History of Walworth County, Wisconsin, Part 46

Author: Western Historical Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 998

USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth County, Wisconsin > Part 46

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HISTORY OF WALWORTH COUNTY.

CHAPTER I.

TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCH-THE INDIANS-THE INDIAN VILLAGE-FIRST SETTLEMENT BY WHITE MEN -FORMATION OF THE COUNTY- THE ROADS OF 1836-THE FIRST ROAD MADE BY WHITE MEN- THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS- THE EARLY NEIGHBORHOODS -- WAR AT GENEVA-FIRST TOWN ORGANIZATIONS-FURTHER SUBDIVISIONS- EARLY SURVEYS.

TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

W ALWORTH COUNTY is one of the southern tier of counties in Wisconsin. It is bounded on the north by the counties of Jefferson and Waukesha: east, by Racine and Kenosha Counties: south, by the State line: and west by Roek County. Its eastern line is twenty-four miles west of the shore of Lake Michigan. Elkhorn, the county seat and geographical center of the county, is in latitude 42° 48' north, and longitude 88º 26' west. The county embraces six- teen Congressional townships of six miles square, and constitutes a square of four towns on each side. The towns in the governmental survey are numbered and designated as Towns 1, 2, 3 and 4 north, in Ranges 15. 16, 17 and 18 east. It contains an area of 576 square miles, or 368,640 acres. two-thirds of which is arable land, the surface of the lakes and some small tracts of swamp lying along the ereeks and streams comprising the remaining portion.

The surface is, throughout, gently undulating. in no place breaking into sharp hills or ris- ing to sufficient elevation to prevent its being denominated a level country. It is not, however, a plain, and has few of the characteristics of the vast stretches of prairie lands lying south and east in the States of Illinois and Michigan. It is, by the measure of geological epochs, a much older country than that of the Illinois prairies. It was high and dry. 500 feet above the present level of Lake Michigan, ages before the lake had an existence, and was planed down to its rough level by the glacial drift that preceded the formation of the great lakes, which are believed for an indefinite period to have covered Illinois, and to have found an outlet through the Valley of the Mississippi. The formation of an eastern outlet for these great inland seas, and the conse- quent subsidences of the level of the lakes, brought up to the sunlight the vast alluvial prairies at the South at a much later period than that which marks the existence of Walworth County with essentially its present topographical features.

Marks of the glacial action and consequent formation of its surface are apparent. The ledges of the rock, wherever they appear, have the glacial polish and marks, while the sand deposits, with gravel and bowlders of rock not of the underlying strata, prove conclusively the extreme antiquity of the formation as dry land.

At that remote period, the county was thickly studded with inland lakes, where now are seen the small prairies. The deeper ones, like Geneva and Delavan, still remain. Their short-lived sisters, which once covered Spring Prairie, Delavan Prairie and other fertile spots of the county, subsided before the alluvial deposit of ages had leveled the bottoms and left them the rolling land seen to-day, with a thin black soil compared with the uniform great depth of that deposit found in the prairies further south.

It is not unlikely that the mysterious people whom tradition has forgotten, only known now through the shadowy memorials of the mounds of Wisconsin, might have occupied the land, built their fortifications and flourished in the heydey of their semi-barbarous civilization, at a period

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HISTORY OF WALWORTH COUNTY.

so remote that their most adventurous explorers knew Illinois and the vast prairie land beyond only as the Southern home of the water-fowl. and a boundless water-waste of unexplored lagoon. The evidences that the pre-historic race now generally designated as the Mound-Builders once inhabited this region were not infrequent when the first white settlers came in. They con- sisted of the mounds that appear in other parts of the State, many of them in form resembling animals, reptiles and implements. They were raised from two to five feet above the level of the surrounding ground. Often the soil or debris of which they were composed was entirely differ- ent from that surrounding them, and, however extensive the mounds, the excavations from which the supply of earth to rear them was obtained is never discernible. Their great antiquity is in no way more plainly shown than in the fact that they have existed a sufficient time to allow all traces of excavation or other physical evidences attending their construction to have become en- tirely obliterated. Only the mounds themselves, lying prone upon the earth, covered often with the accumulated soil deposit of a thousand years, and bearing above the ancient oak, that was old before the first white man visited the region, tell of the race that builded them.

These animal mounds were less numerous in Walworth County than at the mouth of Milwaukee River, through the Rock River Valley and along the courses of the other large rivers of the State, but sufficiently numerous and marked to prove that the Mound-Builders formerly occupied the region as a part of their domain .. They appeared mostly in the vicinity of the large lakes in the southeastern part of the county.

