USA > Illinois > Peoria County > Peoria > Peoria city and county, Illinois; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 3
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Indian customs form a very enticing study but space forbids more being said about them here. H. H. Bancroft in discussing these questions says that his work embodies the researches of some five hundred travelers.
Hennepin gives the following account of the village of the Kaskaskias near Starved Rock.
"It contains four hundred and sixty cabins made like long arbors and cov- ered with double mats of flat flags, so well sewed that they are never pene- trated by the wind, snow or rain. Each cabin has four or five fires, and each fire has one or two families, who all live together in a good understanding."
This was probably the largest and best built village in the territory occupied by the Illinois tribes at that time.
More frequently they lived in wigwams, a kind of a rude tent made by setting a circle of poles in the ground, tying the tops together and covering them over with skins of wild animals. These wigwams they could take down and move as quickly as a soldier could move his tent. This they did frequently, and would leave even their villages in a body for their hunting grounds, only re- turning with the change of season.
Concerning tribal boundaries, H. H. Bancroft says :
"Accurately to draw partition lines between primitive nations is impossible. Migrating with the seasons, constantly at war, driving and being driven far past the limits of hereditary boundaries, extirpating and being extirpated, over- whelming. intermingling; like a human sea, swelling and surging in its wild struggle with the winds of fate, they come and go, here to-day, yonder to-mor- row. A traveler passing over the country finds it inhabited by certain tribes ; another coming after finds all changed. One writer gives certain names to certain nations; another changes the name, or gives to the nation a totally dif- ferent locality. An approximation, however, can be made sufficiently correct for practical purposes."
The location of our Illinois tribes is somewhat difficult for they made no
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
permanent improvements. They never owned their land in severalty. No Indian could point out a piece of land as belonging to him and to his family after him, and as being his to improve it for their benefit.
MIGRATIONS OF THE ILLINOIS
The location of our Indian tribes is shown as definitely as possible by the adjoining maps.
Practically, when first discovered, our Illinois tribes occupied the Illinois Valley and the banks of the Mississippi for a little distance below it. (See first cut on the adjoining page.)
Our own Peorians occupied a village where Peoria City now stands and one on the west bank of the Mississippi river, almost due west from Peoria together with all of the territory between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, south of a line connecting these two villages.
The Kickapoos were found between the Rock River and the Mississippi. The Pottawottomies in the southeastern corner of Wisconsin and our tribes were bounded on the northeast by the Wea Miamis and on the southeast by the Piankeshaw Miamis, while the powerful and bloody Shawnees extended over into the southeast corner of Illinois along the Ohio river.
Eighty-one years later in 1765 (see cut number two), when this territory was ceded by France to England, the Indians had moved further south. The Sauks and Foxes then inhabited the territory between the Illinois river and the Mississippi. The Pottawottomies had come to occupy the territory about the southern end of Lake Michigan. The Kickapoos who were at first found in the neighborhood of Galena were now occupying central Illinois east of the Illinois river, and the Illinois tribes, very much reduced in number were driven down and were living about the mouth of the Kaskaskia river opposite St. Louis. Yet later, at the outbreak of the war of 1812, between the Americans and the English, while the Winnebagos had crowded down and were occupying part of the territory north of the Rock River, the Sauks and Foxes were still up along the Mississippi river. The Pottawottomies, who so mercilessly mas- sacred the Kaskaskias near Starved Rock, were occupying the northern half of the valley of the Illinois and the Kickapoos were in the southern part of . Illinois. The Piankeshaw Miamis were driven over into Indiana and the rem- nant that was left of our poor Illinois tribes were occupying a little territory down near St. Louis.
General William H. Harrison in a letter dated 1814 says that when he was first appointed governor of Indiana territory, in 1800, our once powerful Illinois confederacy was reduced to about thirty warriors of whom twenty-five were Kaskaskias, four Peorias and one a Mitchigamian. A furious war between them and the Sauks had reduced them to this forlorn remnant and they had taken refuge among the white people of the towns of Kaskaskia and St. Gene- vieve. Since 1800 they have been moved from reservation to reservation until in 1872 they had dwindled to forty men, women, and children, and were located in the northeast corner of what is now Oklahoma, having merged with the Miamis and other tribes.
The Illinois confederacy had already commenced to decline when the first white men came here, but they were once a powerful organization. Father Membre says that in 1680 they had seven or eight thousand souls in their one village at Starved Rock. In the days of their power, they had nearly exter- minated the Winnebagos, and their war parties had penetrated the towns of the Iroquois as far east as the valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee. Mar- quette himself says in the passage quoted above, "They had an air of humanity that we had not remarked in the other nations we had seen."
