Journey to Illinois.—Story of the Gilham family, captured by Indians.—Hard fare.—Mr. Gilham attempts to recover them.—Indian War.—Peace made.—The Family Redeemed.—Removes to Illinois with Mr. Clark.—Navigation of Western Rivers.—Story of Fort Massac.—Terrible sickness.—Settlement of New Design.—An ungodly race.—First Preacher in Illinois.—A Stranger in meeting.—First Baptisms.—Other Preachers.—First Church Formed.—Manners and customs of the French.—Indian War.—Stations or Forts Described.—Pioneer Books projected.
And now we find the pioneer preacher trudging along the obscure pathway that guided him down the country in a western direction, towards the Green river district. He made appointments and preached in all the principal settlements as he journeyed, and was treated kindly and hospitably by all classes of people. It was in the Green river country he became acquainted with James Gilham, who was then preparing to remove his family and settle in the Illinois country, and wanted three or four able bodied men to accompany him, and work the boat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi. Mr. Clark had started from Lincoln County with the intention of passing through the wilderness on foot, but he had now a good opportunity of proceeding in a keel boat, or French pirogue, by water. They fitted out at the Red-banks, on the Ohio. While pursuing their journey of several hundred miles, Mr. Clark, in accordance with a long cherished wish, had a fine opportunity to learn much of Indian character and habits from this family. Mrs. Gilham and three children had been redeemed from a long and distressing captivity but two years before, and the story of her sufferings, privations, and wonderful preservation, as told to Mr. Clark, while sitting around their camp fire at night, deserves a place in our narrative.
Mr. James Gilham was a native of South Carolina, where he married his wife Ann, and commenced the battle of life as a frontier farmer. He removed his young family to Kentucky, and pitched his station in the western frontier settlements of that district. There he purchased a claim to a tract of land, and cleared a farm, cheered with the hopeful anticipations of a peaceful and happy life; but, like many others, he and his wife were doomed to disappointment. They had three sons and one daughter living, between the ages of four and twelve.
It was in the month of June, 1790, that he was ploughing in his corn field, some distance from his house, from which he was hidden by a skirt of timber, while his eldest son Isaac was clearing the hills from weeds with the hoe. At the same time several “braves” of the Kickapoo tribe of Indians, from the Illinois country, were lurking in the woods near the house, where Mrs. Gilliam, the two little boys, Samuel and Clement, and the daughter, were sheltered, wholly unsuspicious of such visitors. The Indians, finding the door open, rushed in; some seized the woman and gagged her, to prevent her giving the alarm; others seized the children, who could make no resistance. Mrs. Gilham was so alarmed that she lost her senses, and could not recollect any thing distinctly, until aroused by the voice of Samuel, “Mamma, we’re all prisoners.” This excited her feelings, and she looked around to find out whether the other children were all alive. Indians never walk abreast, as white people do. One leads off on the trail, and the others follow in single file, and are sometimes half a mile apart. One stout, bold warrior, went forward as a guide, and another kept many yards behind as a spy, watching cautiously to see if they were followed. They kept in the thick forest, out of the way of all the settlements, lest they should be discovered.
Mrs. Gilham and the children were in great distress. They were hurried forward by their savage masters, whose fierce looks and threatening gestures alarmed them exceedingly. The Indians had ripped open their beds, turned out the feathers, and converted the ticking into sacks, which they had filled with such articles of clothing as they could conveniently carry from the cabin, but were in too much haste to be off with their captives, to lay in provisions. They were used to periods of starvation, and could go three or four days without food, but the mother and her little ones suffered to an extent beyond the conception of our readers. But human nature can endure much in extreme cases. The feet of the children soon became sore and torn with briers; and the poor woman tore her clothes to obtain rags to wrap around their feet. The savages, as they thought, treated them kindly,—just as they would have done to their own children,—and Mrs. Gilham and the children had been familiar with the privations of frontier life, but they always had enough of plain, coarse food to eat; now they were starving. The Indians had with them a morsel of jerked venison, which they gave the children, but for themselves and the suffering mother there was not a particle of food to eat. One day they encamped in an obscure place, and sent out two of their best hunters, who crept stealthily through the thick brush and cane, and returned towards night with one poor raccoon. Mrs. Gilham afterwards told her friends that the sight of that half-starved ’coon was more gratification to her at that time than any amount of wealth could have afforded. She was in great distress lest her children should perish with hunger, or the Indians kill them. They dared not hunt near the settlements, lest they should be discovered.
