USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 25
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"The retreating whites hurried from the battlefield down the Chariton valley, and, being mounted-save a few who lost their horses during the fight-easily escaped. Reaching the Cabins, they hurriedly gathered up the women and children, and, pushing rapidly on south- ward, traveled all night without halting until within five miles of Huntsville. From here the women and children were sent on into Howard County. The Indians did not burn the cabins and destroy the settlement, as they easily might have done, but the next day after the fight retreated northward in alarm at the probable consequences that might follow.
"Tidings of the affair, magnified and exaggerated, of course, soon spread among the settle- ments along the Missouri, and there was intense excitement. A considerable force of militia, under Gen. P. Owens, of Fayette, was raised, by order of the governor, and marched to the scene. A regiment or battalion of this force was commanded by Gen. John B. Clark, Sr. A company of seventy-six men from Chariton county, under Maj. Daniel Ashley, acted inde- pendently. A company of Randolph and Howard county men, acting as scouts, and led by Capt. John Sconce-a noted old Kentucky Indian fighter, and who subsequently commanded the Ray county company of the Missouri regiment in the Florida war of 1837-was sent in advance to reconnoiter. It reached the scene first and buried the bodies of Myers, Owenby and Winn, and then returning met the commands of Owens and Clark.
"When Gen. Owens came up to the scene of the encounter there was, of course, not an Indian to be found. Big Neck had retreated northward to the Des Moines river. Capt. Sconce's company was sent on the trail and followed it forty miles. On the trail, not far from the battlefield, Capt. Sconce found the body of an Indian, presumably the brother of Big Neck. It was in a sitting posture, tied to a tree, and very elaborately dressed, decorated and orna- mented with a profusion of beads, porcupine quills, silver and brass rings, a Masonic brooch, etc., and on the ground at its side lay a bow and quiver of arrows and a fine pipe tomahawk. When the scouts returned and reported that the Indians had left the country Gen. Owens marched the men of his command back to their homes.
"Meanwhile Gen. Atkinson, at Jefferson Barracks, had ordered Col. Henry Leavenworth to take a detachment of regular infantry from the then cantonment of Leavenworth (now Fort Leavenworth) and assist the militia. The agent of the Ioways, Gen. A. J. Hughes, was also ordered to co-operate. At that time there was a camp of Ioways in the forks of Grand river, near the present site of Chillicothe. Capt. Daniel Ashby, with the Chariton company, had been sent by Gen. Owens to this town to see if the Indians were assisting Big Neck. He found them perfectly quiet, or, as they expressed it, 'ar-ro-pee,' friendly and all right every way, whereupon he marched eastward and joined Gen. Owens on the Chariton. Gen. Hughes delivered eleven of the principal Grand river Ioways to Col. Leavenworth (who had advanced into the country with his troops) as hostages for the good conduct of the band, and then Col. Leavenworth returned to the fort."
The agent of the Iowas, General Hughes, concluded that Big Neck must be taken personally if further trouble along the Chariton and Clinton was to be averted. With four men the agent took up the trail of Big Neck's band and fol- lowed it nearly four hundred miles up through the unsettled Iowa country. On Skunk River, Hughes met a Sac chief, whose name was "The-Bear-Whose- Screams-Make-The-Rocks-Tremble." This chief directed the agent to Big Neck's camp and sent ten Indians to help take the prisoner. General Hughes reached the village very early in the morning and just before sunrise stepped into Big Neck's lodge. He told him that he must go to answer for the troubles in Missouri.
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"I'll go with you," the Indian answered. "A brave man dies but once, cowards are always dying." Big Neck and his band were conducted by Hughes and his four companions to the Mississippi near Fort Madison. The Indians were observed to be holding consultations. Hughes expected an outbreak. He ordered his men to get their guns ready. Big Neck had sent the squaws and children forward to the river bluffs. Unexpectedly there appeared coming down the river a fleet of boats filled with United States soldiers under Lieutenant Morris. The squaws ran back from the bluffs to General Hughes and begged that Big Neck and the braves be spared.
