then the extreme western outposts of the Americans along the lakes. A company of United States soldiers was stationd at the former place, under command of Capt. John Whistler, an officer of the Revolution, and to him was entrusted this service. Under his command were two young lieutenants-William Whistler, his oldest son, and James S. Swearington, from Chillicothe, Ohio. To the latter he gave orders to conduct the soldiers across the forests of Michigan to Chicago, while he and his wife, his son William and his wife-a young bride-took passage on the U. S. schooner Tracy for the same destination, there to set up the American standard at a spot venerable with the memories of one hundred and thirty years of transient French occupation, though now inhabited by only three rude huts of French fur-traders, each with their usual adjuncts-the Indian wife and the inevitable brood of half-breed sprites.

The schooner arrived on the Fourth of July and anchored outside the bar, for the mouth of the river was choked with a sand drift. Here she discharged her freight of ammunition, arms and provisions into small boats, in which they were rowed into the river and landed on the spot where the fort was to be built. Two thousand Indians were assembled, who, with many a grunt of surprise and approbation, beheld these preparations so fatal to their security.

The schooner was the especial object of their admiration. They called it the big canoe with wings. After the freight and passengers were landed, Capt. Tracy, the commander, gave orders to set sail for Detroit, and the ship soon vanished into the distant dip of the sky and left the new-comers among their swarthy associates, cut off from the outside world. Their first business was to build the block house-an easy task but for the hauling of the logs to the ground selected for its site. They had neither oxen or horses with which to do this, but the soldiers geared themselves with ropes, and performed the onerous toil.

The summer and autumn of 1803 were spent before the fort was finished, but comfortable quarters were secured for the garison before cold weather had commenced. The defenses consisted of two block houses, one on the southeast and the other on the northwest corner of the grounds enclosed. These were large enough for a parade ground, and were surrounded by a substantial palisade. A sallyport connected the enclosure with the river by means of a subterranean passage. Immediately north of the fort, the main branch of the Chicago river rolled its quiet waters to the lake, and on the west, half a mile of wet prairie intervened between the fort and the south branch of the Chicago river. On the east were the shifting sand-drifts through which the river found its way to the lake by a detour southwardly along the shore

half a mile south of its present outlet. Three pieces of light artillery and small arms constituted the armament. Attached to the fort was a two-story log building, sided with clap-boards, riven from logs like barrel staves. This was called the United States factory, which meant a place to store goods belonging to the government designed for gratuitous distribution among the Indians. It stood outside of the palisade to the west, and was under the charge of an agent who was sutler to the fort, and was subject to the orders of its commander. The garrison of the fort consisted of 1 captain, 1 second lieutenant, 1 ensign, 4 sergeants, 1 surgeon and 54 privates.*

Says Hon. Zebina Eastman, in his history of Chicago: "This fort then occupied one of the most beautiful sites on the lake shore. It was as high as any other point, everlooking the surface of the lake; commanding as well as any other view on this flat surface could; the prairie extending to the south to the belt of timber along the south branch and on the north side, and the white sand hills both to the north and south, which had for ages past been the sport of the lake winds."

This lonesome hermitage soon became a nucleus around which the restive spirits which forest life had brought into being, gathered, not to enrich themselves and live in luxurious ease, but to follow the bent of an ambition that led their way into an untroden path.

What matter if dangers lurked beside it? These were so many stimulants to variegate the path of life and give point to its smoother surface by contrast with its rougher. Daring and muscle then held a high place in frontier accomplishments. They were necessary in order to push the American "idea" far into the forest in advance, to pave the way for other graces which were some day to follow.

Demand begets supply in every essential want of humanity; and when pioneers are wanted to face danger, plenty are willing to enlist under an assurance that they will be fully renumerated on the spot by that immunity from restraint which the forest secures to its tenants, and by that dashing style of good fellowship which is ever present between themselves and their comrades. Whatever may be the rough exterior of such men, they are heroes in the estimation of even the most cultured leaders of society, and even the prude regards them with charity, and accepts even their eccentricies without censure. Chicago was unlike Boston, which was settled by Winthrop and the Puritans. She (Chicago) began under the naive elements of frontier life, and after many years graduated under the influence of the seed *American State Papers, Vol. I, p. 175, 176.

they (the Puritans) planted on the eastern fringe of the continent, somewhat modified however in its march across the intervening country).

Among the venturesome pioneers of Virginia, was a backwoodsman named McKenzie. He, with a number of his comrades settled at the mouth of Wolf's creek, where it empties into the Kanawha, in Giles county.

During Dunmore's war on the frontier, the Shawanese, then the great formidable power of the forest, in one of their border forays came suddenly upon the home of McKenzie, killed his wife, and led two of his children into captivity. The names of the young captives were Margaret, ten years old, and Elizabeth, eight years old. They were taken to old Chillicothe, the great Indian town of the Shawanese, where they were adopted into the family of a high-bred Indian chief, and raised under the tender care of his obedient squaw, according to custom. Ten years later, when the girls were in the full bloom of maidenly beauty, Margaret was allowed to accompany her foster father on a hunting excursion to the Saint Mary's river, in the present State of Indiana, near Ft. Wayne, under the especial care of a matronly squaw who was one of the party. Arriving at the place, a young chief of the same tribe became enamored by the graces and accomplishments of the young captive. But Margaret, who retained vivid memories of her youth, with all the tender associations that clustered around the hearthstone of civilization, recoiled from the savage attentions of her swarthy lover, and determined not to yield her heart to one who had no higher destiny for her than to ornament his leggins with porcupine quills, as one of the highest accomplishments of which a squaw was capable. Whatever else may be the gifts of an Indian, he knows not how to play the rejected lover with the manly graces by which the impassioned young civilian gently tones up the affections of his hesitating fair, and he (the Indian) attempts by force what he cannot win by grace. Margaret's audacious lover was no exception to this rule, and at midnight approached the camp, where she was sleeping, intending to force her to become his wife. According to the Indian custom a din of yells and the rattle of an Indian drum announced the intentions of the would-be bridegroom to the terrified victim.

Aroused to a full sense of danger, the heroine leaped from her couch and fled into the glooms of the forest for a protection that her friends could no longer give her. Fortunately her dog followed her as she fled down the bank of the St. Mary's river to the stockade, half a mile distant, where the horses were kept. Ere she reached the place, the footsteps of her detestable lover were heard close behind. She turned, set her dog upon him,