A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III, Part 20

Author: Louis Houck
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: R. R. Donnelley & sons company
Number of Pages: 405


USA > Missouri > A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III > Part 20


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11 Flint's Recollections, pp. 103-4.


12 Schultz's Travels, vol. 2, p. 103. The Catholic chapel built by Father Gibault.


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for the daily "changes and inroads of this mighty river." Cumings, who passed there in 1809, says that the town contained one hundred houses "much scattered, on a fine plain of two miles square, on which, however, the river has encroached during the twenty-two years since it was first settled, so that the bank is now half a mile behind the old bounds, and the inhabitants have had to remove repeatedly further back." 73 The population was composed of French-Cana- dians, Americans and Germans. The people, Cumings says, have plenty of cattle, but otherwise "are very poor." Drygoods sold enormously high, and travellers complained that they were charged "immensely for any domestic necessaries, such as milk, butter, fowls, eggs, etc." A militia company was the only organization, and the officers wore cockades "in chapeaus as a mark of distinc- tion, although the rest of their dress should only be a dirty, ragged hunting shirt and trousers." The church was without a priest. Cumings says that the inhabitants still regretted the change of govern- ment, perhaps on account of the fact that the trade and traffic, necessarily caused by all boats being compelled to land, had ceased and thus the important business of the town had been destroyed.


Bradbury, December 14, 1811, notes that he found only a few straggling houses situated around a plain of from two to three hundred acres in extent and that in the town there were only two stores "indifferently furnished." Not quite two days after Bradbury left on his boat, with "Morin, patron, " there occurred the earthquake which startled the world, and made the name of New Madrid a familiar one everywhere. Everything published about it at the time indicates that it was a most remarkable event. Subse- quently seismologists chronicled the fact that it occurred about at the same period and seemed connected with similar great seismic disturbances in other parts of the world,- notably at Caracas, in South America, and at points in southern California. The New Madrid region was then only sparsely inhabited and the loss of life and property was therefore inconsiderable. The facts regard- ing this earthquake have almost faded from popular memory. Many otherwise intelligent persons now pretend to believe that it was no extraordinary occurrence, and that if it occurred at all, it has been grossly exaggerated. But this can in no wise diminish the phenomenal character of the occurrence, and as such it must be considered. The district most violently affected was about 7ª Cumings' Travels, p. 256.


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thirty miles square, situated in what are now the counties of New Madrid and Pemiscot, in Missouri, and in Lake county, Tennessee, the axis extending from New Madrid to Little Prairie, now Caru- thersville, the Mississippi running nearly through this district. But while this Territory seemed to be the center of the greatest convulsion, it was felt from New Orleans to Chicago and Detroit on the north, and from Washington to Charleston on the east, and as far westward as southern California, affecting fully one-third of the area of what is now the United States, or not less than one million square miles. Voluminous records exist showing the wide extent of this earthquake, which, beginning about December 16th, 1811, was felt frequently with gradually diminishing intensity until about February Ist, 1812, and from time to time thereafter in a less degree throughout this year, and in 1813.


Various theories have been from time to time advanced as to the cause of this earthquake. Nuttall, writing in 1817, thinks that the "vast bed of lignite or wood-coal situated near the level of the river, and filled with pyrites, has been the active agent in producing the earthquakes," 74 and concludes that "the time, though slowly, is per- · haps surely approaching, which will witness something like volcanic eruptions on the banks of the Mississippi." "As to the primary cause of the New Madrid earthquake," says Professor Edward M. Shepard,75 "it is difficult to make any statement. It may have been due to the readjustment of the fault lines in the Ozarks, or to a similar cause in the Appalachians. It would seem more likely to have been the former, as the fault scarps in the Ozarks frequently have an appearance that does not betoken great age and, further, slight earthquake shocks, which observers described as coming from the west, have been noticed. As to the cause of the great local dis- turbance in the New Madrid region, there can be no doubt that it was due to the great artesian pressure from below, which slowly undermined for centuries the superincumbent beds of clay by the steady removal of the sand through innumerable springs. A slight earthquake wave would destroy the equilibrium of a region thus undermined, resulting in the sinking of some areas and the ele- vation of others, thus producing such conditions as were described by various observers who witnessed the catastrophe of 1811."