The coon was dressed by singeing off the hair over a blaze of fire, and after throwing away the contents of the intestines, the animal was chopped in pieces and boiled in a kettle with the head, bones, skin and entrails, and made into a kind of soup. When done, and partially cooled, the children, mother, and Indians sat around the kettle, and with horn spoons, and sharpened sticks for forks, obtained a poor and scanty relief from starvation.
They approached the Ohio river with caution, lest white people might be passing in boats. They camped in the woods near the present site of Hawesville, and made three rafts of dry logs, with slender poles lashed across with thongs of elm bark, and placed them near the river, that they might push them in and cross over before they became soaked in water and heavy. The wily Indians were too cunning to cross by daylight lest they should be discovered, and Mrs. Gilham was exceedingly terrified at the danger of crossing by night. However they all got over safely.
The warriors considered it a great achievement to capture a white woman and three children in Kentucky, and elude all pursuit, and reach their own villages on Salt Creek, in the Illinois country, without being discovered. And they exercised all their cunning and sagacity to accomplish this daring feat.
When they reached the wilderness south-west of the Ohio river, they were in the Indian country, and proceeded slowly. They hunted with such success in the country between the Ohio and White river that they had plenty of provisions. They kept to the right of the white settlements near Vincennes, and along the valley of White river, and crossed the Wabash below Terre Haute, and proceeded through the present counties of Clark, Coles and Macon to their towns in Logan county.39
There they held a season of feasting and frolicing with their friends for their successful enterprize. And here we will leave Mrs. Gilham and her children, distributed as they were among different Indian families, and suffering all the hardships of Indian captives, until the war was over in 1795.
We now return to the father and son in Kentucky. They continued their labor in the cornfield until dinner time, when the horse was ungeared, and they returned to the house. There every thing was in confusion. The feathers from the beds were scattered over the yard, the mother and children were gone! The “signs” were too plain to leave any doubt on the mind of the husband and father of their fate! They were Indian captives, unless some were killed. The first natural impression was that in attempting to flee they were butchered by these monsters of the woods. Isaac began to cry and call loudly for his mother, until he was peremptorily told by his father to hold his tongue and make no noise, as some of the Indians might lie concealed, watching for him and his son. He knew the character and habits of these cunning sons of the forest, and stealthily examined in every direction for further signs. He soon fell on their trail, as they left the clearing and entered the woods, and saw in one or two places the tracks of his wife and little ones. He now felt encouraged, for he knew that Indians more generally kill persons on their first attack, and that when they take possession of women and children they take them to their towns that they may adopt them in the place of those they have lost, and train them up in Indian ways, and thus increase the number and strength of the tribe. White children who are trained by Indians make the smartest and often the most ferocious savages.
The country where Mr. Gilham resided was very thinly settled, and it was not until the next day he could raise a party strong enough to pursue them with any prospect of success. He and his neighbors followed the trail for some distance, but Indians when they expect pursuit are very cunning and skillful in concealing their tracks, and turning their pursuers in the wrong direction. When a large number are together, they divide into small parties, and make as many separate trails as they can. They will step with singular caution, so as to leave no marks, and they will wander in opposite directions and make their trails cross each other. When they come to a stream of water they will wade a long distance in the water, and frequently in a contrary direction to that of their journey, and unless their pursuers understand all their tricks, they will not fail in deceiving them. Mr. Gilham and his friends understood their strategy, but could not find their trail after they once lost it. It is probable they struck the Ohio river some distance from the crossing place of the Indians.
