USA > Missouri > A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union, Volume I > Part 5
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62 69 Jes. Relations, p. 209.
63 Brackenridge's Views of La., p. 191 et seq.
64 An Account of Louisiana, 1819, p. 15.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
park-like aspect of the country at the head-waters of the St. Francois, Saline, and Big river.65 "In places," he says, "the country is exceedingly wild and romantic. Ledges of limestone rock frequently show themselves on the sides of the hills, and have much the appear- ance of regular and artificial walls. What is somewhat singular is that they are generally near the top of the hill, which gradually slopes down to the vale of some rivulet; a view of great extent and mag- nificence is presented to the eye -rocks, woods, distant hills, and a sloping lawn of many miles. Near Colonel Hammond's farm there is a natural curiosity worth noticing. A hill commanding a most extensive prospect, embracing a scope of fifteen or twenty miles, and in some directions more, is completely surrounded by a preci- pice of the sort described. It is called Rock Fort, and might answer the purpose of fortification." Speaking of the country near Florissant, he further says: "No description can do justice to the beauty of this tract."
North Missouri was mostly a prairie. But along the Missouri river a belt of land about thirty miles wide was covered with timber.66 From La Mamelles, two mounds bearing the appearance of art, projecting from the bluff some distance into the plain, and sit- uated near St. Charles, you behold the prairies extending northwest almost idefinitely. Brackenridge, who saw these prairies before they had been vexed by the plow, thus describes this landscape: "To those who have never seen any of these prairies, it is very difficult to convey any just idea of them. Perhaps the comparison to a smooth, green sea is the best. Ascending the mounds, I was elevated about one hundred feet above the plain; I had a view of an immense plain below, and a distant prospect of hills. Every sense was delighted and every faculty awakened. After gazing for an hour, I still con- tinued to experience an unsatiated delight in contemplating the rich and magnificent scene. To the right, the Missouri is concealed by a wood of no great width, extending to the Mississippi, a distance of ten miles. Before me I could mark the course of the latter river, its banks without even a fringe of wood; on the other side, the hills
65 La Harpe describes the country in 1719, as follows: "L'on commence sa route à l'Ouest, l'on trouve beaucoup de montagnes, de roches couvertes de bosquets de chesnes, où l'on passe plusieurs petites rivières, dont les eaux tombent à l'Est qusqu'au Mississipy." Margry's Coureurs de Bois, vol. vi, P. 3II.
66 Brackenridge's Views of La., p. 205.
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PRAIRIES
of Illinois, faced with limestone in bold masses of various hues, and the summits crowned with trees; pursuing these hills to the north, we see, at a distance of twenty miles, where the Illinois sep- arates them in its course to the Mississippi. To the left, we behold the ocean of prairie, with islets at intervals. The whole extent perfectly level, covered with long, waving grass, and at every moment changing color from the shadows cast by the passing clouds. In some places there stands a solitary tree, of cottonwood or walnut, of enormous size, but, from the distance, diminished to a shrub. A hundred thousand acres of the finest land are under the eye at once, and yet in all this space there is but one little cultivated spot to be seen." And, says Flint, in 1816, "I have not seen, before or since, a landscape which united in an equal degree, the grand, the beautiful, and the fertile."67 Nor, says he, "is it nec- essary in seeing it to be very young or romantic, in order to have dreams steal over the mind of spending an Arcadian life in these remote plains, far removed from the haunts of wealth and fashion, in the midst of rustic plenty, and of this beautiful nature."
On the Missouri, near Côte sans Dessein, the prairie first extended to the river, but it was "handsomely mixed with woodland." 6% From the Osage, on either tide, according to Brackenridge, the prai- rie then stretched westward into the boundless distance. On the Bonne Femme, he says, "the hills rise with a most delightful ascent from the water's edge to the height of forty feet; the woods open and handsome." 69
All along the Missouri river as far as Grand river, in 1811, the upland woods were clean and open, the soil covered with blue-grass, and the growth, oak, elm, hickory, etc. Beyond and west of Grand river, the prairies extended, at many places, up to the waters edge. Near where "Fort Osage" was located, about three hundred and thirty miles above the mouth of the river, the bottoms of the river were covered with white and black oak, cottonwood, hickory, black walnut, linn, ash, mulberry, and other varieties of timber.70
