village to village ran 
 the Indian Trails now, with few exceptions, lost, forgotten 
 and obliterated. The exceptions, however, are worthy 
 of attention. The present resident of the North Shore 
 rides to and fro and to the site of Old Fort Dearborn in 
 Chicago in his automobile along Sheridan Road. For half 
 a century and more substantially the same highway was 
 travelled by the stage coach and the pioneer when it was 
 the Green Bay Road; and for a century and more before 
 that, it was the Green Bay Indian Trail, the principal 
 Indian thoroughfare by land, leading from the North to 
 the Chicago Portage and to Fort Dearborn, in constant 
 use, as was the parallel thoroughfare to the West, terminat- 
 ing in what is now Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, long known 
 as the Little Fort Trail. The North Shore respecting 
 several of its long established highways is similar to many 
 other localities. First the Indian Trail, used in turn by 
 the Explorer and the Pioneer, at last to become the inter- 
 urban paved street for the twentieth century multitude. 
 
 INDIAN TREATIES, INDIAN BOUNDARY LINES, 
 
 AND OUILMETTE INDIAN RESERVATION, 
 
 WITHIN THE PRESENT CORPORATE 
 
 LIMITS OF WILMETTE AND EVANSTON 
 
 are still further chapters in the history of the first residents 
 of the North Shore. The treaty making Indian Councils 
 at Old Fort Dearborn; the noted Indian orators there 
 assembled; the speeches preserved as the best types of 
 Indian eloquence by such reporters and historians as 
 Henry R. Schoolcraft; the vivid descriptions of both pictur- 
 esque and pathetic scenes on such occasions when the 
 Indian parted with his birth-right; the further descriptions 
 of all the pomp and glory of the tribes as they came along 
 
 (19)
 
 the North Shore Trails in single file, mounted on their 
 Indian ponies, accompanied by squaws and Indian children, 
 all arrayed in their best apparel, bedecked with beads and 
 feathers, and armed with guns and bows and arrows, all 
 on their way to the Council, there to meet the Government 
 agents and soldiers and to listen to the speeches of their 
 greatest orators; the picture of the vast Indian encamp- 
 ments around the Fort in the little frontier Village of 
 Chicago, never again to be seen in America, are all authen- 
 tic historical preliminaries to the Treaties which not only 
 established the Indian Boundary Lines, but which turned 
 the primeval prairies into farms and started the primeval 
 owners, the victims of circumstance to which they had 
 made no contribution, on their long journey of many suc- 
 cessive stages, from which there was to be no return, across 
 the Great River and toward the setting sun. 
 
 On July 29th, 1829, there were such scenes in Wisconsin 
 at Prairie du Chien attending the execution of an important 
 Indian treaty. One of the interested spectators and 
 participants was Antoine Ouilmette, a Frenchman, former 
 employee of John Kinzie and of the American Fur Com- 
 pany, a man who came to Chicago in 1 790 and who became 
 the first permanent white resident of the North Shore at 
 Evanston in 1826, a man of influence with the Indians and 
 skilled in all the intrigue of government agents incident 
 to an Indian Treaty. When this treaty was signed on 
 that day, its 4th article gave to Archange Ouilmette, the 
 Pottawatomie squaw of this Frenchman, and to her 
 children, two sections of land constituting most of the 
 present Village of Wilmette and part of Evanston. Thus 
 was the Ouilmette Indian Reservation established on the 
 North Shore. To relate its history in detail and the history 
 of the Ouilmette family and their Indian friends would be 
 to give much of the history of Chicago for the forty years 
 succeeding 1 790, and of Evanston, Wilmette and the North 
 Shore for the forty years succeeding 1826. The comings 
 and goings and doings of this Frenchman and his family 
 
 [201
 
 lack nothing in the way of frontier adventure from the 
 time of his first North Shore voyage on his way to Chicago 
 in 1790; through the stirring times of the war of 1812 and 
 the massacre of the garrison of old Fort Dearborn; the 
 Black Hawk War and all the historic scenes surrounding 
 the negotiation and signing of many Indian Treaties, in- 
 cluding the final treaty at Chicago of 1833, which finally 
 removed the Indians from Illinois in 1835, in all of which 
 historic scenes and dramas Ouilmette and his family played 
 a part. 
 
 The story of the Indian Days and the history of the 
 times here under consideration would be sadly disappoint- 
 ing and deficient without at least some reference to the 
 
 INDIAN TRIBES 
 
 who first and last have either occupied or who have been 
 the landed proprietors of the North Shore. While the 
 charm and romance of Indian history and of Indian tales 
 and legends seems never to wane, still the detailed account 
 of each of these tribes is the story of the rise and fall of a 
 savage nation, in most instances through centuries of 
 time; hence they can only here receive brief and hasty 
 consideration, leaving details to the many books and 
 writings that have described them in every aspect of their 
 glory, their misfortune and their decline. 
 
