Part 5 (1/2)

Early Settlers in Vicinity--Early French Settlements-- Buffalo Rock--Chronological glance at Illinois--Black Hawk War--Indian Creek Ma.s.sacre--Cork War--Murder of Story--John Myers--Ninawa t.i.tles--Col. Kinney--A. H.

Miller--Starved Rock--Deer Park--Sulphur Springs.

The writer indulges in the hope that he will be pardoned for the following digression, which, though forming no part of the ”History of Peru,” is so connected with it as to induce the belief that it will be not altogether uninteresting to its citizens, or to the general reader into whose hands this little book may fall. The present residents, as they turn their eyes over the beautiful State they inhabit, and behold it dotted with towns, cities, and cultivated farms, where the presence of its original inhabitants is as rare as in Europe, where churches, schools and libraries are strewn broadcast over the land, where the arts, embellishments and accessories of high civilization are everywhere present and pervading, and where rail road and telegraph lines intersect in every direction, may find it pleasant, for a few moments, to drop the present and turn their thoughts to the remote past, and briefly follow up the chain of events, in chronological order, to the period which immediately preceded the settlement of the town. A brief notice of events which occurred in the neighborhood, of the surrounding localities, and of the individuals who inhabited them, whose characters were marked with strong and original peculiarities, may also not be uninteresting.

Looking backwards three years before the commencement of this History--twenty-five years ago--we behold the site of Peru occupied as an Indian village. The very spot where is now the residence of the writer is said to have been an Indian burying ground. Northward, the nearest residence of the white man was at Dixon's Ferry, and westward, at Princeton, excepting, perhaps, the Hoskins family near the Bureau.

South of the river were some settlements. Along the timber towards Hennepin lived George Ish and Henry Delong; at Cedar Point, Nathaniel Richie; on the bluff, near the old Fort, John Myers; at Bailey's Point, Lewis Bailey, William Seeley, William Groom, Joel Alvord, Asa Holdridge, William Haws, and perhaps a few others; at or near Hennepin, the Willises, Stewarts, Thompsons, Durleys, Donlevys, Shepperds, Zenors and Dents; at Utica, Simon Crosiar; at Ottawa, the Walkers, Browns, Covills, &c.; at Dayton, John Green and William L. Dunnavan; at Indian Creek, the Halls, Davises and Petegrus; and further eastward, the Hollenbecks and Holdermans. At Bloomington, seventy miles distant, was the nearest mill, and thither all the people went to get their corn and wheat ground, until Green built one at Dayton, in 1833 or 1834. As late as 1837, as related by Mrs. Lockwood who then lived with her father, Isaac Manville, at Manville Hollow, in Cedar Creek bottom, two miles south of Peru, when a new mill was erected and it was announced that bolted flour could be obtained on a certain day, the people flocked around it in crowds; and so eager were they to enjoy that luxury, that they employed Mr.

Manville's family to bake cakes for them, keeping them thus engaged nearly the whole night, and standing around the kitchen fire--it is not to be supposed that the other apartments were very s.p.a.cious or numerous--with watering mouths and excited palates, ready to appropriate the delicious pasty, as it came smoking from the pans. Mrs. Lockwood says she was nearly exhausted, and thought the people never would get enough. The frame of this mill was afterwards removed to Peru where it was set up, and is now occupied by Capt. Lewis Goodell as a livery stable. We will now turn our attention nearly two centuries backwards.

The word, Illinois, is a French corruption of Leno. The Indians told the early French settlers that they were Leno-Lenapes--we are men--meaning, we are brave or masculine men, in contradistinction to cowardly or effeminate men. To an imperfect p.r.o.nunciation of the first word, the French added the termination peculiar to their own language--hence Lenois, and ultimately, by a further corruption, Illinois.

