USA > Illinois > Rock Island County > Past and present of Rock Island County, Ill., containing a history of the county-its cities, towns, etc., a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late Rebellion, portraits of early settlers and prominent men > Part 11
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IIISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY ..
GEOLOGY.
The surface of the Rock River and Maredosia bottoms belongs to the alluvial deposit. That part of the county north of the bluff line is a broad and level sand prairie. At a time when the Mississippi River flowed a mightier stream both in its present channel and in the Maredosia slough, this prairie was a broad headland sand bar. The bluff-bounded highlands then rose as an island from the broad, lake-like river; the drifting sands lodged against its upper end, and the sand-plain under consideration was gradually formed, just as sand bars of the present day are formed against the upper ends of river islands.
The Mississippi Valley was once occupied by a mightier stream than the present river. The most curious phenomenon along the bluffs of the Mississippi is its old shore line marked along their sides. At Cordova, the principal part of the town is built upon this ancient beach or terrace. It is here some fifty feet above the present low-water mark of the Mississippi River, and is distinctly traced all along the bluffs to Milan.
The bluffs and hills of Rock Island County are composed in part of whitish-blue clays, sands, and the marly deposit known as loess. Receding back from the bluff lines the loess thins out, and is succeeded by fine lumin- ated drift clays, such as cover most of our upland barrens and high prairies. Genuine drift-gravel beds and large boulders are of rare occurrence.
COAL MEASURES .- In that portion of the county lying west of Rock River the coal measures are found as outliers, overlaying and resting uncon- formably upon the Devonian and Upper Silurian limestone, as far north as the vicinity of Port Byron, where it finally terminates. The most northerly point where a workable bed of coal has been found on this side of the river, is at Rapids City, where the seam is from four to five feet thick, and over- lies the Niagara limestone, with only a few feet in thickness of shales and fire clay between. Two miles east of Hampton, where coal shafts have been sunk, are good seams from four to five feet thick. The Carbon Cliff mines were the earliest worked on the west side of Rock River. For many years extensive coal operations, in connection with an establishment for the manu- facture of pottery and fire-brick, were carried on at this point, under the management of W. S. Thomas, Esq., but the limited supply of coal finally became so nearly exhausted that mining here was discontinued. The tri- angular piece of elevated land east of the city of Rock Island, bounded by Pleasant Valley, Rock River and the Mississippi, is a mass of coal measure materials, resting upon a Devonian or Upper Silurian formation of under- lying limestone.
All that part of the county south and east of the Mississippi and Rock River ranges of bluffs is underlaid by the coal measures. In every part of the county the coal measures are covered with a deep deposit of drift-clays. At Milan, Carbon Cliff and east of the city of Rock Island, this drift-clay is from forty to seventy-five feet in thickness.
South of Rock River the coal measures are more regular and more extensively developed than in the northern part of the county. The coal mining interest has become an important branch of industry in Rock Island County. According to the Inspector's report for 1876, there were twenty- six mines regularly operated eight months of the year, and some twenty others occasionally worked. In these were employed an aggregate of 941
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
miners, the average for the whole time being 650. Six important mines are operated constantly. The whole number of tons of coal mined was 299,228, its value at the mines being $597,917. The average value of coal per ton at the mines was $1.99. The amount of capital invested in coal mining was $243,750. The capacity of the mines worked for the prodnc- tion of coal was 506,550 tons annually. The thickness of the coal seams varies from three and a half to five and a half feet, and is reached at a depth of from 40 to 120 feet. The coal is raised at the principal mines by steanı power. The active operations in mining have greatly enhanced the value of contiguous lands, and led to the introduction of railroads as a special means of transportation. The Milwaukee and St. Paul has trains constantly run- ning from the principal mines in Hampton township to connect with the Western Union railroad. Also private tracks have been laid for the dis- charge of coal on the Mississippi River. The Coal Valley Mining Com- pany run trains from Rock Island to Coal Valley, twelve miles, for coal exclusively. They also own and operate the Rock Island and Mercer County Railroad, from Rock Island to Cable, in Richland Grove township, in Mercer County, a distance of twenty-six miles. This road has been built and is operated for coal and general purposes.
