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 33
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The events following the relief of Fort Wayne, and the failure at Fort Harrison, were the formation of a navy upon Lake Erie and the raising of a large military force by Gen. Harrison, under diffi- culties and such depressing delays as would have discouraged almost any other officers than Harrison and the immortal Perry.
On. the 10th day of September, 1813, Perry met the British fleet of vessels at the head of Lake Erie, and captured every one of them in an engagement that shed imperishable fame upon every officer and private of his command. Harrison's army collected upon the
* Gen. Taylor's report, read in connection with the account given by the commander on the other side,-Old Joseph Lenar, as Taylor calls " La Farine, " or Pa-koi-shee-can, - found on page 165, will give the reader a very full understanding of the ingenuity and boldness of the attack on Fort Harrison and the heroism of its defense.
303
TECUMSEH'S DEATH.
peninsula formed by Sandusky Bay, with the venerable Gov. Isaac Shelby in his gray hairs at the head of his children, the gallant Kentucky militia, were transported across the lake to Malden, which the fleeing Proctor had burned at their approach. Retreating up the River Thames, the forces of Proctor and Tecumseh were brought to an engagement near the Moravian towns, where, on the 5th of October, they were defeated in an action as brilliant upon the land as was Capt. Barelay's upon the water.
The Indians were posted in a swamp, and were commanded by Tecumseh in person, who went down in the thickest of the fight, gallantly encouraging his men. His prediction was verified to the letter-he and Harrison had "fought it ont"; the confederation he had molded dropped to pieces. The several tribes hastened to Gen. Harrison's headquarters to say they wanted peace. It was the last great combination of the Indians against the whites; and it is a historical coincidence that the confederations of both Pon- tiac and Tecumseh to check the ever westward flow of immigration should have met their final overthrow in the vicinity of Detroit, and on British soil.
Happily for the west, that owing largely to the exertions of its own people, the lost territory was recovered, and when the treaty of peace was concluded in 1815, the old boundary lines remained as before, without the loss of a single acre.
Upon the restoration of peace, immigration received a new im- pulse. Indiana, having sufficiently increased her population, was, on the 11th of December, 1816, admitted as a state in the Union. Two years afterward, December 3, 1818, Illinois followed Indiana in the sisterhood of states.
The campaigns of Harmar, Scott, Wilkinson, St. Clair, Wayne and Harrison gave the volunteers a knowledge of the beauty and fertility of the western country, and may well be said to have been so many exploring expeditions. As soon as the Indian titles to the several portions of the territory were successively extinguished, population poured in, often in advance of the government surveys. The Ohio and the Mississippi were the base, and the Illinois, the Wabash, the Miami and their tributaries, with other principal streams, were the supporting columns upon which the settlements respectively formed and gradually extended itself to the right and left from these waters until the intervening country was filled.
Within little more than half a century, population has extended itself northward over the states of Indiana and Illinois, and coun- ties have been organized like the blocks of a building, one upon
304
HISTORIC NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST.
the other, until now those hitherto wild and uninhabited wastes com- prise the most wealthy, enterprising and populous portions of these two states.
The order in which these counties were organized and filled can be more properly carried forward in their respective county histories in an unbroken continuity from the place where the writer now bids the reader a hearty good-bye.
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31
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
BY H. W. BECKWITH.
THAT part of Illinois now known as Vermilion county was orig- inally a portion of New France. It, together with all the immense territory lying west of the Alleghanies and north of the Ohio, be- longed, by right of discovery and occupation, to the King of France from the year 1682 to 1763. During this time, for administrative purposes, New France was divided into two immense districts, the one known as Canada and the other as Louisiana, and at one period prior to 1745 the division line of the "Illinois country " began on the Wabash, at the mouth of the Vermilion River, thence northwest to La Salle's old fort ou the Illinois River, a few miles above Ottawa. North of this line was Canada ; south of it, and west of the Wabash, was Louisiana. At that time the county seat for that part of Ver- milion county south of the line named was Fort Chartes. North of this line the country was governed from the Post of Detroit; and if a French trader, then living along the Vermilion River, wished to get married to an Indian girl, he would have, in the absence of a nearer parish priest, to go either to Fort Chartes or Detroit, if he wished to lawfully celebrate the ceremony. They seldom went to this trouble, however.