The Indian agent was certain that but for the appearance of the troops he and his men would have been murdered. Selecting Big Neck and about ten or twelve of the Indians who admitted they had been in the fighting along the Chariton, Hughes put them aboard the boats and took them to St. Louis. There it was ordered that they be put on trial for murder and that the trial be held in Ran- dolph County. Big Neck and the others were taken to Huntsville under guard to protect them from the settlers as well as to insure their presence in court. The trial resulted in a verdict of not guilty, the jurors rendering it without leaving their seats. Big Neck, instead of rejoicing over his discharge, went into mourning. He blackened his face. Referring to the treaty he had made at Washington and to the subsequent troubles that actually brought it on, he said: "I am ashamed to look on the sun. I have insulted the Great Spirit by selling the land and the bones of my fathers ; it is right that I should mourn always."
Big Neck continued in mourning according to the traditions until he was killed in a fight with a band of Sioux who had stolen some of his horses in the Upper Des Moines country. It is tradition that after he had been shot and while one of the Sioux was taking his scalp, Big Neck drew his knife with one hand, reached up with the other, pulled his assailant down to the ground, stabbed him to death, scalped him and then fell dead across the body. After the fight the Sioux warrior lay stretched on the ground with Big Neck lying across him with the scalp in one hand and the knife in the other.
The scene of "the Heatherly War" was near the border between Mercer and Grundy counties. Those counties were not established and while the territory was a part of Carroll County, two men, one named Dunbar, were killed. A party of Indians was in the vicinity at the time but was not hostile. The Heatherlys made their appearance in Clay County claiming that the Indians had murdered the two men. Two companies of militia were ordered out under Colonel Shubael Allen and sent to the locality. Upon investigation it appeared that the Indians were innocent ; that the charge against them had been made to cover up a crime by white men.
Father DeSmet a Whole Peace Commission.
To St. Louis the government looked for controlling influence of Indian troubles long after the border line had been moved far westward. Among the prized papers of St. Louis University is a letter from the Peace Commission giving credit and thanks to Father DeSmet for preventing an Indian uprising in the Northwest as late as 1868. The St. Louis missionary left a bed of sickness to go among the Sioux and pacify them. He addressed one war council of 30,000 braves. Father DeSmet repeatedly rendered most valuable service in averting Indian troubles.
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FATHER P. J. DE SMET, S. J. "Black Gown, " the Indian's friend
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He went out as commissioner at the request of the government when an outbreak was threatened. On one of these occasions General Harney was at the head of the expedition ; when the forces reached that part of the west where the outbreak was threatened, Father DeSmet left the camp and went alone among the Indians. Assembling a party of chiefs, he brought them with him to General Harney and was the chief agent in bringing about a treaty of peace. He crossed the plains eight or ten times. He made half a dozen trips to Europe in the interests of the Indians. He was devoted to the theory that the Indians might be civilized. The purpose of his trips abroad was to enlist sympathy for the Indians and to obtain for them agricultural implements and money, and to influence the young men on the other side of the water to take up the mission of civilization work among the American tribes. In 1859 Father DeSmet took a small skiff at Fort Benton and with three oarsmen descended the Missouri River, making as many as eighty miles a day.
CHAPTER X.
MISSOURI'S UNDERWORLD.
Roark Peak-The Devil's Den-Fate of the Guerrilla-The Sentence of the Home Guards- Nature's Ammonia Completes the Work-Henry T. Blow's Exploration-Tradition of Spanish Treasure-A Visit with Truman S. Powell-Descent into the Amphitheater- Great White Throne-Through Registry Room to the Gulf of Doom-Lost River Which Makes Onyx-Fat Man's Misery-Rest Room-Mystic Luke and Mystic River-Blondy's Throne-Mother Hubbard-The Dungeons-Sentinel Rock and Shower Bath Room- Thirty Miles of Passages-Tales of Marble Cave-Wonders of Hahatonka-Bishop McIntyre's Lecture-A Pretty Stretch of Boone's Lick Road-The Caves and Bottom- less Pit of Warren-Grandeur of the Canyon at Greer-Old Monegaw's Self Chosen Sepulchre-Devil's Lake-Fishing Spring-The Lost Rivers-Senator Vest's Experience on the Roubideau-Cave Decorations by the Indians-Persimmon Gap-Mark Twain's Cave-Dr. McDowell's Gruesome Experiment-Tragedy of Labbadie's Cave-Perry County's Subterranean World-Missouri's Long and Varied List of Underground Wonders.
