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 20
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117 | Part 118 | Part 119 | Part 120
179
BECOME CITIZENS.
necessary that both should be satisfied, in order to prevent disputes in the future. In this, however, the governor succeeded, on terms. perhaps, more favorable than if the title had been vested in only one of these tribes ; for, as both claimed the land, the value of each claim was considerably lowered in the estimation of both; and, therefore, by judicious management, the governor effected the pur- chase upon probably as low, if not lower, terms that if he had been obliged to treat with only one of them. For this tract the Pianke- shaws received $700 in goods and $200 per annum for ten years; the compensation of the Delawares was an annuity of $300 for ten years.
The Delawares continued to reside upon White River and its branches until 1819, when most of them joined the band who had emigrated to Missouri upon the tract of land granted jointly to them and the Shawnees, in 1793, by the Spanish authorities. Others of their number who remained scattered themselves among the Miamis, Pottawatomies and Kickapoos; while still others, including the Mo- ravian converts, went to Canada. At that time, 1819. the total num- ber of those residing in Indiana was computed to be eight hundred souls. *
In 1829 the majority of the nation were settled on the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They numbered about 1,000, were brave, en- terprising hunters, cultivated lands and were friendly to the whites. In 1853 they sold to the government all the lands granted them, ex- cepting a reservation in Kansas. During the late Rebellion they sent to the United States army one hundred and seventy out of their two hundred able-bodied men. Like their ancestors they proved valiant and trustworthy soldiers. Of late years they have ahost entirely lost their aboriginal customs and manners. They live in houses, have schools and churches, cultivate farms, and, in fact, bid fair to become useful and prominent citizens of the great Republic.
* Their principal towns were on the branches of White River, within the present limits of Madison and Delaware counties, and the capital of the latter is named after the " Muncy" or " Mon-o-sia " band. Pipe Creek and Kill Buck Creek, branches of White River, are also named after two distinguished Delaware chiefs.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE INDIANS: THEIR IMPLEMENTS, UTENSILS, FORTIFICATIONS, MOUNDS, AND THEIR MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
BEFORE the arrival of the Europeans the use of iron was but little known to the North American Indians. Marquette, in speaking of the Illinois, states that they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron tools, their weapons being made of stone." This was true of all the Indians who made their homes north of the Ohio, but south of that stream metal tools were occasionally met with. When Hernando De Soto, in 1539-43, was traversing the southern part of that terri- tory, now known as the United States, in his vain search for gold, some of his followers found the natives on the Savanna River using hatchets made of copper.+ It is evident that these hatchets were of native manufacture, for they were " said to have a mixture of gold."
The southern Indians " had long bows, and their arrows were made of certain canes like reeds, very heavy, and so strong that a sharp cane passeth through a target. Some they arm in the point with a sharp bone of a fish, like a chisel, and in others they fasten certain stones like points of diamonds. "# These bones or " scale of the armed fish" were neatly fastened to the head of the arrows with splits of cane and fish glue.§ The northern Indians used arrows with stone points. Father Rasles thus describes them : " Arrows are the principal arms which they use in war and in the chase. They are pointed at the end with a stone, ent and sharpened in the shape of a serpent's tongue ; and, if no knife is at hand, they use them also to skin the animals they have killed."; "The bow- strings were prepared from the entrails of a stag. or of a stag's skin. which they know how to dress as well as any man in France, and with as many different colors. They head their arrows with the teeth of fishes and stone, which they work very finely and handsomely."
* Sparks' Life of Marquette, p. 281.
+ A Narrative of the Expedition of Hernando De Soto, by a Gentleman of Elvas; published at Evora in 1557, and afterward translated and published in the second volume of the Historical Collections of Louisiana, p. 149. # Idem, p. 124.
§ Du Pratz' History of Louisiana: English translation, vol. 2, pp. 223, 224.
| Kip's Jesuit Missions, p. 39.
T History of the First Attempt of the French to Colonize Florida, in 1562, by Réné Laudonnière: published in Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida, vol. 1, p. 170.
180
18
THEY USE STONE IMPLEMENTS.
