DECLINE OF THE ILLINOIS. 117 The Iroquois came no more subsequent to 1721, having war enough on their hands nearer home; but the Illinois were constantly harassed by other enemies; the Sacs, Foxes, Kickapoos and Pottawatomies. In 1722 their villages at the Rock and on Peoria Lake were besieged by the Foxes, and a detachment of a hundred men under Chevalier de Artaguette and Sieur de Tisné were sent to their assistance. Forty of these French soldiers, with four hundred Indians, marched by land to Peoria Lake. However, before the reinforcements reached their destination they learned that the Foxes had retreated with a loss of more than a hundred and twenty of their men. "This success did not, however, prevent the Illinois, although they had only lost twenty men, with some women and children, from leaving the Rock and Pimiteony, where they were kept in constant alarm, and proceeding to unite with those of their brethren who had settled on the Mississippi; this was a stroke of grace for most of them, the small number of missionaries preventing their supplying so many towns scattered far apart; but on the other side, as there was nothing to check the raids of the Foxes along the Illinois River, communication between Louisiana and New France became much less practicable."* The fatal dissolution of the Illinois still proceeded, and their ancient homes and hunting grounds were appropriated by the more vigorous Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos. The killing of Pontiac at Cahokia, whither he had retired after the failure of his effort to rescue the country from the English, was laid upon the Illinois, a charge which, whether true or false, hastened the climax of their destruction. General Harrison stated that "the Illinois confederacy was composed of five tribes: the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorians, Michiganians and the Temarois, speaking the Miami language, and no doubt branches of that nation. When I was first appointed Governor of the Indiana Territory (May, 1800), these once powerful tribes were reduced to about thirty warriors, of whom twenty-five were Kaskaskias, four Peorians, and a single Michiganian. There was an individual lately alive at St. Louis who saw the enumeration made of them by the Jesuits in 1745, making the number of their warriors four thousand. A furious war between them and the Sacs and Kickapoos reduced them to that miserable remnant which had taken refuge amongst the white people in the towns of Kaskaskia and St. Genieve."+ * History of New France, vol. 6, p. 71. + Official letter of Gen. Harrison to Hon. John Armstrong, Secretary of War, dated at Cincinnati, March 22, 1814: contained in Captain M'Afee's "History of the Late War in the Western Country." By successive treaties their lands in Illinois were ceded to the United States, and they were removed west of the Missouri. In 1872 they had dwindled to forty souls-men, women and children all told. Thus have wasted away the original occupants of the larger part of Illinois and portions of Iowa and Missouri. In 1684 their single village at La Salle's colony, could muster twelve hundred warriors. In the days of their strength they nearly exterminated the Winnebagoes, and their war parties penetrated the towns of the Iroquois in the valleys of the Mohawk and Genesee. They took the Metchigamis under their protection, giving them security against enemies with whom the latter could not contend. This people who had dominated over the surrounding tribes, claiming for themselves the name Illini or Linneway, to represent their superior manhood, have disappeared from the earth; another race, representing a higher civilization, occupy their ancient domains, and already, even the origin of their name and the location of their cities have become the subjects of speculation. CHAPTER XIV. THE MIAMIS-THE MIAMI, PIANKESHAW, AND WEA BANDS. THE people known to us as the Miamis formerly dwelt beyond the Mississippi, and, according to their own traditions, came originally from the Pacific. "If what I have heard asserted in several places be true, the Illinois and Miamis came from the banks of a very distant sea to the westward. It would seem that their first stand, after they made their first descent into this country, was at Moingona.* At least it is certain that one of their tribes bears that name. The rest are known under the name of Peorias, Tamaroas, Caoquias and Kaskaskias." The migration of the Miamis from the west of the Mississippi, eastward through Wisconsin and northern Illinois, around the southern end of Lake Michigan to Detroit, and thence up the Maumee and down the Wabash, and eastward through Indiana into Ohio as far as the Great Miami, can be followed through the mass of records handed down to us from the missionaries, travelers and officers connected with the French. Speaking of the mixed village of Maskoutens, situated on Fox River, Wisconsin, at the time of his visit there in 1670, Father Claude Dabion says the village of the Fire-nation "is joined in the circle of the same barriers to another people, named Oumiami, which is one of the Illinois nations, which is, as it were, dismembered from the others, in order to dwell in these quarters. It is beyond this great river that are placed the Illinois of whom we speak, and from whom are detached those who dwell here with the Fire-nation to form here a transplanted colony." From the quotations made there remains little doubt that the Miamis were originally a branch of the great Illinois nation. This theory is confirmed by writers of our own time, among whom we may mention General William H. Harrison, whose long acquaintance and official connection with the several bands of the Miamis and Illinois gave him *Charlevoix Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 227. Moingona, from undoubted authorities, was a name given to the Des Moines River; and we find on the original map, drawn by Marquette, the village of the Moingona placed on the Des Moines above a village of the Peorias on the same stream. + Father Dablon is here describing the same village referred to by Father Marquette in that part of his Journal which we have copied on page 44. The Mississippi, of which the missionary had been speaking in the paragraph preceding that which we quote. the opportunities, of which he availed himself, to acquire an intimate knowledge concerning them. "Although the language, manners and customs of the Kaskaskias make it sufficiently certain that they derived their origin from the same source with the Miamis, the connection had been dissolved before the French had penetrated from Canada to the Mississippi."