67 Recollections of ten years in Miss. Valley, p. 123.
68 Brackenridge's Journal, p. 30.
69 And Duden observes, in 1824, that in the night "the air, filled with lightning-bugs, gives the woods an appearance of magic." -- Duden's Bericht ueber Nord Amerika, p. 147 (2 Ed.),
70 See letter of George C. Sibley, dated Sept. 16,1808. (Mo. Hist. Society Archives.) Long says: "Out of one walnut-tree on Loutre Island 200 fence
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
And everywhere these forests, in the spring of the year, were em- bellished by the blossoming dogwood, the redbud, the locust, the plum-tree, cherry, and persimmon; and the air was fragrant with the blooming vine-a wilderness more beautiful than Germania, as described by Tacitus.71
Grand river was the western boundary of the timber-belt along the Missouri river on the north side; and the Osage, in a general way, limited the timber-belt on the south side of the river. West of these rivers the prairie stretched away to the head-waters of the Missouri and its tributaries, and to the Shining mountains, by which name the Rocky mountains were then designated by the French-Canadian hunters and voyageurs. According to Brown, there were only about one hundred sections of "tolerably good woodland" in this part of the state when he surveyed the boundary line between the Missouri and Arkansas rivers.72 The prairies on the north side enveloped the timber-belt along the Missouri river, as heretofore described, and north of this timber-belt which was about two hun- dred miles long and thirty miles wide, they extended from the Missouri across to the Mississippi and beyond.
Distant undulating prairie lawns of immense extent, clothed in nature's richest dress, continually presented themselves to the eye of the traveler through these regions. Many of these wide-extending prairies beguiled the solitary wanderer by an alternation of open forest islands and promontories, apparently arranged in perfect order, as if by the labor and skill of the landscape gardener, and ever and anon his eye involuntarily would seek for some human dwelling- for some village or stately mansion embosomed in a little copse of trees, or in the edge of the woods that fringed the streams and riv- ulets in the distance.78 Says Atwater: "The bottoms, covered with tall grass, begin on the very brink of the river, above high-water mark, and they gradually ascend, from one to three miles back, intersected every mile or two by never-failing rivulets originating in the hills; and the ground between the springs is rounded as if by art, and fitted for a mansion-house and all its attendant buildings. Princes might
rails were made, 11 feet long and from 4 to 6 inches in thickness and a cotton- wood produced 30,000 shingles." Long's Expedition, vol. i, p. 78.
71 Duden's Bericht ueber Nord Amerika, p. 110 (2d Ed.).
72 Brown's Western Gazetteer, p. 189.
73 Long's Ex. vol., 1, p. 104. "Trees in such groups as if made or created by art of man."-Duden's Bericht, etc., p. 101.
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BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE
dwell here, once within a mile or two of each other, fronting the Mis- sissippi and along it, and possess handsomer seats than any one of them can boast of in the Old World. We could hardly persuade our- selves, many times, when we first saw any one of these beautiful spots, that all the art that man possessed and wealth could employ had not been used to fit the place for some gentleman's country-seat; and every moment, as we passed along, we expected to see some princely mansion, erected on the rising ground. Vain illusion! Nature had done all to adorn and beautify the scenery before our eyes." 14
The earliest adventurers uniformly record that the woods and the margins of the prairies were full of wild grapes, wild plums, red and . black haws, mulberries and pawpaws; that the pecan-tree, hickory and walnut were of enormous size in the river bottoms; that the sweet chinkapin and hazel grew in abundance in the open woods and prairies, as well as the wild strawberry and blackberry.
Bourgmont, who marched along the Missouri to the mouth of the Kansas river, gives us in a few words a picture of the appearance, in 1724, of the country now within the limits of Saline, Lafayette, and Jackson counties, as follows: "Nous avons passè trois petites rivières beaux chemins, grandes prairies, costeaux, quantitè de noisillers chargès de noisettes le long des rousseaux et vallons; les chevreuils y estoient en tropeaux." 75
Speaking of the country along the Missouri river, Sieur Hubert, in 1717, says: "The country along the banks of this river surpasses in beauty and fertility the rest of the colony, possessing a happy climate which, without fail, produces everything in abundance." 76
Missouri is a land of beauty now, but, in a state of nature, before touched, and too often defaced, by the work of man, Missouri was a terrestrial paradise. Indeed, nature had done everything to make the landscape one of ravishing beauty. Nowhere else on the conti- nent did she lavish more prodigally her charms, excelling all that the highest art of man could create, on a scale magnificent and stupend- ous- soaring knobs in high, grassy plateaus, through which, in deep ravines, ran crystal rivers mirroring the varied sky, lined with odorous flowers and trees, forming a natural arch, and often an enchanting
74 Atwater's Tour in Western Antiquities, p. 236.
75 6 Margry, Coureurs de Bois, p. 399.
