USA > Illinois > Clay County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 38
USA > Illinois > Wayne County > History of Wayne and Clay counties, Illinois > Part 38
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To take possession of this after Clark had wrested it from the enemy was the next nat- ural step.
In the spring of 1779, Lieut. John Todd, of Kentucky, by commission of Patrick Henry, came to Kaskaskia and organized civil gov- ernment, which has gone on uninterruptedly ever since, and under its continuation we now live.
At this period, with the exception of the French along the Mississippi, and a few fam- ilies along the Wabash, the whole country was the abode of the savage Indian.
The first Western emigration commenced at this time, and the descendants of several of these early pioneers are here yet. It is a singular fact that it was the wars that always helped Illinois. Soldiers would be sent campaigning over the State, and the country was so beautiful that they would return, and to this we owe many of the best citizens that have ever come to the State of the noble band of Clark's soldiers who made that immortal march, from Kaskaskia to Vincennes, and passed through Clay County, and that at once became permanent citizens of Illinois; we have the record of James Piggot, John Doylo (afterward the first school teacher), Robert Whitehead and a Mr. Bowen.
St. Clair County was organized in 1790, and named in honor of the first territorial Governor. The boundaries of this, the mother of counties in this State, included the present State boundaries, extending as far north as the Little Mackinaw Creek on
the Illinois River. This of course included what is now Clay County.
The next step in which the local history of this part of Illinois is concerned, was the extinguishment of the Indiau titles to the lands we now enjoy and possess. Our peo- ple as a rule, in fact without exception, in all matters of transfer of lands, make no further inquiry after titles, except to trace them to the Government, but as a fact and as a part of the history of every acro of land in all this part of the world, the titles were all at one time in the Indians, and the country's records show that these original owners passed the title first to the Government, and this was a condition precedent to that power possessing a title to give to its inhabitants.
August 13, 1803, the treaty of Vincennes was concluded with the Kaskaskias. The expressed consideration being $580 in cash, an increase in their annuity, under the treaty of Greenville, to $1,000, and $300 toward building a church and an annual payment for seven years of $100 to a Catholic priest stationed among them. The tribe of Kaskaskias, reduced to a few hundred individ- uals, but still representing the once powerful confederacy of the Illinois, ceded to the United States, except a small reservation, all that tract included within a line beginning below the inouth of the Illinois, descending the Mississippi to its junction with the Ohio, as ending the latter to the Wabash, and from a point up the latter, west to the Missis- sippi River, embracing the greater part of Southern Illinois, some 8,608,167 acres.
The reader will readily understand that we have not attempted a synopsis of the early history of Illinois, but only the briefest refer- ence to that portion of the general history as has references or connection with this particular part of Illinois.
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.
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CHAPTER III.
THE EARLIEST SETTLERS-WHO TIIEY WERE AND IIOW THEY CAME-APPEARANCE OF THIE COUNTRY -JOHN McCAWLEY -- HOW OUR TITLES TO THE LAND CAME-THIE INDIANS-A LIST OF EARLY SETTLERS -- THOMAS MCCRACKIN AND MANY OTHERS-TRUNDLE BED-SCHOOL TEACHIER-SINGING MASTER-FIRST DUDES-WRITING MASTER-BOTTLE RACE -WEDDINGS-MANY OTHER INTERESTING FACTS AND FANCIES, ETC.
