USA > Illinois > Marshall County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 2
USA > Illinois > Putnam County > Records of the olden time; or, Fifty years on the prairies. Embracing sketches of the discovery, exploration and settlement of the country, the organization of the counties of Putnam and Marshall, biographies of citizens, portraits and illustrations > Part 2
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1.
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NAMING THE NEW WORLD.
was not connected with them or with the Bahamas, he accomplished very little. He was a pompous man, with a plausible way of expressing himself, and on his return gave glowing accounts of his achievements, in which he adroitly omitted all reference to Columbus, and took the credit to himself of having discovered the new continent, likewise ignoring the fact that it was the genius of Columbus which had organized the first expedition, his courage that sustained the enterprise, brought the voyage to so successful a termination, and rendered further discoveries an easy matter. It was Columbus who demonstrated that the earth was round, and that islands, and even continents-yes, a hemisphere, was to be found in the world of waters toward the setting sun. The wily Spaniard undermined the worthy ยท Genoese, and won the honor due alone to him. The New World was named America, but the great, the lasting fame of its discovery remains with him whose prow first ploughed the Western seas.
While the adventurous of all nations participated in the exploration of the New World during the succeeding century, the Spaniards, disappointed in their thirst for gold and plunder among the natives of North America, their rapacity inflamed by glowing accounts of the wealth of the Incas, and doubtless also influenced by the more congenial climate, directed their attention almost wholly to Mexico and South America, inflicting upon those countries to this day the enervating heritage of their own indolent, lawless and revolutionary propensities. Important discoveries within the territory now embraced by the United States were made by Spanish explorers, of which brief mention will be made in their proper connection, but the colonization and development of North America was fortunately left almost wholly to hardy pioneers from the more northerly European countries.
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
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CHAPTER II.
ANCIENT EXPLORERS. :
HILE to Spain is accorded the honor of having discovered the new world, there is a strong probability that the little sea-girt, ice-bound island in mid-ocean between Greenland and Norway, appropriately named Iceland, may justly dispute this distinguished claim. Away back as far as A. D. 986, an Icelandic navigator named Herjulfson, who had made a few voyages for trading purposes between his country and Greenland, while heading toward the land of the Esquimaux, was caught in a storm and driven on the coast of Lab- rador. He saw there a low outline of rocky and wooded shore, far different from that of Greenland. Although sufficiently near, a heavy sea prevented him from landing, and he coasted along until a favorable wind bore him homeward to tell to incredulous ears the wonderful story.
Fourteen years afterward Lief Erickson, another Icelander, inspired by the story of Herjulfson, determined to test its truth, and gathering a crew of hardy Norse sailors, embarked, and in the spring of 1001 touched the coast of Maine, and thence drifted southward. Here he saw wonderful woods and flowers and wild game such as he had never before beheld, be- sides strange red men, wholly unlike the Esquimaux. This to him was a tropical clime, a region of enchanting loveliness, and his crew were loth to leave it.
His brother Thorwald came in the following season, and died near Fall River, Massachusetts. Afterward others followed, including Thorfin Karlsefne, who, with a crew of 150 men, explored the entire coast of the New England States, entered New York Harbor, and established friendly relations with the Indians, giving the region the name of Vinland.
From time to time as late as 1437, Icelandic explorers visited the north-eastern shores of this continent, but failed to establish permanent commercial relations with the Indians, having little to exchange, and small demand for what the aborigines had to barter. The gradually increasing
21
ICELANDIC EXPLORATIONS.
severity of the arctic climate finally caused all Icelandic voyages hither to cease; but the story of their adventures and discoveries exists in legend and history, and the claim that they first discovered America has a sub- stantial basis of fact to rest upon.
Subsequently, in various places along the New England coast have been found relics of a strange race, such as spears and shields, helmets, lances, battle axes, and other weapons of war such as the Northmen used in the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth centuries. Culinary utensils have like- wise been found of the exact pattern of those of ancient Norway.
