The order for evacuating the post was read next morning upon parade. It is difficult to understand why Captain Heald, in such an emergency, omitted the usual form of calling a council of war with his officers. It can only be accounted for by the fact of a want of harmonious feeling between himself and one of his junior officers--Ensign Ronan, a high-spirited and somewhat overbearing, but brave and generous young man. A "council of war" between the captain and his two lieutenants and (perhaps) the surgeon, to debate an unconditional order received from the general commanding the division, does not strike the average reader as an "usual form," nor does any disaffection on the part of the junior among the officers seem likely to enter into the question, one way or the other. But the suggestion throws a side-light on the unhappy state of things at Fort Dearborn. It seems unquestionable that this young ensign was not in accord with his captain, and that the Kinzies, especially the young story-teller, Mrs. Helm (who was Mrs. Kinzie's authority), sided with the junior--as was perhaps natural. To quote from Munsell: It becomes necessary here to call to mind the possible bias which may have existed in the hearts of the narrators in handing down the story to Mrs. Kinzie, the writer of Wau-Bun, who probably never saw the principal actor in it, John Kinzie, behaving died two years before her marriage with his son, John H. Kinzie. The latter was only nine years old at the time of the massacre. His mother, however, Mrs. Kinzie, she did know well, also his aunt, Mrs. Helm [John's step-daughter], from whose lips the Wau-Bun account of the massacre was taken down by her. It is quite certain that departure meant ruin to John Kinzie; for of all the property he had accumulated in his long, able, arduous and profitable business life, not a handful could be carried away by land. And the event showed that he, personally, had nothing to fear from the Indians. Here is what Mrs. Heald says about these matters: It is all false about any quarrel between Ronan and Captain Heald. The ensign thought the world of the captain, and gave him a big book with their two names written it. Among the property recovered after the massacre was this book, which the Indians thought was the Bible. They would pass their hands across the pages and point significantly heavenward; but in fact the book was a dictionary and is still in possession of the family, having been bound in buckskin to preserve such part as has not already succumbed to the many vicissitudes. Occasionally Indians would come and steal horses when the men were some distance away cutting hay for the winter's supplies, and they were apt to try to get the scalp of any white person against whom they had any hard feeling.