Mr. James Simmons. in his excellent history of Geneva, states that, as late as 1843, several were still to be seen; one, a large mound in the form of a turtle, or lizard, nearly sixty feet long, lay with its head toward the lake, its legs spread out on either side, and its tail extending north- ward across what is now the junction of Main and Lake streets in Geneva Village. Mr. Simmons describes it as "clear in its outlines, and rising some two or three feet in the center above the surface of the ground surrounding," and as "bearing upon its back the witness of its age-the stump of a large oak tree, whose concentric rings kept the tally of many a passing year." Another, of much larger size, " stretched his brawny limbs and formidable tail completely across Main street." Many others less notable for size and form, but evidently belonging to the same class, are mentioned. On the old Beckwith farm, five miles west of Geneva Village, on the Del- avan road, was a peculiar mound, some ninety feet in length, in the form of a bow, drawn, with its arrow pointing toward Geneva Lake. Other circular mounds were found in the vicinity; also, rude specimens of pottery, evincing more skill in the mechanical arts than was possessed by any of the aborigines inhabiting this region since it was known to Europeans.

Few human " remains" are found in these ancient mounds. and such as have been found are perhaps not cotemporary with them, but may have been interred by Indians at a compara- tively modern period, as it is known that they often chose them as places of sepulture. viewing them as too sacred for desecration. The Indians knew as little of their origin as do the Ameri- cans of to-day, and held them in a mysterious awe that shielded them from destruction till the advent of modern civilization, that fell destroyer of sentiment and mystery which makes the old so sacred to the simple mind. Few. if any. of these mounds remain to-day, and soon only the record of an unknown people will remain in the printed pages to tell that the mounds themselves existed.

INDIANS.

The history of Walworth County, so far as it is of interest or value to the present or future reader, dates from the first occupancy of white men, and, prior to that time, little is known of it beyond what is in the geological record and what appears in the mound relics, of which note has been made.

It is not recorded that any white man ever visited the region prior to 1830. As far back as 1663, Joliet coasted up the western shore of Lake Michigan, and touched at points along the coast, and Allouez, as early as 1665, was at Green Bay. In 1671, the Jesuits had established a mission at what is now De Pere, Brown County, and from that point ministered to the benighted Indian tribes of Wisconsin.

In none of the records of these early explorers is any mention made of the region lying in- land between the foot of the lake and the mouth of the Milwaukee River, and it is therefore almost

311

HISTORY OF WALWORTH COUNTY.

certain that the land was unknown to the explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. and that, up to the time of general Western immigration, which commenced after the close of the Black Hawk war, in the summer of 1832, no white man had lived within the boundaries of the present county, and none had visited the region, except, perchance, some fur-trader from Mil- waukee or Chicago. and of such visits, if they occurred. no records have been preserved and no traditions exist. Mrs. Kinzie, wife of John Kinzie, one of the early pioneers of Chicago, crossed the county with her husband in the fall of 1532, on a journey to Fort Winnebago. She has left. an account of the journey in her story entitled " Waubun," in which she describes the scenery about the head of Geneva Lake. She was probably the first white woman who ever visited Wal- worth County, and her party was the first of the white race known to have viewed the land.

At the close of the Black Hawk war, in 1832, the Goverment set about extinguishing the Indian title to the lands of the Northwestern Territory, and thus opening them to the settlement of the whites. At that time, the Pottawatomies and their allies, the Chippewas and Ottawas, were the acknowledged possessors of a vast domain embracing all of the present State of Wiseon- sin lying south and west of the Milwaukee River, and extending into the interior an indefinite distance to the boundaries of the territory of the Winnebagoes, wherever that might be. The undefined western boundary was no bar to obtaining a full title to the domain, as will be seen, September 15, 1832, the Government made a treaty with the Winnebagoes, whereby they relin- quished all claim to lands lying " south and east, of the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers of Green Bay. September 26, 1833, a treaty was made with the Pottawatomies, Chippewas and Ottawas, by which those nations ceded to the Government all their lands along the western shore of Lake Michigan, and between that lake and the land ceded to the United States by the Winnebago na- tion by the treaty of September 15, 1832, The northern boundary of the land ceded was the country lately ceded by the Menomonees (north and east of the Milwaukee River). The southern boundary was defined by the land ceded in a treaty with the same tribes in 1829, whereby they had ceded all lands claimed by them in Northwestern Illinois. The territory thus acquired by the Government by the treaty of September 26. 1833, extinguished the Indian title to 5,000,000 acres of land, and included all of the southeastern part of Wisconsin. The provis- ions of the treaty were that the tribes should remain in peaceable possession of the lands for two years from the ratification of the treaty. Owing to some informalities occasioning delay, the treaty was not duly ratified and signed by both the high contracting parties till so late in 1834 as to delay the final evacuation till 1836. Prior to that time, the Government could give no elear title to the land, and white men had, in Walworth County, no rights which an In- dian was bound to respect.

