USA > Illinois > DeKalb County > History of DeKalb County, Illinois > Part 3
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE.
should have 60,000 inhabitants ; and the boundaries of those three States, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were defined. They were each to extend to the British possessions on the north.
Illinois thus included all of the present State of Wisconsin. But Congress reserved the right to form one or two States out of the territory lying north of an east and west line drawn through the south point of Lake Michigan. But until 1814 Indiana and Illinois were both under one territorial govern- ment, whose head was at Vincennes, in Indiana, and the laws which governed their people went by the name of the laws of the " Vinsan Legislatur." At this time the Illinoians, anx- ious to have a legislature of their own, elected as delegate to Congress, one Judge Thomas, from whom they prudently took a bond, pledging him to procure a division of the two terri- tories. This he accomplished, and came home from Wash- ington with the appointment of Supreme Judge of the new Territory of Illinois.
In 1818 Judge Nathaniel Pope, father of the famous Gen. Pope, was a delegate to Congress from the territory of Illi- nois, and while at his post in Washington, unexpectedly received a petition from the territorial Legislature, then sitting at Kaskaskia, for the admission of the Territory into the Union as an independent State. He immediately brought the subject before Congress ; and before the adjournment an enabling act was passed for this purpose. Through his wise foresight the northern boundary line of the State, which it had been intended should be the line running through the south- ern point of Lake Michigan, was moved north to its present location ; because it was deemed important that the State which, from its great size and commanding position, it was already surmised would become the great empire State of the west, should be so attached to the great system of lake navi- gation at the north that her grand system of river navigation, inclining her to attach herself to a southern confederacy, if such should ever be attempted, would not be a paramount influence, but would be neutralized and controlled by a rival
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
interest, which would make her, as she has since proved, an arbiter of the destinies of the Union, preventing its disrup- tion, and by her commanding position and power checking · the attempt to rend the Union in twain.
It was also deemed important that the Illinois and Michigan canal, which was even then projected, should have its entire course in one State. Urged by these considerations, Congress consented to move the northern boundary line fifty miles to the north ; and so it happens that a love of the Union caused that section of the country which is now our County of De Kalb, 10 be a part of the State of Illinois instead of Wisconsin.
The enabling act passed, a convention was called in the summer of 1818, which formed a State constitution. Its leading spirit, to whom the State is indebted for most of its peculiar features, was Elias K. Kane of Kaskaskia, after- wards a United States Senator, and who gave its name to our neighboring County of Kane. The Constitution having been adopted, an election was held, and Shadrach Bond, a plain old farmer lately from Maryland, was chosen first Governor of the State. Pierre Menard, an old French settler, was elected Lieutenant Governor ; E. K. Kane, Secretary of State; John Thomas, Treasurer ; E. C. Berry, Auditor, and D. P. Cook, Attorney General. Ninian Edwards and Jesse B. Thomas were made the first Senators. The names of most of these first officers will be recognized as having been perpetuated in the names of counties since organized in the State. At this time the population of the State was about 56,000, but scarcely any portion of it was located north of Alton. In October of this year the first Legislature convened at Kaskaskia, and after voting itself a sufficient allowance of stationery, at a cost of $13.50, it organized and put in operation the State government and adjourned till the next winter.
At the winter session a code of laws were passed, mostly borrowed from the statute books of Kentucky and Virginia. In the main they were very good laws, more clearly expressed
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE. ·
and more easily understood than the majority of laws since enacted ; but they contain the infamous black laws, which ever after disgraced the statute book and the State, until re- pealed in the winter of 1866. This code permitted immigrants to bring their slaves with them ; and if the signatures of the slaves could be obtained to an agreement to that effect, it compelled their continual service as slaves-or registered servants, as they were called. It forbid any free negro to reside in the State without giving bonds for his good behavior and that he would not become a county charge. Any negro found without a certificate of freedom could be arrested and sold for a specified time. Any negroes assembled for a dance or revelry were to be committed to jail and whipped by the sheriff, not to exceed thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.