A daughter of a sub-chief of the Peoria tribe gave birth to a son in 1793 where the Kaskaskia and the "River of the Plains" unite to form the beginning
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
of the Illinois and called him Baptiste Peoria. His reputed father was a French- Canadian trader named Baptiste. The son was a man of large stature, pos- sessed of great strength, activity and courage and was like Keokuk, the great chief of the Sac and Fox Indians, a fearless and expert horseman. He soon came into prominence and his known integrity and ability secured the confidence of all so that he was for many years in the employ of the United States govern- ment. By precept and example he spent the better portion of a busy life in persistent efforts to save the fragment of the Illinois and Miamis by encourag- ing them to adopt the ways of civilized life. He finally collected the remnants of the scattered tribes of Indians and in 1867 led them out to the northeast corner of Indian Territory, where he died at the age of eighty years.
It will be interesting to those who now reside in Peoria and vicinity and own and occupy the land once occupied by the Peorias as hunting and fishing grounds when the white men first came, to know what has become of the rem- nant of the Indians who lived here at that time.
The different tribes composing the Illinois confederacy were amalgamated with each other and they all then became known as the Peorias, and then again they were amalgamated with the Miamis and were called the Peoria-Miami Indians and we have seen that they moved out to northeastern Oklahoma to a reservation there, where they are now living, under the leadership of Baptiste Peoria, one of their leading men.
All but five of the one hundred forty-four Peorias wear citizen's dress- that is, white man's dress.
The Indians in the accepted sense have disappeared leaving a race in which white blood predominates-a people having nothing in common with the Indian and having everything in common with the whites.
As long ago as 1890, of the one hundred sixty Indians, one hundred forty could converse in English well enough for ordinary purposes.
Twenty years ago, all the Peorias were made citizens of the United States and of Oklahoma. Those people are self-supporting, not having received any pension for the last twenty years. In that community there are three white persons to each Indian.
Upon their reservation is incorporated a town called Peoria, where they have a postoffice, about twelve miles northeast of Wyandotte, with a popula- tion in 1904 of two hundred, at which time out of one hundred ninety-two Peorias, there were seventy-one half blood or more and one hundred twenty-one of less than half blood.
In estimating the number of Indians now living and in estimating their in- crease or decrease a mistake is almost always made. They count every person of more or less Indian blood as an Indian just as fully as if he were a full blooded Indian. It might be if this process was kept up long enough we would all be counted as Indians. For this reason, in really estimating the number of Indians of the Peoria-Miami tribes in existence at present, of the two hundred who are half bloods, more or less, that ought to be considered as one hundred Indians and one hundred whites. The whites are as well entitled to count a half blood as the Indians are. According to this way of reckoning, it will be seen that the Indians of the Peoria-Miami tribe now should be considered as equal to one hundred full blood Indians.
The restriction on the sale of their homesteads of our tribes will expire in 1915.
In marriage and divorce and all other matters, they follow the laws of their state.
Since they have become citizens, the government of the United States has no further control over their persons. Although some Indians are poor, the Peorias, as a rule, are in comfortable circumstances according to the standard of communities such as theirs. They are a fairly well-to-do people, there being among them some thrifty and successful farmers and stock raisers. There are
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
a few uneducated ones in the tribe. A number of them are people of intelli- gence, education and refinement, comparing more than favorably with a large proportion of the whites who have settled among them. Several reside and are engaged in business in Miami, Oklahoma, a modern town of about three thousand people located within the agency on the Neosho river.
There remain a very few full bloods, yet among these are some of the best citizens. Many of the tribe are members of the Society of Friends and others belong to various denominations.
The wife of the present member of the legislature from their county is a Peoria, a member of one of the old and respected families of the tribe.
Soon the Indians like the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes and the Celts, the Normans and the Gauls will cease to exist among us as a separate people.
Should some future Bulwer Lytton write the romance of "The Last of the Roving Red Monarchs of the Prairies" his hero would be Baptiste Peoria.
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CHAPTER III
FORCES WHICH MADE PEORIA AND THE MATERIAL OF WHICH IT WAS MADE
"I beg pardon, once and for all, of those readers who take up 'history' merely for amusement, for plaguing them so long with old fashioned politics, and Whig and Tory, and Hanoverians and Jacobites. The truth is, I cannot promise them that this story shall be intelligible, not to say probable, without it." -Sir Walter Scott.