At the conclusion of the French colonial war in 1763 the country eastward of the Mississippi and west of the Alleghanies was ceded to Great Britain, and this power held and exercised dominion over it for some fifteen years, through an organization or board known as "The Lords Commissioners of the Council of Trade and Planta- tions," or "Lords of Trade." While the revolutionary war was in progress, the western country, by the capture of Kaskaskia and other settlements within its borders, fell, in 1778, into the hands of Virginia, through the conquest of Gen. George Rogers Clark and his soldiers, citizens of that state. After this Vermilion became a part of "Illinois county," in the State of Virginia. Our own gov-
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306
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
ernment acquired title to the northwest by deeds of cession from Virginia, together with releases from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, of such claims as these states might have had to parts of it under their old charters from the British crown. Afterward, and under the ordinance of 1787. passed by congress for its govern- ment. the country became known as "The territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio." In the year 1800 the territory was divided. when that part of it lying west of a line drawn from the mouth of the Kentucky River to Fort Recovery-the old battle- field of St. Clair's defeat, in the edge of Mercer county, Ohio, four miles east of the Indiana state line-thence north to the British possessions, was named and governed as " The Indiana Territory "; the capitol at Vincennes. In the formation of counties, by virtue of the proclamation of Gen. Harrison, as governor, issued on the 3d day of February, 1801. a part of Vermilion county lay in the county of Knox. and the other portion in St. Clair, the same as sections of it were formerly in Canada and Louisiana, with the difference that the line established by Gov. Harrison split our county by a nearly north and south line, while that fixed, over half a century before. by Mons. Vaudreuil. governor of New France, divided it in an oppo- site direction. Again, in 1809, after the Illinois Territory had been formed off of the Indiana Territory, by a line running from the mouth of the Ohio up the Wabash to Vincennes, thence north to the British Possessions, and when Nathaniel Pope, acting as governor, issued his proclamation on the 28th day of April. 1809. reforming the boundary lines between the counties of Randolph and St. Clair, and that portion of Knox lying west of the territorial line, Ver- milion county fell wholly within the county of St. Clair. Our county seat by the change was now Cahokia, on the west side of the state, opposite the lower suburbs of St. Louis. At this time had any per- son living within the present limits of Vermilion a deed he de- sired to record. it would have required a journey of nearly two hundred miles, and no little skill in finding the way to the county seat.
Two years before Illinois was admitted as a state into the Union the county of Crawford was formed. and at that time Vermilion county was a part of its territory. Here, in the round of changes, our new county seat was shifted back across the state to the banks of the Wabash, at Palestine. sitnated at the month of La Motte Creek, where in 1812 was a block-house, called Fort La Motte, that stood on the extreme northern limit of settlements in eastern Illi- nois.
307
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
In 1819, the year after Illinois was made a state, the county of Clark was formed off the northern part of Crawford, with the county seat established some miles higher up the Wabash, at a place called Aurora, which in turn became the county seat of all that region bordering on the Indiana line, and extending north as far as the Illi- nois and Kankakee Rivers. As it was when Vermilion county was a part of Clark, and while Aurora was the county seat, that the first permanent settlement was begun within the present limits of Ver- . milion, we will defer further reference to the formation of counties in the chain of succession until we have noticed the incoming of the first pioneers.
It was fur and salt that first attracted attention of white people in this direction.
Prior to this date, the title of the Indians claiming the country along the waters of the Vermilions had not been wholly extinguished. At the treaty concluded at St. Mary's, Ohio, on the 2d of October, 1818, between Jonathan Jennings. Lewis Cass and Benjamin Parke, commissioners of the United States, and the Pottawatomie nation of Indians, Me-te-a-" Kiss me," Ke-sis-"The Sun," To-pin-ne-bee, Pe-so-tem, and thirty other principal chiefs of that tribe, ceded the following tract of country : " Beginning at the mouth of Tippecanoe River, and running up the same to a point twenty-five miles in a direct line from the Wabash River; thence on a line as nearly paral- lel to the general course of the Wabash River as practicable, to a point on the Vermilion River twenty-five miles from the Wabash River ; thence down the Vermilion River to its mouth ; thence up the Wabash River to the place of beginning." By the second arti- cle of this treaty the United States agreed to purchase any just claim which the Kick-a-poos might have to any part of the ceded country below Pine Creek. The next year, by the treaty of Edwardsville, concluded on the 13th of July, 1819, the latter tribe ceded a large section of country between the Illinois River and the Wabash, in- clusive of that ceded by the Pottawatomies, and which is more par- ticularly described in the chapter on the Kickapoos, and will be found on page 167 of the general history. Immediately following this latter treaty, another treaty was concluded on the 30th of August, 1819, at Fort Harrison, between the United States, through its commissioner, Benjamin Parke, and that particular tribe or band who, in this treaty, described themselves as "The chiefs, warriors and head men of the tribe of Kickapoos of the Vermilion, in which, to the end that the United States might be enabled to fix with other Indians a boundary between their respective claims, these Kickapoos
308
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
described the country to which they had a rightful claim as follows : "Beginning at the northwest corner of the Vincennes tract"- see the General History, page 167. for the location of the Vincennes tract .- " thence westerly to the boundary established by a treaty with the Piankashaws on the 30th of December. 1805." This line runs north seventy-eight degrees west from the northwest corner of the Vincennes tract to the ridge that divides the waters flowing into the Wabash from the streams that drain directly to the Mississippi. "to the dividing ridge between the waters of the Embarras and Little Wabash ; thence by the said ridge to the sources of the Vermilion River ; thence by the said ridge to the head of Pine Creek : thence by said creek to the Wabash River: thence by the said river to the mouth of the Vermilion River, and thence by [up] the Vermilion and the boundary heretofore established to the place of beginning."