But nature, as if unable to place all of the attractions designed for this imperial domain on the surface, has invaded the dark recesses of her mountains and given to Missouri caves of immense and wondrous magnitude and beauty. Say to an American tourist that Switzerland had discovered a cave finished in glittering onyx, and millions of American money would be spent in visiting it, and volumes would be written upon its fascinating beauty, yet in Missouri such caves, rivaling in magnificence and brilliancy the royal splendors of Solomon's Temple, designed and finished under the Supreme Architect to evidence the unlimited resources and wondrous skill of nature's God, are numerous and in the profusion of our dazzling wonders attract but little attention .- From an old Bulletin of the Missouri Board of Agriculture.
Hunters and early settlers visited Roark Peak before the Civil war. They crawled down the crater-like depression where had once risen the summit of Roark. They leaned over the edges of the long narrow gap in the rock bottom of the crater. They looked down into a hole which semed at first to have neither sides nor bottom; it was without form and void. Strange noises came to the strained ears. Imagination helped eyes to see gleams of light and shadowy forms. "The Devil's Den," these early visitors called it. A closer acquaintance with his satanic majesty was not sought by them.
At the close of the war a guerrilla leader came back to his home on White River. He had bushwhacked. He had been a spy against his more loyal neighbors. Assassinations and house burnings and horse stealings and all the various crimes of that period were laid to his log cabin door. For self-protection the people of Stone County had formed themselves into a regiment of home guards. The guerrilla's return was soon known. One night a company of the guards called at his house. When the guards rode away he was with them. Without talk or laughter the escort and the guerrilla walked their horses along the river until they came to the Old Wilderness road. They turned northward and fox trotted along the flinty trail which follows the ridge, one of the widest of the Ozark vertebræ. Four miles from the river the party turned sharply to the east. The road was left
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for what was scarcely more than a bridle path. It curved to keep on the spur of the ridge and wriggled to dodge the trees. Straight up Roark Peak the captors and prisoner rode and halted on the rim of the crater. All dismounted. With his hands firmly tied and his legs hobbled so that he could not use them for defense, the guerrilla was made ready for a doom that was the refinement of the horrible. He knew "The Devil's Den." He had been familiar for years with the associa- tions and superstitions of the place. The time was early morning. When the sun comes up over the bald knobs to the east it makes this Ozark country look like a favored region of the gods. The home guards stood in a fringe on the rim of the crater, looking down at the narrow black gap in the bottom 200 feet below. By the appointed executioners the guerrilla was half carried, half dragged along the steep side of the great bowl. In the center of the gap dividing it into two parts there is wedged a great keystone. The doomed man was seated upon this stone. In front of him and behind him the cave yawned. There could be no pity for such as he had been. The memory of four years of terror and of murdered friends rose up to drown all pleadings. A signal was given by the captain of the company. A strong hand was laid on the guerrilla's shoulder. In a second the keystone was unoccupied. The sound of something striking the flint heap far below barely reached the gap. Those guards who stood above, on the edge of the crater, heard nothing but the morning breeze among the pine needles. The little squad climbed up out of the crater and the command moved out to the Old Wilderness road. The night's work was done. Stone County people slept easier after that.
Cremation by Ammonia.
Nearly twenty years after the guerrilla went to his doom a woman came to Roark Peak on a mission. The cave had been opened. Access to the interior was for the first time in that generation possible. News of this had spread along the Old Wilderness road and had reached White River. The woman was the sister of the man. She came to tell the cave explorers the story of her brother, and to ask for the bones that she might take them away and bury them. The perpen- dicular plunge from the keystone was measured. The place on the side of the cave where life must have been dashed out was found. There was not so much as a button. But as they tramped and prodded around the spot the explorers' feet sank in a deep black substance which looked like rich garden mold, but gave out no odor. This substance was the guano of countless bats. When analyzed it showed the presence of 13 per cent of ammonia. The powerful agent had eaten up all traces of the bloody work of the Stone County Home Guards.
