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977.3 C222e cop.2
THE EARLY HISTORY of NORTHERN ILLINOIS
CHARLES KNAPP CARPENTER
LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
977.3 C222e cop.2
Ill. Hist. Surv.
4
Grace B. Miller from Fancy
Du Jour
Xmas, 1949
D.C. Allen1-1 286635
The Early History
of
Northern Illinois
By CHARLES KNAPP CARPENTER A Crane's Grove Settler of Long Standing
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Copyright, 1948 By Charles Knapp Carpenter
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CHARLES KNAPP CARPENTER,
THE AUTHOR,
DEDICATES THIS HISTORY TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS,
THE FUTURE BACKBONE OF AMERICA, ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO ARE IN THE COUNTRY SCHOOLS.
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Published by the Ogle County Federation of Women's Clubs
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9973
FOREWORD
This very condensed history of Northern Illinois consists of two sections.
SECTION A is a brief sketch of the history of this territory from the beginning of Time to the admission of Illinois to statehood in the year 1818. (See page 43.)
This is meant to be the panoramic back- ground against which the more important part of this book is thrown into relief.
My hope is that the readers may have their memories quickened, or may be sent to their libraries to increase their knowledge of this seemingly endless period of Illinois history.
SECTION B is the more detailed and valuable part of this writing, the settling of Northern Illinois by the white men. (See page 63.)
The focal points are: The Kellogg Trail, Crane's Grove, and Abe Lincoln.
BEING A History of the Settlement of Northern Illinois
And Of
The Northern Illinois Development Company
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80.51
Printed by Kable Brothers Company Mount Morris, Illinois
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THE EARLY HISTORY OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS
SECTION A A Brief Account of the History of this Ter- ritory from the Beginning of Time to the Ad- mission of Illinois into Statehood in 1818.
PART I from the Beginning of Time to the Coming of the White Men.
PAGE
CHAPTER I The Creation 13
CHAPTER II The Shadow-Men 17
CHAPTER III The Aztecs. 21
CHAPTER IV The Mound-builders 31
CHAPTER V The Indians 35
PART II America from the Coming of the White Men to the Declaration of Independence
CHAPTER I The Norsemen 45
CHAPTER II The Spaniards 47
CHAPTER III The French. 49
CHAPTER IV The English, and Others. 51
CHAPTER
V
The Struggle for Supremacy in Amer-
ica among the European Powers ..
53
CHAPTER VI
The Colonists Against the "Mother-
Country"
55
PART III The United States from its Beginning to the Admission of Illinois into Statehood 57
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PART I From the Beginning of Time to the Coming of the White Men
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CHAPTER I THE CREATION
T HE greater part of the history of Illinois was written before the Indians gave it its name or any man of any kind looked at its beautiful prairies and forests.
Before any men as we know them were here, these regions were teeming with life. The mastodon stood at the head of the proces- sion, for LeConte says that "the Mastodon Americanus" is probably the largest land- mammal known. Several kinds of elephants, tigers, lions, bears, deer, horses, beavers five feet long, and others, have left their skeletons intact in many places as proof positive of their presence here. A mammoth's tooth in my mu- seum was found within a mile of my home. And parts of skeletons have been taken from our gravel-beds.
Not to be outdone, plants of great size cov- ered the earth; ferns growing to the size of our modern forest-trees to furnish the mate- rial for the making of the coal-beds that un- derlie our state, and warm our homes.
But let us review the panorama from the beginning. If we are to cover the entire his- tory of Illinois, we must start with a great blank or vacuum (shall we call it the Great Blank or NOTHING) in place of this far- flung universe and this tiny solar system with
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THE CREATION
this little world as one of its integral parts but which is of the greatest importance to us who read these pages.
And across that empty DARKNESS, we see only a blazing word or two: GOD-THE CRE- ATOR, and beneath those words a blazing sen- tence : "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."
There may be only one word-CREATOR -but it is written all over the universe, per- haps approaching ETERNITY for continu- ance, and being OMNIPOTENCE in action.
