USA > Illinois > Jefferson County > History of Jefferson County, Illinois > Part 13
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The Mound-Builders lived while the mam- moth and mastodon were upon the earth, as is clearly proved by the carvings upon some of their elaborate stone pipes. From the size and other peculiarities of the pipes, it is in- ferred that smoking was not habitual with them, but that it was reserved as a sort of ceremonial observance. Our knowledge of the habits and customs of the Mound-Builders
* By W. H. Perrin.
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is very incomplete, but it is sufficient to show that at least a part of this country was once inhabited by a people who have passed away without leaving so much as a tradition of their existence, and who are only known to us through the silent relics which have been interred for centuries. A people utterly for- gotten, a civilization totally lost! Oblivion has drawn her impenetrable veil over their history. No printed page intelligible to us, or sculptured monument, inform us who they were, whence they came or whither they went. . In vain has science sought to pene- trate the gloom and solve the problem locked in the breast of the voiceless past, but every theory advanced, every reason assigned ends where it began, in speculation.
" Ye moldering relics of departed years,
Your names have perished; not a trace remains. Save where the grass-grown mound its summit rears From the green bosom of your native plains. Say, do your spirits wear oblivion's chains? Did death forever queneh your hopes and fears?"
There are no traces of the Mound-Builders to be found in Jefferson County. From the relics they have left of their existence, it seems they kept near the water, as the most extensive mounds and earthworks are found in the vicinity of the lakes of the North and along our great rivers. Two of the largest mounds in the United States are located in Illinois and West Virginia-the great mound in the American Bottom between Alton and East St. Louis, denominated the "Monarch of all similar structures in the United States," and that located near the junction of Grave Creek with the Ohio River in West Virginia. Along the Illinois and Wabash Rivers, many of these mounds may still be seen, though hundreds of the smaller ones have been leveled with the earth by the plow- share. At Palestine and Hutsonville, Ill., and at Merom, Ind., on the Wabash River,
are extensive groups. The Hutsonville group contains fifty-nine mounds, and vary in size from eighteen to fifty feet in diameter at the base: They were scientifically examined a few years ago by Prof. Putnam, of Boston, who made an extended report of them to the Boston Historical Society.
The Indians .- Of the Red Indians, but lit- tle is known of them prior to the discovery of the country by the Europeans. They were found here, but how long they had been in possssion historians have no definite means of knowing. Their origin is a ques- tion that has long interested archæologists, and is one of the most difficult they have been called on to answer. Many theories upon the subject are entertained, but all, alike, are more or less unsatisfactory. It is believed by some that they were an original race, indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. A more common supposition, however, is that they are a derivative race, and sprang from one or more of the ancient peoples of Asia. In the absence of all authentic history, and even when tradition is wanting, any attempt to point the particular theater of their ori- gin must prove unsuccessful. For centuries they have lived without progress, while the Caucasian variety of the race, under the transforming power of art, science and im- proved systems of civil polity. have made the most rapid advancement.
The advent of the whites upon the shores of the western continent engendered in the red man's bosom a spark of jealousy, which, by the impolitic course of the former, was soon fanned into a blaze, and a contest was thereby inaugurated that sooner or later must end in the utter extermination of the lat- ter. But the struggle was long and bitter. Many a campaign was planned by warriors worthy and fit to command armies, for the destruction of the pale-faced invaders.