Most of the hatchets and knives of the northern Indians were likewise made of sharpened stones, "which they fastened in a cleft piece of wood with leathern thongs."* Their tomahawks were con- structed from stone, the horn of a stag, or " from wood in the shape of a cutlass, and terminated by a large ball." The tomahawk was held in one hand and a knife in the other. As soon as they dealt a blow on the head of an enemy, they immediately cut it round with the knife, and took off the scalp with extraordinary rapidity. +
Du Pratz thus describes their method of felling trees with stone implements and with fire: "Cutting instruments are almost con- tinually wanted : but as they had no iron, which of all metals is the most useful in human society, they were obliged, with infinite pains, to form hatchets out of large flints, by sharpening their thin edge, and making a hole through them for receiving the handle. To cut down trees with these axes would have been almost an impracticable work ; they were, therefore, obliged to light fires round the roots of them, and to ent away the charcoal as the fire eat into the tree. "+
Charlevoix makes a similar statement : " These people, before we provided them with hatchets and other instruments, were very much at a loss in felling their trees, and making them fit for such nses as they intended them for. They burned them near the root, and in order to split and cut them into proper lengths they made use of hatchets made of flint, which never broke, but which required a prodigious time to sharpen. In order to fix them in a shaft, they cut off the top of a young tree, making a slit in it, as if they were going to draft it, into which slit they inserted the head of the axe. The tree, growing together again in length of time, held the head of the hatchet so firm that it was impossible for it to get loose ; they then cut the tree at the length they deemed sufficient for the handle." >
When they were about to make wooden dishes, porringers or spoons, they cut the blocks of wood to the required shape with stone hatchets, hollowed them out with coals of fire, and polished them with beaver teeth.
Early settlers in the neighborhood of Thorntown, Indiana, 10- ticed that the Indians made their hominy-blocks in a similar manner. Round stones were heated and placed upon the blocks which were to be excavated. The charred wood was dug out with knives, and
* Hennepin, vol. 2, p. 103.
+ Letter of Father Rasles in Kip's Jesuit Missions, p. 40.
# Volume 2, p. 223.
Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 126. Hennepin, vol. 2, p. 103.
182
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
then the surface was polished with stone implements. These round stones were the common property of the tribe, and were used by individual families as occasion required .*
"They dug their ground with an instrument of wood, which was fashioned like a broad mattock, wherewith they dig their vines as in France ; they put two grains of maize together."+
For boiling their victuals they made use of carthen kettles.# The kettle was held up by two crotches and a stick of wood laid across. The pot ladle, called by them mikoine, laid at the side .; "In the north they often made use of wooden kettles, and made the water boil by throwing into it red hot pebbles. Our iron pots are esteemed by them as much more commodions than their own."
That the North American Indians not only used, but actually manufactured, pottery for various culinary and religious purposes admits of no argument. Hennepin remarks: "Before the arrival of the Europeans in North America both the northern and southern savages made use of, and do to this day use, earthen pots, especially such as have no commerce with the Europeans, from whom they may procure kettles and other movables."" M. Pouchot, who was ac- quainted with the manners and customs of the Canadian Indians, states "that they formerly had usages and utensils to which they are now scarcely accustomed. They made pottery and drew fire from wood." **
In 1700, Father Gravier, in speaking of the Yazoos, says: "You see there in their cabins neither clothes, nor sacks, nor kettles, nor guns ; they carry all with them, and have no riches but earthen pots, quite well made, especially little glazed pitchers, as neat as you would see in France." ++ The Illinois also occasionally used glazed piteh- ers. ++ The manufacturing of these earthen vessels was done by the ++ women. §§ By the southern Indians the earthenware goods were used for religious as well as domestic purposes. Gravier noticed several in their temples, containing bones of departed warriors, ashes, etc.
* Statements of early settlers.
+ Laudonnière. p. 174.
# Hennepin, vol. 2, p. 105.
$ Pouchot's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 186.
Charlevoix' Narrative Journal. vol. 2. pp. 123. 124.
T Volume 2, pp. 102, 103. This work was written in 1697.
** Pouchot's Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 219.
tt Gravier's Journal, published in Shea's Early Voyages Up and Down the Missis- sippi, p 135.
