USA > Missouri > Saline County > History of Saline County, Missouri > Part 15
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The general similarity, with only enough of exception to prove the gen- eral rule, demonstrates the fact that the people covering this vast region were one and the same race, having the same manners, customs and lan- guage, and one religion common to all. Their religion was the worship of the sun, as the great central Deity or representative of Deity.
The state of Missouri presents as rich an archæological field as any por- tion of the Mississippi valley, and many monuments of this vanished race are to be found in the county of Saline.
The mounds of the Mound-builders are heaps of earth or stone of vari- ous dimensions and every imaginable shape. In size they vary from four or five feet in height and eight or ten in diameter, to ninety feet in height and
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eight hundred in diameter; they are round, square elliptical, conical, and many of them shaped like birds, beasts, instruments, and some even have the human shape. In every case where they have been investigated they contain human bones, besides every variety of stone and pottery imple- ments. There is a tradition, (but it is only tradition, and shadowy at that) that many hundreds of years ago the Lenno-Lenape (who are said to have been the remote ancestors of the Delaware tribe of the Algonquin family of Indians) resided in a far distant part of the northwest, determined to emigrate to the east in a body and after a long journey and many halts (often of long periods of time) they reached the Mississippi river where they were joined by the Minquas, who had also emigrated from a distant country. They found the country east of the Mississippi inhabited by a very powerful nation called by themselves the Allequi, who were remark- ably tall and stout, and even had giants among them, and had their habi- tations entrenched by regular fortifications.
The Lenno-Lenape desired to settle in the country of this people, but were only permitted to pass through to the further east. They began to cross the Mississippi, when the Allequi became alarmed and attacked them. A great battle ensued in which many were killed on both sides. A long war followed, and at length, the Allequi, finding themselves too weak to continue it, and that the Lenno-Lenape were bent on their exter- mination, fled in a body down the great river, and settled the country afterward occupied by the Natchez, whose ancestors they were.
This is mere tradition, but the evidences are sufficient to suggest to us that mighty nations with various degrees of advancement, have from time to time occupied the Mississippi valley, empire succeeding empire, rising, falling and disappearing, corresponding to the early changes in Asia and Europe. The earthen mounds, whether constructed for fortifications, observations, temples or tombs, exhibit little art, though immense labor. The pottery so often found in these mounds, is generally made of clay, with a considerable intermixture of sand, sometimes flinty and sometimes calcareous, but generally of a whitish color. The earth-works found along the Missouri river are manifestly of a defensive character, and gen- erally crown the summits of steep hills, and consist of an embankment and exterior ditch.
On the Missouri river, near the Pinnacles in Saline county, in section 19, township 52, and range 21, and section 24, township 52, range 22, in the field of Mr. Edward Casebolt, there is one of these old forts, in which have been found at various times human bones, entire skeletons, jaw-bones, and leg-bones, much larger than those of men at the present time. This field of Mr. Casebolt's, and also that of Mr. Richard Williams, contains numerous mounds. West by southwest from this old fort in the Pinnacles are to be seen a series of conical shaped mounds, varying from three to
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seven feet in height, and having a circumference of from fifty to one hundred feet, which evidently, (as well from the remains found as from their conical shape), belong to the sepulchural class of mounds. Many specimens of pottery have been found here-jars, double-handled jugs, very similar to those used in early times in eastern countries. One human, skull was here found with an arrow point sticking in it, entering about the center of the frontal bone. An iron crown was also found here, indicat- ing that, somewhere in the far shadowy past, royalty dwelt in these fair and favored regions. Pikes, hatchets, axes, and clubs of stone and iron, have here been picked up, and arrow points in great abundance. Mortars and pestles, not for the compounding of drugs and medicines, but for the preparation of food, were found near this old fort, but made of a peculiar stone that does not belong to this region. Many have been led to believe from the vast quantity of human bones found in this vicinity that there was either a common burial place here, or that once a great battle was fought in this locality in which the slain were numbered by the thousands. Indeed these mounds are to be found, at intervals of a few yards to a mile, all along the high ground bordering the adjacent river bottom.
