Nine years cover the period of existence of Old Fort Dearborn. In that nine years of history it witnessed the efforts of three nations to subdue a continent, and played its part in the struggles between those nations. Established as a frontier post, it became an important link in the chain of western defenses, and one of those schools of military instruction in which lessons were learned by those who had the task of preserving by force of arms a young republic in the midst of powerful and unscrupulous foes. A rallying point for traders and settlers in the virgin fields of the west, it was representative of a phase of development of the great Northwest Territory, and indeed of the development of the United States. Its culminating disaster, which left it a heap of ruins, was one of those temporary setbacks which do not for long hold back the progress of such a growing nation. Within four years after the accident of war had made the fort and those in and about it the victims of a lingering barbarism, the foothold of the nation was secure in the west, the beginnings of its agricultural and commercial prosperity were laid, and upon the ruins of the old fort rose the walls of a new Fort Dearborn. THE END. * * * * * Transcriber Note Images were moved so as to not split paragraphs. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Old Fort Dearborn, by J. Seymour Currey