The story of the Great Lakes

Front matter

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•The

Preface

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

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

and noble deeds should be treasured, as should the achievements of the builders of cities and captains and soldiers of industry of our own day.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, November, 1908.

CHAPTER I. The Great Lakes

II. Champlain on the Great Lakes, 1615— 1616

III. The Jesuit Mission to the Hurons, 1626— 1650

IV. The Pageant of Saint Lusson, 1671

V. The Building of the Griffon, 1 678-1 679 .

VI. La Salle on the Great Lakes, 1679 .

VII. A Hapless French Governor, 168 2-1 684

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49 61

PART II The Struggle for Possession

VIII. The Founding of Detroit, 1701

IX. Niagara and the Loss of Canada, 1759

X. The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 1763—1764

XI. The Adventures of a Trader, 1761 — 1764

XII. Wayne's Indian Campaign, 1794 .

XIII. The Great Lakes in the War of i 8 1 2

XIV. The Conquest of Lake Erie, i 8 i 3 . XV. General Lewis Cass and Reorganization,

1832 .....

XVI. The Black Hawk War, 1832

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. 113

. 135

. 151

. 165

. 179

. 191

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Contents

PART III Occupation and Development CHAPTER

XVII. Gateways of the Great Lakes, 1600— 1900

XVIII. The Story of a Road, 1600- 1900

XIX. Before and after the Turnpike, 1 796-1 81 1

XX. The Erie Canal, 1825

XXI. The Great Lakes in i 840 .

XXII. The Coming of the Railroad to Lake Erie 1836-1853 ....

XXIII. Lincoln and Douglas in Chicago, 1858-186:

XXIV. The Great Lakes in the Civil War, 186^ XXV. Three Great Industries of the Lakes

XXVI. Shipping on the Lakes XXVII. The Development of the City .

A Brief List of Books .....

PAGE

228 242 251 266

283 299

374 385 393

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

Huron — Erie — Ontario

From Lake Michigan to the Mississippi

Gateways of the Lakes

By Trail and Turnpike to Lake Erie .

By Canal and Railroad to Lake Erie .

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202 223 232 284

ILLUSTRATIONS

La Salle .....

The *'Soo" Canal

Niagara Falls as sketched by Hennepin

La Barre and Grangula

A View of Niagara Fort .

Black Hawk .....

Through the Locks at Lockport

Chicago in 183 1 .

An Early Lake Superior Copper Mine

Iron Ore at a Lake Superior Port

The Old and the New, General Cass's Canoe

and a Modern Freight Steamer .

Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam

ix

. Frontispiece facing page 8

360 370

Part I Discovery And Exploration Chapter I

STANDING in Lake Park, Chicago, beside the statue of General Logan, the supporter of Douglas and, later, of Lincoln, one has behind him the most marvellous city of modern times, and before him the southwesternmost of the Great Lakes. In front, glitter the waters over which La Salle journeyed three centuries ago. As in those days, they respond to the play of wind and weather, now calm as a sheet of glass, and now swept by sudden gales into turbulent waves and breakers ; but the aspect of the land is such that were La Salle to visit it he would not recognize the spot. In place of a wilderness with an occasional group of low-lying Indian wigwams he would see a mighty city of buildings towering one hundred and fifty feet above the street and reaching down from twenty-five to fifty feet below ground. In place of a few canoes with their loads of furs and crews of savages, emerging from the

A The Story of the Great Lakes

narrow mouth of the Chicago River, seven thousand freighters and steamers with an aggregate tonnage greater than that floated in any other port in the world touch annually at the wharves along her splendid harbor front. These vessels and thousands of trains, running on tracks whose mileage is more than a third of that of the whole railway system of the United States, bring to her stockyards, her grain elevators, and her markets the herds and flocks of the western plains, the crops of the wheat-fields of the Northwest, and the merchandise of Europe and of Asia.

Chicago is the greatest distributing centre of this region, but the ports of Lake Erie handle many important industries whose traffic never enters Lake Michigan. The copper of the upper Michigan peninsula, the iron ore of the Wisconsin and Minnesota ranges, the coal of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and many a minor industry have had their share in building up the modern empire of the Great Lakes. The body of water about which this empire has risen is made up of five lakes: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, which together form the greatest inland waterway of the world. These lakes have an area of more than half that of the Black Sea or the

Caspian, while Lake Superior is the largest body of fresh water on the globe. The four upper lakes are so nearly level that one canal with a single lock has given them a navigable length of over fourteen hundred miles. Lake Ontario, however, is effectively separated from the others by Niagara Falls and its attendant rapids. Other great inland bodies of water are directly connected with the ocean by navigable straits. The Mediterranean Sea is entered from the Atlantic by the Strait of Gibraltar, the Black Sea is connected in its turn with the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus ; but Niagara closes direct navigation between the Great Lakes and the sea.

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

On the lonely shores past which La Salle and later explorers voyaged have been built villages, towns, and cities. This region is to-day the clearing-house of the commerce of the central plain of North America. From the western terminals of the lake routes railways pass over the plains and mountains of the Northwest to the Pacific ; from their eastern ports stretch lines to the seaboard cities of the Atlantic. The farms of the Northwest send yearly one hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, six hundred million bushels of oats, and a billion bushels of corn to Chicago and

Buffalo and thence to the eastern states and Europe. Coming from the west, the transcontinental roads pay tribute at Chicago and then choose between the route north of Lake Erie via Detroit, or south via Cleveland. They unite at Buffalo and follow the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson and then to New York or Boston; or they pass the Alleghanies farther south and reach the coast at Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Norfolk. In any case, by land or water, from the north or from the west, these products come to the Great Lakes, and are carried from their ports to the factories and markets of the East, or to steamers bound for Europe. This combination of land and water transportation makes the Great Lakes the keystone of American industry.