The mounds of the Mound-builders are to be found in almost every part of the county, on the bluffs of the streams. They are by no means con- fined to the Pinnacles, though the most important of them are probably there. These mounds all antedate the recollection of the Indians who were found here by the first white men. They told the earliest settlers that they were utterly ignorant of the origin of them. They abound all along the river bluffs, from Arrow Rock up. Near Arrow Rock a jaw- bone was found, that, upon close investigation, was determined to have belonged to a child not over ten years of age, yet it was fully as large as the present adult jaw-bone. How it was determined that the wearer of the jaw-bone was only and exactly ten years of age, is not recorded. The pottery found in these mounds is very similar to some made by the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico.
THE OLD FORT ON THE "PINNACLES."
This structure, elsewhere alluded to, is situated in section 24, township 52, range 22. It crowns the summit of one of the "Pinnacles," and com- prises an area of perhaps six acres. In a complete sense it is not at all a fort; it is merely a breastwork of an irregular elliptical form, made to conform to the topography of the land it encloses. The ground slopes from the breastwork or embankment on every side but one-that next the main land. This sloping, in nearly every part, is quite steep, and the crest of the Pinnacle is several hundreds of feet above the main land below. Immediately at the foot of the Pinnacles is the Missouri river bottom, along which, or over which the river ran at the time the fort was built. Upon · the eastern side of the works a narrow neck of level ground leads to the
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main land; and at one place on the side next the river there is an inclined plane leading down to the bottom. This plane is not covered with trees of any considerable size or age, alt hough the surrounding land is heavily timbered.
Very many descriptions of this so-called "fort" have been written, and very many theories of its origin and purpose advanced; but all of them in all reasonable probability, have been inaccurate. The examinations seem to have been cursory and very imperfect. At the time they were made the site of the fortification was covered with timber and underbrush, and could not be carefully inspected. Prof. G. C. Broadhead, a learned and accomplished scientist, in the Western Science Review, June, 1878, gave the following description of the "fort:"
In 1872 I visited an interesting locality in Saline county, about four miles southwest of Miami, where were observed ancient earthworks, walls and ditches, on a high ground in a dense wood. It approached a circular form, though of quite irregular shape, caused by ravines breaking off near the periphery, the walls becoming re-entrant at such places. The space enclosed was about forty acres, around which there extended three ridges and two valleys or depressions, the remains of former ditches. Two ridges extended entirely around the enclosed area, and apparently were formed of the earth excavated from the ditches, and are about three feet above the bottom of the ditches. They have undoubtedly been much higher, the ditches correspondingly deeper, at some former period in the remote past. No rocks were seen by or in the inclosure. Black oak trees from three to five feet in diameter were noticed as growing over the walls and ditches and the inclosed area of the entire space was covered with a dense growth of bushes, vines and trees. In the neighboring fields human bones, spear heads and fragments of pottery have been plowed up. I, myself, observed in the neighborhood many fragments of pottery, with arrow and spear heads of flint.
It will be observed that the learned professor puts the area of space enclosed at "forty acres," the number of "ridges" as he styles the embank- ments, at three, twoof which "extended entirely around the enclosed area." The professor's examination was hastily and imperfectly made. He examined but one side of the fortification, at a point where there were three ridges, two of which were well defined and longer than the third. In point of fact but one of these ridges is over fifty feet in length! A heavy rain was approaching at the time of the professor's visit, and in company with his guide, Dr. Dunlap, of Miami, he soon left the field. Seeing three ridges at the point he examined, he concluded that they extended entirely around the ground of the fort, circumscribing an area of "forty acres," ten times the real size.
Dr. Dunlap, the gentleman alluded to as Broadhead's companion, is him- self a gentleman of no mean attainments as a geologist and archæologist. The doctor had given the "fort" the best examination he could, and written several descriptive articles for the press in which he gave a description of
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the fortification somewhat similar to Broadhead's, and advanced the specu- lation that the works were those of the Mound-builders.