For the time they have been worked, the Rock Island County coal mines will compare favorably with any in the West. The defective machinery, apparatus, or manner of mining, resulting from hasty prepara- tion, are rapidly disappearing, as proprietors of the mines feel the necessity of putting in operation plans for rendering the miners' lives sater, and their leisure hours happier. The report states that no person was killed in the mines during 1876, two cases of fracture of limbs being the most serious accidents.
HAMILTON LIMESTONE .-- About a mile and a half below Hampton, the upper and more shaley beds of the Hamilton limestone first begin to out- crop along the Mississippi. Abont Moline still heavier outcrops exist. These latter are thicker-bedded, are of a brownish color, and full of fossils. At the city of Rock Island and abont Milan it becomes more massive ; the stratification irregular, the color bluish-white, or brown upon recent frac- ture, and the stone hard and tenacious. At Milan the bed of the river is a solid floor of these irregular rocks. Rock Island, in the Mississippi river, is a vast pile of this Hamilton limestone, rising in the midst of the stream, overlaid by a thin soil, and covered with a magnificent young forest.
The Devonian limestones as they are found in this county, may be readily separated on lithological grounds into three divisions, viz: the upper, the middle, and the lower, each distinguished by its peculiar charac- teristics. The uppermost division is a gray and brown limestone, rough and coarse-grained, and completely filled with the shells and corals peculiar to the Hamilton beds. The formation is from thirty to forty feet in thick- ness. The middle division consists of brown argillaceons and calcarions shales, full of the characteristic shells of this group, and from thirty to forty feet thick. This division is well seen between Rock Island and Moline, where a perpendicular face of thirty feet or more is exposed in the quarries. These shaley limestones are underlaid by the third division, consisting of a fine-grained, gray or dove color, compact limestone, the upper part tolerably massive, but becoming thinner-bedded below. It extends below the river level,and is said to have been penetrated in some borings made here several years ago, to the depth of 150 to 175 feet.
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
The floor of Rock river from Milan almost to the Mississippi is com- posed of this rock, whose massive paving stones are seen at the bottom, irregular in size and contour, but worn smooth by the ceaseless flow of the strong, rapid current. Their thickness at this place is unknown ; the massive solidity, conchoidal fracture and white dove color of the stone, indicate that it belongs to the lower part of the formation. At Lear's Mill, almost in the bed of Rock River, the workmen quarried into the solid stone floor of the river fifteen or twenty feet, with no signs of the bottom. Rock River runs over the same rocky floor of Hamilton limestone at and below Cleveland, near the eastern line of Rock Island County, and also at its con- fluence with the Mississippi below Milan. Between these points the river bottom shows a mud deposit, under which this same formation might prob- ably still be found. . Few fossils are found in the rock quarried from this river floor, either in Rock River or in the Rock Island rapids of the Mississippi.
The Mississippi River has a similar rocky floor from Port Byron almost to Muscatine. Horse-backs. hog-backs and great rocky chains characterize the Rapids proper ; but the lower part, from the city of Rock Island down, shows alternating stretches of mud, sand, and rocky bottom. The Missis- sippi River bed from Rock Island to a few miles below Andalusia, is com- posed of the lower member of the Hamilton group, being the same as the floor of Rock River at Milan.
At Andalusia, in the edge of one of the Mississippi sloughs, just between high and low water mark, an excellent stone quarry is opened in this formation. The layers are not so massive as those found in the river ; some of them are of a dove, and even of a light blue color, and fossils are abundant. The middle division of this formation, which outcrops between Moline and Rock Island, has not been observed south of Rock River.
The little spring run extending up from the stone quarry at Andalusia, towards the residence of Dr. Bowman, runs over the top of the Hamilton limestone till it rises into the coal measures of the adjoining bluffs. :
NIAGARA LIMESTONE .- From Cordova to Port Byron this formation ontcrops heavily. Leaving Port Byron, it gradually sinks as we approach Hampton, and a little south of that place disappears beneath the outliers of the coal measures. The stone at Cordova has a tough, hornstone-like con- sistency and appearance, unlike. its outcrop at Fulton and further north. All the upland region north of Pleasant Valley is underlaid by this Niagara formation and a thin outlier of the coal measures. The soils and upland clays deeply cover them, except where the small streams cut down through the superficial deposits.
