Meanwhile the conquering tribesmen, whose canoes paddled up the Mississippi and the Illinois to the "Checagau Portage," to barter with Canadian _voyageurs_, or glided thence across the Lakes, touching at the outposts of colonizers and missionary friars, were prefiguring the gigantic activities of civilized men who in a later age were to radiate from this same coveted point of distribution. But as they had won their Checagau country by might, and established their holdings by commercial enterprise, so they resisted the coming of their European rivals and masters. Although as early as 1795, by the treaty of Greenville, they ceded much domain to our country, including "one piece of land six miles square, at the mouth of the Checagau River," the intrigue of the powerful Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, led the tribes to disregard these and subsequent treaty stipulations. So that when, on the same day that saw the capitulation of Detroit, Fort Dearborn was burned and its garrison massacred, "the last vestige," says Henry Adams, "of American authority on the western lakes disappeared. Thenceforward the line of the Wabash and the Maumee became the military boundary of the United States in the northwest, and the country felt painful doubt whether even that line could be defended." For four years the unburied bones of the Fort Dearborn victims lay where the bodies had fallen. Then came peace, Christian interment of these pathetic human fragments, and a reorganization of the valuable fur trade of the region. The spot again became the centre of this industry. Trading posts were re-established on the Illinois River and the Kankakee with the Pottawatomies of the prairies; at Rock River with the Winnebagoes; at Milwaukee with the Menomonies, and at Le Large with the Kickapoos. Trains of pack horses carried the furs and peltries to Chicago, and in the spring vessels touching at that port bore these valuable cargoes to Mackinac, where the American Fur Company, organized by John Jacob Astor, had established its headquarters. [Illustration THE DEARBORN MONUMENT.] In 1821, Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory and Solomon Sibley, with Henry R. Schoolcraft as their secretary, representing the United States, met three thousand Indian braves at Chicago. Topinebee and Meeta were spokesmen for the tribes. In consideration of five thousand dollars, to be paid annually for five years, the Pottawatomies and other tribes ceded to this Government 5,000,000 acres of land lying in Michigan and Illinois. The marvellous real estate transactions subsequently negotiated in Chicago, whereby citizens have multiplied their millions, have not eclipsed this profitable investment of the Federal Government in 1821.