USA > Illinois > Will County > History of Will County, Illinois, Volume One > Part 8
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In marshes, ponds, and along streams were, Mallard ducks, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, Canada goose, brant, snipe, sand-hill crane, and king-fisher.
Along cliffs were, Barn-swallow, cliff swallow, bank swal- low.
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Permanent residents in Will County then and now,-Crow, blue-jay, red-tailed hawk, screech owl, quail, cardinal, barred owl, downy wood-pecker, hairy woodpecker, white breasted nut-hatch, and tufted titmouse.
Bird life is abundant now in prairies and forests and seems to be increasing. A comparison may be made thus for 1828 and 1928. Then in a radius of five miles one might have found 150 species nesting. Now one may find 50 species nesting in the same area. The highway for migration through Will County makes it possible to identify 110 species in one day, including sand-hill crane and all species of geese and ducks.
Wild animal life is found in many of the smaller species, gopher, field mouse, white-footed mouse, red squirrel, gray squirrel, ground squirrel, gopher, musk rat, moke, wood-chuck, cotton tail rabbit, mink, and opossum. The larger species are represented by coon, prairie wolf, timber wolf, and fox. Dur- ing 1928, prairie wolves and timber wolves have been killed in Will County.
The history of the American bison, or buffalo in Northern Illinois is interesting. About the time that Columbus reached the eastern shores of North America (1492) the great American bison was leaving the failing pastures of the north. He came down around the western end of the Great Lakes and followed the eastern side of the Mississippi River and thus arrived in Illinois. Fossil remains have been unearthed near the western border of Will County, among which are buffalo bones mingled with those of the mastodons which occupied this region in Geo- logical times. From these remains we gather that they were here before 1492 but the Red Man had no traditions about this early occupation. The fossil remains may have been from an occupation which occurred ages ago.
The buffalo was welcomed by the Indians because he furn- ished an abundance of food which was easily taken. Some historians venture to say this food supply changed the natives
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from farmers to hunters and warriors. This is not likely since game was always abundant on the fertile prairies of Illinois, prairies which were always prized by the Indians and had to be defended by a sturdy people. Surely, life among the natives became easier because food, clothing, and shelter were readily procured. Hospitality was abundant and a better fellowship came to their hearths and homes.
Since we have given the coming of the buffalo, the going (disappearance) from Will County may not be omitted. From the "Memories of Shaubena" (Shabona) we take the following: "The trade in buffalo robes in what is now Will County ceased about 1790, and that of elk skins thirty years afterward. Shaubena said, in his youthful days he chased buffalo across the prairies, but while he was still young they all disappeared from the country. A big snow about five feet deep, fell and froze so hard on the top that people walked on it, causing the buffalo to. perish by starvation. Next spring a few buffalo, poor and hag- gard in appearance, were seen going westward, as they approached the carcasses of dead ones, which were lying here and there on the prairie, they would stop, commence pawing and blowing, then start off again on a lope for the West. Years afterward buffalo bones were found in large quantities on the prairies; in some places, many acres were covered with them, showing where a large herd had perished, and their trails, lead- ing to and from watering places, were plain to be seen."
Passenger pigeons were so numerous that they passed in clouds rather than in flocks. The author recalls such a cloud which passed over eastern Will County half a century ago. In the distance, it resembled a dark cloud which appeared to be agitated by wind. The moving of many wings produced this effect upon the eye. Roosts were found in many places, the best known being on the bluffs south of the gravel works on the Channahon road. The bluffs were covered with trees, na- tive timber undisturbed. In these trees the birds passed the
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night, assembling in such numbers that the trees were frequent- ly broken down by the weight of the birds. Hunters came there at sunrise to shoot the birds as they went out in the morning to go to their feeding grounds. This bird is now extinct. The last one died in the zoological park at Cincinnati twenty years ago.
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Deer were abundant as late as 1850. They disappeared rapidly after that because settlers came in immediately follow- ing that date. Firearms and dogs were destructive to game. Turkey, bear, panther, lynx, and otter, were driven out or killed by 1860.
