USA > Illinois > Jefferson County > History of Jefferson County, Illinois > Part 11
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Chicago is in the field almost alone, to handle the wealth of one fourth of the ter- ritory of this great republic. This strip of seacoast divides its margins between Port- land, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Savannah or some other great port to be created for the South in the next decade. But Chicago has a dozen em- pires casting their treasures into her lap. Ou a bed of coal that can run all the ma- chinery of the world for 500 centuries; in a garden feed the racc by the thousand years; at the head of the lakes that give her a temperature as a summer resort equaled by no great city in the land; with a climate that insures the health of her citizens; surrounded by all the great de- posits of natural wealth in mines and forests and herds, Chicago is the wonder of to-day, and will be the city of the future.
MASSACRE AT FORT DEARBORN.
During the war of 1812, Fort Dearborn became the theater of stirring events. The garrison consisted of fifty-four men under command of Captain Nathan Heald, assisted by Lieutenant Helm (son-in-law of Mrs. Kinzie) and Ensign Ronan. Dr. Voorhees was surgeon. The only residents at the post at that time were the wives of Captain Heald and Lieutenant Helm, and a few of the soldiers, Mr. Kinzie and his family, and a few Canadian voyageurs, with their wives and children. The sol- diers and Mr. Kinzie were on mnost friendly terms with the Pottawatomies and Win-
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nebagoes, the principal tribes around them, but they could not win them from their attachment to the British.
One evening in April, 1812, Mr. Kinzie sat playing on his violin and his children were daneing to the musie, when Mrs. Kin- zie eame rushing into the house pale with terror, and exelaiming: "The Indians! the Indians!" " What? where?" eagerly in- quired Mr. Kinzie. "Up at Lee's, killing and scalping," answered the frightened mother, who, when the alarm was given, was attending Mrs. Barnes (just confined) living not far off. Mr. Kinzie and his family crossed the river and took refuge in the fort, to which place Mrs. Barnes and her infant not a day old, were safely eon- veyed. The rest of the inhabitants took shelter in the fort. This alarm was caused by a sealping party of Winnebagoes, who hovered about the fort several days, when they disappeared, and for several weeks the inhabitants were undisturbed.
On the 7th of August, 1812, General Hull, at Detroit, sent orders to Captain Heald to evacuate Fort Dearborn, and to distribute all the United States property to the Indians in the neighborhood-a most insane order. The Pottawatomie ehief who brought the dispatch had more wisdom than the commanding general. He ad- vised Captain IIeald not to make the distribution. Said he: "Leave the fort and stores as they are, and let the Indians make distribution for themselves; and while they are engaged in the business, the white people may eseape to Fort Wayne."
Captain Heald held a council with the In- dians on the afternoon of the 12th, in which his officers refused to join, for they had been
informed that treachery was designed- that the Indians intended to murder the white people in the council, and then destroy those in the fort. Captain IIeald, however, took the precaution to open a port-hole displaying a eannon pointing di- reetly upon the council, and by that means saved his life.
Mr. Kinzie, who knew the Indians well, begged Captain Heald not to confide in their promises, nor distribute the arms and munitions among them, for it would only put power into their hands to destroy the whites. Acting upon this advice, Heald resolved to withhold the munitions of war; and on the night of the 13th after the dis- tribution of the other property had been made, the powder, ball and liquors were thrown into the river, the muskets broken up and destroyed.
Black Partridge, a friendly chief, eame to Captain Heald and said: "Linden birds have been singing in my ears to-day; be careful on the march you are going to take." On that night vigilant Indians had crept near the fort and discovered the destruction of their promised booty going on within. The next morning the powder was seen floating on the surface of the river. The savages were exasperated and made loud complaints and threats.
On the following day when preparations were making to leave the fort, and all the inmates were deeply impressed with a sense of impending danger, Capt. Wells, an unele of Mrs. Heald, was discovered upon the Indian trail among the sand hills on the borders of the lake, not far distant, with a band of mounted Miamis, of whose tribe he was chief, having been adopted by the famous Miami warrior, Little Turtle.
