History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 31

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948

USA > Illinois > Union County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 31
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 31
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 31

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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raises them so high, that they pass above us and produce little or no effect. Then, again, the great river, leading directly from the Gulf, forms a complete isothermal line, that is unobstructed in its course until it strikes this mountain range, when it stops, and, to some extent, recoils upon the northern part of Union County.

These are some of the geological, meteoro- logical and topographical advantages Union, Alexander and Pulaski Counties pos- sess over all other portions of the great and and rich State of Illinois, and in the

interests of truth and justice, and in vindica- tion of a long-neglected, misunderstood and grossly misrepresented portion of our be- loved native State, we have attempted briefly to explain the more important facts. To give the skeleton oulines of such well-established truths as will enable the people to go look for themselves, and to continue the investi- gation in all its detail, and the conclusion in every case, whether a friend or a prejudiced foe of this southern end of Illinois, he will rise from the investigation ready to exclaim, " the half has not been told."

CHAPTER II.

PRE-HISTORIC RACES-THE MOUND-BUILDERS-FIRE WORSHIPERS-RELICS OF THESE UNKNOWN PEOPLE-MOUNDS, WORKSHOPS AND BATTLE-GROUNDS IN UNION, ALEXANDER AND PULASKI COUNTIES-VISITS OF NOXIOUS INSECTS-HISTORY THEREOF, ETC.

"For the truth is, that time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and solid."- Bacon.

A S to the many different peoples that have occupied all this portion of the coun- try, in the long-buried ages of the past, are questions that have long been, and are now, of deep interest to archaeologists. How many different and distinct races; how many cent- uries intervened between their rise and ex tinction; what manner of people they were, and how they came and then passed away- many of them, perhaps, leaving no wrack behind, while others built the mounds, the military posts of defense, the burial monu- ments, the flint instruments of the chase, and the varieties of pottery that are dug up here and there, as the mute but eloquent story of an unknown people, who here, at some time

in the world's history, lived, flourished, struggled and died. Could we unravel the strange, eventful story of these different peo- ples, what fairy-like legends they would be. Thus, the busy investigators are digging in the mounds, visiting the battle-fields and delving in the burial places, and laboriously and patiently trying to unravel and gather up their histories, and rescue them from the oblivion that has so long rested upon their memories.

Until within a period considerably less than a century ago, few, comparatively, of even the thinking and investigating portion of mankind, were much concerned about the question of the antiquity of the race. The church maintained, through centuries, that the Bible was the only authentic and trust- worthy record of antiquity, and maintained, equally, that itself was the only authorized interpreter of this record and on this basis

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certain vague chronology, which did not, in its various forms, agree with itself by some three or four thousand years, and this vague belief as to time, which fixed the origin of man and of the globe he inhabits at a period now some six thousand years ago, was gener- ally accepted as not to be disputed. Now and again some thinker, bolder than his fellows, formulated some theory which looked toward a far greater antiquity for the race. As early as 1734, Mahudel, and at a later period Mercatl, ventured the suggestion that the flints found pretty much all over the globe, " from Paris to Nineveh, from China to Cam- boja, from Greenland to the Cape of Good Hope," were the weapons of the men who lived " before the flood." But these were looked upon, when they received any atten- tion at all, as merely fanciful, not to say ridiculous, speculations. Even when Buffon, in 17SS, " affirmed again that the first men began by sharpening into the form of axes these hard flints, jades or thunderbolts, which were believed to have fallen from the clouds and to be formed by the thunder, but which, said he, 'are merely the first move- ments of the art of man in a state of nature,' the simple and just theory, upon the sub- stantial truth of which all scientific men are now agreed, was allowed to pass without notice." Later, Mr. Bouche de Perthes was virtually laughed at upon the presentation of an account of his discoveries, and the theories he deduced from them, to the French Institute, and it was not until the lapse of fifteen or twenty years from the time when he first called the attention of that body to these discoveries and theories that they were given any serious consideration. Even then. the attention was not what a purely scientific question should have. De Perthes himself says: " A purely geological question was made the subject of religious controversy.