Rattlesnakes were numerous when the first settlers ap- peared upon the prairies. The bite of this snake was considered deadly at that time and is still considered so. Deaths from the bite of the rattlesnake are recorded but were not numerous. The reptile was not aggressive and always gave warning be- fore striking. While it was not apt to flee from man, it pre- ferred flight to fight. They were found near low lands or marshes most frequently. When they appeared near habita- tions they were found in pairs, male and female together. They were exterminated rapidly, becoming extinct more than sixty years ago.
One good German woman helped in haying and placed the hay upon the wagon without a fork, using her hands instead, as was the custom in the fatherland. After finishing the load and taking it to the stack, she went to the house to get the mid- day meal while the men unloaded. When about half-way down, the man on the wagon found a live rattler of good size. After that, she loaded with a fork.
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The following account is taken from the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, April, July, 1924. It describes conditions on the praries: "In those days rattlesnakes were more than common. It was the custom to wear heavy, high leather boots as a protection from the reptiles and to carry a
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bottle of whiskey as first aid. He would ride along on horse- back, snapping off the rattlers heads with his long cattlewhip, often killing as many as twenty-five a day. Mr. Meharry's in- separable companion while herding was a brown dog, Old Shep, who would kill almost as many as his master. The dog seemed to have an instinctive hatred for the reptiles. If he surprised one stretched out in the sun, he would seize it by its neck and shake it to pieces before the snake could defend itself. But if the snake was coiled and ready for battle, Old Shep was more deliberate. He would seemingly forget his prey, in the meantime keeping his sharp eye on it, until the snake would partly uncoil. Then he would have it by the neck and all the fun was over."
Where the E. J. and E. R. R. yards and shops are now was formerly a horse pasture owned by the Joliet horseman. One day he sent the hired man, a negro, to the pasture to bring in a certain horse. As usual, he carried a halter of leather to which was attached a long rope. The man entered the pasture where the grass was knee high. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a snake following him. He ran away and it following him gaining speed as he ran faster and faster. In terror he fled from the pasture to the road where there was no grass. Then he discovered that he was dragging the rope and mistook it for a snake. He was not bitten.
Wild eggs were abundant. Prairie hens were numerous. In the spring, after nesting had begun, settlers would set fire to the prairie grass. When it had passed the eggs were easily gathered for use in the home. Ducks and geese nested in the lowlands and marshes. These eggs were gathered for domestic use. The nests of coots and rails were also robbed. These were known as wild eggs. Lincoln tells of the time when he could buy wild eggs by the peck, for twenty-five cents a peck, in Kentucky. The same conditions prevailed in the first years of Will County.
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The common gray rat and the larger brown rat are not natives. They are Tartars coming into Eastern Europe about 1700 and reached England about 1755. The rat travels by land on foot and by sea in ships. Records show that he had reached St. Louis in 1831. From this as a center, this plague spread northward through Illinois while Chicago served as a center of distribution for Northern part of the state.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH AND THE SPANISH IN WILL COUNTY.
EARLY EXPLORERS-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET-JEAN NICOLET-FATHER ALLONEZ'S WORK AMONG THE INDIANS-FRENCH OCCUPATION-FUR TRADING POSTS ESTABLISHED-REVOLUTIONARY WAR PERIOD-SPANISH OCCUPTION OF WILL COUNTY
Neither the French nor the Spanish had permanent settle- ments in Will County. The French explorers passed and re- passed using the Great Highway and the Spanish soldiers passed this way but once. However, Marquette resided here during one winter and established a somewhat permanent con- nection with our history.
The first was Jean Nicolet who reached the French settle- ments in Canada in 1618. He was a young man of ability, seeking adventure in a new land. Champlain sent him to live with the Algonquins and Nipissings who resided westward from the French settlements. He was to learn the language of these people that he might act as an interpreter for future expeditions which were to go into the west. His was not a familiar face when he returned to Three Rivers in the company of Algonquin traders who came in their annual pilgrimage for trade and barter. His outdoor life together with the food and clothing of the Indians, made him much like his companions from the interior.
