USA > Illinois > Hardin County > History of Hardin County, Illinois > Part 2
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Be this as it may, it is well known that the mad, stampeding buffalo held Indian prowess in check on the Great Plains. The scattered tribes that settled there were driven in by stronger and more war-like tribes, and then they sought bluffs, rugged lands, or forested strips along rivers for protection from the beastly buffalo and his wild
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stampedes. Buffaloes were the tyrants of the American plains from the Rocky mountains to the beginning of the Hardwood Belt in the state of Ohio.
That beastly tyranny might have domineered the vast plains of America for two or three thousand years without a waver or shadow of turning, till the coming of the in- vincible White Man on his horse. The buffalo had no fear of man nor of beast; but when man sat astride of a horse, that seemed to form an impression upon the bully beast of Pegasus, the winged horse, and from it he fled pell-mell. About 1870 a fad for Buffalo rugs and robes leaped into vogue as if it came in overnight both in Amer- ica and Europe. During the next thirty years it is esti- mated that two millions of these animals were shot down every year. Sixty million buffaloes fell upon the plains; their hides were taken and their bodies left for beasts and birds. History has no record or anything like that destruction of animal life. Thereafter no more buffaloes were driven into the pounds of Hardin County, or deer either. His stampedes had stood at bay two strong races of men, but the third race brought buffaloes to extinction or near it in the unbelievable space of thirty years.
The Red Man of the Forests
However, previous to this event Indians followed Mound Builders in that prehistoric drama of Hardin County and other Ozark regions. It is believed that per- haps the Red Man held possession of our county more. than a thousand years before the coming of Europeans. Recent ethnologists hold that there can be no mistake. that the American Indian is a descendant of the ancient Mongolian Race of Central Asia. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. aptly called the Desert of Gobi "The Dead Heart of Asia." From that mad climate 5000 years ago, Mongo- lians fled to the four winds. The sinking Alaska Penin- sula was then a wide isthmus over which unnumbered tribes crossed to America.
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It is one of the discoveries of prehistory that the tribes of mankind multiply prolifically in the tonicy cli- mates of northlands, while they suffer loss and decima- tion in the pestilential south; hence tribes generally and steadily move from north to south. The mighty empires of southern lands like Rome, Babylon, and Jerusalem have fallen before onrushing wild tribes from northlands. At the coming of the White Man to our country this move- ment was in full force and effect among Indian tribes. The fierce Iroquois were driving Algonquian tribes southward from New York and the Great Lakes. The Algonquians had pushed the Shawnees from Ohio and Indiana down to Shawneetown, and Tolu with Hardin County lying between as their chief hunting grounds. In return the Shawnees were bloodily clashing with tribes south of them, which gave that region the name of Ken- tucky; that is, "Dark and Bloody Grounds." At this time as Cherokees said, "the Pale Faces" came, but the Shaw- nees called white men "Big Knives," because they carried swords.
Prehistoric Trails
Now I am edging upon the borders of history, which belong to other writers in our committee. But the line between tradition and history has never been surveyed. Like hope and prayer, it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. I must not close without adding a few words pertaining to the famous Indian trails of Har- din County. These trails virtually all connected Shaw- neetown. Equality, and Tolu. These were famous Shaw- nee cities, but they were noted cities under Cherokee rule, before Shawnees drove them southward; and we have al- ready noted evidence which prove that they were also famous under the rule and prowess of Mound Builders. Furthermore there can be little doubt that those trails were well-trodden paths when nuts were first jarred from
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lopmost twigs of our giant forests by resounding war- whoops of "Big Injuns." North and west Shawnees were held in check by Illini and Tamaroas, which were like- wise Algonquin tribes. Illinois was named for the Illini, which meant Big Men.
The Saline and Ohio rivers were the main avenues of trade between these cities. Birch-bark canoes carried salt from the "Salt Spring" of Equality and the "Salt Licks" of Shawneetown to Tolu for that city and a num- ber of villages on the Hardin County side. These canoes returned with supplies of shell beads, trinkets, and wam- pum from the shell factories of Tolu.
