History of Madison County, Illinois With biographical sketches, Part 6

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co.
Number of Pages: 698

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PRESENT CONDITION OF THE NORTH-WEST.

In former chapters we have traced briefly the discoveries, settlements, wars, and most important events which have occurred in the large area of country denominated the

* American State Papers

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

north-west, and we now turn to the contemplation of its growth and prosperity. Its people are among the most intelligent and enterprising in the Union. The population is steadily increasing, the arts and sciences are gaining a stronger foothold, the trade area of the region is becoming daily more extended, and we have been largely exempt from the financial calamities which have nearly wrecked com munities on the seaboard, dependent wholly on foreign com- merce or domestic manufacture. Agriculture is the leading feature in our industries. This vast domain has a sort of natural geographical border, save where it melts away to the southward in the cattle-raising districts of the south- west. The leading interests will be the growth of the food of the world, in which branch it has already outstripped all competitors, and our great rival will be the fertile fields of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico.

To attempt to give statistics of grain productions for 1880 would require more space than our work would permit of. Manufacturing has now attained in the chief cities a foot- hold that bids fair to render the north-west independent of the outside world. Nearly our whole region has a distribu- tion of coal measure which will in time support the manu- factures necessary to our comfort and prosperity. As to transportation, the chief factor in the production of all articles except food, no section is so magnificently endowed, and our facilities are yearly increasing beyond those of any other region.

The principal trade and manufacturing centres of the great north-west are Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo, with any number of minor citics and towns doing a large and growing business. The intelligence and enterprise of its people ; the great wealth of its soil and minerals ; its vast inland seas and navigable rivers ; its magnificent railroad system ; its patriotism and love of country will render it ever loyal in the future as in the past. The people of the Mississippi Valley are the key- stone of the national union and national prosperity.

CHAPTER II.

BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ILLINOIS.

EGINNING the history of this great State we direct attention briefly to the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi, Hernando De Soto, cutting his way through the wilder- ness from Florida, had discovered the Missis- sippi in the year 1542. Wasted with discase and privation, he only reached the stream to die upon its banks, and the remains of the ambitious and iron-willed Spaniard found a fitting resting-place beneath the waters of the great river. The chief incitement to Spanish discoveries in America was a thirst for gold and treasure. The discovery and settle- ment of the Mississippi Valley on the part of the French

must, on the other hand, be ascribed to religious zcal. Jesuit missionaries, from the French settlements on the St. Lawrence, early penetrated to the region of Lake Huron. It was from the tribes of Indians living in the West, that intelligence came of a noble river flowing south. Marquette, who had visited the Chippewas in 1668, and established the mission of Sault Ste. Marie, now the oldest settlement within the present commonwealth of Michigan, formed the purpose of its exploration.

The following year he moved to La Pointe, in Lake Superior, where he instructed a branch of the Hurons till 1670, when he removed south and founded the mission at St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinaw. In company with Joliet, a fur-trader of Quebec, who had been designated by M. Talon, Intendent of Canada, as chieftain of the explor- ing party, and five French voyageurs, Marquette, on the 10th of June, 1673, set out on the expedition. Crossing the water-shed dividing the Fox from the Wisconsin rivers, their two canoes were soon launched on the waters of the latter. Seven days after, on the 17th of June, they joy- fully entered the broad current of the Mississippi. Stopping six days on the western bank, near the mouth of the Des Moines River, to enjoy the hospitalities of the Illinois Indians, the voyage was resumed, and after passing the perpendicular rocks above Alton, on whose lofty limestone front were painted frightful representations of monsters, they suddenly came upon the mouth of the Missouri, known by its Algonquin name of Pckitanoni, whose swift and turbid current threatened to engulf their frail canoes. The site of St. Louis was an unbroken forest, and further down the fertile plain bordering the river reposed in peaceful solitude, as, early in July, the adventurers glided past it. They continued their voyage to a point some distance below the mouth of the Arkansas, and then retraced their course up the river, arriving at their Jesuit Mission at the head of Green Bay, late in September.