 First, of course, in point of interest come the Illinois 
 consisting of the several tribes, five in number, from whom 
 the Great Lake and our great State was first named. The 
 people who in 1673, gathered with friendly greeting, by 
 thousands, at their great Indian metropolis at the present 
 site of Utica, on the Illinois River, said to be the greatest 
 Indian town ever built by northern natives, there to see 
 the first white men, and there to listen to Marquette 
 who, accompanied by Joliet, addressed the assembled 
 multitude. We hear of the Illinois again in a life and death 
 struggle with the Iroquois seven years later, in the same 
 
 (211
 
 locality, in the year 1 680, when Tonty there saved the day 
 for the remnant of the tribes which the Iroquois had not 
 destroyed. For the next twenty years we know that they 
 were true to the French and to Tonty as his faithful allies 
 at Fort Saint Louis. We hear of them for half a century 
 and more at the Catholic Missions of Kaskaskia and 
 Cahokia, and at last in the year 1 770 in the greatest Indian 
 tragedy of American history when by siege and starvation, 
 surrounded by their enemies the Ottawas and Potta- 
 watomies, the remnant of this once [proud and powerful 
 nation, not only paid the last penalty that human flesh 
 can pay, but gave to the site of old Fort Saint Louis the 
 historic name it has borne for over a century, designating 
 and perpetuating the cause of their extermination in the 
 name, "Starved Rock." And there, now, on the banks of 
 the River Illinois, in the new State Park, stands that 
 Great Rock, 100 feet high, which every school boy for the 
 past fifty years has seen in his geography, an appropriate 
 and lasting monument, first, to the French occupation of 
 Illinois, the North Shore and the Mississippi Valley, then 
 to two masters of the wilderness, to Tonty and to La Salle 
 and last of all to the extinct Tribes of the Illinois. 
 
 In considering the people of all these tribes, it should 
 be borne in mind that for two hundred years preceding 
 the advent of the white man to this locality and for how 
 much longer we do not know, more than half of the North 
 American Continent extending as far south as the Ohio 
 River and as far north as Hudson Bay and east to west 
 almost from ocean to ocean, was the country of the tribes 
 speaking the Algonquian language in its various dialects. 
 
 Like a great Island in the midst of the Algonquins lay 
 the country of the Iroquois or Five Nations of New York, 
 of a far different race and language, the Indians of "The 
 Long House." The Five Nations were a powerful confed- 
 eracy. For centuries of time, with slight cessation, they 
 lived in a state of open war and defiance of the French and 
 all the other Indian tribes. With but 2500 warriors, but 
 
 [22]
 
 equipped with better weapons and having superior ex- 
 perience in warfare, they practically destroyed more than 
 thirty nations, and in eighty years are said to have killed 
 600,000 people. The Algonquins, times without number, 
 fled at the first peal of the Iroquois' war cry and all Canada 
 shook with the fury of their onset. 
 
 Their thirst for conquest led them westward from their 
 far away eastern homes; their war parties penetrated the 
 intervening wilderness of forest and plain, navigated the 
 western rivers and great lakes and destroyed or drove 
 their enemies in terror before them. Distance, hardships, 
 winter, and time expended in travel presented no obstacles 
 to them. They were away from home, at times, more 
 than a year on the war path and extended their depredations 
 not only into Canada and the entire region of the Great 
 Lakes, but as far west as the Black Hills. 
 
 They must be mentioned in our North Shore history 
 for they scattered and all but destroyed the Illinois tribes, 
 and time and again pursued and chased their enemies, 
 including the Hurons or Wyandots in the year 1660, along 
 the North Shore and at other times across the prairies 
 of the Illinois Country. 
 
 Here also have come and gone many other known 
 tribes. Among them in their long wanderings from home, 
 the great and savage Sioux from his far away Western 
 prairies, the marauding Sacs and Foxes, the Winnebagoes, 
 former brothers of the Sioux. The warlike Kickapoos, 
 perhaps their supposed allies, the Mascoutens, the ancient 
 Hurons or Wyandots just mentioned later to suffer all 
 but annihilation at the hands of the blood-thirsty Iroquois, 
 the short, thick-set Ottawas, and the Shawnees from their 
 former sunny Southland. 
 
 Here also came, especially to treaty-making-Councils, 
 there to share in the goods and whiskey furnished by the 
 glib-tongued Government Agents in exchange for wide 
 domains of land, the Ojibways or Chippewas from Michigan 
 and Lake Superior, where they have lived longer than all 
 
 (23)
 
 the traditions of all their people and from remote pre- 
 historic times. 
 