'But the main land trail which traversed our county began at Equality proceeding southeastward to the Salt Spring, where it was joined by a branch trail from Shawneetown. From that juncture it pro- ceeded to Potts Hill Spring, where there was a vil- lage. Here it branched and passing through the moun- tain gap near the present site of Thos. Clanton's Store, it entered Shawnee Hollow, and from time immemorial has been known as Shawnee Hollow Trail. This crossed the mountain pass again near Keeling Church and School into Hosick Creek, which led on to the river opposite Tolu. This trail was famous for its game long after the White Man came, and it must have been even more so before a Big Knife had set foot upon it. It would be only a mat- ter of conjecture to try to estimate the number or amount of flint arrow heads, hatchets, skinning knives, pipes, etc. that have been picked up for the past 200 years along the trail threading its way through that deep hollow. How- ever, one could safely place the estimate in tons of Indian artifacts.
Another trail which was really a branch trail slipped up Pounds Hollow to The Pounds, and from there it fol- lowed Big Creek to the Illinois Furnace and joined the Shawnee Hollow trail as it was leaving that hollow for
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the Kecling Gap and Hosick Creek depression. Anoth- er followed the trend of the mountains southwestward from Equality to Herod Gap where it also divided. One trail crossing the valleys of Rose and Hicks creeks avoid- ed the mountains by following Walrabs Mill Creek till it also joined the Big Creek and Shawnee Hollow trails. The other branch followed Big Grandpier creek to a few villages near some large springs along the river. From these it followed the river passing the sites of Rosiclare and Elizabethtown to their village and ferry near the mouth of Hosick Creek.
The Bloody Fords Road Trail
These were well-traveled hunting trails following creeks and valleys always well supplied with game and water. In fact hunting necessarily had to be done more or less by trails, because it was a tiresome task to travel through the high grass most seasons of the year. How- ever the shortest route connecting Equality and Shawnee- town with Cave-in-Rock and Tolu, and the one travelled for other intercourse than hunting and fishing trips was that famous trail taken over by White Men and named Fords Road for Esquire James Ford, who rebuilt Fords Ferry and Tolu. This noted trail divided towards the southern terminus into two branches for Fords Ferry and Cave-in-Rock, where there were large Shawnee vil- lages at the coming of Caucasian Big Knives.
If we may rely upon the traditionary history of Shaw_ nees, that 25-miles of path was famous as a war-path. Here Cherokees and other tribes driven southward met their Waterloo defeats under such famous Shawnee Chiefs as Logan the Eloquent and Tecumseh the Wise. Here also that favorite path was marked and colored with blood when Shawnee later clashed with Big Knives. Nevertheless that 25-miles did not cease to flow with human blood even after Indians were gone, if we are to believe the voluminous traditions of pioneers; for in those
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days when Tories and bandits fled westward from what they called "The Tyrannical Government of George Wash- ington and Pat Henry," they set up a rebellious rule of clans. hoping to hold Hardin County for their own, and men continued, (to use the speech of that bloody path) to "bite the dust of Fords Road."
Many of those Indian trails became roadways in pioneer days, and some of them are traveled to this day. Illinois Route No. 34 slips through Herod Gap and branches as the Indian's most western trail of our county did to furnish travel both up and down the Ohio river. So also Route No. 1, though much straighter and shorter, follows the Equality Trail pretty well of Indian days and of Fords Road of pioneer days, and there is still a road avoiding the mountains by following Shawnee Hollow to Elizabethtown.
But by far the most famous road and by far the most notorious is the old trail of Fords Road seen in part by State Route No. 1. Whole families weirdly disappeared on that road never to be heard from again. Virtually every mile of it has its murder story as well as its ghost story. The folklores of three races of mankind which occulty hover about that most notorious path in the Mis- sissippi Valley are hoary and bloody, fantastic and mar- velous. In Indian days as well as in pioneer days it was also spoken of as "the Road of the Werwolf." If Indian traditions are to be given credence, hundreds of arrows sped from the finest archers at that meddlesome spook, but no hair was ever skelped from it by Indian archery. Likewise fearless pioneer marksmen whose aim was true with the old flintlocks spent many a ball and the powder which followed it with a whirling spurt of fire at that strange loafer of Fords Road, but no marksman ever drew blood from that magic target. Honest pioneers from that race of men honored for truth and veracity claim that at least three men at different times had tried to kick the Werwolf off Fords Road, but that their home-made boots
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slipped through that vicious-looking animal, as if they had kicked through a shadow. Many a brave Red Man and sturdy White Man have taken to forest paths travel- ling some distances around rather than tread the dust of that Werwolf Road after sunset.