There prevailed in Europe in the days of Le Grand Monarque and the great protector, about the middle of the seventeenth century, many fundamental principles and ideas influencing society, ecclesiastical and civil, which were strenuously contending with each other for supremacy. These warring ele- ments prompted and controlled the discovery and settlement of North America and influenced our development, determining the character and progress of our people and being still effective in the shaping of our institutions, our laws, and our civilization. The predominance of some of them in North America and their former suppression in South America have made the difference that exists to-day between the people, the laws, the civilization and progress, the happiness and glory of these two continents. Our southern sister republics are now making great advances and for several decades have been but this has come about largely through their efforts to follow our example and because they have been under the shadow of our flag. In all probability there would not be a republic there to-day if the United States had not demonstrated the proposition that a government of the people, by the people and for the people can live, at least for a hundred years and more.
The colonies in South America were a hundred years old at the inception of those in North America. This was perhaps a disadvantage to them for they were begun at a time when civil and religious liberty were little understood any- where in the whole world, and they were controlled by Spain and other nations which in these respects were the least progressive of all-church and state were allied and autocratic ; and the greatest ambition of the people was the acquisition of gold. Only one party was allowed in Spain, the leaders being selfish, cor- rupt and tyrannical while the working people were little better than serfs or beasts of the plow.
On the other hand when our continent was colonized personal liberty, espe- cially the liberty of the mind, had begun to be developed; men were beginning to pursue their own way of thinking and to express their opinions freely and publicly and the plain working people were more respected through all Europe.
In England at this time four great classes of fundamental principles of gov- ernment were at work each represented by a political party and each favoring and favored by some special religious faith and form of church government. The churches differed from each other as much in their form of government as in their creeds and each endeavored to have the civil government brought as nearly as possible to the rules and forms under which it controlled its ecclesias- tical matters. The Independents carried their radical democratic principles not only into matters of church but into matters of state as well. The Presbyte- Vol. 1-2
17
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
rians were in both respects more conservative and stood for the principles of representative republican government. Then there was the established Episcopal Church with its prelates and bishops, its hierarchy in church and its specially favored nobility and gentry, its primogeniture and entailed estates. The fourth party was that of the Roman Catholics, a powerful element in the state. Charles II was a professional member of the Episcopal Church but in his heart he was a sympathizer and lover of the Roman Catholic Church and died in its confession. His brother and heir apparent to the succession was an open and pronounced Roman Catholic and when he came to the throne, lived on a pension from Louis XIV the grand master of absolutism. The kings of France and England both believe in the right of kings to rule absolutely by divine appointment and with- out the consent of the people. Fortunately no one of these four principal politi- cal parties had the uncontrolled power for any great length of time.
In France, under Louis XIV, the last of these four principles of absolutism held full sway. The church and state were absolutely allied and thoroughly autocratic, and the king allowed no opposition to his own views or wishes. He surrounded himself with able men who merely executed his will and whose highest aim was to increase and spread abroad the glory of the king. Colbert, his great promoter of French industry, manufactures and trade, and his gen- erals Turenne, Conde and Vaban surpassed the statesmen and soldiers of all other countries while Louis himself was pre-eminently able, efficient, and accom- plished among the kings and princes of his time which he rendered the most illustrious in the French annals. He caused the court of Versailles to be every- where admired as the model of taste, refinement and distinction but he sought nothing but the gratification of his own selfishness and love of pleasure, his pride and desire of renown and splendor. His reign became the grave of free- dom, of morals, of firmness of character, and of manly sentiment. Court favor was the end of every effort of his subjects and flattery the surest means of reaching it. Virtue and merit met with little acknowledgment. He built up the glory and magnificence of his own age and nation while he destroyed the only sure and permanent foundations of government. Without the free power in the people to conscientiously criticize superiors with impunity, no country can be progressive and enduring. Louis permitted nothing of the kind in either church or state. Without power in the citizen to act according to his own in- dividual judgment and on his own initiative, controlled only by necessary and equitable laws and his own conscience undominated by the dictation of auto- cratic superiors, no people can be intelligent, progressive, courageous, strong or safe. This power in either church or state, Louis completely crushed out in his kingdom. The magnificent centralization of wealth and splendor in his time ended after a few generations in a terrible downfall and the horrors of the French revolution and Louis and his wrong principles were responsible for it. There was only one clause in the constitution of France and that was made by the king himself. It reads thus, "The State, I am the State."
Spain too was a monarchy under the absolute control of the Catholic Church.
There were other feebler nations that made settlements in what is now the territory of the United States. But the three great kingdoms of Europe- Spain, England and France-were almost equal in strength, and for hundreds of years it was the policy of European nations to preserve, if possible, the bal- ance of power.
