at he was in
correspondence with General Harrison. Kinzie was taking a promenade under
guard, when he heard the guns on Lake Erie. The time allotted to the
prisoner for his daily walk expired, but neither he nor his guard
observed the fact, so anxiously were they catching every sound from what
they now felt sure was an engagement between ships of war. At length Mr.
Kinzie was reminded that the hour for his return to confinement had
arrived. He pleaded for another half hour.

"Let me stay," said he, "till we can learn how the battle has gone."

Very soon a sloop appeared under press of sail, rounding the point, and
presently two vessels in chase of her.

"She is running--she bears the British colors," cried Kinzie--"yes, yes,
they are lowering--they are striking her flag! Now"--turning to the
soldiers, "I will go back to prison contented. I know how the battle has
gone."

The sloop was the Little Belt, the last of the British fleet to
surrender, after a vain attempt to escape. The Father of Chicago had seen
the end of the battle which made possible the Chicago of to-day.[3]

[3] John Kinzie was born at Quebec in 1763. After the war he went
back to Chicago, and died January 6, 1828, aged 65 years.

Perry's victory compelled the enemy to evacuate Detroit, and all their
posts in American territory except Michilimacinac, which place remained
in the possession of the British until the close of the war. Soon after
the battle of Lake Erie, General Harrison crossed to the Canadian shore,
entered Maiden, and then passed on in pursuit of Proctor and Tecumseh,
who were in full retreat up the valley of the Thames. In the battle of
the Thames, which followed, the British were completely routed, and
Tecumseh was slain. The Northwest was now secure. The British had been
driven back and their Indian ally, Tecumseh, with his great scheme of an
independent Indian power, had passed away.

* * *

In the Southwest, however, the struggle between whites and Indians
continued to rage, the latter being led by a half-breed Creek named
Weathersford. The massacre of more than four hundred men, women and
children by the Creeks at Fort Mimms, in what is now Alabama, aroused the
frontiers to fury, and Andrew Jackson, already known as "Old Hickory,"
the idol of his troops and the terror of the feeble War Department, took
the field at the head of twenty-five hundred men. He showed himself a