User:JeremyA/sandbox/Fort Dearborn

Not to be confused with the former Fort Dearborn, now Odiorne Point State Park in New Hampshire.

Fort Dearborn, sketched 1831, printed in 1865.

Fort Dearborn, named in honor of Henry Dearborn, was a United States fort built on the Chicago River in 1803 by troops under Captain John Whistler. The site of the fort is now a Chicago Landmark, part of the Michigan–Wacker Historic District in the City of Chicago, Illinois.

Background

The history of human activity in the Chicago area prior to the arrival of European explorers is mostly unknown. In 1673, an expedition headed by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, though possibly not the first Europeans to visit the area, was the first recorded to have crossed the Chicago Portage and travelled along the Chicago River. Marquette returned in 1674, camped a few days near the mouth of the river, then moved on to the portage, where he stayed through the winter of 1674–75. Joliet and Marquette did not report any Indians living near the Chicago River area at this time, though archaeologists have since discovered numerous Indian village sites elsewhere in the greater Chicago area. Two of La Salle's men built a stockade at the portage in the winter of 1682/1683. A Jesuit mission, Mission of the Guardian Angel, was founded somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago in 1696, but was abandoned in around 1700. The Fox Wars effectively closed the Chicago area to Europeans in the first part of the 18th century. The first non-native to re-settle in the area may have been a trader named Guillory, who might have had a trading-post near Wolf Point on the Chicago River in around 1778. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable built a farm and trading post near the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s, and he is widely regarded as the Founder of Chicago. Antoine Ouilmette is the next recorded resident of Chicago; he claimed to have settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in July 1790.

The first page of the Treaty of Greenville

In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had claimed a large territory, including the Chicago area, for France. In 1763 the French ceded this area to Great Britain following the French and Indian War. Great Britain then ceded the area to the United States at the end of the American Revolutionary War, though the Northwest Territory remained under de facto British control until 1796. Following the Northwest Indian War of 1785–1795, the Treaty of Greenville was signed at Fort Greenville (now Greenville, Ohio), on August 3, 1796. As part of the terms of this treaty, a coalition of Native Americans and Frontiers men, known as the Western Confederacy, turned over to the United States large parts of modern-day Ohio, and various other parcels of land including six square miles centered at the mouth of the Chicago River.

The first fort

Plan of the first Fort Dearborn

On March 9, 1803, Henry Dearborn, the Secretary of War wrote to Colonel Jean Hamtramck, the commandant of Detroit, instructing him to have an officer and six men survey the route from Detroit to Chicago, and to make a preliminary investigation of the situation at Chicago. Captain John Whistler was selected as commandant of the new post, and set out with six men to complete the survey. The survey completed, on July 14, 1803, a company of troops set out to make the overland journey from Detroit to Chicago. Whistler and his family made their way to Chicago on a schooner called Tracy. The troops reached Chicago on August 17; the Tracy was anchored about half a mile offshore, unable to enter the Chicago River due to a sandbar at its mouth. Captain Whistler's wife, Anna, later related that 2000 Indians gathered to see the Tracy. The troops had completed the construction of the fort by the summer of 1804.

• Chicago at time of arrival documented by Whistler's wife
• Murder of Jean La Lime

Evacuation, battle of Fort Dearborn

Main article: Battle of Fort Dearborn

• Events leading up to, and reason for, the evacuation
• Battle
• Destruction of the fort

In 1810, when Whistler was recalled to Detroit, Michigan, he was succeeded by Captain Nathan Heald. During the War of 1812, General William Hull ordered the evacuation of Fort Dearborn in August 1812. Heald oversaw the evacuation, but on August 15 the evacuees were ambushed by about 500 Potawatomi Indians in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. The Potawatomi captured Heald and his wife, Rebekah, and ransomed them to the British. Of the 148 soldiers, women and children who evacuated the fort, 86 were killed in the ambush. The Potawatomi burned the fort to the ground the next day. Following the war, a second Fort Dearborn was built in 1816. This fort consisted of a double wall of wooden palisade, officer and enlisted barracks, a garden, and other buildings.

Fort II

• re-establishment
• periods of disuse
• eventual abandonment
• use after abandonment
• straightening of the river
• fire

The American forces garrisoned the fort until 1823, when peace with the Indians led the garrison to be deemed redundant. This temporary abandonment lasted until 1828, when it was regarrisoned following the outbreak of war with the Winnebago Indians. Closed briefly before the Black Hawk War of 1832, part of the fort was demolished to make way for a new channel for the Chicago River. By 1837, the fort was being used by the Superintendent of Harbor Works.

In 1857, a fire destroyed nearly all the remaining buildings in the fort. The fort's tower bell was rescued from the remains by Police Constable Jacob Schoenewald and donated for use in the bell tower of St. Joseph's Catholic Church during its construction in 1864. The blockhouse and the few surviving outbuildings were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Legacy and monuments

Fort Dearborn was located at what is now the intersection of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in the Loop community area of Chicago at the foot of the Magnificent Mile. Part of the fort outline is marked by plaques and a line embedded in the sidewalk and road near the Michigan Avenue Bridge and Wacker Drive. A few boards from the old fort were retained and are now in the Chicago History Museum in Lincoln Park.

Also in 1933, at the Century of Progress Exhibition, a detailed replica of Fort Dearborn was erected as a fair exhibit. As part of the celebration both a United States postage stamp and souvenir sheet (containing 25 of the stamps) were issued showing the fort.

In 1939, the Chicago City Council added a fourth star to the city flag to represent Fort Dearborn. This star is depicted as the left-most, or first, star of the flag.

The site of the fort was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 15, 1971.

See also

• Fort of Chicago
• History of Chicago

Notes and references

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Currey, J. Seymour (1912). The Story of Old Fort Dearborn. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.
• Helm, Linai T. (1912). Gordon, Nellie Kinzie (ed.). The Fort Dearborn Massacre. Rand McNally.
• Kinzie, Juliette (1856). Wau-Bun, the "Early Day" in the North-West. Derby and Jackson. Retrieved August 25, 2010.
• Pacyga, Dominic A. (2009). Chicago: A Biography. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226644318.
• Quaife, Milo Milton (1913). Chicago and the Old Northwest, 1673-1835. The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved August 25, 2010.
• Quaife, Milo Milton (1933). Checagou From Indian Wigwam To Modern City 1673-1835. The University of Chicago Press. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
• Reed, Christopher R. (June 1991). ""In the Shadow of Fort Dearborn": Honoring De Saible at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933–1934". Journal of Black Studies. 21 (4): 398–413. doi:10.1177/002193479102100402. JSTOR 2784685. S2CID 145599165.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)