The people of Iceland, unlike the Esquimaux, are clearly Europeans, in form, habits, religion and color, and their resemblance to their neighbors of Norway, six hundred miles eastward, is unmistakable. Between Iceland and the northernmost point of Scotland the distance is about five hundred miles, with the Faroe Isles intervening midway. But there seems little question of the Norwegian descent of the Icelanders. They connect them- selves by their chronicles with the former country, which they left in open boats ages ago. They have old legends, religious beliefs and superstitions and ancient traditions in common with the mother country, and trace themselves to European ancestry. Their chronicles of the discovery of America are equally clear and credible. That they could have crossed from Norway 500 or 600 miles of sea, in open boats, with island resting places between shores, is no longer doubtful, since only recently the broad Atlantic was crossed in a frail craft navigated by a single daring mariner and his adventurous wife.
A few years ago, beneath a rock near the coast was found the skeleton of a man encased in armor; and an ancient paper among the archives of Iceland tells how a sailor was killed in a skirmish with the natives, and his remains buried where he fell, at the foot of a precipice.
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
CHAPTER III.
THE GARDEN SPOT OF THE WORLD.
HE discovery of America was an event of great consequence. to Europe. It not only marked out a new career for many of her people, but changed the destinies of whole nations. The safety of a tyrant lies in the ignorance and supersti- tion of his subjects. Knowledge is not only power, but freedom itself. The people were becoming enlightened, and in proportion as they advanced in wisdom, so the ... chains of political servitude became more galling; and far-off America, with her grassy plains, broad savannahs, leafy woods and crystal streams, loomed up before the' oppressed as a land of promise. .. Monarchy was in danger when the spirit of freedom was aroused, and it became a question of Revolution or Emigration; and both the people and their rulers saw in the latter the surer, safer course.
The people who first settled here found a wonderful contrast between the sterile soil of the old world, where the farmer forced a scanty subsis- tence from land not his own, and the broad forest regions of New England or the mountainous declivities of Virginia or North Carolina; for the land, though hilly, was rich virgin soil; and above all, it was free. Whatever the farmer raised was his own beyond the reach of rapacious tithes-gath- erers. To fell and clear these vast forests and remove from the sunny ; hillsides the stone was joyful work, since it was to make free homes for free men and their children forever. This labor of love would cause the wilderness to blossom as the rose.
Luckily, the hardy pioneers who cleared the bleak hills of New Eng- land little dreamed of the far-off Eden of the West, made by nature ready. for the plow,-the richest, freest soil under the sun. For thousands of years, ever since man began to till the soil to get from it his bread, it had lain unturned, waiting the white man's coming. No soil had heretofore been found so rich as to require no dressing. . No farm was believed possible until some one cut down the trees and removed the stumps and roots, or
23
THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
dug up and carried away or sunk out of sight and reach of the plow the larger stones that cumbered the surface. To tell the Puritans of a land still more perfect than their own was to insult their judgment with a fictitious impossibility !
And yet here lay this broad, beautiful, unsurpassably rich garden spot of the world. Here, extending from the copper mines and along the southern shore of the largest fresh water lake in the world-Lake Su- perior, - stretching around to the base of the Rocky Mountains, and thence eastward to the Alleghanies and south to the Gulf of Mexico, enclosing the mightiest lakes and the longest rivers of the world-the peerless Mississippi, the turbulent but even larger Missouri, the Platte, the Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Tennessee, and many others, forming together a perfect system of drainage and fertilization, -lay this grand country, the great Mississippi Valley, the richest agricultural region under the sun, so far as human knowledge goes.
A great discovery was that of this grand central plain, once the basin of a vast inland sea long ages ago, when hideous monsters of the coal period disported themselves among the luxuriant weeds that grew as trees, and gigantic saurians hid beneath their branches or lazily wallowed in the oozy marsh. Long cycles of time have passed since this great inter-conti- nental ocean between the rising hills of the East and the frowning moun- tains of the West subsided its flood and slowly, by degrees marked by centuries, the finished world emerged from its chaotic beginning. During that vast intermediate space what mighty throes of nature has it witnessed, what Titanic convulsions has it experienced? Then came great floods of water aid intense heat, followed by the glacial or cold period, when for centuries fields of ice hundreds of feet in depth ploughed up the surface and harrowed down the hills till, after cons of ages, came man-not historic man, with his progressive faculties, but the pre-historic first attempt of nature toward the genus homo, -- the dweller in caves, possessing an abun- dance of low cunning, and fighting his way with sticks and stones among the swarming monsters of earth and sea. Then came the mound-builders and what is known as the Stone Age, supplemented by what are termed the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Whether these periods resulted from gradual progress, or were rudely broken off by long intervals of time, is not certain. History tells that after the fall of Greece and Rome came the Dark Ages, and man seemed to have degenerated thousands of years. So between the strongly marked characteristics of pre-historic races there
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
may have been wide gaps of time, and nations rose and fell unnoted and unknown. .
