tried to rescue the prince, but it was in vain, and he himself almost lost his life. In his greatest peril he vowed that if God would save his life he would consecrate it entirely to the conversion of his native land. Having been wonderfully rescued, he remembered his vow, and the father of the young prince subsequently became his best friend and patron. Like Calvin, Olevianus now sought admission into one of the secret Reformed churches, and then successively visited Geneva and Zurich. Returning to his native city, he began to preach the Gospel, but was arrested and cast into prison. Dlivered through the potent intercession of Frederick, he went to Heidelberg, where he was at first professor of theology, and subsequently pastor of the principal church of the city. He was a man of extraordinary eloquence, and was far more instrumental in the general work of organizing the church than the retiring and scholarly Ursinus. His part in the composition of the Heidelberg Catechism was by no means insignificant, as has sometimes been represented. Traces of his hand may be noticed almost everywhere, and Sudhoff insists that after Ursinus had composed the cate chism in Latin, Olevianus prepared the German version. This is probable from a comparison of the style of the two, as manifested by their separate compositions. It is also almost certain that what is said in the Catechism concerning the Office of the Keys and Christian Discipline was derived from Olevianus, as its substance may be found in his previous writings. After the death of the elector Frederick, Olevianus went to Herborn, where he spent his remaining years. When he was dying some one asked him whether he was certain of salvation, and he replied, laying his hand on his heart: Certissimus," that is, "Most certain." With this beautiful word his spirit winged its flight to heaven. Zacharias Ursinus (1534–1583) was a faithful disciple of Melancthon. He was a native of Breslau, in Silesia, where his family, whose name was Von Baer, were reckoned among the nobility. His father was a clergyman, who had Latinized the name, according to the fashion of the times. Ursinus studied at Wittenberg, where he acquired great distinction, and was declared by Melancthon to be his most promising pupil. Subsequently he visited the universities of Switzerland and France, and made the acquaintance of Bullinger, Calvin and Peter Martyr. Accused of Philipism," or possibly Calvinism, he at a later date, fled from Silesia and found a refuge in Switzerland. Peter Martyr had been requested by Frederick to assist in the organization of the Church of the Palatinate, but feeling the weight of years, he recommended Ursinus to take his place. Concerning the latter Frederick subsequently said to a Silesian: "His fatherland was not worthy of such a man. Tell your countrymen to banish many such men, so that they may come to me. Ursinus became Professor of Theology at Heidelberg. He was not gifted as a preacher, but was an excellent instructor. When he and Olevianus were directed to prepare a confession of faith, each of them submitted a plan. That of Ursinus was preferred by the elector, and he thus became the main author of the Heidelberg Catechism. To him it owes its irenic character; for it is known that the polemic questions were inserted at the direct command of the elector. In its composition he used materials found in the catechisms of Calvin and De Lasky, but the originality of his work has never been questioned. "The Heidelberg Catechism," says Max Goebel, "may be regarded as the flower and fruit of the entire German and French Reformation; it has Lutheran sincerity, Melancthonian clearness, Zwinglian simplicity, and Calvinist fire. Whoever is not familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism does not know the German Reformed Church, as it was and as it still remains; whoever is acquainted with all its particulars, its excellencies and imperfections, is alone able to appreciate the Christian spirit and the Christian life of our Reformed Church in all its strength and weakness." Ursinus was personally a man of retiring disposition, who made but few intimate friends, and took the greatest delight in profound study. He did not like to be disturbed in his work, and over the door of his study he had placed an inscription in Latin verses to the following effect: "Friend, whoever thou art, if thou comest to me, be brief. Either leave me soon, or aid me in my labors." In the opinion of his cotemporaries Ursinus lived a life of prayer, which seemed too pure and holy for th's world. It was said that he never spoke an unnecessary word, and yet all who were brought into contact with him could not help loving him for the almost angelic sweetness of his character. After the death of Frederick the opponents of the Catechism enjoyed a temporary triumph, during the brief reign of his son Louis, and Ursinus left Heidelberg to become a Professor in a Reformed Theological Seminary which Frederick's second son, John Casimir, had just founded in Neustadt. Here, after five years of faithful labor his noble life was brought to a close in the forty-ninth year of his age. The inscription