History of Vermilion County, together with historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources, Part 18

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164

USA > Illinois > Vermilion County > History of Vermilion County, together with historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources > Part 18

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We find no instance in which the Kickapoos or Muscotins assisted either the French or the English in any of the intrigues or wars for the control of the fur trade, or the acquisition of disputed territory in the northwest. At the close of Pontiac's conspiracy, the Kicka- poos, whose temporary lodges were pitched on the prairie near Fort Wayne, notified Captain Morris, the English ambassador, on his way from Detroit to Fort Chartes, to take possession of " the coun- try of the Illinois"; that if the Miamis did not put him to death, they themselves would do so, should he attempt to pass their camp. +

Still later, on the Sth of June, 1765, as George Croghan, likewise an English ambassador, on his route by the Ohio River to Fort Chartes, was attacked at daybreak, at the mouth of the Wabash, by a party of eighty Kickapoo and Mascoutin warriors, who had set out from Fort Ouiatanon to intercept his passage, and killed two of his men and three Indians, and wounded Croghan himself, and all the rest of his party except two white men and one Indian. They then made all of them prisoners, and plundered them of everything they had.#

* Official Report of M. Du Boisson on the Siege of Detroit.

+ Parkman's History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, 3d single volume edition, p. 474.

# The narrative, Journal of Col. George Croghan, "who was sent, at the peace of 1763, etc., to explore the country adjacent to the Ohio River, and to conciliate the Indian nations who had hitherto acted with the French." [Reprinted] from Feather- stonhaugh Am. Monthly Journal of Geology, Dec. 1831. Pamphlet, p. 17.

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Having thrown such obstacles as were within their power against the French and English, the Kickapoos were ready to offer the same treatment to the Americans ; and, when Col. Rogers Clark was at Kaskaskia, in 1778, negotiating peace treaties with the west- ward Indians, his enemies found a party of young Kickapoos the willing instruments to undertake, for a reward promised, to kill him.

As a military people, the Kickapoos were inferior to the Miamis, Delawares and Shawnees in movements requiring large bodies of men, but they were preeminent in predatory warfare. Parties con- sisting of from five to twenty persons were the usual number com- prising their war parties. These small forces would push out hun- dreds of miles from their villages, and swoop down upon a feeble settlement. or an isolated pioneer cabin. and burn the property, kill the cattle, steal the horses, capture the women and children, and be off again before an alarm could be given of their approach. From such incursions of the Kickapoos the people of Kentucky suffered severely .*

A small war party of these Indians hovered upon the skirts of Gen. Harmer's army when he was conducting the campaign against the upper Wabash tribes, in 1790. They cut out a squad of ten regular soldiers of Gen. Harmer by decoying them into an ambuscade. Jackson Johonnot, the orderly sergeant in command of the regulars, gave an interesting account of their capture and the killing of his companions, after they were subjected to the severest hunger and fatigue on the march. and the running of the gauntlet on reaching the Indian villages. +

The Kickapoos were noted for their fondness of horses and their skill and daring in stealing them. They were so addicted to this practice that Joseph Brant, having been sent westward to the Maumee River in 1788, in the interest of the United States. to bring about a reconciliation with the several tribes inhabiting the Maumee and Wabash, wrote back that. in his opinion, "the Kickapoos, with the Shawnees and Miamis, were so much addicted to horse stealing that it would be difficult to break them of it, and as that kind of business was their best harvest, they would, of course, declare for war and decline giving up any of their country."+

* One of the reasons urged to induce the building of a town at the falls of the Ohio was that it would afford a means of strength against, and be an object of terror to, "our savage enemies, the Kickapoo Indians." Letter of Col. Williams, January 3, 1776, from Boonsborough, to the proprietors of the grant, found in Sketches of the West, by James Hall.

¿ Sketches of Western Adventure, by M'Lung, contains a summarized account, taken from Johonnot's original narrative, published at Keene, New Hampshire, 1816. # Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. 2, p. 278.

163

KICKAPOOS DESTROY THE ILLINOIS.

