USA > Illinois > Illinois, historical and statistical, comprising the essential facts of its planting and growth as a province, county, territory, and state, Vol. I > Part 3
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Fruit-growing is made a specialty in some sections, tobacco and hops in others; and it being generally too hot for wheat south of Illinois, and too cold for corn north of it, these two great cereals here find their native home and highest culture.
When the country was first discovered, not only the richness of its flora rendered it an expanse of beauty to the eye, but the abundance and variety of its fauna made it still more attractive to the hunter. Here roamed almost unchecked and in countless numbers, the buffalo, the oebuck, hind, stag, and different kinds of fallow deer, the bear, panther wildcat, and wolf. The rivers were covered with swans, geese, ducks, and teals. "One can scarcely travel without finding a prodigious multitude of turkeys, who keep together in flocks often to the
* Condensed from an account written for the Department of Signal-Service Weather Bureau, after a personal inspection of the locality the next day, by Dr. G. V. Black of Jacksonville, I!1.
+ " Congressional Report of Forestry," 503. 3
34
ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
number of ten hundred."* And for trapping, there were the beaver, otter, and mink.
From these great flocks and herds, roaming at will over the prairies, Col. Geo. Croghan says: "At any time, in half an hour, we could kill all we wanted." But although there are yet left the squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, opossum, and pigeon, inviting the sportsman to wood and field, the great flocks of geese and ducks which formerly nested within the State now pass over it; and the prairie-chicken, whose wild fields have been taken from him, has flown to others farther west. A few wolves and foxes are still left to prey upon the farmers' sheep and fowl, but the buffalo, with his beaten track through the prairies and groves, the elk and the bear, have long since disappeared with the red man, himself a superior kind of game, before the all-conquering invasion and greed of the white man.
The impressions which the country made upon those who beheld it for the first time were uniformly favorable, and their reports of its appearance and resources were expressed in terms of highest praise. Father Marquette said: " We had seen noth- ing like this for the fertility of the land, its prairies, woods, and wild cattle." Father Zenobe Membre: "The Illinois River is edged with hills, covered with trees of all kinds, whence you discern beautiful prairies. The soil is good, capable of produc- ing all that can be desired for man's subsistence. The whole country is charming in its aspect." Father Marest: "We must acknowledge that the country is very beautiful. There are great rivers which water it, vast and dense forests, delightful prairies, and hills covered with thick woods." Col. Croghan, in 1765, among the first of Englishmen to visit it: "The country appears like an ocean. The ground is exceedingly rich, well watered, and full of all kinds of game." Col. George Rogers Clark: "On the river you'll find the finest lands the sun ever shone on. In the high country you will find a variety of poor and rich lands, with large meadows extending beyond the reach of your eyes, variegated with groves of trees, appearing like islands in the seas, covered with buffaloes and other game." And Thomas Hutchins, the first surveyor-general of the United States, then called "the geographer," whose testimony is the
* Father Gabriel Marest.
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INTRODUCTORY-IMPRESSIONS.
most valuable of all on account of his experience and ability, says: "The Illinois country is in general of a superior soil to any other part of North America that I have seen." Volney (C. F.), in 1796, says: "It will doubtless prove hereafter the Flanders of America, and bear away the prize equally for pasture and tillage."
There is no "earthly paradise," nor any country, however attractive, on which the sun shines in regard to which there is left nothing to wish for. Man has never yet discovered a Utopia, and the physical conformation of Illinois leaves much to be desired in respect of both comfort and æsthetic gratifica- tion. The lofty mountain-ranges, with their chain of silver lakes, are wanting; the mineral wealth which nature has locked in the rock-bound caverns of the hills is not hers. The sun of midsummer, which sometimes scorches the very roots of the nodding grass upon her prairies, drives many of her people to seek relief from the sweltering heat in latitudes farther north; while the fierce western winds of winter, which sweep unchecked across her level surface, force others to seek a refuge in more ' genial southern climes. But while the State loses the uniform- ity of climate, the picturesque appearance, and the mineral wealth which she might have possessed had her broad bosom been more broken, she can better afford to be deprived of these than surrender her proud preeminence as the first agricultural State in the Union .*
* In writing the foregoing chapter, the author has had occasion to examine and refer to the following works: Foster's "Mississippi Valley"; Worthen's "Geology of Illinois"; the works of James Hall; H. W. Beckwith's " Vermilion County"; R. B. Porter's "The West "; Reynolds' " Illinois"; " A View of the Soil and Climate of the U. S. of America, " by C. F. Volney; State Reports on Agriculture and Hor- ticulture; U .- S. Report on Forestry; Encyclopedia of Geography; Eames' " History of Morgan County"; Findlay's " Western Territory"; "Illinois Monthly Magazine "; Laws of Congress; etc.