76 6 Margry, Coureurs de Bois, p. 190.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
coup-d'oil, characterized the Ozark country! The broad alluvial bottoms along the great rivers, within the limits of the state were covered then with immense and towering open forests. Here wild fruits were abundant, "the grape, the plum, the persimmon, the pawpaw, and cherry attained a size unknown in less favored regions." Early in February, on the slope of the hills, the maple yielded its sugar. In autumn the walnut, the hickory-nut, the pecan and hazel strewed the ground.
But the extensive prairies of what is now north and west Mis- souri, by their vast extent and luxuriance, mocked human labor and dwarfed it into insignificance. It is difficult for us now to imagine the natural beauty of this virgin landscape. The outline remains- the swelling hills, the valleys, the rocks and streams; but the pictur- esque clumps of trees, the narrow line of woodlands here and there along the creeks, or on the isolated hill-tops, far away, are gone; then, too, bordering these prairies, the immense thickets of wild plum and the varieties of crab-apples, and copses matted with grape-vines have disappeared. From the open oak woods, crowning here and there a hill-top, the emerald prairie then gleamed to the far-away horizon. There was nothing to disturb the serene repose of the scene or divert the mind. In the summer, a green carpet covered the whole landscape. The high wild grass undulated in the breeze like the billows of a southern sea. Here the various prairie flowers, some in purple, some with creamy spikes, some in golden yellow; lilies, some in white, and others tossing and swaying their red cups in the breeze; the gorgeous sunflowers; lobelias, some purple, some blue, and some scarlet, made fragrant, when in full blossom in the summer sun, these "gardens of the desert, these unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful." Here the wild rose bloomed and blos- somed. "When the summer was past, autumn followed with its mellow sunshine stealing through the hazy atmosphere, with trees and woods panoplied with a thousand varied colors, and with a golden glory unparalleled at any other season of the year in any other land. After a few killing frosts had completed their work, blasting the long grass of the prairies and rendering it combustible as tinder, came the prairie fires, sometimes filling the air with a filmy cloud for days, and at night fringing the horizon with pale-red tints, at length growing into forked flames, encroaching nearer and nearer until the last tuft of withered grass disappeared in the lambent blaze. If a very sharp
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PRAIRIE FIRES
wind arose, these fires would spread with marvelous rapidity over the landscape, darkening the sun with smoke and filling the air with ashes and flying sparks - a blizzard of flame!" Before such a storm, no living creature could stand, and, led by wondertul instinct, all animals then fled to the banks of streams for cover. Such a fire Featherston- haugh witnessed, not in the prairie, but in the forests of southeast Missouri, and describes thus: "Night having fallen, we could see a fiery horizon through the forest in every direction, and hear the crack- ling of the advancing conflagration. It was a most interesting spec- tacle, and, notwithstanding my indisposition, I was out until a late hour observing it. We were upon an elevated table-land, covered with dry autumnal leaves, grass, and sticks, upon which stood numerous dead and dry trees, killed by previous fires. Not a quarter of a mile from the house was a narrow edging of bright, crackling fire, sometimes not more than two inches broad, but much wider when it met with large quantities of combustible matter. On it came in a waving line, consuming everything before it, and setting fire to the dead trees that, like so many burning masts, illuminated the scorched and gloomy background behind, and over which the wind - against which the fire was advancing - drove the smoke. Every now and then one of the flaming trees would come to the ground, and the noise thus produced, the constant crackling of the devouring element, the brilliancy of the conflagration, and the great extent of the spectacle formed a picture that neither description nor painting could do justice to. The wild turn our minds had caught from the scenes we were daily passing through was singularly increased by this adventure, and amidst many exclamations of admiration we retired late in the night to the house. I measured the progress of the fire, and found that it advanced at the rate of about a foot a minute, leaving everything incinerated behind it, and casting a beautiful, warm light into the forest in front where we stood. To "fight the fire" means to beat this edging of flame out with sticks, which it is not difficult to do when it first begins; but when it has extended itself several hundred yards, it is generally beyond the power of a very few individuals to accomplish. Upon this occasion, the line of fire in front of the buildings was extinguished, but not without great exer- tions." 77
In this favored and park-like land, all animal life flourished. The 77 Excursion in the Slave States, Featherstonhaugh, vol. I, p. 353.