Many miles away from the New Madrid district, in the barrens


"' Nuttall's Arkansas, p. 53.


" See Journal of Geology, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan. and Feb., 1905.


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of Kentucky, the bird lover Audubon, jogging along on horseback, was surprised by this great earthquake. He saw the shrubs and trees move, the ground rise and fall like the waters of the sea, the convulsions lasting a few minutes. Before this occurrence, he noticed in the western horizon a strange darkness, and heard a roar that seemed to him like the distant rumbling of a tornado. He says that, after the first shock, and for several weeks, shocks of greater or less violence took place almost every day, so that the people ceased almost to notice them. On one occasion he records that while in the solidly built house of a friend, a physician, in the morning just as day began to dawn, the rumbling noise preceding the earthquake was so loud as to arouse every inmate from slumber and cause them to leave bed, and that the creaking of the log house so alarmed them all, except the doctor, that they rushed out of the house into the front yard. The doctor, anxious to save his medicine bottles on his shelves, tried to prevent them dancing off, and jumped around from one place to the other, pushing back bottles here and there, holding out his arms to catch those that might slip off, but to so little purpose that before the earthquake stopped nearly all were lost. In the high country north of New Madrid, as far as St. Louis county, the earth- quake caused innumerable "sink-holes" and for several months in this district also, almost daily, people were alarmed by shocks.


Senator Linn, who was personally acquainted with the people who resided at New Madrid at the time of its occurrence, writing in 1836, says that the earthquake began December 16, 1811, with dis- tant "rumbling sounds." This was succeeded by a noise as if "a thousand pieces of artillery were suddenly exploded." Mr. Godfrey Lesieur, who during these disturbances lived at Little Prairie, in his account published in 1872, says that he noticed a "rumbling noise in the west," where Audubon observed the peculiar color of the sky. John Sibley writes Major Stoddard from Natchitoches, April 2, 1812, that his son, when he descended the Mississippi during the first of these earthquakes, experienced thirty to forty shocks, and that "it is astonishing that they still continue." 76 And Reynolds says that on the Kaskaskia river near the present town of Athens, about two hundred miles north of New Madrid, in December, 1811, during the earthquake, water and white sand were thrown up through a fissure of the earth.77 The New Madrid earthquake aroused the inhabi- 1ª Letter of John Sibley, dated April 2, 1812, in Missouri Historical Society Archives.


17 Reynolds' Pioneer History of Illinois, p. 335.


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BRINGIER


tants of Cincinnati on the night of December 16, 1811, and many people rushed out of their houses. The oscillations of the earth were noticed there for five months. Mansfield says that his father "put up a very delicate pendulum inside one of the front windows, and that the pendulum never ceased to vibrate in nearly five months." The violent shocks in January and February were also observed, and it was May, 1812, before "these earthquakes really ceased." He further says that "a peculiarity attended them, which has perhaps not followed other earthquakes. They seem not only to have had a center, but an axis, which caused a reaction or agitation at a great distance," and that the center of the agitation in the Mississippi valley was at or near New Madrid.78 The naturalist Bradbury, who passed New Madrid only a few days before the earthquake, tied his boat to the shore not far from Little Prairie at the upper Chickasaw bluff on the evening of the 16th of December. He went to his bed made of a bear and buffalo skin, but about 10 o'clock he was awak- ened by a tremendous noise accompanied by so violent an agitation of the boat that it appeared in danger of upsetting, and he says, "before I could quit the bed or rather the skins upon which I lay, the four men who slept in the other cabin rushed in and cried out in the greatest terror, 'O, Mon Dieu, Messieur Bradbury, qu'est c' qu' el y a,' (what is that!). I passed them with some difficulty and ran to the door of the cabin where I could distinctly see the river agitated as if by a storm, and although the noise was inconceivable loud and terrific I could distinctly hear the crash of falling trees and the screaming of the wild fowl on the river, but found that the boat was still safe at her moorings. I was followed by the men and the patron who in accents of terror were still inquiring what it was. I tried to calm them by saying, 'Restez vouz tranquil, c'est un tremblement de terre,' which term they did not seem to understand. The banks of the river then began to fall and cave in, so that the patron of the boat began to be greatly alarmed, crying out, 'O, Mon Dieu nous perrons! '"