It has been often remarked that the topography and climate of Illinois bear a strong a.n.a.logy to those of some portions of France. In its primeval condition, there was, in its landscape and atmosphere, the spirit of gay and joyous life, and of soft and luxurious repose which distinguish the Gallic Empire. The broad plains were free from the enervating influence of the Tropics, on the one hand, or the stern and rugged landscape features which nurse the restless Norseman, on the other. These may have been among the reasons which tempted the Frenchman, after their existence had been made known by the explorations of his countrymen, to take up his abode along the streams and groves which diversify them. At any rate, French settlements were made immediately in the footsteps of Marquette, La Salle, La Hontag and other explorers, who carried the Holy Cross of the Church and the Fleurs de Lis of France into these wilds, as early as the reign of the Grande Monarque, Louis XIV. in the latter part of the seventeenth century.--Settlements were made at Peoria, Kaskaskia and Cohokia, to which were transferred the arts, customs, manners, faith and costumes of France, at the period, and where they flourished and were conserved, with very little innovation, until the approach of the American Goth--the rude and semi barbaric pioneer. Little jealousy and few feuds appear to have existed between these intruders and the tawny children of the forest and prairie, by whom they were surrounded, and upon whose hunting grounds they were trespa.s.sing. The imposing ceremonies of the Catholic faith, and the simple, frank and conciliatory manners of the strangers charmed the senses and soothed the pa.s.sions of these children of nature. The French rule in America was, in the main, marked by the absence of those terrible and prolonged conflicts which almost always accompanied Anglo Saxon settlement, in which the amenities of civilized, or even barbaric warfare, were entirely ignored, and each party strove to out do the other in acts of revolting atrocity. The stern, cold hauteur, the rude, coa.r.s.e insolence, and the grasping, insatiable cupidity of the latter inevitably aroused every demon in the Indian breast. The English colonists knew no arts of Indian conciliation. Their tactics were limited to fire water in advance, and the sword in reserve to avenge the acts of madness excited thereby. The race has not degenerated at all, in these respects, since the marauding Saxon scourged the Baltic sh.o.r.es of Britain. In support of this, witness the efforts of England to force an interdicted and demoralizing commerce upon the pa.s.sive Chinese; witness her success in saddling the sp.a.w.n of her aristocracy upon the necks of the subjugated Hindoo and Sepoy, compelling the wors.h.i.+ppers of both Vishnu, and Mahomet to bow before crosier and mitre; witness the long and cruel oppression of her Celtic neighbors; witness how we, shoots from the same scion, have carried the bible in our hand and the whisky bottle in the other, while in the rear came the rifle of the backwoodsman to enforce all arguments with the untutored savages; witness how volunteers have rallied around the stars and stripes, and pushed the original possessors of the soil backwards, ever backwards, until a new wave comes rolling from the Pacific coast upon his rear; witness the cruel and inglorious wars--if by that name they may be dignified--in Florida and Oregon, excited by mercenary and unscrupulous jobbers for the sake of a chance of plunder from the National treasury; witness the bullying of and final conflict with the mongrel races of poor, decrepit, imbecile Mexico, whereby the auriferous valleys of California and the sterile wastes of New Mexico were wrested from her nerveless grasp; witness the filibustering forays in Central America; and witness the undisguised l.u.s.ting after the Gem of the Antilles, and the unblus.h.i.+ng announcement made at Ostend, by dignified statesmen, claiming, in the nineteenth century, to be Christians, and representing, not cannibal savages or outlawed pirates, but a people who profess to acknowledge the divine injunction, ”do unto others as you would that they should do unto you,” and to believe that the command, ”thou shalt not steal,” is as imperative now as it was in the days of the great Jewish law giver.

But to return to the Acadian settlements of the French in Illinois. The manners and customs of the seventeenth century, as before mentioned, were cherished and conserved by these communities, isolated as they were in the heart of a wilderness continent, until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Pa.s.sing from French to English rule by the treaty of 1763, they finally came under the jurisdiction of the American Confederation by the treaty of 1783. After the treaty of Ghent in 1814 the restless American pioneer began to make encroachments. The contrast between these two representatives of their respective races, thus meeting face to face in the wilderness, was even more marked and decided than between the same races, separated by the English Channel. The Frenchman represented a by-gone age, softened and subdued by the influences of more than a century's sojourn, in aggregated communities, among the quiet, sylvan glades of le belle terre. The American, originally imbued with the heartless and licentious voluptuousness of the Cavaliers of the times of Charles II. or the morose, ascetic manners of the Commonwealth, was in either case, transformed and remoulded, but with many of his original characteristics yet clinging to him, by more than a century's residence upon a wilderness frontier, where ”no pent up Utica confined his powers,” where the most unbounded freedom of thought and action were enjoyed, where the wants of nature and the requirements of taste were gratified in the rudest, simplest and most primeval manner, and where, surrounded by the stern and gloomy grandeur of forest life, continual conflict with savages and wild beasts had produced characteristics which, transmitted from one generation to another, had culminated in a character original, unique and interesting. The salient points which distinguished him were unhesitating self reliance; reckless and chivalrous daring; imperious and resistless will; cool and imperturbable self possession; spasmodic and startling energy, contrasted with intermittent, if not habitual indolence; strong, masculine sense, undiluted with any poetry, sentiment or superst.i.tion; scorning wilds and strategy, but always prepared to circ.u.mvent and baffle them; hospitable to friend or stranger, and ever ready to share his wolf or bear skin, his hog and hominy, his tobacco and whisky, with all comers; to his enemies bold and defiant, but generous and forgiving; to his friends faithful and true, deeming desertion of their fortunes, in trouble or danger, the most aggravated of delinquencies; possessed of physical powers of endurance which mocked privation and fatigue; eye, nerve and brain steady and true in all emergencies; migratory in his habits as a Bedouin Arab; ready, at all times, to drink or fight, run or wrestle; unlettered and untutored as the savage who had been his companion or his foe; and uncouth and repulsive in action, manners and habits as the bear with which he had coped in a hand to paw and knife to fangs conflict.

