USA > Illinois > St Clair County > Historical encyclopedia of Illinois and history of St. Clair County, Volume II > Part 3
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and I let on I did not understand what she wanted. She appeared to be very much asham- ed and went away. The older squaws en- couraged her and persuaded her to try it again; I still pretended to be ignorant, but she held fast. I knew it would have to go. One of the warriors then stepped up to me and told me to let her have it; I then pulled it off and gave it to her. The old squaws laughed very much at the young squaw. It was a very cold day; I had nothing on me but moccasins, leggings and a breechcloth."
After perhaps four hours, the Indians went to a war-post near by to dance, and Biggs ac- cepted an invitation to join them. "They sang and danced around the war-post about half an hour. The old Indians would sing and dance sometimes out of the ring and appeared very lively." The journey was resumed then. No sooner had the captive and the Indians started than a squaw ran after them, giving Biggs a dirty and ragged blanket which that night af- forded him inadequate protection against the cold.
On the tenth day, near the Wabash, Biggs
was, with due ceremony, made a Kickapoo. After feasting and while dancing was in prog- ress, two Indians and a squaw, on horseback, forded the river from the east side. "The war- riors never let on that they saw them, but con- tinued dancing about fifteen minutes then they went to them and shook hands; they appeared very glad to see each other. The captain of the warriors then talked with them about half an hour, and they appeared to be very serious in their conversation. The captain then told me I must go with the two Indians and the squaw. The sun was just then set- ting; the two Indians looked very much pleased; I did not want to go with them, as I knew not where they were going and would have rather remained with the warriors that took me, as I had got acquainted with them. One of the strange Indians had a handkerchief tied around his head and carried a gun; the other, who wore a cocked hat, carried a large sword. The Indian that had a sword rode up to a stump and told me to get up behind him on his horse. I did so with great reluctance, . . . they looked very much like warriors. However, they started off very lively, and the Indian that I was riding behind began to plague and joke the squaw about me; she was his sis- ter-in-law. He was an Indian that was full of life and very funny. When I got acquainted with him, I was well pleased with him."
At a sugar camp, ten miles further on, Biggs was given to an old Indian, the father of the Indian that carried the gun and of the squaw, and the funny Indian's father-in-law. The lat- ter asked Biggs if he had a wife and family. Biggs truthfully owned to a wife and three children. "The old chief then appeared to be very sorry for my misfortune," Biggs continues, "and told me that I was among good Indians; I need not fear; they would not hurt me; and after awhile I should go home to my fam- ily; that I should go down the Wabash to Opost, from there down to the Ohio, then down the Ohio, and then up the Mississippi to Kas- kaskia. We sat up until almost midnight; the old chief appeared very friendly indeed." That night and until late next morning, Biggs slept, unbound, on a comfortable bed. When break- feast was over, the funny Indian took him to his cabin, near the old chief's, and brought him a very good razor. The "widow squaw," the old chief's daughter, brought him some shaving
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soap, some shaving water in a tin cup, some bathing water in a pewter basin and a cloth that served as a towel. She told him to be seat- ed on a bench, and when he had done so she combed his hair-she had both a coarse and a fine comb-and "queued" his rather long hair* very neatly with a ribbon that she got out of a trunk. The old chief's son then gave him a good regimental blue cloth coat faced with buff and the son-in-law gave him a .beaver "maca- roni" hat; then the widow invited him to her cabin, and there gave him a new ruffled shirt and a good blanket. Biggs believed that the military toggery had been stripped from the body of some slain officer. When the prisoner had put on these gorgeous garments, the funny Indian told him to walk across the floor. Know- ing that his friendly captors wanted a little diversion, he put his arms akimbo, with his hands on his hips, and proudly strutted three or four times across the room. The funny In- dian said, in his own language, that Biggs was a very handsome man and a big captain. They appeared to be very well pleased with their guest, and he felt as comfortable as was possi- ble under the circumstances.