This treaty was signed by Wah-co-haw, " The Grey Fox"; Kitch- e-mah-quaw, "Big Bear ": Te-cum-the-na. " Track in the Prairie"; Pe-le-che-ah, " The Panther": Mac-a-ca-naw (none of the treaties to which this chief was a party give the signification of his name) : Ka- an-eh-ka-ka or Ka-an-a-kuck, "The Drunkard's Son." as he was first called, or " The Prophet," a name which he assumed after he reformed and became a religious teacher ; Pu-koi-shee-can, or "The Flour. " and whom the French called ". La Ferine."
However singular these names may appear to ns. doubtless the parties to whom they belonged were men of distinction during the time they owned and lived within the territory they relinquished. We have mentioned in the General History, page 164, the fact of the Kickapoos having ceded the tract of country between the Vermilion and the mouth of Raccoon Creek, below Newport, Indiana. and ex- tending from the Wabash westward some fifteen miles. In an address delivered by the writer before the Historical Society in May, 1878, it was stated that " a history of our county would not be complete un- less it went back of the time when the settlements began : that the mind would constantly recur to the unwritten chapter. would go back beyond the recollection of the . oldest inhabitant,' and busy itself with the inquiries, Who first explored this part of our country ? Who owned it before the United States acquired it ? Who were the aboriginal proprietors ? What were their tribal names? Where were their villages located ?" These questions the writer has en- deavored to answer in the General History preceding that of the County History in this volume. One other topie in which the writer supposed the citizens of this locality would be interested was as to when and how our government extinguished the Indian titles to
309
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
the lands drained by the Vermilion River and its tributaries. This last question has now been answered.
In less than a month after the treaty at Fort Harrison, August. 1819, the Vermilion River was explored. The inducement was the hope of discovering salt. It appears, from an affidavit made to Joseph Barron, who for many years was Gen. Harrison's in- terpreter, and well versed in the dialects of all the Indian tribes who lived, hunted or claimed to own the lands wa- tered by the Wabash and the streams flowing into it, that he was at the " Vermilion Salines" as early as the year 1801. He further made oath that he was again at the same " salt spring, situated on the Big Vermilion River, on the north side, about one and a half miles above the old 'Kickapoo town,' and about. fifteen or eighteen miles from HAWTIN CHL NT. the Big Wabash River, in the DRAI county of Clark, state of Illi- JOSEPH BARRON. nois, on the 22d day of September, 1819, in company with Lambert Bona, Zachariah Cicott" [as we know the name, or Shecott, as spelled by the justice of the peace who wrote and verified the affi- davits to which Bona, Cicott and Barron had sworn before him on on the 8th of December, 1819], "and Truman Blackman, together with four Shawnee Indians whom he [Barron] had hired and paid to go with him and show him minerals, salt springs, etc."
The occasion of these affidavits, with several others of which the writer obtained copies from the archives at Springfield, was that the legislature had previously passed a liberal law to encourage the dis- covery and development of saline water, by the terms of which any person making such discoveries should have the exclusive right to manufacture salt within a given area. Conflicting claims arose di- rectly as to the rights of several parties, and it was several years before they were finally adjusted, and the letters and affidavits sent in to Gov. Bond from the contestants afford reliable dates and other interesting matter relating to "the first settlement of the county."'
The parties returned, and Capt. Blackman organized a second
310
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
expedition withont the knowledge or sanction of Barron. His party consisted of himself. his brother- Remember Blackman - George Beckwith, Seymour Treat, Peter Allen and Francis Whitcomb. They crossed the Wabash at the mouth of Otter Creek in the latter part of October, and struck ont in a northwest course through the timber and prairies, keeping the direction with a small pocket compass, un- til they arrived at a stream supposed to be the Big Vermilion. abont twenty-five miles, as they inferred, from the Wabash River. Here they eneamped on the 31st of October. 1819. Capt. Blackman pointed ont a smooth spot of low ground from twenty to thirty rods across where he said there was salt water. There was no vegetation growing upon the surface, and no traces of people ever having been there. "except."- says Peter Allen in his affidavit. - " in some few places where the Indians had sunk enrbs of bark into the soil for the purpose of procuring salt water."