 Intimately connected with the history of the North 
 Shore are the Miamis, among whom and at their Village 
 was founded the Guardian Angel Mission. There is 
 abundant evidence to indicate that in all probability this 
 tribe occupied much of the North Shore for an extended 
 period of time. Prior to the exploration period they were 
 probably one of the Illinois tribes. They migrated from 
 Illinois, west of the Mississippi and then again returned 
 to occupy much of Northern Illinois, and later to become 
 a power in the States of Ohio and Indiana. 
 
 They thought more of war and hunting the buffalo than 
 they did of the Catholic creed and religion, as appears 
 quite clearly from the Jesuit Relations, showing that even 
 the kind and zealous Fathers Pinet and Binneteau gave 
 up this North Shore Mission and went to religious pastures 
 new among other tribes to the South and West, and as 
 appears also by what Hiram W. Beckwith and William 
 Henry Harrison say of the Miamis in the following words: 
 
 "With the implements of civilized warfare in their 
 hands, they maintained their tribal integrity and inde- 
 pendence and they traded with and fought against the 
 French, British and Americans by turns, as their interests 
 or passions inclined: and made peace or declared war 
 against other nations of their own race as policy or caprice 
 moved them. More than once they compelled the arrogant 
 Iroquois to beg from the governors of the American colonies 
 that protection which they themselves had failed to secure 
 by their own prowess. Bold, independent, flushed with 
 success, the Miamis afforded a poor field for missionary 
 work. * * * Saving the ten years preceding the Treaty 
 of Greenville in 1 795, the Miamis alone could have brought 
 more than three thousand warriors in the field, and they 
 composed a body of the finest light troops in the world." 
 
 And now in concluding these brief and incomplete 
 references to the Indian Tribes of the North Shore, men- 
 
 (241
 
 tion at least must be made of the Pottawatomies, a people, 
 as Schoolcraft describes them, "tall of stature, fierce and 
 haughty" the prairie bands, "the canoe men," who for 
 the greater part of two hundred years were the landed 
 proprietors of this North Shore, from whom the white 
 man at last took his title. 
 
 The writers tell us that they came here from Green Bay 
 at an uncertain date, but prior to the siege of Starved Rock 
 in 1770, when they finally destroyed the Illinois and took 
 possession of their country, from that time until the final 
 Treaty of Chicago in 1833, they were of commanding 
 importance here and allied with the Pottawatomies of 
 the Woods of Michigan, and with the Ottawas and the 
 Ojibways of the North. They were not only actively con- 
 cerned in all the warlike transactions of their time, but 
 among their numbers were some of the most noted orators 
 of history. They participated in the battle of Tippecanoe 
 and stamped their names forever upon the History of 
 Chicago by the Fort Dearborn Massacre. 
 
 The final picture of the Pottawatomies as a tribe in 
 this locality, will be found in that graphic description by 
 the learned English Traveler, Charles Latrobe, friend and 
 traveling companion of Washington Irving. Latrobe was 
 an interesting spectator of much, if not all, that occurred at 
 the final treaty with the Indians at Chicago concluded Sep- 
 tember 26th, 1833; says Latrobe: * * * "When within 
 five miles of Chicago we came to the first Indian encampment, 
 five thousand Indians were said to be collected around this 
 little upstart village." * * * "The Pottawatomies were 
 encamped on all sides on the wide level prairie beyond the 
 scattered village, beneath the shelter of the low woods on the 
 side of the small river, or to the leeward of the sand hills near 
 the beach of the lake." * * * "I loved to stroll out 
 toward sunset across the river, and gaze upon the level 
 horizon, stretching to the northwest over the surface of 
 the prairie, dotted with innumerable objects far and near. 
 Not far from the river lay many groups of tents. Their 
 
 1251
 
 vicinity was always enlivened by various painted Indian 
 figures, dressed in the most gaudy attire." * * * 
 "Far and wide the grassy prairie teemed with figures; 
 warriors, mounted or on foot, squaws and horses. Here a 
 race between three or four Indian ponies; each carrying 
 a double rider, whooping and yelling like fiends. There a 
 solitary horseman with a long spear, turbaned like an 
 Arab, scouring along at full speed groups of hobbled 
 horses; Indian dogs and children, or a grave conclave 
 of gray chiefs sea ted on the grass in consultation." * * * 
 "After many days of delay, preparation and negotiation, 
 the council fire was at last lighted under a spacious open 
 shed on the green meadow, on the opposite side of the 
 river from that on which the fort stood." * * * "The 
 relative positions of the commissioners and the whites 
 before the council fire, and that of the red children of the 
 forest and prairie, were to me strikingly impressive. The 
 glorious light of the setting sun streaming in under the 
 low roof of the council house, fell full on the countenances 
 of the former as they faced the west while the pale light 
 of the east hardly lighted up the dark and painted linea- 
 ments of the poor Indians, whose souls evidently clave 
 to their birth-right in that quarter." 
 
