66 IN SPRING COUNTY," THE MC VEYS, AN EPISODE," "THE CAPTAIN OF COMPANY K," ETC. CHICAGO THE DIBBLE PUBLISHING COMPANY 334 DEARBORN STREET AUTHOR'S PREFACE. History is not a snap-shot. Events happen, and the true record of them follows at a distance. Sometimes the early report is too voluminous, and it takes time to reduce it to truth by a winnowing process that divides chaff from grain. This has been the case regarding every great modern battle. Sometimes, on the other hand, the event was obscure and became important through the rise of other, later conditions; in which case, instead of winnowing, the historian sets himself to gleaning the field and making his grist out of scattered bits of its fruitage. This has been the case regarding the Chicago massacre of 1812. It was only a skirmish and a slaughter, involving the loss of three score lives. But those dead men, women and children were the fore-runners of all the dwellers in one of the greatest cities of Christendom, the renowned city of Chicago. Up to less than twenty years ago it was thought-by the few who gave the matter any thought-that next to nothing could ever be found out concerning the events which took place in and about Fort Dearborn-now Chicagoon August 15, 1812, and the time immediately before and after that day. All that was then known was contained in the artless, non-historic narrative contained in Mrs. Kinzie's amusing and delightful story of her own adventures (1831-1833), into which she wove, as a mere episode, the scattered reminiscences of members of her family who had taken part in the tragedy of twenty years before. But in 1881, ten years after the Great Fire had wiped out all old Chicago, and all records of older Chicago, the Historical Society happily took up the task of erecting a |