T' THE first settler in Clay County was John MeCawley, as fine a specimen of the pioneer and genuine man in every respect as ever made his name a household word that cannot perish in any new community. When it was simply a desert wild, with nothing but the wild beast, the game and the Indian, this man came and took up his abode, and he made friends of the Indians, captured the game for his family supplies, and commenced the work of exterminating the wild beasts, which were the enemies to every living thing that came in their way, and contributed nothing toward the good of the world. He was a splendid type of man evidently for the heroic work that had been set apart for him to do. It is much to say of any one that he was the first white man to settle in a county. The simple statement of the fact to any one who at all bears in mind all that the term implies-its hardships and dangers, its drear- iness and loneliness in the eternal solitudes; its oppressive silence, save the scream of the panther, or the "war-whoop that oft woke the sleep of the cradle; " the prowling wolf and the fear-inspiring hoot of the owl, like a midnight messenger of evil-and when the day and its quiet solitude would come, it only aroused the greenhead tly, whose raven- ous armies upon the broad prairies made any attempt to dispute their possession both a daring and a dangerous one indeed. The
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reader must bear in mind that the whole face of the country has undergone during the past thirty or forty years a great change. Natural and artificial drainage has dried the lagoons and swamps until farms in a high state of cultivation have taken their places. The once almost impenetrable forests have given place to well trimmed and cleaned pasture lands, and all of that wildness that once reigned here oppressively in its magnitudo has disappeared before the patient industry of man. Only a few years ago, during the rainy spring seasons, it was almost impossi- hle to cross these prairies with a team, even where the road had been thrown up in the center, and ditches had been cut at the sides to let off the world of surplus water. On the untouched prairies was a strong sod, strong enough to bear up a horse and man, as well as strong enough to bear a wagon, unless heavily laden. And it would bear even the heaviest wagon, except in this very wet spring weather. Plenty of men can well re- member that at one time you could by jump- ing up and down at times and in numerons places shako the sod for a rod all around. The action of the strong sod was as though it rested solely upon water, and to a certain extent this really seems to have been the case. Where once were large ponds that would be the resort of all kinds of water fowls in the spring of the year, are now dry
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farms. The water would fall ever a large portion of the prairies, and lie where it fell, and have to await the slow process of evapor- ation or soaking into the ground before it would disappear. The rainfall was not greater then than now, but so small a quanti- ty had such lasting effects and was slow to disappear, that the evils the superabundant waters produced were an hundred-fold great- er then than now. To these waters upon the prairies was added the dense, tall, prairie grass, almost every vestige of which has now disappeared.
This country was once the regular rang- ing place of the buffalo, and a fact not known to many people is, that with the disappear. ance of the buffalo, disappears invariably the buffalo grass. Hence this peculiar grass must have at one time prevailed all over these prairies, and as the buffalo crossed the Mis- sissippi not to return again, his grass seems to have followed him, and then it was that the prairie grass came to be in its turn ex- terminated by the present grasses, and it is the judgment of the writer that a few years will witness the disappearance of all the present wild grasses, to be followed by the final grass that is the handmaiden of the highest state of land cultivation-the blue grass.
Mr. McCawley had started West. His pi- lot and guiding star on his route was the old " Vinsans " trace, as the old Vincennes, St. Louis & Kaskaskia Indian and buffalo path was called and known in the early day. When he came, it had been twenty-two years since George Rogers Clark and his noble band of heroes had passed over the ground where MaCawley concluded to stop and erect his roof-tree.
The Kaskaskia Indians had ceded to the Government all these lands in Illinois seven years before he came here, that is, the treaty
was made in 1803, and the title had run in the General Government seven years before any white man came to claim any part or por- tion of them as a home. The Indians were here, and they alone were the only semblance of man to hold dispute with the wild beasts. The best title had belonged to the Kaskaskias, and it was of them the Government acquired its title, but other Indians were here, chiefly the Kickapoos. but all, Indian-like, were roving hunters, nomadic in all their habits, always professing the greatest friendship for the whites when begging salt and some- thing to eat; yet by those who knew them best, they were always trusted the least. The Indian and his congeners, the wolf and the greenhead fly, the bear and the deer, and the panther, have gone, and one has left, like the other, nothing but a memory. All these were beasts, but the Indian is called human, because of his vastly superior sense, but as to values there were many species of game that have disappeared whose loss will always be regarded as far greater than that of the red man. We know nothing of the Indian ex- cept what we saw of him after we found him in the possession of a country that he had not the intelligence to hold or appreciate. How long they had been in this country we now have no means of knowing-it is doubt- ful if the race knew anything on this subject themselves. Their interest and information as to their own early history was satisfied with a few incoherent and impossible tra- ditionary tales. And now the white man, the natural archaeologists of the world, are prying everywhere in the Indian's tracts to trace his story back to its origin. For a long time it was believed they had built the mounds, and, therefore, they had once pos- sessed a superior civilization and had been the happy possessors of great and strong cen- tralized governments; perhaps spelling na-
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tion with a big N. This theory is not yet en- tirely abandoned, but the better opinion among patient investigators is, that at the most, the Indian found the mounds here when he came, and that he used portions of them as suitable burying places, and it is only possible that there was among the many different tribes of fighting red men here, some of the many who had sufficient intelli- gence to do this. Because we have seen that those we found here buried their dead in trees, on poles, and in various ways above ground. No. The Indians that the whites found here built no mounds, nor did they build anything else. Every pulsation of their nature opposed the very idea of slavery. The Indian was ready to die, but never to be a slave. The peoples who built all such works as the mounds were slaves. This is true of all the great historical works-works whero great time and innumerable numbers of men wero necessary to do the actual labor. Thus, the pyramids, a monument to slaves alone-slaves did the work, and the infinites- imal glory that may be extracted therefrom belongs to them alone. And this silly hunt of half-cracked enthusiasts who go upon their pilgrimages to the sphynx and the pyramids, the Kremlin and the ruins of Alhambra, are only feeding a transparent delusion, in sup- posing they will ever find there the evidences of some supremely exalted evidences of civ- ilization and intelligence.