Between the years 1786 and 1796, the Kickapoo war parties, from their villages on the Wabash and Vermilion Rivers, kept the settle- ments in the vicinity of Kaskaskia in a state of continual alarm. Within the period named they killed and captured a number of men, women and children in that part of Illinois. Among their notable captures was that of William Biggs, whom they took across the prairies to their village on the west bank of the Wabash, above Attica, Indiana. *

Subsequent to the close of the Pontiac war. the Kickapoos, as- sisted by the Pottawatomies, almost annihilated the Kaskaskias at a place since called Battle Ground Creek, on the road leading from Kaskaskia to Shawneetown, and about twenty-five miles from the former place.+ The Kaskaskias were shut up in the villages of Kaskaskia and Cahokia, and the Kickapoos became the recognized proprietors of a large portion of the territory of the Kaskaskias on the west, and the hunting grounds of the Piankeshaw-Miamis on the east, of the dividing ridge between the Illinois and Wabash Rivers. The principal Kickapoo towns were on the left bank of the Illinois, near Peoria, and on the Vermilion. of the Wabash, and at several places on the west bank of the latter stream. ;

The Kickapoos of the prairie had villages west of Charleston, Illinois, about the head-waters of the Kaskaskia and in many of the groves scattered over the prairies between the Illinois and the Wa- bash and south of the Kankakee, notable among which were their towns at Elkhart Grove, on the Mackinaw, twelve miles north of Bloomington, and at Oliver's Grove, in Livingston county, Illinois.

These people were much attached to the country along the Ver- milion River, and Gen. Harrison had great trouble in gaining their consent to cede it away. The Kickapoos valued it highly as a desirable home, and because of the minerals it was supposed to contain. In a letter, dated December 10, 1809, addressed to the

* Biggs was a tall and handsome man. He had been one of Col. Clark's soldiers, and had settled near Bellefountaine. He was well versed in the Indians' ways and their language. The Kickapoos took a great fancy to him. They adopted him into their tribe, put him through a ridiculous ceremony which transformed him into a genuine Kickapoo, after which he was offered a handsome daughter of a Kickapoo brave for a wife. He declined all these flattering temptations, however, purchased his freedom through the agency of a Spanish trader at the Kickapoo village, and returned home to his family, going down the Wabash and Ohio and up the Mississippi in a canoe. His- torical Sketch of the Early Settlements in Illinois, etc., by John M. Peck, read before the Illinois State Lyceum, August 16, 1832. In 1826, shortly before his death, Mr. Biggs published a narrative of his experience "while he was a prisoner with the Kick- apoo Indians." It was published in pamphlet form, with poor type, and on very com- mon paper, and contains twenty-three pages.

+ J. M. Peck's Historical Address.

# Reynolds' Pioneer History of Illinois, J. M. Peck's Address, and Gen. Harrison's Memoirs.

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Secretary of War, by Gen. Harrison, the latter, - referring to the treaty at Fort Wayne in connection with his efforts at that treaty to induce the Kickapoos to release their title to the tract of country bounded on the east by the Wabash, on the south by the northern line of the so-called Harrison Purchase, extending from opposite the mouth of Raccoon Creek, northwest fifteen miles; thence to a point on the Vermilion River, twenty-five miles in a direct line from its mouth ; thence down the latter stream to its confluence. - says "he was extremely anxious that the extinguishment of title should extend as high up as the Vermilion River. This small tract [of about twenty miles square] is one of the most beautiful that can be con- ceived, and is, moreover, believed to contain a very rich copper mine. The Indians were so extremely jealous of any search being made for this mine that the traders were always cautioned not to approach the hills which were supposed to contain it."*

In the desperate plans of Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, to unite all of the Indian tribes in a war of extermination against the whites, the Kickapoos took an active part. Gen. Harrison made extraordinary efforts to avert the troubles that culminated in the bat- tle of Tippecanoe. The Kickapoos were particularly uneasy; and in 1806 Gen. Harrison dispatched Capt. Wm. Prince to the Vermil- ion towns with a speech addressed to all the chiefs and warriors of the Kickapoo tribe, giving Capt. Prince further instructions to pro- ceed to the villages in the prairies, if, after having delivered the speech at the Vermilion towns, he discovered that there would be no danger in proceeding beyond. The speech. which was full of good words, had little effect, and " shortly after the mission of Capt.