Robert Cavalier de La Salle, whose illustrious name is more intimately connected with the exploration of the Mississippi than that of any other, was the next to descend the river, in the early part of the year 1682. La Salle was a man of remarkable genius, possessing the power of originating the vastest schemes, and endowed with a will and a judgment capable of carrying them to successful results. Had ample facilities been placed by the king of France at his disposal, the result of the colonization of this continent might have been far different from what we now behold. He was born in Rouen, France, in 1643, of wealthy parentage, but he renounced his patrimony on entering a college of the Jesuits from which he separated and came to Canada a poor man in 1666. The priests of St. Sulpice, among whom he had a brother, were then the proprietors of Montreal, the nucleus of which was a seminary or convent founded by that order. The Superior granted to La Salle a large tract of land at La Chine, where he established himself in the fur trade. He was a man of daring genius, and outstripped all his competitors in exploits of travel and commerce with the Indians. In 1669 he visited the healquarters of the great Iroquois Confederacy, at Onondaga, in the heart of New 25

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

York, and obtaining guides, explored the Ohio River to the falls at Louisville.

Iu order to understand the intrepid genius of La Salle, it must be remembered that for many years prior to his time the missionaries and traders were obliged to make their way to the North west by the Ottaway River (of Canada), on account of the fierce hostility of the Iroquois along the lower lakes and Niagara River, which entirely closed this latter route to the Upper Lakes. They carried ou their commerce chiefly by canvas, paddling them through the Ottaway to Lake Nipissing, carrying them across the port- age to French River, and descending that to Lake IIuron. This being the route by which they reached the North-west, accounts for the fact that all the earliest Jesuit missions were established in the neighborhood of the Upper Lakes. La Salle conceived the grand idea of opening the route by Niagara River and the Lower Lakes to Canadiau commerce by sail vessels, connecting it with the navigation of the Mississippi, and thus opening a magnificent water communi- cation from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. This truly grand and comprehensive purpose seems to have animated him in all his wonderful achievements and the matchless difficulties and hardships he surmounted.

As the first step in the accomplishment of this object he established himself on Lake Ontario, and built and gar- risoned Fort Frontenac, the site of the present city of Kingston, Canada. Here he obtained a grant of land from the French crown and a body of troops by which he beat back the invading Iroquois and cleared the passage to Niagara Falls. Having by this masterly stroke made it safe to attempt a hitherto untried expedition, his next step as we have seen, was to advance to the falls with all his outfit for building a ship with which to sail the lakes. He was successful in this undertaking, though his ultimate pur- pose was defeated by a strange combination of untoward circumstances. The Jesuits evidently hated La Salle and plotted against him, because he had abandoned them and co-operated with a rival order. The fur traders were also jealous of his superior success in opening new channels of commerce. At La Chine he had taken the trade of Lake Ontario, which but for his presence there would have gone to Quebec. While they were plodding with their bark canoes through the Ottaway he was constructing vessels to command the trade of the lakes and the Mississippi. These great plans excited the jealousy and envy of the small traders, introduced treason and revolt into the ranks of his own companions, and finally led to the foul assassination by which his great achievements were prematurely ended. In 1682, La Salle, having completed his vessel at Peoria, descended the Mississippi to its confluence with the Gulf of Mexico. At its mouth he erected a column, and decorating it with the arms of France, placed upon it the following inscription :

LOUIS LE GRAND, ROI DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1682.

Thus France, by right of discovery, lay claim to the Mississippi Valley, the fairest portion of the globe, an

empire in extent, stretching from the Gulf to the Lakes, and from the farthest sources of the Ohio to where the head waters of the Missouri are lost in the wild solitudes of the Rocky Mountains. La Salle bestowed upon the territory the name of Louisiana, in honor of the King of France, Louis XIV.

The assertion has been made that on La Salle's return up the river, in the summer of 1682, a portion of the party were left behind, who founded the village of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but the statement rests on no substantial foun- dation.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS IN ILLINOIS.

The gentle and pious Marquette, devoted to his purpose of carrying the gospel to the Indians, had established a mission among the Illinois, iu 1675, at their principal town on the river which still bear stheir name. This was at the present town of Utica, in La Salle County. In the presence of the whole tribe, by whom, it is recorded, he was received as a celestial visitor, he displayed the sacred pictures of the Virgin Mary, raised au altar, and said mass. On Easter Sunday, after celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist, he took possession of the land in the name of the Saviour of the world, and founded the "Mission of the Immaculate Conception." The town was called Kaskaskia, a name afterwards transferred to another locality. The founding of this mission was the last act of Marquette's life. He died in Michigan, on his way back to Green Bay, May 18, 1675.