The Niagara limestone burns into excellent quicklime-white, strong, and pure. At Port Byron and Cordova are extensive kilns for the conver- sion of this raw material into merchantable lime for the markets and for local use. The Hamilton limestone of Rock Island County is a very pure carbonate of lime, and is extensively manufactured into quick-lime. Build- ing stone of an excellent quality is also obtained in great abundance from the Hamilton and Niagara limestones of Rock Island County.
SANDSTONE .- The sandstone of the coal measures outcrops in a few places in the county. Up in a ravine in the bluffs, midway between Milan and Andalusia, a dark colored, massive sandstone is quarried to some extent. The ontcrop is abont ten feet thick, and the stone is colored and iron-stained. This stone seems to extend down the bluff line of the Mississippi to where
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
quarries have been opened opposite Muscatine. Near Copper Creek, also, in the eastern part of the township of Drury, there is a sandstone quarry which has been worked to some extent. The sandstone in these localities, and that which underlies the sandy shale on Big Run, near Brownsville, is an excellent and durable stone for heavy masonry. The creek bed is full of large blocks of it, on which the elements seem to have no effect.
POTTERS' CLAY .- The county also contains some fine potters' clay, from which a fair sized pottery is kept running at Hampton, for the manufacture of common pottery ware. The best establishment of this kind was located at Carbon Cliff, within a few hundred yards of the railroad station of that name. The buildings erected here for pottery purposes, in which a large force was formerly employed, have been changed in their use to the mann- facture of drain tile. The buildings are of brick. the principal one being similar to a large railroad round-house, with a towering smoke-stack in the centre.
MINERAL SPRINGS,-Just below Andalusia, in this county, is a remarkable group of mineral springs, known as the " Rinnah Wells Springs." Two or three of them are curbed with stone. The water flows out of the top and leaves a whitish incrustation, which has a strong and rather pleasant soda taste. These springs are also called the " White Sulphur," or "Soda Springs," and contain medicinal qualities not inferior to those of the famous springs at Saratoga. Andalusia, with its musical name and romantic sur- roundings, in proximity to these springs, might easily become a noted summer resort for invalids and tourists.
BEAUTY OF SCENERY.
The peculiar topography of the county about Rock Island imparts.to the scenery great variety and beauty. Part of this is caused by the prox- imity of the Mississippi, with its grand sweeps and ranges of bluffs, to the hills which outline the Rock River Valley. By ascending the high table-land which forms the divide between the two rivers, and which ter- minates in a single bold bluff overlooking the point of their confluence, the valleys of both sides, with the cities of Rock Island and Davenport, are dis- tinctly in view ; while looking away to the southwest, along the sloping bluffs which bound the Mississippi, we can see in the distance the smoke of Muscatine, thirty miles away.
Rising abruptly from Rock river to the height of about two hundred feet, is " Black Hawk's Watch Tower," an eminence from which the famous Sac warrior is said to have watched the troops sent against him by Governor Reynolds, as they deployed into the valley about ten miles distant. This whole valley is visible as far as the eye can reach, while before the observer, on the opposite shore, is the thriving town of Milan, the intervening islands covered with their groves of stately elms, and the glancing and shimmering waterfalls of four separate channels, spanned by their railroad and wagon bridges. Points may be selected almost anywhere about Rock Island from which charming views may be obtained.
The early historians have borne their testimony to the natural attract- iveness of this locality. Governor Reynolds, in his " Life and Times," says: " The scenery about Rock Island is not surpassed by any in the whole length of the Mississippi. It seems as though Nature had made an effort in form- ing this beautiful and picturesque country. Rock Island itself presents a
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
grand and imposing appearance, rising out of the waters of the Mississippi a solid rock'with many feet elevation. It is several miles long and three- fourths of a mile wide. The rocks are covered with a fertile soil. The river washes around its base with a rapid current of pure and limpid water; and Rock river, a few miles south, is seen in the distance, forcing its way with great rapidity over the rocky rapids into the Father of Waters. The country around is interspersed with beautiful groves of timber, which give to the scene a sweetness and a beauty rarely equalled. The blue hills in the distance, directing the course of the river, are seen on the north and the south to rise with gentle slopes from the water to considerable elevations, and the valley between, embracing the river, is some miles in extent, pre- senting a variety of surface and beauty of landscape never surpassed."