Louis Bringier, who seems to have visited the locality soon after the first shock, in a letter published in the American Journal of Science,7º in 1821, gives this account: "On the 6th day of January,


78 Mansfield's Personal Memoirs, p. 46.


7º Silliman's American Journal of Science, pp. 21, 22. Louis Bringier in 1818 lived in Arcadia Parish, Louisiana, and the letter published was by him addressed to Rev. Elias Cornelius. Bringier was born about 1779, the oldest son of Marius Pons Bringier of LaCadiere, Provence, France, and who settled


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1812, during the earthquakes which destroyed New Madrid and which were felt two hundred miles around, I happened to be passing in its neighborhood where the principal shock took place. The violence of the earthquake having disturbed the earthy strata impend- ing over the subterraneous cavities existing probably in an extensive bed of wood highly carbonized, occasioned the whole superior mass to settle. This, pressing with all its weight upon the water that had filled the lower cavities occasioned a displacement of this fluid which forced its passage through, blowing up the earth with loud explo- sions .. It rushed out in all quarters, bringing with it an enormous quantity of carbonized wood reduced mostly into dust, which was ejected to the height of from ten to fifteen feet and fell in a black shower mixed with the sand which its rapid motion had forced along. At the same time the roaring and whistling produced by the impetu- osity of the air escaping from its confinement seemed to increase the horrible disorder of the trees which everywhere encountered each other, being blown up, cracking and splitting and falling by a thou- sand at a time. In the meantime the surface was sinking and the black liquid was rising up to the belly of my horse, who stood motion- less, struck with a panic of terror. These occurrences occupied nearly two minutes; the trees shaken in their foundations kept falling here and there and the whole surface of the country remained covered with holes, which, to compare small things with the great, resembled so many craters of volcanoes surrounded with a ring of carbonized wood and sand which rose to the height of about seven feet. I had occasion a few months after to sound the depth of these holes and found them not to exceed twenty feet, but I must remark that the


in Louisiana; was brought up at Whitehall, his father's residence in St. James parish. It is related that on one occasion he took the products of Whitehall plantation, belonging to him and his brother, to New Orleans, and lost the pro- ceeds of sales in gambling; and that being ashamed to return he mysteriously disappeared, going up the Missouri among the Indians where he was adopted by one of the tribes and finally became a chief, and likely while trading with the Indians crossed the continent,- at any rate on his return home he declared that he had discovered the presence of gold on the Pacific coast. He afterward went to Mexico where he acquired an immense fortune in silver mines, but engaging in a revolution, his property was confiscated and he barely escaped with his life. At one time he was City Surveyor of New Orleans and also held the office of Surveyor-General of Louisiana. Eccentric in disposition, he built a house on Esplanade avenue in New Orleans and had a fish pond constructed on the roof; he died in 1860 at eighty years of age. It is supposed that while he lived among the Indians in Missouri he was engaged in trade and traffic with them, travelling in many portions of the Arkansas and Missouri territory, and evidently during the earthquake of New Madrid must have been in that neighborhood and made the observations which have been published by him.


..


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MRS. BRYANT


quicksand had washed into them. The country here was formerly perfectly level and covered with numerous small prairies of various sizes dispersed through the woods. Now it is covered with slushes (ponds) and sand hills, or monticules, which are found principally where the earth was formerly the lowest, probably because in such cases the water broke through with more facility. A circumstance worthy of notice was a tendency to carbonization that I perceived in all the vegetable substances soaking in the ponds produced by this eruption. It was about seven months after the event had taken place that I had occasion to make these remarks on the spot before men- tioned. The same earthquake produced a lake between St. François and Little Prairie, distant twenty-seven miles from the Mississippi river. This lake much resembles the big lakes on Red river inas- . much as the trees are standing upright in all of them and sunk about thirty feet when the water is high. They are all evidently modern lakes whose bed was not long since part of the forest."