La Salle, while making preparations to descend the Mississippi, built a fort, on the Illinois River, below the Lake of Peoria, in February, 1680, and in commemoration of his misfortunes, bestowed upon it the name of Crerecœur, " broken-hearted." Traces of its embankments are yet dis- cernible. This was the first military occupation of Illinois. There is no evidence, however, that settlement was begun there at that early date.

On La Salle's return from this exploration of the Missis- sippi, in 1682, he fortified " Starved Rock," whose military advantages had previously attracted his attention. From its summit, which rises 125 feet above the waters of the river, the valley of the Illinois speeds out before the eye in landscape of rarest beauty. From three sides it is inacces- sible. This stronghold received the name of the Fort of St. Louis. Twenty thousand allied Indians gathered round it on the fertile plains. The fort seems to have been aban- doned soon after the year 1700.

Marquette's mission (1675), Crevecœur (1680), and the Fort of St. Louis (1632), embrace, so far, all the attempts made towards effecting anything like a permanent settle- ment in the Illinois country. Of the second few traces remain. A line of fortifications may be faintly traced, and that is all. The sced of civilization planted by the Jesuit, Marquette, among the Illinois Indians, was destined to pro- duce more enduring fruit. It was the germ of Kaskaskia, during the succeeding years of the French occupation-the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. The southern Kas- kaskia is merely the northern one transplanted. The Mision of the Immaculate Conception is the same.

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

FOUNDING OF KASKASKIA.

On the death of Marquette, he was succeeded by Allouez, and he by Father Gravier, who respectively had charge of the Mission on the Illinois River Gravier is said to have been the first to reduce the principles of the Illinois lan- guage to rules. It was also he who succeeded in trans- ferring Marquette's Mission from the banks of the Illinois south to the spot where stands the modern town of Kas- kaskia, and where it was destined to endure. The exact date is not known, but the removal was accomplished some time prior to the year 1685, though probably not earlier than 1682.

Father Gravier was subsequently recalled to Mackinaw, and his place was supplied by Binetcau and Pinet. Pinet proved an eloquent and successful minister, and his chapel was often insufficient to hold the crowds of savages who gathered to hear his words. Bineteau met with a fate similar to that which befell many another devoted priest in his heroic labors for the conversion of the savages. He accompanied the Kaskaskias on one of their annual hunts to the upper Mississippi, that his pastoral relations might not suffer intermission. His frame was poorly fitted to stand the exposure. Parched by day on the burning prairie, chilled by heavy dews at night, now panting with thirst and again aching with cold, he at length fell a victim to a violent fever, and " left his bones on the wilder- ness range of the buffaloes." Pinet shortly after followed his comrade.

Father Gabriel Morrest had previously arrived at Kas- kaskia. He was a Jesuit. He had carried the emblem of his faith to the frozen regions of Hudson's Bay, and had been taken prisoner by the English, and upon his liberation returned to America, and joined the Kaskaskia Mission. After the deaths of Bineteau and Pinet, he had sole charge until joined by Father Mermet shortly after the opening of the eighteenth century.

The devotion and piety of Mermet fully equalled those of his companion. He had assisted in collecting a village of Indians and Canadians, and had thus founded the first French port on the Ohio, or, as the lower part of the river was then called, the Wabash. At the Kaskaskia Mission his gentle virtues and fervid eloquence seem not to have been without their influence. " At early dawn his pupils came to church dressed neatly and modestly, each in a large deer- skin, or in a robe stitched together from several skins. After receiving lessons they chanted canticles; mass was then said in presence of all the Christians in the place, the French and the converts-the women on one side and the men on the other. From prayer and instruction the mis- sionaries proceeded to visit the sick and administer medicine, and their skill as physicians did more than all the rest to win confidence. In the afternoon the catechism was taught in the presence of the young and the old, when every one, without distinction of rank or age, answered the questions of the missionary. At evening all would assemble at the chapel for instruction, for prayer, and to chant the hymns of the church. On Sundays and festivals, even after vespers a homily was pronounced ; at the close of the day parties

