Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  The Board took the bait. They suspended O’Leary’s license to operate as a grain inspector and agreed to forward the evidence put before them about the “alleged misdemeanors” to Chicago’s Court of Justice. The upshot, then, is that Mr. Brody continues to own and operate one of the largest elevators in Chicago and remains free to trade on the futures market. If someone ever does have to spend a few nights in Joliet, it will not be Mr. Brody but his henchman, Mr. O’Leary.

  The disgraceful manner in which the Honorable Cloke traduced his profession and hoodwinked a docile Board of Trade was as clever as it was shameless. By yet again looking the other way, the Board jeopardizes not only the success of the Exchange but also threatens the livelihood of all those farmers who depend on the honesty and efficiency of the grain market. This newspaper demands the Board come to its senses and reopen the investigation. Rather than being diverted by small fry like Mr. Dermot O’Leary, it should concentrate on bringing Mr. Brody and his “accomplices” to justice. Those unnamed accomplices, one suspects, were the true brains behind the corner.

  1879–1886

  1879

  RECEPTION FOR THE SETTLERS OF CHICAGO

  Address delivered by Professor Milton Winship, Faculty of History, University of Chicago, at the “Reception to the Settlers of Chicago Prior to 1840,” held at the Calumet Club of Chicago on Tuesday Evening, May 27, 1879.

  (IT SHOULD BE noted that Professor Winship was unable to deliver the latter half of his speech due to interruptions from guests in attendance. In this pamphlet we have chosen to print the professor’s proposed address to the club in full.)

  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

  Without any preamble, I proposition to read aloud extracts from the transcript I made of an interview conducted with Mrs. Eulalie Van Voorhis, shortly before her death earlier this year at the age of eighty-three years. As some of you may know, I am a historian at the University of Chicago, and it was through my research into events that took place here at the beginning of this century that I would come to know Mrs. Van Voorhis. I wanted to persuade her to talk to me about her recollections of the battle of Fort Dearborn in 1812 because she was, to the best of my knowledge, the last living witness of that tragic occurrence. Judging it best to lead her gently toward such a traumatic event, I asked her first about what I thought would be a happier memory—the arrival at Fort Dearborn of the man who would, briefly, become her husband.

  Let me point out that I have made no alterations to the text I shall read out. The imperfections, the infelicities of expression, the contrarieties, are those of the elderly lady who uttered them. As you shall hear, she confused me at times with her late husband, addressing me as though I were he. I ask you to treat such slips with forbearance, and concentrate instead on the substance of her story. It has been said, by those infinitely better equipped than I to make such a judgment, that the memory of youth sharpens with age, and the mind begins to function like a telescope, no longer able to focus on what is near at hand but marvelously proficient at looking into the distance. That would seem to have been the case with Mrs. Van Voorhis’s recollections of those far-off days. I believe the story she tells has much to teach us about the origins of Chicago.

  * * *

  “It was the coldest day of the year, Mr. Winship. The same day one of the soldiers that went to fetch water from the river lost two fingers from frostbite. The same day the wind, how cruel it howled, cut through the timbers and unrooted a row of palisades better than an Indian attack ever could. The same day an ox froze to death. The day was so cold our breath, it came puffin’ out like clouds, though we women was crammed together like slapjacks inside the barracks room of the Fort. It wasn’t much, that room, neither in spacefulness nor comfort. How dark it was. Splintered stools for seats and a poor fire smoking damp wood, and prickly mats on the floor for sleeping, that was the sum of it, but we had to borne up to it, as one had to borne up to everything in those days.