This Legislature also provided for a new seat of government at Vandalia, a point then uninhabited, and named by a wag who suggested to the commissioners that the Vandals, a tribe of Indians, formerly resided there, and that Vandalia would perpetuate their musical Indian name.
Few events of importance in the history of the new State occurred until in 1821, the Legislature established a State Bank upon an absurdly insecure basis, which made moncy plentiful until in 1824 it failed, and brought great financial distress upon the inhabitants.
In 1822, Edward Coles, an accomplished Virginian, was elected Governor, and in 1823 there commenced a long struggle for the establishment of slavery in Illinois. Missouri had in 1820 been admitted into the Union as a slave State, under the Missouri compromise act, and that State was rapidly fill- ing up with settlers from the eastern slave States, who thronged the public roads with long trains of teams and negroes, ex- citing the envy of those who had farms to sell and were pre- vented from disposing of them to these rich slaveholders, only because slaves could not be held in this State.
To secure the establishment of slavery in Illinois, a conven- tion to alter its constitution was required ; and by a majority
48
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY :
of a single vote the Legislature decided to submit to the vote of its people the question of calling such a convention. For nearly eighteen months the question was debated with great earnestness, and one of the most exciting and extraordinary contests ever known in the State was kept up; but it was finally decided by a majority of nearly 2,000 that Illinois should be consecrated to freedom.
The construction of a canal uniting the waters of Lake Michigan with the Mississippi through the Illinois river was the great work of the early days of the infant State ; and as early as 1821 the Legislature appropriated $10,000 to pay the expense of a survey of the route. The survey was com- pleted next year, and the expense was estimated at $750,000. Its final cost was about thirty millions. In 1826 Congress appropriated 300,000 acres of public lands in aid of the scheme, the State Legislature gave State bonds to the amount of $300,000, and the work was begun.
In 1824, '25 and '26, the lead mines of Galena began to attract attention, and in 1827 seven thousand settlers about those mines were engaged in seeking fortunes by prospecting for and extracting the ore. They were a migratory popula- tion, running up the Mississippi to work the mines in the spring and back to their homes again in the fall. It is sup- posed that this peculiarity in which they resemble the fish called suckers, gave Illinoisans the name which has attached to them ever since. Another theory, however, accounts for the origin of the name by the assorted fact that the early immigrants were of the poorer class of the population of the Southern States, and called Suckers by the wealthy slave- holders and tobacco growers, because they were like the worthless suckers on the tobacco plant, which were picked off from the parent stem and thrown away.
In 1830 the population of the State had increased to 157,- 447 and in that year John Reynolds was elected Governor.
Next year the northern part of the State, which had then some scattered white settlers, was invaded by Black Hawk
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE.
and his tribe of Indians, who, repudiating the treaty of 1804 by which some of the chiefs of his tribe had sold and ceded his lands to the whites, declared his determination to repossess the lands of his fathers, and drive out all whites who had settled upon them. He proceeded to destroy their houses, fences and crops, and of course excited great distress and alarm. A battalion of volunteers, aided by some hundreds of United States regulars, soon drove them across the Mississippi again, and burned their villages near Rock Island. A threat of pursuing them into their own country, brought Black Hawk to terms, and induced him to sue for peace. A new treaty was made which bound the Indians to remain forever on the western side of the great river.
The spring of the succeeding year, 1832, had hardly opened, however, when the same treacherous Indian chief, who has acquired world-wide fame, and whose character has obtained an ill-deserved reputation for nobility and integrity, disre- garding alike the treaty of his chiefs made with Gen. Harrison at St. Louis in 1804 and his own treaty extorted from him a few months before this time, again crossed the Mississippi at the head of a numerous band of his warriors, and prepared to reassert his right to the lands which had twice been solemnly released. He directed his march to the Rock River country, in the direction of the Pottawatomies, who inhabited this section of the State, and toward the Winnebagoes, whose wigwams were on Rock River.
In April, Governor Reynolds had assembled at Beardstown a force of eighteen hundred volunteers, who were placed under command of General Whiteside, an officer of the State militia who had been in command of a portion of the forces in the campaign of the previous year.