The Indians whom our ancestors found here, in arts and sciences were- far behind the ancient people who once inhabited this country. They did not have the sagacity to provide for inclement weather or old age. Each day was for itself; and so their lives ran, either a feast or a famine: They had no traditions of former races, and knew nothing of their own previous history. The numerous mounds that covered the country excited neither interest nor enthusiasm, and the red man is best described by Pope in the following lines:
" To be, contents his natural desire ; He asks no angel's wing nor seraph's fire, But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."
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THE FATHER OF WATERS.
The Mississippi River was first discovered by the Spaniards, in the year 1541, at a point near its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico. Two years later Father Hennepin voyaged down the Illinois River to its confluence with the Mississippi, and launching his craft upon its rapid current, jour- neyed to the falls of St. Anthony, and returning, went as far southward as the thirty-third parallel, near the mouth of the Arkansas. These long voyages were prompted by utopian dreams, the Spaniards seeking the fabled fountain of eternal youth, and the French a shorter route to China.
In 1512, Juan Ponce de Leon, Spanish Governor of Porto Rico, one of the West India Islands, rich and avaricious, but growing old, fitted out a fleet and sailed in search of the fabled spring. On ths 27th of March, he came upon the coast of a wonderful land, abounding in limpid springs and wood-crowned hills, gay with gorgeous flowers, and tenanted by gaudy . plumaged birds. He named this enchanting country Florida, "the land of flowers." Landing near the site of what is now the city of St. Augustine, the oldest town built by white men on this continent, and claiming the country for the King of Spain, he promptly organized and vigorously prose- cuted his search for the fabulous fountain. After many weeks of fruitless exploration among the everglades and flower-laden groves, he turned southward, discovered and named the Tortugas, doubled Cape Florida, and returned to Porto Rico. The king, to compensate him for the discovery,
25
NARVAEZ-DE SOTO-PONCE DE LEON.
made him Governor of Florida, and sent him to establish a colony. He re- turned in 1521, to find the natives intensely hostile, instead of friendly and hospitable as before, and had scarcely landed ere they fell upon him in overwhelming numbers and drove his men to their ships, Ponce de Leon himself being so severely wounded that he died soon after reaching Cuba, for which point his expedition sailed in precipitate haste.
In A. D. 1528, Narvaez was appointed Governor of Florida by the King of Spain, and sailed for that province with a force of two hundred and sixty footmen and forty horsemen. He landed at Tampa Bay in April, and went northward in search of gold and conquest; but where he hoped to find ancient cities and vast empires abounding in wealth, he discovered only morasses, lagoons and savages. After weeks of peril and hardship they reached the coast, built light barges, and put to sea, but were driven by storms again upon the shore. Here Narvaez died, His lieutenant, De Vaca, at length reached the Spanish settlements in Mexico with a handful of men, having, as some historians allege, discovered the Mississippi on his way. As he seems not to have claimed that honor, however, and failed to formally take possession of it in the name of the King of Spain, as other Spanish discoverers were wont to do, his government never accred- ited him with that achievement.