Can we imagine God the Creator taking a great Cipher (call it Nothing if you will) in His hands and pulling it in two, and holding the positive part of the Cipher in one hand (the protons) and the negative part of the Cipher in the other hand (the electrons), and using the residue (the neutrons) for ballast; balancing them to shape the atoms and grouping the atoms into molecules, and building the molecules into stars and worlds and every creature that calls them its home ?
Can we patiently make our imagination practical and realistic by reading all as- tronomy, geology, botany, zoology, to learn something of the details as they are being spelled out by the great army of scientists? And can we then, in great humility, say that Creation is the work of God? No school-boy,
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THE CREATION
no great inventor, no sage, is a Creator. Cre- ation is God's unaided chapter.
And with our imagination traveling much faster than time, can we see the Creator fash- ioning the solar system, creating the sun and using it perhaps for the dynamo, fashioning the planets, building the world, guiding it through the long periods of time, building the land and water, shaping and reshaping the continents, and peopling the land and sea with plants and animals, and leading them to high levels, from the tiny protozoan to the most complex forms, using these forms of life to build coal-beds and limestone bluffs, send- ing the giant ice-floes from the far north across northern Illinois to shift the plant and animal populations, to pulverize the rocky soil and fit it for the bite of the pioneer's plow ; and to leave great windrows of pulverized rock in the form of gravel and sand to ballast our railroads and undergird our highways and make our dwelling-places more enduring? And so Illinois was fashioned by Omnipo- tence into its present form.
When all of this and countless other things had been done by the Almighty, He beheld His handiwork and said, "It is Good. Now let us make man in our image." And "God created man in His image."
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CHAPTER II THE SHADOW-MEN
T HE first groups of men who spread over the earth, I am calling "the Shadow-men" because in so many ways they are vague and indistinct. They seem like dim shadows flit- ting along the beaches of the Pacific and At- lantic oceans, the edges of the prairies, the aisles of the forests.
We might call them pre-historic men, but that term is misleading for a mass of indis- putable evidence has been collected by the ethnologists and anthropologists and archae- ologists, proving that these primitive groups have a definite place in the world's history. Anybody wishing to know what can be known will consult the books written by these emi- nent scientists.
They have classified and named these "Shadow-men," calling them the Pliocene men, the Heidleberg men, the Piltdown men, the Neanderthal men, and the Cro-Magnon group. And they talk of them as we talk of the English and Germans, the French and Italians. They suggest that the Pliocene men arrived on the earth about 500,000 years ago. They tell us that these folks probably origi- nated in Java and its environs, and spread west and north across Asia and Europe to reach their highest flowering in western Eu-
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THE SHADOW-MEN
rope and the British Islands. The large mu- seums exhibit a splendid range of human skel- etons found in various caves and other places in that region, the skeletons mingled with the skeletons of ancient animals used by them for food. And there are many other relics.
And yet there is so much speculation and disagreement, so many unanswered questions among the scientists that I am content to call these men "the Shadow-men." Moreover, they are much more shadowy in America than in England and Europe and Asia.
Our country has made the least contribu- tion to these studies, perhaps because it is a newcomer in the field of investigation; and has the least concrete evidence to offer, per- haps because machinery instead of hand-labor has been largely used to dig away the gravel deposits where relics might have been found.
But in a volume entitled "The Evolution of Man," a series of lectures by prominent scien- tists, published by The Yale University Press, we note a list of places in the United States where traces of the Shadow-men have been found. California and New Jersey, Nebraska and Florida and Texas are listed. With such widespread wanderings indicated, we may think of these folks as having made their way from Java through China and Siberia, and, crossing by land into Alaska, have come down
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THE SHADOW-MEN
the Pacific coast, and then fanned out across the continent to the Atlantic seaboard.
But at least so far as Illinois is concerned, they are Shadow-men. We see them only dim- ly in the shadows of the forests.
Where the Shadow-men roamed
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CHAPTER III THE AZTECS
T HE three remaining groups that made a contribution to the history of America much more definitely than the Shadow-men did are the Aztecs, the Mound-builders and the Indians.