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When news of Hull's surrender reached Fort Wayne, he had started with this force to assist Heald in defending Fort Dearborn. He was too late. Every means for its defense had been destroyed the night be- fore, and arrangements were made for leav- ing the fort on the morning of the 15th.
It was a warm, bright morning in the middle of August. Indications were posi- tive that the savages intended to murder the white people; and when they moved out of the southern gate of the fort, the march was like a funeral procession. The band, feeling the solemnity of the occasion, struck up the Dead March in Saul.
Capt. Wells, who had blackened his face with gun-powder in token of his fate, took the lead with his band of Miamis, followed by Captain Heald with his wife by his side on horseback. Mr. Kinzie hoped by his personal influence to avert the impending blow, and therefore accompanied them, leaving his family in a boat in charge of a friendly Indian, to be taken to his trading station at the site of Niles, Michigan, in the event of his death.
The procession moved slowly along the lake shore till they reached the sand hills between the prairie and the beach, when the Pottawatomie escort, under the lead- ership of Blackbird, filed to the right, placing those hills between them and the white people. Wells, with his Miamis, had kept in the advance. They suddenly came rushing back, Wells exclaiming, "They are about to attack ns; form instantly." These words were quickly followed by a storm of bullets which came whistling over the little hills which the treacherous savages had made the covert for their mur- derous attack. The white troops charged
upon the Indians, drove them back to the prairie, and then the battle was waged be- tween fifty-four soldiers, twelve civilians and three or four women (the cowardly Miamis having fled at the outset) against five hundred Indian warriors. The white people, hopeless, resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Ensign Ronan wielded his weapon vigorously, even after falling upon his knees weak from the loss of blood. Capt. Wells, who was by the side of his niece, Mrs. Heald, when the conflict began, behaved with the greatest coolness and courage. He said to her, " We have not the slightest chance for life. We must part to meet no more in this world. God bless you." And then he daslied forward. Seeing a young warrior, painted like a demon, climb into a wagon in which were twelve children, and toma- hawk them all, he cried out, unmindful of his personal danger, " If that is your game, butchering women and children, I will kill too." He spurred his horse towards the Indian camp, where they had left their squaws and papooses, hotly pursued by swift-footed young warriors, who sent bul- lets whistling after him. One of these killed his horse and wounded him severely in the leg. With a yell the young braves rushed to make him their prisoner and re- serve him for torture. He resolved not to be made a captive, and by the use of the most provoking epithets tried to induce them to kill him instantly. He called a fiery young chief a squaw, when the en- raged warrior killed Wells instantly with his tomahawk, jumped upon his body, cnt out his heart, and ate a portion of the warm morsel with savage delight !
In this fearful combat women bore a
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conspicuous part. Mrs. Heald was an ex- cellent equestrian and an expert in the use of the rifle. She fought the savages bravely, receiving several severe wounds. Though faint from the loss of blood, she managed to keep her saddle. A savage raised his toma- hawk to kill her, when she looked him full in the face, and with a sweet smile and in a gentle voice said, in his own language, "Surely you will not kill a squaw !" The arm of the savage fell, and the life of the heroic woman was saved.
Mrs. Helm, the step-daughter of Mr. Kinzie, had an encounter with a stont In- dian, who attempted to tomahawk her. Springing to one side, she received the glancing blow on her shoulder. and at the same instant seized the savage round the neck with her arms and endeavored to get hold of his scalping knife, which hung in a sheath at his breast. While she was thus struggling she was dragged from her antag- onist by another powerful Indian, who bore her, in spite of her struggles, to the margin of the lake and plunged her in. To her astonishment she was held by him so that she would not drown, and she soon per- ceived that she was in the hands of the friendly Black Partridge, who had saved her life.
The wife of Sergeant Holt, a large and powerful woman, behaved as bravely as an Amazon. She rode a fine, high-spirited horse, which the Indians coveted, and several of them attacked her with the butts of their guns, for the purpose of dismount- ing her; but she used the sword which she had snatched from her disabled husband so skillfully that she foiled them; and, sud- denly wheeling her horse, she dashed over the prairie, followed by the savages shout-
ing, " The brave woman! the brave woman! Don't hurt her!" They finally overtook her, and while she was fighting them in front, a powerful savage came up behind her, seized her by the neck and dragged her to the ground. Horse and woman were made captive. Mrs. IIok was a long time a eaptive among the Indians, but was afterward ransomed.
