n, where the old Jesuit
explorer had had a vision of a great city; and where Point au Sable, the
San Domingo negro, for a time settled, hoping to be made an Indian king.
Here he found the hospitable roofs of John Kinzie, the pioneer of
Chicago, the Romulus of the great mid-continent city, where storehouses
abounded with peltries and furs.

John Kinzie (the father of the famous John H. Kinzie) was a grand
pioneer, like the Pilgrim Fathers of the elder day. He dealt honestly
with the Indians, and won the hearts of the several tribes. He settled
in Chicago in 1804, at which time a block-house was built by the
Government as a frontier house or garrison. This frontier house stood
near the present Rush Street Bridge. Mr. Kinzie's house stood on the
north side of the Chicago River, opposite the fort. The storm-beaten
block-house was to be seen in Chicago as late as 1857, and the place of
Mr. Kinzie's home will ever be held as sacred ground. The frontier house
was known as Fort Dearborn. A little settlement grew around the fort and
the hospitable doors of Mr. Kinzie, until in 1830 it numbered twelve
houses. Twelve houses in Chicago in 1830! Pass the bridge of sixty
years, and lo! the rival city of the Western world, with its more than a
million people--more than fulfilling the old missionary's dream!

For twenty years John Kinzie was the only white man not connected with
the garrison and trading-post who lived in northern Illinois. He was a
witness of the Indian massacre of the troops in 1812, when he himself
was driven from his home by the lake.

He saw another and different scene in August, 1821--a scene worthy of a
poet or painter--the Great Treaty, in which the Indian chiefs gave up
most of their empire east of the Mississippi. There came to this
decisive convocation the plumes of the Ottawas, Chippewas, and
Pottawattamies. General Cass was there, and the old Indian agents. The
chiefs brought with them their great warriors, their wives and children.
There the prairie Indians made their last stand but one against the
march of emigration to the Mississippi.

Me-te-nay, the young orator of the Pottawattamies, was there, to make a
poetic appeal for his race. But the counsels of the white chiefs were
too persuasive and powerful. A treaty was concluded, which virtually
gave up the Indian empire east of the Mississippi.

Then the chiefs and the warriors departed, their red plumes
disappearing over the prairie in the sunset li