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When King Philip struck the blow which he hoped would forever crush the growing power of the white men, both sides recog- nized the supreme importance of the contest, and the courage and resources of the New England colonists were taxed to the utmost to avoid a defeat which meant destruction final and complete. When Tecumseh organ- ized the tribes of the West for a last and desperate effort to hold their own against the advancing tide of civilization, it was a duel to the death, and the conquerors were forced to pay dearly for the victory which to them was salvation. When the Creeks chal- lenged the people of the South to mortal combat, it required the genius of a Jackson and soldiers worthy of such a chief to avert an overwhelming calamity, and the laurels gathered by the heroes of Talledega, Emuck- fau, and Tohopeka lost little of their luster when with them were twined the laurels of Chalmette. But since the decisive battle of Tohopeka, March 27, 1814, there has been no Indian war of any considerable magni- tude, none certainly which threatened the supremacy of the whites upon the continent, or even seriously jeopardized the safety of the States or Territories where they occurred. The Black Hawk war, about the last organized effort, required but a few weeks service of raw militia to quell. Since then, campaigns have dwindled into mere raids, battles into mere skirmishes, and the mas- sacre of Dade's command in Florida and Custer's in Montana were properly regarded as accidents of no permanent importance. A dozen such, melancholy as they might be, would not, in the least, alarm the country, and Indian fighting, though not free from peril, now serves a useful purpose as a train- ing school for the young graduates of West Point, who might otherwise go to their graves at a good old age without ever having smelled hostile gun powder.
The Indians as a race are doomed by the inexorable laws of humanity to speedy and everlasting extinguishment. Accepting the inevitable with the stoical indifference which the instinct of self-preservation or the prompting of revenge seldom disturb, they excite pity rather than fear. The recent Apache nprising, which Gen. Crook sup- pressed so quickly and cheaply, is the ut- most the red man can now do in the way of warlike enterprise. Discouraged and de- moralized, helpless and hopeless, he sits down to await a swiftly approaching fate; and if now and then he treads the war path and takes a few white scalps, it is more from force of habit than from any expectation of crippling the power that is sweeping him and his out of existence.
Two hundred years ago, however, the white man lived in America only by the red man's consent, and less than a hundred years ago the combined strength of the red man might have driven the white into the sea. Along our Atlantic coast are still to be seeu the remains of the rude fortifications which the early settlers built to protect themselves from the host of enemies around; but to find the need of such protection now one must go beyond the Mississippi, beyond the Rocky Mountains, to a few widely scattered points in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon. The enemy that once camped in sight of the At- lantic has retreated almost to the shores of the Pacific, and from that long retreat there can be no returning advance. East of the stream which he called the "Father of Waters," nothing is left of the Indian ex- cept the names he gave and the graves of his dead, with here and there the degraded remnants of a once powerful tribe dragging out a miserable life by the sufferance of their conquerors. Fifty years hence, if not in a much shorter period, he will live only in the pages of history and the brighter im-
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mortality of romantic song and story. He will leave nothing behind him but a memory, for he has done nothing and been nothing. He has resisted and will continue to resist every attempt to civilize him-every at- tempt to inject the white man's ideas into the red man's brain. He does not want and will not have our manners, our morals or our religion, clinging to his own and perish- ing with them. The greatest redeeming feature in his career, so far as that career is known to ns, is that he has always preferred the worst sort of freedom to the best sort of slavery. Had he consented to become a hewer of wood and drawer of water for the superior race, he might, like our American- ized Africans, be enjoying the blessings of Bible and breeches, sharing the honors of citizenship and the delights of office, seeking and receiving the bids of rival political par- ties. Whether his choice was a wise one, we leave our readers to determine ; but it is impossible not to feel some admiration for the indomitable spirit that has never bowed its neck to the' yoke, never called any man " master." The Indian is a savage, but he never was, never will be a slave.