During his years of travel with these tribes, Nicolet had journeyed through extended regions around the upper lakes which are now called Huron and Superior. Many stories were
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told of tribes in the west who lived on the shores of a fresh- water sea, a people who journeyed in large canoes, and had neither hair nor beards. After a rest of about one year, he be- came restless again and was ready for the mission upon which Champlain dispatched him. He planned to penetrate farther westward and learn, at first hand, of these people. Accounts of the period indicate that he expected to find an oriental people because he believed that they were close to the Asiatic coast. How little did he guess what intervened !
He started on July 1, 1634, traveling up the Ottawa River and across Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay and onward to the Huron Village. Here, among old friends, he readily obtained seven men to act as guides, and canvas and equipment for the journey. They went as far as Sault Ste. Marie. Nicolet was the first white man to reach this place and he was the first white man to open communications with the ancestors of the modern Ojibways who still reside in that region.
From Sault Ste. Marie, Nicolet and his companions retraced their path to the Straits of Mackinaw. From here he jour- neyed southward to the head of Green Bay where he encoun- tered the Winnebago tribe. He was surprised to find that his knowledge of Algonquin and Nipissing availed him but little. This is accounted for by the fact that these were western peo- ple, the first of the Dacotah stock who spoke a different tongue. They were able to understand his message, recognized that he came as a friend, and celebrated his coming with feasting. Nicolet was without any fear of treachery perhaps because he intended no evil for these simple minded ones. He pushed on up the Fox River until he reached the village of the Mascoutins who once again greeted him in the familiar Algonquin tongue.
The reader recognizes once more that the Red Man was a traveler. He journeyed far in search of food, for the purpose of barter, and for adventure in warfare in which the warrior might count coup and go home as a brave. He gave no medals
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for honor or for distinguished service. Nevertheless the war- riors won distinction and honor among his fellows and count- ing coup was one way. He had a just pride in these things.
The Mascoutins, who were Algonquin stock, told many stories of other waters which lay to the southward. He learned of the pasage from the lake to the Illinois River. The accounts of the Indians were not understood, partly because he used poetic language, a common practice among a simple people and partly because the White Man's imagination induced him to vision that which he longed to see.
Nicolet did not continue his journey. No reasons were given for this omission, for such it seems to have been. The great Illinois Basin and the great Valley of the Father of Waters were left for Joliet and Marquette. Nicolet returned to the shore of Lake Michigan, journeyed northward to join his friends, the Hurons. Earley in the summer of 1635, he joined the flotilla which made the annual pilgrimage to Three Rivers. His services were recognized by Champlain by appointing him official interpreter at that trading post.
Soon after this the administration of affairs in- Canada fell upon the intendent, Jean Baptiste Talon. He was alert and active giving his personal attention to finance and good order and the administration of justice without favor. He occu- pied himself with the discoveries of Nicolet and sought to gain the advantage of the provision of that intrepid explorer.
The energetic Talon sent expeditions to the north to solve the Hudson Bay problem. When this was underway he turned to the west, to the region visioned by Nicolet for which he had pictured a wonderful future. Again the reader must recall that these leaders sought mercenary ends, hoping to fill the coffers of the king with gold from the profits of trade with the Indians. The Illinois Basin, the land of their dreams, has produced riches beyond the wildest dreams of their greatest
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visionaries. But, how different is the source of its wealth from that which they sought to develop.
Father Allonez came to Sault St. Marie on September 2, 1665, to work among the Indians as a missionary. From this mission and trading post, he journeyed westward along the southern shore of Lake Superior, going nearly to the western extremity. He found, here and there among the natives, Frenchmen who were adventurers and traders, often more savage than the savages among whom they lived. They were known as coureurs des bois, men who were described as a law- less gang, half traders and half explorers, bent on lustful pleas- ures, men of wonderful physical endurance not easily discour- aged by perils or discomforts of the wilderness. They obtained furs by fair means or foul, traded where they pleased, and held themselves subject to no one.