No one who has never experienced the same affliction, can fully realize the distress of poor Mr. Gilham, when, after a long search, he was obliged to yield to the advice of his neighbors, turn back, and leave his wife and children in savage hands. But hope did not desert him. He knew they must be alive, and he hoped the time was not far distant when he might hear of them. He sold his farm in Kentucky, put Isaac in the family and charge of a friend, fully determined to reclaim his lost family, or perish in the effort. He visited post Vincent (now Vincennes) and Kaskaskia, and enlisted the French traders, who held personal intercourse with the Indian tribes of the north-west, to make inquiries and redeem them if they could be found. He visited General St. Clair at Fort Washington, now Cincinnati, who was governor of the north-western territory, and who had just returned from the Illinois country. He learned that the Indians, stimulated by British agents and traders in the north, were meditating hostilities. Anthony Gamelin, an intelligent French trader, had been sent out by Major Hamtramck, with instructions from Gov. St. Clair, on an exploring mission to the Indians along the Wabash and Maumee, to learn their designs, and he had just returned with abundant evidence of their hostile intentions. General Harmar had commenced his unfortunate campaign, and the prospect was dark and discouraging. It was the intention of Mr. Gilham to penetrate the Indian country, and go from tribe to tribe until he found his lost family, but Governor St. Clair and all others acquainted with the state of things in the north-west dissuaded him from such a hopeless attempt. After a lapse of five years of doubt, trial, and disappointment, he learned from some French traders they were alive, and among the Kickapoos of Illinois. At the treaty of Greenville, the chiefs of the Indian tribes promised to give up all American captives, but a French trader had made arrangements for ransoming them; the goods having been furnished by an Irish trader at Cahokia, by the name of Atcheson. With two Frenchmen for interpreter and guides, Mr. Gilham visited the Indian towns on Salt Creek, and found his wife and children all alive, but the youngest, Clement, could not speak a word of English, and it was some time before he knew and would own his father, or could be persuaded to leave the Indian country, and he was left for a time among the savages.
Mr. Gilham had become enamored of the Illinois country, and after he had gathered his family together in Kentucky, resolved to remove them to the delightful prairies he had visited. As an honorable testimonial of the hardships and sufferings of her captivity, Mrs. Ann Gilham, in 1815, received from the national government, one hundred and sixty acres of choice land in the county of Madison, where they lived. Mr. Gilham died about 1812, like a Christian. His widow and most of the children professed religion, and some joined the Methodists and others the Baptists. A large number of the Gilham connection followed this pioneer to Illinois, where their descendants are yet living.
Mr. Clark and the Gilham family met with no difficulty on their voyage. They floated down the Ohio with the current, aided by the oars and setting poles, but to stem the strong current of the Mississippi, they used the cordelle and setting-poles, and occasionally crept along the shore by “bush-whacking.”40 Mr. Clark made a capital hand on the boat, and cheerfully engaged in the labor and toil of the voyage. His experience in sea-faring business made him an acquisition to the company, and laid the foundation for friendship in this family and with all of the name until death parted them. Many of the Gilham connection became Methodists in Illinois, but Father Clark was the most welcome guest who entered their houses.
When night came on, they tied their boat to a tree at the shore, made a fire, and camped in the woods, where they provided their two meals for the day. They moved up the strong and turbid current of the Mississippi at the rate of twelve miles each day. Indians occasionally hailed them from the shore, but they were friendly, and only desired to barter venison for whiskey, tobacco, corn-meal, knives and trinkets.
When the company reached Kaskaskia, Mr. Gilham disposed of his boat to some French voyageurs, and made his first location in the American bottom, about twenty-five or thirty miles above the town. Both him and his family were hospitably received by the settlers, for they knew their trials and the history of their captivity. Mr. Clark soon found religious friends, and was ready to preach the gospel on these remote frontiers.