Next day all of these Indians left that camp, where they had had no neighbors. Putting all their movable property into a large canoe, they ascended the Wabash to the old Kickapoo trad- ing-town, ten miles from their sugar camp. Biggs was sent by land, accompanied by one Indian. About midway of the journey they met a young Frenchman named Ebart, whom Biggs had known in the Illinois Country. The Indian left Biggs to the company of Ebart the rest of the way. At a cabin to which the French- man conducted him, the prisoner met John Mc- Causlin, a trader, a very friendly man from the north of England-a Free Mason, who assured him of the Indians' pacific intentions, and of- fered to do anything possible to assist him to get back to his home and family. Soon the Indians arrived. The squaws set the cabin to rights and got dinner. They were a "smart, neat and cleanly family; kept their cabin very nice and clean, the same as white women," and were good cooks. That day the old chief gave Biggs to his eldest brother, in place of their father-one of their chiefs-who had been killed by whites about a year before. With new companions, the captive departed. At the edge of the town they stopped at a cabin.
There, the Indians got bread, some of which they gave to Biggs, who stayed outside. The old chief's young daughter came and stood by the cabin door, refusing to enter. "She was a very handsome girl," wrote Biggs, "about eigh- teen years of age, a beautiful full figure and handsomely featured, and very white for a squaw; she was almost as white as dark com- plexioned white women; her father and mother were very white-skinned Indians." She ap- peared to be in an ill-humor. She did not want Biggs taken away and the Indians laughed at and ridiculed her.
When they resumed their journey, with their prisoner, "the squaw started immediately after them. They would look back once in awhile, and when they would see the squaw coming, they would whoop, halloo and laugh. When they got out of sight of the squaw, they stopped running and traveled at a more moderate walk." After awhile they stopped and let the girl overtake them. Then they "began to plague and laugh at her. She soon began to cry. When they got tired of plaguing her, they started on their road in a trot, and I ran with them. The squaw stood still till we got most out of sight-they would look back and laugh and sometimes hallo and whoop, and appeared to be very much diverted." Soon they slowed down and went leisurely to their town, arriving about an hour and a half before sunset. In about an hour the young squaw came. That evening she stood long at the door of the cabin which Biggs occupied with another captive, a young German named Coonse. Two days and three nights passed be- fore she went back home. If we are to believe Biggs, he never once spoke to her.
One day a council was held, evidently to de- cide in what way Biggs could be made useful in his new relation. They questioned him, us- ing Coonse as interpreter.
"Will you have your hair cut off like ours?" they queried.
"No," was Biggs' answer.
"Will you have holes bored in your ears and nose and have rings and lead hung in them, as we do?"
"No."
"Can you make hats?"
"No," replied Biggs, who, when he had been captured, had with him a large bag of beaver
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fur, from which circumstance he supposed they had thought him a hatter.
"Are you a carpenter? We want a door made for our cabin."
"No."
"Are you a blacksmith? Can you mend our guns and make axes and hoes for us?"
"No."
"Can you hoe corn ?"
"No."
"Can you hunt?"
"No. I shoot at a mark very well; I never hunted."
Now the Indians told Coonse to ask Biggs how, if he knew no kind of work, he made his living.
Biggs had, until now, thought he had said much to convince the redskins that he would prove to be an unprofitable boarder. He ad- mitted to himself, however, that the last ques- tion was somewhat baffling. After a little thought he asked Coonse to say that he made his living by writing.
They replied that that was very well, and asked Biggs if he had a family.
"A wife and three children," he answered.
"Do you want to go home to see your wife and children?"
"Yes."
"Very well. You shall go by and by. Do you want a wife now?"
"No. It is not the fashion for white people to have two wives at the same time."
They told him very well-he could get a wife if he wanted one. If he remained with them until "their corn got in roasting ears," he must take a wife.
"Yes," he said, "if I stay with you so long."
He was given the freedom of the vicinity and warned strongly and in many ways not to try to escape. He promised not to go without let- ting them know about his plans. They were so well pleased with him that they told him he should be exempt from work even to the extent of the carrying of a bucket of water. He was put through a ceremony of smoking and named Mohcossea, in honor of the old chief who had been killed and whom it was intend- ed that, so far as might be he should replace. He was shrewdly made to prove that he had told the truth when he had said that he could write. After he had done so, they treated him, if possible, with more consideration than be-
fore. One of the squaws combed and "queued" his hair and ornamented his hat with a large ostrich feather, of the value of which she prob- ably had no conception. On a Sunday, soon afterward, he was taken by some Indians to the old Kickapoo trading town, to dance the "beg- gar's dance." It was the custom of the Kicka- poos, when they came in from their hunting ground in the spring, to dance for presents of tobacco, spirits, bread, blankets, knives, toma- hawks, etc., before the traders' doors. There Biggs again met John McCauslin, the trader, who with other traders ransomed him for 130 buckskins, worth $260 in silver. Even after they had been paid, some of the Indians were reluctant to say good-by to him, visiting him and trying vainly to induce him to return with them to their town, if only for a short time. When, at length, he got home, he was greeted almost as one risen from the dead, for it was generally believed that the Indians had killed him.