In this sharp conflict two thirds of the white people were slain and wounded, and all their horses, baggage and provision were lost. Only twenty-eight straggling men now remained to fight five hundred Indians rendered furious by the sight of blood. They succeeded in breaking through the ranks of the innrderers and gaining a slight eminence on the prairie near the Oak Woods. The Indians did not pursue, bnt gathered on their flanks, while the chiefs held a consultation on the sand-hills, and showed signs of willingness to parley. It would have been madness on the part of the whites to renew the fight; and so Capt. Heald went forward and met Blackbird on the open prairie, where terms of sur- render were agreed upon. It was arranged that the white people should give up their arms to Blackbird, and that the survivors should become prisoners of war, to be ex- changed for ransoms as soon as practicable. With this understanding captives and cap- tors started for the Indian camp near the fort, to which Mrs. IIelm had been taken bleeding and suffering by Black Partridge, and had met her step-father and learned that her husband was safe.
A new scene of horror was now opened at the Indian eamp. The wounded, not being included in the surrender, as it was interpreted by the Indians, and the British
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general, Proctor, having offered a liberal bounty for American scalps, delivered at Malden, nearly all the wounded men were killed and scalped, and price of the trophies was afterward paid by the British govern- ment.
This celebrated Indian chief, Shabbona, deserves more than a passing notice. Al- though he was not so conspicuous as Tecumseh or Black Hawk, yet in point of merit he was superior to either of them.
Shabbona was born at an Indian village on the Kankakee River, now in Will Connty about the year 1775. While young he was made chief of the band, and went to Shab- bona Grove, now De Kalb County, where they were found in the early settlement of the county.
In the war of 1812, Shabbona, with his warriors, joined Tecumseh, was aid to that great chief, and stood by his side when he fell at the battle of the Thames. At the time of the Winnebago war, in 1827, he visited almost every village among the Pot- tawatomies, and by his persuasive argu- ments prevented them from taking part in the war. By request of the citizens of Chicago, Shabbona, accompanied by Billy Caldwell (Sauganash), visited Big Foot's village at Geneva Lake, in order to pacify the warriors, as fears were entertained that they were about to raise the tomahawk against the whites. Here Shabbona was taken prisoner by Big Foot, and his life threatened, but on the following day was set at liberty. From that time the Indians (through reproach) styled him " the white man's friend," and many times his life was endangered.
Before the Black Hawk war, Shabbona met in council at two different times, and
by his influence prevented his people from taking part with the Sacs and Foxes. After the death of Black Partridge and Senachwine, no chief among the Pottawat- omies exerted so much influence as Shab- bona. Black Hawk, aware of this influ- ence, visited him at two different times, in order to enlist him in his cause, but was unsuccessful. While Black Hawk was a prisoner at Jefferson Barracks, he said, had it not been for Shabbona the whole Potta- watomie nation would have joined his standard, and he could have continued the war for years.
To Shabbona many of the early settlers of Illinois owe the preservation of their lives, for it is a well-known fact, had he not notified the people of their danger, a large portion of them would have fallen victims to the tomahawk of savages. By saving the lives of whites he endangered his own, for the Sacs and Foxes threatened to kill him, and made two attempts to execute their threats. They killed Pypeogee, his son, and Pyps, his nephew, and hunted him down as though he was a wild beast.
Shabbona had a reservation of two sec. tions of land at his Grove, but by leaving it and going West for a short time, the Government declared the reservation for- feited, and sold it the same as other vacant land. On Shabbona's return, and finding his possessions gone, he was very sad and broken down in spirit, and left the Grove forever. The citizens of Ottawa raised money and bought him a tract of land on the Illinois River, above Seneca, in Grundy County, on which they built a honse, and supplied him with means to live on. He lived here until his death, which occurred on the 17th of July, 1859, in the eighty-
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fourth year of his age, and was buried with great pomp in the cemetery at Morris. His squaw, Pokanoka, was drowned in Mazon Creek, Grundy County, on the 30th of November, 1864, and was buried by his side.