We say it was the opposite of all we know of the Indian character to suppose he or any of his kind over built a mound. The Indian was intelligent and shiftless, but every tissue of his body was at war with be- coming a slave. The first whites that ever looked upon the shores of this continent saw about the same characteristics in the Indian that we see to day. His shrewdness taught him to be jealous of the superior white man
and his coming, and he inaugurated a war that he then could not know, must sooner or later end in the utter extermination of his race. The struggle was long and bitter. Many a campaign was planned by warriors fit to command great armies for the destruc- tion of the white invaders. Their King Philip was beyond doubt their Napoleon and Hannibal, aud when he delivered his blow the white man for the first time was awakened to the serious and bloody work before him. The endurance, courage and bravery of the whito man was taxed to its utmost throughout all New England. Then in the West was his compeer, Tecumseh, who, like Philip, real- ized the power of organization and union among the roving tribes, and his was to be the supreme general effort in the West to stay the on-marching civilization. The Creeks challenged the people of the South to mortal combat, and it required all the genius of a Jackson to withstand the desperate as- saults. In 1814 was fought the decisive battle of Tohopeko, and since then there has been no memorable battles with the Indians, at least none where the supremacy of the whites was seriously menaced. The Black ·Hawk war, about the last organized effort, required but a few weeks' service of raw militia to quell. Since that day, in 1832, cam- paigns have dwindled into mere raids, battles into mere skirmishes or ambuscades, and the Custer massacre in Montana was merely an accident. No possible number of such oc- currences could menace any fractional portion of the country. It was a melancholy affair indeed, but like a sad accident at a fire or railroad and no longer felt than they.
The Indian, as a race, is doomed by the inexorable laws of humanity to a speedy ex- tinction. Accepting the inevitable with the stoical indifference which the instinct of self-preservation or the promptings of ro-
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venge seldem disturb, he may excite pity only now, certainly not fear. Discouraged and demoralized, helpless and hopeless, he sits down to await a swiftly approaching fate; and if now and then in feeble and hopeless bands he treads the war-path, and takes here and there a defenseless scalp, it is more from force of habit and the savage in- stinct for blood, than from any hope of check ing or crippling the power that is swiftly sweeping him and his out of existence.