Latterly the site of the fort has been cleared of timber and brush and a considerable portion of it cultivated, at least one crop of corn having been raised by a negro whose house is near by. It is quite an easy matter now to view the shape and peculiarity of the fort as they probably were. The investigation by the writer discloses that the fort is as described in the beginning of this article.
Its origin is probably as follows: About the year 1720 the French ascended the Missouri and established forts and trading posts at different points on the river. This was one of them. The breastwork bears every mark, almost, of comparatively modern origin. In some places it has been washed down; in others it is quite well preserved, and here are to be seen angles in the manner of modern fortifications. Upon the side of the works where the neck joins, connecting with the main land-the only place where the works could be readily reached by an attacking force -- are two large piles of earth, the remains, no doubt, of a bastion erected to defend the approach. At the point where the inclined plane slopes down to the old river-bed, no breastwork seems to have ever been made. This was doubtless to allow passage to and from the river. Near the center of the ground is a pile of earth thirty feet long and not so wide, and at one corner of this elevation the writer and other representatives of the publishers of this work, accompanied by Dr. Dunlap, discovered an abandoned well, nearly filled, but yet quite well defined. It is circular in shape and yet about four feet in depth. A stick thrust into it was made to penetrate very easily a distance of many feet, while but a few feet away it could not be sunk but a few inches. The trees mentioned by Prof. Broadhead have since his examination been cut down. Not one of them exceeded four feet in diameter, and a careful examination and close counting of the rings of growth show that the age of none of them is more than a hundred years. Not a particle of pottery, not an arrow-head or lance-head, not a mound, or any other indication of a Mound-builder or any sort of pre-historic origin has ever been discovered. A few years since, however, a cannon-ball was found by Mr. J. A. Lewis within the limits of the fortification.
The occupants of this fort, whoever they were, and whenever they lived there, were undoubtedly among the first whites that were ever in Saline. To be sure they were not settlers, in the correct sense of the term, and yet they were inhabitants. Just when they were here can never be deter- mined; but it is reasonably certain that it was near the year 1720. They may have been here contemporaneous with Renault's men, and abandoned their fort when Ft. Orleans was built; or they may have been here before, and left the place when they heard of the approach of the Spanish expe-
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dition from Santa Fe. Whenever the place was evacuated it would seem that the block houses and other buildings inside of the breastworks were burned, for this is what the character of the soil composing the heaps before mentioned indicates. In these views generally Dr. Dunlap, for- merly a believer in the theory that the works were those of the Mound- builders, now concurs.
The "old fort on the Pinnacles," is fast disappearing from human sight. It is rapidly being converted into a cornfield. A vandal "of African descent" is leveling its walls, dismantling its escarpments, destroying its bastions, and filling up its moat and ditches, in order that the entire site may be made to serve his base uses as a "truck patch." These pages will be read by some when there will be no sign or token of the old fort- when, where once it stood will be waving corn and golden grain and all the accompaniments of agriculture and a time of peace and plenty.
In the northeast part of the county the mounds seem to be in parallel ranges from southeast to northwest, the ranges being about six miles apart, with great variations in the distance between the mounds. The ranges extend, some of them, from the bluffs into the interior. They were precipitous on the northwest side, sloping gradually to the southeast. There is one very large mound on Morrison's place where the old Glasgow and Marshall road entered the bottom, 10 to 15 feet high and 200 feet in circumference at base, and 20 feet at cone. Very large oak trees are growing on these mounds, and one 18 inches across on the one on Morri- son's place. In digging a grave to bury old Mrs. Williams, in one of these mounds, pottery was dug up, but nothing to indicate that Indians were buried there.