CENTENNIAL ROOM
Champaign Public Library Champaign, Illinois
CHAPTER IL. Aborigines-Origin, Location, and Habits.
H OW the inhabitants found upon the American continent by the first white explorers came to receive the misnomer of Indians, in consequence of the mistaken belief of Columbus that in the West-India Islands he had found the eastern shores of India, is too well known to call for repetition here.
Of the origin and previous history of the red men, scarcely anything is known. The nature and extent of their former civilization is left to extremely vague tradition and conjecture. That there had been a people more advanced than those found here by Europeans, the mounds erected by them and the stone and copper weapons and utensils showing their handiwork, afford us the only, but not very satisfactory, evidence. Whence they came, whither they went, and at what periods, no one can tell.
Their successors found in this country on the arrival of the white man, with the one exception of the Shawnees, who claimed a foreign extraction-asserted that they were natives, and that they came up out of the earth. But their traditions all pointed to the fact that they came from the West, while their white conquerors came from the East. They were divided into different tribes, who, wandering over hills and. valleys, had ap- portioned these among themselves by indefinite boundaries, which were held by an uncertain possession and title.
They have been classified into five groups, according to lan- guage and dialects, as follows: the Algonquins, inhabiting the country from Nova Scotia to the mouth of the James River, thence west to the mouth of the Ohio, thence northward- to Hudson Bay; the Iroquois, south and east of Lake Ontario, within the above territory; the Appalachians, south of the Algonquins and east of the Mississippi, the Dakotas, or Sioux, west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri and Platte rivers; and the Shoshones, south and west of the Dakotas.
Their numbers in 1639 were estimated at about one hundred
36
ATO
OU LONGITUDE WEST FROM
DO GREENWICH
POT
MIES
KAKELS
MICHIGAN
42
RIVER
VER
RI
RC
GAREN
s colony
WEAS
PianiShaw
ST. Louis Oshawnees
R
1 B
MILLON
Peorias
s
RICO
40
SA
2
RIV
MISS
NSV
38
58
IŞSIS
ILLINOIS.
AS IT APPEARED
TO THE
FIRST EXPLORERS
IN 1673-82
with location of INDIAN TRIBES. 37
.
12
LONGITUDE WEST FROM WASHINGTON
MISSISSIPPI
KICKAPOOS
DESPL
IOWA
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ABORIGINES-ORIGIN, LOCATION, AND HABITS.
and ninety thousand, as follows: Algonquins, ninety thousand; Iroquois, comprehending the Hurons and the Five Nations, twenty thousand; Cherokees, twelve thousand; Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Muskhogees, sixty-three thousand; Natchez, four thousand; beside the Shoshones and Dakotas .* In the divis- ions and subdivisions of tribes at this time there were included two hundred and fifty-two different names.
These red men of the new world, wherever situated, in rocky New England, in Southern forests, or on the prairies of the West, were essentially the same, and altogether savage. Their government was tribal and each chief a petty despot; their religion was a superstition-a blind worship of some unde- fined Great Spirit; they were without learning or any knowl- edge of the world around them; they possessed no definite ideas of property or of human rights; they knew nothing of architecture, of mechanics, or of manufactures. They lived in cabins and were clothed in skins; their implements and arms were of the rudest sort, made from stone and wood and the bones of the buffalo; they were ruthless and revengeful, nar- row-minded and brutal, dissolute, lazy, selfish, gluttonous, polyg- amous, and lustful; they had no enjoyments except the chase and dance, no music but the rudest sounds, giving forth no melody. Their relaxations were those of the indolent; "their great business in life was to procure food and devour it, to subdue their enemies and scalp them." +
Not the stoics they have been represented to be, but rather epicures, who preferred to enjoy themselves at the expense of duty, avoiding all hardship and peril. Hence their feeble, capricious, and ineffective military operations. Yet they were not without great leaders, men of quick perceptions and reso- lute will, possessing remarkable powers of oratory, and capable of acts of daring courage and heroic fortitude; while in not a few instances, these untrained, unreasoning children of nature, knowing no guide but instinct, displayed a fidelity to treaty obligations which might well put to shame the civilized, Chris- tianized Caucasian.