In 1861 subscriptions were taken up in
many of the river towns, to erect a monu- ment over the remains of Shabbona, but the war breaking out, the enterprise was abandoned. Only a plain marble slab marks the resting-place of this friend of the white man.
PART II.
HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY.
PART II.
HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY 1
CHAPTER I .*
INTRODUCTORY-GEOLOGY AND ITS PRACTICAL VALUE-HOW THOROUGHLY TO EDUCATE TIIE FARMERS-WHY THEY SHOULD UNDERSTAND THE GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS OF THE LAND THEY TILL-AGE OF THE EARTH ACCORDING TO THE RESEARCH OF THE GEOLOGISTS-LOCAL GEOLOGY-CONFIGURATION- SOILS AND TIMBER-MINERALS AND MINERAL SPRINGS-BUILDING MATERIALS, ETC.
" The little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years."
T HERE is no question of such deep in- terest as the geological history of that particular portion of the country in which we make our homes. The people of Southern Illinois are an agricultural people in their pursuits. Their first care is the soil and climate, and it is in them they may find an almost inexhaustible fund of knowledge, that will ever put money in their coffers. All mankind are deeply interested in the soil. From it comes all life, all beauty, pleasure, wealth and enjoyment. Of itself, it may not be a beautiful thing, but from it comes the fragrant flower, the golden fields, the sweet blush of the maiden's cheek, the flash of the lustrous eye, that is more powerful to subdue the heart of obdurate man than an army with banners. From it spring the great, rich cities, whose towers, and temples, and minarets kiss the early morning sun, and whose ships, with their precious cargoes,
fleck every sea. In short, it is the nourish- ing mother whence comes our high civiliza- tion -- the wealth of nations, the joys and ex- alted pleasures of life.
The corner-stone upon which all life rests is the farmer, who tickles the earth, and it laughs with the rich harvests that so bounti- fully bless mankind. Who, then, should be so versed in the knowledge of the soil as the farmer? What other information can be so valuable to him as the mastery of the science of geology, that much of it, at least, as ap- plies to the portion of the earth where he has cast his fortunes and cultivates the soil ? We talk of educating the farmer, and ordi- narily this means to send the boys to college, to acquire what is termed a classical educa- tion, and they come back, perhaps, as grad- uates, as incapable of telling the geological story of their father's farm as of describing the color and shape of last year's clouds. How much more of practical value it would have been to the young man had he never looked into the classics, and instead thereof
* By W. H. Perrin.
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had taken a few practical lessons in the local geology that would have told him the story of the soil around him, and enabled him to comprehend how it was formed, its different qualities and from whence it came and its constituent elements. The farmer grows to be an old man, and he will tell you he has learned to be a good farmer only by a long life of laborious experiments; and if you should tell him that these experiments had made him a scientific farmer, he would look with a good deal of contempt upon your sup- posed effort to poke ridicule at him. He has taught himself to regard the word " science" as the property only of bookworms and cranks. He does not realize that every step in farm- ing is a purely scientific operation, because science is made by experiments and investi- gations. An old farmer may examine a soil and tell you that it is adapted to wheat or corn, that it is warm, or cold and heavy, or a few other facts that this long experience has taught him, and to that extent, he is a scien- tific farmer. He will tell you that his knowl- edge has cost him much labor, and many sore disappointments. Suppose that in his youth a well-digested chapter on the geological his- tory, that would have told him in the sim- plest terms, all about the land he was to culti- vate, how invaluable the lesson would have been, and how much in money value it would have proved to him. In other words, if you could give your boys a practical education. made up of a few lessons pertaining to those subjects that immediately concern their lives, how invaluable such an education might be, and how many men would thus be saved the pangs and penalties of ill-directed lives.