Before bringing these three groups into our sketch of northern Illinois preceding its set- tlement by the people of the eastern United States, it may be well to clarify my object in this brief history. There are countless ques- tions that will suggest themselves about the origins, relationships, both geographical and chronological, and about the achievements of these groups which have been and are being studied by our scientists. While they con- tinue to gather much evidence, to answer these questions, there is still the widest di- vergence in their answers.
After all, these classifications of human be- ings depend upon the content of the defini- tion. For example, how shall we define the word Indian ?
We can limit it to the groups of Red men who occupied the United States in its infancy. Or we can go to the other extreme of calling the original Asiatic group Indians, and calling the groups of Shadow-men Primitive Indi- ans, the Aztecs Mechanical Engineering In-
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THE AZTECS
dians, the Mound-builders Mound-building Indians, the Cliff-dwellers Cliff-dwelling In- dians, and the Indians of our day Modern Indians.
Three groups of competent men are giving themselves to the study of these problems which, being solved some day, may give us a more perfect answer, if not a final one, to our questions. The Anthropologists are the first class studying MAN. The Archaeologists, a branch of the first class, are studying MAN as he is revealed by the relics he has left, in- cluding his own skeleton. The Ethnologists, another branch of the first class, are study- ing MAN through his relationships with other men, anatomically and historically.
These men in all of these groups are in wide disagreement. If and when they reach a common understanding, all of us will gladly accept their findings. With their problems I am greatly interested but not here con- cerned. I think that the groups of men, called Shadow-men in this writing, stem from a com- mon ancestor; but some wiser men will dis- pute it. However, the answer to that question has nothing to do with my present endeavor.
And what about the origin of the Aztecs? Did they originate in Asia, and from what group? And did they cross from that conti- nent into Alaska, and did they move slowly around the present United States before pass-
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THE AZTECS
ing on into Mexico and Central America? These are interesting matters for thought and study but not relevant to this writing.
And what of the relation of the Mound- builders to the Indians? Are all of them In- dians with minor differences as some would affirm? I am not willing to go that far but have no intention of debating the matter.
What I do believe and endeavor to portray is that each of these four groups - the Shadow-men, Aztecs, Mound-builders and In- dians-with a common ancestry somewhere in the past, have diverged far enough from the others, have displayed a different culture, developed different beliefs, moved forward in different directions, so that each of them is distinct enough to have a place of its own in my composite picture. Let us turn more directly now to the Aztecs, the best known of three groups inhabiting Mexico long ago.
The Mayas occupied much of Mexico and Central America, and still do. Their early his- tory is the best known of these peoples, taking us far back to the years preceding the Chris- tian era. And preceding their well-known his- tory, their traditions tell of their coming to Mexico from the far North. This fits in with a widespread belief that they came out of Asia, crossed into Alaska or Canada, and moved slowly southward through the United States into Mexico.
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THE AZTECS
They had a well-developed culture as did their near cousins, the Aztecs and Incas, as numerous ruins of temples and other build- ings, and many relics indicate. Indeed some historians consider them further advanced than either the Aztecs or Incas.
Perhaps we may think of these three groups as representing the most progressive of the early American peoples, and let the Aztecs- the best known group-be their common spokesman. If their early path is obscured by clouds, their later history is sharply defined as we look at them, definitely located in Mex- ico. They are an integral part of American life with great achievements that have al- ready contributed to the present civilization of America, and with possibilities still present to aid America in her future progress.
Nearly a thousand years ago, the Aztecs were emerging from obscurity ; and from then on, their history takes definite shape.
The human pattern was much like that of the Indian tribes in the United States as the European explorers found them. Mexico was occupied by numerous groups of people, living independently of each other, striving with each other in war for supremacy, forming loose federations on a voluntary or compul- sory basis for the purpose of protection or conquest. These groups seem to me to have been much more highly civilized, more intel-
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THE AZTECS
lectual, more progressive than the Indians.
During these struggles the Aztecs came to center in and around Mexico City. When we read of the magnificent buildings, mansions, temples, and art-galleries, or of their gigantic strides in promoting their welfare in the fields of mining, agriculture, etc., of engineering feats, a remarkable system of irrigation, and especially their knowledge of astronomy, we marvel at their progress.