Those who threw no doubt upon any religion accused me of rashness; an unknown archæ- ologist, a geologist without a diploma, I was aspiring, they said, to overthrow a whole system confirmed by long experience and adopted by so many distinguished men. They declared that this was a strange pre- sumption on my part. Strange, indeed; but I had not then, and I never have had, any such intentions. I revealed a fact; conse- quences were deduced from it, but I had not made them. Truth is no man's work; she was created before us. and is older than the world itself; often sought, more often re- pulsed, we find but do not invent her. Some- times, too, we seek her wrongly, for truth is to be found not only in books; she is every- where; in the water, in the air, on the earth; we cannot make a step without meeting her, and when we do not perceive her it is be- cause we shut our eyes or turn away our head. It is our prejudices or our ignorance which prevent us from seeing her -- from touching her. If we do not see her to-day, we shall see her to-morrow; for, strive as we may to avoid her, she will appear when the time is ripe." These are very simple truths, and yet it is only the man who has the courage to see facts who is also capable of seeing these truths of reason. The change from that day to this is remarkable indeed. Neither ridicule nor disbelief is now the por- tion of the believer in that antiquity of the race which goes back. of a supposed Biblical chronology. Even upon the point of that chronology itself. scientific men and the most learned theologians alike are almost or quite agreed to coincide with Sylvestre de Sacy, himself a savant and devout Christian also, who said: " People perplex their minds about Biblical chronology, and the discrep- ancies which exist between it and the dis- coveries of modern science. They are great-

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ly in error, for there is no Biblical chronol- ogy." While this is true of the thinking people of the world, it is in far less degree true of the unthinking masses, and the liberal thinker is even yet looked upon by many as a sort of monster. This is not, however, a fact that ought to produce any uneasiness, since it is the opinion of the thinkers which, sooner or later, makes the opinion of the world.

This territory, including the three coun- ties of Alexander, Union and Pulaski, are rich in these remains and relics of men of a time reaching back to the paleolithic and the neolithic civilizations, or rather of the slow evolution of civilization in those divis- ions of the so-called stone age, of which those " fairy tales of science" that were started into life during the past quarter of a century were written. The mounds, and the great workshops for the manufacture of flint in- struments, the battle-grounds and the burial- places, indicate that some one race of these stone-age people probably made their na- tional headquarters in the upper portion of Alexander County, and from this point they extended their habitations. and working places in every direction, into Kentucky, Missouri and- the uppor portion of Illinois. The most recent " finds " have been so traced as to plainly point out that from here they must have traveled into and through Mexico and into South America, and that in making this extended voyage they passed directly southwest from this point, and in returning they came from the Gulf toward the lower portion of the Ohio River, on the east side of the Mississippi, and the improvement made in the few flint instruments, and again in the pottery vessels, mark as well the ad- vances these pre-historic races made as the course of their slow travels over the con- tinent. If the cave people were here in these

hills of Southern Illinois, their resorts or dwelling-places have not yet been discovered, yet the hunt for them has hardly com- menced, as the investigations are so far con- fined to the mounds and the graves, as well as the flint instruments that are plowed up in the fields and found nearly everywhere over the face of the country. The topog- raphy of the country has, most probably, in- vited here, at some time, the cave-dwellers. The action of man himself should be well considered in seeking the causes which have brought about the filling of the caves; for in many cases they have served as dwellings, as refuges, as the rendezvous of hunters, as meeting places or tombs to the earliest popu- lations of these districts. It is, therefore, not surprising that they should have left in them their mortal remains, the fragments of their daily meals, their weapons, their tools- in a word, the still simple products of their dawning industry. Unfortunately, we can- not always be sure that these objects are of the same date as the bones of extinct species with which they are found. Accidental dis- turbances of the soil, occuring at widely- separated ¡periods, may have mixed the pro- ductions of human industry with the bones of a very different date. This is evidently the case in the cave of Fausan (Herault), where Marcel de Sevres found a fragment of enameled glass embedded in a skull of Ursus Spelaeus; specimens of fire-baked pottery, relatively quite modern, were found at Bize, by the same naturalist, side by side with other ves- sels of unbaked clay and of far ruder work- manship. Similar facts, which may have oc- casioned many mistakes, have been observed in several other caves, among which it is sufficient for the moment to cite those of Herm and Auvignac. We cannot, therefore, always, and as a matter of course, conclude that the human bones found in company with