The Indians of the north-west had been so severely chastised by “Mad Anthony,” (as the soldiers call General Wayne,) that they were glad to make peace; and now, after many years of distress, and the massacre of many families in the Illinois country, the people had opportunity to cultivate their little farms, and provide the necessaries to enable them to live comfortably. The people then travelled from the older settlements to this frontier country, and even caravans of moving families went down the Ohio in flat boats, with their horses, cattle, provisions, and clothing, to a place called Massac by the French, from whence they followed a trail through the wilderness, with their wagons or pack horses, to Kaskaskia, and to the settlement of New Design, and the American bottom, thirty miles further. Massac was a contracted form of speech for Massacre, in the French mode of abbreviating proper names. It is on the Ohio river, near where the town of Metropolis is now situated, which is the seat of justice for Massac County. Its name is a memento of a fearful calamity in the early part of the last century. The French established a trading post and a missionary station on the right bank of the Ohio, then called Ouabache. The southern Indians, then hostile to these Europeans, laid a stratagem to obtain possession of the fort. A number of them appeared in the day-time on the sand-bar of the opposite side of the river, each covered with the skin of a bear, and walking on all fours. They had disguised themselves so completely, and played pantomime so successfully with each other, that the French people did not doubt they were really wild bears from the forest who came there to drink. A party crossed the river in pursuit of them, while the rest left the fort and stood on the bank to see the sport. They did not discover the deception until they found themselves cut off from returning within the fort. They were soon massacred by the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savages. The French built another fort on the same spot, afterwards, and called it Massacre, or, as they taught the American pioneers to call it, Massac.
Early in the same season that Mr. Clark came with the Gilham family, a colony of one hundred and twenty-six emigrants from the south branch of the Potomac in Virginia, set out for Illinois. At Redstone, on the Monongahela, (now Brownsville,) they fitted out several flat boats, on which, with their horses and wagons, they floated down the current to Pittsburgh, and thence down the Ohio to Massac, where they landed and went across the country to the settlement of New Design. That season, and especially after they left the Ohio, was unusually rainy and hot. The streams overflowed their banks, and covered the alluvial, or bottom lands on their borders; and the low ground in the woods and prairies were covered with water. They were twenty-one days traveling through this wilderness, the distance of about one hundred miles, and much of it through dreary forests. The old settlers had been so long harassed with Indian warfare, that farming business had been neglected, their cattle were few in number, and bread corn was scarce. Their cabins usually contained each a single room for all domestic purposes; and though hospitality to strangers is a universal trait in frontier character, it was entirely beyond the ability of the inhabitants to provide accommodations for these ‘new comers,’ who arrived in a deplorably famishing and sickly condition. They did all they could; a single cabin frequently contained four or five families. Their rifles could provide venison from the woods, but the weather that followed the severe rains in midsummer was so unusually hot and sultry, that their fresh meat spoiled before they could pack it from the hunting grounds; and they were destitute of salt to preserve and season it. Medical aid could be procured only from a great distance, and that very seldom. Under such circumstances, no one need be surprised that of the colony, who left Virginia in the Spring, only one-half of their number were alive in autumn. A ridge in the western part of the settlement, adjacent to the bluffs, was covered with the newly formed graves. They were swept off by a putrid fever, unusually malignant, and which, in some instances, did its work in a few hours. The old settlers were as healthy as usual. No disease like this ever appeared in the country before or since. Mr. Clark had good health, and found work enough among these suffering families in nursing, instructing, and praying with the sick, and consoling the dying. The settlement of New Design had been commenced by American families about a dozen years previous. Its situation was on the elevated plateau, about thirty miles north of the town of Kaskaskia, and from ten to twelve miles from the Mississippi, and from three to six miles east of the American bottom and contiguous bluffs. Along the wide alluvial tract, or bottom, there were American families settled at intervals from Prairie du Rocher to the vicinity of Cahokia. The character of the American families was various. Some were religious people, both Baptists and Methodists; some were moral, and respected the Sabbath; others were infidels, or at least skeptical of all revealed truth. They paid no regard to religious meetings, and permitted their children to grow up without any moral restraint. They were fond of frolics, dances, horse-racing, card playing, and other vices, in which they were joined by many of the French population from the villages. They drank tafia,41 and when fruit became plenty, peach brandy was made, and rye whiskey obtained from the Monongahela country.