 Turning from this fragmentary reference to Latrobe's 
 account, we can see the Pottawatomies once again in the 
 last great mimic war dance at this same little village, in the 
 presence of its early settlers two years later and in 1835, 
 preceding their removal to the West. 
 
 These last transactions are all within the memory of 
 many North Shore citizens who have lived in this genera- 
 tion. Less than a century has rolled by since these savage 
 children of the wilds took their farewell look at old Lake 
 Michigan and crossed for the last time, in their westward 
 journey, the plains and woods and streams of the land 
 of the Illinois. Their fathers entered here with strong and 
 bloody hands, peaceably, yet by still stronger hands, have 
 they gone the way of all their race. They have caused 
 
 126J
 
 the white man to hear and to speak of the last of the 
 Illinois, and soon, too soon, will the white man also hear 
 of the last of the Pottawatomies. 
 
 These people and these historic incidents to which has 
 been given such hasty and imperfect reference, represent 
 much of the history of our State and of the North Shore, 
 at a time that will command the attention of all those 
 who admire primeval scenes, or appreciate the historic 
 charm of Indian Days and the romance of the Period of 
 the Explorers of the days of the North Shore as it used 
 to be. The Wigwams of the Pottawatomies and the 
 Miamis are seen no more by the Skokie, nor their birch-bark 
 canoes on the water; the explorer, and the wearer of the 
 black robe, journey no more to unknown lands, nor in 
 fruitless search for the short passage to the Orient; the fur 
 trader lives only in memory or in the far away Northland; 
 the last note of the boat song of the French voyageur has 
 long since died away in the distance; the ceaseless change 
 of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries has brought 
 a swiftly moving panorama of new men and new events 
 creating a new civilization, but those of two centuries 
 and more ago and of the later period of the Pioneers will 
 live in interesting contemplation through the years that we 
 shall enjoy that richest of all empires, which these men 
 first saw in its primeval splendor. 
 
 271
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Jesuit Relations. 
 
 Schoolcraft's Writings. 
 
 Parkman's Works. 
 
 Hand Book of American Indians. 
 
 Hennepin's New Discovery. (Edited by Thwaites, McClurg Reprint, 
 
 1903.) 
 Histories of the Illinois and Indiana Indians, by Hiram W. Beckwith, 
 
 in Fergus Papers (1884). 
 The Last of the Illinois, and A Sketch of the Pottawatomies, by John 
 
 Dean Caton. (Fergus Papers, 1876.) 
 The Aborigines of the Ohio Valley, by William Henry Harrison. 
 
 (Fergus Papers, 1883.) 
 
 Elijah M. Haines' History of Lake County. (1852.) 
 Haines' American Indian. 
 Shea's Early Mississippi Voyages. 
 Halsey's History of Lake County. 
 Currey's History of Chicago. 
 Marian A. White's Books of the North Shore. 
 Moorehead's Stone Age in America. 
 Unpublished Writings and Collections of Karl Dilg and of Albert F. 
 
 Scharf in Chicago Historical Society Collections. 
 Maps of Albert F. Scharf, showing Indian Trails, Villages, Mounds, 
 
 Chipping Stations, etc. 
 Charles J. Latrobe's Travels. (Rambler in America, Harper Bros., 
 
 1835.) 
 
 Warren's History of the Ojibways (Vol. V., Minn. Hist. Colls.) 
 Kappler's Indian Treaties. 
 Hulbert's Historic Highways of America. 
 Hurlbut's Chicago Antiquities. 
 Thwaite's Marquette. 
 
 Wild Flowers of the North Shore, by Georgia Douglas Clarke. 
 Frank R. Grover's Papers and Monographs, viz.: Our Indian Pred- 
 ecessors (1901); Some Indian Land Marks of the North Shore 
 (1905); Father Pinet and The Mission of the Guardian Angel (1907); 
 Antoine Ouilmette (1908); Some New Chapters of Mackinac 
 History (1911); Indian Treaties Affecting Lands of Illinois (1915). 
 Manuscript copy of St. Cosme's letter of July 14th, 1698. (Evanston 
 
 and Chicago Historical Societies Colls.) 
 Blanchard's History of Chicago and the North West. 
 Wau-Bun The Early Day, Mrs. John H. Kinzie (1856). 
 Quaife's Chicago and the Old North West. 
 Parrish's Historic Illinois. 
 Mason's Chapters from Illinois History. 
 The Story of Tonty by Mary Catherwood. 
 Currey's Story of Old Fort Dearborn. 
 Reed's Tonty in Masters of the Wilderness. 
 Caleb Atwater's Tour in 1829 to Prairie du Chien (1850). 
 Thwaite's Early Western Travels. 
 Steven's Black Hawk War. 
 
 [28|
 
 F