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the remains of extinct animals were contem- porary with each other. But doubt is no longer reasonable when the bones of animals and those of our own species, uniformly mixed, imbedded ¡in the same sediment, and which have undergone the same alterations, are, moreover, covered by a thick layer of stalagmite; when objects of a completely ~ primitive industry occupy the same bed with bones belonging to extinct species; when the latter bear the evident marks of human workmanship; finally, when we find in the diluvian strata of the valleys manufactured objects and bones exactly like those dis- covered in caves of the same date. Now, all these circumstances occur together in the valleys of the Somme, the Rhine, the Thames, etc., as well as in certain caves of France, England, Belgium, Italy, Sicily, etc.

Dr. W. R. Smith, of Cairo, informs us that he has extensively examined the mounds, burial-places and workshops of Southern Illinois, and across the river into Kentucky and Missouri. He finds within this scope of country the burial mounds, tem- ple mounds, altar mounds and mounds of observation, the distinction in them being clear and distinct, and he finds many facts corroborating the belief that the upper part of Alexander, or the lower portion of Union County, was the center or great meeting place of the surrounding tribes. In the tem- ple mounds are many evidences that they were erected by the fire- worshipers. The Lake Millikin mound. in Dogtooth Bend, is the third largest mound in size in the United States. A large number of mounds in the western and southern parts of Union, and in the upper part of Alexander County, are all burial mounds, and one very large one in Alexander is composed of chert stone, and was evidently the point where they manu- factured their rude implements of industry

and the chase, and, most singularly, it seems, they carried the flinty chert rock to their working place instead of moving their work- ing place to the hills where they dug out the chert used in the manufacture. This mound has every appearance of having been formed as chip mounds are formed near the wood piles where the wood is chopped, and the chips left to rot and accumulate. The im- mensity of the works may be imagined when the workmen's chips would accumulate into a large-sized mound that would remain through all these ages, and another most singular cir- cumstance is the fact that no implements can be found at these points where they were evi- dently made. Across in Kentucky is an ex- tensive region underlaid with remnants of pottery, and the grounds about Fort Jeffer- son seem to have been the main headquarters for this industry, the burned fragments, in some places, underlying the thin surface soil to a considerable depth. In Kentucky and Missouri, near Cairo, a great many pieces of pottery have been found, in a perfect state of preservation, particularly some perfectly formed water jugs, that are so true and per- fect in construction that skilled workmen who have examined them have believed they could only have been made upon a potter's wheel. Dr. Smith suggests that they shaped or fashioned their flint implements, and werg enabled to chip and break them into the many forms they did, by means of heat, and then deftly touching with a wet stick at just those points which they wished to scale off. It is possible that in this way they made their flint or chert darts and arrow-heads, while other rocks show they were shaped by rubbing and the slow process of friction.

Ethnology has hardly yet begun to be a science, and yet its progress is sufficient to demonstrate that, in the slow progress of evolution, many millions of years have

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passed away since man, in some form, ap- peared upon our continent. But why a numerous people should appear in the world, live out their allotted time, and wholly dis- appear, and in the long course of time be followed by another and yet a distinct race of people. Did they come at fixed periods, think you, after the manner of the seventeen- year locusts ? Evidently not; as the old law of transmigration of souls would have to be revived, in order to account for those long periods of absence of each race from the earth. In the investigations thus far, these two points only are established; that is: That distinct races have come, lived their brief time upon the earth, and then passed away entirely, to be succeeded by another race of human beings, and this by still an- other. How many of these have played their separate parts in this wonderful world's drama we may never know, and so blended now are the remains and traces they have left, that it may be forever impossible to ar- rive at the numbers of the different races, much less to fix the period of the coming of the first, or the length of time intervening between the disappearance of one and the ap- pearance of the other. Indeed, so little can we yet positively know, that it may even be conjectured that one people would come and displace those they found here, much as the white man has superseded the Indian, and in the course of long centuries have driven them from the face of the earth.