The historian Prescott says, "We cannot contemplate the astronomical science of the Mexicans without astonishment." And Hitch- cock adds, "They were acquainted with the cause of eclipses, and they recognized some of the most important constellations. They ad- justed the times of their festivals by the move- ments of the plants and fixed the length of the tropical year with great precision."
An immense sundial disinterred in 1790, reveals more of their knowledge. "They set- tled the hours of the day precisely, also the periods of the solstices and equinoxes," etc. These buildings and engineering feats remind us strikingly of the ancient wonders in the Egyptian deserts-their magnificent temples, the statues of their rulers, the pyramids, the Great Sphinx, and others. We wonder whether the Aztecs and Egyptians may not be closely related or have followed the same path in the distant centuries.
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THE AZTECS
This forward march and possibly greater contribution to the future of the Americas was ruthlessly stopped by the coming of two expeditions, headed by two of the most loath- some men who ever trod this earth, Spanish adventurers or rather murderers, as cold- blooded as the Capone gang of our day. Pizar- ro devoted his time to destroying the Inca civilization in Peru; while Cortez treated the Aztecs in the same manner.
They destroyed not only peoples but a civil- ization that would have been of priceless ben- efit to the Americas through all of the years. Even yet the United States may well heed and profit by their wisdom.
Today, the United States with our Illinois in the center of it, is facing destruction through the misuse of our water-supplies. There are many angles to the problem. Soil- erosion which destroys the fertility of farm- lands; the lowering of the water-table be- neath our feet, so that springs that fed the streams have dried up; the trees have been forced to change their habits and are now competing with the grass for surface-mois- ture instead of reaching for their supply into the deeps; our wells are being driven deeper and deeper to the danger-point in the search for water, and the cities in the Fox River val- ley, scarcely able to reach water enough for the needs of their people are crying for help
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THE AZTECS
and looking to Lake Michigan for relief which could only be temporary ; the dust-storms of Kansas and other states, made possible be- cause land unfit to be plowed was plowed to grow more wheat; the ruthless destruction of forests needed to provide top-soil and reser- voirs of water; the building of dikes or levees to turn our rivers into mill-races, to rush the top-soil into the sea to destroy the oyster-beds and greatly diminish our crops, or to break through the embankments to bring great dam- age to property and loss of life as yesterday in Vanport, Oregon, and increasingly every year as more and more we defy the laws of Nature: these things stagger us with their threatened destruction of our civilization.
We have been speaking of Mexico and the Aztec people, teaching us the need of conserv- ing the water-supplies. We think of Mexico and South America as parts of the earth where the land has scarcely been scratched and where generous crops are assured for many, many years. A book just off of the press entitled "Our Plundered Planet" by Fairfield Osborn portrays a very different picture. It is well worth your reading. The situation even in these lands is so alarming that Mexico and the nations to the south recently had a confer- ence to face this problem seriously. "The Chief of the Conservation Section of the Pan American Union" in his report on the findings
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THE AZTECS
of the convention said, "If the present trends continue, Mexico within a century will be so severely denuded that the country AT BEST will only be able to maintain its people at the barest subsistence level." And the author of the book with many pages of figures and sta- tistics speaks with a startling prophecy that "the present situation portends the eventual collapse of the whole economic structure. Mexico today is engaged in a desperate strug- gle for survival."
His picture of the United States is equally disheartening, but we do not need to be told these things. Our casual reading constantly brings us these warnings. Across the northern states of our nation, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of denuded forest-lands and abandoned farm-lands because our fore- bears did not recognize the need of caring for the treasures that were theirs. Across the southern section of our country, are hundreds of thousands of acres of abandoned or sorely wasted farm-lands that were used for the growing of cotton and tobacco, year after year without any thought of conserving the wealth of the soil.
And in Illinois, this garden-spot of the world, we have engaged in this same ruthless destruction of the things that must be pre- served or restored, if we are to continue hav- ing the bountiful food-supplies.