The Red Men recognized them for what their lives indicated. They besought Father Allonez to reform them. By making this request, they demonstrated their faith in his religion. If it had the redeeming grace which he set forth, surely it would regenerate the lawless Frenchmen and remove a disturbing element in the settlements. How soon the simple native was undeceived !
At La Pointe Mission, the good priest met many messengers from distant tribes to the west and the south. In the inter- course with these traders and warriors, he heard much of the Mississippi and the great sea into which it flowed. He made many trips seeking native pure copper. The Sioux (Nadoue- siouek) told of the vast prairies and the game, and of the tribes still farther westward. The Des Plaines passage was explained to him but he failed to traverse it. However, he established faith in the project and demonstrated what could be done by those who came after.
Father Marquette reached Quebec from France in Septem- ber, 1666. Here he reported to his superior officer and devoutly
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returned thanks to his Heavenly Father for having come so near to the land in which he sought to render service. He proceeded to Three Rivers where he was in training for three years, learning the language of the natives, and acquiring the art of providing himself with food, clothing and shelter in the wilder- ness. There was much to learn which was not found in books. He applied himself with great zeal and was ready to go for- ward in 1668.
Marquette proceeded to Sault Ste. Marie where there was a mission which was prosperous. From here he went west to the extremity of Lake Superior where he worked among the natives for two years. The Indian tribe among whom he had labored were driven out by hostile tribes and the missionary returned eastward to the island of Mackinaw. While here he received a most welcome message from the Governor of Can- ada. This was brought to him by his former acquaintance and friend, Joliet, whom he had known and admired at Three Rivers.
Joliet was commissioned as an explorer and Marquette was to accompany him to act as interpreter and guide .. The priests were known to all of the tribes as "black robes" and as "medi- cine men" of the whites. The natives trusted them and were kindly disposed to traders who came with them. During the winter these two men made their preparations for the journey. They gathered information, two canoes, and five oarsmen. In May they started, going up the west shore of Lake Michigan into Green Bay from which they entered the Fox River. They followed this stream upward to the portage which took them to the Wisconsin River. They passed down this stream into the Mississippi which was followed as far south as the Arkan- sas. Here they found natives with firearms, thus demonstrat- ing a contact with Europeans. The return journey was slower and more difficult. On coming to the mouth of the Illinois,
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they ascended that stream and thus came into the Des Plaines and the Great Highway and through this to Chicago. The two men returned to Green Bay and the Mission of St. Xavier.
Marquette had promised the Kaskaskia Indians that he would return to them to teach them the gospel. But exposure and fatigue had broken his health so that he had to remain to recuperate during the summer. In the autumn he made the return journey with two Frenchmen as companions. They pro- ceeded slowly because his illness returned. On December 4th they entered the Chicago River and passed up the west branch to Summit where they passed the winter of 1674-75. In the spring, Marquette had recovered sufficiently to enable them to proceed slowly on their way. In eleven days they reached the Kaskaskia village. He taught them for a few days and estab- lished the Mission of the Immaculate Conception.
The good man felt that he had but a few weeks to live and started back, accompanied by many of his devoted friends who took him through Will County for the last time to the shores of Lake Michigan. From here he and his companions paddled around the southern end of the lake and proceeded upward along the eastern shore. On May 18, 1675, he passed away in a rude shelter near where Luddington now stands. From "Illi- nois History Stories" by W. H. Campbell we take this tribute: "The most lovable as well as the most prominent character con- nected with the exploration of the Middle West was the heroic Father Marquette. His is one of the lives untouched by selfish- ness and untainted by greed, that stands out like a great prom- ontory in the sea of passion and cruelty and scheming that swept over the New World during the first centuries of its his- tory. He was molded of the material of which martyrs are made. He never desired ease or fame. He loved humanity and wild na- ture. He lived as he had hoped to live and died as he had prayed to die, far from the habitations of men, in the midst of
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the interminable forests beside the waterways leading to the Great Lakes, his face turned toward Heaven, and only a few faithful converts to mark his passing."