In the northeast part of Pulaski County, where the river bank is rugged and rocky, the sandstone rocks bave been washed bare, in the solid rocks are the footprints of three persons, a man, woman and a child, the child supposed to have been about six years old. The impressions of the feet are clear, and every outline sharply defined, and are sunk into the rock nearly an inch in depth. They

are ordinary sized feet, and indicate arched instep and wide and long toes-feet, evi- dently, that had never been cramped by tight shoes. The position of the tracks would in- dicate the man and woman (and it is only supposed to be a woman's track because somewhat more delicate and smaller than the other) stood facing each other, and five or six feet apart, and the child stood to the man's left, a few feet. A few feet from these are plainly marked, on the same rock, turkey tracks, and these you can trace where the turkey walked out and circled and returned by the same way that it came. The surface soil at one time had covered this rock three or four feet in depth.

Insect Plagues .- At irregular periods, in nearly all portions of the world, appear those extraordinary visitations of insects, that sud- denly come, and often as suddenly disap- pear, and we can no more tell from whence they come than we can tell whither they go. All of the southern and central portions of Illinois, particularly this extreme southern end of the State, received one of these un- accountable visits this year (1883), in the form of innumerable caterpillars. They over- ran the country in immense numbers, and as they came with the early tree leaves, they left the apple trees and certain kinds of forest trees, upon which they fed, as barren of foliage as the middle of winter. The forest trees upon which they would feed were the walnut and sweet gum and the red oak. The injury these insects caused was not regularly inflicted upon all the orchards, as there were places where they did not seem to go, and thus some orchards escaped their visitations, while in other localities it is much feared the trees are permanently injured. They were called caterpillars, and yet they were a different variety from the regular old orchard insect that weaves its web and

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hatches its young to feed upon the leaves, and more or less of which we have every year. They were like those noxious insects that have from time immemorial visited the world, that are to the insect world much as the wandering comets to the heavenly bodies. The sudden appearance, and the no less sud- den disappearance, of noxious insects, have given rise to much speculation concerning their cause. They have been common in all countries, from the equator to those nearest the poles. The earliest historians took note of them. Moses has described the insect plagues of ancient Egypt, and Greek and Roman writers furnish graphic accounts of the ravages of insects in other countries of antiquity. In times when religious and superstitious beliefs were stronger than they are at present, it was generally thought that insects were sent to various parts of the earth to inflict punishments for the sins of the peo- ple. It appears certain that the coming of large numbers of noxious insects has been accompanied with outbreaks of epidemic diseases among human beings and domesti- cated animals. Possibly the climatic condi- tions that favored the production of these in- sects were unfavorable to the health of ani- mals, human beings included. When some of the vegetation was destroyed, it was but natural that the physical condition of the animals that gained their sustenance from them should be reduced. The sudden de- struction of vast numbers of insects would be likely to vitiate the air and to render water unfit to drink. If we can credit ancient his- torians, the sudden appearance of large num- bers of insects, especially of those not com- mon to the country, was generally accompa- nied by earthquakes, floods and various other calamities. No natural connection, of course, exists between the flight of locusts and an upheaval of the earth. The early accounts

of insect plagues are generally meager, and probably very inaccurate.

