Note 588 — Chapter X · THE BATTLE AND DEFEAT

Affidavit of December 2, 1817, Draper Collection, Forsyth Papers, Vol. I.

[589] Heald's report does not mention the holding of a council; Helm's narrative represents that Wells held the council with the Indians. This is probably correct as to the main fact that a council was held, but untrue in representing Wells, rather than Heald, as the principal participant in it on the part of the whites. A few months after the massacre the Superintendent of Indian Trade was initiating measures for recovering from the War Department indemnity for the goods of the Chicago factory destroyed at the time of the massacre on the ground that they were delivered by Heald to the Indians "under a kind of treaty" between the two (Indian Office, Letter Book C, Mason to Matthew Irwin, February 9, 1813).