The army moved up the Mississippi to the mouth of Rock River, and thence by a forced march up the banks of that stream to the present location of the city of Dixon. and upon their route burned the Indian village of which the Prophet
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
was the chief, and which place has since been called Proph- etstown.
From Dixon a small portion of the force was pushed for- ward in a northeasterly direction, and on the 12th of May discovered Black Hawk's forces near Stillman's Run, a small branch of the Kishwaukee, near the northeast corner of this county. Here a battle occurred in which the militia were outnumbered, and fled in disorder, reaching the main body of the army next day in small parties, with a loss of eleven men killed.
The army had pushed on to their present location with unnecessary haste, leaving their supplies and baggage behind them; and they were. now threatened with famine. Their immediate necessities were, however, supplied by Mr. John Dixon, then the only settler on Rock River, whose entire stock of cattle, hogs and corn they consumed ; and the supply train coming up, they next day started in pursuit of their foes, at the scene of the late disaster. But the Indians had now scattered in small detachments, and were carrying on a guerrilla warfare all over the country. About fifteen miles from Ottawa they massacred three entire families of white settlers, and afterwards related with great glee, how the women had squeaked as they run them through with spears, or gashed them with tomahawks.
The army, now returning to Dixon, found General Atkin- son encamped there, with a force of regulars which increased the number of troops to twenty-four hundred men, and sup- plied them with an abundance of provisions.
They were now in condition for effective warfare, but the short time for which the volunteers had enlisted, had nearly expired; they were also much dissatisfied with Gen. Whiteside, their commander, and they earnestly demanded to be sent home. As it was useless to attempt to prosecute the cam- paign under these circumstances, they were marched across the country by the way of Paw Paw, in this County, to Ot- tawa, and on the 28th of May were there discharged. The
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE STATE.
Governor now called out new volunteers who soon answered the call, and one regiment was organized out of the troops recently discharged, in which Gen. Whiteside volunteered as a private, and conducted himself with great bravery and skill.
The Indians now scattered all over the country, made desper- ate attacks upon all white settlements from Chicago to Galena, and from the Illinois river up to Northern Wisconsin. These assaults of the savage foes were generally repulsed by the whites with great heroism. The war lasted all summer, the savages, generally defeated, were driven ultimately into North- ern Wisconsin, where, at the last great battle of Bad Axe, they were routed and scattered, with a loss of one hundred and fifty of their best warriors. A few days afterward, Black Hawk was captured by the treachery of some of his allies of the Winnebago tribe, and the Prophet, the next most power- ful chieftain, soon shared the same fate. They were taken to Washington, and after some months of captivity, were con- veyed through the great cities of the Union where they were greatly lionized, being regarded by a perverted public opinion, as noble sufferers from wrongs and chicanery of the domineer- ing white race who had stolen their lands, and driven them to desperation. The ladies, in some instances, publicly salu- ted them with kisses. Black Hawk returned to his people, and lived in peace with the whites eight years, when he died and was buried in the burial grounds of his forefathers.
Many men who have since occupied a large space in the history of the State and County, were more or less conspic- uous in this war. Among them were General Scott, then in the zenith of his fame; Zachary Taylor, a major of the reg- ulars ; Abraham Lincoln, a captain of volunteers ; Jefferson Davis, a lieutenant of the regular forces ; General Atkinson, Gov. Dodge, Murray McConnel, Capt. Stephenson and Gen. Henry. The glory of this war was monopolized to a great extent by Gen. A. C. Dodge, but more properly belongs to Gen. Henry, who died too soon after to reap the reward due to his gallantry and skill.