About the year 141, we are told that " de- vastation from every variety of the insect tribe " presaged the outbreak of an awful pestilence at Rome in that year. In 158, all the grain in Scotland was destroyed, famine ensuing. An ecclesiastical chronicler relates that when the King of Persia was besieging Nisibin in 260, swarms of gnats suddenly appeared, and attacked his elephants and beasts of burden so furiously as to kill or dis- able most of them. The siege had to be raised in consequence, a step which ultimate- ly led to the discomfiture of the Persian Army. In 406, multitudes of grasshoppers infested Egypt. They are said to have been so numerous that the putrifaction of their dead bodies occasioned a plague in the coun- try. It is not improbable that locusts are the insects meant, for we frequently find old writers calling locusts grasshoppers; and, besides, there are many instances of the advent of locusts in a country being fol- lowed by a pestilence. In 1807, after a shower of blood in England, Grafton says that there " ensued a great and exceed- ing number and multitude of flies, the which were so noxious and contagious that they slew many people." What might be the nat- ure of these deadly flies we are unable to conjecture.

The army of Philip of France, while at Gerona, in 1283, was attacked by swarms of flies, the poisonous stings of which were fatal both to the men and the horses. The insects are described as being the size of acorns. Two species have been suggested as likely, neither of them, however, indigenous to Spain, viz., the Simulum reptans, a native of Eastern countries, and Chrysops coecu- tiens, an African fly, which is said to attack horses. The French Army lost about four

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thousand men, and as many horses, through the attacks of this insect. The plague was attributed to a miracle wrought by St. Nar- cissus. In 1285, "a curious worm, with a tail like a crab," appeared in numbers in Prussia. The sting of the creature was fatal to animals within three days.

Riverius, a medical writer, mentions that in April and May, 1580, prodigious swarms of insects obscured the daylight, and were crushed on the roads by the million. The species is not indicated, but they were sup- posed to have risen out of the earth. In 1612, previous to the outbreak of epidemic pestilence in Germany, Goelenius relates that " a sud- den and amazing number of spiders ap- peared." It is curious that the same phe- nomenon occurred at Seville nearly a century afterward. In 1708, just before the plague broke out in that city, immense swarms of insects appeared, most conspicuous among which were spiders. Why spiders in par- ticular should herald pestilence it is difficult to understand. In the summer of 1664, the ditches in England were filled with frogs and various kinds of insects, the houses liter- ally swarmed with flies, and ants were so numerous that they might have been taken in handfuls from the highways. This abund- ance of insect life was said to foreshadow the great plague of London which followed. Five years later, a remarkable swarm of "ant-flies" alighted at Litchfield and other places. They appeared over the city about noonday, and were so thick that they dark- ened the sky. On alighting, they "filled the houses, stung many people and put all the horses mad." All who happened to be out of doors had to flee. The market people packed up their goods and made off, and those in the harvest field were all driven home. After remaining on the ground for three hours, the swarm took flight in a

northerly direction. So many of the insects were left dead on the streets that their bodies were swept into great heaps.

In 1679, the little town of Czierko, in Hungary, was the scene of a curious visita- tion. During the summer, a winged insect, of an unknown species, made its appearance, and inflicted mortal wounds upon men, horses and oxen with its sting. Thirty-five men and a great number of animals were killed. In the case of the men, the insect inserted its 'sting wherever the skin was un- protected, i, e., the face, neck and hands. Shortly after the infliction of the wound, a tumor was formed. Unless the poison was extracted at once, the victims died within a few days. The Poles, it seems, were the chief sufferers, on account of their habit of wearing short hair, and thus exposing their necks. It is remarkable that the insects confined their ravages to Czierko, a circum- stance which caused many people to regard them as a divine punishment.

Sir Thomas Molyneux, in the " Natural History of Ireland," gives an account of an invasion of cockchaffers, which occurred in 1688. He says: "They appeared on the southwest coast of the county of Galway, brought thither by a southwest wind." Pass- ing inland toward Headford, “ multitudes of them showed themselves among the trees and hedges in the day-time, hanging by the boughs, thousands together, in clusters, sticking to the back one of another, as in the manner of bees when they swarm. Those that were traveling on the roads, or abroad in the fields, found it very uneasy to make their way through them, they would so beat and knock themselves against their faces in their flight, and with such force as to smart the place they hit, and leave a slight mark behind them. A short while after their com- ing, they had so entirely eaten up and de-

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 31

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 948

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948