In 1537, Ferdinand de Soto, a distinguished cavalier of Spain and bosom friend of Pizarro, who as conqueror of Peru had just returned loaded with the wealth of the Incas, was made Governor of Florida, and came with six hundred men to conquer and subdue the country, expecting to find it a second Peru in wealth. His men were representatives of the nobility of Spain, clad in knightly armor, and they came with all the pomp and cir- cumstance of conquerors, bringing shackles for slaves, bloodhounds for hunting, and priests to conduct their religious exercises. In June, 1539, they first caught sight of land, but instead of the wondrous beauty deline- ated in Ponce de Leon's painting, they beheld but a silent beach of marshy waste and gloomy morass. Some of the men deserted and returned to Cuba. Landing with the remainder of his force, De Soto marched north- ward, wading swamps, swimming rivers, and fighting the Indians who hovered about his line of march, harrassing his column and seeking to im- pede his progress. They wintered in the country of the Apalachians, on the left bank of Flint River, and in the spring of 1540 resumed their tedious journey, wandering through the interminable wilderness until about April or May of 1541, when they reached the lower Chickasaw Bluff, a
26
RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
little north of the thirty-fourth parallel, where they discovered the Missis- sippi River. After crossing the "Father of Waters," a tedious process, requiring several weeks' time, they journeyed to the north-west through Arkansas to the southern limits of Missouri, in the vicinity of New Mad- rid, thence west about two hundred miles, then south to the Hot Springs, where they arrived in the winter of 1541-2. They were guilty of many cruelties to the Indians, who were superstitious, and became easy victims to the duplicity of the gaudily attired Spaniards. Disappointed in finding wealth and spoils, they destroyed Indian towns and villages on their route, and cruelly mutilated their captives or burned them alive in pun- ishment for real, imaginary or pretended offences. But in the mean- time De Soto'and his followers suffered terribly, sickness and death rapidly decimating their ranks. At length they turned eastward and again reached the Mississippi River, where De Soto, broken in health and spirits, gave way to melancholy, succumbed to the malarial fever incident to the climate and country, and finally died. His body was taken to the middle of the stream by his sorrowing companions, a requiem was chanted, and in a rustic coffin enclosing them, the remains of Ferdinand De Soto were buried be- neath the rolling waters of that mighty river whose discovery was the only important result of all his weary wanderings. His companions, after many months of further desultory travel over Texas; again" reached the" Missis- sippi, near the mouth of Red River, where they built seven brigantines. In these they floated down the river to its mouth, whence they steered . southwesterly across the Gulf of Mexico, and after fifty-five days' buffeting the terrible coast waves, three hundred and eleven survivors of this ill-fated expedition reached a Spanish settlement at the mouth of the River of Pahus.
Other Spanish expeditions, notably those of Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, Pamphilo de Narvaez and Pedro Melendez, visited portions of North America now comprised within the limits of the United States, mainly in- stigated by greed and characterized by atrocious cruelties, but devoid of important results.' Spain retained possession of Louisiana, Florida and Texas, the former until the year 1800, when it was ceded to France and in turn purchased by the United States;"Florida until Feb. 22, 1819, when it was likewise purchased by the United States; and of Texas until 1821, when it passed into the nominal possession' of Mexico, only, however, to raise the standard of insurrection, achieve speedy independence and sue for ad- mission to the glorious sisterhood'of States when the galling hand of des- potisin bore too heavily upon the rights and liberties of her people.
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27
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS.
SETTLEMENT OF CANADA.
CHAPTER IV.
EXPLORATIONS OF THE FRENCH.
S EARLY as 1504, fishermen from the north of France sought the shores of New Foundland to ply their trade. A. well executed map made in 1506, and found among the archives of the nation, defines the outlines of the Gulf of St. Law- rence and the fishing grounds very accurately: In 1508 two Indians picked up at sea were carried to France and edu- cated, afterward becoming very serviceable as interpreters.
In 1501 Gaspar Cortereal, a Portuguese seaman, sailed on a voyage of discovery, and striking the continent somewhere near the latitude of Maine, coasted northward a distance of seven hundred miles,. until near the fiftieth parallel, when floating ice stopped further progress. Returning, he captured about fifty Indian fishermen, and took them to Portugal, where they were sold as slaves.
In 1523 an expedition was fitted out in France, consisting of four small vessels, three of which were wrecked in a storm before leaving the coast, but the fourth, the Dolphin, reached the coast of North Carolina, from whence the commander sailed northward as far as New Foundland, where he landed and took possession of the country. in the name of the king, his master, and named it New France.