* General Harrison's Official Letter: American State Papers of Indian Affairs, vol. 1, p. 726. It was not copper, but a mineral having something like the appearance of silver, that the Indians so jealously guarded. Recent explorations among the bluffs on the Little Vermilion have resulted in the discovery of a number of ancient smelting furnaces, with the charred coals and slag remaining in and about them. The furnaces are crude, consisting of shallow excavations of irregular shape in the hillsides. These basins, averaging a few feet across the top, were lined with fire-clay. The bottoms of the pits were connected by ducts or troughs, also made of fire-clay, leading into reser- voirs a little distance lower down the hillside, into which the metal could flow, when reduced to a liquid state, in the furnaces above. The pits were carefully filled with earth, and every precaution was taken to prevent their discovery, a slight depression in the surface of the ground being the only indication of their presence. The mines are from every appearance entitled to a claim of considerable antiquity, and are probably "the silver mines on the Wabash " that figure in the works of Hutchins, Imlay, and other early writers, as the geological formation of the country precludes there being any of the metals as high up or above "Quiatanon," in the vicinity of which those authors, as well as other writers, have located these mines. The most plausible ex- planation of the use to which the metal was put is given by a half-breed Indian, whose ancestors lived in the vicinity and were in the secret that, after being smelted, the metal was sent to Montreal, where it was used as an alloy with silver, and con- verted into brooches, wristbands, and other like jewelry, and brought back by the traders and disposed of to the Indians.

165

PA-KOI-SHEE-CAN.

Prince, the Prophet found means to bring the whole of the Kieka- poos entirely under his influence. He prevailed on the warriors to reduce their old chief, Joseph Renard's son, to a private man. HIe would have been put to death but for the insignificance of his char- acter."*

The Kickapoos fought in great numbers, and with frenzied cour- age, at the battle of Tippecanoe. They early sided with the British in the war that was declared between the United States and Great Britain the following June, and sent out numerous war parties that kept the settlements in Illinois and Indiana territories in constant peril, while other warriors represented their tribe in almost every battle fought on the western frontier during this war.

As the Pottawatomies and other tribes friendly to the English laid siege to Fort Wayne, the Kickapoos, assisted by the Winneba- goes, undertook the capture of Fort Harrison. They nearly suc- ceeded, and would have taken the fort but for one of the most he- roic and determined defenses under Capt. (afterward Gen.) Zachary Taylor.

Capt. Taylor's official letter to Gen. Harrison, dated September 10, 1812, contains a graphic account of the affair at Fort Harrison. The writer will here give the version of Pa-koi-shee-can, whom the French called La Farine and the Americans The Flour, the Kicka- poo chief who planned the attack and personally executed the most difficult part of the programme. +

First. the Indians loitered about the fort, having a few of their women and children about them, to induce a belief that their pres- ence was of a friendly character, while the main body of warriors were secreted at some distance off, waiting for favorable develop- ments. Under the pretense of a want of provisions, the men and

* Memoirs of Gen. Harrison, p. 85. A foot-note on the same page is as follows: "Old Joseph Renard was a very different character, a great warrior and perfectly sav- age-delighting in blood. He once told some of the inhabitants of Vincennes that he used to be much diverted at the different exclamations of the Americans and the French while the Indians were scalping them, the one exclaiming Oh Lord! oh Lord! oh Lord! - the other Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! mon Dieu!"

+ The account here given was narrated to the author by Mrs. Mary A. Baptiste, substantially as it was told to her by "Pa-koi-shee-can." This lady, with her hus- band, Christmas Dagney, was at Fort Harrison in 1821, where the latter was assisting in disbursing annuities to the assembled Indians. The business, and general spree which followed it, occupied two or three days. La Farine was present with his people to receive their share of annuities, and the old chief, having leisure, edified Mr. Dag- ney and his wife with a minute description of his attempt to capture the fort, pointing out the position of the attacking party and all the movements on the part of the Indians, La Farine was a large, fleshy man, well advanced in years and a thorough savage. As he related the story he warmed up and indulged in a great deal of pan- tomime, which gave force to, while it heightened the effect of, his narration. The particulars are given substantially as they were repeated to the author. The lady of whom he received it had never read an account of the engagement.