Thus were the offshoots of the two greatest and most cultivated and refined of modern nations, vis-a-vis, in the heart of the American continent. Soon the song of the voyageur,

”Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian vineyards,”

as he floated with the stream, or propelled his batteaux against the current, with pole, and line, and oar, and sail, was hushed forever.

Soon the panting of the steamer awoke the long silent echos of the bluffs and startled the aquatic fowl from lagoon and bayou. Soon the swelling tide of a more advanced civilization rolled westward over the prairies, and the ”common” of the rustic village, upon whose verdant sward and beneath whose branching elms, enamoured swains and blus.h.i.+ng maidens,

”Wearing their Norman caps, and their kirtles of blue, and the ear rings Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir loom, Handed down from mother to child, through long generations,”

had been wont to ”trip the light fantastic toe” to rude and simple music, was illumined with the camp fires and whitened with the wagon covers of the Saxon emigrant. Soon the alloted arpents which, in the exercise of ”squatter sovereignty,” had been appropriated by each family as a home lot, were surveyed, divided, staked and sold, and an embryo city was rising thereon. Soon the quaint and moss covered church, where Vesper, Matin and Ma.s.s had erst been said, chanted and sung, gave place to the ”meeting house” of another creed and faith.

The early French explorers established a post at Buffalo Rock which, it is believed, was the first attempt at settlement by Europeans, in the valley of the Mississippi. This presumption is supported by the following facts. De Soto, after his two years wandering among the everglades of Florida and the swamps and mountains of what is now Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, arrived on the bank of the ”Great river” in 1541, ”but founded no settlement, left no traces, and produced no effects, unless to excite the hostility of the red against the white man.” One hundred and thirty-two years later--1673--Marquette pa.s.sed up the Fox of Wisconsin, across the portage, and down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, and returned by way of the Illinois. But he, too, according to Joliet, who was his companion, ”founded no settlement, and left no traces.” These two expeditions contained the only Europeans that ever set foot in the Great Valley until La Salle, five years later, pa.s.sed down the Illinois. His route was up the St.

Joseph in Michigan, across the portage by the Kankakee, and down that stream to the Illinois, upon the banks of which he made his first halt and built Rock Fort, where he established a Mission and settlement, but which was afterwards abandoned, the inhabitants taking themselves to Fort Crevecour. That Buffalo Rock was the site of Rock Fort is probable from the name, as well as from its superior advantages for such an establishment over any other place in the valley, from the confluence of the Kankakee to Peoria. This supposition is sustained by Perkins, Sparks and Bancroft. A year or two ago, a bra.s.s kettle was found in this locality, imbedded in a strata of coal which runs through this singular eminence. It was reported to have been overlaid by a regular seriated, unbroken coal formation; but as this statement is opposed to received geological theories, it is reasonable to suppose that it was deposited by design or accident, in an excavation made by these settlers.