If the treatment of the red man by the white had been uniformly or even generally honest and honorable, the superior race might contemplate the decay and disap- pearance of the inferior without remorse, if not without regret. But unfortunately that treatment has been, on the whole, dishonest and dishonorable. In a speech in New York City, not long before his death, Gen. Sam Houston, an indisputable authority in such matters, declared with solemn emphasis that "there never was an Indian war in which the white man was not the agressor." The facts sustain an assertion which carries its own comment. But aggression leading to war is not the heaviest sin against the Indian. He
has been deceived, he has been cheated, he has been robbed; and the deception, cheat- ing and robbery has taught him that the red man has no rights which the white man feels bound to respect. Whatever else he may be, he is no fool, and with the dismal experience of more than 250 years burning his soul, is it any wonder that they will have none of our manners, our morals, or our religion ? " My son," said the mother of a too often whipped boy, "why will you not behave like a gentleman?" " If you did not treat me like a dog, I might," was the reply. We have treated the Indian like a dog and are surprised that he has de- veloped into a dog and not into a Christian citizen. There is no reason to suppose that the Indian is capable of a high degree of civ- lization, but that he is what he is may be largely ascribed to white influences and ex- amples, and to what he has suffered from the | whites since the first European landed on American soil. Every spark of genuine manhood has been literally ground out of him by the heel of relentless oppression and outrage. He was always a barbarian, but we have made him a brute. He might, perhaps. have been gradually transformed into a hum- ble and harmless member of civilized society. We have made him a nuisance and a curse whose extermination the interests of society imperatively demand-and are rapidly ac- complshing. The crimes of the Indian have been blazoned in a hundred histories; his wrongs are written only in the records of that court of final appeal, before which op- pressors and oppressed must stand for judg- ment.
But few people, and particularly the pio- neers of the country, will agree with any de- fense, be it ever so feeble, of the Indian. Their hatred of him, often on general prin- ciples, is intense, and always was so, and
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the greatest wrongs have been heaped upon him merely because he was an Indian, utterly regardless of the fact that he was a human being. When resenting the encroachments of the whites upon his hunting grounds, he has been characterized as a fiend, a savage and a barabarian, and one who might be robbed, mistreated, and even murdered without any compunction. This whole broad land was the Indian's birthright. How he came to possess it is no business of ours, nor is it pertinent to the subject. It is our own now, and it is a matter of grave doubt whether we attained it more honorably than did the In- dian before us. Were our title to be chal- lenged by another race of people, we doubt- less should do as the Indians did, contest our rights step by step to the bitter end, and with all our boasted civilization and retine- ment, it is not improbable that we might in- augurate as great barbarities and cruelties as they did, rather than yield our homes and firesides.
Tribes of Southern Illinois .- The Indians occupying Southern Illinois when first known to the whites were the Delawares, the Kickapoos, the Shawnees and the Pianke- shaws, with occasional fragmentary bands from the tribes who came to hunt. The Del- awares were once a powerful tribe, one of the most powerful of North America. They called themselves Leuno Lenape, which sig- nities "original " or " unmixed " men. When first met with by Europeans, they occupied a district of country bounded easterly by the Hudson River and the Atlantic, on the west their territories extended to the ridge sepa- rating the flow of the Delaware from the other streams empyting into the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay. The Delawares had been a migratory people. According to their own traditions, many hundred years had elapsed since they had resided in the
western part of the continent; thence, by slow emigration, they reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the " Allegewi," against whom they (the Dela wares) and the Iroquois (the latter also em- igrants from the West) carried on successful war; and still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions. By the other Algonquin tribes, the Delawares were re- garded with the utmost respect and venera- tion. They were called " fathers," " grand- fathers," etc. *
A paper addressed to Congress, May 10, 1779, establishes the territory of the Dela- wares subsequent to their being driven west- ward from their former possessions by their old enemies, the Iroquois, in the following described boundaries: " From the mouth of the Alleghany River at Fort Pitt to the Ve- nango, and thence up French Creek and by Le Bœuf (the present site of Waterford, Penn.) along the old road to Presque Isle on the east: the Ohio River, including all the islands in it, from Fort Pitt to the Oubache (Wabash), on the south; thence up the Oubache River to that branch. Ope-co- mee-cah (the Indian name of White River, Indiana), and up the same to the head thereof; from thence to the head-waters and springs of the Great Miami, or Rocky River; thence across to the head-waters of the most northeastern branches of the Scioto River; thence to the westermost springs of the San- dusky River; thence down said river, in- cluding the islands in it and in the little lake (Sandusky Bay), to Lake Erie on the west and northwest, and Lake Erie on the north." These boundaries contain the cessions of lands made to the Delaware na- tion by the Wyandots, the Hurons and the
*Taylor's History.
f.