What a brief time ago it was the white man lived in this country by the red man's consent, and less than a century ago the combined Indian strength properly handled might have driven the whites into the sea. In the oldest settlements of the country are still to be found the moldering remains of the rude fortifications the settlers had to build to de- fend themselves and families from the hosts of enemies around them, but now where can need be for such protection from the Indian ? If any, certainly, only a few points in Arizo- na, New Mexico and Oregon. The fierce enemy that once encamped his clans in their hideous war paint, within sound of the waves of the Atlantic shores, has retreated across the Alleghanies, the Mississippi, the Rockies, and now in all this settled country of fifty millions of people, there is nothing left of the tribes save an occasional name that was of their invention or use, with here and there a degraded remnant of a once powerful tribe, dragging out a miserable existence as the most wretched of beggars, and outcasts among their conquerors. A very few years hence and the Indian will live only in story and song. He will leave nothing behind him but a memory, for he has done nothing and been nothing. He has been consistent only in his resistence to all attempts to civi- lize him-every attempt to inject the white man's ideas into the Indian brain. He has
not wanted and would never have our morals, manners, religion or civilization, and has clung to his own and perished with them. There is but one redeeming thing that should linger forever in the memories of the savage, and that was that he preferred the worst pos- sible freedom to the best and even luxurious slavery. More attempts were made to enslave him than to civilize him; a nod of assent to hew wood and draw water for the superior race, and, like the negro. he might now be living by the million and enjoying the blessings of Bible and breeches, and sharing the honors of citizenship and the sweets of office, seeking and receiving the bids of rival political par- ties, and selling his vote and even his influ- ence at the polls, and then going to a na- tional convention and gathering in more shekels for a single district vote than all his tribe got for an indefeasible title to the half of the State of Illinois. No; he would not do this, because his make-up was such he could not be a slave. He chose rather to die. Whether his choice was a wise one, the read- er can say for himself; but it is impossible not to find some little spark of respect to that indomitable spirit that accepted sufferings unspeakable, and hardships cruel unto death, but who never bowed his neck to the yoke, never called any man " master."
The treatment of the Indian by the white race is not defensible as a whole. Gov- ernment officials have robbed, cheated and lied to them so long and so persistently-not satisfied with this, the rascally Government Indian rings have time and again, indeed almost times without number, forced them to commit depredations, or white men would commit an outrage to lay at their doors, and all that these rascals might call ont the army to punish the Indian, but really to increase their stealings. Such accursed action on the part of officials and their ring friends was
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not only a deep ontrage upon the Indians and whites, but against humanity. What- ever else the red man may be, he is no fool, and for 250 years he has experiences of the white man's dishonesty and double dealing that were dismal enough to canso us not to wonder that he will have none of our man- nors, morals or religion, and away back of those swindling agencies was a sickly sen- timentalism, that read Cooper's silly novels about the Indian, and went over the country prating and mouthing about taking away his birthright and his lands. One was the hon- est sentimentalism of fools, and the other the cunning of crafty thieves. The talk of the sentimentalists about the Indian being here first, as beautiful as it may be. applies with as much force to the wolves and snakes the rod man found here as it does to the Indian. The snakes were here probably before the wolves. So long as there was none to dis- pute their title, they were not disturbed, but the snake or the wolf when he came be- tween the Indian and his welfare and exist- ence, was mercilessly scotched and killed.
The Indian stood as a barrier in the path- way of civilization, and it was best that he has perished. It is nonsense to talk about his being a human; in the economy of God even, everything human perishes, and the existence of the Indian was not only not pos- sible, but it was infinitely better that it should be as it is. It is the law of the " sur- vival of the fittest." A law of nature appli- cable to all living things, animal or vege- table or human, and like all nature's laws cannot change, nor can it possibly be avoid- ed. It is inflexible, inexorable. eternal, and cunning schemes to cheat nature are only prolonging the agony, the inevitable throes of death and extinction that await the infe- rior in the presence of its superior. The white man is civilized, not perfect, not per-
fectible, but he is the Indian's superior, as he is the superior of tho negro and the Mon golian. The Anglo Saxon is the superior of the white races, and he is becoming, and will be, if he is not already, the world's master, because " blood will tell."
The Tribes of Southern Illinois were the Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees and Pianke- shaws, with many fragmentary bands of various other tribes. Of these, the Delawares were once the most powerful tribe. They called thomselves the Lenno-Lenape, signifying " unmixed " men. When the country was first discovered. they occupied much of the shores of the Hudson River, and along the Atlantic coast. Their traditions, not enti - tled to much consideration, however, were that they had occupied the whole continent at one time and another.
Tecumseh's Army .- As previously stated, Mr. John McCawley had located where the old town of Maysville was afterward laid off in 1810. He had proceeded quietly in build- ing him a home for his family, and opening the first improvement, not only in what is now Clay County, but the first for a wide stretch of country in every direction then in Illinois. Vincennes was his nearest trading point, and as for neighbors he had none ex- cept the Indians With these he held honor- able and friendly intercourse.