## Vide p. 109 of this work.
SS Gravier's Journal, published in Shea's Early Voyages Up and Down the Missis- sippi, p. 135; also, Du Pratz' History of Louisiana, vol. 2, p. 166.
183
INDIAN FORTIFICATIONS.
The American Indians, both northern and southern, had most of their villages fortified either by wooden palisades, or earthen breastworks and palisades combined. De Soto, on the 19th of June, 1541. entered the town of Pacaha, * which was very great, walled, and beset with towers, and many loopholes were in the towers and wall.+ Charlevoix said : "The Indians are more skillful in erect- ing their fortifications than in building their houses. Here you see villages surrounded with good palisades and with redoubts; and they are very careful to lay in a proper provision of water and stones. These palisades are double, and even sometimes treble, and generally have battlements on the outer circumvallation. The piles, of which they are composed, are interwoven with branches of trees, without any void space between them. This sort of fortifica- tion was sufficient to sustain a long siege whilst the Indians were ignorant of the use of fire-arms."+
La Hontan thus describes these palisaded towns: "Their villages are fortified with double palisadoes of very hardwood, which are as thick as one's thigh, and fifteen feet high, with little squares about the middle of courtines.">
These wooden fortifications were used to a comparatively late day. At the siege of Detroit, in 1712, the Foxes and Mascoutins resisted, in a wooden fort, for nineteen days, the attack of a much larger force of Frenchmen and Indians. In order to avoid the fire of the French, they dng holes four or five feet deep in the bot- tom of their fort.
The western Indians, in their fortifications, made use of both earth and wood. An early American anthor remarks: "The re- mains of Indian fortifications seen throughout the western country, have given rise to strange conjectures, and have been supposed to appertain to a period extremely remote ; but it is a fact well known that in some of them the remains of palisadoes were found by the first settlers. "" When Maj. Long's party, in 1823, passed through Fort Wayne, they inquired of Metea, a celebrated Pottawatomie chief well versed in the lore of his tribe. whether he had ever heard of any tradition accounting for the erection of those artificial mounds which are found scattered over the whole country. "He immediately replied that they had been constructed by the Indians as fortifica-
* Probably in the limits of the present state of Arkansas.
+ Account by the Gentleman of Elvas, p. 172.
# Narrative Journal, vol. 2, p. 128.
$ Vol. 2. p. 6.
Dubuisson's Official Report.
T Views of Louisiana: Brackenridge, p. 14.
184
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
tions before the white man had come among them. He had always heard this origin ascribed to them, and knew three of those con- structions which were supposed to have been made by his nation. One is at the fork of the Kankakee and the Des Plaines Rivers, a second on the Ohio, which, from his description, was supposed to be at the mouth of the Muskingum. He visited it, but could not de- seribe the spot accurately, and a third, which he had also seen, he stated to be on the head-waters of the St. Joseph of Lake Michigan. This latter place is about forty miles northwest of Fort Wayne."
One of the Miami chiefs, whom the traders named Le Gros, told Barron* that " he had heard that his father had fought with his tribe in one of the forts at Piqua. Ohio; that the fort had been erected by the Indians against the French, and that his father had been killed during one of the assaults made upon it."+
While at Chicago, and " with a view to collect as much informa- tion as possible on the subject of Indian antiquities, we inquired of Robinson # whether any traditions on this subject were current among the Indians. Ile observed that these ancient fortifications were a frequent subject of conversation, and especially those in the nature of excavations made in the ground. He had heard of one made by the Kickapoos and Fox Indians on the Sangamo River, a stream running into the Illinois. This fortification is distinguished by the name of Etnataek. It is known to have served as an in- trenchment to the Kickapoos and Foxes, who were met there and defeated by the Pottawatomies, the Ottawas and Chippeways. No date was assigned to this transaction. We understood that the Et- nataek was near the Kickapoo village on the Sangamo."'s
Near the dividing line between sections 4 and 5, township 31 north, of range 11 east. in Kankakee county. Illinois, on the prairie about a mile above the mouth of Rock Creek, are some ancient mounds. "One is very large, being about one hundred feet base in diameter and about twenty feet high, in a conic form, and is said to contain the remains of two hundred Indians who were killed in the celebrated battle between the Illinois and Chippeways, Delawares and Shawnees; and about two chains to the northeast, and the same
* An Indian interpreter.