Modern readers will ask me, "Now, Mr. Writer, why are you writing this ghostly stuff? Do you not know that we don't believe a word of this large volume of folklore told by Indians and pioneers also?"
That's perfectly all right; readers may tell me that and get by with it easily; but if those brave old Indians or sturdy White Men were living, I would not advise any one to tell them that they were lying and try to get by with it.
The Noble Shawnees
Shawnee Indians who called the forest-covered hills and sheltered valleys of Hardin County, "Our Happiest Hunting Grounds," were intelligent and upright people. They would fight before they would break a trust or be- tray a friend, and their word sealed by a smoke from the peace-pipe was as good as any man's bond. It has been said that Chief Tecumseh was the wisest unlettered man that ever lived. He preached a crusade uniting Red Men to resist encroachment of Big Knives. His war trumpet was a long-necked gourd said to be five feet long. When that mighty trumpet sounded, Indian war-whoops also sounded in the din of battle. In the battle of the Thames near Lake Erie, however, Tecumseh fell; his trumpet ceased, and Indians fled to the four winds. When that wise Chief who ruled Hardin County went down to rise no more, Indian rule and gallantry also went down to rise no more. A third race had come to possess these hills.
It is said that Frederick the Great, who was the most learned man of his times, was a great admirer of history; but when he found time to read, he would say
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to his servant, "Jimmy, bring me my liar." The servant understood that the king wished his history brought to him.
All History Biased
So wise men in general have held history to be far from an unbiased report of the acts of men and nations; but it is the humble opinion of the writer of this brief sketch that the biggest untruth in all history is that biased story of the American Indian found in United States his- tories. There were hundreds of treaties entered into between Europeans and Indians, but these were all broken by White Men, except one. That one made under the historic elm with William Penn was the only one never sworn to and the only one never broken. Bancroft, the most trustworthy of American historians, says, "There was never a drop of Quaker blood shed by an Indian, or of Indian blood shed by a Quaker." They told William Penn on that famous day that they would live in peace with him and his tribe so long as the sun and moon con- tinned to shine, and they kept their word.
The facts are that domineering Big Knives broke all teatries, and tried to enslave Red Men by whole tribes. Failing in this, they proceeded to drive them from their homes and lands, shooting them down as they would shoot beasts of jungles, and because Indians would not succumb to such inhuman treatment and raised their hands in de- fense of their homes and families, American history wrote them down as savages unworthy the consideration of civilized people.
But as I was leading up to say, the Shawnees who ruled our own county were a learned people; that is, if one would be allowed to use the term "learned" for the quaint knowledge and wisdom they cultivated and re- vered. They had and wished to have only one book, but that was the "Book of Nature given by the Great Spirit." The habits and habitudes of animals, trees with their
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fruits, barks, and juices, and herbs with their healing properties were common knowledge to them. They knew the stars of the firmament and grouped them into constel- lations which agree so well with Mongolian astrology that there can be no mistake that they came from a common source. They furthermore were a chaste people, true to family vows and ties. Divorce and illegitimacy were vir- tually unknown among them.
When the deadly milk-sick plague swooped down up- on pioneer Hardin County with an awful death scourge for man and beast, settlers began to move to settlements north and west towards Vandalia, because they superstit- iously reasoned among themselves that these hills infest- ed by wicked clans were at length justly cursed by heaven's decree. However, in the time of that dire ca- lamity, it was a Shawnee medicine woman, who led Doc- tor Anna Bigsby into the forests to teach her "White Sis- ter" the cause of the milk sick plague. She showed her the deadly snake-root herb, saying that it must be first destroyed before White people and their cattle could live in these mountains.
The Shawnee's Signal System
When I assert that Shawnees used a system of wire- less telegraphy in the hills of our county, it may surprise some readers who have been schooled to that adverse view of Indians advanced by U. S. history. Pioneer Big Knives did not understand that ingenius invention, and were many times made to wonder how Red Men knew that their armies were approaching even beyond rivers and mountains. Though many times generals had taken the utmost precautions to keep strategic plans and movements from being revealed, yet in some mysterious way Indians foreknew and prepared bloody ambush attacks, or fled to safety before an army approached.