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
clear and limpid waters were alive with fish, the air full of birds,78 the woods and prairies were the haunt of wild and ferocious animals. The lordly bison roamed in great herds through the prairies.79 The first voyageurs and travelers who came into the limits of what is now Missouri never tire recounting the wonders of this prolific animal life. Nor could it be otherwise. Practically no one disturbed its increase. It is hardly probable that, at the period named, the total aboriginal population, scattered from the northern borders of the state to the present state-line on the south and west, exceeded in num- ber the population of the smallest county of the present state. Nor was this population familiar with firearms or engaged in the pursuit or slaughter of wild animals to gain their furs for commerce. It was only for actual subsistence that the aborigines of Missouri enticed the fish, snared the birds, or with the silent and deadly arrow laid low the deer, or elk, or buffalo. Father Membre, in 1681, writes that "The fields are full of all kinds of game, wild cattle, stags, does, deer, bears, turkeys, partridges, parrots, quails, woodcock, wild pigeons, and ring- doves. There are also beaver and martens, for a hundred leagues below Maroa, especially in the river of the Missouri, the Ouabache," but that there "are no wild beasts formidable to man," and he con- cludes by saying that "Our hunters, French and Indian, are delighted with the country." 80 And before this time, while in the upper Illinois country, Father d'Ablon, in 1672, remarked that "stags, does, and deer are almost everywhere;" that "turkeys strut about on all sides," and that "parroquets fly in flocks of ten or twelve, and quails rise on the prairies every moment.""1 La Honton, in 1688, went up the Mis- souri, where he procured "a hundred turkeys" with which that people, he says, "are wonderfully well stocked." $2 The Jesuit missionaries, in 1697, noted particularly that near the mouth of the Ohio the num- ber of wood pigeons to be seen was so great that "the sky was quite hidden by them." 83
73 Duden says, in 1824, the woods were filled with wild bees, bluebirds, redbirds, humming-birds, mocking-birds, whippoorwills, partridges, doves; and that after a hail-storm at St. Charles over 300 wild ducks were picked up in an overflowed meadow (Duden's Bericht, etc., p. 147); that "the woods were full of life, of gobbling turkeys and woodcocks." Ibid
79 Prairies filled with buffalo, deer, and other kinds of game. - An Account of Louisiana, 1819, p. 15.
80 Shea's Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 183.
81 58 Jesuit Rel., p. 99.
82 La Honton's Voyage to North America, vol. I, p. 130 (London Ed., 1703). $3 65 Jesuit Rel, p. III.
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1254227
GAME
In autumn great flocks of wild geese filled the air with their harsh trumpetings. Prodigious quantities of wild water-fowl disported themselves on the streams and pools of the interior and along the great river, where the sand-bars were filled with the whirring and croaking of tens of thousands of cranes.84 Father Gravier, one of the earliest travelers along the borders of the Mississippi, records that on his trip down the river, in 1700, he killed two bears on an island opposite what is now known as Gray's Point, in Scott county, and that between that island and the mouth of the Ohio he saw fifty bears in one day crossing the Mississippi river.85 He also records that wild oxen abounded along the river all the way from the mouth of the Illinois. Many of them were killed by his companions, "almost all of which were left to be eaten by the wolves;" "but one, " he says, "so well defended his life that he cost ten or twelve gunshots." 86 According to Father Allouez, the Indians of the Illinois country- and at that time the term "Illinois Country" included the whole upper valley of the Mississippi - "catch twenty-five sorts of fish in the waters of the country, among them the eel; hunt the roebuck, the bison, the turkey, the wildcat, a species of tiger," and other ani- mals, and that they "reckon up twenty-two kinds of fish and some forty kinds of game and birds." 87 Father Binneteau says that game is plentiful, "such as ducks, geese, bustards, swans, cranes, and tur- keys," and that "the ox, bear, and deer furnish the substantial meats of the country." 83 He also mentions other animals, such as wildcats, lynxes, and "tree-rats," and that "the female of the latter carries her young in a sort of pocket under her belly," describing the opossum. Father Membre, too, notes the opossum.89 "All the plains and prai- ries," says Father Marest in 1702, "are overspread with oxen, roebucks, hinds, stags, and other wild beasts. There is still greater abundance of small game. We find here, especially, multitudes of swans, cranes, bustards, and ducks. The wild oats which grow freely on the plains fatten them to such a degree that they will very often die, their fat suffocating them. Turkeys are likewise found here in
84 Smythe's Tour in America. London, 1784, P. 337.
85 65 Jes. Rel., p. 107.
65 Jes. Rel., p. 105.
87 60 Jes. Rel., p. 163.