After the guerrilla died this was more than ever "The Devil's Den." Natives were satisfied with semi-occasional peeking. Some told weird stories of things seen and heard around the gap in the crater bottom. The more sensible shook their heads and said to all inquiring strangers that the den was "a good place to keep away from." These pioneer settlers of Stone and Taney and Ozark were East Tennesseans, originally. They came here before the war. They brought their East Tennessee customs with them. They settled upon the creeks and the knobs. They were the bravest of men and would fight at the drop of the hat. But they had their superstitions and fears. No highlander was ever more sensitive upon the subject of the uncanny than these Ozark descendants of East Tennes-
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seans. And so the Devil's Den went unexplored because these men who feared neither each other nor "varmints" were content to live and die with the under- ground mystery unsolved by them.
Early Explorations.
In 1869 Henry T. Blow, of St. Louis, and a party prospected through this region for mineral. They heard of the Den and came to see it. A saw mill not far distant tempted them with the means of outfitting for a descent. They put timbers across the gap, and lowered themselves with ropes. The better part of a day was spent in clambering around the great amphitheater, and a single one of the connecting rooms was visited. But with scarcely more than a glance at the wonders the lead-ore prospectors climbed out of the cavern and went on.
From that visit the Den remained closed for thirteen years longer. In 1882 a party of Grand Army men at Lamar, in Barton County, organized for an outing. An uneasy spirit named Beaver came drifting through the country and told the story of the Devil's Den. But he coupled with his version of the mystery a tale of hidden Spanish treasure, of secret charts and of traditions dating back beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants. Inspired by desire for adventure rather than by much credence in Beaver's narrative, the campers headed for Stone County, over a hundred miles southeast from Lamar. Thereby came about the discovery of the astonishing features of Marble Cave, as it was called for some years, but better known now as Marvel Cave. With the arrival of the Lamar party the exploration began.
The moving spirit in the Lamar party was Truman S. Powell, an officer in an Illinois regiment during the war. Powell had moved to Missouri years before, and was publishing the Barton County Record. That camping trip changed the whole plan of his life. The fascination of cave-exploring fastened itself upon him. After his first ramblings through the cave, the editor moved his paper to Galena, the county seat of Stone, and changed its name to the Oracle. He home- steaded a quarter section of land, the best and nearest he could find to the mouth of the cave. He devoted a great deal of time to cave study. Ten years after Mr. Powell began these explorations Marvel Cave was visited with him as a guide. Upon that personal observation is based the description given.
The Great Amphitheater.
Leading down the side of the crater to the gap where the guerrilla sat on the keystone is a flight of steps. A ladder completes the descent of the crater to the long, narrow gap or cleft which is, up to this time, the only known entrance to the cave. The top of a second and much longer ladder comes up through the cleft. This ladder is almost perpendicular. Standing upon the topmost rung one looks around upon nature in her most charming garb. Grass grows upon the sides of the crater. Large trees are about its rim. The mountain rose clambers over the keystone where the guerrilla sat, and is one great cluster of bloom in the first days of real summer on the Ozarks. The sun filters through the heavy foliage. The sweet mountain air, for this is 1,375 feet above the sea, is full of ozone and glori- ous to the lowest depth of the lungs. Ha! down a round. Charming nature is disappearing. Down another round. Space, dark, gloomy space, in front. No limit on which to steady the vision and the nerves in that direction. To the right,
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quick. More space, and nothing but darkness beyond it. A look to the left. And one backward over the shoulder. It is all the same-space which can't be meas- ured and which disappears in unstable gloom in all directions. The grip tightens on the rung. If that ladder should sway a brain would reel just a little bit. But the ladder doesn't so much as quiver. It is not according to rule to look down- ward in climbing. But the temptation is too great. Just one quick glance. It is regretted. The flaring lamp wick re-enforced by a quart of kerosene is about as insignificant as a match. The man who went down first looks like a pygmy. It's a long way to the bottom. Look upward. There is promise in the rift of sunshine which comes through the gap and falls athwart the ladder. That is something to measure by. Further and further behind the ray is left, and sixty feet below the feet rest on the top of the great cone of debris in the very center of the vast amphitheater. The guide looks up at the ladder illuminated by the sunbeam and shows himself a mind reader by remarking in a casual tone :
"We call that 'the Christian's Hope.'" 1
The foot of the big ladder is a place to stop and get bearings. When the top of Roark Peak fell down through the hole in the roof it landed in the center of a great amphitheater and remained there. Had some prehistoric man been stand- ing on the highest point of Roark when the great event occurred he would have thought the bottom was falling out of creation. And when the mass stopped falling the prehistoric man would have found himself still standing on the highest point of the peak, but about three hundred feet lower than the altitude from which he had started. Instead of looking down great slopes and along the ridges of the Ozarks he would have been looking up through a nar- row gap in a great roof of marble. One minute he might have stamped his foot and exclaimed : "I am monarch of all I survey," and the next his thoughts would have been "how in thunder am I going to get out of this hole?" It is sixty feet from the top of this interior cone to the marble roof. But so rapidly does the cone slope away that a few feet distant to a point directly under where the guer- rilla fell, the drop from the keystone to the side of the cone is over 100 feet.