The reader has, perhaps, been surprised that Biggs found so many evidences of civilization among his captors. Though many Indians in the Illinois Country had permanent abodes, some of which were fairly constructed cabins, each large enough for eight families, it is not proven that all Indian housewives were as tidy as some of those by whom Biggs was enter- tained, or that many of them were as comely as the chief's daughter, who honored the prisoner with advances looking to matrimony. The In- dians had a code of morals, broad enough and rigid enough to fit in with their way of life. Some of them were hospitable, some were friendly, except when trouble was abroad. They had what they might have called rules of eti- quette, even table manners. When a white man was a guest of an Indian, no offense was taken if he declined to partake of any dish, but when he had accepted food of any kind his failure to eat it was regarded as a serious breach of decorum. He could, however, hire some Indian to eat it for him. This was considered good, form and doubtless it sometimes furnished an easy way out of a formidable difficulty. Biggs tells of other Indians who ate and drank, almost on terms of brotherly equality, with dogs whose noses were often the first in the pan. When Indians' dogs became disagreeable otherwise, they delighted the whole family-as soup. The gay apparel and the trinkets that were given
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E.a .E . M.Dans
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY.
to Biggs were plainly the spoils of murder or of war.
THE WHITESIDE AND MCMAHON FAMILIES .- In 1793, William Whiteside, at the head of a band of pioneers consisting of John Porter, John Dempsey, William Harrington, Samuel Judy and John, William L. and Uel Whiteside, pursued a party of Indian marauders command- ed by old Chief Pecan, that had been raiding in the American Bottom, past the site of Belle- ville, and attacked it at a favorite Indian camp- ing-ground on Shoal Creek. The pioneers, di- viding into two parties of four men each, made onslaughts on the savages from two sides simul- taneously. Pecan, believing that he and his followers were surrounded by a superior force, and seeing one of his braves dead, another wounded, surrendered, begging for quarter. It did not take him long, however, to discover how he had been fooled. His party greatly out- numbered the whites, and though he had given up his gun, he called on his followers to return and make the pale faces prisoners. Whiteside would not kill the unarmed chief, but he drove him back and then quickly got himself and his companions away from that place where, in a short time, they would very likely have been surrounded and captured or perhaps murdered. Whiteside's station, as the great borderman's stronghold between Cahokia and Kaskaskia was called, afforded the brave, but perhaps, rash, rangers ample protection.
One December day in 1795, Robert McMahon and his family, of New Design, were attacked, by four Indians, who killed Mrs. McMahon and four of their children and made prisoners of McMahon and two little daughters. The second night, the Indians encamped, with their cap- tives, above the site of Lebanon, on one of the tributaries of Silver Creek. Though the weather was cold, even for the time of year, in order to guard against any chance of Mc- Mahon's escaping, his captors not only tied him but stripped him of most of his clothing. Fear- ful that he would be burned at the stake, leav- ing his girls to the questionable mercy of the savages, he resolved, if possible to get away from them and bring some of his friends to fol- low them and rescue his children. With fin- gers half useless from cold, he labored long to loosen his bonds and finally succeeded. In a moment he would have been on his feet, when one of the Indians awoke, raised himself on
his elbow and looked around. McMahon lay mo- tionless, feigning sleep. The unsuspicious red- skin dropped back and soon slept again. Then McMahon, nearly naked as he was, glided si- lently out of the camp and went barefooted and shivering through the snow back toward New Design. The settlers had buried his wife and children and had assembled for a religious meeting at the blockhouse of James Lemen, Sr., and his advent among them gave them no little surprise. Eventually his two surviving daugh- ters were ransomed.