The French occupation of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys was of a dual nature, material and spiritual. The trader and the priest came together, the latter preceding be- cause his messages appealed to the simple minded natives. Their own religion, spiritual in nature and with a belief in one God readily took on the Catholic teachings. The trader fol- lowed almost immediately, prospering because the missionary had established faith among the Indians. The French and In- dians were friendly through a long period of years.
Fur-trading posts were established in many places to be converted into forts as occasion demanded. Such a fortification was located on the south side of the St. Joseph River about one mile west of the present town of Niles, Michigan. This was on a trail (route) used for many generations as the tribes mi- grated in quest of game, or war parties traveled that way. After Wolfe took Quebec and Montreal capitulated, the British sent a detachment of the Sixtieth British Regiment called the Royal Americans, to take charge of the fort at St. Joseph. They hoisted the English flag and took up a carefree, easy life. The natives were disturbed but little in the routine of trading and remained peaceable.
During the Revolutionary war, France induced Spain to join the contest against Great Britain. St. Louis became the northernmost post and the Spanish capital of Louisiana. In 1781, Don Francesco Cruvat was the governor with a most lengthy and enlightening title. It is given here because it is a description of the man as well as his province: "Brevet Lieu- tenant Colonel of Infantry, Captain in the Regiment of Louisi- ana, Commander and Lieutenant Governor of the western part and district of Illinois, for His Most Catholic Majesty the King
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of Spain." The nearest British flag was the one flying at St. Joseph so Colonel Crevat must take the fortification.
The expedition was not undertaken in summer when a direct route might be taken across country where food was plenty and going was easy. It must be in the dead of winter when the ground was frozen and covered with snow. Game was not on the prairies and Grand Prairie afforded no fuel for fires in the camps at night. These were hardy soldiers for no weak- lings were found in these distant outposts. Vigorous as they were, they dared not attempt to cross the prairies. Rather, they followed the wooded land along the streams that they might have fuel and food. By day they trudged on through the snow carrying heavy burdens for beasts of burden were few. The French soldiers always light-hearted and gay, frequently burst into song and thus cheered the stoics in the little army. By night they sat about the camp-fire recounting deeds of valor in other expeditions, deeds which grew more noble with each recounting. Their line of march took them upstream along the Kankakee River to the portage leading to the St. Joseph River. This took them through what is now the south- ern part of Will County. The fort was captured without diffi- culty. The British garrison relied upon Indian spies. The Red Men had nothing to lose so they were careless. One account states that the fortification was so accustomed to being cap- tured that one more made little difference. The British flag was lowered and the standard of His Most Catholic Majesty was placed on high.
The soldiers plundered the fort with system and dispatch for they were master hands at that work. Supplies and food for their own use were retained and the rest was given to the Indians in their own ranks and to those about the fort. They were generous with the other fellows' supplies. After a few days for rest and refreshment they made the return to St.
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Louis. Thus for a few weeks, Will County was under the Span- ish flag. Nothing more was done after this. No records ap- pear later excepting one which cites Don Charles Tayon who was second in command in the expedition, who it is stated "had rendered important services to the Spanish Government from the year 1770, and was second in command at the siege of St. Joseph which he contributed to take." He afterwards received a commission for his merits.
It is not easy to understand the overlapping of claims and the consequent disputes of those early days. Travel was ex- ceedingly difficult by water and much slower by land. Com- munication was very slow and unreliable because messengers might misrepresent the mesage, and those using another tongue might not understand. In the days of 1928 when one travels over concrete roads at fifty miles an hour, or by air service at twice that speed, when registered mail carries the informa- tion so rapidly and so surely, when one may dine in Chicago one day and in New York City the next, it is, indeed, necessary to take much on faith. The following letter will be interesting and reliable first-hand information:
"New York, October 9, 1768.
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