The Indians who owned and occupied the territory, and sold or ceded it to the United States, are worthy of a passing notice. The leading tribe was known as the Pottawatomies, and had, ever since known to white men, shown capabilities and tendencies to civilization in advance of neighboring tribes. They were more peaceful in their disposition, showed little deceit or treachery, and, among their fellow-tribes, had managed to cement friendships that remained un broken through the vicissitudes of tribulation that followed the appearance of a strange race, which, by ways and means inscrutable to them, dispossessed them of their heritage.

In 1665, when the French Jesuits first knew them, they were settled abont Green Bay, and received the Gospel of the Great Master with a readiness that showed them endued with an ap- preciation of the doctrines of peace and mercy which He taught. Even then, the great doctrines of civilization-an alliance to preserve peace and prevent war-had brought them into a close communion of interest with other tribes, so intimate that only the tribal relations of government distinguished them from the Chippewas and Ottawas, who held with them in common a joint interest in the lands they claimed as their hunting-grounds and their homes. It was a barbaric confederacy of nations, which all the craft and cunning of enlightened diplomacy was never able to destroy, and it is an historical faet that no treaty or alliance was ever made with one of these tribes, except it was confirmed and ratified by all. So the motto "E pluribus unum," had its inception in the union of nations, for the common good, in the hearts of these barbarians, long before the days of the American Republic.

They gradually moved south and west during the period embraced from 1670 to 1830, giv- ing way to the Menomonees and the Sacs and Foxes on the north, and the Winnebagoes on the

312

HISTORY OF WALWORTH COUNTY.

west, occupying, in 1830, just prior to the Black Hawk war, the southeastern part of Wis- consin.

Several villages were located about the shores of Lakes Geneva and Delavan. There was one at the foot of Geneva Lake, on the site of the prosent village; another at Williams' Bay. some four miles further west; and still another at the head of the lake-the most important, it being the family residence of Mank Suck (Big Foot), one of the leading chiefs of the Pottawato- mies. Big Foot is remembered as the last of the chiefs who ruled his people while they re- mained in the land of their fathers. He was a sturdy hater of the whites, and refused to cede the lands until all the other chiefs had signed the treaty. He had, however, a sense of honor which made him hold his pledges sacred when given, and, having given his word, he held it inviolable. So, in the Black Hawk war, being bound under former treaties not to take up arms against the whites, he remained neutral, and surlily kept his faith, against all the instinets of his savage nature, and later, in 1836. the terms of the treaty requiring him to leave forever the hunting-grounds of his fathers and the home he loved, with the instinctive intensity of his wild blood, he remembered his vow, and disappeared, never to return.

Yet he reichel no high ideal, either in character or demeanor. Like all Indians. he took on the vices of the whites more readily than their virtues, and would get most beastly drunk when circumstances were favorable. Mrs. Kinzie saw him on her visit in 1832. and describes him as " a large, raw-boned, ugly Indian, with a countenance bloated by intemperance, and with a sinister. unpleasant expression." With this most uncomplimentary and probably truthful por- trait. he should still be remembered as the Indian type of honor and truthfulness. which goes to the extreme of keeping faith. once pledged. even with an enemy.

THE INDIAN VILLAGE.

The village of Big Foot was at the western extremity of Geneva Lake, on what is now Sec tion 14 in the town of Walworth. It consisted of a cluster of huts reaching along the shore for a quarter of a mile, and back nearly as far: and was the home of about sixty families. Big Foot's wigwam was quite pretentious in its dimensions, and, for the time, might be considered a permanent structure. It was on a knoll, a little way from the shore of the lake. It was some twenty feet in diameter, and circular in form. It was made from posts set into the ground, and was covered with mats woven from grasses and bark. It was the council house and seat of justice for the section of the tribe that gave allegiance to Big Foot. On the elevation, near the council house, was a tall tree. from which was often displayed the insignia of his rank and power; the stump was, at a very recent date, still standing, and known as Big Foot's Flag-Staff. No traces of the village remain. Rev. S. A. Dwinnell. an early pioneer and a chronicler of the earlier days gives the following entertaining sketch of the tribe as living in 1836, just prior to leaving the country, and of their final departure, which took place in September, 1836. His account is as follows:

" The Pottawatomies possessed innch of the southern part of the Territory, as well as of Northern Illinois and lands further east. In the year 1832,* John Kinzie, of Chicago. as agent of the United States, bought of them their title to all their lands west of Lake Michigan, agree- ing to make annual payments. as was usual in such cases, in coin, guns, blankets and other arti- > cles needed by them. The Government agreed also to protect them in the occupancy of the soil for four years more, or until 1836. then provide another possession for them, west of the Missis- sippi. and remove them to it.