A few days after these events Captain White- side learned that a band of Indians had en- camped at a point southeast of where the East St. Louis and Belleville road was later made, and that they were awaiting opportunity to per- petrate some deviltry in the Bottoms. He quickly organized a band of fourteen, including Samuel, William L., Johnson J. and Uel White- side, Samuel Judy and Isaac Enochs, descended on the camp just before dawn and killed every Indian there except one who, according to tra- dition, was afterward killed by members of his tribe for having run away from the very brisk fight that preceded the white men's vic- tory. In this attack, Captain Whiteside was shot in the side and believed that he was mor- tally wounded. As he lay on the ground, urg- ing his men to still greater daring, his son Uel, himself shot through the arm, was examinng his father's wound. The ball had glanced along the Captain's ribs and lodged against his spine, close to his skin. Uel removed it with the point of his knife and shouted, as he held it up:
"Father, you're not dead yet!"
"Boys, I can still fight Indians!" yelled the Captain, springing up and getting into the thickest of the fray.
A double romance is said to have grown out of this brief but decisive battle. History has it that, on their way home, Captain Whiteside and Uel had their wounds dressed at the house of Widow Rains, at Cahokia, whose two lovely daughters, as a consequence, became the wives of two of the Whiteside boys.1
John Hays embarked in the Indian trade at Cahokia in 1793, Nicholas Jarrot, who came to Cahokia in 1794, soon set up in a small way as an Indian trader. He set boatloads of mer-
(1) See biographical sketch of heads of Whiteside fam- ilies, Vol. 1, page 586.
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY.
chandise. to the Upper Mississippi and traded them to the Indians for furs and peltries. He also opened a small store at Cahokia. Gradu- ally his enterprises assumed larger proportions and as his trade was characterized by exceed- ingly large profits, he amassed a goodly for- tune. June 28, 1809, Jarrot made affidavit that the British agents and traders at Prairie du Chien were inciting Indians to hostility and furnishing them arms and ammunition, with the result that the Indians along the Mississippi were growing more and more audacious and warlike.
APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT.1-"At a numerous meeting of the militia officers and other inhab- itants of St. Clair County, Illinois Territory, at the court house, this day of 1811, to take into consideration the alarming situation of the frontiers of this. county from the numerous and horrid depredations lately committed by the Indians, Col. William White- side was conducted to the chair and Samuel D. Davidson was appointed secretary.
Footnote page 24
"Resolved, That there be a memorial imme- diately signed by the chairman of this meet- ing and countersigned by the secretary, stat- ing to the President of the United States the necessity of his ordering what number of regu- lar troops he, in his wisdom, may think requi- site, to be stationed for the defense of said county.
"Resolved, That the said memorial be sent to the Governor of said Territory, requesting him to forward the same to the President of the United States and make such statement (to accompany said memorial) as the urgency of the subject does require.
"To James Madison, President of the United Statess
"The memorial of the inhabitants of the aforesaid county, humbly showeth: That the inhabitants residing on the frontier aforesaid have sustained frequent and repeated damages from the different and numerous tribes on and in the neighborhood of the Illi- nois River, these five or six years past, by steal- ing their horses and other property, as well as the cruel murder of some few of the citizens. In lieu of retaliating, the said citizens curbed their passions and restrained their resentment, lest they should be so unfortunate as to draw
a stigma on the government by punishing the innocent for the transgressions of the guilty; and in one instance restrained the vindictive spirit, by taking two Indians prisoners who were in possession of stolen property, after a chase of 100 miles, and gave them up to the law.
"We are become the victims of savage cruelty in a more hasty and general manner than what has lately been experienced in the United States. Last spring there were numbers of horses stolen. On the 2d of June, a house of Mr. Cox was robbed of valuable effects, five horses stolen, a young man massacred and his sister taken prisoner, sad and conclusive presages of war. There was likewise a man severely wounded, when following the aforesaid Indians.
"On the 20th of the same month (June) a man was killed and scalped and another mor- tally wounded, which can be more fully stated by the executive of said territory. Those who have suffered are not intruders, but are living on their own farms on the northwestern fron- tier of said county. From our own knowledge of the danger we are in, and our long suf- fering, we think we ask nothing but what is reasonable and what will be advantageous to the United States when we implore you to sta- tion what number of soldiers you may think sufficient to establish a garrison at the village of Peoria, commonly called Opea, on the Illi- nois River; and one other on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, at or near the place once viewed and adopted by Captains Stoddart and Bissell, six or eight miles below the mouth of said Illinois River-both sites being covered by treaty. We beg to refer you to the Governor of said territory concerning the urgency and ne- cessity of the case, not doubting but that you will grant our request if you think it will be for the welfare of the Union.
