The development of Chicago, 1674-1914, shown in a series of contemporary original narratives

Front matter

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY

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Preface

I am minded to begin my prefatory note by telling a Chicago story; if I do not tell it well it will not matter provided the moral is clear. During the World's Fair of 1893 some French visitors were one day comparing the city they had come to see with their own great metropolis, to the manifest disadvantage of the former. "And how long," asked a Chicago woman, herself of French descent and familiar with the language, "have you been developing your city of Paris? Do you expect us to do in sixty years as much as you have done in a thousand? Only give us time and see what we will accomplish."

The moral of the story chiefly concerns the principal actor in it. She had come as a child to Chicago when it was an insignificant military outpost in the heart of the wilderness, with the Potawatomi still lords of all the adjacent region. As these lines are penned, she still resides in the community of her childhood adoption, grown from a wilderness outpost to America's second city, and fifth metropolis of the world. In memory she sees the lonely hamlet of 1830, clustered around the stcckade fort beside the sluggish river; pictures of dusky throngs gathered periodically to receive their treaty payments, of panic paleface rout before the tomahawk and scalping knife of Black Hawk's followers, pass before her mind; while around her flows and throbs unceasingly the rushing life of the city of two and a half millions, and to her ears comes a babel of tongues still stranger than the Potawatomi she learned to speak in childhood. I can think of no more marvelous development in all history than the one spanned by this single lifetime on the banks of Chicago River.

In view of the rapidity and the recency of her development it ^ is not to be expected as yet that Chicago shall give much heed to her past. Yet the fact remains that she has an interesting past, the records of which stretch back farther than most men realize; and a knowledge of and reverence for one's past constitutes a

PREFACE

potent cultural influence, whether in the life of an individual or of a community. The present volume attempts to visualize the development of Chicago and the tributary region from seventeenth-century savagery to twentieth-century civilization by grouping a considerable number of the more interesting accounts that have been written of it from the first recorded visit of white men down to the present day.

A few words may be offered concerning the conception of the project and its execution. In preparing the volume I have followed no conscious model, and so far as I am aware the plan of it is unique. The chief obstacle to its execution was the difficulty, in many cases insurmountable, of finding suitable material for certain periods which it was desired to illuminate. With but few exceptions the selections offered are travelers' narratives and journals. Gathered from many sources, they are necessarily of uneven interest and value. In transcribing the selections taken from published works the liberty has been exercised of disregarding, on occasion, the typographical style of the original volume, but in no case has the work of the author himself been altered. The editorial work has designedly been confined to the minimum; naturally the earlier selections call for more of annotation than do the later ones.

Although duly acknowledged in another place, I take pleasure in here calling attention to the generosity of the Burrows Brothers Company, the Century Company, T. Fisher Unwin, Charles Scribner's Sons, Harper and Brothers, and George H. Doran Company, publishers, in permitting me to reprint portions of books copyrighted by them. Acknowledgment of courtesies rendered is also due the Michigan Historical Commission and the Chicago Historical Society; and to Marjorie Park and Lydia Brauer of the Wisconsin Historical Library staff for much accurate and faithful labor in preparing the manuscript and index, and in seeing them through the press.

MlLO M. QUAtFE.

MADISON, WISCONSIN, March i, 1916.

Part I. The Seventeenth Century

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Historical Introduction — Part I 9

Father Marquette's Sojourn at Chicago, 1674-75 .... 15

Part II. A Military Outpost Historical Introduction — Part II 49

William Johnston's Tour from Fort Wayne to Chicago, 1809 55

A Government Factor's Journal: Chicago from 1816 to 1822 71

Judge Storrow's Tour of the Northwest, 1817 83

Mrs. Baird's Excursion to Chicago, 1817 95

Governor Cass's Tour of 1820 99

Major Long's Expedition of 1823 109

Part III. The Birth of Modern Chicago Historical Introduction — Part III 129

A Winter Visit, 1834 J6i

Harriet Martineau's Visit, 1836 177

CONTENTS