These Mound-builders-so many traces of whom are to be found in Saline county, as well as in all parts of the Mississippi valley-who were they? Where did they come from? And what became of them? These are questions that must ever be the subjects of conjecture and speculation, and can never be positively determined. It is impossible, in a local work like the present, to give the many different theories, and the different argu- ments by which they are supported. That the whole of this great valley was once, in the far distant past, the empire of a vast population, whose civilization was far above that of the tribes who were found here by the Europeans, there is no doubt. At what period of the past they flourished it is impossible to determine, except that it was many, many centuries before Christopher Columbus first found his way to the west. The ten- dency of great migrations is always from the north to the south; and the most reasonable theory of the origin of this Mound-building race is that they came from the northern races of Asia, crossing high up, where the distance between the continents is comparatively small. That the mound- building race or races obeyed the usual law and disappeared to the south,
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may be set down as almost certain, while the most probable theory is that the Aztecs of Mexico were the last remnant of this ancient civilization. The existence of the Mound-builders, their undoubted partial civilization, and the deep obscurity which clothes their history, presents no obstruct- tion to the Christian religion, and no stumbling block to the enlightened Christian. The Christian scientist, says Prof. Conant, pursuing his inves- tigations, regardless of all dogmatic theories concerning divine revelation, and bringing, at last, all right results of his work to the subjective light of that old, old record, which, thus far, they have only served to glorify, discovers now and then the golden key, by which the sublime and occult truths condensed in its sententious statements may be unlocked, and the long aeons understood, which are comprehended in the evening and the morn- ing of the creative days.
THE FIRST WHITES IN THE COUNTY.
In the year 1720, Philip Renault, a son of a celebrated iron founder of France, established a fort on the Illinois bank of the Mississippi river, about ten miles above the town of St. Genevieve. He had been appointed by the king director-general of the mines of the French possessions in America, and left France the previous year with two hundred artificers and miners, well provided with tools and appartus and whatever else was con- sidered necessary to develop the supposed innumerable mines of gold and silver believed to abound in Missouri and Arkansas. In his passage to America, Renault touched at the Island of San Domingo and purchased five hundred slaves for the purpose of doing the "heavy" mining work. The fort which Renault established was named Fort Chartres. From this fort he dispatched parties of miners to "prospect" for silver and gold at different times and in different directions, but chiefly as to the former the same season of his arrival, and mainly as to the latter west of the Mis- sissippi river.
One of these prospecting or exploring parties of Renault's penetrated into the interior of the present state of Missouri certainly as far west as Lafayette county, and remained for some time in the southeastern part of this county, being engaged in digging for the precious metals. They seem to have made considerable effort in this direction, for many of their shafts were of quite a depth in 1812, and can still be seen, although over- grown with trees and shrubbery, and partially filled with soil subsequently formed.
These "diggings " of Renault's men are in Black Water and Salt Fork townships, on the Black Water river, and here was where white men first stepped upon the soil of Saline county. Furthermore, it may be claimed
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that these were the first settlers, and these the first settlements in the county made by white men.
Proofs of the presence of Renault's men in Saline, while not as "strong as those of Holy Writ," yet exist. Failing to find anything valuable in the line of minerals except lead and iron ores, he established furnaces for smelting the former, and sent a report of the fact to his government. In Williams' Life of Thos. Jefferson appears a letter from the distinguished statesman, written in 1803, about the time of the Louisiana purchase, and in reference to that scheme. In this letter, speaking in regard to the immense value of the territory sought to be acquired, Mr. Jefferson says :
* * "That there is immense mineral wealth in the territory of Louisiana is a fact well established. More than eighty years ago valu- able minerals were found to exist as far west of the Mississippi river as one hundred and eighty miles northwest of the town of Saint Genevieve, as appears by reports made to the regent of France by M. de Renault."
"One hundred and eighty miles northwest of the town of St. Genevieve " would be about in Black Water and Salt Fork townships, Saline county. Renault could make no report to his king of the existence or non-existence of mineral here, unless he was in possession himself of reports on the subject, which reports, it is reasonably certain, he obtained from one of his prospecting parties, that dug the holes yet to be seen on the Black Water. How long Renault's men remained on the Black Water, is not known. From here they went on the Tebo, in Lafayette county, where it is said traces of their presence have been discovered, although it has hitherto been believed that the Spanish were the authors of the work there done, as well as that done on the Black Water, in this county.