Near Indian village sites along the northern ranges
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of our county were for a long time seen what early set- tlers called "coalings." This term also later was applied to the iron mining regions of our county, because in them were many sites where charcoal had been burnt for use in blast furnaces for smelting iron. Charred wood is a lasting substance, and remained many years to mark places where Shawnees raised their signal fires.
An Indian lived so near the breast of nature that he knew winds and weather intimately. He knew the day when smoke would rise steadily towards the zenith cup of the heavens. Weather bureaus have since discovered that the Creator wisely planned to water the lands by sending vast whirlwinds from west to east collecting and distributing vapors. From two to five of these pass over us a week usually with higher wind and falling weather. But there are a few hours, often a whole day, as the een- ters of these cyclonic movements are passing, during which the air becomes very quiet, often sultry and ap- parently breathless, but during these hours the air is steadily rising and carrying smoke upward in straight columns.
The mother buzzard knows these hours and days quite well, and she leaves her bluff retreats of our coun- ty with her bevies, and without efforts of wings or pinions they circle upward, being lifted by rising currents aloft to high altitudes. where in their circles they naturally turn anti-clockwise, as all whirlwinds turn over our county, and as some timber also twists in growing.
Likewise the Shawnee's instinctive knowledge of na- ture led him to prepare for the centers of rising atmos- pheric drifts in order to send up his smoke signals from his telegraphic smoke-pit. A blue smoke spoke a certain message, a white smoke another, and a black smoke still another. At times a blue cone rose from one point, while from an adjacent hill a white cone rose, or maybe two would rise of the same color, and on the night following
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perhaps their fires would paint the heavens with a radiant glow. All these signals were read and interpreted by allied chiefs far away.
A number of these coalings were left on the Oldham Hills of our county lying near the Saline and Ohio rivers. Night fires and day columns of smoke on that high spur could be seen far up the Ohio and Wabash to the north, up the Saline to the west, and up Tread Water eastward in Kentucky. White men passed up their notices of these smoke messages, as a casual fire or burning tepee, and thought no more about it, but it came to light many years later that on the northern hills of Hardin County in pre- historic days there was a wireless system of telegraphy, and that this system explained how Red Men came to know many things, which many white people believe they received through revelations from their prophets and fortune tellers. Nevertheless this as well as other know !- edge and inventions reveal to us that Hardin County was inhabited in prehistoric days by an intelligent race, a brave and noble race of men.
This bush-whacking warfare continued in Hardin County till 1813 bloodily fought between three tribes, iu . their free-for-all war. These were the Cherokees, the Shawnees, and the Big Knives (White settlers). How- ever, it is believed that Cherokees moved on southward taking less part north of the Ohio river after 1800. It is known that Tecumseh was in Hardin County Terri- tory and in Tolu, Kentucky as late as 1808, organizing his forces against Big Knives. In 1811 William Henry Harri- son whipped the Shawnees out of Tippecanoe, their only remaining town in Indiana, and sent them scouting into the Illinois Territory.
Hardin County Abandoned
In the Wir of 1812 Tecumseh advised the Indians to join the British against the Big Knives. The British com-
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missioned him as brigadier general, but he was killed in the battle of the Thames near Detroit in 1813. After this his brother, Tenskwatawa the Prophet, took command as ruling chief of Shawnees, and virtually gave up the fight. Under his rule Shawneetown and Tolu were abondoned, and Hardin County with them, as the Shawnees moved westward along the Ozark Ranges. So at the time Illi- nois became a state in 1818 there were very few Indians in our county, and they desired peace with the Big Knives.
In 1829 the Indian Territory was set aside by the U. S. Congress as a permanent reservation for Indians. In the next few years many tribes, which had been reduced to dwindling number in their wars with Big Knives, were moved to reservations in that Territory. Among them were the Shawnees, but a few scattering families hiding in the Ozarks here and there remained here many years. They were called "Stowaways," because they had dodged officers in their work of moving Indians to western reser- vations, but they gave pioneer settlers no more trouble in the way of warfare.
From this time on Hardin County's main trouble was in establishing law and order among a lawless class of river pirates, rogues, and highwaymen, who gave her trouble for a number of years.