would meet in houses to recite the chaplet in alternate choirs, and sing palms until late at night. These psalms were often homilies with words set to familiar tunes. Satur- day and Sunday were days appointed for confession and communion, and every convert confessed onec in a fortnight. The success of the mission was such that marriages of French immigrants were sometimes solemnized with the daughters of the Illinois according to the rites of the Catholic Church. The occupation of the country was a cantonment of Europeans among the native proprietors of the forests and the prairies .* A court of law was unknown for nearly a century, and up to the time of Boisbriant there was no local government. The priests possessed the entire confidence of the community, and their authority happily settled, without the tardy delays and vexations of the courts, the minor difficulties which threatened the peace of the settlement. Of the families which formed part of the French population in the early history of Kaskaskia, there is some uncertainty. There is, however, authority for believing that the following were among the principal settlers: Bazyl La Chapelle, Michael Derouse, (called St. Pierre), Jean Baptiste St. Gemme Beauvais, Baptiste Mon- treal, Boncher de Montbrun, Charles Danie, François Charlesville, Antoine Bienvenu, Louis Bruyat, Alexis Doza, Joseph Paget, Prix Pagi, Michael Antoyen, Langlois De Lisle, La Derrou te and Nova !.

AS PART OF LOUISIANA.

The settlements of Illinois had been a separate depend- ency of Canada. In 1711, together with the settlements on the Lower Mississippi, which had been founded by D'Iber- ville and Bienville, they became united in a single province under the name of Louisiana, with the capital at Mobile.

The exclusive control of the commerce of this region, whose boundless resources, it was believed, were to enrich France, was granted to Anthony Crozat, a merchant of great wealth. "We permit him," says the king in his letters patent, "to search, opeu, aud dig all mines, veins, minerals, precious stones and pearls, and to transport the proceeds thereof into any part of France for fifteen years." La Motte Cadillac, who had now become royal Governor of Louisiana, was his partner. Hopes of obtaining great quantities of gold and silver animated the proprietors, as well as agitated France. Two pieces of silver ore, left at Kaskaskia by a traveler from Mexico, were exhibited to Cadillac as the produce of a mine in Illinois. Elated by this prospect of wealth, the Governor hurried up the river to find his anticipations fade away in disappointment. Iron ore and the purest lead were discovered in large quantities in Missouri, but of gold, and silver, and precious stones not a trace was found. After Crozat had expended 425,000 livres, and realized only 300,000, lie, in 1717, petitioned the king for the revocation of his charter. The white popula- tion had slowly increased ; and at the time of his departure it was estimated that the families comprising the Illinois settlements, now including those on the Wabash, numbered three hundred and twenty souls.

₹ Bancroft.

HISTORY OF MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

The commerce of Louisiana was next transferred to the Mississippi Company, instituted under the auspices of the notorious John Law. The wild excitement and visionary schemes which agitated France during Law's connection with the Company of the West, and while at the head of the Bank of France, form the most curious chapter in the annals of commercial speculations. These delusive dreams of wealth were based mainly upon the reports of the fabu- lous riches of the Mississippi Valley. Attempts to colonize the country were conducted with careless prodigality. Three ships landed eight hundred emigrants in August, 1718, near Mobile, whence they were to make their way overland to the Mississippi. Bienville, on the banks of that river, had already selected the spot for the Capital of the new Empire, which, after the Regent of France, was named New Orleans. From among the emigrants, eighty convicts from the prisons of France were sent to clear away the coppices which thickly studded the site. Three years after in 1721, the place was yet a wilderness, overgrown with canebrakes, among which two hundred persons had en- camped.