on his monument in the church at Neustadt justly calls him "a great theologian, a conqueror of heresies concerning the Person of Christ and the Lord's Supper, mighty with word and pen, an acute philosopher, a wise man, and a stern instructor of youth." The Illinois Indians were very jealous of encroachments upon their coveted domain by neighboring tribes. We have seen how the Iroquois at times laid waste their heritage and left mourning and desolation for the survivors. But the severe handling that they received from Tonti at Starved Rock, or Fort St. Louis, in their last raid, prevented any more incursions from these most dreaded foes of the Illinois. Immunity from this danger, and their increasing numbers, made the Illinois somewhat arrogant. Hunting parties from neighboring tribes were frequently roughly handled and driven off, and bad blood stirred up. Lake Weno, nine leagues west of La Vantum, abounded with beaver, otter and muskrat, and here the Illinois Indians spent a great part of the winter, gathering furs and pelts. This lake was thirty miles long and from one to three miles broad, but it no longer exists. No doubt it occupied the valley of the Green river, and included what was afterwards known as the Winnebago Swamps, the favorite hunting and hiding resort of Black Hawk at the beginning of the present century. The writer of this article once lost his reck It was but natural that the catechism jointly produced by Olevianus and Ur-oning in crossing the Maines from Stersinus should encounter violent opposition, and it was therefore necessary that it should be stoutly defended. The Defence of the Catechism will form the subject of our next article. ling, on Rock river, to Henry City, on Illinois river, and became entangled for the greater part of an April afternoon in those famous swamps. No track of man or four-footed beast could be seen for many miles. But never before or since did I sec such endless varieties and countless numbers of wild fowl. They seemed to regard me, as the Illinois regarded the Winnebago and other Indians 200 years ago, as an intruder and trespasser upon their ancient and hallowed domain. Such a quacking, gabbling and clatter I never heard elsewhere, and my ideas in regard to the probable speedy extinction of wild ducks, geese, etc., were very materially changed on that eventful afternoon. Had not my trusty horse been used to traversing sloughs and sloughy streams I could never have traversed those swamps diagonally and forded Green river, as I did several times, without any serious mishap. Owing to natural changes at what was once the southern or south-western outlet of the lake, as well as to ditching on the part of the State and local authorities, this responded to his bugle call. He is said region has become drained to such an to have taken part in the defeat of extent that farms of surpassing fertility Braddock's army by French and Innow cover many places where the Indians in 1755, a defeat and massacre dian plied his light canoe a century or that would never have taken place had more ago. During the thirty-six years Braddock accepted the proff-red aid of that the French were settled at Fort St. a band of Catawbas, who off red their Louis, on the Illinois river, and during services as scouts and allies when his the 136 years that they had undisputed army lay at Cumberland. possession of the lucrative fur trade, Here I beg pardon for a moment Lake Weno furnished large supplies of while I relate an incident in which one otter, beaver, and less valued furs and of my ancestors took part. When the pelts, which the Indians exchanged for haughty British general refused to acknives, tomahawks, blankets, rifles, pow-cept the services of the Catawbas, their der, etc. As late as 1800 it was estimated that there were between 30,000 and 40,000 Indians in the bounds of the State of Illinois, and three-fifths of this entire number were located in the region of the Illinois river. But our main purpose is to tell how the supremacy of the Illinois came to an end, in a tragedy at La Vantum and on Starved Rock, which proves that, with all their injustice and cruelty, the whites have not treated the red savages worse than they were in the habit of treating each other. We have seen in a former article how the Iroquois slaughtered old and young indiscriminately, and how 800 Illinois prisoners, mostly squaws and pappooses, were burnt at Lake Seneca, after a victorious campaign. When Montcalm fell on the plains of Abraham the hopes of French dominion and supremacy in the new world were forever blasted. The forts and posts along the St. Lawrence and the lakes, along the Ohio, the Illinois and Mississippi soon passed into the hands of the English. The Indians lamented the change, and their discontent was fanned by disappointed French traders, who led the savages to believe that the King of France would some day drive out the English and recover the lost dominion. The spirit of discontent found a gifted and powerful champion in Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas. We have seen it stated that he had originally belonged to the warlike Catawba Indians, from the