On the 4th of July, 1778, two years after the declaration of Independence, Col. Clark, between whom and Boone the honor of founding Kentucky is divided, with a small band of frontier soldiers, surprised Kaskaskia, then garrisoned by the British, and shortly afterwards made himself master of Cohokia, without bloodshed. He first brought to the inhabitants intelligence of the alliance between the Americans and their former liege, the King of the French, which was received with rapturous enthusiasm, so galling and unwelcome had been the British yoke. Les long Conteaux, as the Kentuckians were called, and les Bostonias, as the Yankees were called were thenceforth welcome.

The attachment which the Indians always manifested towards their great Father of France, in opposition to the British rule, was quickly transferred to the Americans. In October, the House of Burgesses of Virginia erected the country north of the Ohio into the county of Illinois, over which they placed John Todd, of Kentucky, Governor. Two companies, raised in the French settlements, accompanied Clark in his famous expedition against Vincennes. In 1783, the treaty of peace was concluded, by which the western boundary of the enfranchised Colonies was declared to be the Mississippi. In 1784, the North West Territory was ceded by Virginia to the Confederation Congress. In 1787, it was organized by Congress, but no government was established in Illinois until 1790. This consisted of a Governor, three Judges and a Council, who combined executive, judicial and legislative authority. In this year, the county of St. Clair was organized.--From 1783, when the country pa.s.sed from under British rule, to 1790--a period of seven years--no government of any kind existed in Illinois. In 1809, Illinois, then including what is now Wisconsin, was organized as a first cla.s.s Territorial Government, the people electing a House of Representatives, and the President and Senate appointing the Governor and Council. Ninian Edwards was the first Governor and Nathaniel Pope, both of Kentucky, the first Secretary. In 1812, war was declared between the United States and England. Soon followed the surrender of Detroit, by Hull, and the Chicago ma.s.sacre. At this time no settlement existed in Illinois, north of Alton, except the small French settlement of Peoria. An expedition, in which the present Buchanan candidate for Superintendent of public instruction, John Reynolds, the ”Old Ranger,” partic.i.p.ated, attacked and destroyed an Indian village on the bluff, at the head of Peoria Lake. On the 24th of Dec. 1814, the treaty of Ghent was signed. In July, 1815, a treaty was made at Portage des Sioux, a short distance above the mouth of the Missouri, between the American Commissioners, consisting of Gov.

Clark of Missouri, Gov. Edwards of Illinois, and Auguste Chouteau of St.

Louis, and the various Indian tribes of the North West, except the Sacks and Foxes, under Keokuk and Black Hawk, who refused to come to the treaty ground. Two years afterwards, at St. Louis, a treaty was made with these tribes, an alleged violation of which led to the Black Hawk war in 1831 and '32. From this time to 1820, emigration poured into Illinois. It was almost entirely from the Southern States, and stopped south of the Sangamon. The population of Illinois was in 1790, about 2000; in 1800, about 3000; in 1810, 12,284; in 1820, 45,000; in 1830, 157,447; in 1840, 478,929; in 1850, 853,317; and in 1855, 1,300,000.

The first Legislature convened at Kaskaskia in 1812. Not a lawyer or attorney is found on the roll of names. Pierre Menard, of the French settlements at Peoria, presided in the Council.--The Legislature of 1817-'18 incorporated the ”Illinois Bank of Shawneetown,” the ”Bank of Cairo” and the ”Bank of Edwardsville.”--They all became depositories of United States money. The latter failed soon afterwards, by which the Government lost $54,000. The two former failed, but were galvanized into life during the Internal Improvement mania of 1835-'36, and by their subsequent failure contributed to the distress of the people in 1841 and 1842. In 1818, Illinois became a State. Her const.i.tution was not submitted to a vote of the people. Shadrick Bond, of Kaskaskia, was the first Governor and Pierre Menard first Lieutenant Governor. Gov. Bond, at the first session of the State Legislature, recommended the construction of the ca.n.a.l. In 1820-'21 the ”State Bank” was incorporated.--The faith of the State was pledged for its issues. It failed and the State made up a deficiency of one hundred thousand dollars which she borrowed of or through a gentleman named Wiggins. This was the famous Wiggins loan and the foundation of the State debt.

The suggestion of the ca.n.a.l was made as early as 1814, in Niles Register. The extract is as follows:

”By the Illinois, it is probable that Buffalo, in New York, may be united with New Orleans by inland navigation, through lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan, and the Illinois, and down that river to the Mississippi.