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THE AZTECS
We need to learn from the ancient Aztecs the value of water-supplies. We need to stop turning our rivers into mill-races to hurry the water away : we need to keep it at home. We need to break down the dikes instead of build- ing them higher, and let the water with every rain, spill out into the bayous and marshes, not only to stop the floods, but to keep the water to evaporate and form new clouds or soak into the ground to bring the water-table to the old levels. We need to restore the drain- age districts to their former status. I have in- timate acquaintance with three of these through close study of the plant and bird life. Babcock's slough, between Freeport and Rockford, needs only the filling of a ditch dug to drain the water into the Pecatonica River. The Rob Roy marshes, west of Aurora, need only the filling of a ditch that carries the water from where it ought to be, into Black- berry Creek. The Pingree Grove Marsh, west of Elgin, a most wonderful bird-haven, that ought to be restored for many reasons, could be restored in the same very easy way. These are only examples familiar to me of what we could do to prevent floods and help to restore underground water-levels. The serious en- deavor to replace denuded forest-lands to hold water-supplies and other things enters into the picture.
It is a mighty difficult task, but a matter of
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THE AZTECS
life and death. The Aztecs may not have set foot on Illinois territory, but if we will think of them and let them teach us of the great need of conserving our water-supplies, they will earn a permanent place in our affairs as we strive for a greater Illinois.
स्नर्स
The Aztecs built magnificent temples
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CHAPTER IV THE MOUND-BUILDERS
W TE HAVE been considering two groups of people, the Shadow-men and Aztecs who probably had no personal contact with Northern Illinois, or at least have left no rel- ics to establish a claim to residence.
In sharp contrast with these are the Mound- builders who were the first settlers to take possession of the entire area of our state and who were present in all parts of the state in considerable numbers.
If this group did come out of Asia, the so- called spawning ground of mankind, and did cross into Alaska, we wonder whether they may not have made their way across the Rockies as far north as Canada. If they fol- lowed down the Pacific coast, they must have walked softly for they left no footprints; and they did leave many footprints all over the re- mainder of our country. All of the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, they left many, many footprints, these being most numerous in the Mississippi River basin. The name of Mound-builder is given to this quaint group of folks because building mounds seems to have been their chief business. Perhaps no- body has made a studied estimate of the
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THE MOUND-BUILDERS
scores of thousands of these mounds. They are of many sizes from a few feet to thousands of feet in diameter or length. They are of many shapes ; square, oblong, round, or shaped like serpents, birds, mammals or other forms of life. They are used for or associated with many of the customs of the people. And the shapes seem to have definite meanings at least to some of the groups.
Small square mounds may mark the site of homes, the contents of the mound indicating a use something like that of our cellars, because of its contents, such as bones of animals used as food, ashes, relics of various kinds, weap- ons, etc.
Small, circular mounds may be burial mounds, and may contain several skeletons, arranged symmetrically, following different designs. These burial mounds may display considerable skill and knowledge of the use of different kinds of clays and fire to make a kind of cement which has preserved the skele- tons in an unusual manner. These burial vaults may contain relics of many kinds.
The most interesting mounds perhaps are those shaped like a bear or reptile or eagle or other form of life. These seem to have had some cultural or religious significance.
There are small mounds which were used for altars, with a bowl made of clay in which fires were built.
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THE MOUND-BUILDERS
An Ohio mound shaped like a great snake with three coils in its tail was more than 1300 feet long. There are large eagles in Wiscon- sin, measuring 1000 feet from tip to tip of wings. Such figures are sometimes placed as though meant to afford protection to large cemeteries.
Northern Illinois was one of the most thick- ly-populated regions occupied by the Mound- builders. The lead-mine region was thickly strewn with these earthy hieroglyphics. Ga- lena and its companion-city Dubuque on the west side of the Mississippi River are in the midst of a vast field of these relics.
In August, 1872, the American Association for the Advancement of Science held its an- nual meeting in Dubuque with the Mound- builders occupying a prominent place on the program. During the meeting, the delegates went across the river into Illinois, and watched the opening of one of these mounds in which "they found skulls, stone hatchets, rude household utensils, and the thigh bone of the skeleton of a man estimated to be at least eight feet in height."
Kett's History of Ogle County, Illinois, pub- lished in 1878, describes the very numerous mounds, in the neighborhood of Oregon, the county-seat. Oregon was built on one of these ancient villages. Many of these mounds have been opened; many were removed during the
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