In 1534 France sent a new and successful explorer to further view her new possessions here, in the person of James Cartier, who, after cruising about Nova Scotia and New Foundland, went north and westward, enter- ing the estuary of a broad river, which he named, in honor of his patron, St. Lawrence. He sailed up this great river past the island of Orleans, and extending his journey, reached a beautiful village at the foot of a hill in the middle of an island, the location of which had been described to him by captive Indians. Ascending the hill and discovering the surroundings fully confirmative of what 'had been described by his Indian guides, he named the place Mont Real, and with the usual ceremony took possession in the name of the King of France.
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RECORDS OF THE OLDEN TIME.
In 1541, about the date of De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi River, Cartier organized a new expedition from France. The fabulous stories of great wealth to be had without labor in the new world were now exploded, and the spirit of adventure was dying out; volunteers were slow to offer their services, and the king being appealed to, opened the prisons, filled with vermin from all parts of Europe, and proclaimed a free pardon for all who enlisted, excepting only such as were under sentence for coun- terfeiting or treason. By this means Cartier's complement was speedily made up, and with a crew of thieves, robbers and cut-throats, the future founders of a western empire, he reached the present site of Quebec, where he passed the winter.
For the next fifty years the French seem to have made no effort to colonize New France, or to explore its territory. In 1603 De Monts was appointed Governor of the country from the latitude of Philadelphia to one degree north of Montreal. In 1604 he arrived, and after some reverses of fortune, in 1605 founded a permanent settlement on the northwest coast of Nova Scotia, and the whole country and surrounding islands, with the mainland as far south as the St. Croix River, was named Acadia.
In 1608 Champlain, discoverer of the lake which bears his name, fore- seeing in the fur trade of that region a profitable business, susceptible of unlimited expansion, established trading posts for the advancement of that industry, and founded Quebec. He vigorously prosecuted this industry, the new world's contribution to commerce, yearly extending it up the river until 1624, when Fort St. Louis was completed, securing the French in their permanent occupancy of the St. Lawrence Valley.
During this period the Jesuits of France were turning their attention to the far-off region of the then Northwest in America, with a view to planting the cross of the Catholic Church and converting to its tenets the inhabitants of this benighted wilderness. While priests had accompanied every expedition here, none had come as missionaries; but in 1632 Paul La Jeune, De Noue, and a lay brother named Gilbert sailed from Rouen for "that miserable country," as they called it, arriving at Quebec in the month of July.
Le Jeune's first missionary effort was made while seated on a log, an Indian boy on one side, and a little negro, an attache of the garrison, on the other. As neither understood the language of the others, their pro- gress in spiritual matters must have been small.
After learning the Indian language, he was better satisfied with his
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MARQUETTE-PRIEST AND EXPLORER.
labors. Others joined him, ambitious young missionaries from the mother country, and sometimes folowing, more often preceding the fur traders up to and around the chain of the great lakes, they founded posts and missions throughout the far North-west to the southern shores of Lake Superior. Brave, resolute and self-sacrificing men were those pioneer missionaries. Voluntarily forsaking home, friends and country, they went out into the far-off wilderness before untrodden save by savage feet, devoting their lives to the propagation of their religious faith. Sublime faith, indeed, which prompted these heroic apostles of Christianity to place their lives in momentary jeopardy, with death in its most terrible form a continual menace. The death of Jean De Brebeuf, the founder of the Huron Mis- sion in Canada, together with his companion, Lalemont, was horrible be- yond description, and has never been exceeded in brutal ferocity or intensity of suffering. Savage ingenuity in torture could no farther go than in the horrible maiming, flaying alive and burning of these martyr pioneers.
In 1632, four years before the missions were formed among the lake tribes, a grand council of Indian tribes was held at the falls of St. Mary, at the outlet of Lake Superior. In 1660 Mesnard established a station near the lake, but perished in the woods soon after. In 1668 Claude Dablon and James or Jacques Marquette, afterward a leading character in the history of Western exploration, established the mission of Sault Ste. Marie, and two years later Nicholas Perrot, agent for M. Talon, Governor General of Canada, explored Lake Michigan (then Lake Illinois) to its southern limits, or near the present site of Chicago. Marquette also founded a mission at Point Saint Ignace, across the Strait of Mackinaw.
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