Mrs. Bryant describes the noise accompanying the earthquake as a "very awful noise, resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating." Rev. Timothy Flint, who spent some time in New Madrid in 1819, in the course of a full account of this earth- quake, no doubt gathered from those who lived there during the time, says, "It was preceded by a terrible mixture of noise." Then, in the language of Mr. Lesieur, "The earth began to shake and topple, and persons were unable to stand or walk." But some of the affrighted inhabitants ran to and fro screaming, not knowing where to go or what to do. The earth rolled in waves. Then chasms opened, and water, sand and a black substance resembling coal were thrown up, while sulphurous vapors filled the air. These fissures · ran north and south. They were found in many places. Some were three and four feet deep, and ten feet wide and four or five miles long. In Pemiscot county, in a district yet called the "blows" these fissures extended for many miles north and south, and sand was blown out of them.


Seven years after the earthquake, Flint tells us he observed hundreds of these chasms or fissures, and that large tracts of land were covered with white sand blown out of them. That the Mississippi river ran backwards seems well attested. Whether this was caused by the river-bed being dammed up by a part of the bed rising, or by a chasm in the river-bed itself, is uncertain. It is said that this was caused by the bursting of the earth just below New


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Madrid, thus causing the reflux of the water. It is also recorded, by Lesieur, that the country around Little Prairie overflowed, and the conclusion is almost irresistible that in some way or other the water of the river was backed up by the bed of the river being either ele- vated or obstructed. These earthquake waves, it was observed, seemed to travel from the east to the west.


Nearly all the country affected was at the time totally uninhabited. The settlements were scattered along or near the river. Only an occasional squatter lived in the interior. This being the case, we can never secure an adequate idea of the full extent of the changes occasioned by the earthquake. Undoubtedly new lakes were formed, while others became dry land, and the river system of the upper St. Francois basin all through what is now southeast Missouri was deranged. At Little Prairie, in Pemiscot county, the con- vulsions seemed to have been especially marked. Nuttall says that the inhabitants there, in 1818, claimed that the land sunk ten feet below its former level.80 The country around Reelfoot lake in Tennessee, opposite Little river, so Mr. Lesieur claims, sank some ten feet. In "Reelfoot" lake trees said to have sunk in the lake during this earthquake are yet pointed out to the curious. Along Little river and the Castor and St. Francois rivers great bodies of sunk- lands are well known. There can be no doubt that large districts of the St. François basin sank during these earthquakes, but it would be a mistake to suppose that the whole country sank. On the contrary it may be that even some portions of the lands of this district were slightly elevated.


From December 16, 1811, to January 7, 1812, the earth seemed to be in a constant tremor, and on that day another seismic convul- sion took place, in all respects as violent as that occurring in Decem- ber. The convulsion took place about four o'clock in the morning. The same hoarse, clamorous, tempestuous thundering noise and sulphurous vapor that accompanied the first earthquake was observed again. And from January 7th to February Ist slight disturbances were experienced almost daily, while occasional shocks occurred during the entire year, and up to 1813.81 On the 15th of February, 1812, the "Gazette" published a letter from Cape Girardeau which says the shock on the 7th of January, 1812, was "more violent than any preceding, and lasted longer perhaps than any on record, from


·º Nuttall's Arkansas, p. 47.


" See History of Southeast Missouri, p. 307.


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ACT FOR RELIEF


ten to fifteen minutes; the earth was not at rest for an hour." Ac- cording to the "Gazette" the whole country was nearly depopulated, and the inhabitants fled in every direction. Flagg, who was in Cape Girardeau in 1837 says: "Many brick houses were shattered, chim- neys thrown down and other damage effected, traces of which are yet to be viewed." 82


Only two families remained out of two hundred at Little Prairie. In the first paroxysm of fear the inhabitants of this region tried to escape to the hills. After the earthquake the whole country ex- hibited a melancholy aspect; when Flint resided in New Madrid he says that the aspect was one of decay, desolation and deser- tion. Although this earthquake was so terrific, it is remarkable that only a few casualties occurred. This must be attributed to the fact that the houses were built out of logs, and were low and small. On the other hand it was supposed that many of the men on the flatboats perished, because after the first great earthquake the river was cov- ered with much debris, such as barrels of flour, whiskey, pork and other products.