THE SAC AND FOX INDIANS.
Before this section of country had been discovered by the white man, it was inhabited by the Sac and Fox Indians, who had some of their princi- pal villages within the present limits of Rock Island county. The Sacs and Foxes were a warlike people, descended from the great Algonquin family, from whom they separated at an early time, and under their own tribal chiefs sought their new hunting-grounds. Tradition locates their early residence on the shores of the St. Lawrence, whence, at different stages and through long periods, driven by circumstances and the vicissitudes of war, they migrated to the West, and spread themselves southward along the Mississippi and its tributaries. These tribes were known to the old French missionaries and traders as the Saukies and Cutagamies. When the Jesuit missionaries first visited Green Bay, in 1665, one tribe of the people, the Foxes, was located in that vicinity. Fox river, which empties into Green Bay, was so named from the residence of some of this tribe upon its banks. At that time, and for some time after, there appears to have been no formal union of the Sacs and Foxes. Both were warlike tribes, and, like all North American Indians, frequently engaged in fierce and bloody wars with their enemies.
For some reason not made known in history, the Foxes became enemies of the French and resisted the advance of their settlements west- ward. In 1712 they attacked the post at Detroit and came near destroying the garrison and the settlement. After a siege of nineteen consecutive days, during which they fought with great persistence and desperation, they were finally driven off by the aid of the Kickapoos, Pottawatomies and Ottawas, who rallied in great numbers to the assistance of the French. They then retired and fortified themselves in a strong earthwork near the river St. Clair, from which they were only dislodged by cannon brought from the fort.
Although this experience somewhat humbled the Foxes, it by no means conquered their hostility. Burning with rage and thirsting for revenge, they repaired to their old stamping-ground on Fox river. This was at that time an important avenue of communication for the Canadian traders with the Mississippi, and the route for all voyageurs and emigrants from Canada to Louisiana. The wily Foxes saw that they could make their enemies suffer by intercepting their passage through this part of their territory, where they had no fort to afford them protection. Accordingly, they inaugurated a system of brutality, plunder, robbery and murder, along
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
the Fox river and Portage route to the Mississippi, which has hardly a par- allel in the annals of savage warfare. This finally aroused the Canadian authorities, and three successive campaigns were undertaken to exterminate the Foxes. The third only was successful in driving them from their last stronghold -- "Butte des Morte" or Hill of the Dead-where they had forti- fied themselves and gathered all their men, women, and children and warriors, and resolved to sell their lives as dearly as possible rather than surrender to the enemy. The fort was taken by the engineering skill of the French, and thousands of the hapless Foxes, with their women and children, miserably perished. This was in 1746. The number of the Foxes was so greatly diminished by this slaughter that they never afterward equalled · their allies, the Sacs. It was after this and probably in consequence of the reduced strength of the Foxes, that a formal union was effected between the two tribes.
When the noted English traveller, Capt. Jonathan Carver, visited the Northwest, in 1766, they were found living in the vicinity of each other on the Wisconsin River. Carver describes a village of the Sacs which he vis- ited on the Sth of October, after he had embarked his canoe upon the Wis- consin, as containing ninety houses, each large enough for several families. They were constructed of hewed plank neatly joined, and covered with bark roofs, impervious to the most penetrating rains. Sheds were constructed in front of them, in which the Indians smoked in fair weather. "This,". says Carver, "was the largest and best Indian village I had ever seen. It seemed more like an abode of civilization than the home of savages." They had well cultivated plantations adjoining their village, and streets regularly laid out. The Sacs of this village could muster three hundred warriors.