At the time the history of Peoria begins, from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, there were very few European settlements situated more than ten miles distant from a port accessible to ocean vessels and these were small and insignificant.
Florida was held by the Spaniards. St. Augustine is the oldest settlement in the United States. It was and is a walled town, founded in 1565 by Spaniards. Possibly Santa Fe, New Mexico, also Spanish, was the next. French Calvinists, under the patronage of Admiral Coligny, had made a settlement a short time
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
before at St. John in Florida, but the Spanish navy ruthlessly destroyed the place, murdering the women and children and making slaves of the men whom they did not murder. These people were destroyed because they were Protes- tants.
Meanwhile the English were planting enduring colonies. The Dutch had settled in New York and the Swedes in Delaware but their control was of short duration. Except for these little colonies, which were soon absorbed by the English, the Atlantic coast was settled from Florida to Canada under the auspices and protection of the English government. However, the colonies dif- fered greatly in character. Each one of the four parties of England was spe- cially interested in its own particular colony and the people of each colony par- took of the characteristic of the party, church or sect which colonized it.
New England was colonized by the Independents. They were divided into different sects and were not always tolerant of each other, but they did not differ greatly in the character of their people or even in important matters of creed or of ecclesiastical and civil government.
The Dutch colony of New York (New Amsterdam) soon passed into the control of the Duke of York, a Roman Catholic, but all religions were tolerated and most were to be found there.
Pennsylvania belonged to a Quaker and Quakers predominated there; but it also contained many Presbyterians and men of other sects, all of whom en- joyed religious liberty.
New Jersey and Delaware were settled partly by Swedes and Quakers and largely by Presbyterians.
Maryland belonged to a Roman Catholic proprietor but although thus owned and governed the majority of the people were Protestants from a very early day. Religious liberty prevailed there until 1692 when it passed for a short time under the control of the Episcopalians.
The leading Virginians were from the beginning lovers and imitators of the English gentry. They loved the English Episcopal Church, which was the es- tablished church until after the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and it was rather intolerant in the lower counties, nevertheless the Virginians were always strong and valiant defenders of liberty. For business reasons, the Lutherans were tolerated by special statute at an early date; and the valleys of the Shenan- doah and Holston rivers were first settled by the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Pres- byterians, whom Gov. Gooch sought to introduce, on account of their heroic fighting qualities, as a defense against the Shawnees, Cherokees, and other war- like Indians promising that they should be allowed to enjoy their own religion in their own way. There were also some Dutch immigrants who were Protestant dissenters. It will be seen in another chapter that Virginia was really Illinois' mother country.
Neither of the Carolinas nor Georgia was sufficiently settled before the mid- dle of the seventeenth century to make it an appreciable element in early colonial life or politics.
At the time of the discovery of Illinois, there were probably 150,000 white people settled on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean within the present territory of the United States : to the west of them in a territory bounded by the great lakes, the Mississippi river, and the Gulf of Mexico, there were approximately an equal number of Indians ( 150,000). Probably Plymouth had 6,500 whites; Connecticut, 13,000; Massachusetts, 19,000; Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island had about 3.500 each; New York, 18,000; Virginia about 42,000; Mary- land probably 16,000; Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware possibly 6,000; the Carolinas and Georgia together, 7,000.
We have given this review of the condition of the eastern colonies because they were at that time establishing and developing those great principles of civil and religious liberty upon which they united and formed of themselves a great nation which from the days of George Rogers Clark and his Virginians
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HISTORY OF PEORIA COUNTY
protected and defended us and of which we ourselves have since become a part so that their destiny and ours have become one; and further because the men of heroic character, indomitable energy, self-reliance and individual initia- tive who made Peoria were themselves the unique product of those older colonies.
There was not a prelate of any church or sect within the territory of the colonies until after the Revolutionary War nor a nobleman, except those who were made noble in nature by the grace of God and their own efforts.
The attempt of France to colonize the new world had not been very success- ful. They made their first permanent settlement at Port Royal three years before Jamestown was settled. Champlain established a colony at Quebec in 1608. In 1644 Cardinal Richelieu organized the "Company of New France" which was to have the monopoly of trade for fifteen years and on the other hand it agreed to take three hundred French Roman Catholic settlers each year to the colony and to provide each settlement with three priests.
In 1660 there were no more than two thousand French settlers in New France and there were not probably more than two or three times that many at the time Marquette and Joliet visited Illinois.
CHAPTER IV
DISCOVERY BY THE FRENCH
"Thou too sail on, O ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel,
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