+ Long's Expedition to the Sources of the St. Peters, vol. 1. pp. 121, 122.
¿ Robinson was a Pottawatomie half-breed, of superior intelligence, and his state- ments can be relied upon. He died, only a few years ago, on the Au Sable River.
§ Long's Expedition, vol. 1, p. 121. This stream is laid down on Joliet's map, pub- hashed in 1681, as the Pierres Sangumes. In the early gazetteers it is called Sangamo: ride Beck's Illinois and Missouri Gazetteer, p. 154. Its signification in the Pottawat- omie dialect is "a plenty to eat ": Early History of the West and Northwest, by S. R. Beggs. p. 157. This definition, however, is somewhat doubtful.
185
INDIAN MOUNDS.
distance to the northwest, are two other small mounds, which are said to contain the remains of the chiefs of the two parties." *.
Uncorroborated Indian traditions are not entitled to any high degree of credibility, and these quoted are introduced to refute the often repeated assertion that the Indians had no tradition concerning the origin of the mounds scattered through the western states, or that they supposed them to have been erected by a race who occu- pied the continent anterior to themselves.
These mounds were seldom or never used for religious purposes by the Algonquins or Iroquois, but Penicault states that when he visited the Natchez Indians, in 1704, " the houses of the Sunst are built on mounds, and are distinguished from cach other by their size. The mound upon which the house of the Great Chief, or Sun, is built is larger than the rest, and its sides are steeper. The temple in the village of the Great Sun is about thirty feet high and forty-eight in circumference, with the walls eight feet thick and covered with a matting of canes, in which they keep up a perpetual fire."+
De Soto found the houses of the chiefs built on mounds of differ- ent heights, according to their rank, and their villages fortified with palisades, or walls of earth, with gateways to go in and out.
When Gravier, in 1700, visited the Yazoos, he noticed that their temple was raised on a mound of earth. | He also, in speaking of the Ohio, states that " it is called by the Illinois and Ommiamis the river of the Akansea, because the Akansea formerly dwelt on it."@ The Akansea or Arkansas Indians possessed many traits and cus- toms in common with the Natchez, having temples, pottery, etc. A still more important fact is noticed by Du Pratz, who was mti- mately acquainted with the Great Sun. He says: " The temple is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mound about eight feet high, by the side of a small river. The mound slopes insensibly from the main front, which is northward, but on the other sides it is somewhat steeper."
According to their own traditions, the Natchez "were at one
* Manuscript Kankakee Surveys, conducted by Dan W. Beckwith, deputy govern- ment surveyor. in 1834. Major Beckwith was intimately acquainted with the Potta- watomies of the Kankakee, whose villages were in the neighborhood, and without doubt the account of these mounds incorporated in his Field Notes was communicated to him by them.
t The chiefs of the Natches were so called because they were supposed to be the direct descendants of a man and woman, who, descending from the sun, were the first rulers of this people.
# Annals of Louisiana: Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida, new series. pp. 94, 95.
$ Account by the Gentleman of Elvas.
| Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, p. 136.
Idem, p. 120.
186
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
time the most powerful nation in all North America. and were looked upon by the other nations as their superiors, and were, on that account. respected by them. Their territory extended from the River Iberville, in Louisiana, to the Wabash."" They had over five hundred suns. and. consequently, nearly that many villages. Their decline and retreat to the south was owing not to the superi- ority in arms of the less civilized surrounding tribes, but was due to the pride of their own chiefs, who. to lend an imposing magnificence to their funeral rites, adopted the impolitic custom of having hun- dreds of their followers strangled at their pyre. Many of the mounds, scattered up and down valleys of the Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi, while being the only. may be the time-defying monu- ments of the departed power and grandeur of these two tribes.