"WM. WHITESIDE, "SAM'L D. DAVIDSON."
These resolutions, with letter, were forward- ed to the President by Governor Edwards, Feb- ruary 15, 1812. Companies of rangers were organized. Forts, block-houses or stockades were built at many settlements. A correspon- dent of the "Missouri Gazette," under date of March 20, 1813, said: "We have now nearly finished twenty-two family forts (stations), ex- tending from the Mississippi, nearly opposite Bellefontaine (the mouth of the Missouri), to
(1) Indian Affairs, American State Papers.
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY.
the Kaskaskia River, a distance of about sixty miles. Between the forts spies are to pass and repass daily and communicate throughout the whole line, which will be extended to the United States Saline, and from thence to the mouth of the Ohio. Rangers and mounted militia, to the amount of 500 men, constantly scour the country from twenty to fifty miles in advance of our settlements, so that we feel perfectly easy as to an attack from our red brethren (?), as Mr. Jefferson very lovingly calls them."
This was the situation about the time of the beginning of the War of 1812-14. In December, 1814, Captain James B. Moore, with fifty men, was guarding cattle at a grove near Sugar Creek on the Camp Russell and Peoria trail, and some of the rangers saw some Indians and, singling out one of them, gave him chase. William Hewitt overtook him and accepted the surrender of the Indian and his gun. John Moredock, who, in revenge for the killing of his parents and his brothers and sisters by Indi- ans, killed every Indian that it was possible for him to kill, raised his gun to fire at the prisoner. Hewitt remonstrated with Moredock, endeavoring to dissuade him from his purpose, but unavailingly. The Indian snatched from his captor's hand the gun that he had just sur- rendered, and at the instant when Moredock's ball pierced his breast, he fired upon and slew Hewitt. The death of Hewitt, caused by More- dock, was the last in this vicinity chargeable to the War of 1812-14. He and Moore and More- dock lived in the part of St. Clair County that was laterorganized as Monroe. John Moredock's mother was several times widowed by Indians. At length she and her children, except John, were killed by Indians. John, approaching manhood, the last of his race, vowed vengeance against the Indians and his career as an Indian slayer would supply material for an exciting book. He became a member of the Territorial Legislature of Illinois and won distinction as a military officer. He died at a ripe age, respect- ed and regretted.
For the most part the history of the red man has been written from the white man's point of view. Few writers have seriously considered the Indian as a man regardless of his color and of the white man's interests. "Some time ago," said Chief Gomo, in 1811, "one of our young men was drunk at St. Louis and was killed by an American. At another time, some person
stole a horse near Cahokia. The citizens of the village followed the trail, met an innocent Kickapoo on his way to Kaskaskia, and killed him." The triumph of the white man over the red man was inevitable, but a concession of that fact cannot justify all of it. "The Red Man's Last Roll Call" is the title of a paper by Charles M. Harvey, of St. Louis, which appeared in a recent issue of the "Atlantic Monthly." Mr. Harvey believes that the epoch of the American Indian has closed, now that the Choctaws and the Creeks have allotted their land to the indi- vidual members, have abolished their tribal government and have merged themselves in the mass of American citizens. He reviews with a romantic regret the hard lot which the race, as a race, has suffered at the hands of the ag- gressive white man, and concludes with this picturesque summary of his fate:
"Down in the foothills of the Wichita Moun- tains of Oklahoma the Comanches' Epictetus, the aged Quanah Parker, discourses philosophy and stoically awaits the end. Like the Moorish King,' Abu Abdallah, looking mournfully back- ward at his lost Granada, Geronimo, from Fort Sill, gazes westward across prairies and hills toward the Arizona of his great days, which he will not see again. Up at Pine Creek Agency the Sioux nonagenarian, Red Cloud, the most famous of living Indian warriors, who could tell as many marvels as Aeneas told to Dido, refuses to accept the Government's offer of an allotment of land and goes down, like Dickens' Steerforth in the storm at Yarmouth, waving his hand de- fiantly in the face of destiny."
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