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
The war ended, and danger from Indian disturbances for- ever quelled, various projects for internal improvements and the rapid development and settlement of the country occupied the attention of the inhabitants. Railroad charters were granted in 1833, but none of those then projected were ever built. It was not till 1836, that the grand system of internal improvements was planned which, in a few months, grew to such enormous dimensions as to rouse the people almost into a wild frenzy, cover the State with embryo cities, existing only in the imaginations of their projectors, swamp the State government under enormous debts, and ultimately, when there was not enough money in the hands of the entire pop- ulation to pay even the interest on the State debt, force the State into bankruptcy. In this Legislature Dr. Henry Mad- den, ever a prominent citizen of our County of DeKalb, repre- sented a district composed of the present Counties of De Kalb, LaSalle, Kane, Kendall, Iroquois, Grundy, and several others, and at this session he procured the passage of a bill for crea- ting the County of De Kalb.
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THE INDIANS.
CHAPTER III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE INDIANS.
The Indians who inhabited this County of De Kalb, at the time of its first settlement by the whites, were of the power- ful tribe of the Pottawatomies. Their territory extended as far to the west as the Rock river, which stream divided them from the Winnebagoes. These two tribes, although living upon the most friendly terms, were of diverse origin, speaking a different dialect, and having emigrated from different parts of the continent. The Winnebagoes belonged to the Sioux branch and spoke that language. The Pottawatomies, with the Ottawas, Chippewas, Menomonies, Sacs and Foxes, and other noted tribes, spoke the Algonquin dialect which was originally the language of most of the tribes north of the Potomac and east of the Mississippi. This tribe came origi- nally from Canada. Like most Indians, they were in person rather above than below the average height of Europeans. The usual expression of their countenances when in repose, was grave, even to sadness. They had high cheek bones, faces uncommonly wide below the eyes, retiring foreheads, long, sleek black hair, finer than a horses mane, but much resembling it, but no beards, for a beard was con- sidered disgraceful, and untold tortures were endured in plucking out the first faint symptoms of one that sometimes appeared. They were of rugged health, straight and well limbed, and with a stoical indifference to pain that was either a wonderful exhibition of fortitude or, more probably, the re- sult of physical insensibility. They were generally sullen, seldom impatient, or hurried into intemperate warmth, except in hatred of their enemies ; generally feigning a proud indif-
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
ference. to their families, yet often giving evidence of strong attachment to them ; and always indolent, except when engaged in the chase or the war-path. This was rather the natural character of the original Indian than that which most of them bore at the period of the settlement of this County. The use of intoxicating liquors had at this time demoralized them, and destroyed their native nobility of character. They had become more puerile and purposeless, and their most conspic- uous traits, were their indolence and their disgusting personal habits.
Their pride in dress had mostly passed away, yet they were childishly fond of display. Their persons were anointed with vile paints and grease, as much for the purpose of utility as decoration, as it defended the body from cold and from the attacks of insects. In 1835 there were villages of them near Ohio Grove; on Section 3, in the Town of Cortland; in Kingston on Section 21; at Coltonville; a large settlement at Shabbona Grove, under the good chief Shabbona, and another at Paw Paw Grove, under a chief of yet higher rank, called Waubonsie. There were some forty wigwams at Col- tonville, but at this time they were not all inhabited. The first settlers found them making sugar from the maples of the adjoining grove, having, beside ·the hewn troughs, quite a number of the backs of turtles for sap buckets ; and the early settlers were sometimes nauseated by sceing them cast into their boiling syrup, rabbits and woodchucks, entrails, hair and all, which they devoured, when thus cooked, with evident relish, and thought the syrup none the worse for the unusual addition.
Their modes of burial were various. The most of them were buried in shallow graves, with such of their bows and arrows, guns and trinkets, as their relatives thought they might need in the happy hunting grounds to which they had gone. The bodies of their chiefs, however, were treated in a different manner. A space was selected upon some conspic- uous mound, and a square, about six feet by ten, fenced in with
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THE INDIANS.
high palisades. Within this, the body was placed, braced up in a sitting posture, with knives, rifle, blankets, pipe, and a good supply of tobacco, and all were thus left to moulder and decay.