In 1815 Congress passed an Act affording liberal relief for the suf- ferers from this earthquake. The land owners were permitted to give up their present holdings and to locate, with the certificates received for their New Madrid possessions, on other public land. This opened a wide door for fraud, speculation and litigation. The actual sufferers were in nearly every instance defrauded. Before they had knowledge of the passage of the Act of Congress the New Madrid country was filled with speculators from St. Louis who purchased their property at a rate of from forty to sixty dollars per claim, a claim sometimes embracing as much as six hundred and forty acres of land. After so acquiring the rights to the injured land, certificates of dislocation were issued by the St. Louis land-office to the purchasers of these injured properties. The owners of these certificates, of course, hunted around for the most valuable public property and located their certificates on it. The demand for certifi cates being very great the more unscrupulous and dishonest New Madrid setters would sell their claims several times to new speculators anxious to buy. All this led to endless litigation. Under New Madrid certificates so issued much valuable property was located in North Missouri in the Boonslick country, and near the city of St.


" Flagg's "Far West," p. 57. Also see Life of Elder Wilson Thompson, p. 159, for interesting details.


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Louis, and also near Chicago. . One François Langlois attempted to secure the Hot Springs of Arkansas with a New Madrid certificate.


After the earthquake New Madrid declined more rapidly than before. Evans, who was there in 1818, says, "it is unflourishing." 83 Nuttall, in 1817, describes New Madrid as an insignificant French hamlet, containing little more than twenty log houses, and stores "miserably supplied, the goods of which are retailed at exorbitant prices, for example, 18 cents per pound for lead, which costs 7 cents at Herculaneum, salt $2.00 per bushel, sugar 31} cents per pound, whiskey $1.25 a gallon, apples 25 cents a dozen, corn 50 cents per bushel, fresh butter 37} cents per pound, eggs the same per dozen, pork $6 per hundred, beef $5." He states, however, that the people have been discouraged from settling on account of the earthquake, although the land is of good quality. Even at the time Nuttall visited the place the people frequently experienced an earthquake of two or three oscillations a day. He says that he had such an experience while going down the river in his boat." What wonder this district did not share in the general improvement and development of the country.


A few miles below New Madrid is Point Pleasant. Here too the earthquake paralyzed development. Nuttall was shown near this place a considerable chasm in the earth still far from being filled up when he was there five years after the earthquake. The land in this neighborhood was of superior quality, but the "Canadian squatters" he observes, "in the midst of plenty" are in "miserable circum- stances," because they raise no wheat, scarcely enough corn to sup- port themselves, and flour is "sold here at eleven dollars per barrel." The men dressed in blanket capeaus, buckskin pantaloons and moc- casins. 85


Below Point Pleasant Nuttall found what had once been the vil- lage of Little Prairie, but there was then only a single house remain- ing. Here too the prices were as high as at New Madrid, butter 25 cents a pound, milk 50 cents per half gallon, eggs 25 cents per dozen, and fowls from 50 to 75 cents apiece. In 1811 Cumings found a village of twenty-five cabins here. A mile below the village the


& Pedestrious Tour, p. 197. In 1815, when Buttrick passed down the river he stopped at New Madrid, and during the night was awakened by a noise as if a cable was being drawn over the boat's side; he went out but found nothing and on inquiry about this strange noise learned that it was an earthquake.


"4 Buttrick's "Voyages," p. 34.


86 Nuttall's Arkansas, p. 46, et seq.


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FREDERICKTOWN


Delaware Indians had a camp. In 1818 J. Hardeman Walker's big plantation had taken the place of the village. Between New Madrid and Little Prairie was the Ruddle settlement at Ruddle's Point, so named after Abram Ruddle, son of Isaac Ruddle, a family celebrated in the Indian wars of Kentucky.


In these days of steamboat navigation and rapid travel by rail, the picture of a voyage in a flatboat down the Mississippi among the islands of the river near Point Pleasant, which Cumings gives us in his journal is pleasant to read: "May 25th, when we were awoke to the enjoyment of a delightful morning, by the enchanting melody of the birds saluting the day - while the horn of a boat floating down the far side of the river was echoed and re-echoed from both shores, to all of which we added, with fine effect, some airs on the clarinet and octave flute. When we hauled out of the willows, several boats were in sight, which added much to the cheerfulness of the morning.""




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