* The assertion of General Harrison that the tribal relation between the Illinois and Miamis had been broken at the time of the discovery of the Upper Mississippi valley by the French is sustained with great unanimity by all other authorities. In the long and disastrous wars waged upon the Illinois by the Iroquois, Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and other enemies, we have no instance given where the Miamis ever offered assistance to their ancient kinsmen. After the separation, on the contrary, they often lifted the bloody hatchet against them. Father Dablon, in the narrative from which we have quoted,† gives a detailed account of the civility of the Miamis at Mascouten, and the formality and court routine with which their great chief was surrounded. "The chief of the Miamis, whose name was Tetinchoua, was surrounded by the most notable people of the village, who, assuming the role of courtiers, with civil posture full of deference, and keeping always a respectful silence, magnified the greatness of their king. The chief and his routine gave Father Dablon every mark of their most distinguished esteem. The physiognomy of the chief was as mild and as attractive as any one could wish to see; and while his reputation as a warrior was great, his features bore a softness which charmed all those who beheld him." Nicholas Perrot, with Sieur de St. Lussin, dispatched by Talon, the intendant, to visit the westward nations, with whom the French had intercourse, and invite them to a council to be held the following spring at the Sault Ste. Marie, was at this Miami village shortly after the visit of Dablon. Perrot was treated with great consideration by the Miamis. Tatinchoua "sent out a detachment to meet the French agent and receive him in military style. The detachment advanced in battle array, all the braves adorned with feathers, armed at all points, were uttering war cries from time to time. The Pottawatomies who escorted Perrot, seeing them come in this guise, prepared to receive them in the same manner, and Perrot put himself at their head. When the two troops were in face of each other, they stopped as if to take breath, then all at once Perrot took the right, the Miamis the left, all running in Indian file, as though they wished to gain an advantage to charge. *Memoirs of General Harrison, by Moses Dawson, p. 62. "But the Miamis wheeling in the form of an arc, the Pottawatomies were invested on all sides. Then both uttered loud yells, which were the signals for a kind of combat. The Miamis fired a volley from their guns, which were only loaded with powder, and the Pottawatomies returned it in the same way; after this they closed, tomahawk in hand, all the blows being received on the tomahawks. Peace was then made; the Miamis presented the calumet to Perrot, and led him with all his chief escort into the town, where the great chief assigned him a guard of fifty men, regaled him magnificently after the custom of the country, and gave him the diversion of a game of ball."* The Miami chief never spoke to his subjects, but imparted his orders through some of his officers. On account of his advanced age he was dissuaded from attending the council to be held at Ste. Marie, between the French and the Indians; however, he deputized the Pottawatomies to act in his name. This confederacy called themselves "Miamis," and by this name. were known to the surrounding tribes. The name was not bestowed upon them by the French, as some have assumed from its resemblance to Mon-ami, because they were the friends of the latter. When Hennepin was captured on the Mississippi by a war party of the Sioux, these savages, with their painted faces rendered more hideous by the devilish contortions of their features, cried out in angry voices, "Mia-hama! Mia-hama!' and we made signs with our oars upon the sand, that the Miamis, their enemies, of whom they were in search, had passed the river upon their flight to join the Illinois."+ "The confederacy which obtained the general appellation of Miamis, from the superior numbers of the individual tribe to whom that name more properly belonged," were subdivided into three principal tribes or bands, namely, the Miamis proper, Weas and Piankeshaws. French writers have given names to two or three other subdivisions or families of the three principal bands, whose identity has never been clearly traced, and who figure so little in the accounts which we have of the Miamis, that it is not necessary here to specify their obsolete names. The different ways of writing *History of New France, vol. 3, pp. 166, 167. Father Charlevoix improperly locates this village, where Perrot was received, at "Chicago, at the lower end of Lake Michigan, where the Miamis then were,' page 166, above quoted. The Miamis were not then at Chicago. The reception of Perrot was at the mixed village on Fox River, Wisconsin, as stated in the text. The error of Charlevoix, as to the location of this village, has been pointed out by Dr. Shea, in a note on page 166, in the "History of New France, and also by Francis Parkman, in a note on page 40 of his "Discovery of the Great West.' Hennepin, p. 187. |