  I was a pretty one, though you won’t believe it now. Hair on my head like sheaves of corn with the color of a gold ring, not that I ever had one on my finger like the ladies today, heh heh. Wasn’t the way, for a man to put a ring on your finger, not back then. Wasn’t the way to go to the church either, not when there wasn’t one to be found for a hundred miles or more. You did it out in the open between the two of you. Yes, that was the way it was and there was no shame in it. I kept my hair bobbed at one ear, the same like in a picture they hung at the big house when I was young. That picture came with us at the Banishment, all the pictures did, excepting the one of the house itself—the “first mansion” in Chicago, they called it. Everything else stayed. Everything. The fine plates and candlesticks and kettles, the mirrors and pewter basins, even the cabinet of French walnut fitted with glass in each door.

  No, I don’t know about the picture of Lady Strafford—that was her name, the one with the earlock curl—where it is now. They were all sold, long time ago. I never saw a finer lady than that one. She was a wealthy dame about to lose everything. I reckon Gray Curls liked that picture the most, because he saw his own future in it.

  But to talk of fine ladies, I do remember one that was special. A little lady she was, with a spirit to her like the breath of God, for those that believe. Name like a church. [Pauses] Chappell, that’s what it was. Wed to a preacher man. Name of Porter, I believe. Wrong man, if you ask me. Should have taken the other one. I met him once, when he bought back the picture of the “first mansion” for me, though in the end I left it in Chicago. Why? Because I didn’t need it no more, not after I’d told Miss Chappell about you, Isaac, and about what happened.

  What do I mean, when I say Banishment? You ask a lot of questions, and some of them mayn’t have no answers. But yes, to this one there is reason enough. Banishment was what we called it, when they drove us out of Chicago with nothing but a wagon full of pictures, a few loaves of bread and two broken legs. I was only a pup at the time, but I remember Gray Curls saying it like that. Yes, Gray Curls was my grandfather, that’s how I called him. We eat the bitter bread of banishment, he’d say.

  What’s your meaning, that Shakespeare said it first? No, sir, I’m not so touched I never heard of that Englishman. And even if he did say it, I wasn’t to know, was I? You’ve muddled me, with your talk of writers. Isaac was a fine writer. But not me. I don’t write. And I never was one for talking much neither. I think though. I’m always thinking. Where was I? Yes, yes, I was the kind that primped myself good, soon as I was big enough to fasten my own buttons. I was gay in my colors as a hummingbird, the best I could make with homespun. My mother knew the loom better than most, and whenever a new cloth comes, she makes it into a bonnet or skirt or bloomers or something of the sort. No, bloomers came later, I reckon. Not that it matters, what came when anymore, whether it was before or after, not when you live this long, heh heh.

  We were seated around a fire that day, that was leaking heat into the barracks like the roof leaked water. There were only two thoughts in my mind. One was the cold, and how long it would last and if it would ever be over. The other was my belly, and the ache that growed there. For two weeks we’d lived on a diet of turnips and potatoes. The portions were getting smaller each day. There’d been no bread since the previous Sunday. Mrs. Heald—she was the governor’s wife—told us fresh supplies would come soon from St. Joseph, but I didn’t believe her. She’d said that before. It was in her character to be always hopeful, even when there wasn’t no reason. Some people are like that, and they rise fast in the world, and Mrs. Heald was one of them risers. You know what happened to her? When she was captured, the captain had to buy her back for a mule and a bottle of whiskey. After the fighting was done, they bought a farm in Stockton, Missouri. That’s what I heard.

  I’m ahead of myself, or maybe I’m behind, and it don’t matter which. I’m touched, you see, that’s what people say, though it ain’t true. I keep to myself, that’s all. You arrived, recall you this my husband, on the coldest day of the year
and when the door scraped open and a hideous wind came rushing inside I turned on my stool, and through eyes watering with the cold I gazed upon you for the first time. Seeing through moistness makes a mirage, and there’s shimmering in the air and hard things lose their edges and everything becomes more than it is. Remember those spring days on the prairies, when a carpet of primroses looks to be floating above the earth, when a tree far off looks like a tower leaning against the sky, and when the air vibrates like the strings of a violin with all the nature that’s passing by? That was how I saw you, coming in from the cold like a mirage of nature, rubbing your hands together not fast like the rest of us but slowly, like you was only wanting to caress the cold, and I saw the snow shining like clusters of stars, bright on the tassels of your Hessian boots, sparkling on the folds of your blue velvet frock, twinkling on the brim of that round black hat—oh yes, I can see you as clearly now as I saw you then. You were as near to a god as can be made with flesh and blood. Your cheeks were pink, your eyes were bright as a blaze of sunlight, and when you spoke, your voice sounded like music inside my head, though I remember none of the fine words you spoke. I’ve never heard anyone speak or write the English tongue like you, Isaac, despite the Dutchness in your name.