The "old fort on the Pinnacles" and its occupants, receive attention else- where in this volume.
From time to time parties of French and Spanish explorers and traders passed through the county, and it is said that evidences of their encamp- ments in the county were plain about the year 1812.
Near the site of one of these supposed camps, not far east of Miama, a son of Mr. Ingham found a very old French coin but a few years since. And in the neighborhood of the old fort on the Pinnacles, there was found in an early day pieces of crockery resembling the queensware of to-day.
The next representatives of the Caucasian race to visit Saline county, of which there is certain knowledge, were the members of Lewis and Clark's expedition sent out by President Jefferson, in 1804. Very soon after the acquisition of the Louisiana territory, Mr. Jefferson projected an expedition to explore the newly acquired district from the mouth of the Missouri to its source and thence across to the Pacific ocean. The president's private secretary, Captain Merriwether Lewis, then but thirty-one years of age, was given command of the expedition, with Captain William Clark, of the
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regular army, as second in command. The company consisted of nine young Kentuckians, fourteen soldiers, two Canadian voyageurs or boatmen, a hunter, and Captain Clark's negro servant. In May, 1804, this expe- dition passed up the Missouri along Saline county, and two years after- ward, or in September, 1806, passed down the river and through Saline county, reaching St. Louis, and terminating the expedition on the 23d of the month.
Captain Lewis was the second governor of Missouri territory-then called Louisiana territory-and Captain Clark the fourth. Lewis com- mitted suicide in 1809, while passing through Tennessee on his way to Washington. Clark was appointed governor in 1810 and served until Missouri was admitted into the Union, in 1821. He died in St. Louis, in 1838.
In the year 1807 a company of traders with head quarters at St. Louis, sent Captain George Sibley, of St. Charles, to establish a trading post within the present boundaries of Saline county. The site chosen, after a careful survey of the country was where the town of Arrow Rock now stands. Here Captain Sibley erected quite a substantial building of logs a story and a half high, with one door and no window, which could be used for a trading house and converted into a fort or block-house at a minute's warning. Sibley had with him a clerk, an interpreter, one or two assist- ants, and his family. The trading house had no windows and no side openings save a door and numerous port holes. Sibley was agent for the Sacs, Foxes, Iowas, and Miamis. Upon the breaking out of the war of 1812 he returned to St. Charles or to St. Louis, and it is believed never after came to the county. Sibley's house stood on the bluff, some say upon the present site of High street, and others say a mile north of the town.
THE PIONEER.
Lo! here the smoke of cabins curled- The borders of the middle world; And mighty, hairy, half-wild men Sat down in silence, held at bay By savage kindred. Far away The redmen's boundless borders lay; And lodges stood in legions then, Striped pyramids of painted men. What stout, uncommon men were these! These settlers hewing to the seas. Great horny-handed men and tan; Men blown from any border land; Men desperate and red of hand;
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HISTORY OF SALINE COUNTY.
And men in love and men in debt; And men who lived but to forget; And men whose very hearts had died, Who only sought these woods to hide Their wretchedness-and hid in vain! Yet every man among them stood Alone along the sounding wood; And every man somehow a man. A race of unnamed giants these, That moved like gods among the trees, So stern, so stubborn-browed and slow, With strength of black-maned buffalo; And each man notable and tall, A kindly and unconscious Saul,- A sort of sullen Hercules. * * * *
They pushed the mailed wood aside, They tossed the forest like a toy,- That great forgotten race of men, The boldest band that yet has been Together since the siege of Troy- And followed it, and found their rest. *
Oh, bearded, stalwart western men! So tower-like, so Gothic built, An empire won without the guilt Of studied battles-this hath been Your blood's inheritance. Your heirs Know not your tombs. The great plow-shares Cleave softly through the mellow loam Where you have made eternal home, And set no sign. Your epitaphs *
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