James lo Baldridge
LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
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HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY.
Iroquois. The Delawares, after Gen. Wayne's signal victory in 1794, came to realize that. further contests with the American colouies would be worse than useless. They there- fore submitted to the inevitable, acknowl- edged the supremacy of the whites and de- sired to make peace with the victors. At the close of the treaty at Greenville, made in 1795. by Gen. Wayne, Bu-kon-ge-he-las, a Delaware chief of great influence in his tribe, spoke as follows: "Father, your chil- dren all well understand the sense of the treaty which is now concluded. We expe- rience daily proofs of your increasing kind- ness. I hope we may all have sense enough to enjoy our dawning happiness. All who know me, know me to be a man and a war- rior, and I now declare that I will for the future be as steady and true friend to the United States as I have, heretofore, been an active enemy."
This promise of Bu-kon-ge-he-las was faithfully kept by his people. They evaded all the efforts of the Shawnee prophet, Tecumseh, and the British, who endeavored to induce them by threats or bribes to vio- lato it. They remained faithful to the United States during the war of 1812, and, with the Shawnees, furnished some very able warriors and scouts who rendered vai- uable services to the United States during the war. After the Greenviile treaty, the great body of the Delawares removed to their lands on White River, Indiana. Whither some of their people had preceded them, while a large fragment of the tribe crossed the Wabash into Southern Illinois. Now and then predatory bands committed ontriges on the scattered settlers, but on a small scale. They continued to reside on White River and the Wabash and their trib utaries until 1819, when most of them emi- grated to Missouri and located on the tract i now bears their name. Some of them went 2
of land granted by the Spanish authorities in 1793, jointly to them and the Shawnees. Others of their tribe, who remained in Illi- nois, finally scattered themselves among the Miamis. Pottawatomies and Kickapoos, and a few, including the Moravian converts, went to Canada, and their identity as part of a distinct tribe is lost.
The largest part of the Delaware nation in 182 , settled on the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. They numbered 1,000, were brave. enterprising hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853, they sold the Government all the lands granted them, excepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late civil war. they sent to the United States Army 170 out of their 200 able-bodied men. Like their ancestors, they proved valiant and trustworthy sokliers.
The Shawnese or Shawanese were an erratic tribe of the Algonquin family. A tradition recently originated makes them primarily one with the Kickapoo nation. They were driven southward by the warlike Iroquois and wandered into the Carolinas and some of them into Florida. But toward the close of the seventeenth century a large band of them went North and was among the tribos occupying Pennsylvania when it was granted to Penn. The Iroquois claimed sovereignty over the Shawnees and drove thom to the West. They took part in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and afterward participated in the campaigns against Gens. Harmar and St. (flair in Ohio. For many years they were bitter and relentless foes of the whites. They submitted under the treaty of Gen. Wayne at Greenville in 1795, but in the war of 1812 some of the potty tribes of the Shawnees joined the British. A fragment of the tribe drifted to Southern Illinois, and had their village at Shawneetown. which place
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West after the Greenville treaty, and a few years after the close of the war of 1812 most of those remaining crossed the Father of Waters. In 1854, there were about 900 Shaw- nees in Kansas, and in 1876 there were some 750 in the Indian Territory.
The Kickapoos were also a tribe of the Algonquin family, and were found by the French missionaries toward the close of the seventeenth century on the Wis. consin River. They were closely allied to the Miamis, but roved in bands over a large territory. They were more civ- ilized, industrious, energetic and cleanly than the neighboring tribes, and, it may also be added, more implacable in their hatred of the Americans. They were among the first to commence battle and the last to enter into treaties. Unappeasable enmity led them into the field against Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, and a like spirit placed them first in all the bloody charges on the field of Tip- pecanoe. In the treaties of Portage des Sioux in 1815, Fort Harrison, 1816, and Edwards- ville, 1819, they ceded a large part of the land they claimed. Many of the tribes had already gone beyond the Mississippi, and the United States assigned them a large tract on the Osage. But they still retained their old enmity to the Americans, and when removed from Illinois a part of them went to Texas, then a province of Mexico, to get be- yond the jurisdiction of the United States. In 1822, about 1,800 had removed, leaving only 400 remaining in Illinois. Some few of these settled down to cultivate the ground, but more of them rambled off to hunt on the grounds of Southern tribes. They plun- dered on all sides and made constant inroads, killing and horse-stealing. During the years 1810 and 1811, and prior to the emigration of any of them to the West, they committed so many thefts and murders on the frontier
settlements in conjunction with the Chippe- was, Pottawatomies and Ottawas, that Gov Edwards was compelled to employ military force to suppress them.