Their mode of living was as follows: in the spring the tribe
* Bancroft's " United States, " III., p. 253.
+ Mckinney's "Indian Tribes."
215
VERY
38
ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
assembled at its village or favorite camping-ground, and there remained until the time came for hunting. Here crops were raised-the women and old men doing the work-skins were dressed, and preparations made for hunting and trapping in the fall, when the tribe, separating into different bands, departed from their villages to occupy their winter-quarters.
They were unacquainted with the use of iron or copper, and had formed but the crudest notions of trade. If left to them- selves, they would doubtless have continued as they were found, ignorant, savage, and untamable. Three hundred years of oppor- tunity, afforded by contact with the white race, have left them unbenefited and unimproved by the connection. By adopting the vices of the white man they have become enfeebled, and by learning the use of firearms they have been the better enabled to carry out their savage propensities. It is only when the blood of the white race has been infused into the veins of the red, and in that proportion, that the civilization of the former has been understood, appreciated, or adopted by the latter.
During the period of the early explorations of the West, from 1673 to 1720, that portion of it called "the country of the Illinois" was found to be inhabited by seven different tribes of Indians, namely: the Illinois, Miamis, Kickapoos-including the Mascoutins, Pottawatomies, Sacs and Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Shawnees. These all belonged to the Algonquin family, except the Winnebagoes who were classed with the Dakotas.
The names by which different tribes were known and desig- nated were not generally of their own selection, but such as were bestowed upon them by some other tribe, or by the French, to denote some supposed peculiarity. Thus the prin- cipal tribe, denominated the Illinois, called themselves L-in-ni- wek. This collective name, as applied to a nation or confed- eracy, included five separate tribes, called the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Tamaroas, Peorias, and Mitchigamies-the latter, from whom Lake Michigan was named and near whose borders they for a time encamped, having been adopted from the Qua- paws living west of the Mississippi.
The Illinois had their possessions along the river of that name, beginning on the Desplaines and Kankakee, and claimed the country adjacent thereto and on the west of these streams
39
ABORIGINES-ORIGIN, LOCATION, AND IIABITS.
to and even beyond the Mississippi, and as far south as its confluence with the Ohio. Their favorite and principal loca- tions, however, were in the central and northern portions of what afterward became the State, where they had seventeen villages. The largest of these, their metropolis, was situated on the Illinois River in LaSalle County, one mile south of the celebrated rock subsequently fortified as Fort St. Louis, and adjoining the present town of Utica. This village was called La Vantum, and, according to Father Membre, in 1680 con- tained a population of seven or eight thousand, not including the Kaskaskias. The chief village of the Peorias was on the lake of that name, while that of the Tamaroas and Cahokias was below the mouth of the Illinois River and nearly opposite St. Louis.
The character generally given to the Illinois Indians by the French missionaries does not differ from that of other tribes, and shows that they were not entitled to the distinction of superiority which their name implied. While they were "tall of stature, strong and robust, the swiftest runners in the world, and good archers, proud, yet affable," they were "idle, revengeful, jealous, cunning, dissolute, and thievish."* They lived on Indian corn, beans, and other vegetables, including fourteen kinds of roots, fruits and nuts, and fish and game.
It is not surprising that a country so beautiful and pro- ductive, and so full of the finest game, as that inhabited by the Illinois Indians should be coveted by the surrounding tribes. The Dakotas (Sioux) had made hostile incursions upon it from the west, the Sacs and Foxes from the north, and also the Kick- apoos and Pottawatomies from the northeast. Its fame, indeed, had spread to the farther east, where the warlike Iroquois, having heard of this splendid hunting-ground, determined to dispossess its occupants and hold it for themselves. They had made frequent raids upon it prior to 1673, in most of which they had been successful, claiming, indeed, to have conquered the country.
In one of these warlike expeditions, however, through the heroism of an Indian woman, they had to acknowledge a defeat. They had attacked an Illinois village on the banks of a river,
Father Membre.