The Indian manner of making a fire is thus related by Hennepin : " Their way of making a fire, which is new and unknown to us, is thus : they take a triangular piece of cedar wood of a foot and a half in length, wherein they bore some holes half through : then they take a switch, or another small piece of hard wood. and with both their hands rub the strongest upon the weakest in the hole, which is made in the cedar, and while they are thus rubbing they let fall a sort of dust or powder, which turns into fire. This white dust they roll up in a pellet of herbs, dried in autumn. and rubbing them all together, and then blowing upon the dust that is in the pellets, the fire kindles in a moment. "+
The food of the Indians consisted of all the varieties of game. fishes and wild fruits in the vicinity : and they cultivated Indian corn. melons and squashes. From corn they made a preparation called sagamite. They pulverized the corn. mixed it with water, and added a small proportion of ground gourds or beans.
The clothing of the northern Indians consisted only of the skins of wild animals, roughly prepared for that purpose. Their southern brethren were far in advance of them in this respect. .. Many of the women wore cloaks of the bark of the mulberry tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkies or Indian ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry shoots that rise from the roots of trees that have been cut down. AAfter it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody parts fall off. and they give the threads that remain a second beating. after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coarseness of pack-thread. and weave them in the following manner :
* Du Pratz' History of Louisiana, vol. 2. p. 146.
* Ibid, vol. 2. p. 103.
187
THEIR CANOES.
They plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square, with a wrought border round the edges."*
The Indians had three varieties of canoes, elm-bark, birch-bark and pirogues. "Canoes of elm-bark were not used for long voyages, as they were very frail. When the Indians wish to make a canoe of elm-bark they select the trunk of a tree which is very smooth, at the time when the sap remains. They cut it around, above and below, about ten, twelve or fifteen feet apart, according to the num- ber of people which it is to carry. After having taken off the whole in one piece, they shave off the roughest of the bark, which they make the inside of the canoe. They make end ties of the thickness of a finger, and of sufficient length for the canoe, using young oak or any other flexible and strong wood, and fasten the two larger folds of the bark between these strips, spreading them apart with wooden bows, which are fastened in about two feet apart. They sew up the two ends of the bark with strips drawn from the inner bark of the elm, giving attention to raise up a little the two extremities, which they call pinces, making a swell in the middle and a curve on the sides, to resist the wind. If there are any chinks, they sew them together with thongs and cover them with chewing-gum, which they crowd by heating it with a coal of fire. The bark is fastened to the wooden bows by wooden thongs. They add a mast, made of a piece of wood and cross-piece to serve as a yard, and their blankets serve them as sails. These canoes will carry from three to nine persons and all their equipage. They sit upon their heels, without moving, as do also their children, when they are in, from fear of losing their balance, when the whole machine would upset. But this very seldom happened, unless struck by a flaw of wind. They use these vessels particularly in their war parties.
" The canoes made of birch bark were much more solid and more artistically constructed. The frames of these canoes are made of strips of cedar wood, which is very flexible, and which they render as thin as a side of a sword-scabbard, and three or four inches wide. They all touch one another, and come up to a point between the two end strips. This frame is covered with the bark of the birch tree, sewed together like skins, secured between the end strips and tied
* Du Pratz, vol. 2, p. 231; also, Gravier's Voyage. p. 134. The aboriginal method of procuring thread to sew together their garments made of skins has already been no- ticed in the description of the manners and customs of the Illinois.
188
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
along the ribs with the inner bark of the roots of the cedar, as we twist willows around the hoops of a cask. All these seams are cov- ered with gum," as is done with canoes of elm bark. They then put in cross-bars to hold it and to serve as seats, and a long pole, which they lay on from fore to aft in rough weather to prevent it from being broken by the shocks occasioned by pitching. They have with them three. six, twelve and even twenty-four places, which are designated as so many seats. The French are almost the only people who use these canoes for their long voyages. They will carry as much as three thousand pounds. "+ These were vessels in which the fur trade of the entire northwest has been carried on for so many years. They were very light. four men being able to carry the largest of them over portages. At night they were unloaded, drawn upon the shore, turned over and served the savages or traders as huts. They could endure gales of wind that would play havoc with vessels of European manufacture. In calm water. the canoe men, in a sitting posture, used paddles ; in stemming currents, rising from their seats, they substituted poles for paddles, and in shooting rapids, they rested on their knees.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.