On the 10th of October, Carver visited a Fox village farther down the river, which contained fifty houses, but at that time they were unoccupied, an epidemic having driven away the inhabitants. The Foxes had also an- other considerable village at Prairie du Chien at the time of Carver's visit. Probably it was not long after this that the Sacs and Foxes were driven from their homes by the Chippewas and Menomonies, and came and settled in the beautiful country about Rock Island. The earliest intelligence we have of them in this locality is that found in the journal of Lient. Zebulon Pike, of the United States Army, who was sent on an expedition up the Mississippi in 1805. Their principal villages then were situated as follows: The Sacs had three villages-one on the west bank of the Mississippi, just above the Lower Rapids; another on the opposite side a little further up; the third and principal village was on the banks of Rock River, about three miles from its mouth. This last was the famous Sac village which figures so conspicuously in the early history of this locality. The Foxes had no villages below Rock Island. Their first was situated above the Upper Rapids, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, and consisted of eighteen lodges; the second was on the Iowa side, back of the Dubuque lead mines, and the third and last on the same side, near the mouth of Turkey River. The whole population of these villages amounted to about 5,000. The available force of the united Sac and Fox warriors was about 1,100, of whom the former could muster 700, and the latter 400. The domestic life of these tribes was much like that of other Indians. They hunted during the winter months, and in the summer their squaws cultivated their patches of corn, squashes and beans. Rock Island was their favorite place of resort for their summer sports and pastimes. Their fishing grounds were on the rapids of
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HISTORY OF ROCK ISLAND COUNTY.
the river, and their favorite hunting grounds on the west side of the Missis- sippi. In the events which follow, the important part taken by a portion of these Indians in the early history of this portion of the Mississippi Valley is somewhat at length described.
EVENTS FROM 1804 TO 1812.
The first official act of the government of the United States touching the relations of Rock Island County, was the acquisition of the territory in which it is included, by a treaty made at St. Louis on the 3d of November, 1804. This treaty was made by William Henry Harrison, then Governor of the Territory of Indiana, and the chiefs and head men of the Sacs and Foxes of Rock River. It conveyed to the United States some fifty millions aeres of land on the east side of the Mississippi, extending from opposite the mouth of the Jefferson, in Missouri, to the mouth of the Wisconsin, and back to the Fox River of Illinois. This tract included a large portion of what are now the States of Illinois and Wisconsin, and of course compre- hended the territory embraced in Rock Island County. This immense traet of country, now invaluable, and containing as rich and beantiful a portion of land as can be found in the United States, was sold for the paltry sum of two thousand two hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty cents, with an annuity annually thereafter of one thousand dollars.
At the period of the above treaty, the Americans were a new people to the Indians of the West. They knew the French, the English and the Spanish, but had little acquaintance with the "Long Knives," as they called the Americans. The latter, by the purchase of Louisiana from the French, on the 30th of April, 1803, had just come into possession of the great country west of the Mississippi, and the upper portion of this territory, including St. Louis, had been formally transferred to the United States by the Spanish, who still held nominal possession of it, in the spring of 1804, only about six months before the treaty with the Sacs and Foxes. The Government having thus acquired territory on the west side of the Missis- sippi, was desirous of pursuing a policy that should gradually extinguish the Indian title to lands on the east side, and transfer the Indians to portions of the new territory across the river. This policy was had in view in the treaty of 1804. The Indians, although they had ceded their lands, were allowed to remain in possession of them till such time as they should be entered for actual settlement by the whites.
While the Spanish held the west side of the Mississippi, it was for many years the hunting grounds of the Sacs and Foxes; many of them lived upon it; they worked the lead mines known as the "Spanish mines," on the site of the present city of Dubuque; St. Louis was their market and trading post, to which they frequently resorted in the fall and spring to sell their furs and other articles, and obtain supplies for their hunting exeur- sions. In this manner they became familiar with the Spanish traders and authorities at St. Louis, and acquired a sort of allegiance to them as the owners and rulers of the country. Black Hawk, in his Life, speaks of one of these visits to St. Louis in the spring of 1804, and of how he and the citizens there were affected by the transfer of the country to the Americans. He says:
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