The Piankeshaws'were a weak, petty tribe, and supposed to have been an offshoot of the Shawnees. They at one time inhabited and claimed the country for some distance on both sides of the Wabash River toward its mouth, and northwest to the head-waters of the Kaskaskia River. This comprises a brief sketch of the different tribes of the "noble red men" who inhabited Southern Illinois, and who doubtless have chased the deer and hunted the game through the woodland groves and prairies of Jefferson County. The Piankeshaws, however, seem to have been the Indians who held a kind of claim on this immediate section of the country. "But what is remarkable," says Mr. Johnson, " they have not left a single name of prairie, town or stream that may remain as a monument to tell the world that such a tribe ever existed." All the Indians of Southern Illinois were driven back finally by stronger tribes coming down from the North. They lost the proud spirit characteristic of their race, cowered around the white settlements for protection and abandoned themselves to indolence and drunkenness.
From the time of the first white settlements in this county, occasional bands of Indians made incursions for hunting and traffic. They carried their pelts to Shawneetown, Kaskaskia and St. Louis, and in return brought back a variety of articles which they bartered away among the white settlers. In 1819-20, the Delawares came through the county on their way to their Western reservation. From some cause or other, they remained here a considerable time. A large number of them were encamped on the creek near where John Pearcy lives, under a
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chief called George Owl. There were also some 600 encamped for a time on Horse Creek, some eight or ten miles from Mount Vernon, under Capt. Whitefeather. They sent loads of pelts to Shawneetown and Kas- kaskia, bringing back many things the set- tlers could not have procured elsewhere. They also sold hunting shirts, breeches and moccasins (of buck-skin) of their own make to the whites. Another band was encamped where George Bullock's meadow is now. The chief, it is said, had some pretty daugh- ters, and when, at his urgent request, Isaac Casey's daughters paid them a visit, the old chief seemed very much delighted and was as polite toward them as a French dancing master. While these Indians were encamped in the county, they remained on the most friendly terms with the settlers, and were polite (as an Indian could be) and extremely hospitable. If any of the whites visited them at meal time, they were invited to eat, and if they refused, the Indians felt offend- ed; but on the contrary, if they accepted, they (the Indians) were highly pleased and all sat back and waited till their pale face guests were through eating.
No murders or massacres are positively known to have been committed in the county by the Indians. The only probable murder was that of Andrew Moore, an account of which will be found in connection with the early settlement. A little panic occurred in 1818, but resulted in nothing more than a considerable scare. The facts are about as follows: The Cherokees, who occupied the western part of Kentucky, made occasional visits to this part of Illinois. They were less peaceably disposed than the Illinois Indians, and a band of them caused the panic alluded to, the only instance of the kind known in the history of Jefferson County. Isaac Casey and William and Isaac Hicks had oc-
casion to go to the Ohio River on business, and Abram and Clark Casey were left in charge of the families. Soon after they left, | small squads of Indians came about the cabin, acting in a rather suspicious manner, greatly alarming the whites. Some time during the night a noise was heard, which their fear magnified into a probable attack or preparations for one, and gathering up their arms, they beat a hasty retreat-" fall- ing back in good order"-to William Casey's cabin, where they spent the night -- a prey to dismal forebodings. The night passed, how- ever, without any attack being made, and with the morning's light their courage re- turned. They went back home, where they found things undisturbed, and then enjoyed a hearty laugh at their needless scare.
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