The Fort Dearborn Massacre: Written in 1814 by Lieutenant Linai T. Helm, One of the Survivors, with Letters and Narratives of Contemporary InterestHelm, Linai T. (Linai Taliaferro)
History
The Fort Dearborn Massacre: Written in 1814 by Lieutenant Linai T. Helm, One of the Survivors, with Letters and Narratives of Contemporary Interest
Helm, Linai T. (Linai Taliaferro)
Fort Dearborn Massacre, Chicago, Ill., 1812; Massacre survivors -- Illinois -- Chicago
Time rolled on, and every year the hope of recovering the little captive
became more faint. She, in the meantime, continued to wind herself more
and more closely around the heart of her Indian brother. Nothing could
exceed the consideration and affection with which she was treated, not
only by him, but by his mother, the Old Queen. All their brooches and
wampum were employed in the decoration of her person. The chief seat and
the most delicate viands were invariably reserved for her, and no
efforts were spared to promote her happiness and banish from her mind
memories of her former home and kindred.
Thus, though she had beheld the departure of her parents and her dear
little brother with a feeling amounting almost to despair, and had for a
long while resisted every attempt at consolation, time at length, as it
ever does, brought its soothing balm, and she grew contented and happy.
From her activity and forcefulness, characteristics for which she was
remarkable to the end of her life, she was given the name, "The Ship
under Full Sail."
The only drawback to the happiness of the little prisoner, aside from
her longing for her own dear home, was the enmity of the wife of the Big
White Man. This woman, from the day of Eleanor's arrival at the village
and her adoption as a sister into the family, had conceived for the
child the greatest animosity, which she at first had the prudence to
conceal from her husband.
It was perhaps natural that a wife should give way to some feeling of
jealousy at seeing her place in the heart of her husband usurped by the
child of their enemy, the American. But these feelings were aggravated
by a bad and vindictive temper, as well as by the indifference with
which her husband listened to her complaints and murmurings.
As the woman had no children of her own to engage her attention, her
mind was the more easily engrossed and inflamed by her fancied wrongs,
and the devising of means for their redress. An apparent opportunity for
revenge was not long wanting.
During the absence of the Big White Man upon some war party or hunting
excursion, little Eleanor was taken ill with fever and ague. She was
nursed with the utmost tenderness by the Old Queen; and the wife of the
chief, to lull suspicion, was likewise unwearied in her attentions to
the little favorite.
One afternoon while the Old Queen was absent for a short time, her
daughter-in-law entered the lodge with a bowl of something she had
prepared, and, stooping down to the mat on which the child lay, said, in
an affectionate tone, "Drink, my sister. I have brought you that which
will drive this fever far from you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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