166

HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

women were permitted to approach the fort, and had a chance to inspect the fort and its defenses, an opportunity of which the men fully availed themselves. A dark night, giving the appearance of rain, favored a plan which was at once put into execution. The warriors were called to the front, and the women and children retired to a place of safety. La Farine, with a large butcher knife in each hand, extended himself at full length upon the ground. He drove one knife into the ground and drew his body up against it, then he reached forward, with the knife in the other hand, and driv- ing that into the ground drew himself along. In this way he ap- proached the lower block-house, stealthily through the grass. He could hear the sentinels on their rounds within the fortified enclo- sure. As they advanced toward that part of the works where the lower block-house was situated, La Farine would lie still upon the ground, and when the sentinels made the turn and were moving in the opposite direction, he would again crawl nearer .* In this manner La Farine reached the very walls of the block-house. There was a crack between the logs of the block-house. and through this opening the Kickapoo placed a quantity of dry grass, bits of wood, and other combustible material, brought in a blanket tied about his back, so as to form a sack. As the preparation for this incendiarism was in progress, the sentinels passed within a very few feet of the place, as they paced by on the opposite side of the block-house. Everything being in readiness, and the sentinels at the farther end of the works, La Farine struck a fire with his flint and thrust it between the logs. and threw his blanket quickly over the opening, to prevent the light from flashing outside, and giving the alarm before the building should be well ablaze. When assured that the fire was well under way, he fell back and gave the signal. when the attack was immedi- ately begun by the Indians at the other extremity of the fort. The lower block-house burned up in spite of all the efforts of the gar- rison to put out the fire, and for awhile the Indians were exultant in the belief of an assured and complete victory. Gen. Taylor con- structed a barricade ont of material taken from another building, and by the time the block-house burned the Indians discovered a new line of defenses, closing up the breach by which they expected to effect an entrance.+

* Capt. Taylor, being suspicious of mischief, took the precaution to order sentinels to make the rounds within the inclosure, as appears from his official report.

+ The Indians, exasperated by the failure of their attempt upon Fort Harrison, made an incursion to the Pigeon Roost Fork of White River, where they massacred twenty-one of the inhabitants. many of them women and children. The details of some of the barbarities committed on this incursion are too shocking to narrate. They

167

TERRITORY OF THE KICKAPOOS.

In 1819, at a treaty concluded at Edwardsville, Illinois, they ceded to the United States all of their lands. Their claim included the following territory : " Beginning on the Wabash River, at the upper point of their cession, made by the second article of their treaty at Vincennes on the 9th of December, 1809 ;* thenee running northwestwardlyt to the dividing line between the states of Illinois and Indiana ; # thence along said line to the Kankakee River : thence with said river to the Illinois River : thenee down the latter to its mouth ; thence in a direct line to the northwest corner of the Vin- cennes tract, § and thence (north by a little east) with the western and northern boundaries of the cessions heretofore made by the Kickapoo tribe of Indians, to the beginning. Of which tract of land the said Kickapoo tribe claim a large portion by descent from their ancestors, and the balance by conquest from the Illinois Nation and uninterrupted possession for more than half a century." An exam- ination, extended through many volumes, leaves no doubt of the just claims of the Kickapoos to the territory described, or the length of time it had been in their possession.

With the close of the war of 1812, the Kickapoos ceased their active hostilities upon the whites, and within a few years afterward disposed of their lands in Illinois and Indiana, and, with the excep- tion of a few bands, went westward of the Mississippi. "The Kickapoos," says ex-Gov. Reynolds, "disliked the United States so much that they decided, when they left Illinois that they would not reside within the limits of our government," but would settle in Texas. | A large body of them did go to Texas, and when the

are given by Capt. M'Affe in his History of the Late War in the Western Country, p. 155. The garrison at Fort Harrison was cut off from communication with Vincennes for several days, and reduced to great extremity for want of provisions. They were relieved by Col. Russell. After this officer had left the fort, on his return to Vincennes, he passed several wagons with provisions on their way up to the fort under an escort of thirteen . men, commanded by Lieut. Fairbanks, of the regular army. This body of men were surprised and cut to pieces by the Indians, two or three only escaping, while the provisions and wagons fell into the hands of the savages. Vide M'Affe, p. 155.

* At the mouth of Raccoon Creek, opposite Montezuma.

+ Following the north western line of the so-called Harrison Purchase.

# The state line had not been run at this time, and when it was surveyed in 1821 it was discovered to be several miles west of where it was generally supposed it would be. The territory of the Kickapoos extended nearly as far east as La Fayette, as is evident from the location of some of their villages.