40
ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
and had succeeded in driving out the inhabitants with great carnage. A young, courageous, and patriotic woman of the tribe, called Watch-e-kee-the orthography of which has been changed to Watseka-having ascertained that their enemies were then exulting over their victory and rioting on the spoils secured in the village, urged her countrymen to take advantage of the situation and attack them in return. But the warriors, smarting under the sense of recent humiliation, refused to respond to her urgent call. She pointed to the darkness of the night, and the almost certain chances of a successful sur- prise. The "braves" still refusing, she called for volunteers from among the squaws, urging upon them that death in battle was preferable to torture and captivity, which might be their fate on the morrow. The women came forward in great num- bers and offered to follow their brave leader. Seeing the deter- mined courage of their wives and daughters, the men became ashamed of their cowardice, and, inspired with a valor they had not lately exhibited, rushed to arms. A plan of attack was speedily arranged, and the Iroquois, being taken unawares, in turn suffered an overwhelming defeat. The stream near which this engagement took place was called the Iroquois, as has been the county through which it flows, while to the county- seat of the latter has been given the name of the heroic Indian girl who compassed the overthrow of her enemies.
When the French came to the Illinois country they were received not only without opposition, but with decided mani- festations of friendliness. With their superior arms and equip- ments of war, the Illinois had the sagacity to see that they might prove most valuable allies and defenders. They wel- comed their priests and listened apparently with great favor to the scheme of religion presented by them with so much zeal and fervor; and the friendship thus begun was never afterward in- terrupted. The two peoples, so different in birth and civiliza- tion, had yet so many characteristics in common that their mutual attachment was not unnatural. They hunted and traded together, fought together, and eventually many of them inter- married and lived together. It was an alliance which, although at first beneficial to the French, in the end proved fatal to both parties.
41
ABORIGINES-ORIGIN, LOCATION, AND HABITS.
Having heard that the Illinois were again assembled in large numbers at their village of La Vantum, and of the presence among them of some Frenchmen, who might divert the valua- ble trade in furs from their British and Dutch allies to the French, the Iroquois, in September, 1680, with six hundred picked warriors, made an attack upon them, killing twelve hun- dred and driving the rest beyond the Mississippi, with a loss of only thirty men. Further particulars of this foray will be given hereafter.
The French having established themselves at the Rock, which they had fortified and garrisoned, the Illinois, under their favor and protection, again occupied their villages in that vicinity, with other tribes invited by LaSalle. On March 20, 1684, the Iroquois again came in great force and laid siege to this fort for seven days, but were finally repulsed and compelled to retreat with great loss. This was their last invasion of the Illinois country, and from this time until 1702, when the post of Fort St. Louis was disbanded as a military establishment, the Illinois remained at peace with their neighbors, and were prospered in their hunting and trading with their new-found friends.
About the year 1700, the Kaskaskias, learning that the French were establishing a military post and colony near the mouth of the Mississippi, as Father Gravier remarks, decided to remove thither prematurely. That a portion of the tribe had already commenced the emigration is probable, as appears from the journal of M. Penicaut .* He describes the Kaskas- kias as having "already departed and established themselves within two leagues of this river [meaning the Kaskaskia] in the interior." Father Gravier deplored this step, and through per- sonal influence induced the ultimate modification of the plan; and those of the tribe who, at the time of his arrival, still remained in their old hunting-grounds were induced by him to join their brethren in the southern portion of the Illinois coun- try, where they continued to reside.
The remaining Illinois at Peoria and Fort St. Louis were attacked by the Foxes in 1722, but the latter were defeated and driven off with a loss of over one hundred and twenty meil.
* "Journal of Leseur's Expedition to Falls of St. Anthony in 1700."
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ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
After this, however, their situation was so exposed and they were so subject to "constant alarm" that they decided, says Charlevoix, to unite with their brethren who had settled upon the Mississippi. How many of them thus changed their loca- tion can not be stated, but it seems certain that a portion, to- gether with some confederate bands, continued at times to occupy their old villages.
The French at this period found their dusky dependants not only useful in their settlements and beneficial to their trade, but also valuable allies, rendering important services in their wars. The chief Chicagou, who had been sent by them to France in · 1725, where he received the attentions due to a foreign prince, was afterward honored with a command in their expedition against the Cherokees. In 1736, the number and location of warriors in that portion of the confederacy which had been incorporated under the French government in 1718, was as follows: Mitchigamies, near Fort Chartres, two hundred and fifty; Kaskaskias, six leagues below, one hundred; Peorias, fifty; Cahokias and Tamaroas, two hundred; making a total of six hundred. They took part in the French and Indian war of 1755, but are not mentioned in any of the accounts extant of the war of Pontiac, in 1763.