Phillip Renault was created Director-General of the mines of the new country, and an expedition was organized to work them. Renault left France, in 1719, with two hundred mechanics and laborers. Touching at San Domingo he bought five hundred negro slaves for working the mines. On reaching the Mississippi, he sailed to Illinois, the region in which gold and silver were supposed to abound. A few miles from Kaskaskia, in what is now the south-west corner of Monroe County, was the scat of his colony. The village which he founded received the name of St. Phillip's. From this point various expeditions were sent out in search of the precious metals. Drewry's Creek, in Jackson County, was explored ; St. Mary's, in Randolph; Silver Creek, in Monroe; and various parts of St. Clair County, and other districts of Illinois. On Silver Creek, tradition has it that considerable quantities of silver were discovered and sent to France, and from this the stream has its name. By the retrocession of the territory to the crown, Renault was left to prosecute the business of mining without means. His operations proved a disastrous failure.

FORT CHARTRES.

Meanwhile war had sprung up between France and Spain and to protect the Illinois settlements from incursions of Spanish cavalry across the Great Desert, it was thought advisable to establish a fort in the neighborhood of Kas- kaskia. A Spanish expedition had, indeed, been fitted out at Santa Fe, but their guides, leading it by mistake to the Missouri Indians, instead of the Osages, enemies instead of friends, the whole party was massacred, with the exception of a priest who escaped to relate the fate of his unfortunate comrades, Previous to this La Salle, on the occasion of his visit to Paris, had shown the necessity of building a chain of forts from Canada to the Gulf, in order to secure the territory to the crown of France. In 1718, Boisbriant was despatched to Illinois. He began the building of Fort Chartres, long the strongest fortress on the Western Conti-

nent, and of wide celebrity in the subsequent history of Illinois.

Fort Chartres stood on the east bank of the Mississippi, seventeen miles north-west of Kaskaskia, and between three and four miles from the location of the present village of Prairie du Rocher. The Company of the West finally built their warehouses here. In 1721, on the division of Louisi- ana into seven districts, it became the headquarters of Bois- briant, the first local Governor of Illinois. Fort Chartres was the seat of the Government of Illinois, not only while the French retained possession of the country, but after it passed under English control. When the fort was built, it stood about one mile distant from the river. In the year 1724 an inundation of the Mississippi washed away a portion of bank in front of the fort.

Captain Philip Pitman visited Illinois in 1766. He was an engineer in the British army, and was sent to Illinois to make a survey of the forts, and report the condition of the country, which had recently passed under British control. He published in London, in 1770, a work entitled, " The present State of the European Settlements on the Missis- sippi," in which he gives an accurate description of Fort Chartres :

" Fort Chartres, when it belonged to France, was the seat of the government of the Illinois. The headquarters of the English commanding officer is now here, who, in fact, is the arbitrary governor of the country. The fort is an irregular quadrangle. The sides of the exterior polygon are four hun- dred and ninety feet. It is built of stone, and plastered over, and is only designed for defence against the Indians. The walls are two feet two inches thick, and are pierced with loopholes at regular distances, and with two port holes for cannon in the facies, and two in the flaaks of each bastion. The ditch has never been finished. The entrance to the fort is through a very handsome rustic gate. Within the walls is a banquette raised three feet, for the men to stand on when they fire through the loopholes. The buildings within the. fort are, a commandant's and a commissary's house, the magazine of stores, corps de garde, and two barracks. ¿ ,These occupy the square. Within the gorges of the bastion are a powder-magazine, a bake-house, and a prison, in the floor of which are four dungeons, and in the upper, two rooms and an out-house belonging to the commandant. The command- ant's house is thirty-two yards long and ten broad, and con- tains a kitchen, a dining-room, a bed-chamber, one small room, five closets for servants, and a cellar. The commis- sary's house is built on the same line as this, and its propor- tion and the distribution of its apartments are the same. Opposite these are the store-house, and the guard-house, each thirty yards long and eight broad. The former consists of two large store rooms, (under which is a large vaulted cellar), a large room, a bed-chamber, and a closet for the storekeeper. The latter of a soldiers' and officers' guard-room, a chapel, a bed-chamber, a closet for the chaplain, and an artillery store-room. The lines of barracks have never been finished. They at present consist of two rooms each for officers, and three for soldiers. They are each twenty five feet square, and have betwixt a small passage."

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History of Madison County, Illinois With biographical sketches, Part 6

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co. Number of Pages: 698

Author: Brink, W.R. & Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Edwardsville, Ill. : W. R. Brink & co.
Number of Pages: 698