Carolinas, but having been captured and adopted when a mere lad, he became, by force of native courage and genius, the leading chief of the Ottawas, and finally all the savage hosts, from the Hudson to the Father of Waters, chief indignantly remarked that he had warriors who could outrun any white man, and he backed his boast with a wager of twenty shillings. Major George Washington took the bet, and got the great-great-grandfather of the writer of this present article, on the mother's side, to enter the lists against the dusky champion. The result was that the white man came off victorious, much to the chagrin and mortification of the confident savages. That fleetness on foot served our ancestor an excellent purpose in making his escape to Fort Ligonier, nine years later, when Pontiac had launched the thunderbolt of war from a cloudless sky, with reverberations that sent terror to all white people residing between the Lakes and the Alleghanies. Pontiac was a born leader, and had that magnetism, as well as dignity and independence of character, that fitted him for the difficult and dangerous role that he resolved to play in order to restore the supremacy of the red men on the American continent. In May, 1762, his messengers summoned neighboring tribes to assemble on the Ecores river, near Detroit. The fierce Ojibwas and Wyar dots responded to his call as promptly as his own Ottawas. The previous November he had met Major Rogers, of the British army, when he was marching with a battalion to take possession of Detroit and other French posts. With his magnificent figure drawn up to full height, he raised his hand in threatening attitude and said, "I stand in your path. You can go no farther without my permission." The warriors took their seats in the council near Detroit, and for a long while not a word was spoken. At last the Swiss commander of the British Pontiac sprang into the circle, plumed garrison, until finally relieved by the and painted for war. Lightning flashed gallant Bouquet and his army of delivfrom his dark eyes as he proceeded to erance, after the most desperately condenounce the English and to call upon tested battle ever fought between whites the warriors to assert their rights. With and Indians. sudden and violent gestures, and a voice that pealed like a bugle, he sounded the tocsin of war. "The red coats," he exclaimed, "have conquered the French, but they have not conquered us. We are not slaves or squaws, and as long as the Great Spirit is our ruler we will great-great-grandfathers had received a maintain our rights. These lakes and these woods were given us by our fathers, and we will part with them only with our lives." He proposed to capture Detroit by stratagem, and would have succeeded had not his plans been betrayed to Maj. Gladwin by an Indian maiden whom that officer had corrupted and infatuated. In an article published in the Guardian for December, 1880, I gave an account of Bouquet and his great victory, by which some of my ancestors were saved from the tomahawk and scalping knife of the red savages. One of my large grant of land and had established himself where Harrison City, in Westmoreland county, Pa., now sands, a few months before the Pontiac Conspiracy broke out. He had gone to help bury some distant settlers massacred by the Indians, when an Indian whom the family had befriended brought word after night that a general massacre of whites was about to take place, and if they remained till morning all would be killed. He was forced to the alternative of a regular siege, in which he displayed wonderful fertility of resources. Several parties sent to the relief of the be- Our great-great-grandmother had a sieged garrison on ships were surprised babe three days old, but in such an and cut off. Vessels were boarded by emergency, with horrible death or more the savages from their canoes. Im- horrible captivity staring herself and mense fire rafts were floated down the children in the face, she rose from her river to destroy the ships of the Eng- sick couch. The horse was saddled, lish. A currency of birch bark, with and the mother, with the tender babe in Pontiac's stamp, was employed in se- her arms, and another very small child curing supplies from neutral French on the horse behind her, and older chilsettlers and neighboring tribes, and, to dren following on foot with their small his lasting honor let it be recorded that herd of cattle, set out through the wilPontiac saw to it that every piece that derness for Fort Ligonier, some thirty bore his sign manual was fully re- miles distant. Our great-grandfather deemed. Not a few white individuals was only three or four years old, and and communities are put to shame by had a lame foot, affected with a painful the integrity, sacrifice and fidelity of the stone-bruise, but with the help of an great Ottawa chieftain. older brother he got along rapidly. In the simultaneous attack made up- The father had been notified of the on the other forts along the lakes and flight and danger by a few lines written through the wilderness all had fallen on the door of the dwelling, and also before the crafty and courageous as- made good his