There has been a very marked difference between these two classes of pioneers, down to the third and fourth generation. But a very few of the descendants of the immoral and irreligious class are to be found amongst the present generation of the religious, moral, industrious and enterprising class. They followed the footsteps of their fathers, and have wasted away. Even the names of a number of these pioneer families have been blotted out, while the children’s children, of the virtuous class, are numerous and respected.
There were several families in the very commencement of these settlements, before a preacher of the Gospel brought the glad tidings here, or a single person had made a profession of religion, that held meetings on the Sabbath, read portions of the Scriptures, or a sermon, and sang hymns, and thus set a good example to the others. They and their descendants have been favored of the Lord.
The first preacher who visited the Illinois country, was James Smith, from Lincoln County, Ky. He was a “Separate Baptist,” and came on business, in 1787, but preached to the people repeatedly, and many of those who had kept up the meetings just noticed, professed conversion under his preaching. Of these the Hon. Shadrach Bond, Captain Joseph Ogle, James Lemen, Sen., his son-in-law, were conspicuous persons. He made another visit to the country in 1790, after the Indians had become troublesome, and preached with similar effect. While riding to the meeting place, on a week day, in company with another man, and a Mrs. Huff, they were fired at by a party of Kickapoos in ambuscade, near the present site of Waterloo, in Monroe county. Mrs. Huff was killed and scalped. The other man was wounded, but escaped with his horse, and Mr. Smith taken prisoner. The Indians took him through the prairies to their town on the Wabash, but he was afterwards ransomed through the agency of a French trader. After the visits and preaching of Mr. Smith, there were persons who could pray in these social meetings, and when it was safe to live out of forts, they met at each others houses, and Judge Bond, James Piggott, James Lemen, and some others, conducted the worship.
It was in January, 1794, while Judge Bond was officiating in this informal manner on the Sabbath, that a stranger came into the log cabin, where the people had assembled. He was a large, portly man, with dark hair, a florid complexion, and regular features. His dress was in advance of the deer-skin hunting shirts and Indian moccasins of the settlers; his countenance was grave and dignified, and his aspect so serious, that the reader was impressed with the thought that he was a professor of religion; perhaps a preacher, and an invitation was given him “to close the exercises, if he was a praying man.” The stranger kneeled, and made an impressive, fluent, and solemn prayer.
There was a man in the congregation, of small talents, and rather narrow views, who, from his national origin, bore the soubriquet of Dutch Pete among the people; or Peter Smith, as his name appears in the land documents. Pete was a zealous Methodist, and when his own preachers prayed, he felt moved by the Spirit to utter Amen, at the close of every sentence. While the people were on their knees, or with their heads bowed low on their seats, Pete manifested much uneasiness at the prayer of the stranger. He fidgetted one way and then another, uttered a low, but audible groan, and to those near him seemed to be in trouble. The very impressive and earnest prayer of the speaker excited his feelings beyond suppression. He might not be a Methodist; but Pete could hold in no longer, and bawled out, at the top of his voice, “Amen, at a wenture!”
The stranger proved to be Rev. Josiah Dodge, from Nelson county, Kentucky. He had been to St. Genevieve on a visit to his brother, Doctor Israel Dodge, and hearing of these religious people being entirely destitute of ministerial instruction, he had arrived opportunely to preach to them.