Space, space is the first impression at the foot of the ladder. Gradually the vision conforms to the gloom. The shadows roll back slowly. Directly above is the red marble roof, with the gleaming gap which leads to heavenly outdoors. The vision sweeps along the roof to darker portions and catches the first glimpse of the marvels. Great stalactites ten and twelve feet long fairly stud the roof and point downward with the suggestiveness of the sword of Damocles. The first survey of the cone from the top gives no idea of its size. A zigzag pathway down the southern slope is traversed over the broken rock half imbedded in the guano. From the bottom of the slope a backward look, shows a hill of 225 feet to where the ladder stands in its halo. And there, at the foot of the cone, the first ade- quate idea of the immensity of the amphitheater impresses itself. If the central cone or dump of debris was out of the way the Capitol at Washington might be put down into the amphitheater. The roofs of the Senate and House wings would not touch the marble top of the cave. The dome of the Capitol would not disturb a stalactite, and the Goddess of Liberty could poke her Indian headgear through the rift in the crater and see daylight. There is nothing in Mammoth or Luray, or any other American cavern, which reaches the dimensions of the amphitheater
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of Marvel Cave. Seen the second time it seems greater than upon the first de- scent.
. The Great White Throne.
"Well, there's the Great White Throne!" exclaimed the adventurous Powell as he halted with the original exploring party at the dump on the first entry in 1882. "The Great White Throne!" it is to-day and always will be. The name which first came to the explorer's lips was singularly appropriate, and it sticks. Built out on one side of the amphitheater, but far enough from the wall to leave a wonderful passage, the throne rises sixty-five feet from the base. It is round and built up by successive layers of rock, each set in a little from the one below, so as to give a symmetrical, tapering appearance. The color is pure white-daz- zling in the flame of the torches.
They got "a native" down into the cave on one occasion. He was a man who wasn't afraid of his weight in wild cats, but he had the awe of the Devil's Den, entertained by all of the old inhabitants. As he stood in front of the throne the poor man was seized with a trembling fit. In broken voice he cried that if the Lord would let him out that time he would never do so again. They put a rope around him to steady him, and hustled him up the ladder as fast as they knew how. The way to the top of the throne is around to the rear and up the back by a scramble. The top is spacious enough to hold half a dozen persons. It affords a view of the whole amphitheater save where the shadows unsubdued by the largest torches still linger. Back of the throne rises a bewildering collection of the most fantastic imagery. There are stalactites and stalagmites. The forma- tions from the top and the bottom meet and crowd each other. Elephant heads as true as Jumbo's look out from such a menagerie of freaks in water-formed rocks as the wildest dreamer never saw in fancy. There are moldings and carvings, devices of animals and of plants which nature never produced in living forms. Men who have seen this collection of bric-a-brac year after year still stop to study it bit by bit and to find new wonders in it.
The Great White Throne has an interior. Leaving with reluctance the bric-a- brac which rises above and to the rear of the throne, the visitor slides and bumps down to the path, and finds his way around to the foot of the throne and up further side to an entrance. Here the water has worked a peculiar wonder of its own. The roof of this interior of the throne is hung as closely as they can be placed with what looks for all the world like innumerable flicks of bacon in cold storage. In the sides of the pieces can be traced the streaks of fat and lean.
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