Gala Days of Irish Miners
The iron industry did as much later on to invite peo- pue to Hardin County, as her beautiful hills, healthful waters, and abundant food supplies had been doing from time immemorial; but here history begins, and I must close for other writers. However, many fine stories have come down to us from those gala days through the chan- nels of tradition; hence I may claim an interest in them as a writer of prehistory. Yet I shall venture only a clos- ing one. Uncle Riley Oxford who got his start in boy- hood days by hauling "pigs" (pig iron) from Martha Fur-
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nace to the Elizabethtown landing, gave the writer d good story, which reveals iron-mining times quite well.
Hardin County being the first and only mining sec- tion then in the West, very few here knew anything about iron mining. Uncle Riley said that many Irish workers who understood mining came to our county from the East, and that they were a gay set of fellows. One Sat- urday pay-day a nimble young fellow offered to wager a gallon of good whiskey that there was not a man on the job who could hit him with a club. Colonel Ferrell who was then in his prime of life and who had been somewhat of a fighter himself accepted the proffered wager.
So the bully Irishman walked out with his shillalah in hand. An Irish shillalah is a stout cudgel about the size of a large hoe handle, but not so long. The hilarious crowd found one for Col. Ferrell, and gathered around the contestants to see the shillalah bout. The Colonel struck at and punched at the young Irishman rather light- ly at first, but each of his efforts was skillfully warded off with the shillalah of the practiced Irishman.
At length the contest became more spirited and he caught a rather quick lick of Col. Ferrell's which jarred his hand painfully and angered the Colonel; whereupon he came back with a quick stroke intended to knock the bully down. Nevertheless the practiced shillalah again caught his club, jerking it from his hand and whirling it over the heads of by-standers into the brush.
Then rubbing his hand, Colonel Ferrell exclaimed, "D -- n him, fellows, draw out his gallon; I'll pay for it; pay for two before I'd fight him again!"
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.
PIONEER HARDIN COUNTY
By Robert A. Gustin
French Occupancy
In the year of 1692 the English settlers of Maryland were treated to a bit of excitement. Two hundred odd Shawnee Indians had appeared on the banks of the Sus- quehanna. There near the mouth of the river they squatted, as if they intended to make the spot their per- manent residence. Suspicious of the Indians' intentions the colonists sent officers to investigate-and found the leader was a Frenchman. Martin Chartier. Chartier was questioned and his story recorded. According to it, he must have been the first man ever to travel the length of the Ohio-and strangely enough to the English offi- cials. his journey had been eastward. Upstream, he had travelled through over a thousand miles of unknown wil- derness before he and his band reached to most western outposts of the English.
Perhaps a part of the Ohio, roughly between Pitts- burgh and the falls at Louisville, had been seen a few years previously by LaSalle. But Chartier was undoubt- edly the first of any white man on the lower five hundred miles of the river. In 1679 he had been one of the men with LaSalle, when that explorer was on the Illinois river preparing for his first exploration of the Mississippi. La- Salle's harsh treatment had caused him to desert in Jan- uary 1680. after which he had wandered to the Ohio and Wabash Valleys, where he had made friends with the Shawnees. There he had lived for several years before he with his band migrated eastward, probably to escape punishment by the French government for his desertion.
Martin Chartier: we have no definite proof, still we can feel pretty certain that he was the first White to touch what is now Hardin County, to trap its streams, explore
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its forests and hills, live within its bounds. We can pic- ture him, dressed like his Indian companions in fringed buckskin shirt and loincloth, leather leggings and mocca- sins, carrying Indian weapons, the tomahawk and knife, in his belt. a bow and arrows (little chance of him possess_ ing ammunition for a musket), beaching a canoe with a band of Shawnees before the great-mouthed cave which overlooked the Ohio. and there camping for the night, listening to his braves as they squatted before the camp- fire, telling legends of the place.
Then. before the party left the following morning on its way upstream to the creek of the licks to make a supply of salt for which the band had hungered for months, possibly Chartier scrawled his name and date among the Indian pictographs upon the cave walls. The first of all the white man names inscribed there-and like so many others, now erased by time along with the crude scrawls of French coureurs and voyageurs who for eighty years after his visit camped there on voyages between Detroit and New Orleans along the Maumee-Wabash- Ohio-Mississippi route with cargoes of furs or brandy and trade goods. Names which in turn were erased or covered by the English-speaking banditti and traders and trappers of the late seventeen hundreds, the settlers and boatmen of the eighteen hundreds, the tourists of today.
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