Mr. Dodge spent some time in the settlement, preaching daily, and visiting from house to house, and in February, the ice was cut in Fountain Creek; all the people for many miles around were present, and there he baptized James Lemen, Sen., and Catharine his wife; John Gibbons and Isaac Enochs, who were the first persons ever baptized in this territory.42
During the next two years, the people remained without preachers; but both Baptists and Methodists, without organized societies, united in holding prayer-meetings, in which, as formerly, the Scriptures and sermon books were read, prayers offered and hymns sung in praise to God.
The year previous to the visit of Mr. Dodge, Rev. Joseph Lillard made an excursion to the Illinois country. He was a Methodist, and in 1790-’91, was in the traveling connection in Kentucky, but he withdrew from that connection from objections to the government and discipline, and like Mr. Clark occupied an independent position. He preached to the people and organized a class, the first ever formed in this country, and appointed Captain Joseph Ogle the leader. Mr. Lillard was esteemed by all who knew him, as a pious and exemplary man; but while in Illinois he became temporarily deranged, made his escape from his friends and outran them, and followed the trail towards Kaskaskia. On the route he came across the body of a man by the name of Sipp, whom the Indians had killed and scalped. While gazing at this horrid sight, he became calm, his reason and consciousness were restored, and he returned to his friends at New Design, and made report of the discovery. The people made up a party who visited the place and buried the unfortunate man.
From time to time, Baptists came into these settlements, so that by May, 1796, there were ten or a dozen men and women in the country who had been members of churches in Virginia or Kentucky, from whence they came. Among these was Joseph Chance, who was an exhorter, and also a lay-elder, from Shelby county, Kentucky. This office, now unknown in Baptist churches, was regarded in Virginia and afterwards for a time in Kentucky, as an appendage to the pastoral office. Lay-elders had no authority in government and discipline, as in a Presbyterian church, but aided the pastor in conducting religious meetings by exhortation and prayer, visiting the sick, instructing the ignorant, and confirming the wavering. Mr. Chance afterwards became an ordained minister. He did not possess great talents as a preacher, but was faithful in the exercise of the gifts bestowed on him, loved religious meetings, devoted much time to preaching and visiting destitute settlements, and died while on a preaching tour in 1840, aged seventy-five years.
The Baptists in Illinois did not appear to know they could have formed themselves into a church, and chose such gifts as they had amongst them as leaders; and kept up the worship of God without the authority of an ordained minister. In the spring of 1796, Rev. David Badgley, of Hardy county, Va., made a visit to the Illinois country. He arrived in the settlement of New Design on the 4th of May, and preached night and day until the 30th, during which time he baptized fifteen persons on a profession of faith in Christ, and with the aid of Mr. Chance organized the first Baptist church ever formed in this country, of twenty-eight members. He returned to Virginia the same season, and the next spring (1797,) came back with his family and several others to settle this new country.
At that period the white population of the Illinois country, numbered about 2,700, of which about two-thirds were of French descent, spoke that language, and followed the customs of the Canadians, from whence most of their forefathers originated. They were a contented race of people, patient under hardships, without ambition, and ignorant of the prolific resources of the country. They never troubled themselves with political matters, engaged in no schemes of aggrandizement, and showed no inclination for political domination. They were a frank, open-hearted, joyous people, and careless about the acquisition of property. Their houses were small, built of logs set upright, like palisades, with the spaces filled in, plastered, and neatly white-washed inside and out. They cultivated fruits and flowers, and in this respect showed taste and refinement beyond the Americans. In religion they were nominally Roman Catholics; in the morning of the Sabbath they attended mass, and in the afternoon visited, played the violin, danced, or engaged in other recreations and ruder sports out of doors.