From this period their decline into a subordinate position among other tribes, and their inability to defend themselves, rendered them an easy prey to their fellow savages. They were hemmed in by relentless foes on all sides. On the south- east were the Shawnees, who, in a bloody engagement with the Tamaroas, nearly exterminated that tribe; to the northeast were the Kickapoos and Pottawatomies, against whose attacks they were able to oppose but a feeble resistance.
In 1769, having been charged with the assassination of Pontiac, some tribes with whom that great chief was con- nected attacked them from the north. Fugitive bands of the Illinois, fleeing from these warriors, sought to defend them- selves in their ancient village of LaVantum, which they rudely fortified. Here a sanguinary engagement took place which lasted two days. Seeing that they were likely to be overcome, during a stormy night they sought refuge on the projecting bluff near by which had been the site of Fort St. Louis. Here
-
Starved Rock
Buffalo Rock
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ABORIGINES-ORIGIN, LOCATION, AND HABITS.
they were again assaulted and besieged for twelve days. When at length their provisions were exhausted and they were un- able to obtain water, hunger and thirst accomplished what their relentless foes had been powerless to effect. Determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible, those who were able made a last desperate sortie, but fell easy victims to their watchful enemies below, who, gaining access to the top of the cliff, satiated their vengeance in true savage fashion by the unspar- ing use of the tomahawk upon their now defenceless foes who had been too feeble to join in the last desperate encounter. Only one, a half-breed, escaped to tell the tale. Their tragic fate and whitening bones, which were to be seen for years after- ward upon its summit, gave to this noted location the name of the Starved Rock, which it has ever since borne .* Such, at least, is the traditional account handed down from Indian sources.
Following their history to a later period, in 1773, the number of Kaskaskias in their village is estimated by the geographer, Thomas Hutchins, at two hundred and ten and of Peorias and Mitchigamies at two hundred and forty warriors. Col. George Rogers Clark, in his report of the conferences he had with the various tribes of Indians at Cahokia in 1778, especially men- tions the Illinois, Kaskaskias, Peorias, and Cahokias as having been present, with whom and other tribes he concluded treaties.
The French villages in the Illinois country having been in possession of the British at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the first predilections of the neighboring Indians were to ally themselves with the cause of Great Britain. But when they came to understand the true situation, as explained by Col. Clark, and learned that their ancient allies, the French, had sent ships of war and armies to aid the Americans-"the long knives," as they called them-in their struggle for inde-
* N. Matson, in his "Pioneers of Illinois," says that the Indians whose fate is here narrated constituted "the remnants of the different bands of the Illinois-in fact all that was left of them," and concludes his romantic account by stating that "thus perished the large tribe of Illinois Indians which, with the exception of a solitary warrior, became extinct." A statement in which Judge J. D. Caton, in his "Last of the Illinois," concurs, although the latter fixes the number who escaped at eleven. Neither of these statements are at all consistent with other well-known and established facts mentioned in the text.
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ILLINOIS-HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL.
pendence, they were easily persuaded to cease their hostility and transfer their friendship to the Americans." But later they joined the Miami confederacy, and, the Kaskaskias certainly, were recognized at the inaking of the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, as having participated in the war, the issues of which that treaty adjusted; and were in that document placed on the same footing, as to payments for lands ceded by them, as the Kickapoos, Piankashaws, and Weas.
Coming down to the year 1800, Gov. Reynolds remarks, in his "Pioneer History," that at that time the entire Illinois confeder- acy numbered about one hundred and fifty. Their chief, DuCoign or DuQuoin, "a cunning man of considerable talents," had for- merly paid a visit to President Washington, and, as a token of his favor, wore a medal received from him. It was in this year that, according to an historical sketch by the Rev. J. M. Peck, they encountered their hereditary enemies, the Kickapoos, Sacs and Foxes, and Pottawatomies, for the last time at Battle Creek, about twenty-five miles from Kaskaskia, where the Illi- nois were overwhelmingly defeated.
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