  Yes, it was the coldest day of the year when you arrived. An ox froze to death, a soldier lost two fingers from frostbite, our breath puffed out in clouds, but none of that mattered anymore because you had arrived. You had arrived, Isaac Van Voorhis, and the sweet madness of love was about to break my heart.

  You say you want to hear how it happened, Mr. Ship, heh heh? How we courted, and how we were wed? Those are secrets I can’t tell, because it’s a story that belongs only to Isaac and me. Don’t think it’s shame that prevents me from talking. The nearer I get to the end, the more shame I have and the less shame I feel. Every year we pile it up, don’t we, all of us excepting the angels? But shame’s easier to live with, the more time we spend with it. Maybe that’s why we don’t all go lunatic. And why some of us do. I feel more shame than you can imagine, about what I didn’t do the day of the fighting. But I never felt shame about us, about you and me, Isaac, and how we loved.

  What they’re calling the “Massacre Tree” was our cottonwood. It was the biggest tree that side of the Lake with branches as high as the Towers of Babel they’re building these days in New York. We aren’t birds, are we, Mr. Ship? We don’t walk on air, we only breathe it. Why do there be people who want to live with the birds? But times change, don’t they? Yes, the times they change. We weren’t to know what would happen there one day, when we took our vows beneath that tree. We went for love, that’s all, because the tree was huge, and beautiful, and a long way from the wrong eyes. I wore a white calico skirt, and you wore a blue silk coatee, the same one in which you fell three months later. And that’s how we pledged our troth beneath the cottonwood tree. You knew all the words, Isaac, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. Nobody could see us in that flowerful hollow. Nobody but the God I still believed in then. The leaves hung in a tangle of green triangles, thousands of them, the fruit already splitting open in wisps of white. And we lay there, didn’t we, we lay in that hollow, day after day in the long afternoons, and there we loved. And after the loving was done and you were stretched on your back, staring up into that green cloud of leaves, and as I slumbered fallen half across you, one leg crooked over the both of yours, you would tell me your visions of the future, and how things would come to pass in America. I believed you, even though I didn’t know how such justice and kindness could ever be. I didn’t think anyone could see the future, except Gray Curls.

  His birth name was Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable. A mulatto—French by the father, freed slave by the mother. He was the first trader, and he built the mansion, he planted the fields, he made a dairy and a stable and a barn, a poultry house and bakehouse. He planted a row of Lombardy poplars. Everyone liked him. That’s how Chicago was birthed. One day Mr. Kinzie arrived and cheated him out of everything, and that’s when we came here, to St. Charles.7

  I use the memory of you, Isaac, to fight the nightmares. It sounds silly, don’t it, a woman as old as me, with only one memory to keep me apart from madness? Or maybe not. Maybe I’m a crazy old witch. You taught me everything about the herbs and plants, Isaac, what was good and what cured what. Even that last afternoon, before the journey, you brought me elk root for the aches and bruises. And I remember how you said the lunatic, the lover and the poet, they’re all the same. And we’d laugh, and kiss again, and you’d say the taste of my lips was like poetry and lunacy and love.

  That was Shakespeare, again, Mr. Ship? Shakespeare wrote it too? I wouldn’t be knowing about that. It’s something Isaac used to say, that’s all.