"The lands which they sold were much better adapted to the wants of the red man, in his un- civilized state, than the vast prairie regions west of the Mississippi, although less so, by far, than the heavy timbered lands of Kentucky. Ohio and Indiana, with a mild climate and abundance of game of almost every variety.

"Although our climate was rigorous, and, in consequence of abounding prairies and openings. and the absence of hills and mountains, was often swept in winter by cold northern blasts, they

"Mr. Dwinnell was in error as to the treaty whereby the Pottawatomies relinquished their claims to the territory in question. Kinzie's treaty, if any such was made in 1832, was never ratified, or acknowledged as the basis of a Government treaty. As has been previously sbown, the land was ceded by the treaty of September 26, 1833, made at Chicago. The error occurs from confounding the preliminary treaty of peace, at the close of the Black Hawk war, in which Kinzie was a Government agent, with the subsequent treity whereby the lands were ceded by the Pottawatomies, who took no part in the war.

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HISTORY OF WALWORTH COUNTY.

obtained a comfortable living, for savages, from the animals of the forest, the fish of the lakes and streams, wild honey from the trees and sugar from the rock maple. Their game was taken with guns, their fish with hooks and traps, and their honey by climbing trees by means of rude ladders and cutting into them with their hatchets, taking out the comb, often obtaining fifty or sixty pounds in each tree. Their sugar was made by boiling down the sap in brass kettles. The sap was caught in trays made of white birch bark. Most of the Indians also cultivated patches of corn and beans, eating them not only in their green state, but drying them for winter use.

" Their largest villages in the region where I settled, soon after the Indians left, were at Mnkwanago, also at the Bay of Big Foot Lake, and at the head of that lake.

"At the last-named place lived Big Foot. a prominent chief of the tribe. His village was situated upon an elevated plateau, overlooking the upper portion of the lake. It had a couneil house made of posts set in the ground and covered with mats, near which was planted a signal pole some twenty-five feet in height. Their permanent wigwams were usually about ten feet in diameter. Some of them were square, made of posts and poles, fastened together with bark, and covered with slabs made from hollow trees, both on the sides and the roof. Upon each side of the wigwam was a platform some four feet wide, elevated two feet from the level of the earth, which served for a bedstead. while the fronts were used in place of chairs. They could, by this means, enjoy the warmth of the fire, which was made in the middle of the cabin. a hole being left in the center of the roof for the egress of the smoke. Other and more temporary wigwams were circular and oval, the frame-work being made of saplings and covered with mats woven from rushes and flags.

" When the time arrived, in 1836, for their removal, the Indian agent collected the various bands at Chicago, preparatory to their removal to their lands on the north banks of the Kansas River, opposite to where the city of Lawrence has since been built.

" Big Foot's band was all gathered into his village at the head of the lake. so as to be taken to Chicago. This was in the month of September. James Van Slyke had removed to that point a few weeks before, and his family were living in a partially finished log cabin, in full view of their encampment. Noticing one morning a great commotion in the Indian camp, and not know- ing the cause of it, he imagined that an outbreak upon the white settlers who had trespassed upon their lands was contemplated. For some reason not now known-whether from cowardice or not-he at once fled for his life, leaving his family in the cabin. Mrs. Van Slyke watched every movement of her savage neighbors through the unchinked walls of her dwelling. After a time, she was relieved of anxiety by seeing them pack their movable property upon their ponies and squaws, and, taking a trail toward the South, disappear one after another through a wooded ravine.

"After all were gone, as she supposed, Big Foot appeared, and, proceeding to the council house and placing one arm around the signal pole, stood for some time in silence, thoughtfully viewing the scenes which had been familiar to him from childhood, and which he was never to behold again.

"He had refused to sign the treaty of 1832, but was overruled by a majority of the other chiefs, who, through some influence brought to bear upon them, either just or unjust, were in- duced tocede their lands. The time had now come for his unwilling removal. He was evidently sad. His soul was burdened. He wished to be alone with the Great Spirit and the graves of his fathers and kindred. A year or two previously. he had lost a youthful son, whose body he caused to be encased in a rude coffin and fastened to the limbs of an oak some forty feet from the ground and overlooking the lake. He gave as a reason for this novel mode of sepulture that his son was unusually fond of lake scenery, and he wished him to enjoy a fine view of it from that country to which he had gone. The usual mode of disposing of the dead among the tribe was by a slight burial in the earth, protecting the graves from the inroads of wild beasts by a small covered pen made of small trees. They usually deposited with the dead, food, tobacco. trinkets and other articles of which the deceased was fond, or which they imagined they would use in the state to which he had gone. * * * 米 *

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History of Walworth County, Wisconsin, Part 46

Author: Western Historical Co Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company Number of Pages: 998

Author: Western Historical Co
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Chicago, Western historical company
Number of Pages: 998