88 65 Jes. Rel., p. 73.
89 Shea's Discovery of the Mississippi, p. 184
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
abundance, and they are as good as those of France." 0 "Some- times 5,000 in a flock," says Smythe in 1784.91 Father Membre also states that he has seen herds of oxen and bear feed along the bank of the "Ou-a-bache," that is to say, the Ohio; and since he immediately after this refers to "swamps filled with roots, some of which are excellent," and to trees which are "very tall and very fine," to one of which he gave the name "Cedar of Lebanon"- evidently referring to the cypress - growing to an immense size in southeast Missouri near the mouth of the Ohio, and also mentions another tree, which he considers the "copal," because from it issues gum, it is certain that these "herds of oxen and bear" were noted by Father Marest near the mouth of the Ohio and in the adjacent bottoms on the west bank of the Mississippi. On the same subject Father Marest tells us that the "flesh of young bears is a most delicious food. "> 92 Sieur de Mandeville, an ensign of the "Compagnie de Voulezard," in 1709, reports that on the Missouri, "une grande abundance de boeufs et de vaches qui passe l'imagination." 93 Sieur Hubert, in his Memoir upon the Colony of Louisiana, addressed to the Council of the Marine, in 1717, says that "the prairies are covered with wild buffalos, deer, and every other species of wild animals." 94 In 1710 Father Vivier thus describes the country: "The plains and forests contain wild cattle, which are found in herds; deer, elk, and bear; a few tigers; numbers of wolves, which are much smaller than those of Europe and much less daring; wildcats; wild turkeys, and other animals less known and smaller in size." He also says that the rivers, as well as the lakes, are "the abode of beavers; of a prodigious number of ducks; of three kinds of bustards, geese, swans, snipe, and of some other aquatic birds, whose names are unknown in Europe - to say nothing of the fish of many kinds in which they abound. " 95 And that "Nowhere is game more abundant; from mid-October to the end of March the people live almost entirely on game, especially on wild ox and deer." 96 Du Pratz hunted with the Indians on the upper stretch of the St. Francois river, perhaps as early
90 66 Jes. Rel., p. 225.
91 Smythe's Tour in America. London, 1784, p. 337.
92 66 Jes. Rel., p. 227.
93 6 Margry Coureurs de Bois, p. 184.
94 6 Margry Coureurs de Bois, p. 190.
95 69 Jes. Rel., p. 209.
96 69 Jes. Rel., p. 219.
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AN INDIAN HUNTING SCENE FROM BOSSU'S NOVEAUX VOYAGES -PUBLISHED IN AMSTERDAM, 1777
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HISTORY OF MISSOURI
as 1750. At that time game was already becoming scarce in lower Louisiana, near the river. But on the St. Francois, he says, not a day passed on which he did not see several herds of buffalo, averag- ing from one hundred to one hundred and fifty in number. In travel- ing from the head waters of the St. Francois to the Mississippi, he notes that, "Through every place we passed nothing but herds of buffaloes, elk, deer, and other animals of every kind were to be seen, especially near the rivers and brooks. Bears, on the other hand, kept in the thick woods, where they found their proper food." 97 He says, in the winter the banks of the Mississippi were lined with bear. In going down the Mississippi for eighty leagues Father Dablon noted that he did not pass a quarter of an hour without seeing game. On the banks of the St. Francois the early French and Canadians made their salt provisions for the inhabitants of New Orleans, in this work being assisted by the Indians. Here the country was covered every winter with herds of buffalo, notwithstanding they were hunted every season. The meat of wild animals was there salted down in the center of "pettyaugers," that is to say, large canoes hollowed out of cottonwood trees, and so loaded with this meat as to leave room for a man at each end. In this manner it was carried to New Orleans.98 These canoes, made of a single cottonwood-tree, were sometimes fifty feet in length, three to five feet in width, and large enough to carry thirty men with their baggage.99
In 1764, when Bossu was in upper Louisiana, the game was so abundant in the neighborhood of the St. Francois river that when he and his companions went on shore there it was impossible for them to sleep on account of the noise of the multitude of swans, cranes, geese, bustards, and ducks that were continually going up and down on those watery places. "On approaching the country of the Illinois," he writes, "you see in the day time whole clouds of turtle-doves or wood-pigeons. A circumstance that will, perhaps, be incredible is that they often eclipse the sun, these birds living merely upon acorns and the seeds of the beech-trees, so excellent in the autumn. Some- times eighty of them are killed at one shot. "100
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