Capt. Blackman set two or three men to work with spades, and by digging two or three feet into the saturated soil saline water was pro- cured. This was boiled down in a kettle brought along for that pur- pose. About two gallons of water yielded four ounces of good clear salt. An experimental well was dug a few rods from the former. where the brine was much stronger. It was agreed by Capt. Black- man that Treat. Whitcomb and Beckwith should be partners in the discovery of the salt water, and each pay his portion of the ex- penses. Beekwith and Whitcomb were left in charge to hold pos- session against the intrusion of other explorers, and to go on devel- oping the saline water, while the others returned to Fort Harrison and procured a team, tools and provisions, with a view to future ope- rations. In the latter part of November, 1819. Treat returned. com- ing up the Wabash and Vermilion rivers in a pirogue, with tools. provisions, his wife and children. With the assistance of Beckwith and Whiteomb - both good axmen-a cabin was quickly erected and Treat's family took immediate possession. In this war and at this place began the first permanent settlement within the present limits of Vermilion county. Mr. Treat's family suffered all the pri- vations incident to their situation. Their nearest neighbors were on North Arm Prairie, some forty miles away. The old Kickapoo town, a mile below their cabin, was deserted. The fence inclosing the cornfield had tumbled to the ground. Weeds rankled where formerly the Indian squaw had hoed her corn and cultivated her squashes. A year later. Treat, writing to the governor, says " that his family had remained on the ground ever since their arrival, except one who has fallen a victim to the sufferings and privations which they have had
311
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
to endure, in a situation so remote from a settled country, without the means of procuring the ordinary comforts of life."
Capt. Blackman, it seems, did not do as he agreed. Instead of making an application to the governor in the name of Barron and the other parties interested, he look the lease, or permit, in his own name. The other parties complained and presented their own claims to the governor, in numerous affidavits and letters, and it was some three years before the difficulties were finally adjusted. In the mean- time several wells were sunk, one of them by Beckwith and Whit- comb at their own expense, to the depth of fifty feet, mostly by drill- ing through solid rock. The salt was excellent in quality, purity and strength. Great expectations were raised as to the benefit that would accrue to the people of the Wabash Valley from these salt works. The writer has before him a letter addressed, on the 8th of June, 1820, by James B. McCall, from Vincennes, to Gov. Bond, in which the former says, " the people of the eastern section of your state are very anxious that the manufacture of salt might be gone into. Ap- pearances at the Vermilion salines justify the belief that salt may be made north of this sufficient for the consumption of all the settlers on the Wabash, and much below the present prices. Nearly all of the salt consumed above the month of the Wabash is furnished by Kentucky, and the transportation so far up streams materially en- hances the price, and in the present undeveloped state of the country as to money, prevents a majority of the farmers from procuring the quantity of this necessary article that their stock, etc., requires." On the 13th of December, 1822, the conflicting claimants, or as- signees of them, settled their differences at Vandalia before Gov. Bond, in an agreement which defined the shares of each. During this and the following year the manufacture of salt was increased. Nothing, however, was done on a scale equal to the demands until in 1824, and after John W. Vance obtained possession of the salines. In the spring of 1824 Vance brought twenty-four large iron kettles from Louisville, in a batau, down the Ohio, up the Wabash and Ver- · milion to the mouth of Stony Creek, about four miles southeast of Danville. The water being low and the channel obstructed by a sand- bar at the mouth of the creek, the boat was abandoned, and the ket- tles hanled from thence to the salt works by ox teams. Soon after this the number of kettles was increased to eighty. holding a hun- dred and forty gallons each. They were set in a double row in a furnace constructed of stone at the bench of the hill near the wells. A hundred gallons of brine was required to make a bushel of salt. and from sixty to eighty bushels was a good week's run. The salt
312
HISTORY OF VERMILION COUNTY.
sold readily at the works for from $1.25 to $1.50 per bushel. Much of it was taken down the river in pirogues to supply the country below. A great deal was taken away in wagons, and much of it in saeks on horseback by persons who were too poor to own a team. It was not an unusual occurrence to see people at the "works " from the settlements at Buffalo, Hart and Elkhart Groves, from the San- gamon and Illinois Rivers, and from the neighborhood of Rockville and Rosedale, Indiana. In those days, says Mr. HI. A. Coffeen, in an excellent little volume issued by him in 1870, and which is the pioneer history of our country, "the motto seemed to be more wagon roads to the salt works."
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