What a route! How stupendous the idea! How dwindles the importance of the artificial ca.n.a.ls of Europe!” Many Acts were pa.s.sed for forwarding this work--one in 1824, one in 1825, one in 1827, one in 1829, but the law, under which the work was actually commenced, was not pa.s.sed until 1835.

In 1824, the Sangamon river was the northern boundary of settlements.

North of the Illinois, the country was occupied by the Sacks and Foxes.

As before mentioned, these tribes were not represented at the treaty of Portage des Sioux, but afterwards entered into a treaty at St.

Louis.--Another treaty was made with them at Rock Island in 1822, another at Was.h.i.+ngton in 1824, another at Prairie du Chien in 1825, and another in 1830, by all of which they agreed to move across the Mississippi. Black Hawk, a brave but not a chief, refused to be bound by these treaties, and in 1831, commenced a series of depredations and murders on the scattering settlements on Rock River, but on the appearance of the troops retreated across the Mississippi. In 1832, he recrossed the river with most of the warriors of the tribes, and defeated Maj. Stillman with 175 men at a place about 20 miles above Dixon's Ferry.--Soon 3000 militia were rendezvoused at Fort Science, which stood near where the river sweeps northward from the foot of the bluffs above Peru. These were joined by a detachment from Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island, when the whole proceeded under the command of Gen. Atkinson, on the trail of the Savages. Gen. Scott, with six hundred mounted men and nine companies of artillery, was ordered from the seaboard, but before his arrival the western troops had put a termination to the war. These moved northward, and by a series of actions--one by a detachment under the command of Col. John Dement between Dixon and Galena, one by Gen. Henry near the Blue Mounds in Wisconsin, and one near the mouth of the Wisconsin--dispersed the savages and put an end to Blackhawk's power. Keokuk, the regular chief of the Sacks, had endeavored to dissuade them from the war, but the councils of Black Hawk, his rival, prevailed. The few settlers in La Salle county at this time--supposed to be about one hundred in number--suffered much from the atrocity of the Indians. After the rout of Stillman, the latter separated into small squads for the purpose of murder, pillage and the destruction of property. A party made an incursion upon Indian Creek, a few miles north of Ottawa, where they killed fifteen of the families of Hall, Davis and Petegru, who were all living in one house. The attack was made in the day time by about sixty Indians, who watched the men leave the house to go to their work upon a mill dam close by, when they rushed from their coverts, one portion firing upon the men, while the other entered the house and slaughtered all the women and children, with the exception of two daughters of Mr.

Hall. The men, five in number, had time to return the fire of the enemy several times, with probable effect, before they fell. Two of them threw themselves into the creek, but, on reaching the further bank, they were shot. William Davis and John W. Hall, sons of the elder Davis and Hall who were killed, swam down the stream, and baffled the search of their pursuers. Mr. Hall is now living in the vicinity of Peru. John Green, at Dayton, William L. Dunnavan, the Hollenbecks, Holdermans, and all the other settlers in the region of Fox River, were more or less sufferers, and all had to seek refuge in the fort at Ottawa. One man was killed on the Bureau, six or eight miles from Princeton. Some of the present citizens of La Salle county, remember with grat.i.tude the kindly services of Shabanna, a friendly Indian, at present living at Shabanna's Grove, to whose friendly warnings and active interference they owe their own lives and those of their families.

The two Miss Halls--Rachael about seventeen and Silvia about fourteen years of age--were carried captive to the Blue Mounds thence to the Desmoine, where they were purchased by the Winebagoes for three thousand dollars in trinkets, of whom the Government purchased them for five thousand dollars. They were taken down the Desmoine to Keokuk where their uncle, Reason B. Hall, had repaired to receive them. They were in captivity only fifteen days and were, upon the whole, treated with very little rudeness. Their faces were painted upon one side black and upon the other side red and their hair, upon one side, was clipped close to their heads, while upon the other it was suffered to remain long. One day they were ordered to lay themselves down, with their faces to the ground, while above them the warriors brandished their weapons and debated about killing them, their language being partially understood by the captives. It is probable that the circ.u.mstances were very favorable to the acquisition of the language. One day, on their march, an Indian's pony stumbled on the brow of a steep hill, when horse and rider went tumbling, one over the other, to the bottom. The younger Miss Hall has since declared that, notwithstanding all the horrors of her situation, she could not help indulging in a ringing shout of laughter. This, so far from prejudicing her with her captors, gained her their favor.