A chief of this tribe, whose name has not been preserved, was in this manner enshrined upon the farm of Calvin Colton, in Mayfield, at the first settlement of the country, and his skeleton was afterward begged of Colton by Dr. Richards and went, with the bullet in it which was the cause of his death, to adorn the collection of physiological curiositics in the medical school at St. Charles. The dried and mouldering corpse of the famous chief Big Thunder, of this tribe, was as late as 1840 a conspicuous object on a height in the pre- sent city of Belvidere, but the early settlers becoming desti- tute of tobacco, had carried off the old fellows supply, and left him destitute also of rifle, tomahawk and knives.
For the bodies of their dead children they had still another mode of sepulture. Hollow logs were procured and halved, the corpses placed in them, covered with bark, bound down tightly with withes, and then fastened with similar withes to the horizontal branches of trees. There they were left, until the withes decayed and the bleached bones perhaps already stripped of their flesh by carnivorous birds, fell in a mass to the ground. As late as 1839 when Mr. Calvin Colton moved to his present location at Coltonville, there were, he says, as many as fifty pappooses thus suspended in the trees of the grove adjoining his residence. The Indians cultivated small fields of corn-not upon the open prairies where it would be difficult to break the sod, but upon the bottom lands, near the streams, and on the borders of the groves. Their only implement was a heavy kind of hoe, and they hilled the corn to a great height so that the traces of their hills may even yet be seen in some places. The squaws. did all of this work ; the male Indians were too proud and indolent to labor. They kept their seed-corn by stringing it upon low poles below the surface of the ground, covering these with bark and then with
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HISTORY OF DE KALB COUNTY.
earth. These deposits were sacred among all tribes, and no Indian, no matter how nearly starved he might be, would ever disturb them.
Their chief reliance for food, however, was upon the chase. Deer were plenty in these woods and upon the prairies at this time, and the prairie wolf, the rabbit, the polecat, the martin and the woodchuck were quite numerous. The buffalo had passed away, but many of their bones were yet to be found. Shab- bona, their intelligent and truthful old chief, states that about the year 1810 there was a winter of extraordinary severity, more terrible than had ever been known before or since that time ; that multitudes of Indians perished with the cold, and that all of the buffalo died and were never after- wards seen in this section of the country.
Near the present town line between Clinton and Shabbona is a small pond of water whose springs never fail to yield an abundant supply. Around this spring, could have been scen, twenty years ago, the bones and skulls of hundreds of buffalo. In times of severe drought, this was the only watering place on the open prairie for many miles around, and it is supposed that the old and decrepid buffalo, who always avoid the groves, resorted to this spot for water when nearly worn out, and died there. But although the buffalo were gone, the toils of the Indian hunters were yet rewarded with an abundance of game, and it constituted their principal supply of food.
Their courtship and marriage was simple in the extreme. If an Indian fancied a certain squaw, he sent word that at a certain night he would visit her wigwam. He enters, stirs the slumbering embers of her fire, and lights a bit of wood. If she remains wrapped in her blanket and takes no notice of him, he is rejected, and departs without more ado. If she rises, blows out the torch, he is accepted, and they are man and wife henceforth
The Indians abandoned the County about six months after the whites moved in. They had a wholesome awe of the power of the government, which protected the white settlers, and
1164921
SHABBONA.
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LIFE OF SHABBONA.
gave them little reason to apprehend danger. They some- times stole articles of trifling valne, and sometimes annoyed the settlers by their begging for food. They often got whis- key of the whites, and, until that was gone, they had noisy powwows, dancing, screaming and singing all night long, very much as some of their successors do to this day ; but even in their debauch they were not quarrelsome, but generally silly ' and good-humored. Shabbona's tribe remained upon their reservation for several years, and they were occasionally visit- ed by other Indians, and reports were occasionally circulated that they were dressed in the red war paint, had sent away their women and children, and were about to make war again upon the whites. Some isolated farmers sent daily messen- gers to watch them, and kept their horses harnessed at night, ready to fly at a moments warning ; but there is no evidence that these fears were well founded. Shabbona was, undoubt- edly, a warm friend to the whites; an Indian who knew and appreciated their power, who had become warmly attached to many of them, and felt the futility of all attempts to resist their onward progress.
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