$ By the terms of the fourth article of the treaty of Greenville the United States reserved a tract of land on both sides of the Wabash, above and below Vincennes, to cover the rights of the inhabitants of that village who had received grants from the French and British governments. In 1803, for the purpose of settling the limits of this tract, General Harrison, on the 7th of June, 1803, at Fort Wayne, concluded a treaty with the Miamis, Kickapoos. Shawnees, Pottawatomies and Delawares. This cession of land became known as the Vincennes tract, and its northwest corner extends some twelve miles into Illinois, crossing the Wabash at Palestine.

| Pioneer History of Illinois, p. 8.

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HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.

Lone Star Republic became one of the United States the Kickapoos retired to New Mexico, and subsequently some of them went to Old Mexico. Here on these isolated borders the wild bands of Kicka- poos have for years maintained the reputation of their sires as a busy and turbulent people. "

A mixed band of Kickapoos and Pottawatomies, who resided on the Vermilion River and its tributaries, became christianized under the instructions of Ka-en-ne-kuck. This remarkable man, once a drunkard himself, reformed and became an exemplary christian, and commanded such influence over his band that they, too, became christians, abstained entirely from whisky, which had brought them to the verge of destruction, and gave up many of the other vices to which they were previously addicted. Ka-en-ne-kuck had religious services every Sunday, and so conscientious were his people that they abstained from labor and all frivolous pastimes on that day. +

Ka-en-ne-kuck's discourses were replete with religious thought, and advice given in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, and are more interesting because they were the utterances of an unedu- cated Indian, who is believed to have done more, in his sphere of action, in the cause of temperance and other moral reforms, than any other person has been able to accomplish among the Indians, although armed with all the power that education and talent could confer.

Ka-en-ne-kuck's band, numbering about two hundred persons, migrated to Kansas, and settled upon a reservation within the pres- ent limits of Jackson and Brown counties, where the survivors, and the immediate descendants of those who have since died, are now residing upon their farms. Their well-cultivated fields and their uniform good conduct attest the lasting effect of Ka-en-ne-kuck's teachings.

The wild bands have always been troublesome upon the south- western borders. plundering upon all sides, making inroads into the settlements, killing stock and stealing horses. Every now and then

* In 1854 a band of them were found by Col. Marcy, living near Fort Arbuckle. He says of them: "They are intelligent, active and brave; they frequently visit and traffic with the prairie Indians, and have no fear of meeting these people in battle, provided the odds are not more than six to one against them." Marcy's Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border, p. 95.

+ One of Ka-en-ne-kuck's sermons was delivered at Danville, Illinois, on the 17th of July, 1831, to his own tribe, and a large concourse of citizens who asked permission to be present. The sermon was delivered in the Kickapoo dialect, interpreted into English, sentence at a time as spoken by the orator, by Gurdeon S. Hubbard, who spoke the Kickapoo as well as the Pottawatomie dialect with great fluency. The sermon was taken down in writing by Solomon Banta, a lawyer then living in Danville, and for- warded by him and Col. Hubbard to Judge James Hall, at Vandalia, Illinois, and pub- lished in the October number (1831) of his " Illinois Monthly Magazine."

169

CHARACTERISTICS.

their depredations form the subject of items for the current news- papers of the day. For years the government has failed in efforts to induce the wild band to remove to some point within the Indian Territory, where they might be restrained from annoying the border settlements of Texas and New Mexico. Some years ago a part of the semi-civilized Kickapoos in Kansas, preferring their old wild life to the ways of civilized society, left Kansas and joined the bands to the southwest. These last, after twelve years' roving in quest of plunder, were induced to return, and in 1875 they were settled in the Indian Territory and supplied with the necessary implements and provisions to enable them to go to work and earn an honest liv- ing. In this commendable effort at reform they are now making very satisfactory progress .* In 1875 the number of civilized Kick- apoos within the Kansas agency was three hundred and eight-five. while the wild or Mexican band numbered four hundred and twenty, as appears from the official report on Indian affairs for that year.

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History of Vermilion County, together with historic notes on the Northwest, gleaned from early authors, old maps and manuscripts, private and official correspondence, and other authentic, though, for the most part, out-of-the-way sources, Part 18

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903 Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company Number of Pages: 1164

Author: Beckwith, H. W. (Hiram Williams), 1833-1903
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : H. H. Hill and Company
Number of Pages: 1164