escape. The Indians got saults of Pontiac's confederates, except so close to them as they neared the Fort Fort Pitt and Niagara, Lee Boeuff, that they were obliged to leave their Venango, Presque Isle, on Lake Erie; cattle, which were captured by their Lea Bay, on Lake Michigan, St. Joseph's, Miami Ouachtanon, Sandusky and Mackinaw had been surprised and their garrisons massacred, some of them tortured at the stake. Guya utha, the cele brated Seneca chief, commanded the horde of savages that besieged Fort Pitt, which was bravely defended by Ecuyer, savage pursuers. The bullets of the Indians rattled against the gate of the little fort as the family pressed into the enclosure at daybreak. afterwards Our great-grandfather served as a soldier in the Revolutionary war, for which he was pensioned; but although he lived to be nearly a hun dred years old he never forgot that race for life in the days of his childhood. Pontiac besieged Detroit for fifteen months, although most of his allies, in Indian style, became discouraged, and gave up the contest after a few months of ineffectual effort to capture the fort, which was well protected by cannon on the ramparts, and by schooners at anchor on the broad deep river in front. The other tribes made peace with the English, but Pontiac was defiant. When Capt. Morris came with proposals of peace to him, Pontiac met him on the outskirts of his camp and refused to take his hand. With flashing eye, he exclaimed, "The English are liars." He rejected all proposals, and with his four hundred warriors passed from village to village among the tribes, calling on them to rise and fight for the preservation of their race. When appeals were unheeded, he threatened the timid "If you hesitate, I will consume your tribes as the fire consumes the dry grass on the prairies." They agreed to rally when he would give the signal for war again. He made a vain attempt to secure the aid of the French at Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi, and sent messengers to the warlike tribes all over the West and down both sides of the great river, even to New Orleans. The French commander there discouraged the movement by assuring the messengers that they had made peace with the English, and that Pontiac must not expect any aid from them. Baffled and disappointed, full of rage and indignation, he at length had to give up his grand project, which Tecumseh took up at a later period with similar results. Refusing to make terms with the English, Pontiac withdrew to the country of the Illinois Indians and located, with 200 warriors, near the junction of the Kankakee with the Illinois river. He entered into an alliance with the powerful tribe of the Pottawatomies, which prevented the Illinois from enforcing their threats against Pontiac, to drive him and his Ottawa warriors off by force if they did not leave before two moons had transpired. Pontiac and thirty of his warriors, while hunting Buffalo on one occasion, were waylaid, and, with the exception of Pontiac and a few others, all were slain by a large body of Illinois In dians. Pontiac was wounded, but made his escape by the superior fleetness of his pony. Raids and reprisals were made by the Ottawas and the Pottawatomies, and many were from time to time slain on both sides. At length a council of leading war chiefs of the respective tribes met near the present site of the city of Joliet, Ill. The harmony of their deliberations was broken when the Otta was and their allies claimed part of the territory of the Illinois as a condition of peace. Kinebro, the head chief of the Illinois Indians, said, "Rather than submit to these terms, he and his warriors would sacrifice the last drop of blood in their veins, and let their squaws and pappooses be scalped by a barbarous enemy." Pontiac then rose and spoke with his old-time eloquence, urging his brother chiefs to stand firm aud never lay down the tomahawk until their demands were granted. Kinebro, finding himself unable to cope with Pontiac in debate, and seeing that the allies were carried away by the enthusiastic valor of the great chief of the Ottawas, drew his scalping knife and plunged it into the heart of Pontiac. Thus fell one of the master spirits of the Indian race. Some historians have given different versions by confounding the real Pontiac with an impostor of that name, who was assassinated at Cahokia, in 1767, by a drunken Indian, who was bribed to do the deed by an English trader named Williamson. The death of Pontiac, under the circumstances, created intense indignation among all the tribes who had ever been marshalled under his leadership. Rumors were sent to the Winnebagos, of the North, and the Kickapco, of the South-West, who agreed to help avenge the death of the great Pontiac. Over his remains a council was held by the allies, who swore by the great Manito of war not to lay down the tomahawk until the fallen chieftain's death should be avenged by the destruction of the Illinois Indians, who abetted the cowardly deed of Kinebro. The Miamis united with the tribes already mentioned, and Bernet, the white outlaw, also with a band of warriors, joined in the bloody strife. |