Another pioneer who was an exhorter in the Methodist connection, and came to the country in 1796, was the late Rev. Hosea Riggs, who at first settled in the American bottom. Mr. Riggs was born in Western Pennsylvania in 1760, became a soldier in the revolutionary war; and when twenty-two years of age, he enlisted in the army of Jesus Christ and joined the Methodist Episcopal church, became an exhorter, and proved himself a diligent and faithful soldier of the cross. When he arrived in the Illinois country with his family he found Capt. Joseph Ogle and family, Peter Casterline and family, and William Murray from Ireland, the remains of the class formed by Mr. Lillard. These he re-organized into a class at Captain Ogle’s house, and at a subsequent period formed another class of immigrant Methodists, in Goshen settlement. This was in Madison county, between Edwardsville and the American bottom. Mr. Riggs, though then only a licensed exhorter, attended these Methodist classes, and made appointments for meetings for six years. He attended the “Western Conference” in Kentucky, 1803, raised a Macedonian cry, and the Conference sent Rev. Benjamin Young as a missionary, who was the first preacher of the Methodist Episcopal church who traveled the circuit in Illinois. Mr. Riggs was tenacious for the Methodist government and discipline, and hence did not so readily coÖperate with Father Clark. He was a good man, a faithful preacher, lived a Christian life, and died a Christian death, in St. Clair county, in 1841, at the age of eighty-one years.
We have now brought up the religious history of Illinois to the period of the arrival of Mr. Clark. But to give our young readers a fuller picture of frontier life, and of the people with whom he lived and labored, and their deprivations, we must again look back on their condition for a few years past.
From 1786, to 1795, the American settlements in the Illinois country, as was the case throughout the north-western territory, were harrassed by hostile Indians. A part of the time the families were compelled to live in forts, or as they were called, “stations.”
A square was marked out, in proportion to the number of families. On two sides log cabins were erected in rows, with the roof sloping to the inner side of the enclosure. Block houses were put up at the corners, and so constructed that in the upper part which jutted over the lower story, the guard could watch the approach of the enemy and attack them successfully. The spaces not occupied by cabins were filled up with palisades. Strong doors made of thick slabs, or split timbers protected the places of ingress and egress. These stations were a sufficient protection against the small marauding parties, that came stealthily into the settlements. When no signs of hostile Indians were seen for some months, the people, tired of living in these stations, would remove to their cabins and attempt to raise a crop, when the first alarm would be by some family being massacred, or individual killed, in attempting to pass from one settlement to another. We could give many thrilling instances of savage barbarity, but our space is limited. They shall all be told, if we are successful in getting out our projected series of Pioneer Books.
While the women and children were compelled to stay in forts, the men cultivated a field in common within sight of the station, and one party with their trusty rifles scouted around as a guard, while another party plowed and planted corn. No schools nor regular religious meetings could be held during these Indian invasions.
When they ventured out of the forts, and resided on their farms, in the absence of the men, pious mothers barricaded the door lest Indians might come on them suddenly, and gathered the little children around the huge fire place, for the light that shone down the large chimneys, and taught them the rudiments of learning. No log cabin had any glass windows, and if apertures were cut in the logs, it was not safe to leave them open when Indians were about.
The Americans in these early settlements in Illinois did not trespass on Indian rights, by taking their country. The Kaskaskia Indians and their allies sold this part of the Illinois country, and gave possession to the French nearly a century before the period of these depredations, and the Kickapoos, Shawanoes and other Indians, whose country was from one hundred and fifty to five hundred miles distant, committed all the murders and robberies. The Kaskaskias remained peaceable during the war, lived within the range of these settlements, in the American bottom, a few miles above the town of Kaskaskia, cultivated corn, beans, and other vegetables, and hunted in the vicinity of the white settlements.
Savage Indians have astonishing propensities for war and plunder. Before the European race came to this continent, the different nations and tribes were fighting and plundering each other, and they still keep up the practice, unless prevented by the strong arm of our national government. Nothing short of the influence of the gospel on their hearts can cure these diabolical passions.
The Indians who were hostile to the Americans did not attack the French inhabitants, for they had been accustomed to trade with them, and had been on friendly terms for half a century.