He had lived along in this way for nearly two years, when Tecumseh's army that he had been gathering in the north began to pass. The very presence of these men meant war upon all whites. McCawley was informed by some friendly neighbors of what was go- ing on, and that he must fly for his life. But the details of all this are fully given in the history of Clay City Township, to be found in another chapter, and to which we refer the reader.
In every line of the history of the county 18
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and the story of this portion of the State be- fore the county was formed, the name of John McCawley is connected and is in fact the chief part; and from that day to the pres- ent hour, the name has passed along and borne the same honorable distinction and wide respect that was conferred upon it by its original founder. His two sons now re- side in the county and they are both men of wealth, high standing and untarnished repu- tations. But as their biographies appear in full in another part of the work, the reader will naturally turn there for further par- ticulars.
Philip Devore, Seth Evans and a Mr. Circles soon followed the second coming of John McCawley to the county. We cannot now find any one able to tell us Mr. Circles' given name, but he is remembered well by all the very early settlers, because of the fact that he put up a horse mill east of Flora, and for some time furnished bread, or the means of grinding their own corn, to the early set- tlers.
John and Benjamin Bishop settled near where the town of Iola now stands, and were the first adventurers in this portion of the county.
John Sutton and a family named Smith set- tled near what is now Oskaloosa. For many years this was known as Sutton's Point, tak- ing its name from John Sutton's improve- ment. It would seem that without any strong reason, it was a pity not to continue to know the place perpetually by its original name in honor of this early settler.
In 1818, William Lewis brought his family and settled in the western portion of the county.
At the same time Thomas Elliott settled and commenced an improvement where John A. Gerhart now lives, a little east of Flora. And Mathias Meisenheimer came at the same time,
and settled on the west side of Raccoon Creek, on a farm owned now by Seth F. Hinkley.
In 1822, came Isaac Elliott, Isaac Mont- gomery, James McGrew, John M. Griffith and John Onstott, who settled in the western por- tion of the county.
The following is a tolerably complete list of the early settlers of Clay County with their respective ages: Francis Apperson, eighty - three; Isaac Elliott, eighty-five; John L. Crutchfield, seventy-four; J. J. Spriggs, sixty-five; Abraham Songer, seventy-seven; John Peirce, seventy-two; Jacob Songer, eighty-one; Jesse Blair, seventy-four; Joseph Bishop, seventy-six; Sarah Bishop, seventy- one; Enoch Sceif, seventy-two; Elizabeth Sceif, seventy-one; Crawford Erwin, sixty- five; M. A. Davis, sixty-five; A. P. Cox, sev- enty·five; A. J. Moore, seventy-four; Felix Cockerell, seventy four; Robert N. Smith, sixty five; Basil Davis, sixty-nine; Margaret Davis, sixty-two; Isaac Baity, sixty-eight; James Baity, sixty-seven; Mary S. Saunders, sixty-three; Alexander Baity, fifty-seven; Louis A. Tolliver, sixty-six; Levi Onstott, sixty-seven; W. L. Colelasure, sixty-two; James Hoard, sixty-seven; Sarah A. Morris, fifty-nine; Theodore MeKennelly, sixty six; Silas Ooton, fifty-eight; R. McClellan, fifty- two; Jesse Montgomery, seventy-one; Feild- den Bridgewaters, sixty-seven; Samuel Jones, fifty-one; I. W. Craig, fifty-one; Daniel Moore, sixty; J. P. Aldridge, fifty-one; Henry Long, seventy; J. C. Craig, fifty-one; Thomas Higgenbotham, fifty-one; F. C. Smith sixty-seven; Harvey Gray, fifty-nine; M. P. Harris, eighty-one; William McCoily, Joseph Colelasure, Mrs. E. J. Colelasure.
As seen in the records of the offices and the courts, among the prominent men here at the organization of the county was Thomas McCrackin. In 1825, he was appointed to take the census of the county, and in 1835
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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY.
Robert Toler was appointed to fill the same duties.
This list does not include all the first settlers in the county, nor all of those who were here the first decade of the county's existence as a municipality. Of course the first scattered and sparsely populated settlement was col- lected around the MeCawley settlement; the next was probably around the settlement made by Thomas Elliott.
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