The parents often spend much money in the education of their children, and from this they build great hopes upon their fut. ure that are often blasted, not through the fault, always, of the child, but through the
error of the parent in not being able to know in what real, practical education consists. If the schools of the country, for instance, could devote one of the school months in each year to rambling over the hills and the fields, and gathering practical lessons in the geology and botany of the section of country in which the children were born and reared, how incomparably more valuable and useful the time thus spent would be to them in after life, than would the present mode of shutting out the sunshine of life, and spend- ing both life and vitality in studying meta- physical mathematics, or the most of the other text-books, that impart nothing that is worth the carrying home to the child's stock of knowledge. At all events, the chapter in the county's history, or in the history of any community or country, that tells its geolog- ical formation, is of first importance to all its people, and if properly prepared it will be- come a source of great interest to all, and do much to disseminate a better education among the people, and thus be a perpetual blessing to the community.
The permanent effects of the soil on the people are as strong and certain as they are upon the vegetation that springs from it. It is a maxim in geology that the soil and its underlying rocks forecast unerringly to the trained eye the character of the people, the number and the quality of the civ- ilization of those who will, in the com- ing time, occupy it. Indeed, so close are the relations of the geology and the people that this law is plain and fixed, that a new coun- try may have its outlines of history written when first looked upon; and it is not, as so many suppose, one of those deep, abstruse subjects that are to be given over solely to a few great investigators and thinkers, and to the masses must forever remain a sealed book. Our youths may learn the important outlines
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of the geology of their country with no more difficulty than they meet in mastering the multiplication table or the simple rule of three. And we make no question that a youth need not possess one-half of the men- tal activity and shrewduess in making a fair geologist of himself that he would find was required of him to become a skillful manip- ulator of cards or a successful jockey.
On the geological structure of a country depend the pursuits of its inhabitants, and the genius of its civilization. Agriculture is the outgrowth of a fertile soil; mining re- sults from mineral resources, and from nav- igable rivers spring navies and commerce. Every great branch of (industry requires, for its successful devolopment, the cultivation of kindred arts and sciences. Phases of life and modes of thought are thus induced, which give to different communities and States characters as various as the diverso rocks that underlie them. In like manner it may be shown that their moral and intellectual qualities depend on mater- ial conditions. Where the soil and sub- jacent rocks are profuse in the bestowal of wealth, man is indolent and effeminate; where effort is required to live, he becomes enlightened and virtuous. A perpetually mild climate and bread growing upon the trees will produce only ignorant savages. The heaviest misfortune that has so long en- vironed poor, persecuted Ireland has been her ability to produce the potato, and thus subsist wife and children upon a small patch of ground. Statistics tell us that the num- ber of marriages are regulated by the price of corn, and the true philosopher has dis- covered that the invention of gunpowder did more to civilize the world than any one thing in its history.
Geology traces the history of the earth back through successive stages of develop-
ment to its rudimental condition in a state of fusion. The sun, and the planetary sys- tem that revolves around it, were originally a common mass, that became separated in a gaseous state, and the loss of heat in a planet reduced it to an elastic state, and thus it com- menced to write its own history, and place its records upon these imperishable books, where the geologist may go and read the strange, eventful story. The earth was a wheeling ball of fire, and the cooling event- ually formed the exterior crust, and in the slow process of time prepared the way for the animal and vegetable life it now con- tains. In its center, the fierce flames still rage with undiminished energy. Volcanoes are outlets for these deep-seated fires, where are generated those tremendous forces, an illus- tration of which is given in the eruptious of Vesuvius, which has thrown a jet of lava, re- sembling a column of flame, 10,000 feet high. The amount of lava ejected at a sin- gle eruption from one of the volcanoes of Iceland has been estimated at 40,000,000,- 000 tons, a quantity sufficient to cover a large city with a mountain as high as the tallest Alps. Our world is yet constantly congealing, just as the process has been con- stautly going on for billions of years, and yet the rocky crust that rests upon this inter- nal fire is estimated to be only between thirty and forty miles in thickness. In the silent depths of the stratified rocks are the former creation of plants and animals, which lived and died during the slow, dragging centuries of their formation. These fossil remains are fragments of history, which enable the geol- ogist to extend his researches far back into the realms of the past, and not only deter- mine their former modes of life, but study the contemporaneous history of their rocky beds, and group them into systems. And such has been the profusion of life, that the
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