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

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

Chapter II

ON the 28th of July, 161 5, Samuel de Champlain paddled out of the mouth of the French River into the waters of Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron ; or, as he named it from its great expanse, the " Mer Douce," or " Freshwater Sea." With him was a young interpreter, Etienne Brule, who had been sent by Champlain when a mere lad to winter in the Huron country, and to learn from the Indians their languages and customs. As a member of this Huron party, in 16 10, he had been the first white man to look upon the waters of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes. Now Champlain himself had come, journeying from Montreal with a trading party of Indians. Some of the Indians had slipped away before the rest of the expedition was ready, taking with them a missionary. Father Joseph Le Caron had, therefore, made the journey a few

Champlain on the Great Lakes ii

days before his leader, but at last Champlain had reached the marvellous sea of Indian story, and was on the point of exploring the region of the Great Lakes.

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

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

BUEON- ERIE -ONTARIO

Zake Champlain

The Algonquins occupied the greater part of the country from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the Mississippi, and included the Illinois, Wisconsin, Chippewa, Ottawa, and other tribes of the lake region. In the centre of the Algonquin country, in a narrow district extending eastward from Georgian Bay toward Lake Ontario, lived the Huron nation, a strong and prosperous tribe. Between them and the Iroquois there was constant enmity, and for a time after the coming of the whites it was by no means certain which group of Indians would come out victorious. It was while this contest was at its height that Samuel de Champlain came to the St. Lawrence and in 1608 founded Quebec. It was to the Huron settlements he was journeying in the summer of 161 5.

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

In the summer of 161 5, yielding to the clamors of the Hurons gathered at Montreal for their yearly traffic with the French, Champlain agreed to accompany them on an inroad into the Iroquois country. He departed for Quebec to make needful preparations, but when he returned after a delay of a few days he found that the impatient Indians had set out for their villages, taking with them Father Joseph Le Caron, a Recollect friar who had come out with him from France that spring as a missionary to the Indians. Champlain embarked immediately with ten natives, Brule, and another Frenchman on the journey to the Huron villages. He approached Lake Huron by the hard northern route, travelling up the Ottawa River, along the portage path to Lake Nipissing, across which he sailed, and down the French River. Indian tribes along the way encouraged the voyagers, telling them that the Lake of the Hurons was at hand. At length they came out from between the banks of the river into the waters of the lake. For more than a hundred miles they coasted southward along its eastern shores, working their way in and out among countless islands, till they reached the lower end of Georgian Bay. There they landed and proceeded by a well-beaten trail into the heart of the Huron country.

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

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

The priest had feared that his leader would not follow the Hurons, or that if he did he would be captured by the Iroquois. When he looked up one morning and saw Champlain standing in the doorway of his dwelling his joy knew no bounds. He showed him the bark wigwam which the Indians, to prove the joy that they felt at his coming, were building for him. They had offered at first to lodge him in one of their common cabins, but Father Le Caron had remonstrated with them, representing that " to negotiate with God affairs so important, involving the salvation of their whole nation," he needed a place where he could be alone, far from the tumult of their families. So they had brought poles and bark and erected this lodge at the edge of the forest. Here he had raised an altar, and here on the I2th of August was celebrated the first mass ever held in the country of the Hurons. Curious Indians crowded about as the priest stood before his rude altar and led the devotions of the kneeling band of Frenchmen with Champlain at their head. For the first time the solemn chant of the " Te Deum Laudamus " rang out on the listening air, and a volley of muskets proclaimed the planting of a cross outside the priest's lodge. The symbol of Christianity had been raised in the country of the heathen ! Before they set out on the war-path the Huron chiefs insisted on a weary succession of feastings and dancings, rejoicing in their serene conviction of victory to come. Champlain spent the time going from village to village, gratifying his insatiable curiosity over everything which he saw.

At last the savage war-party was ready to set out. They crossed Lake Simcoe and paddled, making the necessary portages, down the chain of intervening lakes to the river Trent, which flowed into Lake Ontario. The country through which the long line of canoes passed was singularly beautiful. Champlain found it hard to believe that the groves of walnut trees, whose branches were twined with hanging grapevines, had not been set out by the hand of man to form a beautiful artistic picture. The party stopped once and encamped for a grand deer-hunt, and then proceeded on its way, well-stocked with provisions for the first days in the enemies' country. Out upon Lake Ontario the frail canoes ventured, and crossed it in safety, landing on the eastern side of the lake, thirty miles or so from Oswego. Now a change came over the warriors. Silently they hid their canoes in the woods, and with stealthy and rapid steps they filed in silence through the borders of this hostile country. For four days they marched inland through the forest, crossing the Oneida River at the western end of the lake, and on the 9th of October some of their scouts brought in a captured fishing party of eleven Iroquois, men, women, and children. A Huron chief took possession of the prisoners and began to torture them, cutting off a finger of one of the women. Champlain met this method of celebration with angry protest, declaring that it was not the act of a warrior to treat helpless women with cruelty. The chief agreed, since it was displeasing to Champlain, to do nothing more to the women, but added that he would do to the men what he pleased. It was a curious position in which Champlain had placed himself, aiding one group of savages against another, nor did he find it to his liking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter III

FROM 1 615, when Father Joseph Le Caron celebrated the first mass among the Hurons, for fourteen years a few intrepid priests braved the difficulties of savage life, and endeavored at various times to set up missions in the populous Huron villages south of Georgian Bay. They suffered almost incredible hardships, and in 1629 Jean Brebeuf was the only one who was left in the region. He was recalled to Quebec, but five years later, a year before Champlain's death, he set out with two Jesuit companions to found, in the villages where Champlain had wintered eighteen years before, the greatest Jesuit mission in the history of New France.

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