  I thought those days would never end. I had no true fear, that’s the oddness, that they could. We didn’t have long, that last afternoon. Mrs. Heald was calling for Cicely and me. Never mind. I told myself we would come back to our great tree one day, and lie again beneath its massy branches, the same as before. I was young, and in love, and that was my blindness.

  You gave me your letters that last afternoon. It was safer for me to be taking them, you said. There were four or five addressed to Fishkill, New York. And there was one to me too, though I only found out later. You knew what would happen the next day, didn’t you? How I wish I had told you, Isaac. But I thought there was no rush. That was the sum of it.

  I slept well that night, like the innocent I was. When I woke up the next morning, I was more happy than afraid. The Fort was a dreary place thick with mosquitoes, the food was poor, life in the barracks room was hard, and the only two people who mattered to me, other than Gray Curls, were coming too. Yes, I mean Isaac and my friend Cicely. My mother was dead already, and so was Uncle Jean. He wasn’t my real uncle, but I always called him that. No, he didn’t die of sickness. Mr. Kinzie killed him, stabbed him in the back eight times. Something to do with Mr. Kinzie overcharging the governor, as I recall. No, Uncle Jean wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was fat and lazy and full of laughter, and one of the gentlest men I ever met.8

  There were two baggage wagons, and Cicely and me traveled in the second one with the children, screened by canvas. If there was to be any fighting, it wasn’t for the eyes of the nippers. Cicely was a slave, and my best friend. We washed clothes in the river, and she kept watch for me when I was away with Isaac. She had the dearest, sweetest baby boy nursing at her breast. Name of Juba.

  The day was warm and clear, the sky blue and empty. There was little wind, that I recall. The dust kicked up by the horses inside the stockade hung in the air. Everyone was running around like loons. Mrs. Heald sent me into the wagon first, to get the children settled. They were the youngest ones, that was too small to walk on their own. I was so busy with them, I didn’t even see the flag lowered, nor did I see you march past when the horn blew and the gate was thrown open, Isaac. You must have been looking for me, and I blame myself, that I wasn’t there to look on you for the last time. You’d told me you were to ride at the front, with another captain—I’ve forgotten his name—a captain who’d arrived a day or two before with some braves from the Miami. That was the kind of man you were, to volunteer to go first.

  The “Dead March,” Mr. Ship? No, why would they play that?9 They were trying to make our spirits high that morning, not despairful. And mine—young fool in love that I was—were high indeed. I remember exactly what the band played. I should have known, shouldn’t I, that it could mean nothing good, for that it was Mr. Kinzie I heard sing it first, before the Banishment. It was an old tune called “Hail, Columbia, Happy Land!” You may be too young to be knowing it, Mr. Ship. But that was a song we liked in those days. [She sings] “Hail, Columbia, happy land! Hail ye heroes, heav’n-borne band.”

  That’s how we left the Fort for the last time, with the band playing and the sun shining and thirteen nippers in the back of the wagon. Cicely and me, we’d taught them a game to play
, in case of trouble. When I raised my hand and said “Hide,” they were to bury themselves like moles beneath the blankets, and not move nor make a sound, not until I told them they could. We were the last to leave the Fort.

  Out into the open we pitched and rolled, like a boat on the Lake in a storm, the track was that rutted and rough. There was a gap in the canvas, a torn piece where it was tied at the seam, near where I was seated. Through the tear I could see where we were going. We followed the riverbank until it reached its mouth and then turned onto the path around the southern shore of the Lake. The track in the sand was even slower, and as bumpy. We were crossing between the water’s edge and a line of sandhills on the other side.

  [Long pause]

  I’m sorry, Mr. Ship, but I don’t think I can say no more. I’m seeing it too clear, like it happened yesterday and nothing else has ever happened since. It’s like the taste is in my mouth still, and the stench in the air too, and the blood sticky on my hands again. I’ve already said more than …

  [Long pause]

  I’ll try, then. Yes, I’ll try.